Reducing the number of weapon skills

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

If one skill is enough to dominate, then I'd assume the GM is letting it. Is that broadsword user going to have a ready blade when the batlord crashes a fancy dance? Is the user going to be able to fight off diffuse enemies? Will they see the traps in between them and the ogre? And this is all assuming that dealing lethal damage is even the goal.

It's not that one skill is sufficient -- it's that there's generally no point to taking additional melee weapon skills, because in situation where the broadsword is unavailable or useless, most other melee weapon skills will also be unavailable or useless (possible exception: knife -- but its often best to skip directly from your sword skill to unarmed combat).

If I wanted to make more categories, I'd go with something like:
Melee Weapons: you should pick your preferred melee weapon. It has the following traits:

• Balance (one of Flexible, Unbalanced, Balanced, Fencing)
• Damage Type
• Hands
• Reach

If you pick up a different weapon, you may default it off of your preferred weapon. This gives penalties based on how different the weapons are, as follows:

• Different Balance: -2 per step (Flexible, Unbalanced, Balanced, Fencing)
• Different Damage Type: -1
• Different Hands: -2
• Different Reach: -2 if either minimum or maximum reach is different, -4 if both are different.

Thus to default from Flail to Knife is -4 (flexible to balanced), -1 (crushing to impaling), -2 (different hands), -4 (both minimum and maximum reach are different). You may reduce each penalty (separately) as an average technique; thus, to use all weapons equally costs 13 points.

Adjust penalties to taste.