Behold the power of Thrown Weapons!!

[Celebrim]

Realism can die in a fire, for all I care. Cool is way better than realistic.

Cool is subjective. That to me looks extremely uncool. It is in fact in my opinion, lame. This is closer to my cool.

Realism to me is cool, because something really kicking @$$ is cooler than pretending something kicks @$$. MMA is cooler than Wuxia. I got so sick of hearing about how cool Kung Fu was. There are few things that have given me quite the satisfaction of watching traditional martial artists get beat down by something that is actually cool. You don't look so cool with blood streaming from your face and this dazed look that says, "I thought I was cool? What happened?" Assault rifles are cooler than belts of poorly balanced throwing knives. Simply taking down your opponent without alot of fuss is cooler than showmanship. A well choreographed stage fight as far as I'm concerned involves lots of very small, very fast, very hard to follow movements. I could care less if someone that can't fence doesn't think that what I think is cool is cool. A well choreographed fire fight involves keeping your head down. That's cool. Adventurers wearing garb that looks like it could actually be used in an adventure is cooler than the adventurer wearing spotless fashion accessories. I crawl around in caves, and it makes me laugh to think of the sort of lame 'adventurers' supposedly doing so in most modern D&D art. Armor that looks like it might actually protect you is cooler than spiky bondage wear designed to nicely frame the exposed flesh. Someone that actually looks like he could fight is cooler than metrosexual glam boys and tarted up girls in poses that have more to do with come hither than killing things. Reality is cooler than fantasy, even in a fantasy.

Opinions of course differ.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Oooh. Kinda forgot about this.

Meals and Heinsoo both confirmed at DnDXP that 4E magic throwing weapons all are considered 'returning'... which I like. No more throwing your expensive magic weapon at monsters and then forgetting it for the rest of the encounter.

-Matt

Huzzah!

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The concept of throwing weapons as your central weapon is fairly unrealistic. You are often just arming your enemy, and possibly leaving yourself without a weapon. And you can never really carry enough to be effective. Most of the reasons for using one are poorly modeled by D&D.

The only systematic soldier I can think of using throwing weapons as a primary weapon is a peltast, and then the reasons are primarily cost and technology. Besides, if you were a mercenary, you wouldn't try to beat something like a Spartan phalanx at its own game. You go hurl a few javelins, earn your pay, and then beat a hasty retreat. Let the rich men with thier fancy bronze armor fight it out chest to chest.

You're using actual medieval warfare as your model, which strikes me as irrelevant to the type of combat D&D is modeling. Sure, thrown weapons suck if you're one of a couple hundred mercenaries backed up by phalanxes of soldiers attacking an enemy army... but what if you're with a few buddies in a bar or street fight? Having a dagger up your sleeve to take out a dude from 10 yards away sounds pretty nice then.

Not to mention that the best thrown weapons in D&D are MAGIC and return to your hands after you use them. Them peltasts would probably be a lot more popular if they had INFINITE spears... at least if watching my buddy play "Rome: Total War" has given me any strategic insight.

That said, I'm guessing the most popular "thrown weapon specialists" in 4e will actually be spear- and knife-fighters who appreciate the added flexibility of being able to use their preferred weapon from range when the opportunity presents itself.

For example, I'm looking forward to making a spear-wielding fighter. As a defender, he'll probably spend a lot of his time wading through hordes of enemies. But what if a skirmisher breaks past him to chase after the vulnerable wizard? I'll want to hit him hard, and also to mark him - but I DON'T want to move away from all the other baddies I'm currently threatening, which would leave THEM free to chase after my allies. So instead of chasing down the skirmisher, I skewer him with my spear, Marking him in the process (so he gets a penalty if he attacks my allies instead of me), and then let my spear return magically so that I can continue to stave off the evil hordes.

 

[reff42]

The Franks threw their axes immediately before hand to hand combat with the purpose of breaking shields and disrupting the enemy line while possibly wounding or killing an enemy warrior. The weight of the head and length of the haft would allow the axe to be thrown with considerable momentum to an effective range of about 12 m (40 feet). Even if the edge of the blade were not to strike the target the weight of the iron head could cause injury in any event.

In one description, one of the two iron nails that held the iron shaft in place was replaced with a weak wooden pin that would break on impact causing the shaft to twist sideways. Gaius Marius is sometimes given credit for this modification. Most later pila were constructed such that the iron shank would bend on impact; early pila do not seem to have had this characteristic. A pilum, having penetrated a shield through a small hole and its shank having bent would now be difficult to remove. It is likely that the shaft would hit the ground and thus stop the charging enemy in its tracks.

The art of knife throwing was first used in martial or in hunting applications. It has been incorporated into the martial disciplines of the Japanese as well as some African and Native American tribes. In these cases, however, throwing a weapon when fighting is generally thought of as a risk. If unsuccessful it can leave the thrower without a weapon. It bears noting, however, that many warriors traditionally carried two or more weapons at the same time.

Given the real world's one-hit-kill tendancy, throwing weapons are cool. At the very least, the heavier ones were very effective at destroying or immobilizing the enemys shield.

 

[AZRogue]

I don't care if they're not as good as other options. If they're even PARTLY viable I am so making a dagger throwing rogue. Is it effective in real life? Probably not. But I'm not trying to roleplay an accountant. I want a knife throwing rogue who can kill things. Trhow some knives to start when I see someone giving me Combat Advantage and then move in with two-weapons (daggers) for the melee kill. I wants it. I wants it now.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Definitely, it will actually make sense for all my rogues that have their belts with throwing knives but never use, to actually use them now.