Unified Weapon Attack Adjustments

Related to some discussions in comments on old posts: there's a combat post by "Ways of the Earth" (I don't know his real name, but he's one of the people involved with Delving Deeper) over on the OD&D discussion forums. He took the Greyhawk Weapon vs. AC bonus chart and the "variable weapon damage" system and did some number crunching to reduce it to a single attack roll modifier for use with d6-only weapon damage.

Doing some quick samples, it looks like the weapon adjustments based on length follow roughly the same pattern. If you subtract 3 from the length in feet for several weapons, you get the numbers on the "Ways of the Earth" table. If you add a couple simple rules, it's closer:

• axes and flail/chain weapons get +2 vs. shields
• thrusting and missile weapons get -2 vs. shields

Those are cumulative modifiers, unlike the ones in the linked table.