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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WhosDaDungeonMaster" data-source="post: 7551699">Actually, the intensity of the hit (the *ahem* you discussed) is all about damage. There is no difference between rolling a 10 and a 19 if both hit (only a 20 is different), but rolling a 4 or an 8 is vastly different. Thus, damage determines how significant the hit is. As I've mentioned before, I would be fine with rapiers only doing 1d6 or not even having them in the game. Many campaigns take more off a enlightened/renaissance feel, even with swashbuckling pirates and such, but my campaigns never follow those genres so there are no rapiers.I would compare rapiers to sabres because, like sabres, they were often used in fencing or Dex-based forms of sword play despite having an edged blade, as opposed to the more direct, harder style used by broadsword, longsword, etc. As you point out, since D&D considers the sabre likely a form of scimitar, the sabre would also be a finesse weapon. And why would they consider scimitars a light weapon, weighing 3 lbs, but a rapier (only 2 lbs) are not a light weapon???Either way, the point was simply that rapiers aren't just piercing weapons historically and had edged blades, often on both sides, allowing a greater damage potential due to a longer slashing edge than a shortsword such as a gladius. Even most short bladed weapons were also edged on at least one side.Ultimately, I believe the development teams for 5E simply wanted to select one melee weapon for finesse characters that would do a d8, instead of a d6. They could have just as easily selected the scimitar to be 1d8 and left the rapier at 1d6. Like you point out, longer edged blade but smaller cross-section than a gladius. Sure, those could cancel each other out easily enough. But the traditional scimitar is much longer than a shortsword such as a gladius, with a wider blade as well if you go with the cresent-shaped version. However, the scimitar is not usually used with a thrusting motion, which a sabre often is, making it more akin to a rapier in that aspect.LOL that was kind of all over the place! Hope it makes sense. <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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