Top 10 odd D&D weapons

big dummy said:

Three quarters of an inch!!!? LOL!!!! Maybe a D&D sword! Man oh man. You people seriously ought to read up a bit on history.

BD

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Enlighten us then. TheARMA site shows swords about that thickness. However, I do not pretend to be any sort of an expert. As it showed in my post, I was guessing.

I would think 3/4 inch would be rather large, but, again, I'm not pretending to be any sort of expert.

Hussar said:

There was a reason most people carried a spear or a polearm throughout history. They WORK. And they work really, really well. Roman soldiers didn't fight with swords, they fought with spears.

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Actually, the typical roman soldier was armed with javelins, spear, spatulae (don't laugh, the word means broadsword), and potentially the Tower shield.

for the record, more and more often, I'm seeing fighters carying three weapons: a sword, a polearm, and a ranged weapon. My Knight opens with his polearm, then drop it and switch to my sword when the enemy closes... and x3 crit on a 1d10 weapon is devestating when wielded by a mighty foe.

Polearms have three things going for them
- reach
- low cost
- can be used in tight formations

Because D&D mechanics wants to let a guy with a dagger fight a guy with a sword reasonably effective, reach isn't as useful in D&D as you'd think. More base damage and/or a better crit range is more helpful.

Beyond first or second level, the costs of an adventurer's weapons are going to dominated by the cost to make them magical, masterwork, or out of a special material. So there's no point in focusing on a cheap weapon just because it's cheap.

And there are only limitted rules for fighting in tight formations in D&D, as it's not too practical when you have one guy who depends on flanking to do any real damage, one guy who likes straight up swordfights, and two guys standing in the back casting spells.

I cannot remember the actual name for this weapon from Sword & Fist, because it's been replaced in my mind with "orcish tetherball." A heavy weight at the end of a pointed, springy stick: plant one end, pull back, and *thwap* your opponent at range.

Just to be honest, went back and took a look at this article from The ARMA. I was a bit off actually. Most of the swords measured here are 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Like I said, I was guessing. 1/4 inch off isn't too bad though.

Agent Orange - true, Roman soldiers did carry swords. But, for the most part, they fought with spears. Swords were a battlefield weapon of last resort or for dispatching fallen enemies. At least, that's the impression I got from what I've read.

The reason most fighters use swords in DnD is that swords were and still are probably the best weapon in the game. Most damage for the size (or at least right up there), best crit ranges and most likely to be found in a random treasure trove. While they aren't the longswords of older editions, swords are still too powerful IMO.

And, just for the sake of being annoying, I figure we should discuss the fine art of playing with the weight of weaponry, using nothing less than the most violent of modern sports: Baseball!

First off, by reducing the weight of a swung object, (by means of corking the bat) the average batter actually reduces the power of his swing, but he gets to those fastballs sooner (as much as 6" later in his swing) which can mean the difference in a center-line and a, umn, "hard-right" drive. Center-line hits = higher average of getting a run because there are fewer people covering the same quantity of space.

Now, corking the bat is not the only means of cheating in baseball (that's equipment related! EQUIPMENT RELATED! I have not injected anything into Mark McGuire's ass... intentionally...)

Ahem, as I was saying, there have also been cases wherein the bat was illegally weighted. Once a ball player becomes familiarized with swinging a heavier bat, they tend to hit very, very hard, but almsot allways connect early in the swing, resulting in deep hits to right field, and many, many foul balls.

The concept behind the mercurial greatsword is similar to the third, rarest kind of illegal bat tampering, "filled" bats. I only found one example, and it was on a message board, so this is hardly a novel concept. It seemed that a little kid had brought his own Toy baseball bat to a tee-ball game, and it was filled with water... the kid couldn't use it worth a darn, but the adult (who wrothe the post) stated that his swing felt more powerful, and suggested filling an alluminum bat partially with mercury to see how that went over.

Agreed. You could do it with a club. My problem with trying to do it with a sword is that the sword simply isn't thick enough to fill. When you're only talking a half inch of space, how volume can you really add?

And, is mercury really THAT much heavier than steel that adding 1/2 tsp of mercury to the middle of the blade will make much difference. ((WARNING - I am being facetious. I in no way am stating that the interior volume of any sword is equal to 1/2 tsp.))

Hussar said:

Agent Orange - true, Roman soldiers did carry swords. But, for the most part, they fought with spears. Swords were a battlefield weapon of last resort or for dispatching fallen enemies. At least, that's the impression I got from what I've read.

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We´re going to be corrected, but actually weapons used by roman legions change (sometimes dramatically) along roman history. Spears were AFAIK the main weapon in the early period and were used by triarii; I don´t know if they were the main weapon at any other point.

Hussar said:

Just to be honest, went back and took a look at this article from The ARMA. I was a bit off actually. Most of the swords measured here are 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Like I said, I was guessing. 1/4 inch off isn't too bad though.

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.38 inches is not quite half an inch... and those swords in that particular article were unusually heavy. Considerably heavier than average. For a wider cross section of historical and accurare replica blades check out the myarmoury site

http://www.myarmoury.com

The closer average is probably 1/8 to 1/4 inch in maximum thickness....

Agent Orange - true, Roman soldiers did carry swords. But, for the most part, they fought with spears. Swords were a battlefield weapon of last resort or for dispatching fallen enemies. At least, that's the impression I got from what I've read.

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In the very early republic days they fought with spears and shields like the Greeks, but by around 300 BC they had largely abandoned the old thrusting spear (hasta) and replaced it with javelins and swords.

Roman soldiers in the periods we usually see depicted on TV etc. fought primarily with special armor piercing javelins, which they called pila.

Pilum were also known for disabling shields and for breaking or bending on impact so they couldn't be thrown back at the Legionaires.



When the Roman legion closed for hand to hand combat they used short cut-and-thrust swords used with their large center-grip shields (scuta).

The most common swords were the gladius, which was in use from 250 BC to about 300 AD. The Gladius was a broad but very pointy sword primarily intended for thrusting but capable of hacking quite effectively as well. In the Republican period they also used Greek leaf-blade swords and falacata or kopis, kind of a giant kurkri knife.



In the later Imperial era Roman military organization changed a lot again. They switched over to a more open fighting formation, a smaller round shield and a longer version of the Gladius called the Spatha (not Spade). The Spatha was originally a cavalry sword which was based on the longer cut-thrust swords used by the Celtic and German "barbarians". They still stuck to the javelins though and also employed smaller darts called "plumbata" wich had better range (supposedly out-distancing bows of the time, and every other weapon except the sling).

BD

(Some plumbata, historical and repoduction)

CRGreathouse said:

Long, since they need to discourage large monsters from swallowing you whole. Probably as long as 2". On armor designed for footmen, the spikes on the upper half of the body would be curved downward to reduce the amount of force they'd catch on a typical blow; for horseman armor, only the upper portion would have spikes (to protect the horse as well as to avoid trapping a blow).

Why, what are your thoughts on spiked armor? I'd be happy for any advice you could give.

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Also, how many and how dense are these spikes?

Note, I don't know anything much at all about real life combat.

If an armed medium or small sized humanoid is attacking you, it's either going to be thrusting with a weapon, in which case catching the spikes isn't much of an issue, or swinging at you, in which case I suppose a swing could be caught by the armor spikes and deflected or channeled into your armor...but that's why you're wearing armor, right?

And realistically, aren't enemies going to go for your face or joints or areas that aren't protected by the the plate, banding or splint armor or your breastplate or whatever, where the spikes would be (I wouldn't think you could put spikes on chain mail)?

I suppose if you were using leather armor that would allow you to dodge better, it would be a much greater issue (and the spikes would be more easily driven through the leather and need repair more often and be more of a danger), but with heavier armor spikes don't seem to be much of a problem for human-human combat.