"n the hands of equally skilled warriors, the two weapons would be comparable, but a two handed polearm user would have the benefit of dealing more damage (on average - as they would have a higher maximum damage output) while the knife wielder would have (had) the benefit of paying fewer devs for the same amount of skill."

Maybe on the right track, but not exactly there. I think It'd be a good idea to give some different.. abilities to different weapon types. Like.. SOme weapons good to parry with, others have a penalty. Others are hard to parry against (penalty for the one attacked to parry), some are easier to parry, some are harder to dodge, others easier to dodge. It's easier to dodge while using a knife, while dodging while using a 2h polearm is harder, and so on. Combine it with giving every weapon skill cost 5, and there opens for a lot of variety.

Other than that, innate damage (High cutting for axes, low cutting for knifes and so forth) might be looked at. Currently I have no idea how high/low it is. For example for cutting, is the difference between a knife and an axe more than 10% after a nica bonnes? Is it 50%? I mean, logically the difference should be enormous, but this is Darke \:\)

"Am I off base (in addition to slightly off topic) in thinking that this might be a servicable idea though? Do weapons even need to be examined for balance, or is it alright that everyone uses the same weapon type(s)? "

Well, I've wanted to use flail some time.. But it's just too expensive compared to.. anything.