Top 10 odd D&D weapons

Another thought about polearms. Something that always bugged me is that swords had really one function - killing people. Polearms, OTOH, whether spears or whatnot, can be, and were, used for hunting. After all, I'd much rather that that nasty bit of bacon was several feet away from me, pinned by my spear.

But, so long as swords are mechanically superior to polearms or spears, no one will bother. Those feats in Dragon go a long way towards leveling the playing field. I hope to see more in the future.

I'm just rather tired of Joe Fighterguy using a longsword. Ten years of 2e and every bloody fighter using one has somewhat soured me on the idea. We have all these other weapons that almost never see the light of day. I'd like to see them be considered viable options.

big dummy said:

8 pounds is still insane for a sword. Try picking up a six or nine pound maul in a hardware store some time.

Click to expand...

Always seemed like a nice comfy weight to me. People use those mauls to split wood rather energetically you know. Nothing wrong with 8 pounds of metal, especially if it is well balanced.

A real longsword or greatsword weighed around 2.5 - 3.5 lbs. The huge 16th century zweihanders could be 4-6 lbs, but these were six foot long swords.

Click to expand...

The other thing you have to remember is that the terms we apply to D&D weapons are not exactly scientific. They are approximations. Real life swords may have gone from 1.5 to 8 or more pounds, but in D&D they round it up. 2 pounds for the lighter swords. 4 for the hand and a halfers (can be used with one or 2 hands). 6 pounds for the one most people need 2 hands for. 8 pounds for the one everyone needs 2 hands for. Seems like a very reasonable approximation.

Nyaricus said:

Two-Bladed Sword = double the dumb

Click to expand...

Tell that to this guy.

Sledge said:

Always seemed like a nice comfy weight to me. People use those mauls to split wood rather energetically you know. Nothing wrong with 8 pounds of metal, especially if it is well balanced.

Click to expand...

LOL! Nice and comfy eh? Who are you, hercules? I guess you have never swung a maul at some concrete before. How many swings you think you can do with a nine pound maul in a row? Now try reversing direction a few times...

Tell you what, try getting about a 6 lb crowbar, and then add some weight to the base like by duct taping some heavy nuts or washers to it until it's "well balanced". Try going through a basic sword drill with that. Better yet, come at me when I'm armed with a 2 lb bastard sword. You would win yourself a darwin award PDQ.

The other thing you have to remember is that the terms we apply to D&D weapons are not exactly scientific. They are approximations. Real life swords may have gone from 1.5 to 8 or more pounds, but in D&D they round it up. 2 pounds for the lighter swords. 4 for the hand and a halfers (can be used with one or 2 hands). 6 pounds for the one most people need 2 hands for. 8 pounds for the one everyone needs 2 hands for. Seems like a very reasonable approximation.

Click to expand...

Well, one thing I agree with you is it's not exactly scientific.

You apparently misread my post. No sword ever used in combat weighed 6 let alone 8 pounds. Hand and a half / two hand swords weigh an average of just under 3 pounds, 4 pounds woudl be very heavy. Many single-hand swords weigh from as little as 1 pound, to never more than 3 1/2.

The huge zweihander types of the 16th century are not depicted in D&D any more (they used to have them in OE D&D, they did 3-18 damage...)

An eight pound weapon would be completely impossible in combat, unless your enemies were frozen solid (always a possibility in D&D I guess) or you were yourself about ten feet tall.

BD

jimbobbrowningstein said:

Tell that to this guy.

Click to expand...

He's missing his left hand because he just cut it off...

BD

big dummy said:

An eight pound weapon would be completely impossible in combat, unless your enemies were frozen solid (always a possibility in D&D I guess) or you were yourself about ten feet tall.

Click to expand...

Or you were the kind of guy who can put on a suit of platemail and walk around for half a day in it. Which people in D&D games do on a regular basis. Sure, weapon weights are unrealistic in D&D. But so are a bunch of other aspects of the game. Physics, biology, chemistry, etc. do not work in the D&D game world as they do in ours. Why fixate on specifically on weapons and not anything else?

shilsen said:

Or you were the kind of guy who can put on a suit of platemail and walk around for half a day in it. Which people in D&D games do on a regular basis. Sure, weapon weights are unrealistic in D&D. But so are a bunch of other aspects of the game. Physics, biology, chemistry, etc. do not work in the D&D game world as they do in ours. Why fixate on specifically on weapons and not anything else?

Click to expand...

Of course you can walk around half a day in suit of "platemail". I've seen people walk around all day in full harness dozens of times, (not that they weren't sore afteword I'm sure). Thats just another fallacy left over from Monty Python or Connectiucut Yankee in King Arthurs court or something. I've seen people do handsprings in plate armor, and wade though rivers en-masse.

As to why apply any real physics or history, this is always brought up as a cop out. Whatever floats your boat of course, but my answer is, then why use "swords" at all? Go the Gene Wolfe route and have people fight with venomous flowers.

The bottom line is, it makes no sense to me to make up this phony baloney quasi-medieval universe when the real historical one is right there ready to borrow from, primarily because unlike generic RpG gear it's internally consistent, each component fits with each other one because they developed together organically on the battlefield. People keep wondering and being bewildered by the illogical way numerous D&D weapons and armor interrract, "what are these polearms all about?" "why is one sword the same as another?" "How come practically everry weapon does the same damage?" "Why do daggers barely cause any harm?" Well, here is your way out.

Or stick with your 20 lb swords and 200 lb suits of armor for all I care. I may think it's silly but I'm all for freedom of choice in how people play. I do personally feel it contributes to the whole negative image of D&D, it's sort of willfully cheezy, like WWF wrestling. Or at least thats how it seems to me... but hey WWF has a huge fan base to this day. Who am I to judge.

BD

big dummy said:

You apparently misread my post. No sword ever used in combat weighed 6 let alone 8 pounds. Hand and a half / two hand swords weigh an average of just under 3 pounds, 4 pounds woudl be very heavy. Many single-hand swords weigh from as little as 1 pound, to never more than 3 1/2.

Click to expand...

I have a sword that's around a short sword size, weights about 2 pounds, maybe a little bit more, and it's quite well balanced. Heck, a baseball bat, about the size of a longsword but made of light wood weighs in at over 2 pounds (ususally 32-40 oz).

I've also lifted a friend's greatsword (who was a SCA member at one point), that thing was a good 6-8 pounds.

People who used swords trained with them regularly. A tenis racket is very awkward to use for a bit, but once you get used to it, you can move it quite quickly dispite it's weight and less than ideal aerodynamics. I think you're greatly underestimating the weight of the weapons, particularly when they were made of iron or even bronze as opposed to steal.

Sledge said:

The other thing you have to remember is that the terms we apply to D&D weapons are not exactly scientific. They are approximations. Real life swords may have gone from 1.5 to 8 or more pounds, but in D&D they round it up. 2 pounds for the lighter swords. 4 for the hand and a halfers (can be used with one or 2 hands). 6 pounds for the one most people need 2 hands for. 8 pounds for the one everyone needs 2 hands for. Seems like a very reasonable approximation.

Click to expand...

I always got the impression that the weight listed included scabbard, tools for maintenance of the blade, etc., not just the weapon itself.

big dummy said:

He's missing his left hand because he just cut it off...

BD

Click to expand...

I recall reading that Ray Park was basically staff fighting when he was using the double light saber. It looked fine, but some of his moves involved stopping the staff's motion with his body...which is slightly more problematic when the body of the staff is supposed to be made of coherent energy that can slice through hull plating.