Originally Posted by
sgeos
You want to give reasons to use different weapons, but these things can be hard to balance. Different damage types are one way of relatively simple way of doing this (slash, bash, pierce).
Gimmicks such as hitting from two spaces away will require extra time/iterations/feedback to balance. Unless the game is being actively developed, one or two weapons will probably outshine others. FWIW, isn't long sword one of the better skills in Nethack? (For a lot of classes at least?)