Weapon Finesse

[shurai]

Bastoche-

You're right, we think of D&D in vastly different ways in terms of the rules' intent. We do agree about when Weapon Finesse is useful, though. To a rogue or bard who isn't concerned with dishing out the most damage, and who instead wishes to play to his forte by using a light weapon in tune with his body type, Weapon Finesse is a great thing. Truthfully I'm very glad its there, but my point was allowing it for anything more than it already is just doesn't make sense.

And I have to heartily disagree with you about medeival martial traditions. We may not know what they were really like, but that's not a reason against trying to figure it out. We may be guessing, but I think they're good guesses for the most part.

Also, I know your guitar might seem light, but I assure you it is because you've never tried to fight with it. My blade is actually lighter than the real thing generally is, but even so it was quite heavy at first, and if I don't practice every week I know it will grow very heavy again.

-S

 

[Bastoche]

I agree that weapon finesse should not be allowed for other weapons.

I agree that we can try to figure out western martial arts.

Also, I know your guitar might seem light, but I assure you it is because you've never tried to fight with it.

Never fought with my guitar heh ? You may be right...

 

[ruleslawyer]

Try hefting a 6-pound sword at some point and see how well it works. That much weight concentrated into an object that's at most two or three inches wide along most of its length makes it quite heavy.

Also, it's not the single swing you have to worry about; it's getting back into position and swinging AGAIN. Sure, you can take that guitar into a nice big powerful arc, but see how long it takes you to recover and swing it again.

Finally, did you say that stainless steel is actually heavier than older materials? As a sword collector, I can tell you that the stuff forged today is absolutely no heavier than that forged even a hundred and fifty years ago, and in many cases is actually lighter.

I'll agree with some others on this topic in saying that D&D is a fantasy game, and that considerations of realism should be taken with a grain of salt. However, IMHO, the system does incorporate a great deal of "cinematic realism" and suspended sense of disbelief. Human fighters can't, for instance, attack people 15 feet away with Medium-sized longswords, or fire bows while simultaneously wielding a melee weapon. Within this context of cinematic realism, it does make sense that some weapons are finessable and others not.

Reiver is correct with regard to 16th and early/mid-17th-century rapiers; later blades are patterned on the smallsword, not the Renaissance rapier, and are lighter and definitely "finessable." It's probable that WotC's designers had the latter in mind when they designed the "rapier." I for one don't expect them to be historical weapons experts, and thus I'm happy to assume that the D&D "rapier" is in fact more of a smallsword or an 18th century gentleman's fencing weapon. If you want a more historically-accurate 16th-century rapier, change the damage back to 1d8, lower the crit range to 19-20, and raise the crit multiplier to x3 to reflect that it works more on the same general principles as a broadhead arrow. Oh, and make it non-finessable to boot. That's still probably worth an EWP slot.

 

[Staffan]

I do not own any sword. But I own a guitar. The guitar weights 10 pounds. I assure you it's not heavy at all. And it's not even designed to cut people down. 6 pounds for a 2-hd sword is very light IMO !!!

I took a look at Del Tin's site (Del Tin is an italian company making replicas of historic swords and daggers, priding themselves on making the weapons just like the real ones), www.deltin.it. The swords they list as "two-handed swords" weigh:
2050 gram (135 cm)
2800 gram (148 cm)
3700 gram (162 cm)
2350 gram (138 cm)
2200 gram (142 cm)

That's 4.5 to 8.2 lbs. If you ignore the really big one, the next one down is 6.2 lbs. In other words, 6 lbs is in no way an unrealistic weight for a two-handed sword.

And no, these are "real" two-handed swords, not "hand-and-a-half" swords. Most of those seem to weigh between 1500 and 2000 gram (3-4 lbs).

 

[mmu1]

I do not own any sword. But I own a guitar. The guitar weights 10 pounds. I assure you it's not heavy at all. And it's not even designed to cut people down. 6 pounds for a 2-hd sword is very light IMO !!!

A 6 pound sword is heavy as all hell.

I'm a fairly big guy (Strong enough to, for example, lift a 100 pound dumbell off of a rack with one hand.), and I don't have enough strength or endurance in the wrist and forearm to easily control a 3-4 pound sword. I'm sure that'd change very quickly with practice, but even so, most people don't realize:

a) How light most swords are in absolute terms,

b) How heavy they feel in your hand because of the way the weight is distributed, and

c) How much strain trying to halt a swing puts on the wrist.

d) A lot of weapons you see people swing in movies are made from aluminum.