There is an argument to be made for ‘ease of entry’ because everybody knows 5e. There lot of people doing it, and tons of resources.

Even if 5E really doesn’t have the greatest new player experience because of convoluted rules, it feels like it’s easy to enter because of the amount of support.

Your faith is misplaced

Finally, that special trait; turns out I lied. There are two traits that increase damage by 2. Heavy grants a flat +2 bonus but incurs a -2 penalty to all rolls, Versatile grants a +2 bonus as long as the weapon is held in two hands.

That’s about everything!

The general goal is to limit the damage potential of trait-heavy weapons to create a trade off; sure you can fight from far away with your Greatbow that’s got Reaving, Loading, 2 handed, and Ranged; but it will deal less damage than the longsword which has one trait: versatile.

Finally, after traits, the weapon is put through one last YES/NO, does it have 2 or more traits? If yes; the damage stays the same. If no, the damage increases by +1.

After the weapon has been put through the basic YES/NO and typing questions, it moves to traits; certain traits incur a further -1 penalty, some grant a +1 bonus, and many are simply neutral. There is one trait that provides a +2 to damage but that one is a little special.

After a weapon is given its baseline, it is then run through a series of YES/NO and Type questions, depending on the answer, it will receive a +1 bonus, a -1 penalty, or stay the same. For example: a two handed ranged weapon would receive +1 for being two handed, and -1 for being ranged.

There are 3 classifications of weapons in Ascendant. Martial, Exotic, and Simple. Exotic are the most complicated and Simple are the least, with Martial weapons serving a nice middle ground.

Each class gets a different damage baseline, for Martial weapons it is 3, Exotic gets 2, and simple 1.