D&D General The rapier in D&D

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Although not T-rexes, because they're not around at the same time.

 

[Steampunkette]

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

Tolkien was 100% historically accurate... To Middle Earth, rather than real world Earth.

That's rather the point, in the end. Trying to say the Rapier is "Too modern" next to waistcoats in the quintessential fantasy story is silly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Which D&D? Isn't that up to the table to some degree?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tolkien was 100% historically accurate... To Middle Earth, rather than real world Earth.

That's rather the point, in the end. Trying to say the Rapier is "Too modern" next to waistcoats in the quintessential fantasy story is silly.

The quintessential fantasy story is not all of fantasy, and certainly not all of fantasy gaming. It's its own thing.

 

[CleverNickName]

Me, as a DM: Another rapier, how original. (eyeroll) Let me guess, high dexterity and a two-level dip of spellcaster, too?

Me, as a player: Yeah so my next character has a high dex and a two-level dip of spellcaster, so I'm going with the rapier...

I'm not sure how that can be fixed; people are gonna always gravitate to it because (1) it has the best damage of any Finesse weapon, and (2) Dexterity is the most important stat in the game. Any proposed "fix" to the rapier is going to involve changing (1) or (2), and your players will never go for either.

Sometimes the best course of action is just to shrug and willfully suspend your disbelief. Rapiers are real but dragons aren't, so I use my imagination to bend the dragons a bit. Sure, dragons are mythical creatures of legendary power with scales tougher than iron, but they can also be defeated by a 16th century Spanish fashion accessory. (shrug) Anyway, roll initiative.

 

[AlViking]

Although not T-rexes, because they're not around at the same time.

My point was not about historical accuracy of people encountering T-Rexes, it's that if you want a "dragon" that works according to real world physics you have to strip away a lot of what makes a dragon a dragon. First thing that goes is the breath weapon and flying. Then you ask if the fore-limbs really do anything essential, scale to an appropriate size and suddenly you have a predator that looks a lot like a T-Rex. Convergent evolution created the same basic structure many times over millions and millions of years because it was effective.

Of course you could go the other way and create something like a giant pterosaur like Quetzalcoatlus that had a cobra's venom spit. But you're never going to have anything that looks like a D&D dragon.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Me, as a DM: Another rapier, how original. (eyeroll) Let me guess, high dexterity and a two-level dip of spellcaster, too?

Me, as a player: Yeah so my next character has a high dex and a two-level dip of spellcaster, so I'm going with the rapier...

I'm not sure how that can be fixed; people are gonna always gravitate to it because (1) it has the best damage of any Finesse weapon, and (2) Dexterity is the most important stat in the game. Any proposed "fix" to the rapier is going to involve changing (1) or (2), and your players will never go for either.

My solution is to limit availability, and to provide a much wider weapon list with more differentiation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My point was not about historical accuracy of people encountering T-Rexes, it's that if you want a "dragon" that works according to real world physics you have to strip away a lot of what makes a dragon a dragon. First thing that goes is the breath weapon and flying. Then you ask if the fore-limbs really do anything essential, scale to an appropriate size and suddenly you have a predator that looks a lot like a T-Rex. Convergent evolution created the same basic structure many times over millions and millions of years because it was effective.

Of course you could go the other way and create something like a giant pterosaur like Quetzalcoatlus that had a cobra's venom spit. But you're never going to have anything that looks like a D&D dragon.

True, which is why reality in a fantasy game has its exceptions.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Which D&D? Isn't that up to the table to some degree?

It is. If you want a true reality simulator, I would think a world with dragons would invent their own new weapons appropriate to the task

The quintessential fantasy story is not all of fantasy, and certainly not all of fantasy gaming. It's its own thing.

Right, but including something that allows emulating the quintessential fantasy story in a fantasy game is hardly out of bounds for the game. This is a critique of the argument that something being 'too modern' is reason to exclude something from the game.

 

[Reynard]

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.

My point was that the idea that stone age weapons can be used to take down a T-Rex is just laughable.