[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

If people want fighters to be skilled with every weapon, why not just give them more points to spend on weapons? Or is there some inherent value to be gained by stripping away nuance and variation?

Nuance is good, but "just give them more points" doesn't help much with making a character who is skilled with all weapons. That's because the alternative, an ahistorically-specialized character, is far more appealing. Consider a character who has, say, skill 18 in a favored skill (Broadsword), and ~skill 14 in most other melee weapon skills. With DX 10, that's [32] in Broadsword, which gives Two-Handed Sword at 14 and Shortsword at 16, but we'll burn [1] on each to be able to treat the character as proficient in the skill, so those are covered. The character also needs Axe/Mace, Knife, Polearm, Shield, Spear, and Two-Handed Axe/Mace (the others are more specialized; this will cover pretty much all battlefield weapons). Axe/Mace 14 costs [16], Knife 14 costs [12], Polearm 14 costs [14] (buying up from the Two-Handed Axe/Mace default we'll get in a bit), Shield 14 costs [12], Spear 14 costs [14] (buying up from the Polearm default), and Two-Handed Axe/Mace costs [12] (buying up from the Axe/Mace default), for a total cost of [114]. Of course, that's a bit inefficient; +3 DX [60] drops the costs above to [20], [1], [1], [4], [2], [4], [2] [4], and [4], respectively, reducing total cost to [102] (or [87] if we can take a -0.75 to Basic Speed, negating the bonus to that from our enhanced DX) - although this means our character is a bit of a DX-monkey, which may not have been part of the concept. Of course, if the player were to decide to drop the bit of the backstory where the character was a highly-skilled soldier (or just ignore it for purposes of skills), he could take those [114] and invest them entirely in Broadsword and Shield; maintaining the -4 separation, that's Broadsword 26 [64] and Shield 22 [44], with another [6] left behind (say, for Targeted Attack: Broadsword Thrust/Eye -4 [6]). The latter character is going to markedly outperform the former in roughly 90% of combat situations (unless the GM is a jerk who frequently contrives to deprive the characters of their best weapons, but lets them have access to other weapons that "coincidentally" aren't usable with their best skills). A scheme that essentially gives more lenient defaults between the above (and/or allows you to buy them up from default for less than it costs to increase the skill being defaulted off of) would make the soldier-turned-swordmaster a more competitive character than the guy who only knows how to use a sword and shield.

Of course, there is the risk of going too far - the option where we shove all the melee weapons into a single skill will generally mean you can either build a character who is skilled with all weapons (maybe favoring a handful via Proficiency Perks), or a character who is skilled with one weapon (and has lesser skill with its defaults), and pretty much nothing in-between. Above, using Kromm's rough-draft suggestion, the generalist-who-favors-swords could have Melee Weapon 18 [40] and [4] invested in appropriate Perks to be able to use his preferred weapon designs at full skill (everything else is a 16) for the same cost as it would take for the sword-and-board specialist to have Broadsword 18 [32] and Shield 14 [12], leaving the specialist markedly below the "generalist" in nearly all instances, only tying in one (Broadsword vs Broadsword).