CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

What weapon someone will use depends not only on who that person is, but also on time and situation. If we look at early medieval, only those with notable better economy than average could afford a sword. However, at late medieval, everyone who wasn't a beggar could afford one. If you wonder how a lowly peasant could afford a sword, they afforded it the same way as someone today with poor economy can afford a car, they buy it used. As time went on, there would be more and more swords in circulation since the mass production improved and as someone who could afford it got a new sword, the old one would go to someone less wealthy.

The same thing happened with armor. Early medieval, only the rich could afford mail. Late medieval, every peasant could afford mail and/or brigandine.

Now, in warfare, swords were rarely the primary weapon for infantry. If you were a close range fighter, you would usually use a spear or other polearm. What you see in Hollywood movies where two sides run towards each other with a sword and shield and then starts fighting pretty much never happened. Sometimes one side would choose a sword as primary weapon, the Romans did it for some time and knight would sometimes do it if they were fighting unarmored opponents like peasants (not during late medieval period of course). However, in over 90% of the cases, a polearm would be the primary weapon for close range and a sword would only be a secondary weapon (it could be an axe or mace or something else as well though).

Knights would usually use lances when they were heavy cavalry. Later, when knights became infantry rather than cavalry, they would often use pollaxes as their main weapon. The samurai would usually use either a bow or a polearm as their primary weapon, use the other of those two as the secondary weapon and their katana was their tertiary weapon. Really, a swordsman wasn't that much of a thing as fiction depicts it.

The sword was however a great secondary/backup weapon. It's flexible, as has been mentioned, and it can easily be carried in a scabbard and (less easily in a stressful situation) drawn when needed. If you have a spear and a sword, you have to carry the spear in your hand and keep the sword in you scabbard. If needed or desired, you can drop the spear and draw the sword. You cannot do the opposite. A spear cannot be kept in a scabbard and keeping it on your back is too awkward to be practical, you can only carry it in your hands.

The sword was also very popular outside of war. You're not going to lump around a spear when going to a bar, but you can easily carry a sword in your scabbard. Also, people were generally not wearing armor unless going to war, and that made the sword extra effective since one of the main weaknesses of a sword is armor. If you could afford a sword, that was your primary weapon for peace time (unless the law forbade it and you decided to respect it).

I got a bit sword heavy here. Still, what weapon someone will use depends on a lot of factors. What is the current technology (early vs late medieval has a huge technological difference), who is it and is the person expecting battle or just carrying a weapon for self defense in case she/he gets attacked?

author=Liberty
Hell, even bladed weapons require strength to use well, especially larger swords which require strength to even lift, let alone use effectively.

A greatsword intended for battle and not just for hanging on wall or ceremonial purposes, will weight less than the average adult cat. A small child can lift a cat, so large swords do not require anything above a tiny amount of strength to lift. However, actually handling them effectively does indeed require strength, although not a huge amount. An average man should be good to go with less than a months training.

Anyway:

author=kentona
A bow's "power" is limited by its draw weight and works by augmenting a person's strength with the bow's tension. A melee weapon, especially blunt ones, are pretty much pure strength.

It is true, a bow is limited by it's draw weight. If you have a 70 pound bow, but is perfectly capable of using a 120 pound bow, the extra strength will not let you loose more devastating arrows. However, a stronger archer would not use the same bow as a weaker one.

Blunt weapons are not pure strength by a long shot. Having a great technique is hugely helpful even with a mace. If someone with great strength, but poor technique fought someone with poor strength, but great technique, the latter would have the advantage. That said, someone with great strength and technique would have a big advantage over someone with just great technique.

I don't think even blunt weapons makes as much use of strength as bows though.

If you want it to take 3 actions to defeat an enemy and you go with EHP = 3 * HDO then random variance will make it so that half the time you will need four actions. Even with no random variance, it just takes for the party to be slightly under leveled or under equipped and it will take four actions. Make it so that EHP = 2,5 * HDO and you have a much better margin or error. Of course, you may want to make some enemies with EHP = 2,9 * HDO or EHP = 3,1 * HDO so that things like equipping that +10 attack accessory has a chance of making a difference.

As a rule, when you have decided the number of actions needed, subtract 0,5 from that number and plug the result into your formula.

author=unity
Again, the fact that you think people equate fiction with reality and assume that people will believe that they deserve a happy ending just because a narrative device said so sounds deeply flawed to me. Again, I never had that misunderstanding as a child, and found happy endings a bright spot when my actual life was shitty, without believing there was some "magical force of Justice" that was going to give me good things.

author=Solitayre
I think you're devaluing the intelligence of players/readers in this article. People can decide for themselves what a story or ending means or whether or not the ending was right or just, or if the player characters/villains were in the right or not. And people do this kind of thing all the time, whether the ending was happy or dark or ambiguous, so I don't think you have grounds to call players or developers intellectually lazy for doing this.

Contrary to Sailerius' example, the real danger is not what you think, rather it's when you don't think. If you intellectually dismiss the idea that good people always get a happy ending, this is not a guarantee that you won't nevertheless factor that in when something bad happens to someone.

Assume you watch a movie or play a game where the good people get a happy ending. You notice that they got a happy ending due to dumb luck rather than because of whatever the fiction is trying to push as the source of their success. This does help, but the fact that good things happened to the good people still enters your memory. If you keep consuming fictions where good people get a happy ending, this will be etched into your brain. It will not make you actually believe this is true, but the idea will nevertheless be planted in your consciousness.

Next, assume you hear about something bad happening to someone. You won't think "he must have done something bad for this to happening to him". You may however think in line of "he probably didn't deserve this, but such is life". If you think this, then you're in the clear, you consciously acknowledged the fact that bad things can happen to a good person. There is a third option though, namely that you don't think at all in terms of whether or not bad things can happen to a good person. This is when you can accidentally fall into the trap of victim blaming.

Or brain is made so that we don't necessarily have to consciously think about something in order to factor it in. Even though you intellectually dismiss the good person = good ending idea, it's still sitting in your mind. You brain is perfectly capable of factoring this in even though you are not consciously thinking about it. Of course, there's no guarantee it will do so. Still, being intellectually aware of something is not a 100% protection.

That said, I think the divine intervention happy endings are just a minor part of a much bigger problem. Sad endings can push the wrong ideas into our brain just as much as a happy ending can.

If you followed the instructions, you should not be able to reopen the chest. The event command "Control Self Switch: A=ON" and creating a new event page with the condition "Self Switch A is on" will prevent you from reopening the chest. The only possibilities I can think of is that either you skipped one of the instructions or you copied the event code into the new page.