Joe Commoner, and his BIG AXE!!!

[Nahat Anoj]

Also (just thought of this) wouldn't most farmers have some experience with using an axe to kill things? How does your average medieval farmer kill his chickens, pigs, or cows? (I know you don't usually kill the cows, but humor me.) I don't know, I'm wondering what the usual method was. I would imagine an axe, that makes the most sense to me.

I remember reading some castle book several years ago that talked about this. If the butcher killed a pig and the pig saw it coming, then the pig's muscles would be tensed up and the meat wouldn't taste good. So the butcher would sneak behind the pig (perhaps while it was eating) and kill it by hitting it over the head with a hammer or bar. Because the pig was caught off guard, the cooked meat was more tender.

So now everyone knows how to kill a pig.

 

[TerraDave]

So will we see every tom, dick, and harry wielding a big honking axe,

Another point for 4E.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

None of which compares to katanae, which can cut through TANKS.

TANKS, mang!

I know I am not the only person who remembers Storm Shadow from COBRA cutting a tank up with his sword!

 

[Cactot]

another benefit of axes, picks and blunt weapons are that they are both extremely cheap/easy to make (wood shaft + metal head), incredibly durable/low matinence (dont have to worry about chipping the blade), and vastly higher effectiveness against armored foes (compared to one handed bladed weapons) because of a MUCH higher moment of inertia at a similar angular velocity.

Spears are also excellent weapons for very similar reasons, cheap/easy to make, low matinence, longer reach (particularly great for shield+spear combinations) and decent ability for armor penetration (depending on style of spear head).

Swords in general are pretty crappy weapons for the following reasons:
1. Incredibly expensive/difficult to craft
2. Very high matinence/fragile
3. Barring a specialty design (bastard sword with a thrusting point, falchion with a heavily weighted blade), not terribly effective against armored foes (though extremely effective against lightly armored/unarmored foes)...
4. More difficult / less intuitive to use

Not to say that they do not have excellent capability for killing, just that as an all-purpose weapon, they are pretty lousy. For killing unarmored foes they are pretty much unequaled, and with the right type of design they can function againstly light/medium armored foes. But unless you have a phenomenally heavy sword or you are vastly stronger/more skilled than your opponent, against heavily armored foes they are not ideal.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

In theory, that's totally awesome. In practice, many settings don't seem to have a lot of tanks. Presumably because the heroes of old cut them into little pieces long ago.

But with 4E the defender role is that of the tank.

 

[arscott]

Doesn't the axe also give +1 damage? According the "PHB Lite" there are weapons that give +3 to hit ('accurate'), +2 to hit ('regular') and +1 to hit/+1 to damage ('inaccurate').

I think we'll find that's an error in the PHB Lite.

It seems far more likely to me that weapon's bonus to hit is not directly tied to bonus damage. Instead, a weapons accuracy, damage, and other qualities reflect a broader balancing system.

In 3e, for example, the fact that a weapon was a martial weapon didn't automatically mean that it had a better threat range than a simple weapon. Instead, it simply indicated that the weapon was superior in some way, be it threat range, multiplier, ability to trip/disarm, etc.

 

[DM_Blake]

I come from a mindset that people inhabiting my fantasy world want to survive. They know very well how their environment works, and they make decisions to the best of their ability within that environment that maximizes their chance of survival.

Ergo, if a commoner needs to take up arms to defend his home or his village, he will choose a weapon that maximizes his chance of surviving.

He will know whether swords or axes make the biggest wounds (he won't know d8 vs. d10, but he will know what kinds of wounds the weapons make).

He will know which weapon is harder to wield (he won't know he's -2 with a sword and -1 with an axe, but as soon as he's tried both implements, he will know which one he can use best).

Given that he will hit more often with an axe, and that the axe will make bigger wounds, he would see no reason at all to choose a sword.

He will maximize his chances of surviving by choosing an axe.

And, because axes are a dime a dozen in a medieval farm or village, and swords aren't, he won't likely be forced to choose an inferior sword because it's the only weapon lying around handy for him to find.

So yes, if the numbers we are discussing in this thread are true in 4e, then very nearly all of my commoners will be defending their homes with axes, not swords.

 

[Revinor]

I doubt most farmers would even consider using their scythe for combat either. They'd be used to swinging it along the ground at calf-level, not swinging at shoulder level to take off someone's head.

You don't use scythe in combat this way (unless you are Grim Reaper). You move the blade to point straight forward from the pole, making kind of spear/naginata.

One of the major Polish uprisings is famous from it's use of battle-scythes.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Stachowicz_Kosynierzy.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...later_conducting_Polish_scythemen_in_1831.PNG

 

[WheresMyD20]

Also (just thought of this) wouldn't most farmers have some experience with using an axe to kill things? How does your average medieval farmer kill his chickens, pigs, or cows? (I know you don't usually kill the cows, but humor me.) I don't know, I'm wondering what the usual method was. I would imagine an axe, that makes the most sense to me.

Typically, chickens are killed by snapping the neck with bare hands. Pigs are killed by slitting the throat with a knife.

 

[med stud]

I come from a mindset that people inhabiting my fantasy world want to survive. They know very well how their environment works, and they make decisions to the best of their ability within that environment that maximizes their chance of survival.

Ergo, if a commoner needs to take up arms to defend his home or his village, he will choose a weapon that maximizes his chance of surviving.

He will know whether swords or axes make the biggest wounds (he won't know d8 vs. d10, but he will know what kinds of wounds the weapons make).

He will know which weapon is harder to wield (he won't know he's -2 with a sword and -1 with an axe, but as soon as he's tried both implements, he will know which one he can use best).

Given that he will hit more often with an axe, and that the axe will make bigger wounds, he would see no reason at all to choose a sword.

He will maximize his chances of surviving by choosing an axe.

And, because axes are a dime a dozen in a medieval farm or village, and swords aren't, he won't likely be forced to choose an inferior sword because it's the only weapon lying around handy for him to find.

So yes, if the numbers we are discussing in this thread are true in 4e, then very nearly all of my commoners will be defending their homes with axes, not swords.

Bow and arrow used to be a classic in Scandinavia. The peasants ran to the woods and killed the soldiers that tried to get them there.

In an organized battle they brought spears most often. Another weapon that is cheap and easy to use. The reach was very good when facing other unarmored opponents and if peasants faced trained enemy footmen they were toast whether they used spears or axes. The spear was also good if you got large predators about.