I am working on a game that is heavily focused on a narrative style that does not use dice very often. Actions are taken using an aptitude scale, with combat falling into that category. In the game, characters have a difficulty threshold (for example, something is "routine"), and their aptitude in a particular skill or weapon determines whether or not they're able to do that "routine" action.

My curiosity is this: if various weapons don't have damage dice assigned to them--therefore giving them differentiation from other weapons--how does one go about developing combat, damage, etc. using various weapons without simply saying, "you have a weapon; it does damage"? I want characters' choice of weapons to be meaningful, but I'm having a challenging time devising a method by which the absence of dice retains that meaningful choice (as D&D often does).

If there are others who are working with a dice-less or dice-minimal system who have worked through some of their combat scenarios, I would love to discuss.