D&D General The rapier in D&D

[Micah Sweet]

The term "Rapier" first appears in the Coplas de la Panedera, a poem describing the first battle of Olmedo in 1445. It criticized the nobility and their cowardice in the fight, where only 22 people died. The poem, itself, was written somewhere between May of 1445 and 1450, certainly earlier than your statement, there. Which means the rapier, itself, was invented at some point around or prior to 1445 to be used in that battle.

And, of course, the Coplas de la Panedera is the REASON it was used as an insult. Not that pointing to the witty poem would protect you from a rapier if you insulted a man to his face for wearing it.

I also wasn't going for "This is when the Rapier was used on the battlefield" or "this is when it got the famous swoopy loops basket hilt" but when it was invented. It shouldn't be that surprising that it didn't see heavy military use until after plate armor was largely discarded, as a thrusting weapon is generally a poor tool against someone decked out in steel. However, long before then it saw use in the populace as a weapon of self defense within the well to do and wealthy of Spain. In the 1540s you'd be talking about the War Rapier which, y'know, I don't care.

Also worth noting: THE RAPIER WAS USED TO FIGHT OFF AND KILL BANDITS. Like that was a massive part of it's appeal as a weapon of self defense of the Spanish. A D&D zombie, likewise, has minimal or no armor and would be precisely as well defended from the HP damage as your average anesthetized dog. As for "Large Monsters" the Lucerne Hammer would be just as useless as the Rapier or the Longsword. If it wouldn't be used to effectively kill a hippopotamus in 1v1 combat, it wouldn't stop a dragon. (Yes, I know D&D combat against a dragon is 4 or more versus 1, but I'm referring to how long any member of the party would survive in a real fight against a large, violent, powerful animal before it turned and killed someone else. And dragons are smarter than hippopotami and also breathe fire that kills you before you get close enough to use whatever comically inept weapon your like). And no. A lucerne hammer would not protect you from a hippo.

Assuming a charging hippo, and you set your hammer to take the charge and push that 16 and a half inch long spike deep enough to wound the hippo in a serious way, you're still dead before you can do anything else. That 2,000kg animal is coming at you at 19mph or 8.4m/s. Let's say the spike MIRACULOUSLY doesn't bend under the force of this beast running at you. When it hits the hammerhead portion of your weapon, we're looking at...

View attachment 417385

347kN Each kN is 224lbs of impact. 77,728 pounds of 'weight' suddenly pressing on the haft of your lucerne hammer. 35 tons of pressure. It snaps -well- before peaking. And the rest of that force goes into you as the hippo keeps moving on it's current trajectory past the now splintered haft to where you are in less than 0.4 seconds.

And that's the BEST case scenario for you.

No weapon forged by man stands a chance against a dragon.

The point I'm trying to make, here, is that it's a poor argument to say the Rapier would be useless against a Dragon. Because EVERY D&D weapon would be useless against a dragon. And complaints about it being "Too Modern" are likewise pointless because EVERYTHING in D&D's weapon listings is too modern or too ancient to be reasonably viewed as contemporaneous. Similarly, their effectiveness is flattened so dramatically as to be practically meaningless.

The Sling was completely out of military use before Plate Armor was a thing, but you can still ping a Paladin for 1d4+Dex through full plate and a helmet because sense and reason left the building when the game mechanics landed. Grab a feat and discard your Windlass and pull back that heavy crossbow 4 times in 6 seconds. Did tridents even see military use or were they just arena weapons? Light Hammers that you could throw similarly weren't a thing. Sickles weren't employed on battlefields, either, unless you wanna try to argue a k'pinga was a sickle, but they threw those wild looking weapons often enough. Whips are just -comical- as a weapon of war... unless you're fighting with a rapier in your other hand and then it was a serious fighting style in Mexico much later on.

Anyway. Yeah. No D&D weapon makes sense against anything hippo sized or larger, but -especially- dragons.

Oh, for sure. Or a nice anti-tank rifle if you're aimed at the skull and the dragon isn't dreaming any bad dreams when you pull the trigger. But D&D's list of weapons would be useless.

This is why every item in my equipment list is fitted with a rough era category.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Historically they were at least worn in mass combat as the sidearm a lot more often than commonly depicted. They were serious weapons, and are deadly. They are not smallswords or modern fencing equipment.

Note also that the common spear (decidedly a weapon of war) and falchions (not generally weapons of war, but serious strength-based martial swords) have worse armor penetration qualities than a rapier. Some weapons are meant to find the soft spots.

Again, so people can imagine their characters as Inigo Montoya or D'Artagnan or the Grey Mouser. But also, if we're suddenly being sticklers about historical time period gatekeeping, the game has included iron rations since oD&D, and those were introduced in 1907. Also weapons like sickles and jo staffs (not weapons of war) since AD&D; and khopeshs and bone/stone weapons since 2nd edition (stretching the 'current era' depicted in the game much farther than however far rapiers came after plate mail). I think we just had a thread where we talked about the Hobbit including barometers and the dragon-shaped firework going overhead like am express train.

Well, the firework was set off by a wizard.

 

[Steampunkette]

Well, the firework was set off by a wizard.

True, but Bilbo also wore a waistcoat which was invented in the 1800s. So. Y'know.

Wheee "Historical Accuracy" in Fantasy!

 

[kermit4karate]

Dragons are mostly made of plush.

I feel like everyone knows this.

 

[AlViking]

This thread is a good reminder that serious simulation is a terrible idea for D&D fantasy. You'll die.

True, but a serious simulation of a dragon sans magic is never going to breath fire or fly. Try to design a realistic dragon and you'll end up with something that looks like a T-Rex. While a T-Rex would be terrifying our ancestors have been killing everything in their path with stone-age weapons since we were living in caves.

So I don't get too concerned about it, some fiction makes dragons virtually unkillable but D&D does not.

 

[Reynard]

True, but a serious simulation of a dragon sans magic is never going to breath fire or fly. Try to design a realistic dragon and you'll end up with something that looks like a T-Rex. While a T-Rex would be terrifying our ancestors have been killing everything in their path with stone-age weapons since we were living in caves.

So I don't get too concerned about it, some fiction makes dragons virtually unkillable but D&D does not.

Stone age hunters did not go toe to toe with massive predators. They drove herds of horses off cliffs and chased a wounded deer for 3 days.

 

[NotAYakk]

One game I've played with dragon's in some heartbreaker fantasies is to make size a real impact on the game.

Imagine a Kaiju factor. This multiplies or divides all damage.

We'll have it grow with the square of the size of the creature.

Kaiju 5 is for Large creatures (~2x larger scale than humans; ~2x2).
Kaiju 10 is for Huge creatures (~3x larger scale than humans; ~3x3).
Kaiju 20 is for Guagantuon creatures (~4-6x larger scale than humans, ~5x5).
Kaiju 50 and 100 are for even bigger ones. (~7-10x larger scale than humans; ~7x7 and ~10x10).

We could even be generous and have "Kaiju" scale weapons be poor at hurting smaller scale targets, and only do 2x damage for every step smaller. So a monster would be Kaiju 5x/2x, 10x/4x, 20x/8x, 50x/16x, 100x/32x; or more simply, just use the previous scale number (5x/2x, 10x/5x, 20x/10x, 50x/20x, 100x/50x).

You'll still turn to a fine mist being hit by a Kaiju 100x foe.

This might work in a game where PCs are expected to use fantasy mecha or something to fight "big" monsters. Large enemies (5x/2x) (ie, ogre-scale) would be tough but doable without such mecha, while giant-scale starts looking ridiculous.

A "baseline" basically trained foe at each scale:

Human scale (1): 5 damage, 15 HP. - typical guard
Ogre scale (5): 10 damage, 75 HP.
Giant Scale (10): 25 damage, 150 HP.
Drake Scale (20): 50 damage, 300 HP.
Dragon Scale (50): 100 damage, 750 HP.
Titan Scale (100): 250 damage, 1500 HP.

A difference would be that an attack dealing less than 100 damage would bounce off a Titan.

Here, "specialized equipment" would be aimed at dealing damage at a larger scale. A ballista might be a "5 Kaiju" scale heavy crossbow (1d10 damage [x5]), while a catapult a "20 Kaiju" scale sling (1d4 [x20]).

 

[Willie the Duck]

Stone age hunters did not go toe to toe with massive predators. They drove herds of horses off cliffs and chased a wounded deer for 3 days.

I think this is a non sequitur, in that that's not what AIViking stated. There some significant ground between "our ancestors have been killing everything in their path with stone-age weapon" and "Stone age hunters did not go toe to toe with massive predators."

Few if any groups ever hunted* large predators. Just in general it is not an efficient way of acquiring food (both based on risk and regularity of coming across them). However, people have successfully defended themselves from lions/tigers/bears all the way back to the sharpened-rock era (with middling success rates, to be sure, and plenty success stories falling into the 'the spear was not the deciding factor, any putting up of a fight would have worked in making the creature look for easier/safer prey). *for food. Nobles hunting dangerous beasts for sport certainly predates the colonial era.

Likewise, pre-historic people did go after boars and elephants/mammoths and other pretty dangerous non-predators in a hunting capacity, and not just by driving them off cliffs. Even Neanderthals seem to have done so, and there's indication that they couldn't/didn't throw their spears.

 

[AlViking]

Stone age hunters did not go toe to toe with massive predators. They drove herds of horses off cliffs and chased a wounded deer for 3 days.

People did hunt grizzly bears with stone tipped spears, there are stories of warriors that would hunt them with only a dagger as a challenge. Admittedly a bear is "only" going to weigh 600 pounds or so but people (and the MM IMHO) really underestimate their power. If movies like one million years BC taught me anything it's that an allosaurus can be killed with a single spear.

Even if the dagger hunt is apocryphal, D&D isn't a reality simulator it's a story simulator. A dragon being impervious to mere mortal weapons relies on a lot of assumptions about a creature that can't exist in the real world but are frequently slain in stories.

 

[Micah Sweet]

True, but Bilbo also wore a waistcoat which was invented in the 1800s. So. Y'know.

Wheee "Historical Accuracy" in Fantasy!

No one ever said Tolkien was historically accurate. That doesn't mean the idea is laughable and should never be pursued.