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<blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 2136881" data-attributes="member: 5724">I've also seen woodcuts showing men with faces where their bellies should be. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I'm a bit familiar with medieval stuff and I believe the rapier only developed into a martial weapon (as opposed to a courtly weapon) because people stopped wearing armor due gunpowder. It's not a weapon designed to face high medieval armor and is ineffectual against such in comparison with weapons such as maces, longswords, and hammers. In other words, it's (as you point out) a weapon of the Renaissance, not the period where people ran around in plate armor.This isn't a denegration of the rapier. You simply can't use the wrong weapon and expect a good result. For what it is supposed to do the rapier is very effective (that's why it lasted so long), but bypassing armor isn't what it's supposed to do.Which makes me wonder why they gave it such a high crit threat range to begin with. Personally, the weapons designed to bypass high armor (picks, maces, morningstars) should be the ones with high crit threats because Crit Threat Ranges should have been assigned based upon high ACs, not effectiveness vrs unarmored opponents. Anyway, no matter how much damage a rapier can do to with a solid hit against an unarmored opponent, it'll pale in comparison with what a two-hander would do with a solid hit.joe b.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jgbrowning, post: 2136881, member: 5724"] I've also seen woodcuts showing men with faces where their bellies should be. :) I'm a bit familiar with medieval stuff and I believe the rapier only developed into a martial weapon (as opposed to a courtly weapon) because people stopped wearing armor due gunpowder. It's not a weapon designed to face high medieval armor and is ineffectual against such in comparison with weapons such as maces, longswords, and hammers. In other words, it's (as you point out) a weapon of the Renaissance, not the period where people ran around in plate armor. This isn't a denegration of the rapier. You simply can't use the wrong weapon and expect a good result. For what it is supposed to do the rapier is very effective (that's why it lasted so long), but bypassing armor isn't what it's supposed to do. Which makes me wonder why they gave it such a high crit threat range to begin with. Personally, the weapons designed to bypass high armor (picks, maces, morningstars) should be the ones with high crit threats because Crit Threat Ranges should have been assigned based upon high ACs, not effectiveness vrs unarmored opponents. Anyway, no matter how much damage a rapier can do to with a solid hit against an unarmored opponent, it'll pale in comparison with what a two-hander would do with a solid hit. joe b. [/QUOTE]

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