Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
In another thread, people are having a great discussion about what, exactly, a D&D (5e) scimitar really is. Like many D&Disms, the inclusion of scimitars is ... well, it's certainly a choice. But reading the thread, I saw a great comment by @Gradine ...
They're swords that druids can use
I mean ... yeah! That's exactly right! In 5e, Druids are allowed the following weapons:
Clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears
But while everyone knows that Druids and scimitars go together like Bards and, um, pushing Bards into pits filled with green slime, the more interesting question is ... why? And what does this mean for D&D?
1. The History of the Druid and the Scimitar.
The druid abides.
The Druid first appeared as a monster ... that's right, a monster ... in OD&D. Playing the game in Wisconsin, Dennis Sustare (of Bunnies and Burrows fame) wanted to create his own, playable Druid class that focuses on plants and animals ... something that wasn't based in any fantasy literature but was more based in his understanding of the literature about early (Celtic) Britain and Ireland. Some kind of imagined proto-Romano Celtic people. Now, there's a whole 'nother (and I think very interesting!) conversation about the ways in which those largely incorrect myths from the Romans informed, and were informed by, the nascent enviromentalist movement of the 60s and early 70s, but that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, Sustare made his class, and the Druid class made its way to Gygax and was published in Eldritch Wizardry. The weapons, at the time, were listed as the following:
Daggers, sickle or crescent-shaped swords, spears, slings, and oil. (EW p. 2).
Why sickles and crescent-shaped swords? Well, to harvest mistletoe! Next, when the Druid was codified into AD&D (1e), we see something that starts to look very familiar for their weapons:
Club, Dagger, Dart, Hammer, Scimitar, Sling, Spear, Staff. (PHB p. 19).
Now the immediate question is ... why the switch? Two reasons ...
1. The PHB in 1e contained a scimitar, but not a sickle.
2. As Gygax put it, "Heh, It is because the scimitar is as close a sword weapon I could come up with to match the druids' mistletoe-harvesting sickle."
Notably, the druid is the only class that specifically allowed for the scimitar in 1e, and with d8/d8 damage, it was easily the best choice for many. The scimitar became associated with Druids as an iconic class weapon, and it persisted throughout the editions.
2. But What is the Druid, Really?
I'm the Druid, so that's what you call me. That or, uh, His Druidness, or uh, Druider, or El Druiderino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing
Classes are always a weird concept. The Druid, though ... that's a tough one. At heart, we can agree on the core of the Druid- the Druid is the class that explodes when it puts on metal armor. But other than that, what is it, really?
Essentially, the Druid has become a hodgepodge of D&Disms. It's the class with shapeshifting, and it's the nature cleric (but not, um, the Cleric of the Nature Domain). It's the class with a shillelagh and a scimitar. It's a class that doesn't wear metal armor based on (largely) discredited Roman stories about Britain, but primarily uses a metal weapon mostly associated with the Middle East and South Asia (and, if you're including cutlasses, Pirates, ARGHHH!).
And while there are some fantasy druids in literature (Radagast the Brown, the Forrestals of the Land), they are not a common archetype. And yet, here they are in 5e (and likely 5.5e) continuing to run around, swingin' their scimitars.
3. Path Dependency and the Scimitar
Nobody calls me Nature Cleric, you got the wrong guy, I’m the Druid, man.
What is path dependency? For those not familiar with the term, the easiest way to explain it is, for example, the internal combustion engine and automobiles. If you were designing a transportation system, from scratch, today, you could probably think of a lot of better ways to do it than to use cars (that require pavement, highways, parking, etc., that all require maintenance) and gas-powered ICE (that comes with its own issues). However, once you start down that path, it becomes harder and harder to switch; the transaction costs to switching to something "better" are so high, that it is very very difficult to do so, even though it might not have been the optimal choice if starting from scratch. It's not enough for something to be better- it has to be really, really, really better. If that example doesn't work for you, think about why we aren't all using the DVORAK keyboard.
And this path dependency is why we have a lot of D&Disms as well. If you could go back in time, and you had perfect knowledge, you'd probably design a lot of things differently. But when you see the history, it becomes obvious- why do Druids use scimitars? Druids use scimitars because they were meant to use sickles to harvest mistletoe. And since there weren't sickles in the 1e PHB table, they got scimitars instead.
And now when we look at it, we can say that scimitars are ... the swords Druids use. But understanding this history brings us to a more interesting issue, which, perhaps, we can analyze in the following way; knowing that this is a mistake, what should be done?
That's the interesting issue with this, and many other, D&Disms. We have had multiple generations of gamers since 1977 (the publication of the PHB) grow up associating the Druid (which is a made up D&D class) with the Scimitar (which, as others note, is probably not historically associated with pre-Roman Britain) to the extent that it is an iconic weapon for that class. Is it better to continue down that path and keep reifying that D&Dism, or to break from that idea?
The reason that the Druid/Scimitar is interesting to look at is that it avoids a great deal of the baggage that similar issues do- primarily, do you keep returning to classic D&D tropes, or do you believe that it is better to break with them, and how do you make that determination?
They're swords that druids can use
I mean ... yeah! That's exactly right! In 5e, Druids are allowed the following weapons:
Clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears
But while everyone knows that Druids and scimitars go together like Bards and, um, pushing Bards into pits filled with green slime, the more interesting question is ... why? And what does this mean for D&D?
1. The History of the Druid and the Scimitar.
The druid abides.
The Druid first appeared as a monster ... that's right, a monster ... in OD&D. Playing the game in Wisconsin, Dennis Sustare (of Bunnies and Burrows fame) wanted to create his own, playable Druid class that focuses on plants and animals ... something that wasn't based in any fantasy literature but was more based in his understanding of the literature about early (Celtic) Britain and Ireland. Some kind of imagined proto-Romano Celtic people. Now, there's a whole 'nother (and I think very interesting!) conversation about the ways in which those largely incorrect myths from the Romans informed, and were informed by, the nascent enviromentalist movement of the 60s and early 70s, but that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, Sustare made his class, and the Druid class made its way to Gygax and was published in Eldritch Wizardry. The weapons, at the time, were listed as the following:
Daggers, sickle or crescent-shaped swords, spears, slings, and oil. (EW p. 2).
Why sickles and crescent-shaped swords? Well, to harvest mistletoe! Next, when the Druid was codified into AD&D (1e), we see something that starts to look very familiar for their weapons:
Club, Dagger, Dart, Hammer, Scimitar, Sling, Spear, Staff. (PHB p. 19).
Now the immediate question is ... why the switch? Two reasons ...
1. The PHB in 1e contained a scimitar, but not a sickle.
2. As Gygax put it, "Heh, It is because the scimitar is as close a sword weapon I could come up with to match the druids' mistletoe-harvesting sickle."
Notably, the druid is the only class that specifically allowed for the scimitar in 1e, and with d8/d8 damage, it was easily the best choice for many. The scimitar became associated with Druids as an iconic class weapon, and it persisted throughout the editions.
2. But What is the Druid, Really?
I'm the Druid, so that's what you call me. That or, uh, His Druidness, or uh, Druider, or El Druiderino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing
Classes are always a weird concept. The Druid, though ... that's a tough one. At heart, we can agree on the core of the Druid- the Druid is the class that explodes when it puts on metal armor. But other than that, what is it, really?
Essentially, the Druid has become a hodgepodge of D&Disms. It's the class with shapeshifting, and it's the nature cleric (but not, um, the Cleric of the Nature Domain). It's the class with a shillelagh and a scimitar. It's a class that doesn't wear metal armor based on (largely) discredited Roman stories about Britain, but primarily uses a metal weapon mostly associated with the Middle East and South Asia (and, if you're including cutlasses, Pirates, ARGHHH!).
And while there are some fantasy druids in literature (Radagast the Brown, the Forrestals of the Land), they are not a common archetype. And yet, here they are in 5e (and likely 5.5e) continuing to run around, swingin' their scimitars.
3. Path Dependency and the Scimitar
Nobody calls me Nature Cleric, you got the wrong guy, I’m the Druid, man.
What is path dependency? For those not familiar with the term, the easiest way to explain it is, for example, the internal combustion engine and automobiles. If you were designing a transportation system, from scratch, today, you could probably think of a lot of better ways to do it than to use cars (that require pavement, highways, parking, etc., that all require maintenance) and gas-powered ICE (that comes with its own issues). However, once you start down that path, it becomes harder and harder to switch; the transaction costs to switching to something "better" are so high, that it is very very difficult to do so, even though it might not have been the optimal choice if starting from scratch. It's not enough for something to be better- it has to be really, really, really better. If that example doesn't work for you, think about why we aren't all using the DVORAK keyboard.
And this path dependency is why we have a lot of D&Disms as well. If you could go back in time, and you had perfect knowledge, you'd probably design a lot of things differently. But when you see the history, it becomes obvious- why do Druids use scimitars? Druids use scimitars because they were meant to use sickles to harvest mistletoe. And since there weren't sickles in the 1e PHB table, they got scimitars instead.
And now when we look at it, we can say that scimitars are ... the swords Druids use. But understanding this history brings us to a more interesting issue, which, perhaps, we can analyze in the following way; knowing that this is a mistake, what should be done?
That's the interesting issue with this, and many other, D&Disms. We have had multiple generations of gamers since 1977 (the publication of the PHB) grow up associating the Druid (which is a made up D&D class) with the Scimitar (which, as others note, is probably not historically associated with pre-Roman Britain) to the extent that it is an iconic weapon for that class. Is it better to continue down that path and keep reifying that D&Dism, or to break from that idea?
The reason that the Druid/Scimitar is interesting to look at is that it avoids a great deal of the baggage that similar issues do- primarily, do you keep returning to classic D&D tropes, or do you believe that it is better to break with them, and how do you make that determination?
