Goodman Games

That kind of reminds me of weapon damage in the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Unfortunately, I gave my copy away years ago but I seem to remember that they had a couple of really broad categories for weapons and every thing in a category did the same damage. It kept things simple but encouraged characters to use weapons based on flavor and not stats.

I'm good with the die shifts. But I prefer bholmes' approach. I don't mind the +1 or +3 to damage either. I mean, imagine if you have a Thief with a dagger and a -2 STR modifier. Mkay, so you can get it figured that the -2 will drop the dagger to a 1d2 damage. Yikes. But then he picks up a short sword... at some point all the die shifting up and down reaches a critical mass.

I like the idea of shifting dice up and down too. But I don't want to go overboard with it. "+2DS because opponent is blinded, +1DS because an opponent is flanked, -1DS because of STR modifier" isn't any better than applying modifiers to a die roll.

I'd rather not apply the die shifts for everything. Using it to represent a weapon that does more (or less) damage? I'm cool with that. Using it instead of ability modifiers? I'm not cool with that.

It's how Lamentations of the Flame Princess does it too. There are a few specialty weapons -- like a whip, for example -- but everything else pretty much gets a broad category of "Big Weapon", "Medium Weapon", "Small Weapon". I very much like that approach because I can fill in the blanks for myself what makes my "Medium Weapon" super-cool.

as i suggested elsewhere, i'm adopting in my small campaign different rules regardin wepaons & combat:

any melee weapon used with 2 hands gets to "roll twice, keep highest" on the damage dice.
any melee weapon used with 1 hand uses normal damage; if it's a weapon intended for 2 hands, it gets -4 to attack.

double wielding weapons allows only 1 attack, but with "roll both, keep highest" on the damage dice OR choose 1 weapon with which to attack like if one handed; the other weapon parries, +1 AC, like a shield. Use of two weapons effectively depends on AGI and level.

After reading the weapon damage chart I have to agree. There isn't much of a reason to take a two handed weapon . The occasional 2 extra points of damage does not make up for the -4 to initiative and lack of shield bonus. 1d12 damage sounds like a simple enough fix to me. "abk108's" double roll idea seems like a good idea also. At any rate I think if this problem is not fixed before the release of the game my gaming group will come up with something to fix it on our own.
Stonebreaker