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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 7046088" data-attributes="member: 32659">To be fair, how often did people historically use throwing weapons? The Romans of course had their two pila, but those are described in the sources for being as much for damaging enemy shields and disrupting formations as for killing, though I'm sure it hurt a great deal if one went through your head. Ancient Germans had their throwing axes I think. Other than that, throwing weapons were never really that big a thing, right? Mongols, Japanese, Persians, Medieval English, Crusader armies, Chinese: all of them are - to me, at least - associated with archery (or, uh, xbowery) far more than thrown weapons. In other words, they only really appeared as a big thing in the ancient mediterranean to my (far from encyclopaedic) knowledge. And while sure, we all remember the velites and balearic slingers from Rome: Total War, I'm not sure that you could describe ancient warfare as one dominated by throwing weapons; it was really heavy infantry clashes, with throwing weapons used to annoy and disrupt prior. So maybe we don't see a lot of throwing weapon action in the game simply because they are not a very strong weapon choice in general. I mean, an archer can fire further and more times, thanks to the quiver and arrows, than a guy with javelins can, and the game rules are likely to reflect that just from a basic attempt to mimic what players expect.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. Throwing weapons get used occasionally, especially at low levels where people don't have other options for bonus actions or when they start 50ft away from the opponents. I tend to be vague over hand use, and not worry about how precisely they are carrying a sword and shield while also throwing a hand axe, which possibly also helps promote their use.Edit: I didn't mention Africa, the Americas, or Australasia in my discussion above. Eurocentric, eh. I did once play an 'Aboriginal tribesman' in an online 3.5 D&D game, who wandered around in light armour and a shield while tossing Javelins as his main attack. Pretty cool imagery, but not necessarily the most powerful thing I could have done.</blockquote>

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