Don't forget to take a closer look at a weapon (right-click for tooltip), especially for high-strength characters. The hover-mouse-over info just shows the base damage (as well as AT and PA modifier), but every melee weapon also has a strength bonus, which goes like XX/Y (for instance 12/4 or 11/2) and means: For every Y points above XX strength this weapon will do one additional hit point (hit points in TDE are the damage potential of a weapon*).
So, if for instance one weapon does 1D+3 base damage and another 1D+2, the first one may seem better (damage-wise) at first. But when the first one has a strength bonus of 12/3 and the second one a strength bonus of 11/2, the second one is better for a strength 17 character (1D+2 + 3 bonus vs. 1D+3 + 1 bonus).
If you don't like math, don't worry, the description always shows the resulting damage at the current strength level of the character holding the weapon in his/her inventory. It then looks something like "Hit points: 1D+2 (1W+4 at strength 18)". Don't get irritated by the '1W', it is a translation oversight, '1D' (one six-sided dice) is meant there.
* TDE knows two kinds of numbers for damage: HP (hit points) and DP (damage points). The basic difference is: When a weapon inflicts HP, these get reduced by the armour rating of the target, thus the resulting DP are HP - armour. Some spells inflict DP instead of HP, that means they circumvent the target's armour.
Short: HP = damage reduced by armour, DP = direct damage (no reduction due to armour).