Ok, so all that's true. Despite his whining, though, he may have a point. Consider how easy it is for a low-ranked, well-geared, well-practiced warrior (with the right spec) to take out a mage, thief or assassin when he gets first-strike. Basically you can one-round people. Esp. when vulns are taken into account. Obviously warriors can't hide, so they should theoretically never get first strike on someone who's being vigilant about their surroundings, but nobody can be vigilant 100% of the time.

I don't feel all that strongly about it, but something like making "effective" weapon average lower for low-ranking characters might do good things. Maybe have effective avg. be 2/3 actual average, approaching 100% as the character reaches some reasonable rank (25 maybe?). Could exempt weapons w/ avgs. less than 15. Just a thought.