Why a rapier is bad for an adventurer

[Umbran]

I think that's a little bit uncharitable.

You may, of course, think what you like.

I'd put it more like: weapon choice is both a way of expressing a character's personality, and something that might suggest interesting tactical difference.

As far as D&D is concerned, the tactical differences are right there in the rules. The rules don't have the rapier as being bad for adventurers. They are, in fact, quite good for a reasonable swath of adventurers.

 

[Smackpixi]

Have you ever tried carrying a 9+ foot pole indoors? Can you imagine how difficult it would be to manuever through doors, around corners, and being unable to point the pike up because the ceiling is too low?

I feel like there’s a variety of dungeon exploration based around carrying a pole of a length that is a little bit longer than 9ft. I get your point, but most dungeons don’t have as many glass windows and shelves with crap on them as modern society “indoors” does…less things everywhere getting knocked over and broken….ok to scrape it along the wall after you’ve tested for traps. Problem for narrow curvey passegways, still great for fighting in long narrow ones.

 

[Dausuul]

According to Wikipedia, a pike was typically 3-7 meters long. Have you ever tried carrying a 9+ foot pole indoors? Can you imagine how difficult it would be to manuever through doors, around corners, and being unable to point the pike up because the ceiling is too low? Pikes were also designed to be used in formation rather than small skirmishes like D&D combat usually has. A pike would be a terrible weapon for a dungeon because it's so unwieldy. You're right though, it's great for holding back a monster in a narrow tunnel. As an adventurer, good luck getting to all the obstacles and setting up that pike though.

Okay, fair point. I should have said a spear, as long you can make it without jamming up at every corner.

The main point was that swords are designed for fighting humans, not monsters, and the longer blades are specialized for particular forms of human-fighting. There's a reason nobody hunted animals with swords. A rapier in the dungeon is unrealistic, but no more so than a greatsword.

 

[MGibster]

Okay, fair point. I should have said a spear, as long you can make it without jamming up at every corner.

The main point was that swords are designed for fighting humans, not monsters, and the longer blades are specialized for particular forms of human-fighting. There's a reason nobody hunted animals with swords. A rapier in the dungeon is unrealistic, but no more so than a greatsword.

This is the part where I get pedantic and point out there was a specific sword designed for hunting boars just so I can earn some internet got'cha points. But I'm too classy to do that. You're absolutely right of course, but D&D hasn't ever done a good job when it comes to appropriate weapons considering the opponent. A longsword against a fully grown dragon should be next to useless in a fight. But that's just heroic fantasy for you, I guess.

I feel like there’s a variety of dungeon exploration based around carrying a pole of a length that is a little bit longer than 9ft. I get your point, but most dungeons don’t have as many glass windows and shelves with crap on them as modern society “indoors” does…less things everywhere getting knocked over and broken….ok to scrape it along the wall after you’ve tested for traps. Problem for narrow curvey passegways, still great for fighting in long narrow ones.

I think I missed out on the whole carry around a 20 ft. pole thing. In all my days of playing D&D, I was never in a party that did that on a regular basis. I kind of associate that with more old school AD&D from 1st edition or earlier with the kinds of dungeon crawls that seem more punishing rather than fun.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's a reason nobody hunted animals with swords.

Just to note it is completely correct to say swords were never used as a primary way to hunt animals (that was always a ranged weapon or spear), but it is worth noting that single-edged chopping swords (think "fancy machete", sometimes called a falchion) and heavy double-edged shortswords/large daggers were pretty much always part of the arsenal of hunters, for finishing animals off.

 

[Ryujin]

Okay, fair point. I should have said a spear, as long you can make it without jamming up at every corner.

The main point was that swords are designed for fighting humans, not monsters, and the longer blades are specialized for particular forms of human-fighting. There's a reason nobody hunted animals with swords. A rapier in the dungeon is unrealistic, but no more so than a greatsword.

They're also usually designed as a backup weapon, not a primary, when on a battlefield. Polearms, spears, etc. are the primaries. In later years the gun was the primary with a sabre or the like in case you ran out of bullets, or were caught out while reloading.

My last couple of characters used short bow and short sword (Gladius) for reasons of practicality. I got lambasted by other players for not "maximizing my damage potential."

 

[Willie the Duck]

Regarding the OP -- On a basic level, most of what Easton says about broad/back/arming swords over rapiers holds true. It is an interesting, thoughtful analysis. However, as counterpoint, most of the negative things this video states about rapiers can also be assigned to spears. There are pros and cons to each weapon (they both stuck around for incredibly long times, after all).

As to what would be best for D&D, honestly it really depends on how you envision your character's fights (how often do your characters fight in military formation? face off against multiple foes at a time in general?). Similarly, and as others have alluded to, real world weapons were not built with going down into conveniently placed holes in the ground to face dragons and ghouls, and if we were to go completely 'realistic' to that scenario, a whole new set of weapons would have been developed in a world populated by such challenges (and those would be the real optimal choices).

But at the end of the day, I think Umbran has the right of this, it is cherry picking. Not that that is inherently bad (after all, what one needs for a game world to have verisimilitude is an inherently subjective judgement call), just to be judicious with it. There's that adage about "if I am a pedant, someone else is 'ignorant' if they don't know what I just learned" and we in nerd culture do love our trivia. I certainly remember suddenly getting very invested in the realism of some facet of the game after I learned a new fact about medieval/renaissance arms&armor (or anything else).

The question I would pose is: does doing anything to reflect this newfound knowledge actually benefit the game to be included? Likewise, do the game rules reflect equal distinctions which reflect the benefits/disadvantages that alternative options have?

As if I needed more reason to hate them.
Rapiers and bards go together like vaping and that guy in the fedora who wants to tell you about NFTs.

Bards were still bards when back in AD&D when they were using longswords like everyone else.

I'm familiar with this particular channel; it makes the rounds among HEMA & martial reconstructionist devotees-- one really has to take their opinions on fuzzy-and-not-very-clear medieval & renaissance manuscripts with a grain of salt.

As alluded briefly by Ungainlytitan above, the rapier evolved out of very specific circumstances; it was not strictly speaking a "military" weapon like a broadsword was. For the time period and purposes it was used, it did its job quite well.

Easton has been pretty upfront about the virtues of the rapiers as well. The advantage of the reach is phenomenal, they do not shatter with every slight sneeze as they are sometimes depicted, they can cut, and they even were at times used on the battlefield. The thing I've mostly gleaned from his and other similar channels is that for every point there is a counterpoint; for every rule an exception; and for every known there is an unknown, contested point, or guesswork. Nothing is pure, the sources conflict, and we don't know how much what has survived is representative.

So, when do we start asking about the environment in the dungeons and how things live down there?

They have meal plans at the dungeon cafeteria. Otherwise, their employee badges work as stored-value cards at the food court.

I don’t think rapiers were in D&D originally if my memory serves. They were added in 3e I think, possibly due to the popularity of Princess Bride!

Original D&D had 'Sword' and 'Two Handed Sword.' Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry distinguished that some swords were sickle-shaped (since druids could use those), but no rules on what proportion. The swords got split out for AD&D with various types each with different stats and the miss-attribution of what was a longsword and so on. 2E expanded the list, and rapier showed up as a distinct entry in AD&D 2nd Edition's Complete Fighter's Guide (along with the swashbuckler kit/character option).
Imputing reasoning to the TSR era is always a hazardous activity, but it coming along with the swashbuckler kit (and alongside cutlass and pirate kit, katana&wakazashi and samurai kit, etc.) make me think they simply were making the game work better for depictions of characters. Chainmail was a historic 'army-men' game with a fantasy subsection, and as such was very battlefield-based (ex.: oD&D and basic-classic have magic users use daggers because quarterstaves didn't show up in Chainmail weapons charts). The game lurched along with additions like staves and clubs (and a whole new list for Oriental Adventures, which is a thread by itself), and then with 2e they realized they could make a lot of content by helping people play Aramis and Captain Hook and Captain Caveman and pajama ninjas and so on.

It worked for Robin Hood. D&D is about tropes, not logic.

There's certainly a lot there. Same as how castle courtyards are still open-air in a game with griffons and dragons. Some things exist in the game because we want to play our favorite 'long-ago, but with magic and dungeons' scenarios, not what it would actually have looked like long ago if there was magic and dungeons.

*I call it this because for me, the tipping point was when I saw an article about how Isaac Asimov (of Laws of Robotics and Golden Age of Science Fiction fame) was a serial and well-known sexual harasser. I mean ... this was the guy that was famous for not drinking and not including any sex and barely a hint of romance in his writing, which he churned out so prolifically that even Stephen King thought he should slow down. Ugh.

In his novels. Perhaps you aren't aware of:

His 80s&90s books also had sex, IIRC.

But, back to the OP.

Rapiers are good for adventurers, because they are good for players. Because they reveal the others at the table who cherrypick their realism with insufficient consideration of anyone else's fun but their own.

I mean, that depends on who does what. If yeah you suddenly decide you must harp on the realism of the game when everyone else is just trying to play it, that's not great. On the other hand, if you are designing a game (or just a shared consensus on what type of game you want to play), than more power to you.

Okay, fair point. I should have said a spear, as long you can make it without jamming up at every corner.

The main point was that swords are designed for fighting humans, not monsters, and the longer blades are specialized for particular forms of human-fighting. There's a reason nobody hunted animals with swords. A rapier in the dungeon is unrealistic, but no more so than a greatsword.

I think for all the heavily armored giant monsters, perhaps something halfway between a can opener and specialized crab/lobster dining utensils might be in order.

 

[Ryujin]

Bards were still bards when back in AD&D when they were using longswords like everyone else.

And I will not forgive AD&D for making me think that a Longsword was exclusively a one-handed weapon, for years. To this day I still don't know what it was that Gygax was seeing in his head, when he thought that word.

 

[MGibster]

In later years the gun was the primary with a sabre or the like in case you ran out of bullets, or were caught out while reloading.

There was one officer in the Civil War who made the soldiers under him in the cavalry leave their swords in the crates they came with. He said something like, "The only use these swords have is for roasting meat over a fire."

And I will not forgive AD&D for making me think that a Longsword was exclusively a one-handed weapon, for years. To this day I still don't know what it was that Gygax was seeing in his head, when he thought that word.

Polearms. Gygax had visions of polearms dancing in his head. We've got that list and the illustrations to prove it.

 

[Retreater]

Why are rapiers bad for adventurers?
Because every time one of my players draws one they sing "I then produced my rapier," followed by a loud "Heh heh!"