D&D 5E The D&D rapier: What is it?

[Satyrn]

Rapier 1d8 (Finesse weapons, light)

. . .

Also, the rapier should be a light weapon. You should be able to hold a dagger in your offhand.

I don't understand what you're getting at with this. Rapiers aren't light weapons.

Or are you saying that light weapons should do 1d8 damage (instead of the 1d6 that shortswords and scimitars do)?


As for the dagger thing, I agree. But rather than nerfing the rapier down into "just another shortsword," my fix would be to give the dagger itself a special rule that would let it be paired with any other weapon.

 

[Thurmas]

I don't understand what you're getting at with this. Rapiers aren't light weapons.

Or are you saying that light weapons should do 1d8 damage (instead of the 1d6 that shortswords and scimitars do)?


As for the dagger thing, I agree. But rather than nerfing the rapier down into "just another shortsword," my fix would be to give the dagger itself a special rule that would let it be paired with any other weapon.

I suppose its maybe not that rapier should be a light weapon, but maybe the two handed rules should be that only the off hand weapon has to be light. It just annoys me that RAW, you can't dual wield a rapier and a dagger without a feat. But this really just gets more to the problems with 2 weapon fighting in a general then a commentary on the rapier.

Regarding your other point, personally I'd like to see the scimitar move to 1d8 damage as a martial, and lose the light property, and the short sword become a simple weapon (but retain all the other properties it has).

 

[Satyrn]

It just annoys me that RAW, you can't dual wield a rapier and a dagger without a feat.

And once you have that feat, you'd be rather silly to wield a 1d4 dagger instead of a 1d8 sword.

As I said, I think the quickest, cleanest solution is to give the dagger a special property. And then I'd add in a 1d4 hatchet - or maybe a pick - with that same special quality for the dwarves. Oh! And give it to the sap for the thugs.

 

[Coroc]

At some point, maybe the 19th century, antiquarians took to calling some straight, single-edged cavalry weapons 'broadswords,' I have no idea why. In fantasy gaming 'broadsword' is sometimes taken, quite literally, as a big honking sword that's improbably wide across the blade, but not overlong, like a cut-down fantasy greatsword, I suppose.

Agreed.

A broadsword is an arming sword, any mainly cutting but also capable of thrusting medium length straight blade
will fall into that category (E.g. Shiavona, the 1 handed basket hilt claymore, but also roman spatha and knightly swords to be used mainly in conjunction with a shield up to about 12th or 13th century)

In game terms 1 handed 1d8 slashing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

When i think of a rapier I usually think of the sabre- like so

 

[Thurmas]

And once you have that feat, you'd be rather silly to wield a 1d4 dagger instead of a 1d8 sword.

As I said, I think the quickest, cleanest solution is to give the dagger a special property. And then I'd add in a 1d4 hatchet - or maybe a pick - with that same special quality for the dwarves. Oh! And give it to the sap for the thugs.

It's not always about maxing damage output, though. Sometimes it's about flavor and two swords doesn't make sense just to max damage if the character concept asks for something else.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Exactly. It's 1 point of damage. So why even add this silly anachronism to the game? Dexterity is superior to Strength in every way...what's wrong with saying that if you want a Dex build you are going to do slightly less damage?

It isn't an anachronism though. Feel free to point to the historical period in our world where elven smiths worked in a thousand year old tradition to design weaponry to fight monsters that are too big to physically exist.

 

[Coroc]

When i think of a rapier I usually think of the sabre- like so

The upper one is a broad sword the lower one is a sabre.

 

[Satyrn]

It's not always about maxing damage output, though. Sometimes it's about flavor and two swords doesn't make sense just to max damage if the character concept asks for something else.

Aye, that's true. I'd figure that person would be happy with a shortsword and dagger, though, and get better use out of some other more interesting feat than Dual Wielder

This all hypothetical what if, of course. But I can add that I have no interest in taking Dual Wielder for my gnome battlemaster because it's so boring compared to other choices. Shortswords are fine.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Rapiers aren't smallswords either - they are the smallsword's predecessor, same way the small sword became the olympic fencing weapon. Smallswords are far shorter, lighter and have a simpler hilt

So what is a rapier. A rapier is a long bladed sword, with a very narrow blade, complex hilt and devoted to the thrust. It was carried by civilians and frequently used in duels. Something a bit like this:

In my campaigns the shortsword is what historicly was the small sword.
The rapiers tend to have advanced ring guards, instead of full cup hilts.
something ike :

 

[Tony Vargas]

Numbers on a stick is probably the best way to keep your sanity.

It could be easier to just boil down weapons to a fairly small matrix of 'heavy' | 'finesse' | thrown | ranged X 1-handed|versatile|2-handed, and then let players pick the element in the array that they feel best fits the fluff of the weapon they want.

 

[Ancalagon]

In my campaigns the shortsword is what historicly was the small sword.
The rapiers tend to have advanced ring guards, instead of full cup hilts.
something ike :
View attachment 88483

Huh. In my game the shortsword is more like a gladius, a xiphos, a cinquedea... but not a smallsword. I see the smallsword as a particularly poor choice for adventuring.

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[Satyrn]

I see the smallsword as a particularly poor choice for adventuring.

So is the leather miniskirt that Xena wore, and yet she only died twice in 6 years of adventuring. That's about average for a D&D character, right?

 

[Ancalagon]

So is the leather miniskirt that Xena wore, and yet she only died twice in 6 years of adventuring. That's about average for a D&D character, right?

Blame the gm

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[cbwjm]

So the Spanish blade and the bilbo? Is it because of the cup hilt? Because let me tell you, these weapons would handle *very* differently in a fight. The bilbo would be a good weapon for an adventurer to have. It's not too long and can deliver both trusts and cuts. The Spanish one... not so much. This is the point of this thread - what kind of rapier are D&D adventurers using.

(as an aside, the bilbo was thus name because of its city of origin, Bilbao, a basque city in Spain, so it's Spanish too)

Probably the hilt. I don't actually worry too much about how they handle in reality, it's just how I envisage them in game.

 

[Kalshane]

Regarding rapier and dagger I have an additional weapon property in my game called "Off-hand" (which was inspired by one of the threads on this board) that applies to all 1d4 light weapons allowing them to be paired with a non-light one-handed weapon for two weapon fighting. (The Dual Wielder feat also grants a second attack with your off-hand weapon if you have the Extra attack feature and at least one of your weapons has the off-hand property or both weapons have the light property. Gives more use for the feat than just swinging two rapiers or longswords around.)

The existence of the rapier itself in the game doesn't bother me. Some folks want to play a swashbuckler in a Princess Bride or Errol Flynn vein. (Just like some folks want to play the barbarian rushing into battle in nothing but a loin cloth. The fact that the game supports both of those things as well as more "traditional" concepts is a good thing, IMO.)

 

[Ancalagon]

When i think of a rapier I usually think of the sabre- like so

... but a rapier is not a sabre. I feel like that you are missing a short sentence or two to qualify your statement. Do you mean "I dislike rapiers so I mentally replace them with sabres"? What do you mean exactly?

Otherwise it's like saying "when I think of cows, I usually think of horses". A horse is not a cow.

And btw, sabres are very cool, but I'm not sure if they need separate stat from scimitars?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

... but a rapier is not a sabre. I feel like that you are missing a short sentence or two to qualify your statement. Do you mean "I dislike rapiers so I mentally replace them with sabres"? What do you mean exactly?

Otherwise it's like saying "when I think of cows, I usually think of horses". A horse is not a cow.

And btw, sabres are very cool, but I'm not sure if they need separate stat from scimitars?

I mean that I don't view DND as using specialist jargon for it's weapons, so the difference between most of these swords is altogether meaningless without the cultural context of European History, and therefore meaningless on Krynn, or in the realms, or in Pantheon, or wherever else you might play) so a rapier in DND, probably ambiguously includes cutlasses, longer varieties of sabre, epee, and so forth.

In the same way I would probably have someone wielding falcutta use the stats of a scimitar, or someone wielding a wakizashi use the stats of the short sword... or the scimitar, really. If I didn't like the mechanical niche of the homebrew katana rules we use (1d6/2d4 versatile, finesse- GWF for finesse characters with a drawback) it would be a longsword, even though they are very much different swords.

 

[Ancalagon]

I mean that I don't view DND as using specialist jargon for it's weapons, so the difference between most of these swords is altogether meaningless without the cultural context of European History, and therefore meaningless on Krynn, or in the realms, or in Pantheon, or wherever else you might play) so a rapier in DND, probably ambiguously includes cutlasses, longer varieties of sabre, epee, and so forth.

In the same way I would probably have someone wielding falcutta use the stats of a scimitar, or someone wielding a wakizashi use the stats of the short sword... or the scimitar, really. If I didn't like the mechanical niche of the homebrew katana rules we use (1d6/2d4 versatile, finesse- GWF for finesse characters with a drawback) it would be a longsword, even though they are very much different swords.

I sort of agree with you - like the longsword stats for a katana, perfectly fine. But you can't go tooo far with this. A sabre is a slashing weapon. A cutlass is a short sabre so it could use the same stats as a sabre I suppose... BUT a rapier is a trusting weapon (very much so for some blade-types), so it does piercing damage - different stats, different weapon. It's not just jargon. Words have *some* meaning

In other words, I agree with your second paragraph but not your first.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm rather disappointed that more people aren't answering, "It's a light weapon that does 1d6 piercing damage, and looks however the player wielding it chooses to describe it."