Should a weapon be statted based on "realism" or "balance"?

[Aaron L]

http://www.thearma.org/Youth/swordweightQ&A.htm

 

[Squidibus]

Sorry, no, you are incorrect there. Authentic longswords from several medieval and renaissance era armouries are, practically without exception, in a weight range of 2.4 to 3.6 pounds. I can, if needed, give you the scientific reasons why a weapon of a particular length and width has to weigh a given weight, but I imagine most here would find it unnecessary. A brief search of the internet of armouries and museums will also confirm this.

Stephen

Personally, I'd find that nifty.

Could you enlighten us?

 

[diaglo]

Sorry, no, you are incorrect there. Authentic longswords from several medieval and renaissance era armouries are, practically without exception, in a weight range of 2.4 to 3.6 pounds. I can, if needed, give you the scientific reasons why a weapon of a particular length and width has to weigh a given weight, but I imagine most here would find it unnecessary. A brief search of the internet of armouries and museums will also confirm this.

Stephen

here's a good link on a modern version: http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-medieval-kingmaker-xviii.htm

 

[sjmiller]

http://www.thearma.org/Youth/swordweightQ&A.htm

The folks at ARMA, while preachy and a bit heavy handed in their criticisms, are quite correct.

 

[sjmiller]

Personally, I'd find that (showing the science behind weapon sizes) nifty.

Could you enlighten us?

Sure, but just remember, you asked for it!

I am going to keep the math, chemistry, and physics to a minimum here, so some of this will be a bit rough. A longsword, according to the PH, weighs 4 pounds. A typical longsword should have an overall length (including grip) of about 4 feet, or 48 inches. The average width of the sword is 2 inches. This width is taking into account tapering of the blade at various points. Because we’re keeping this simple, we’re going to use an average width. Trust me, there’s little effect on the final numbers.

Simple mathematics tells us that the volume of an object can be found using the following formula:

V = L x W x H

Where:
V = volume in cubic units (in this case, inches)
L = length (again, in inches)
W = width
H = height

A quick look in a chemistry book shows us that carbon steel, the material that swords are made of, weighs 0.284 pounds per cubic inch (lb/in^3). Since we know our longsword weighs 4 pounds we can find out how many cubic inches it is by dividing it by 0.284.

4 / 0.284 = 14.08 (rounding off, of course), so it is 14.08 cubic inches.

Going back to our volume formula, since we know the volume, length, and width, we can find out the height, or thickness of the blade.

14.08 = 48 x 2 x H
14.08 = 96 x H
14.08 / 96 = H
0.1467 = H

That comes out to a bit more than 1/8” (actually closer to 1/7”, but that’s hard to show on a ruler).

Surprisingly, that is fairly close to what a 14th century longsword would be (48” x 2” x 1/8” = 12 cubic inches = 3.408 lbs).

Considering the length of the blade is not uniform, and the guard, grip, and pommel weights are not figured in, that’s pretty good.

Let’s take a quick look at a greatsword. In the 3.0 PH (which I have handy) it weighs 15 pounds. A nice, typical greatsword should have an overall length of around 60 inches and a blade width of around 2 to 3 inches, we’ll use 2.5. Using our formula shown above, we get a volume of 52.82 in^3 and a height, or blade thickness, of 0.352 inches. That’s almost a third of an inch thick. Take a look at a ruler for a second and look at 1/3 of an inch. The “greatsword” of those dimensions could best be called a “Great-steel-baton” because it would have no edge whatsoever.

A quick check online shows me that the 3.5 SRD has the greatsword at 8 pounds, and several museum websites show a 60” two-handed, or great sword, being about 6 pounds, and about 2.5” wide. Doing quick math here, the museum pieces should be 0.141” thick. That makes sense for a weapon of that size (between 1/8 and 1/7 inch thick). The 3.5 SRD greatsword, using the same length and width, would be 0.188” thick (between 1/6 and 1/5 inch thick). That’s pretty close to 2/10 (1/5) of an inch thick, a bit thick for that type of weapon, putting it more in the “big steel stick” category.

I must say, I am pleasantly surprised that those two weapons are, while heavy, at least moderately close to a real weapon weight. I noticed that a great many of the two-handed melee weapons are still too heavy, however. The falchion is rather like a steel brick, but a little research can get the size and weights right.

 

[gizmo33]

I chose balance because IMO realism would be too hard in a situation where almost all weapons have 5 ft reach, there are no "weapon vs. armor" modifiers, etc. etc. DnD would need a "realistic" combat system before you could design realistic weapons, and such detail is not in the spirit of DnD.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I chose realism and then specify simple/martial/exotic, but that amounts to choosing balance really.

After all, the 3e designers stuck to a pretty clear principle in almost all their weapons (crossbow is the only exception):

basic crit 20/x2
piercing or chopping weapons 20/x3
piecing weapon on a haft (i.e. piercing with extra leverage) 20/x4
slashing 19-20/x2
sharper slashing 18-20/x2

You then mix in weapon die size, reach and special bonuses with the above basic characteristics to determine whether an item should be categorised as simple, martial or exotic.

A few other weapons have been proposed in other WotC publications over time which have apparenly been ignorant of the basic principles evident in the PHB weapons, which for some people may muddy the waters - but I think if you wanted to introduce a new weapon you certainly should stick to the basic design principles that are already there.

Cheers

 

[Sejs]

i would assume it does too.

although, i have seen more golf bag full of polearm fighters in recent years than i can remember back then mostly due to the lack of encumbrance.

This is perfectly acceptable, just as long as they wear a hockey mask and their name happens to be Casey Jones.

 

[ZombieButch]

I'm crazy - I say stat it for optimal entertainment potential

If that's the wrong way to do it, I don't want to be right.

 

[maggot]

The problem with the "stat it for realism only" approach is that if you make a weapon that is unbalanced it is either better than everything else, or worse than everything else. If better than everything else, everyone will use it. If worse than everything else, no one will ever use it. But in reality there are no weapons that are used by everybody, nor are there weapons used by nobody. And this breaks the "stat it for realism" goal.

So you have to include some kind of balance, just to maintain reality. D&D has very few parameters to play with, much less than all the parameters of reality.