D&D 5E No love for the hand axe?

[Sacrosanct]

This. A knife with a serrated top blade in addition to a non-serrated bottom blade does a lot of jobs. Creating snares, gutting fish or game, shaving wood, skinning, cutting branches. If you kill a large animal, try field dressing or deboning it in the field with an axe instead of a knife. Not easy (although splitting bone is easier with two axes).
.

Um...it's actually pretty easy. You did read my post earlier, right? I mentioned the Ulu knife for a reason. Not only everything you mentioned I've done with an axe using it like I use an Ulu knife, but the axe is exponentially better at cutting down trees, branches, logs, anything that needs hammered, etc. I'm not saying a knife is worthless; of course it's a good idea to have at least two of them. But you are severely underrating the axe.

For those that don't know, this is an Ulu knife. It's something I have a lot of practical experience in when I lived in Alaska, and it's what native Alaskans have used for generations over a traditional knife.

For anyone also interested, there's an entire demographic of people who still live in a wild environment. I highly suggest watching Happy People: A year in the Taiga. I think it's on Netflix. You can see how they use an axe for everything, and you never see them use a knife.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you are expecting battle, you take a weapon- not a tool pressed in to use as a weapon.

Going about day to day life while hunting/crafting shelter, etc.. sure, handaxe it is. Expecting trouble/adventuring? real weapon and armour time.

In a world infested with orcs, goblins and other nastiness- I'd be expecting trouble, and take the weight hit of carrying a real weapon in addition to the tool.

Does it really matter if you're expecting to be attacked by a goblin or a cougar? You're still expecting to be attacked. And I can tell you from practical experience, no one who lives in the woods goes out not expecting danger.

But this sort of illustrates my point earlier, how we view D&D as primarily as combat first and foremost, while ignoring the exploration part to a large degree.

 

[Unwise]

Handaxes see a bit of use in my game, as it is assumed that anybody proficient in survival has a small axe on their belt when outdoors. So there have been a few times that has come in handy. I also add in a 'sundering' property on axes and similar weapons, meaning that they do max damage to inanimate objects. It is rarely important, but it does mean you want to pull out the axe or sledgehammer to destroy that door.

In order to encourage the use of spears, we play that (at least if used two handed) they can all attack somebody that enters their range by giving up their action on their next turn. So basically they always win initiative against another melee attacker that is approaching.

It was an odd little ruling, but it has played out well. It means that players think about charging a spearman differently than they do a swordsman, which is great.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Does it really matter if you're expecting to be attacked by a goblin or a cougar? You're still expecting to be attacked. And I can tell you from practical experience, no one who lives in the woods goes out not expecting danger.

But this sort of illustrates my point earlier, how we view D&D as primarily as combat first and foremost, while ignoring the exploration part to a large degree.

How often did people in Antiquity or the Medieval period die of starvation, thirst, exposure, purely mundane animal attack, or disease? How often did they die of being burned to a crisp, run through by an enemy's sword, or grievously injured by an unseen trap?

Now, consider the same questions, but (a) for your own group's PCs, and (b) for the PCs of the community at large. Death by combat or a really nasty magic trap or spell is, I'd wager, FAR more likely than death by exposure, starvation, etc. except in settings where that is made a key part of play (e.g. Dark Sun--the only such setting I know of).

I don't disagree that the combat pillar is usually the one that weighs heaviest on players' (and DMs') minds, but I think that's rather simply explained by doing a frank risk analysis. What's the bigger threat, environment and mundane creatues or fellow sentients and their works? My experience has always been that the latter is not only greater, but greater by far--and a weapon is still pretty handy for dealing with the mundane creatures too. If taking weapons makes you better at dealing with both the more common and more dangerous threat, why WOULDN'T you take the more-weapon-y, less-tool-y item, especially if your DM is lenient about whether swords can cut down trees or whittle?

I will still grant the spear thing though. Tragically under-used, since it really was super good for killing while staying protected.

 

[KarinsDad]

Um...it's actually pretty easy. You did read my post earlier, right? I mentioned the Ulu knife for a reason. Not only everything you mentioned I've done with an axe using it like I use an Ulu knife, but the axe is exponentially better at cutting down trees, branches, logs, anything that needs hammered, etc. I'm not saying a knife is worthless; of course it's a good idea to have at least two of them. But you are severely underrating the axe.

For those that don't know, this is an Ulu knife. It's something I have a lot of practical experience in when I lived in Alaska, and it's what native Alaskans have used for generations over a traditional knife.

For anyone also interested, there's an entire demographic of people who still live in a wild environment. I highly suggest watching Happy People: A year in the Taiga. I think it's on Netflix. You can see how they use an axe for everything, and you never see them use a knife.

A Ulu knife is not an axe (and specifically, not a hand axe). The curved blade and pointed ends of a Ulu knife can be used for a lot of things that the significantly less curved blade of a hand axe cannot be used for (or is used less efficiently), and hand axes do not have hammers on the opposite side, so they aren't necessarily as good for hammering as a hammer axe.

As for the Taiga, it is a coniferous forest in Siberia. It's still a coniferous forest and I readily admit that in a forest with less animals, more snow, and fewer low branches; an axe might just work better. But it doesn't necessarily work better in the tropics, a deciduous forest, tundra, deserts, polar regions, or mountainous areas, or any areas where tall thick trees with few lower branches are sparse. A person in the Caribbean might never use an axe, but uses his knife on and in the ocean all of the time.

Ulu knifes are found in northern latitudes for a reason. In environments where fires, and strong shelters, and breaking the bones of large creatures are less necessarily, axes or chopping tools are less necessary. In fact, different times of the year would have different tool requirements in many places. So yes, your pacific northwest experience will probably lead you to the theory that axes are usually superior in utility to knives for basic survival. That's obviously not true in the many other parts of the world. In a jungle, I would probably prefer a woodsman's pal. Best tool for the job and frequency/necessity of job is what is important. It's one reason that there were hundreds of different hand weapons made throughout history and no one weapon shines above all others. One weapon or tool doesn't do everything.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A Ulu knife is not an axe (and specifically, not a hand axe). The curved blade and pointed ends of a Ulu knife can be used for a lot of things that the significantly less curved blade of a hand axe cannot be used for (or is used less efficiently), and hand axes do not have hammers on the opposite side, so they aren't necessarily as good for hammering as a hammer axe.

As for the Taiga, it is a coniferous forest in Siberia. It's still a coniferous forest and I readily admit that in a forest with less animals, more snow, and fewer low branches; an axe might just work better. But it doesn't necessarily work better in the tropics, a deciduous forest, tundra, deserts, polar regions, or mountainous areas, or any areas where tall thick trees with few lower branches are sparse. A person in the Caribbean might never use an axe, but uses his knife on and in the ocean all of the time.

Ulu knifes are found in northern latitudes for a reason. In environments where fires, and strong shelters, and breaking the bones of large creatures are less necessarily, axes or chopping tools are less necessary. In fact, different times of the year would have different tool requirements in many places. So yes, your pacific northwest experience will probably lead you to the theory that axes are usually superior in utility to knives for basic survival. That's obviously not true in the many other parts of the world. In a jungle, I would probably prefer a woodsman's pal. Best tool for the job and frequency/necessity of job is what is important. It's one reason that there were hundreds of different hand weapons made throughout history and no one weapon shines above all others. One weapon or tool doesn't do everything.

The axe can be used almost exactly the same way an ulu knife is used. Have you processed a game animal with an ulu knife or axe? I have, with both. Also, not sure what you mean by a hand axe doesn't have a hammer side. Have even seen a hand axe? The opposite side of the blade is wide and flat--perfect for hammering. So far you seem to be making some claims that are objectively not true. I'd be curious to know your experience in these fields. Also, in the Caribbean they didn't use knives per se. They used panga blades, which....wait for it...have a long and heavy weighted tip that is more axe-like than it is knife like.

And the reason I brought up that documentary is because in it, they use their axes for everything you just got done saying you can't really use an axe easily with. I assume they know what a knife is, so why do you think they use an axe for everything you said an axe is bad for? These are people who do this every day as part of their life. I assume the are experts.

But it seems clearly you aren't willing to take my word for it despite my experience. I posed the same question to the Bushcrafter/Survival G+ group (over 12,000 members), and so far roughly 2/3 agree the axe is the better choice.

 

[Rune]

A stout halfling ranger 3 or 4 (2 minimum) / fighter 3 or 4 (minimum 1) / barbarian 5-13 with two weapon and dualist fighting styles who switches between drawing and throwing one handaxe and attacking with another in melee and just attacking with both in melee seems like it would be fun to play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd like to expand a bit on my last post, actually (which was written on my phone, so I tried to keep it short...or, at least, short-er!)

To a certain extent the "more common" and "more dangerous" problems are interwoven, but both individually contribute.

Getting into the thick of fighting is something that D&D characters do on a highly regular basis; I'd even say they do more life-or-death fighting than a typical soldier or guardsman in Antiquity or the Medieval period, admittedly without much expertise on the subject. Similarly, a hunter (someone using a hand axe for its tool benefits) is, I assume, going to try to avoid contact with dangerous predators as much as possible--why engage with a cougar, wolf pack, etc. without a very good reason (e.g. needing to remove competition for scarce resources, or wanting to sell the pelts for profit perhaps)? The less contact you have with "the enemy," the safer you are, so to speak. So even if you assume exploration and combat are equally dangerous, PCs would seem to face life-or-death combat far more often than real-world people did.

On the flipside, I don't know of any game that makes a single environmental challenge usually as dangerous as a combat. Combat, in the vast majority of cases, at least theoretically has the potential for a TPK. Enemies are rarely assumed to "take prisoners," and it is often poo-pooed if they do (something about making it "no-risk" so it becomes "boring" is the usual statement). With rounds being 6 seconds long, most combats are resolved in only 30 seconds--quick and brutal, not the long, drawn-out fight scenes from movies. (We just experience them that way because we can't resolve them at the speed a movie or video game can.) On the flipside, a 30-second environmental challenge is rarely going to be lethal; it almost always takes a substantial pile of failures, or an extremely foolhardy/bull-headed approach, to have the environment kill you off. Unless, of course, it's a trap, but single-save-or-die (or even "no save, just die") traps have been frowned upon for years.

So environmental challenges tend to be more manageable and controllable than combat ones, and combat challenges happen with substantially greater frequency than environmental challenges IF comparing PC experiences to those of someone from Antiquity or the Medieval period. When coupled with the relatively loosey-goosey attitude about how weapons work for non-fighting purposes, and the general wheeling-and-dealing resolution for environmental challenges as opposed to the precisely-defined methods of resolution for combat (even for TotM)...yeah, it's no wonder, to me at least, that people ignore the super-ultra-versatile-IRL item in favor of the powerful-and-sufficient-in-game item.

If you want to change this, you'll probably want to tackle all four of those concerns. Putting that into an advice list would be something like...
(1) Make combats less frequent than environmental challenges, and make it explicitly less-frequently-lethal to lose a combat.
(2) Give weapons-that-are-tools some kind of mechanical benefit for being used as a tool, and make these benefits both meaningful and desirable.*
(3) Make weapons-that-really-aren't-tools actually bad at the things they're supposedly bad at. For example, chopping down a tree with a sword can actually break the sword, or blunt its edge (easily fixed with a whetstone, perhaps, but a -1 to damage until you do).
(4) Consider aping at least the concept of the Skill Challenge from 4e: give non-combat situations a more precisely-defined method of resolution, so that having tools to address those situations becomes an important part of play. Make it a richer scenario than "have vs. have-not," just as weapons are almost always a more diverse experience than merely "you have a weapon or you don't."

*If you have trouble justifying this to yourself, think of it as "the game has failed to show the real-world utility of this item, therefore the game's representation isn't as good as the real thing." Some ways to do this could be allowing "survival tool" proficiency to apply to hand axes; giving a flat bonus to survival tasks as long as having a hand axe is relevant to completing them; granting advantage on specific kinds of tasks performed using the hand axe; or even allowing someone to have Expertise aka Double Proficiency for a list of tasks that employ the hand axe in a central way.

 

[Diamabel]

Does it really matter if you're expecting to be attacked by a goblin or a cougar? You're still expecting to be attacked. And I can tell you from practical experience, no one who lives in the woods goes out not expecting danger.

But this sort of illustrates my point earlier, how we view D&D as primarily as combat first and foremost, while ignoring the exploration part to a large degree.

Frankly.. yes, it does matter if you are expecting to be attacked by a goblin or a cougar. It is not the expectation _of_ danger... but what KIND of danger. You prepare for the situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring. Sure, a hatchet may be an adequate tool to fend off a hungry cougar.. but not a pack of spear wielding goblins.

I disagree that it illustrates your earlier point... carrying adequate tools for both exploration and combat (sword and hatchet) is quite different than ignoring exploration entirely.

My characters tend to carry a reasonable amount of exploration gear- rope, warm clothing, grappling hook, chalk, string, knife, whetstone, flint and tinder, candles, etc..

 

[thalmin]

Some interesting ideas in this thread. Since exploration and the environment are major factors in my campaign (we have combat only about once every 2 or 4 game sessions), I may look at campfire building being a survival check at disadvantage without the proper tools, if the environment is not ideal. I'm thinking if the wood is all wet, splitting thicker than normal limbs to get at the dry wood inside.