[phiwum]

The most obvious issue with the weapons table right now is that there's really no reason to take Ax/Mace. Where the damages differ with Swords, the sword has a half point average damage advantage (with higher maximum and lower minimum). Moreover, if you take Sword, you get Knife essentially for free, and having a dagger skill is very useful in HTH.

Shostak's suggestions would distinguish the two. So would Henry's, but the effects of his suggestion is rather drastic.

Henry's suggestion certainly would make combat a lot less deadly. An ST 9 character with a cutting weapon won't do any damage at all to someone who stops three hits, unless he happens to get a critical hit. (I'm ignoring expertise, obviously.)

Henry, have you actually played this way? Just how long did it take? To take your own example (Chain + Small Shield), a broadsword has to roll 9 or better to do any damage at all. That's damage less than a third of the time. Average damage per hit (ignoring critical hits) in RAW figures at 3.111, while with your suggestion, that drops to 0.55. That battle has just gotten a lot longer.

I'm not saying this isn't realistic (how would I know?) but it sure does seem a lot less interesting for those involved. A DX 12 figure wielding a broadsword against a ST 10 guy armored as above will take roughly 25 turns to put him down if he's willing to stand there and take it. That's compared to 5 turns with RAW.

(Per these rules, a guy using a Morningstar -- 2d+1, but not cutting damage -- would do a lot better than the sword user, taking only 7 turns to put down our figure. The bastard sword wielder -- also 2d+1 -- would take 14 turns.)

At lower armor to damage ratios, I reckon the advantage would be to the cutting weapon user.