D&D General Jacques ze Whipper does a video explaining why real life whips are way worse than d&d whips

Jacques ze Whipper has a ton of fun & interesting circu/renfest type videos of himself doing whip show performances up on YouTube &such if you aren't familiar with him


Quite a few times I found myself needing to set my coffee cup down to keep from spilling it due to laughter at the results. Through the video he shows a few different types of whip explains how ranges complicate things to near useless results if not perfectly setup and finally compares the results of his multiple Guinness record holder whip user with a whip to his totally unskilled short sword usage on some fruit soda cans the air & his own stamina. It's extra interesting because he talks about some d&d mechanics that make whips far more effective in d&d than in real life.

Not sure i needed a video to tell me that a whip wasn't a effective weapon. We have over 2,000 years of recorded history and no one has fielded a army of whip-men.

A d4 damage means that for jo smoe guy with no stats, a whip will knock a guy out 1 out of 4 times. And a couple of hit whips is going to knock a guy out most of the time.

We are just used to weapons against monsters and larger than life heroes, but against the common folk they do already

tetrasodium said:

It's extra interesting because he talks about some d&d mechanics that make whips far more effective in d&d than in real life.

Click to expand...

Unsurprising. Blowguns, bolos, lassos, mancatchers, nets, whips, and various chain weapons have always had weird rules in A/D&D (when they have shown up) to justify ever using them, and they have ranged from useless to overly complicated to optimal in specific contexts to the simply-best-option. At least whips have generally stuck with a reasonable 'they have a good reach, but in compensation do little damage' approach that should keep them in check -- it simply fails because there are so many ways to add damage to the weapon base damage that it often is a meaningless limitation.

They're hardly unique, though. The game has long had trouble figuring out what to do with weapons that did exist, but shouldn't really be seen used alongside weapons of war (except in emergencies). Particularly if it is something an iconic fictional hero/god/monster like Indiana Jones or Zorro (or Poseidon, the grim reaper, the devil, etc.) used.

oD&D stuck pretty closely to arms you would see on a battlefield, but ever since there has been a slow march of other weapons creeping in. B-BECMI added tridents (probably so you could have Poseidan-themed magic items). AD&D 1e added tridents and bo and jo sticks and quarterstaves. Then with Oriental Adventures the whole panoply of unusual weapons from the east came on board, ranging from military to assassin weapons to the Okinawan codified-improvised weapons to the Sang Kauw, which appears to be a misinterpretation of page decorations. AD&D 2nd edition brought in things like sickles and scythes and belaying pins and the like.

Great video. Thanks for sharing.

The whip paladin is one of the best builds for a paladin in 5e. I have mixed feelings about this.

Overall, though it's just a choice they made back in AD&D days to include stuff that looks cool but isn't necessarily practical, like whips, tridents, etc. (Actually tridents are pretty good spears they're just a lot harder to make while being only slightly better than a single point) This fits into the overall shift away from wargame + fantasy and towards a hero-building game.

It could be worse: Pathfinder 2e has chain-whip-swords, which can only work at all with magic / handwaving physics entirely.