To be fair, how often did people historically use throwing weapons? The Romans of course had their two pila.
In some periods as many as six, I think it was, but they were much smaller versions, more like the D&D dart. The Celts were also big into spears and javelins, with many exotic points, and smaller javelins translated as 'darts.' Before the Romans, the Greek peltasts, the primary skirmishers outside of the phallanx, used javelins and slings.
So you've got a couple thousand years of thrown weapons (and spear & shield) being primary weapons of war, included in the building of two vast empires.
Ancient Germans had their throwing axes I think.
The Franks were notorious for the francisca, for instance.
Other than that, throwing weapons were never really that big a thing, right?
Other than most of the history of western civilization? I suppose...
Mongols, Japanese, Persians, Medieval English, Crusader armies, Chinese: all of them are - to me, at least - associated with archery
The Mongols, 'Scythians' I think it was among the Persians, and yes the famed English (actually originally Welsh) longbowmen were notoriously archers. Agincourt was so famous because the triumph of archery over armor was such an unusual thing.
Back to D&D: I hear that many groups are dominated by bows and crossbows. I've not found that myself, since it seems that my players really like cutting people's heads off in melee, but obviously that's just anecdotal.
It's not an unusual anecdote. The ranged DPR type appeals to a sub-set of players, and it works really, really well in 5e. Though most casters can neatly step in and be very effective at ranged combat, obviously. The melee type also has its fans who'll play it whether it's optimal (or even viable) or not.
I didn't mention Africa, the Americas, or Australasia
Africa was pretty varied, of course. The Zulu for instance, threw spears and fought with clubs until Shaka built an empire using the spear in formation, instead. I'm not up on Egyptian or Kush warfare, I'm sure it varied over the thousands of years in question. In Australia, throwing weapons were very much the thing - the famed boomerang of course, and the woomera (in messoamerica the atlatl was a similar weapon), though you could argue that it's a missile weapon using spears as ammunition in D&D terms.
But, yeah, D&D wildly underrates the spear and the shield (and especially the combination of the two, which dominated warfare for most of the history of warfare), and overrates swords (as much status symbol as practical weapon) and draw-bows (because Robin Hood, let's face it).
The problem comes when verisimilitude overcomes simplicity, which happens almost instantly. Anyone else remember weapon type vs armor types and speed factors? [shudder]
Yes. I don't remember many other DMs using them, either (I liked the idea, especially at low level when there wasn't that much else to deal with). Even so, I simplified weapon vs armor to actual types (cutting, bludgeoning, piercing) so there were fewer adjustments to sift through, and also just ruled that magic weapons ignored negative adjustments, and magic armor positive ones, so that once everyone was kitted out we could forget about it.
