Sage... Dragon... Advice... what?

[Altamont Ravenard]

I've always wondered.. where do you put your hands when you grip a one-handed weapon with two hands? A hafted weapon I can sort of see. But what about a longsword?

Aren't longswords made with that in mind, ie the handle is a little longer so that you can place 2 hands on it (it also helps leverage).

Of course, there are some one-handed weapons that I have a hard time imagining used 2-handedly, like the rapier, for instance.

AR

 

[Caliban]

I love how some people are so quick to insult the sage whenever they disagree with on of his answers, acting as if he's always wrong. Just a knee jerk reaction with nothing to back it up.

I did an analysis of his Sage Advice answers (dating from the first 3.0 Sage Advice). I found that he is correct in more than 98% of his answers, and only completely wrong in less than than 1% of his answers.

That's actually a very high accuracy rate, but the Sage-Bashers always ignore all the correct answers and only remember the ones he got wrong.

 

[evileeyore]

If your trying to use common sense then a 'standard'* longsword can not be effectively weilded using two hands. Placing one hand over the other (which is the only way to fit both hands on such a swords hilt) fails to add any leverage for extra damage or weapon retaining purposes.

*for standard I mean short hilted Longswords not Bastard Sword style hilts

Think about it. Do you swing a baseball bat with one hand directly over the other, or side by side with a bit of choke?

I have trained and spared using swords, pikes, spears, staffs, axes, nunchuks, tonfa, etc. Trust me you gain no real benefit to grabbing a small hilt in both hands.

However if you feel that a dagger could be weilded two-handed, then by all means have at it.


IMO, the whole gist of the weapon rules was for sim-pli-fi-ca-tion. Not "But my Longsword has an extra longness to the hilt so I can weild it effectively with two hands" crap.

And yes realistically I find fault with many of their combat rules... Katana requiring a Feat to use effectively one-handed my tail...

TTFN

EvilE

 

[Stalker0]

Not to pick nits, but that sure looks like 3.0 then.

I agree, looks like he's going with 3.0 text on this one.

 

[jgsugden]

Just to clarify a point: The Sage's 'job' is to clarify the rules for WotC. That means that all his 'rulings' should follow the rules. Here, on the message boards, people should feel free to suggest alternative rules if the real rules are flawed, but the Sage's job is to provide clarity to the existing rules. It is not up to him to make up rules for situations that he doesn't bother researching.

In his case, doing a sloppy job is far worse than not doing anything at all.

 

[dcollins]

I did an analysis of his Sage Advice answers (dating from the first 3.0 Sage Advice). I found that he is correct in more than 98% of his answers, and only completely wrong in less than than 1% of his answers.

That's actually a very high accuracy rate, but the Sage-Bashers always ignore all the correct answers and only remember the ones he got wrong.

Not sure if I count as a Sage-basher or not. I think Skip does a great service, and I'm amazed he takes the time to answer personal email questions. He makes some good calls and some bad ones.

The flip side, however, is that the majority of questions he fields are really, really easy. A big swath of Sage Advice and the FAQ is just repeating stuff that's in the core rules that people couldn't find what page it was on. In places where there is some real difficulty, he stumbles a bit too often... even if I'm sure it doesn't rise to 50%. It's pretty clear in most of his answers that he didn't look up the rule in the book to double-check his memory (like you do or I do), and he sort of feels that he doesn't need to, because he's one of the designers.

As purely academic musing, it would be interesting to imagine your survey numbers if they were done after taking out things that are just repeated from the rulebooks. My guess would be about 80% right, 20% wrong or thereabouts.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So, Hyp. et al, what do you think of the Sage's table comparing wielder size to weapon size and indicating whether the weapon is light, one-handed, or two-handed? Is it correct? If not, why not?

I haven't seen it. The only answer I've seen from the magazine is the one under discussion.

-Hyp.

 

[Pax]

As purely academic musing, it would be interesting to imagine your survey numbers if they were done after taking out things that are just repeated from the rulebooks. My guess would be about 80% right, 20% wrong or thereabouts.

And IMO, given it's his job ... an error rate of over 5% is unacceptible, and an error rate of over 10% is inexcusable. Plus it wouldn't surprise me to see the error rate go as high as 30% for the sort of questions you describe.

 

[satori01]

A strict rule inteperation would yield the following situations:

An ogre wielding a medium greatsword in one hand would still receive a two handed disarm bonus due to the weapon classification despite only using one hand.

A halfling utilizing a medium longsword would not receive the two handed bonus against disarm attacks despite using two hands. Of course if said halfling were to wield the nearly identical small greatsword he would than receive the two handed bonus.

The rules are a bit wonky in this area, and the Sage gave a common sense answer. It would have been nice if the Sage acknowledged that he was going off the reservation on this particuliar answer but he didnt.

Like many other things in life, The Sage's responses may contain peanuts.

 

[MerakSpielman]

And IMO, given it's his job

Somehow I doubt doing Sage Advice is what pays his rent. He does a service for the gaming community and gets little in return, and he ain't perfect, just like most people. Even HS has been wrong on occasion.