Let's talk balance : Melee

It's been a while, but when I used it it was not stopped by DR.

Conceal-ability and role-play would be my big two reasons for using one.

Hammers having better minimum and maximum damage far, far outweighs having a 20x2 critical hit range, and with the numbers that it has it even outdoes the 18-20x3 that you can get on a rapier. When power attack is brought into the mix it outpaces its peers severely. When you have basic damage output like that, you could frankly run around trashing people with a 20x1 crit.

When talking average damage in dnd it is an extremely deceptive measurement, but in a game that breaks down into the efficiency of your numbers it can mean a huge amount. A 10 average damage compared to a 14 average damage may not seem like a lot, when we're talking warhammer vs. rapier, but you have to remember that in base 3.5 dnd the average damage of a greatsword is 7, compared to a longsword having 4.5. Just to put them right side by side, a mercurial core rapier will marginally outdo a critical on a hammer, but will severely underperform in regular hits. If you decided to give a longsword x3 criticals and compared it to the greatsword, your criticals would come out to almost the same difference as the warhammer/rapier.

If I could have a one handed greatsword at no penalty in base dnd, you know for sure I would be using it over any other weapon available.

Without armor accounted for, a damage race would dictate that a hammer wielder would beat the crap out of any mirrored character that is using a different weapon. When you DO account for armor, the hammer's damage range means that it is much more likely to penetrate armor and deal damage, whereas you have to rely on critical hits with other weapons to do reliable damage.

It may seem like I'm on a hammer crusade in this thread, and it's because I totally am. It's one of the more egregious affronts to balance that is currently in melee combat. I'm not fancy enough to use PE's spreadsheet that accurately breaks down statistics, but I hope that my post accurately hitting (I think?) every one of the bits of analysis that he pulled a few posts after mine can give me some credibility to my feelings. I will totally toot my own horn when I say that I have a decently intuitive grasp of dnd mechanics. Even though we have auxiliary systems thrown in, all that means is that we're playing 3.5 DnD with different ways of getting numbers.

I'm fairly certain claymores have higher minimum damage

You can still catch people off-guard with larger weapons. There's no need to force everyone into pigeonholed 'traditional' roles where every rogue must use two daggers.

Ironically enough, base NWN2 (And D&D to a less extent) melee damage output is all about those crits, and your greatsword would be worst then a scimitar. Not that this is applicable to engines, since we don't have nearly as many ways of increasing damage.