Weapons you wished you'd see sometimes.

[Vanye]

I think my next character might us a double-sword for the flavor of it...

On that thought.... I've never heard of anyone using a double-sword.

My gf had a elven rogue-fighter-mage who used one; he acquired it as a trophy from someone he'd fought, and determinedly went on to master it; the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 made it a bit easier, as he no longer needed Ambidexterity to use it to best effect.

 

[rgard]

It seems like a lot of the people I've played with, or run games for, always seem to stick with the same few weapons. I think I've only ever had one player pick something that wasn't a longsword, battle axe, scimitar, or rapier.

Why does this happen? Where's the love for the spears, or dual-wielding handaxes?

Had an elf fighter in 1e who wielded a longsword and a short-hafted bill hook. I'll have to adapt 'high sword, low axe' or whatever that feat is when I convert the elf to 3.5.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I usually use whatever the holy weapon of my god is...which brings me to my complaint about clerics and their gods. I find it very annoying when the god's holy weapon is something my cleric is going to have to take a feat to use proficiently! There should be exception for their god's holy weapons.

I can't agree more!!

 

[Nikroecyst]

At high level I would make a Plains Druid with and elephant companion or a Savage Ranger mounted on an elephant. In which case as a weapon I would take either an Ankus (image google it) or a Goad from Frostburn. Goad would be more effective from such a height but I like the Ankus if you get thrown from your mount.

They prolly dont' have much power but I find they have great appeal to me as I've never seen it done.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I can't agree more!!

It doesn't bother me.

If you take the War Domain, you get the proficiency.

If your God doesn't have the War Domain, or if you don't select it, then it seems to me that your order isn't sufficiently militant to bother with martial training. You can bash things with a stick or stab them with a spear if need be, but there are more important things to be learned!

A cleric of Heironeous learns how to use a longsword as part of his training. A cleric of Olidammara, on the other hand, is learning to sneak and deceive. The god might use a shortsword, but that doesn't mean you have to; and if it's that important to you, practise it in your own time.

I've played a paladin whose deity's favoured weapon was a warhammer. The paladin used a greataxe. The deity is going to care about results, not about whether Evil gets chopped instead of bashed along the way!

I see no reason why a priest of a god of love or trade or luck or music should automatically learn how to use a sword just because the god is depicted as using one. A god of war? Absolutely. A god of wisdom? Nuh-uh.

-Hyp.

 

[Nlogue]

May I say "excellent" on both points. A quick an easy way to account for rapiers and using the spear for one of the prime reasons humans used them for for millenia.

To me, millenia of human conflict is the best play test of what's a superior weapon and what is not. There's good reasons many exotic weapons remained exotic, and others spread across the world.

Just to weigh in on the otherside of the rapier debate: The rapier (or transitional rapier as a lot of combat historians refer to it) actually replaced the broadsword cause it was far far superior. First of all the rapier is a dueling weapon and the rise of dueling as a common practice for settling disputes of honor during the Reniassance is why the rapier rose to prominence as the blade of choice. It proved far more lethal and dangerous than a broadsword in a dueling situation because it could be wielded with devestating speed and placed an emphasis on accurate punturing attacks delivered to the opponent's vital organs. The rapier gave way later to the smallsword (the lethal version of the foil) in the Restoration, which was even smaller and lighter than the rapier (its basically a lethal little needle of steel that pierces the lungs and heart with ease). You have to keep in mind that D&D cannot encompass the nuances of mortal combat in any realistic way. The reason the rapier became so deadly (far deadlier than a broadsword) was the way it was utilized. A skilled rapier wielder could accurately and quickly strike a target ony one half of an inch wide with consistent skill. No armor protects one enough to avoid a crippling or lethal stab from a skilled opponent wielding a rapier especially if you cannot even muster a suitable parry or effectively counterattack cause your weapon of choice is a clunky 30 pound piece of steel (ahem: broadsword). In fact, armor was abandoned by duelists because they found quick footwork and mobility to be a far more reliable lifesaver in a fight. In my practical experience the whole armor system in D&D is a little silly, but the way armor is resolved in Game of Thrones makes far more sense.

Another ridiculous myth of combat in D&D is the sheild. A shield offers its bearer an enormous advantage in melee. If two trained warriors even in the same ballpark of skill face each other, one with only a longsword, the other with longsword and shield, the chances of the sheildless warrior seeing his next sunrise is very slim indeed.

Even worse is the horrible way Two Weapon Defense is treated in D&D. Two Weapon Defense should profer far more of an advantage in the game. Sheilds and bucklers were totally abandoned in favor of a secondary dagger during the Renaissance because duelists found the dagger offered the same protection (when wielded with any mote of skill) and created another threat to your opponent making it far more difficult for them to mount an effective attack on your person.

D&D and realistic combat should never really mesh in my mind, it takes away all the fun. The rapier and foil would be far more deadly in this case (the fatality rate in duels when the smallsword became popular jumped from roughly 15% to a staggering 80% due to the tiny puncturing weapons' lethality). And I personally think weilding a broadsword is a lot more fun in many regards.

Sorry to nerd out on the combat. It's my day job when I'm not writing adventures - I choreograph fights for stage and film, and I hate when the rapier gets smacked down, when in truth its far more dangerous than a broadsword.

 

[VirgilCaine]

A god of war? Absolutely. A god of wisdom? Nuh-uh.

I guess using weapons isn't a part of wisdom?

 

[Hypersmurf]

I guess using weapons isn't a part of wisdom?

The cleric can use lots of weapons. But if he wants proficiency in a martial weapon, he either needs to take the War domain, or spend a feat, or multiclass.

Just because a deity carries a sword doesn't mean his priests will all do the same, just like not all of Odin's priests put out one eye, ride eight-legged horses, and sleep with giants. The weapon a deity favours personally doesn't need to be emulated by every priest he has.

-Hyp.

 

[hong]

The unbelievably dire flailing whipaxe:

Unfortunately the original is gone, so we have to make do with Google thumbnails....

 

[humble minion]

I've always seen the rapier/broadsword comparison as comparing apples and oranges. The adoption of the rapier wasn't an island - it also had to do with the general abandoning of armour due to the development of firearms, and has to be seen in that context.

In essence, you've got a couple of 'packages' happening historically. First you have the relatively unarmoured rapier-wielder with a pistol on his belt and perhaps a main-gauche or dagger in his off hand. This is a great package for duelling one-on-one or in small groups. But it's a bit of a liability in the crush of close combat, in a mass battle, or in a siege situation, when you're likely to have all sorts of random attacks coming at you from random directions, and you won't be able to parry (or indeed see) them all. In that case, armour will save your butt. And again, in a close chaotic crush, you won't often have time to line up your rapier with a weak point in your enemy's armour, and simply bashing away with a warhammer or similar may well be a better solution. To say nothing about how easily a rapier could get broken in a protracted battle, especially if there's shields and armour involved. Here's where the heavy-armour-and-big-choppy-thing package comes into its own.

It's worth noting that as dangerous as the rapier is in a duelling situation, it was never adopted in a military context, even though melee weapons such as pikes, halberds, cavalry sabres and even zweihanders (in certain cases) remained in military use for a long time after the advent of black powder. Weapons are situational.

And of course that's before bringing a fantasy aspect in to it. However lethal a rapier is to an unprotected human, it's hard to see it bothering an ooze much. Or a zombie. And while a couple of inches of penetration in the right spot will kill a human, that sort of thing'd be much harder to pull off whe you're fighting a frost giant, or a purple worm...