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Blood axe wrote:I do house-rule, but I feel if you think something is wrong, or a mistake rules-wise- you should point it out.
LL isnt just an exact copy of the old Red book- its the old Red book - new & improved!!!

Agreed.

I pondered this very topic the other day. I wonder If you think of 2H weapons as "longer handles" rather than strength to put behind a weapon you hold with two hands - it makes a little more sense... emphasis on the little!

I really liked the Middle Earth Role Playing system, and Role Master. Those systems allowed any class to learn any weapons, it was just more difficult for a mage to learn a long sword or two handed axe as opposed to a warrior wanting to learn those.

I like the house rules suggested here.

Blood axe wrote:Why does LL hate Dwarves??

Because they drink too much, are cheap, never bath, and piss over everyone and everything! Maybe LL had one for a roommate or something...?

I agree the asterisk on the war hammer is probably an error, otherwise the dwarven thrower war hammer +2 doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Dyson Logos wrote:Easy Answer?

Because the source game did.

Well, the source game had far fewer weapons with lots less discrepancies like the ones reported above (to which I add: mace vs. morningstar: what's the point of the latter?) and it was far more explicit: dwarves cannot use long bows and two-handed swords.
In B/X Halflings could not use long bows and two-handed swords, to which Mentzer adds the specification of pole arms and battle axes.
So there is really no ambiguity in the sources.

RE: the long sword vs. battle axe, at least there is a trade-off in terms of price. Not that it matters much beyond character creation, still...

I think that if LL was to be closer to the source, these points should be addressed clearly. Some things seem clearly wrong (e.g. mace vs. morningstar).

Because the source game did.

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Thats the easy way out. (no offense.) If there are typos, or other mistakes- you fix it.

I just house-rule it in my game. To rob Dwarves of their traditional weapons is just wrong.

Blood axe wrote:Because the source game did.

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Thats the easy way out. (no offense.) If there are typos, or other mistakes- you fix it.

I just house-rule it in my game. To rob Dwarves of their traditional weapons is just wrong.

Easy way out, and plainly put wrong, as a reading of B/X and Mentzer shows.

While I am fairly sure something went wrong with the war hammer in transit, I am just as confident that B/X's battle axe was modeled off of the Norse axe, a two handed weapon. For a one handed axe you are left with the hand axe which I think covers everything from the traditional one handed fantasy battle axe to a tomahawk. The hand axe does 1d6 damage which is the damage done by all weapons if you are not using optional variable weapon damage. In fact, using variable weapon damage only the sword is favored with greater than 1d6 damage as a single handed weapon. In my game I lumped the long and short sword together as "sword" which does 1d6 damage and all two handed weapons do 1d8.

rabindranath72's point is valid, although in the case of halflings B/X also says the equipment has to be cut down to size and there are a number of discussions on the web on the topic of what "cut down to size" entails.

Regardless or all that. Bloodaxe does seem to have a valid question. The war hammer being a two handed weapon and the dwarf being stripped of any two handed weapon use does seem to point to a dark and brooding conspiracy against the bearded race. Whats up with that Dan?

A battle axe is a two-handed weapon , so a Dwarf cant use that either. No war hammer, no battle axe. Poor Dwarf.

In the Red Box, it says they can use all small and normal sized weapons, and it calls out Two-Handed Swords and Longbows (only) as being off-limit. No word on Polearms or Spears. I don't even know what a weapon of small or normal size is supposed to be.

pawsplay wrote:In the Red Box, it says they can use all small and normal sized weapons, and it calls out Two-Handed Swords and Longbows (only) as being off-limit. No word on Polearms or Spears. I don't even know what a weapon of small or normal size is supposed to be.

Go back & recheck. It says two-handed WEAPONS, not two- handed swords.