King Amenjar said:
A percentile system should easily be able to cope with the granularity: if we had +1% per level of quality that would do it. A sword with +5 damage, though, is spectacularly powerful: it's cutting through chainmail as if it wasn't there... except, of course, you could now have bought 10 point chainmail. This is the basis of my dissatisfaction: one thing that I liked about RQ and disliked about D&D was that your character were defined by their own selves; their attributes and their skills, not by what kewl stuff they'd managed to acquire. That seems to be changing.
You're right, +5 damage is spectacularly powerful. That's why I wrote the rules to cap it at +3 (I did waffle a bit whether to go with +2 or +3). The only way you're getting your damage to +4 or higher is with magic. Or Damage Mod, of course, if you're particularly big and burly.
I'll note that I'm going off my original manuscript here. My writer's copy of the Companion is in transit, likely somewhere on or over the Atlantic, and things may have changed somewhat in the editing process. If I'm making a fool out of myself by arguing a point that's no longer valid, everyone here has my sincere apologies.