D&D General RL Non Metallic Weapon's.

[loverdrive]

My favorite will always be the Macahuitl (a wooden club with obsidian blades attached to the sides, used by the natives of Mesoamerica, most notably by the Mayans and Aztecs).
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Macahuitl is, honestly, straight up terrifying to me.

 

[MGibster]

They did that kind of thing in AD&D…and most people ignored it.

We tried it out for a while but found that it was more trouble than it was worth. Same thing with weapon speed.

Macahuitl is, honestly, straight up terrifying to me.

Oddly enough, if I didn't know that was a weapon I wouldn't think it was a weapon. It looks more like a decoration than something you'd use to maim or kill another human being.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Macahuitl is, honestly, straight up terrifying to me.

I think that's largely the point. It looks scary and awesome, and while it wouldn't be that great of a weapon in a society where they had metal weapons and armor, in ones where they only had stone and obsidian weapons and cloth armor, it would be one of the better melee weapons.

 

[Bohandas]

Oddly enough, if I didn't know that was a weapon I wouldn't think it was a weapon. It looks more like a decoration

Or a cricket bat

 

[MGibster]

Or a cricket bat

Here in the United States we don't make bats small enough for crickets to use.

 

[Baron Opal II]

When I worked at a museum I got to catalog a new collection donated to us by the estate of a WW II veteran who served in the Pacific. The provenience of this bad boy was allegedly Papua New Guinea. I'm not an expert in clubs, but this one looks like a Vanuatu club to me. It's made out of some seriously dense hardwood and if you were to strike someone with it they would have a very, very bad day. The overall length of the club was about 42 inches.

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Do you know if that was carved from the root ball? I could see that as an easier way to get those studs in the striking surface.

The Hawaiian versions are Leiomano

I find the second one beautiful! I would love to have one for my wall. It looks like the drilled a small hole in the tooth to tie it down? It would be hard to tie the tooth to the base over a cutting surface, certainly.

 

[MGibster]

Do you know if that was carved from the root ball? I could see that as an easier way to get those studs in the striking surface.

Unfortunately, no. Wooden objects originating from somewhere in the Pacific was so far outside my field that I wouldn't be comfortable saying anything concrete (or wooden) about it. And so far as its origins go, I'm really relying on word of mouth from the descendants of the deceased who was said to have brought it over when he returned to the US after WWII. For all I know, he might have bought it or it was given to him by another soldier while he was in Guam. Or maybe he bought it from a tourist shop while stationed in Japan in the 1960s. I had no way of really knowing.