D&D 5E Odyssey of the Dragonlords Available Weapons and Armor

[Baba]

Before character generation, I made the small house rule that the versatile property of the spear can be used onehanded, if your other hand is either empty or holding a shield. So that made spears and shields more popular.

Then for the bard who would be better of with the stats of the rapier, I said he should use the stats of the rapier, but call it a (and envision it like) a xiphos.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are 0 mentions of rapiers.

Yet IRL in Ancient Greece, there were far more approximately rapier-equivalent (long-bladed thrusting swords) weapons than say longsword-adjacent weapons (i.e. long slashing swords). This is extremely well-established in the archaeological record, if that's the concern.

As an aside, I see no-one here has acknowledged that Thylea is explicitly NOT Ancient Greece. The book stresses this a large number of times. So you need to accept that you're ignoring one of the key tenets of the setting in order to try and make it more like your perception of an RL time period (not even a mythic time period). It's fine to do that, but it should be a conscious decision, not "Oh the book forgot to do this!". Also remember that in Thylea, there are no issues relating to materials - their bronze is the equal of our steel.

For that sort of thing rapiers won't exist.

This isn't really accurate.

They won't be fancy basket-hilted steel rapiers like you're used to, but they will be relatively long poking swords (not quite as long as medieval rapiers, but longer than shortswords conventionally are). They're literally referred to as rapiers by archaeologists (at least in Britain they are). In you really wanted to you could just translate every sword to shortsword, but it's pushing it. D&D regularly has swords illustrated as shorter than bronze age rapiers which it calls "rapiers".

Here are some reconstructions of Mycenean swords:

The bottom one is a very simple Makhaira, the other two are the common thrusting swords, albeit shorter examples than some.

The Kopis is a not an ideal match for D&D's shortsword because it should do slashing damage, not piercing, but I guess it is what it is.

I do like how fantastic the Hoplite subclass makes spears, and I would consider expanding them doing 1d8 damage to all classes just to encourage them. And I would ban longswords and greatswords, if I was ignoring all the "THIS ISN'T ANCIENT GREECE FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!" stuff in the text. Or maybe I would do it anyway just to spite longswords/greatswords. Greataxes on the other hand are a major feature of the imagery/mythology of the period so have to be in.

If you're going for "realism", stuff like the longbow (it's questionable for Ancient Greece), the morning star, light hammer, warhammer, flail, glaive, halberd, and so on should probably be out.

A better approach, indeed one I think actually mentioned in the book, would be to regard non-typical Ancient Greek weapons as "barbarian" weapons, which are frowned at.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yet IRL in Ancient Greece, there were far more approximately rapier-equivalent (long-bladed thrusting swords) weapons than say longsword-adjacent weapons (i.e. long slashing swords). This is extremely well-established in the archaeological record, if that's the concern.

As an aside, I see no-one here has acknowledged that Thylea is explicitly NOT Ancient Greece. The book stresses this a large number of times. So you need to accept that you're ignoring one of the key tenets of the setting in order to try and make it more like your perception of an RL time period (not even a mythic time period). It's fine to do that, but it should be a conscious decision, not "Oh the book forgot to do this!". Also remember that in Thylea, there are no issues relating to materials - their bronze is the equal of our steel.



This isn't really accurate.

They won't be fancy basket-hilted steel rapiers like you're used to, but they will be relatively long poking swords (not quite as long as medieval rapiers, but longer than shortswords conventionally are). They're literally referred to as rapiers by archaeologists (at least in Britain they are). In you really wanted to you could just translate every sword to shortsword, but it's pushing it. D&D regularly has swords illustrated as shorter than bronze age rapiers which it calls "rapiers".

Here are some reconstructions of Mycenean swords:

View attachment 120756

The bottom one is a very simple Makhaira, the other two are the common thrusting swords, albeit shorter examples than some.

The Kopis is a not an ideal match for D&D's shortsword because it should do slashing damage, not piercing, but I guess it is what it is.

I do like how fantastic the Hoplite subclass makes spears, and I would consider expanding them doing 1d8 damage to all classes just to encourage them. And I would ban longswords and greatswords, if I was ignoring all the "THIS ISN'T ANCIENT GREECE FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!" stuff in the text. Or maybe I would do it anyway just to spite longswords/greatswords. Greataxes on the other hand are a major feature of the imagery/mythology of the period so have to be in.

If you're going for "realism", stuff like the longbow (it's questionable for Ancient Greece), the morning star, light hammer, warhammer, flail, glaive, halberd, and so on should probably be out.

A better approach, indeed one I think actually mentioned in the book, would be to regard non-typical Ancient Greek weapons as "barbarian" weapons, which are frowned at.

Probably how I would deal with it.

Rapiers were pretty good in AD&D but you didn't really get magic ones.