Another related question, this time armor.  Our noble Paladin player wrote an interesting little background for his character and drew an amazing fierce looking Paladin covered in plate armor and bearing the symbols of his order on the pauldrons, his maul engraved with the symbols of his order.   He described his Paladin's order as one that would burn down a whole village to rout out one witch.  He's excited about the game.  And that's wonderful.

Would it unbalance the game if I gave him Plate to start?  He didn't ask for it.  But his picture is a fantastic imagining of plate armor.  Or could I perhaps turn the default Scale Armor into "light plate", armor 2, weight 2, to just help him live out the fantasy all the better?

I'm preparing for my first DW game and the players are excited about their characters.  I'm allowing them to substitute starting weapons to suit the personality of their character.  For example, there will be a dwarf cleric with an axe instead of a mace or hammer.   One player wants to have a two handed Maul for his Paladin (instead of a halbard).  Appropriate for crushing the unrighteous.   He suggested to me the tags two handed, +1 to damage, close, forceful.

I'm instantly on-board except that I'm uncertain on the forceful tag.   I'm afraid to approve it without some thought.  So I hoped you experienced players and GMs might have opinions on this and would share with me your thoughts.  I totally get "The fiction comes first".  On a D10 roll of 9 or 10 I'm certainly going to inflict a forceful result to that sad Orc regardless of the tag.  But I also don't see any other weapons in the manual with a forceful tag.  The fighter can have one on his signature weapon.  The Barbarian gets forceful for any weapon.  So my impression is that it has more to do with the operator than the weapon. 

I want to just say "Yes" and not worry about it.  Perhaps I'm over thinking this.  What's one weapon? I'm afraid to break the game.  Perhaps if it's too much, I'll give him a chance to heroically part with it later in the campaign.

What do you think?

What weapons have you created?  Anything similar?

I'm grateful for your reply.  It will take time to break out of my old GMing style.