D&D 5E The fall from grace of the longsword

[Hussar]

All these battlefield comparisons are pretty moot for most campaigns anyway.

How often does your PC face someone in plate mail? Orcs and various other humanoids rarely have armour that expensive. Monsters don't wear armour by and large. Anything Large sized or bigger is almost never in plate mail.

I mean, seriously, in the last five combat encounters in your campaign, how many suits of plate mail were there? Heck, how many suits of armour were there period? In our game, our last five combat encounters, as I recall, were, in reverse order, a young black dragon, a group of baaz and bozak draconian (unarmored), a small horde of zombies (unarmored), dwarves assassins (leather armour) and a group of bandits (leather armour).

So, why would a longsword be a disadvantage here? Granted, my character uses a warhammer, but, that's an aesthetic choice that I made because the character's background is a mason.

But, it seems odd that people would point to battlefield fighting as the reasons for or against a given weapon. PC's almost never fight on a battlefield.

 

[mlund]

More power to you, but in default D&D plate exists and indicates a late middle age level of development.

Ah, I see that I'm confusing terms here. When I hear "Full Plate" in a D&D discussion I immediately think of the specific "more plate-y-than-plate" class of armor found in the 1st Edition AD&D Unearthed Arcana supplement. It has 2 steps better AC than "Plate Mail" and absorbs a limited amount of damage. Likewise "Field Plate" is 1 step above "Plate Mail" and 1 step below "Full Plate" and can likewise absorb damage. These are modeled after the renaissance-era final evolutions of real-world Plate Armor that were created in the ultimately futile arms race against black powder technology.

I've been playing D&D versions and variants that have "Plate" or "Plate Mail" for a long time now, but have never seen a return to that "plate-y-er-than-play" Renaissance-era style that originally introduced "Full Plate" into the D&D lexicon. I've always seen D&D depictions of stock "Plate Mail" that look like plate from the end of the Middle Ages (1400) rather than the High Renaissance (1600).

I've never played an edition of D&D with mass-production reduced plate, steel windlass crossbows, cannons, and muskets ala the 16th century. Generally I like to stay before the military establishment went entirely post-feudal, even if Britain was ahead of the curve with scutage.

Basically the fall of Constantinople and black powder technology are my personal cut-off points for D&D, give or take. If I have to deal with cannons and black-powder and then I'd rather be playing some sort of Pirates/Redcoats/Musketeers thing like 7th Sea.

Your mileage may vary.

All these battlefield comparisons are pretty moot for most campaigns anyway.

How often does your PC face someone in plate mail? Orcs and various other humanoids rarely have armour that expensive. Monsters don't wear armour by and large. Anything Large sized or bigger is almost never in plate mail.

My region in Living Greyhawk must've just been weird, I guess.

For all intents and purposes, though, Chain Mail Armor (the heavy, head-to-toe stuff, not the Light chain-shirt stuff if you remember it from 3E) might as well be Plate for all the good a slashing weapon like a longsword will do for you IRL. I remember fighting tons of humanoid monsters wearing chain-mail in AD&D and 3E. We probably just fought a disproportionate number of orcs, hobgoblins, soldiers, cultists, and evil adventuring parties, though.

- Marty Lund

 

[ExploderWizard]

For all intents and purposes, though, Chain Mail Armor (the heavy, head-to-toe stuff, not the Light chain-shirt stuff if you remember it from 3E) might as well be Plate for all the good a slashing weapon like a longsword will do for you IRL.

- Marty Lund

A chain hauberk was designed to prevent a cut. It does NOT protect you from a blow in the same manner as plate. It will transform a great deal of the incoming damage to bludgeoning but even with a padded gambeson you feel it. Plate distributes the force of the blow across a larger surface which lessens the damage from the overall impact.

Enough force will of course breach either type of armor.

 

[LostSoul]

Is there any reason you can't, say, use a longsword with a half-sword grip and deal piercing damage? Or bash someone with the pommel/cross-guard and deal bludgeoning damage? (Or trip someone with the cross-guard for that matter.)

I don't think you can use a mace to deal piercing or bludgeoning damage in the same way. (Though a warhammer...)

 

[Mephistopheles]

The fact that [the longsword] no longer has any mechanical advantage strikes me as odd.

Putting aside all the real world combat reasoning, looking at this from the perspective that 5E harks back to older editions in many areas I don't find it odd.

This would probably be a bridge too far for most, but you could wind the clock even further back and have all weapon attacks use the same damage die (probably a d8 for 5E, rather than the d6 of old), give +1 to damage rolls for versatile weapons wielded in two hands and +2 to damage rolls with two-handed weapons (this +1/+2 would be considered part of the damage dice for critical hits). This wouldn't necessarily blow out the average damage on smaller damage die weapons too much as I expect the users of such weapons tend to produce the larger share of their damage from their attribute modifier and abilities rather than the die itself. I suppose it would make peasants armed with clubs and pitchforks a little more threatening, but good luck to them, I say.

 

[Barantor]

Is there any reason you can't, say, use a longsword with a half-sword grip and deal piercing damage? Or bash someone with the pommel/cross-guard and deal bludgeoning damage? (Or trip someone with the cross-guard for that matter.)

I don't think you can use a mace to deal piercing or bludgeoning damage in the same way. (Though a warhammer...)

I houserule it that if someone wants to try and use a weapon that could realistically do a different type of damage, then that damage is either 1 dice down or half in the case of slashing with daggers. Things like Mauls or Warhammers, unless they have told me they have a pointed backside of the weapon head; only do one type of damage.

I've noticed that lots of folks get hung up on 5E RAW stuff because they are either used to it, or not used to the DM just house-ruling things (or they just want to argue ). I think most of the rules are fine and would hate to go back to the days of 3rd edition where fighters were in a rush to get exotic weapon proficiency for bastard swords so they could do more sword/board damage.

If you DM uses the minor rules tables in the DMG for magic or special weapons, many of them halve the weight of weapons anyway....

 

[mlund]

A chain hauberk was designed to prevent a cut. It does NOT protect you from a blow in the same manner as plate. It will transform a great deal of the incoming damage to bludgeoning but even with a padded gambeson you feel it. Plate distributes the force of the blow across a larger surface which lessens the damage from the overall impact.

You're totally correct, of course. Plate is leaps and bounds better at defusing the impact damage. There won't be any "slashing" damage, let alone the fantasy trope disembowelment you see in movies etc. That doesn't mean you won't wind up battered, bruiser, or with broken bones.

It does, however, make a sword a seriously sub-optimal choice for fighting men in full chain mail. It simply can't do its job.

Enough force will of course breach either type of armor.

Sure, but in terms of creating a breach in chain with a "slashing" weapon you might as well leave your sword at home and bring an ax due to how the force is delivered. You need a much larger sword to do that job. A heavy swung piercing weapon (like the spike on a military hammer) is the best for breaching. The mace, warhammer, and flail are proper (non-improvised) bludgeons.

Is there any reason you can't, say, use a longsword with a half-sword grip and deal piercing damage? Or bash someone with the pommel/cross-guard and deal bludgeoning damage? (Or trip someone with the cross-guard for that matter.)

The medieval arming manuals have illustrations of that kind of fighting, especially the tripping and bludgeoning techniques. That's pretty much the only way two men in plate can fight each other with swords. Nobody is getting cut/slashed. Two guys in chain mail is similar except a good swing could break bones.

It seems like a pretty complicated detail for D&D, though.

- Marty Lund

 

[LostSoul]

The medieval arming manuals have illustrations of that kind of fighting, especially the tripping and bludgeoning techniques. That's pretty much the only way two men in plate can fight each other with swords. Nobody is getting cut/slashed. Two guys in chain mail is similar except a good swing could break bones.

It seems like a pretty complicated detail for D&D, though.

- Marty Lund

I don't see how it's complicated. Instead of saying "I attack with my longsword" you say "I attack with my longsword using a half-sword grip" and let the DM make the call.

 

[mlund]

I don't see how it's complicated. Instead of saying "I attack with my longsword" you say "I attack with my longsword using a half-sword grip" and let the DM make the call.

Oh, I just meant codified, sword-specific rules mechanics for half-grips, pommel strikes, and handguard entanglement / tripping would be a level of rules granularity I'd expect from like GURPS instead of D&D.

"Describe an improvised / nonstandard attack and let the DM wing it," is totally the right way to handle it.

- Marty Lund

 

[ExploderWizard]

You're totally correct, of course. Plate is leaps and bounds better at defusing the impact damage. There won't be any "slashing" damage, let alone the fantasy trope disembowelment you see in movies etc. That doesn't mean you won't wind up battered, bruiser, or with broken bones.

It does, however, make a sword a seriously sub-optimal choice for fighting men in full chain mail. It simply can't do its job.



Sure, but in terms of creating a breach in chain with a "slashing" weapon you might as well leave your sword at home and bring an ax due to how the force is delivered. You need a much larger sword to do that job. A heavy swung piercing weapon (like the spike on a military hammer) is the best for breaching. The mace, warhammer, and flail are proper (non-improvised) bludgeons.



The medieval arming manuals have illustrations of that kind of fighting, especially the tripping and bludgeoning techniques. That's pretty much the only way two men in plate can fight each other with swords. Nobody is getting cut/slashed. Two guys in chain mail is similar except a good swing could break bones.

It seems like a pretty complicated detail for D&D, though.

- Marty Lund

I agree that the precise detail of weapon effects vs armor type is something that doesn't mesh well with the rest of the abstract combat system. If we start taking such things into account, then hit location, specific injuries, and such would be needed as well. Ultimately, the D&D system is simple with bags of opposing HP trying to reduce each other. The abstraction and simplicity is a selling point. If I'm going to give up those attributes then I would prefer ditching nearly all abstraction and just run GURPS.