Top 10 odd D&D weapons

[Vorput]

I give spiked armor a pass because it's got legendary precedent. Witness the tale of the Lambton Worm....

That. is. awesome.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

That. is. awesome.

Yup, it is, and it made its way into a Pendragon RPG supplement years ago as an adventure. The adventure even went into the making of the armor as the way to defeat the critter.

 

[Blood Jester]

There acually is an event called the Caber Throw (or Caber Toss). Most likley you'll find one in lumberjack style competitions and yes; they basically throw tree trunks.

This isn't to say that trying to use one as a weapon is a good idea, but I can actually see how the idea for the stat block could come up. Not how it actually made it all the way into the book mind you, but at least how it came up in the first place.

After all; what is a DM to do if a party of PCs wanders into the middle of a Caber Toss?

Caber tossing grew from running up and throwing a log one could use to cross a moat or scale a wall (we are talking 10-15 foot walls).

They were never used as weapons, nor do they go far even in the hands of someone who has spent years of their lives training to throw them.

As a matter of fact, distance is not how you win at caber tossing, it is how close to a "perfect throw" one gets (i.e. the end of the log you were holding flies over the top and lands at 12-o'clock from the end that was up when you started.)

 

[eris404]

Behold, new exotic weapons for D&D http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~cwd02/zanyweapons.htm

Unbelievably Dire Flailing Whipaxe!!!

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm just waiting for the sword from the end of Brotherhood of the Wolf to make it into the books.

The Brotherhood of the Wolf sword could segment itself out to resemble a whip with large sword like sections. (This is also the weapon Ivy uses in the Soul Calibur games for any who play that series.) And how, exactly, is the mechanics of this supposed to work? Whip chains are nasty enough (believe me, I have used them in real life in martial arts classes) I do NOT want them laced with large razer blades.

E.N. Arsenal - Whips.

The idea is that you have a mechanism (created by gnomes obviously) that allows you to extend and retract the blade quickly. You wear a full-arm gauntlet on your off-hand so you can grab the bladed whip and maneuver it like, as you suggested, a whip chain. You do not really use it like a whip, since a whip is more of a projectile weapon that happens to have a rope between your hand and the tip. A whip sword is used more like a lash, intended for long slashes and the occasional lacerating entangling strike.

Anyhoo. In a world where a power attacking warrior with a quarterstaff can beat an iron golem to pieces, or a 2-inch shuriken can pierce the scales of a dragon, I can accept bizarre whip weapons. Hell, in one article of Asgard I included rules for using beach balls as weapons.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The manti.

And let's not forget the spear... with the backward-pointing spearheads! Stab someone ten feet away in the chest... then stab someone five feet away in the back!

-Hyp.

 

[demiurge1138]

And let's not forget the spear... with the backward-pointing spearheads! Stab someone ten feet away in the chest... then stab someone five feet away in the back!

-Hyp.

The duom!

Funny thing is, when I was a player in a Greyhawk game last year, the DMs went out of their way to give the Scarlet Brotherhood as many odd weapons as they could - lots of duoms and two-bladed swords, and I think there might eveb have been a gyrspike in there.

Demiurge out.

 

[Imp]

I should probably add in the face of evidence presented that I don't think spiked armor should Not Exist. It should make grappling the wearer an extra unpleasant experience. It's the use as a general martial weapon – an off-hand weapon, even! – that I have trouble swallowing. And I don't even mind the double weapons that don't involve flails.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Caber tossing grew from running up and throwing a log one could use to cross a moat or scale a wall (we are talking 10-15 foot walls). They were never used as weapons, nor do they go far even in the hands of someone who has spent years of their lives training to throw them.

I can't find anything definitive about the caber. It was a fair event as far back as the 16th century. The moat or stream crossing is the most common but there are also suppositions that it was thrown in a way that it "rolled" over 8-10' high walls (which fits with the the end-over-end requirement) or to break up enemy formations (though that makes the "straight line" requirement of the toss irrational.

Either way, getting hit by a telephone pole sucks.

 

[CRGreathouse]

But my biggest pet peeve along this line, since the 3.0 PHB came out, is spiked armor. There's a reason you can't find any in a museum. Several, in fact. It guides an opponent's weapon right to you, not away as armor is supposed to. (Ought to get at least a -1 to AC!) If you whack one of the spikes hard enough with a metal bashing weapon it ought to have a chance to be driven into the wearer's body. And if you fall in the mud, good luck getting back up again.

I don't have any problem at all with spiked armor. I do agree with you that it should have an AC penalty -- at least, most should -- and I'd be generous and make it -1 or possibly -2. I think that in a world with monsters that eat you whole spiked armor makes a lot of sense, even if it does make you a bit easier to hit.

I'm going to put bashing weapon + spikes as one of the many things that falls under the radar of the granularity of D&D weapons.

I should probably add in the face of evidence presented that I don't think spiked armor should Not Exist. It should make grappling the wearer an extra unpleasant experience. It's the use as a general martial weapon – an off-hand weapon, even! – that I have trouble swallowing. And I don't even mind the double weapons that don't involve flails.

I completely agree.