Dwarven weapon skills

[davecake]

Sorry about that garbled  formatting in the last message, forum software seems to have gone a bit odd. 

What I meant to quote, not hide, was

Quote

It is widely known that these are not the only techniques used by the dwarfs. The Silver dwarfs are believed by some Malkioni to be the source of the Tap technique, while Tin dwarfs have some technique to breathe life into inanimate things. 

From the Bestiary. I think it is implied Silver dwarves may have some sorcery knowledge that is more like conventional sorcery. I note that the Gods draft I have seen has some further examples of  Mostali magic, including at least one spell that does not require POW sacrifice (seemingly intentionally - it is active, so it would seem a bad deal if it did), but there are also some other issues with issues with Mostali magic as describe there, and I expect it will be cleaned up in the published version. We have, however, only a tiny glimpse of Mostal magic at best, as whole important sections are so far undescribed. 

[Ludo Bagman]

Another thing to note is that the iron dwarf from the bestiary has the average stats of a dwarf (STR 14 etc.) but he needs a STR of 11 to wield the hammer, a STR of 13/9 to wield the battle axe with one/two hand(s), and a STR of 14-15 to carry 14 ENC worth of iron armor and weapons without penalties (STR 9 to be able to move at all).

This means that the average STR of the encountered iron dwarf warriors will be higher than average. Those with very high strenght and a damage bonus of 1D4 can perform well in every role, those with high strength but without damage bonus will most likely stick to ranged combat. Those with lower strength will most likely not be encountered outside of the dwarven cities (creating and repairing weapons) or just in support roles (if their philosophy allows it, like lighter armored shield bearer to protect the ranged warriors).

[Godlearner]

1 hour ago, Ludo Bagman said:

This means that the average STR of the encountered iron dwarf warriors will be higher than average.

They will have boosted stats with sorcery to make any restrictions such these meaningless. 

[Barak Shathur]

2 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

Another thing to note is that the iron dwarf from the bestiary has the average stats of a dwarf (STR 14 etc.) but he needs a STR of 11 to wield the hammer, a STR of 13/9 to wield the battle axe with one/two hand(s), and a STR of 14-15 to carry 14 ENC worth of iron armor and weapons without penalties (STR 9 to be able to move at all).

This means that the average STR of the encountered iron dwarf warriors will be higher than average. Those with very high strenght and a damage bonus of 1D4 can perform well in every role, those with high strength but without damage bonus will most likely stick to ranged combat. Those with lower strength will most likely not be encountered outside of the dwarven cities (creating and repairing weapons) or just in support roles (if their philosophy allows it, like lighter armored shield bearer to protect the ranged warriors).

I think you too are missing the point of my original post. The stats are given as an ’average’ iron dwarf you might encounter. He/she has STR 14 and a 1H hammer as his highest skill weapon. Now, in RQG a weapon with crush special is really only a meaningful choice if you have 1d6 or more in DB. Otherwise impaling and slashing weapons will give you much more bang for your buck. It just doesn’t make sense that a creature as focused on war as an iron dwarf wouldn’t choose the most optimal weapon available. It’s a matter of logical world building, really. Now Impale special has been added to war hammers, which makes sense since they are supposed to ‘punch through armor’. And voilà, war hammers are suddenly a good choice even for characters with low or zero DB. So problem solved (although battle axe would still be the better option). 
 

I think part of the problem is that it seems the weapons and stats were imported from RQ2/3, but with the new rule for slash specials, some high damage weapons like battle axes and great swords became much more powerful compared to others, where in previous iterations they didn’t have the double damage effect on specials. 
 

I think the weapon system was originally structured with the idea that only the impale special caused double damage, and therefore it breaks down when you change that. Another example  of this is the Swedish BRP system Drakar och Demoner from the 80s, which pretty much lifted the weapons tables straight from Basic Roleplaying, but removed the Impale function. In this game, only swords and axes made sense to use since they had the highest damage dice, and in practice this is what happened. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Barak Shathur

[Ludo Bagman]

7 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

The stats are given as an ’average’ iron dwarf you might encounter. He/she has STR 14 and a 1H hammer as his highest skill weapon.

The mismatch that I wanted to point out is that the characteristics (STR 4D6 etc.) are of an average dwarf independent of caste (there are no other dwarf characteristics) but skills etc. are of a heavily armored iron dwarf that needs a high strength (magical improved or not) to fight as intended. The average dwarf strength used in the example (14) works for the role, but if you consider all strength values instead of the single fixed value, the spread would be something like 11-24 or ideally 14-24 instead of 4-24, resulting in a higher number of dwarfs with a damage bonus that can use crushing weapons effectively (instead of 100% of the dwarf warriors having no damage bonus at all).

This effect is more noticeable with weaker races, e.g. humans (STR 3D6, average 10-11, but a heavy infantry warrior with a large shield would need at least STR 12, so just using the average human strength does not work in this case).

About RQ3: It used special knockback rules for blunt weapons on special hits, so the lack of damage bonus just meant that the target would be pushed back a shorter distance (a small disadvantage)—a DEX x 5 roll must still be made to not fall prone.

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

The mismatch that I wanted to point out is that the characteristics (STR 4D6 etc.) are of an average dwarf independent of caste (there are no other dwarf characteristics) but skills etc. are of a heavily armored iron dwarf that needs a high strength (magical improved or not) to fight as intended. The average dwarf strength used in the example (14) works for the role, but if you consider all strength values instead of the single fixed value, the spread would be something like 11-24 or ideally 14-24 instead of 4-24, resulting in a higher number of dwarfs with a damage bonus that can use crushing weapons effectively (instead of 100% of the dwarf warriors having no damage bonus at all).

I'm not sure this would be a thing. Obviously, when the Dwarf comes out of the vat, it is to a certain set of specifications for their intended role. If something occurs that causes a defect, then they simply get tossed back into the vat, unless that worksite has a severe shortage of workers. In which case the defective worker is placed into a new cast, more suitable for their specifications, and reprogrammed.

Thus, the stats are obviously for one that has strayed from the path, and obvious defects are beginning to creep in that compromise them even further. Not even allowing them to properly use the tools of their trade anymore. 

SDLeary

Edited November 3, 2022 by SDLeary

[Barak Shathur]

21 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

The mismatch that I wanted to point out is that the characteristics (STR 4D6 etc.) are of an average dwarf independent of caste (there are no other dwarf characteristics) but skills etc. are of a heavily armored iron dwarf that needs a high strength (magical improved or not) to fight as intended. The average dwarf strength used in the example (14) works for the role, but if you consider all strength values instead of the single fixed value, the spread would be something like 11-24 or ideally 14-24 instead of 4-24, resulting in a higher number of dwarfs with a damage bonus that can use crushing weapons effectively (instead of 100% of the dwarf warriors having no damage bonus at all).

This effect is more noticeable with weaker races, e.g. humans (STR 3D6, average 10-11, but a heavy infantry warrior with a large shield would need at least STR 12, so just using the average human strength does not work in this case).

About RQ3: It used special knockback rules for blunt weapons on special hits, so the lack of damage bonus just meant that the target would be pushed back a shorter distance (a small disadvantage)—a DEX x 5 roll must still be made to not fall prone.

Ok. I would also bump iron dwarves’ strength, but that is purely up to GM discretion. Someone who didn’t bother to think it through might just go with the printed stats, and wind up with dwarves who are surprisingly ineffective in melee. And even with 1d4 db, crushing weapons are an inferior choice to slashing or piercing weapons due to the rules for specials. This has now been resolved since war hammers got Impale (as they had in RQ3.
 

By the way, even though humans have lower STR they are as a whole more powerful than dwarves physically because thanks to their SIZ, they are on average just 1 pt shy of db, while dwarves need 4. This discrepancy arose in (I believe) RQ3, where human SIZ went from 3d6 to 2d6+6, while dwarves stayed at 2d6. IMO, dwarves should have gotten 1d6+6 SIZ following this logic. 

These may be minor details to some, but they do have a subtle but meaningful influence on world building and outcomes. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Barak Shathur
Typo

[Jeff]

2 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

Ok. I would also bump iron dwarves’ strength, but that is purely up to GM discretion. Someone who didn’t bother to think it through might just go with the printed stats, and wind up with dwarves who are surprisingly ineffective in melee. And even with 1d4 db, crushing weapons are an inferior choice to slashing or piercing weapons due to the rules for specials. This has now been resolved since war hammers got Impale (as they had in RQ3.
 

By the way, even though humans have lower STR they are as a whole more powerful than dwarves physically because thanks to their SIZ, they are on average just 1 pt shy of db, while dwarves need 4. This discrepancy arose in (I believe) RQ3, where human SIZ went from 3d6 to 2d6+6, while dwarves stayed at 2d6. IMO, dwarves should have gotten 1d6+6 SIZ following this logic. 

These may be minor details to some, but they do have a subtle but meaningful influence on world building and outcomes. 

Remember that hit points are not the average of SIZ and CON. The average dwarf has 18 hit points instead of the 11 hit points an average human has.

[SDLeary]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Remember that hit points are not the average of SIZ and CON. The average dwarf has 18 hit points instead of the 11 hit points an average human has.

How do you figure 18? In the Bestiary it states 12, and based on the averages in the stat block, that tracks.

SDLeary

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

How do you figure 18? In the Bestiary it states 12, and based on the averages in the stat block, that tracks.

SDLeary

Oops looked at the wrong stat block! But still a dwarf has an average of 12, which is 1 point higher than the average human. RQ3 needed to massively hike their constitution to get to the same result.

I am perfectly comfortable with the dwarf stats, as they reflect how we view the dwarfs. 

[metcalph]

On 11/3/2022 at 4:44 PM, SDLeary said:

I'm not sure this would be a thing. Obviously, when the Dwarf comes out of the vat, it is to a certain set of specifications for their intended role. If something occurs that causes a defect, then they simply get tossed back into the vat, unless that worksite has a severe shortage of workers. In which case the defective worker is placed into a new cast, more suitable for their specifications, and reprogrammed.

IMO the nature of dwarven stats is dependent on a number of factors that range from a) the dwarves been tailored to the task that they are intended for and b) When the World Machine was broken, the Decamony desperately suspended Quality Control to make the needed quotas for dwarven production.

Dwarves have a severe shortage of workers that has lasted for so long that none of them can remember the days of surplus.  There's no rejection of inferior units because all dwarves produced are inferior to what they could have been.

An Iron Dwarf with a SIZ of 2, a STR of 4 and INT of 8 will always have a place in any Dwarven Society as an Iron Dwarf even though he would be rejected as unfit in any human army (except for possibly the Mobiks).  

 

 

[Barak Shathur]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Oops looked at the wrong stat block! But still a dwarf has an average of 12, which is 1 point higher than the average human. RQ3 needed to massively hike their constitution to get to the same result.

I am perfectly comfortable with the dwarf stats, as they reflect how we view the dwarfs. 

Average human hit points is also 12, both in RQ3 and RGG. So after RQ2, Dwarves became decidedly inferior to humans in combat stat wise, though in RQ3 they at least held an advantage in Fatigue points. I wonder if this was intended, or more an accident of the increased human size, which was done in order to get rid of ridiculously small human PCs as I’ve been told. 

I would prefer to put humans back at 3d6 SIZ, and resolve the tiny person problem some other way. Re-rolling 1s does it. Another version would be to set a min SIZ and re-roll everything under it. I think it’s just incredibly awkward rules wise to have every average human just 1 point shy of DB. I It doesn’t seem like a conscious design decision, especially since 1d4, when most hand weapons do around 2-8 points of damage, is huge. Again, it seems like an unintended consequence of trying to solve the SIZ problem. 
 

Some added thoughts: I think something in the Machine got a little out of whack in another way when human size was increased. A fantasy dwarf is typically about 2/3 the size of a human. 4-5 feet vs humans’ 6. And this was the case in the early iterations of RQ. With RQ3 this changed, and dwarves became half the size of humans. Now, was this a deliberate change in the human-dwarf relationship, or an unintended (or simply not considered) effect of the SIZ change? You might say yes, we decided Gloranthan dwarves are smaller than conventional dwarves, but this relationship carried over to BRP/BGB, so I don’t believe this was the case. Rather, an unintended consequence of a change to an established rule system that had deeper structural impact than the original purpose motivated. Like, I would assume, the increased proliferation of DB (now practically all humans have it) leading to the damage inflation that gave RQ the reputation of being ‘the game where PCs get their limbs chopped off’. Later versions of the BRP family, such as Open Quest and Legend/Mythras, seem to have recognized this problem and increased dwarf size and, in Legend/Mythras, reduced DB. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Barak Shathur

[Jeff]

5 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Average human hit points is also 12, both in RQ3 and RGG. So after RQ2, Dwarves became decidedly inferior to humans in combat stat wise, though in RQ3 they at least held an advantage in Fatigue points. I wonder if this was intended, or more an accident of the increased human size, which was done in order to get rid of ridiculously small human PCs as I’ve been told. 

I would prefer to put humans back at 3d6 SIZ, and resolve the tiny person problem some other way. Re-rolling 1s does it. Another version would be to set a min SIZ and re-roll everything under it. I think it’s just incredibly awkward rules wise to have every average human just 1 point shy of DB. I It doesn’t seem like a conscious design decision, especially since 1d4, when most hand weapons do around 2-8 points of damage, is huge. Again, it seems like an unintended consequence of trying to solve the SIZ problem. 
 

Some added thoughts: I think something in the Machine got a little out of whack in another way when human size was increased. A fantasy dwarf is typically about 2/3 the size of a human. 4-5 feet vs humans’ 6. And this was the case in the early iterations of RQ. With RQ3 this changed, and dwarves became half the size of humans. Now, was this a deliberate change in the human-dwarf relationship, or an unintended (or simply not considered) effect of the SIZ change? You might say yes, we decided Gloranthan dwarves are smaller than conventional dwarves, but this relationship carried over to BRP/BGB, so I don’t believe this was the case. Rather, an unintended consequence of a change to an established rule system that had deeper structural impact than the original purpose motivated. Like, I would assume, the increased proliferation of DB (now practically all humans have it) leading to the damage inflation that gave RQ the reputation of being ‘the game where PCs get their limbs chopped off’. Later versions of the BRP family, such as Open Quest and Legend/Mythras, seem to have recognized this problem and increased dwarf size and, in Legend/Mythras, reduced DB. 

Dwarfs in RQ2 are the same as in RQG. The only change with humans is that their SIZ now averages 13 instead of 11. They have one hit point less than the average human despite being 6 SIZ points smaller.

Again, this is not a problem in our eyes. Dwarves are not intended to be combat monsters, any more than ducks are. And their ranged weapons and explosives should be far more threatening than fighting them up close where humans longer reach and greater SIZ gives them an advantage.

Part of this is how we look at the dwarfs. I view the dwarfs as being less like Gimli or Thorin Oakenshield and more like:

[Barak Shathur]

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

Dwarfs in RQ2 are the same as in RQG. The only change with humans is that their SIZ now averages 13 instead of 11. They have one hit point less than the average human despite being 6 SIZ points smaller.

Again, this is not a problem in our eyes. Dwarves are not intended to be combat monsters, any more than ducks are. And their ranged weapons and explosives should be far more threatening than fighting them up close where humans longer reach and greater SIZ gives them an advantage.

Part of this is how we look at the dwarfs. I view the dwarfs as being less like Gimli or Thorin Oakenshield and more like:

No, dwarves and humans have the same amount of hit points, 12, on average.
 

So I guess dwarves became more gnome-like between RQ2 and 3, which is fine. What stands out to me is that the description didn’t indicate this as far as I can tell, and again, that the same size relationship was replicated in other BRP games. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Barak Shathur

[Jeff]

45 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

No, dwarves and humans have the same amount of hit points, 12, on average.
 

So I guess dwarves became more gnome-like between RQ2 and 3, which is fine. What stands out to me is that the description didn’t indicate this as far as I can tell, and again, that the same size relationship was replicated in other BRP games. 

Dwarfs have always been like they were in RQ2. The issue was the RQ3's hit point calculation would have severely punished dwarfs unless their CON's were raised to be absurdly high. RQG goes back to RQ2's approach, and so restores them to what they were. 

Humans had their SIZ increased to 2D6+6 in late revisions to RQ2, and then that was kept in RQ3. There really shouldn't be a statistically significance chance that a human being is smaller than a duck!

[Barak Shathur]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Humans had their SIZ increased to 2D6+6 in late revisions to RQ2, and then that was kept in RQ3. There really shouldn't be a statistically significance chance that a human being is smaller than a duck!

Ok, I hadn't seen those late revisions so I assumed it came with RQ3. Thanks for updating me on that. I agree humans shouldn't be too small, but not too big either! Wish they could have solved it some other way, as I said. Should dwarves be smaller than ducks though?

[Jeff]

4 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Ok, I hadn't seen those late revisions so I assumed it came with RQ3. Thanks for updating me on that. I agree humans shouldn't be too small, but not too big either! Wish they could have solved it some other way, as I said. Should dwarves be smaller than ducks though?

Some dwarves are definitely smaller than ducks! In fact the smallest dwarves are smaller than the smallest ducks!

[Barak Shathur]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Some dwarves are definitely smaller than ducks! In fact the smallest dwarves are smaller than the smallest ducks!

Hah! Now there’s an eye opener, and no mistake. Or maybe they are making swords for jolanti 😉

[Barak Shathur]

Given that the Mostali are so specialised, shouldn’t the stats for the various types be different? Since they’re produced for specific functions, maybe the spread should be smaller for the relevant characteristics. Maybe it’s time for a Mostali sourcebook…:)

 

[Shiningbrow]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:59 PM, Barak Shathur said:

I think you too are missing the point of my original post. The stats are given as an ’average’ iron dwarf you might encounter. He/she has STR 14 and a 1H hammer as his highest skill weapon. Now, in RQG a weapon with crush special is really only a meaningful choice if you have 1d6 or more in DB. Otherwise impaling and slashing weapons will give you much more bang for your buck. It just doesn’t make sense that a creature as focused on war as an iron dwarf wouldn’t choose the most optimal weapon available. It’s a matter of logical world building, really. Now Impale special has been added to war hammers, which makes sense since they are supposed to ‘punch through armor’. And voilà, war hammers are suddenly a good choice even for characters with low or zero DB. So problem solved (although battle axe would still be the better option). 
 

I think part of the problem is that it seems the weapons and stats were imported from RQ2/3, but with the new rule for slash specials, some high damage weapons like battle axes and great swords became much more powerful compared to others, where in previous iterations they didn’t have the double damage effect on specials. 
 

I think the weapon system was originally structured with the idea that only the impale special caused double damage, and therefore it breaks down when you change that. Another example  of this is the Swedish BRP system Drakar och Demoner from the 80s, which pretty much lifted the weapons tables straight from Basic Roleplaying, but removed the Impale function. In this game, only swords and axes made sense to use since they had the highest damage dice, and in practice this is what happened. 

I don't think anyone is missing the point of your original post. I think people aren't as convinced of its significance - and that's a significance largely along the lines of min-maxsing.

As a fairly simple analogy - why don't most people in the military carry around M60s (or their more modern equivalent)? Or even higher calibre? After all (going by your logic), they are the more powerful weapon compared to most others.

Or, why don't most melee fighters all go for a greatsword (or greataxe) if they've got the STR to use them?

For the dwarf/hammer thing, there's a very clear and obvious reason why - because they are smiths, and they have a LOT more experience in using a hammer than an axe. Besides which, (or along with this), they are also masons.  Axes are decidedly of narrow use to a subterranean species. And same with swords - only useful for combat. Sure, that's largely what the Iron Dwarves were made for, but their makers wouldn't have had a lot of skill with those, so how would they have imparted that to their creations? ANS: they couldn't.

Going back to my first point - just because something is much better than another, doesn't mean everyone should be doing/using it. How incredibly boring that would be!

[Scotty]

If you want to discuss anything other than Dwarfs please start a new topic.

[Jeff]

As a followup thought, remember that Gloranthan dwarves are most emphatically not the Scottish-accented dwarves of the Peter Jackson movies or of most D&D campaigns. A small Gloranthan dwarf might only weigh 10 kg (22 pounds) and be 60 cm (23 inches) tall. That's about the same size as my cat (admittedly she is a Maine Coon)! Dwarfs often have grotesque (but not hideous or repulsive) facial features, disproportionate and gnarled limbs, hunchbacked and twisted.

Larger dwarves exist, of course. A large dwarf might be 140 cm tall (55 inches) and weigh 75 kg (165 pounds). So there is a bewildering variety in sizes and shapes among dwarfdom. A dwarf like Ginkizzie or The Dwarf might be almost human sized, while other dwarfs in the community are no bigger than a large house cat. 

[soltakss]

12 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Given that the Mostali are so specialised, shouldn’t the stats for the various types be different? Since they’re produced for specific functions, maybe the spread should be smaller for the relevant characteristics. Maybe it’s time for a Mostali sourcebook…:)

Mostali are specialised.

However, the Mostali that we see, the Dwarves, are all Clay Mostali, so are very much alike.

Other Mostali are very different. Each of the True Mostali castes are different from the other castes, and have specialisms that help them in their tasks.

Look at the RQ3 Mostali spells and make them abilities for the True Mostali.

[metcalph]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Look at the RQ3 Mostali spells and make them abilities for the True Mostali.

Don't think it's helpful to tell newcomers to look at out-of-print material.  In any case the RQ3 spells referred to are pretty much the same spells given in the RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary p61.

[Barak Shathur]

On 11/5/2022 at 8:19 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I don't think anyone is missing the point of your original post. I think people aren't as convinced of its significance - and that's a significance largely along the lines of min-maxsing.

As a fairly simple analogy - why don't most people in the military carry around M60s (or their more modern equivalent)? Or even higher calibre? After all (going by your logic), they are the more powerful weapon compared to most others.

Or, why don't most melee fighters all go for a greatsword (or greataxe) if they've got the STR to use them?

For the dwarf/hammer thing, there's a very clear and obvious reason why - because they are smiths, and they have a LOT more experience in using a hammer than an axe. Besides which, (or along with this), they are also masons.  Axes are decidedly of narrow use to a subterranean species. And same with swords - only useful for combat. Sure, that's largely what the Iron Dwarves were made for, but their makers wouldn't have had a lot of skill with those, so how would they have imparted that to their creations? ANS: they couldn't.

Going back to my first point - just because something is much better than another, doesn't mean everyone should be doing/using it. How incredibly boring that would be!

Ok, I’ll try to do this one more time (hopefully the last). It is not a matter of min-maxing. It's about logical world building and simulation of 'reality' (which all BRP systems clearly strive for). It’s *not* that I don’t agree that dwarves would be culturally predisposed to turn their tools into weapons of war - I think this is a cool and believable concept. In fact, the first time I came across this was in MERP circa 1986. At the time, it seemed new and original, but at the same time a bit weird since the canon that the game was based on so clearly established other weapons as cultural for dwarves - axes, above all, but also swords, spears and war mattocks. The background skills for dwarves in MERP were so heavily focused on concussion weapons that it was pretty much guaranteed that a dwarf player would choose those over anything else. This was at least true for almost all the premade dwarf PCs that came with the ready-to-run adventures. Now hammers for dwarves was not illogical in itself, but it's an example of where the rules incentivise player choices that implement a game world that is somewhat at odds with the goal of the game, which in this case was to simulate adventure in Tolkien's Middle Earth. 

Now Glorantha doesn't have this literary baggage, and dwarves could be dreamed up any way Stafford and the other creators wished. Thank god, because they made something very original and creative out of them, as with so much else. So hammers for dwarves actually make more sense in this context, and for the iterations of RQ before RQG, it also made sense from a rules perspective. But as of RQG, blunt weapons have become decidedly inferior to others (zero or negligible special effect if you have no or low DB, as will be the case with most dwarves thanks to their low SIZ characteristic), and slashing weapons have become decidedly superior (double damage on special with no drawbacks, unlike impaling weapons that can get stuck at least). In fact, in the years since I started playing RQG and other BRP games, I’ve never, ever seen anyone choose a blunt weapon. For good reason. At the same time stats for dwarves, including weapons, have been carried over from earlier editions, while with the rules changes they no longer made sense. It's really a matter of statistical survival, from an almost Darwinian point of view. Think of how weapons developed in the real world. How some fell by the wayside as armour improved, while new ones were invented to counter the better armour. Do we agree that dwarves are a highly technically advanced culture? Do they have vast amounts of wealth, compared to others? Are they highly pragmatic, and are the different subtypes highly specialised for their tasks? Are iron dwarfs specially produced to produce weapons and use them in war? What seems logical to me is that iron dwarves then would use the most effective weapons available to them, and the way warhammers were implemented in RQG, before I pointed out that they should be able to impale, given that according to their description they 'punch through armor', they were decidedly ineffective. Impale has now been added to warhammers as a correction, and have become a logical weapon for dwarves once again. So as for my original issue, it has been resolved.

Your real world analogies don't hold up. An M60 to a M16 or whatever US soldiers use is more like a great weapon to a hand weapon. Not the obvious choice for all soldiers in the real world. Battle axe vs the earlier iteration of a RQG warhammer is more like an automatic rifle versus a single shot one. An impoverished army might not have enough M16s to go around, but the world's most technologically advanced culture? Would they choose hunting rifle for sentimental purposes, or because they liked to shoot ducks in their free time? And don't tell me that the dwarves don't know how to use axes or swords. It says those were the first weapons they learned to use when defending themselves against elves and trolls. They've known how to use them for millennia. Battle axes aren't that long hafted and could well be used in cramped spaces, and swords can be used to stab with. Spears or halberds might be more logical though, alongside one of those one handed weapons. And using a tool a lot does not make you proficient with it in combat. I use a saw sometimes. I don't think I could use it well in a melee. Maybe the motion would train my arm for stabbing with a sword or spear. And military war hammers are very different from smith's hammers. The chopping motion of hammering steel on an anvil all day would predispose you equally for using an axe or a war hammer.

I think the main reason most players don't seem to choose great weapons is that they just haven't figured out how superior they are in RQG to everythig else. A shield is mostly good as a missile screen in this game. Coming to it as a player, I think we all (including me) just assume that a shield and sword is the safest bet. Another reason is that great weapons aren't cultural for many of the most common cultures.

To finish up, I agree that it would be incredibly boring for everyone to choose the most optimised weapon, or for all dwarf PCs to be the same. Hell, if a player wants to handicap himself for role playing purposes, go for it I say. But for a species as a whole to be constructed in a way that contradicts what the description and the game world implies about them, is worse. 

Sorry to take up so much space with this topic. I hope this will be the end of it as far as I'm concerned.