D&D 5E Fighter Weapon Choice

[Staccat0]

You're thinking of 4E, actually. The 5E books will tell you to find a closest equivalent for weapons that don't otherwise exist (e.g. treat a nunchaku as a club), but doesn't give carte blanche to just swap stats whenever you feel like it. A short sword deals 1d6, and a rapier deals 1d8, and that's just the fact of the matter in this edition. (Of course, the rules do suggest that the DM is free to ignore any rules, to taste, but that's somewhat tangential to the topic at hand.)

Eh, everything they have written on customizing classes and races encourages you to stat swap or retheme when it makes sense. I would assume this extends to short swords.

 

[aramis erak]

They also see the width of the blade. A longer blade can make a deeper hole, but a thicker, wider blade can make a bigger hole. Which does more damage? Depends on what you hit and where, even more so how well. And nothing anywhere indicates which blade is sharper, or will keep its effective edge longer during combat.

Anyone wielding a particularly sharp long blade is not going to have a long blade for long, unless they've bought a particularly high quality blade and use it in the correct manner. (The Katana being the primary long blade that was in fact kept sharp - but the tempering techniques and the fighting techniques to allow this generally involve slicing the silk cording and the arteries. Finesse, not force. And insane quality control standards.)

Besides, modern destructive testing (upon pig cadaver) repeatedly shows that a dull sword actually does more tissue damage and far more bone damage than a sharp one.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think my biggest point of contention is the bolded part. In real life I've spent hours reading and listening to people argue whether or not 9mm vs .45 was superior, or whether 5.56 versus 7.62 was superior. Whether bullet quality was more important, whether bullet placement was the only factor. Whether it was possible at all to quantify stopping power except in the sense that getting shot in the chest by a .50 cal was definitely worse than getting shot in the chest by a .22. In the same way that I would assume that characters would for sure know that greatswords are better than daggers.

To me with all of our anecdotal evidence, ballistic tests, studies, and reports from health physicians. We still can't tell you conclusively what's better when it comes to similar cartridges. I absolutely believe there are characters in DND who will tell you that rapiers are obviously better, because they are bigger. And I will tell you that they will have no hard proof for this statement, and that this statement is not considered true by the world at large.

I don't believe that PCs understand their weapons, better than we understand our own weapons. I also don't believe that PCs would in universe never consider non mechanical factors in their decision making. Because they are not a slab of numbers, they are presumably people who exist in all the spectrum we do not otherwise mention, such as how comfortable they find a particular weapon to use. If every PC knew for a fact the damage values of close(1 damage on average) weapons, then you are meta gaming. Which is okay.

If all fighting characters know as a matter of fact they'd be better off getting hacked at with a scimitar than a rapier. That a trident and a spear might as well be the same weapon. That daggers, clubs, whips, and sickles were all just as deadly as each other. Then you are metagaming. Which is not a bad thing, I metagame on the regular when it comes to certain things that may drive people insane. Of course my character knows that a rapier is better! Mostly to smooth out my gaming experience, in the same way I will share knowledge with another player out of universe before they take an action. You can justify it and say, my character noticed over the years that X weapon was better, or that I as a player was just telling another player something his character should already know. But still that's metagaming, and where you fall on that line is up to you. We may as well argue whether or not OOC conversations are metagaming, or a corrective measure to replace all the offscreen time these characters spend together getting on the same wavelength.

D&D damage has fewer variables than real-life weapons damage, so damage dice differences are easy to detect. I give you the following hypothetical document, written in-character. (My Burly Guy was Str 14, my Average Guy was Str 10.)

The efficacy of the rapier: a treatise on weaponry

Abstract: By comparing the results of repeated application of rapiers and shortswords to a restrained test subject, it is determined that rapiers are substantially more effective than shortswords at reducing test subject to a point of unconsciousness.

Methodology: Test subject is an orcish warrior condemned to death for atrocities. Every morning at nine a.m., a volunteer appears in the orc's cell with a weapon where the orc is tied up. The restrained orc is taunted by an elf until murderously enraged, at which point the experimenter begins slowly counting as the volunteer proceeds to stab the orc into unconsciousness. The orc is then stabilized with a medical kit and left to heal for twenty-four hours to regain his full strength, and the time-to-unconsciousness is noted. There are two volunteers, both guardsmen trained in the use of rapier and shortsword fighting techniques. One volunteer is burly and muscular, the other is physically average. Volunteers alternate on different days, and every other volunteer appearance alternates weapons.

Results: After ten experiments per volunteer/weapon combination, the following averages appear.

Burly guy, short sword: 4.0 rounds
Burly guy, rapier: 3.2 rounds
Average guy, short sword: 6.2 rounds
Average guy, rapier: 4.9 rounds

Conclusion: Rapiers offer a substantial advantage in effectiveness over shortswords for both burly and average physiques, reducing time-to-unconsciousness by approximately 20% across the board.

Further research: It is assumed that weapons which are effective at rapidly producing unconsciousness will have a similarly faster killing speed under combat conditions, but further funding is required to empirically validate this conjecture.

[Edit: whoops! Just noticed I forgot to translate "rounds" into in-character "seconds". Multiply results by six. -Max]

 

[thalmin]

What is a .2 attack? You just started to swing and he died?

And how many people know of the results of this test? Some guy said he read about it on the web. I looked at more than a dozen cobwebs and spider webs, and all I saw were spiders and dead bugs. And I don't take the word of any bugs anyway.

Was it funded by the Waterdeep Guild of Rapier Smiths? Someone who just wants you to spend more than double for your weapon, I"ll bet.

I know from my own experience that I killed an orc with just one attack with my short sword, so those quill-pushers don't know what they are talking about!

Hah! If you know what you're doin', ya don't need but a good dagger.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What is a .2 round? You just started to swing and he died?

No, it's an average. As noted in the treatise, ten trials were made with each weapon/volunteer combo, and the results are an average of those ten trials. If it takes 24 seconds (3 rounds) on eight occasions and 32 seconds (4 rounds) on two occasions, the average is 3.2.

 

[S'mon]

The Katana being the primary long blade that was in fact kept sharp -.

According to scholagladiatoria (Matt Easton) Katanas are shorter than most European swords, and on;y a couple inches longer than a typical Roman gladius.

 

[thalmin]

Well don't talk to me about what the average fighter does. The average fighter dies in combat. Ya gotta be better than average, boy.

 

[n00b f00]

I agree, damage in the game is simpler. If the PCs did such an experiment they would see that they could kill the average orc 6 seconds faster if they were hammering, in a way that was fairly conclusive when removed from the heat of battle(otherwise anecdotally, they wouldn't be sure). Which of course most PCs won't do, and even if they did that's still largely an abstraction of combat. Like a 5 by 5 grid, I imagine the characters are generally aware of how much room they have, but don't know it is a 5 by 5 foot square for all small and medium humanoids. In the same way we would might try to abstract out the difference in a modern game between a .308 and a 5.56. We might make the .308 do more slightly more damage.

Are the PCs going to come to the conclusion that all the armies and characters that used 5.56 weaponry are insane imbeciles with a death wish who are begging to get everyone around them killed? Would the players accept that as a quirk of the mechanics, the setting as written is not played in a min maxed mechanically? Can the PCs see your character sheet, and know that you are proficient with an assault rifle AND a battle rifle? Is fighters being proficient with all weapons a matter of physics? If not, how do they know that because I'm a career soldier that I know how to use everything? Aren't there plenty of career soldiers who have trained with a very limited arsenal? Could you lie and say you only know how to use one? If you couldn't lie, then why not?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Are the PCs going to come to the conclusion that all the armies and characters that used 5.56 weaponry are insane imbeciles with a death wish who are begging to get everyone around them killed? Would the players accept that as a quirk of the mechanics, the setting as written is not played in a min maxed mechanically? Can the PCs see your character sheet, and know that you are proficient with an assault rifle AND a battle rifle? Is fighters being proficient with all weapons a matter of physics? If not, how do they know that because I'm a career soldier that I know how to use everything? Aren't there plenty of career soldiers who have trained with a very limited arsenal? Could you lie and say you only know how to use one? If you couldn't lie, then why not?

I know real-life army guys who think the Army is insane for using 5.56 in the mountains of Afghanistan where everything takes place at long range, and 5.56 is therefore relatively ineffective (too light). But they use 5.56 anyway, because that's the Army standard.

In short, people sometimes even put up with practices that they think are insane, suicidal, and ineffective, because they have no way to change the practices.

 

[bedir than]

But even in the real world, when comparing guns, stopping power is a real thing that can be measured and discussed and taken into consideration. If you're going out to hunt grizzly bears, or hippos, then the guy with the PPK is a liability who is going to get everyone else killed, and the professional hunters who are organizing this expedition aren't going to invite that guy along.

This doesn't happen in real life, so your idea of emulating real life with your in-game attitude is based entirely on a fiction that the world's best don't practice.