Curious what people here think of the idea that weapon damage should determined by class instead of weapon. Probably in line with hit dice, so wizards do 1d4 and fighters 1d10, no matter which weapon they use.
wouldn’t that basically remove loot as an incentive entirely
Welcome to level 1, here’s all the damage you’ll ever do.
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Weapon damage isn’t that big of an incentive in D&D to begin with in 5e. There’s no reason you can’t start with your build’s best basic weapon 90% of the time, so this wouldn’t be radically different. Plus the game’s math doesn’t really assume you’ll have an ever increasing treadmill of weapons, and if you’re a fighty class you’ll probably get class based damage that’ll overtake your base damage dice anyway, IIRC.
I don’t think class damage is a bad mechanic at all. It’s one of those things that sounds like it’s going to be a bigger change than it is. Especially if each weapon option still had like, special stuff attached to it. In fact, it might incentivize making more narrative based choices for your character, and weapon attributes might still let things feel a little differentiated if handled right.
But at the same time, since every class is pretty much just going to use their best weapon anyway, it doesn’t really drastically change the game that much no matter which way you go.
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Dungeon World does this! It works fine!
In fact, it actually makes magic items and loot way more interesting, because it means giving magic items of attack +X almost never happens in favor of like… bags of magic beans, glasses of disguise self, fists of friendship, etc. Items that have some kind of unusual utility that isn’t just make damage number go up.
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From a flavor perspective I love class based damage because (provided weapons have features besides damage (eg polearms have reach and spears could potentially skewer) it means that players aren’t just beholden to whatever weapon does the most damage if they want to keep up. Players can use a whip if they want without annoying the rules lawyer in the group who wants people to be at max effectiveness
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excuse me i’m not a “rules lawyer” i’m a “min-maxer” tyvm
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Back in the day D&D just had all weapons do 1D6 and you can play it like that and it’s fine.
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obviously every dnd character should start with a ridiculously personal heirloom weapon/dick joke that doubles as one or two other things in their class’ toolkit because the dm agrees one of the most fundamental rules about said class is Just Real Stupid and Should Be Ignored + through a mixture of I Haven’t Played This Game Since I was 17 and it was 3.5E & How Do I Do This Hitstuff Automagically Deal Through Roll20’s Unfamiliar Interface??? & said GM Being All “I Guess This Is The Only Melee Weapon You’ll Ever Use, So…” you use a goosed engorgement spell that makes it hit extra hard, sometimes, with enough prep, and
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My little combat revamp alters the weapons and the effect that damage types have in combat so there’s actually a reason to consider using each weapon in the PHB beyond its damage die 
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Also it intuitively tracks, imo, that a fighter should be out there dealing most of the damage while wizards and thieves have other benefits in and out of combat that isn’t simply just ‘does everything a fighter can do, but better’
this way lies the road to Diablo III where the abstractions are laid bare
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It’s tabletop, everything is an abstraction and everything is laid bare.
This particular abstraction is about saying who you are is more important that what junk you have, which is very very Fafhrd and the Gray mouser. Those guys have named weapons…that they they lose and replace virtually every story. But they function as the same weapons because the value is in the narrative weight which is implied.
Another example would be Apocalypse World has extremely abstract weapons and damage, with many weapon effects being totally narrative, yet in the context of apocalypse world combats are often much more narratively involved, colorful, and exciting than a more detailed game like gurps. Since everything in apocalypse world is aggressively tied to the narrative situation, and the narrative context matters. You don’t count the dice and the modifiers, you say “I blast his brains out with my shotgun” and when your roll succeeds you’re thinking more about the splatter than you are about a damage die.
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Oh! Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about:
http://onesevendesign.com/lasers_and_feelings_rpg.pdf
This game a character’s actual game stats are one number, and everything else is narrative. This would almost certainly not work in a video game but works great in a tabletop RPG.
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Oh totally, it depends on what level of abstraction the game is going for. D&D is such a loot-focused game that I’d be hesitant to further abstract weapons, because the main contribution of picking a weapon is the player describing its use and dreaming up concept art. When the weapon type doesn’t matter and the player finds a +2 weapon then the abstraction leaves players over-focusing on the numbers of it.
I think it’s a good candidate to drop in a more roleplaying-focused game, though – and most of them do, like you said.
I do sort of wish the combat in 5e more explicitly differentiated piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage as far as I know it never actually comes up.
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Thats why I specified that weapons should be differentiated beyond size of damage die
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I would actually argue that there is no difference in degree of abstraction between weapons having different damage dice and damage die being determined by class. Hitting a hit point total with a random number is totally abstracted either way
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And like, just having the damage die go up isn’t really what loot does in any edition of D&D. Sometimes you get additional damage dice, but usually it literally is something that is normal in every way except it gives you a +1 or a +2. If you do get extra damage dice, it’s traditionally associated with an element, like fire, which changes what it does in certain contexts.
Although one interesting wrinkle to all of that is how +1 swords have capabilities beyond just giving a stat bonus, they can affect enemies that regular swords can’t in most editions.
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PS I love thinking about ship of theseus problem with magic weapons. (cf the magic sword hilt in no rangers allowed for an actual example of playing with this problem) I love thinking about what part of a weapon would be magical. Like can you replace the wooden handle of a magic spear? I guess it depends on the spear.
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Easily handled if you consider magic contextual and narrative-imbued by nature, right? A “repaired” magic weapon retains its magic as long as it retains its identity, in a normal human way. It’s a bigger problem if magic is heavily rule based like an exotic technology. 5e with the way its spell descriptions work seems to want to have it both ways, which works sometimes and collapses other times.