What are your guys favorite weapons in dnd? Personally i like the spear. Works well with the shield 

I feel glaives are the best looking weapons in .. anything, really. They do substantially less damage than other options, though. 

Sword and spell.

Yeah, I'm fairly traditional :D

What kind of sword has varied over the character's I've played. My first serious RP character was a dual katana wielder, after which there was a warlock who started with rapiers but moved to cavalry sabers (scimitar). Current character is going with a longsword + shield combo. (Supposed to be something between a war sword and a bastard sword conceptually). 

Glaive. They look cool, do good damage, combo with polearm and sentinel, and are cooler than halberds. Plus, they're kinda expensive if I ever (for some reason) need to sell it.

Kinda depends on how crunchy and how diverse the offerings are.

not in the sense of bogging stuff down, but more in the sense of is there a middle ground between dagger and short sword, and what is that like? Or what kinds of sticks can I use. Or can I have a glaive only as tall as my shoulder?

RAW generally uses the most generic of stuff, mostly has through a lot of the game, even as folks added in their own variants, homebrew and otherwise.

I mean, I like to have what I call a longknife but the rules might call a short sword, plus a rod, and then something ranged that depends on the class.

but each character for me gets a different personality and perspective and that influences the decision the most. Even for npc’s, which is mostly what I play.

Back in 2ed days my favourite weapon to use was the Bastard Sword. One-handed it did the same damage as a Long Sword (1d8), but it could also be used two-handed for 2d4 damage, which guaranteed at least a 2, and it bell-curved the damage so that you were more likely to do between 4 and 6 damage with each hit.

In 5e they kind of made the Long Sword like that, with the versatility trait, but 1d10 damage, meaning your chance of any particular damage result is the same likelihood, but you can do up to 10 damage potentially.

1e Unearthed arcana had a bunch of cool weapons in it like the glaive-guisarme, the Lucern Hammer, and Fauchard-Fork. I also really liked using a Halberd!

1e Unearthed Arcana had so many cool weapons.

Quote from OctoberGeek >>

Back in 2ed days my favourite weapon to use was the Bastard Sword. One-handed it did the same damage as a Long Sword (1d8), but it could also be used two-handed for 2d4 damage, which guaranteed at least a 2, and it bell-curved the damage so that you were more likely to do between 4 and 6 damage with each hit.

In 5e they kind of made the Long Sword like that, with the versatility trait, but 1d10 damage, meaning your chance of any particular damage result is the same likelihood, but you can do up to 10 damage potentially.

1e Unearthed arcana had a bunch of cool weapons in it like the glaive-guisarme, the Lucern Hammer, and Fauchard-Fork. I also really liked using a Halberd!

1e Unearthed Arcana had so many cool weapons.

 
it really did. Most were from the gazillion different Dragon articles, but dang if they didn’t give a variety that Finally shut all my random players up, lol.

I always enjoyed the repeating crossbows had great fun running around with a Gnome in 3.5 who just loved to carry so many different clips of bolts for different situations, sure a composite longbow was better in almost every circumstance but what's really optimal, more dpr or making a satisfying clunk as another bolt drops into place just in time to give emphasis to your intimidation check!   

This is only partly related, but I really hope the next edition gets rid of magic weapon being so specific, and almost all the cool ones being swords. 
There’s no game balance reason a hammer couldn’t be a flame tongue, or a frost brand great axe, or a halberd holy avenger. Just make stuff like that an option for any weapon.

For DnD it’s more about either the mechanics of the weapon (+feats) or about the “coolness” of the weapon, which for me factors in things including the class and species of the PC. In 5e weapons are so generic and so able to be reimagined as something else as too almost not matter. Since I tend to come a the game from a real world perspective I actually appreciated the old THAC0 system with different weapons hitting different armors for more or less damage. That’s the way weapons actually work in real life. The issue of the game is that you have about 9000 years of weapon and armor evolution all active at the same time and trying to balance that realistically is impossible. Under THAC0 I favored dual wielding with a long sword and a horsemen’s pick/hammer. Anything I couldn’t slice I could open up holes or break skulls/bones right thru the armor. That is something I would really like to see special abilities for selected weapons like the hammer (stun chance), whip (grapple or prone?), and pick ( armor reduction?). As for present weapons, I like long sword, halberd and scimitar. The longsword can be used one or two handed, the halberd is a canoper with reach and scimitars are the perfect size for dual wielding - I’ve actually tried dual wielding long swords and katanas as well as shorter curved (scimitar) and straight (short sword/long knife) blades and it’s far easier irl to use the smaller weapons or one long and one short as RAI. 

Quote from Xalthu >>

This is only partly related, but I really hope the next edition gets rid of magic weapon being so specific, and almost all the cool ones being swords. 
There’s no game balance reason a hammer couldn’t be a flame tongue, or a frost brand great axe, or a halberd holy avenger. Just make stuff like that an option for any weapon.

 

 There is nothing stopping you from doing it now. The reason those weapons exist in those forms is because that was how it was in 1e (tradition).

Rapier & Whip. You get the d8 when it’s in reach, and at least the d4 when you need reach. Plus, it looks bad455.

I'm quite fond of swords, spears and longbows. I'm not sure where my bias against crossbows comes from, maybe because in former editions they were slower.

Chair leg shillelagh 

I have a dwarf sapper character that uses the old 1e footman’s pick, or war pick.  Nasty looking weapon. Nice for punching holes in armor. 

Quote from Wysperra >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

This is only partly related, but I really hope the next edition gets rid of magic weapon being so specific, and almost all the cool ones being swords. 
There’s no game balance reason a hammer couldn’t be a flame tongue, or a frost brand great axe, or a halberd holy avenger. Just make stuff like that an option for any weapon.

 

 There is nothing stopping you from doing it now. The reason those weapons exist in those forms is because that was how it was in 1e (tradition).

 

 Oh, I know. I just think it’s time to pitch that tradition. 

And what’s stopping me is a DM who rolls for treasure, and those aren’t on the chart. 

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Wysperra >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

This is only partly related, but I really hope the next edition gets rid of magic weapon being so specific, and almost all the cool ones being swords. 
There’s no game balance reason a hammer couldn’t be a flame tongue, or a frost brand great axe, or a halberd holy avenger. Just make stuff like that an option for any weapon.

 

 There is nothing stopping you from doing it now. The reason those weapons exist in those forms is because that was how it was in 1e (tradition).

 

 Oh, I know. I just think it’s time to pitch that tradition. 

And what’s stopping me is a DM who rolls for treasure, and those aren’t on the chart. 

 
we need to get that DM a better chart.

and a bigger boat…

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

For DnD it’s more about either the mechanics of the weapon (+feats) or about the “coolness” of the weapon, which for me factors in things including the class and species of the PC. In 5e weapons are so generic and so able to be reimagined as something else as too almost not matter. Since I tend to come a the game from a real world perspective I actually appreciated the old THAC0 system with different weapons hitting different armors for more or less damage. That’s the way weapons actually work in real life. The issue of the game is that you have about 9000 years of weapon and armor evolution all active at the same time and trying to balance that realistically is impossible. Under THAC0 I favored dual wielding with a long sword and a horsemen’s pick/hammer. Anything I couldn’t slice I could open up holes or break skulls/bones right thru the armor. That is something I would really like to see special abilities for selected weapons like the hammer (stun chance), whip (grapple or prone?), and pick ( armor reduction?). As for present weapons, I like long sword, halberd and scimitar. The longsword can be used one or two handed, the halberd is a canoper with reach and scimitars are the perfect size for dual wielding - I’ve actually tried dual wielding long swords and katanas as well as shorter curved (scimitar) and straight (short sword/long knife) blades and it’s far easier irl to use the smaller weapons or one long and one short as RAI. 

 Yeah, I feel like the current weapons list is just weapons names next to an array of simple math. It would be cool to have some more variety in how different weapons were used, and how they interact with the world beyond simple math.

And bring back Masterwork weapons!

Tavern table with a 20 Str stat. 1d12 of PAIN.

Improvised weapons do 1d4 damage.