The Weapon Problem

I just can't take Blueholme' weapon deal.   Having all weapons do 1d6 is fine, if all monsters do 1d6 (with a few exceptions) and if everyone uses d6 for HD as well (as OD&D originally was set up).  But, if you're going to add variable damage for monsters (as Blueholme does), and variable hit die types, there's no reason to keep weapon damage at 1d6 universal.


For damage, then, I just made Light Weapons 1d4,  one-handed normal weapons 1d6, and 2-handed weapons d8, and heavy lances and heavy crossbows 1d10.  Not a huge difference.


I also decided to port in a feature from the original Chainmail man-to-man combat system.  Each weapon gets a RATING from 1-12.   It's a combination of length and weight.  So, daggers are Rating 1, pikes are RATING 12.  


On first contact, the character with the higher rating strikes first.  On subsequent round, the character with the lower rating strikes first (this actually works nicely with the Blueholme phased turn sequence).   And if one weapon is 4 or more points lower than another, it gets 2 attacks, 8 or more points lower it gets 3 attacks.   Also, I set up the "Reach Weapon" distances based on the same rating.