D&D 5E The D&D rapier: What is it?

[Tony Vargas]

Numbers on a stick is probably the best way to keep your sanity.

It could be easier to just boil down weapons to a fairly small matrix of 'heavy' | 'finesse' | thrown | ranged X 1-handed|versatile|2-handed, and then let players pick the element in the array that they feel best fits the fluff of the weapon they want.

 

[Ancalagon]

In my campaigns the shortsword is what historicly was the small sword.
The rapiers tend to have advanced ring guards, instead of full cup hilts.
something ike :
View attachment 88483

Huh. In my game the shortsword is more like a gladius, a xiphos, a cinquedea... but not a smallsword. I see the smallsword as a particularly poor choice for adventuring.

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[Satyrn]

I see the smallsword as a particularly poor choice for adventuring.

So is the leather miniskirt that Xena wore, and yet she only died twice in 6 years of adventuring. That's about average for a D&D character, right?

 

[Ancalagon]

So is the leather miniskirt that Xena wore, and yet she only died twice in 6 years of adventuring. That's about average for a D&D character, right?

Blame the gm

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[cbwjm]

So the Spanish blade and the bilbo? Is it because of the cup hilt? Because let me tell you, these weapons would handle *very* differently in a fight. The bilbo would be a good weapon for an adventurer to have. It's not too long and can deliver both trusts and cuts. The Spanish one... not so much. This is the point of this thread - what kind of rapier are D&D adventurers using.

(as an aside, the bilbo was thus name because of its city of origin, Bilbao, a basque city in Spain, so it's Spanish too)

Probably the hilt. I don't actually worry too much about how they handle in reality, it's just how I envisage them in game.

 

[Kalshane]

Regarding rapier and dagger I have an additional weapon property in my game called "Off-hand" (which was inspired by one of the threads on this board) that applies to all 1d4 light weapons allowing them to be paired with a non-light one-handed weapon for two weapon fighting. (The Dual Wielder feat also grants a second attack with your off-hand weapon if you have the Extra attack feature and at least one of your weapons has the off-hand property or both weapons have the light property. Gives more use for the feat than just swinging two rapiers or longswords around.)

The existence of the rapier itself in the game doesn't bother me. Some folks want to play a swashbuckler in a Princess Bride or Errol Flynn vein. (Just like some folks want to play the barbarian rushing into battle in nothing but a loin cloth. The fact that the game supports both of those things as well as more "traditional" concepts is a good thing, IMO.)

 

[Ancalagon]

When i think of a rapier I usually think of the sabre- like so

... but a rapier is not a sabre. I feel like that you are missing a short sentence or two to qualify your statement. Do you mean "I dislike rapiers so I mentally replace them with sabres"? What do you mean exactly?

Otherwise it's like saying "when I think of cows, I usually think of horses". A horse is not a cow.

And btw, sabres are very cool, but I'm not sure if they need separate stat from scimitars?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

... but a rapier is not a sabre. I feel like that you are missing a short sentence or two to qualify your statement. Do you mean "I dislike rapiers so I mentally replace them with sabres"? What do you mean exactly?

Otherwise it's like saying "when I think of cows, I usually think of horses". A horse is not a cow.

And btw, sabres are very cool, but I'm not sure if they need separate stat from scimitars?

I mean that I don't view DND as using specialist jargon for it's weapons, so the difference between most of these swords is altogether meaningless without the cultural context of European History, and therefore meaningless on Krynn, or in the realms, or in Pantheon, or wherever else you might play) so a rapier in DND, probably ambiguously includes cutlasses, longer varieties of sabre, epee, and so forth.

In the same way I would probably have someone wielding falcutta use the stats of a scimitar, or someone wielding a wakizashi use the stats of the short sword... or the scimitar, really. If I didn't like the mechanical niche of the homebrew katana rules we use (1d6/2d4 versatile, finesse- GWF for finesse characters with a drawback) it would be a longsword, even though they are very much different swords.

 

[Ancalagon]

I mean that I don't view DND as using specialist jargon for it's weapons, so the difference between most of these swords is altogether meaningless without the cultural context of European History, and therefore meaningless on Krynn, or in the realms, or in Pantheon, or wherever else you might play) so a rapier in DND, probably ambiguously includes cutlasses, longer varieties of sabre, epee, and so forth.

In the same way I would probably have someone wielding falcutta use the stats of a scimitar, or someone wielding a wakizashi use the stats of the short sword... or the scimitar, really. If I didn't like the mechanical niche of the homebrew katana rules we use (1d6/2d4 versatile, finesse- GWF for finesse characters with a drawback) it would be a longsword, even though they are very much different swords.

I sort of agree with you - like the longsword stats for a katana, perfectly fine. But you can't go tooo far with this. A sabre is a slashing weapon. A cutlass is a short sabre so it could use the same stats as a sabre I suppose... BUT a rapier is a trusting weapon (very much so for some blade-types), so it does piercing damage - different stats, different weapon. It's not just jargon. Words have *some* meaning

In other words, I agree with your second paragraph but not your first.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm rather disappointed that more people aren't answering, "It's a light weapon that does 1d6 piercing damage, and looks however the player wielding it chooses to describe it."