I've always had the impression that flails consist of a heavy metal orb attached to a chain attached to a handle. If so, why is this not a weapon with the Reach and Heavy properties? And shouldn't a heavy metal ball on a chain do more damage than a morningstar?
In reality, most flails had a much smaller head and a short chain, but were attached to a longer polearm handle. The D&D version should really be a 1d10 bludgeoning polearm.
In which case, it would have the Reach property, correct? While it makes sense for the Whip to have Reach, I never understood why the Flail in turn does not.
Look at pictures of flails ... the one handed ones clearly represented in the stats, no reach.
Look at a whip ... you'll see reach.
It's a short length of chain, not the length Scorpion uses in Mortal Kombat. D&D flails behave more like nunchaku without IRL or cinematic versatility nunchaku puportedly have. It does not produce a whirlwind of death. Whips do reach out and lash, due to the mechanics/physics behind a whip. The flail if used to such length, so to speak, doesn't have physics on its side.
I believe the variation of the weapon the game developers envisioned was an ~ .5 to .75 meter handle and .25 to .5 meter chain with either a mace head or spiked orb. They consider the morning start to be a mace like weapon with sharpen spikes that can pierce the target. Similar in designs but deals different damage type.
Google tends to bring up a two handed flail, which sounds like what you are envisioning. I don't think there is an official game design for that weapon (I am probably wrong here), but there probably should be distinction between the standard flail and a two handed flail.
Let's assume arguendo that the flail as depicted--a one handed weapon with a ball on a chain--is a real weapon within the D&D world (even if, in the real world, they were effectively non-existent. There are some real-world historical examples, but they are extremely uncommon). Such a weapon would have had a relatively short chain--a longer chain would make it slower to use (longer arch necessary to make a swing) and more likely to hit you if you missed. Thus, it would still be something that you are hitting someone adjacent to you with--not something that you would overextend to reach something over 5 feet away with.
Think of it less like a weapon where you are doing large, sweeping arcs, and more like nunchaku where one of the sticks is replaced by a spiked metal ball.
It's a short length of chain, not the length Scorpion uses in Mortal Kombat. D&D flails behave more like nunchaku without IRL or cinematic versatility nunchaku puportedly have. It does not produce a whirlwind of death. Whips do reach out and lash, due to the mechanics/physics behind a whip. The flail if used to such length, so to speak, doesn't have physics on its side.
In terms of cinematics, I was more thinking about the one used by the Ringwraith in Peter Jackson's LOTR: Return of the King.
Having just educated myself a bit more on YT videos, it seems there were three weapons referred to as flails. The one depicted in the illustration posted by Sposta is the peasant's flail. A peasant weapon that is used otherwise for threshing wheat and similar grains. The military version just adds spikes or metal studs to the business end or replaces the wooden head with a metal head. The one-handed flail was less commonly used. In fact, some claim that it's military use was apocryphal. Then the third is the mangual, documented only in use on the Iberian peninsula. It has multiple metal orbs attached to chains and is described as being used in war like a great sword but with the reach being close to a polearm.
Would be nice if the PHB depicted the weapons, and many more items, in the equipment list.
To be fair on the point of long chained flails, people can easily mess themselves up with whips too, but I've also seen someone get an orbital fracture from mishandling a collapsible baton. But proficiency is proficiency and the hazards for lack of proficiency are the blanket deficiency for such lacking in 5e.
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In which case, it would have the Reach property, correct? While it makes sense for the Whip to have Reach, I never understood why the Flail in turn does not.
It's a short length of chain, not the length Scorpion uses in Mortal Kombat. D&D flails behave more like nunchaku without IRL or cinematic versatility nunchaku puportedly have. It does not produce a whirlwind of death. Whips do reach out and lash, due to the mechanics/physics behind a whip. The flail if used to such length, so to speak, doesn't have physics on its side.
In terms of cinematics, I was more thinking about the one used by the Ringwraith in Peter Jackson's LOTR: Return of the King.
Having just educated myself a bit more on YT videos, it seems there were three weapons referred to as flails. The one depicted in the illustration posted by Sposta is the peasant's flail. A peasant weapon that is used otherwise for threshing wheat and similar grains. The military version just adds spikes or metal studs to the business end or replaces the wooden head with a metal head. The one-handed flail was less commonly used. In fact, some claim that it's military use was apocryphal. Then the third is the mangual, documented only in use on the Iberian peninsula. It has multiple metal orbs attached to chains and is described as being used in war like a great sword but with the reach being close to a polearm.
Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight, and then swing down to crack ‘im in the head. The heavy head of the weapon could easily dent in the knight’s armor and basically crush him inside of it. A small handful of relatively untrained but determined peasants with those flails could seriously threaten even the most well armored knight. Faced with those odds, a knight would often surrender to be ransomed back to his family rather than suffer serious injury, or even possibly death. While it did have some reach advantage over shorter weapons, it really wouldn’t have been any more than an average greatsword or spear.
So I would venture that a peasant flail (simple melee weapon) ought to be a 2-handed, bludgeoning weapon doing 1d8 bludgeoning and the "military flail" would be a mangual, a 2-handed, Heavy, bludgeoning Reach weapon doing 2d6 damage. The difference between the two would be accounted for by the mangual, being a Martial, would deal more damage and have a longer built-in chain. Does that sound about right?
So I would venture that a peasant flail (simple melee weapon) ought to be a 2-handed, bludgeoning weapon doing 1d8 bludgeoning and the "military flail" would be a mangual, a 2-handed, Heavy, bludgeoning Reach weapon doing 2d6 damage. Does that sound about right?
I would skip the reach property, but yeah, probably.
For further context, the Japanese had a weapon called a Kusarigama with a small metal orb attached to a long chain and a short handle that also had a sickle on the end. It was generally considered a peasant's weapon, though some claim that ninjas also employed it.
Yeah flails are much more weaponized farm implements than military weapons - they take regular practice with toperm decently as weapons. My definition for them is simple - two weights connected by a cord/chain. What those weights are and how long the connection is determine how they are used. At one end you have things like nunchaku that you can whip around the body easily and quickly either singly or in pairs. At the other end are things like the kusari gamma with a blade on one end and a steel ball on the other and a long (10’-30’) chain connecting them that is used more like a whip or a recoverable thrown stone or blade. Then there is everything else in between including war flails, three section staves and variations on the ball and chain.
For further context, the Japanese had a weapon called a Kusarigama with a small metal orb attached to a long chain and a short handle that also had a sickle on the end. It was generally considered a peasant's weapon, though some claim that ninjas also employed it.
A lightweight version is shown here:
Most of the weapons ninjas used were peasant weapons. That Kusarigama you mentioned was originally a farm implement, a combo of a sickle for cutting grain and a flail for threshing it.
Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight.
I have doubts that it was ideal for much of anything important, because if it was we'd see it used more than it actually was.
Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight.
I have doubts that it was ideal for much of anything important, because if it was we'd see it used more than it actually was.
You can doubt all you want, makes no nevermind to me whatsoever. I know they were used, and I know they were relatively effective for their cost and the limited training their wielders had. The reason there aren’t a ton of them still in existence in museums and such is because those peasants who wielded them took them back home afterwords and continued using them in the fields as tools.
Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight.
I have doubts that it was ideal for much of anything important, because if it was we'd see it used more than it actually was.
You can doubt all you want, makes no nevermind to me whatsoever. I know they were used, and I know they were relatively effective for their cost and the limited training their wielders had. The reason there aren’t a ton of them still in existence in museums and such is because those peasants who wielded them took them back home afterwords and continued using them in the fields as tools.
Building off the above, as a general rule, if something was a farm implement it was also used as a weapon. In the case of flails, they’re a tool used to thresh wheat. Dedicated weapons were expensive - it’s why regular armies were so expensive to maintain, and fielding even a single knight was beyond the reach of even some minor lords.
Now, as to their efficacy against a knight? Peasants didn’t do so well against knights generally - that armour wasn’t for just for show and (unlike in many modern film portrayals or with your slightly unfit guys at Ren Faires) knights were still really fast in their fitted armor.
Even a farm flail reinforced with some additional iron would have a hard time with a knight’s on foot. But a hard time is better than no chance at all - a good, struck whack to the helmet could possibly kill in its own right (though padding would make that harder), but, more importantly, it would be disorienting and allow one of your fellow fighters a possible opening with a spear or other implement which could slide between armoured plates.
More importantly than for to foot combat, however, is the flail’s ability to dismount a knight on horseback. Something long that you can hit a horse (to force it to buck) or its rider with could help you dismount a knight without being trampled on first, allowing folks to finish off the prone knight.
Granted, all things considered, I’ll take the knight’s position over a peasant with a flail—there’s a reason they were considered worth the unfathomably high costs (until the English longbow and eventual musket led to a revolution in how warfare was fought).
In a game where the weapon you buy at first level is likely to be the same weapon you have at 20th level, no matter how many years later, where wear and tear is not a factor, where the origin of a weapon could have completely and utterly different from the one it has here on earth, where indeed, the weapon that may actually be in use could have no earthly counterpart, where the appearance of a weapon and the diversity of them has been intentionally simplified in order to erase many of the practical differences for the sake of a mechanics system that allows the exchange of attacks and defense's to be a narrative component and represents it with a general and overall number that sorta acts as a catch all fo the same issues around a physical body, the way we can all go into excruciating detail and have minor arguments over the kinds and nature of weapons that were historically used on a place that is not the place in question never ceases to provide me with amusement.
I say that a flail on my world is composed of one rounded handle,, a short length of braided leather, and a flat wooden head that has had hard tacks driven into it, and is a total of 20 inches from the tip of the handle to the end of the head, and is used for punishing disagreeable proles. Has nothing to do with threshing, some to do with thrashing, and was never a farm implement.
Now, the best part is that the answer there is exactly as useful and real as the one about the flails from Earth. The answer to the question lies not here, but in the world and with the DM who is running it.
Also, I have an NPC who has a weapon that consists of two large spiked balls on 2' chains attached to a 12 inch long shaft (can use it one or two handed). He calls it his Wife. he is single, never married, and it is likely easy to figure out why. His weapon does not have reach. It is, as noted above, rather useful for removing the benefit of a shield as an action in combat, allowing for his punch with knockback effect that forces a save or be prone as either a bonus or re-action.
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Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight.
I have doubts that it was ideal for much of anything important, because if it was we'd see it used more than it actually was.
You can doubt all you want, makes no nevermind to me whatsoever. I know they were used, and I know they were relatively effective for their cost and the limited training their wielders had. The reason there aren’t a ton of them still in existence in museums and such is because those peasants who wielded them took them back home afterwords and continued using them in the fields as tools.
That and people didn't find preserving peasant tools to be all that exciting.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You can doubt all you want, makes no nevermind to me whatsoever. I know they were used, and I know they were relatively effective for their cost and the limited training their wielders had. The reason there aren’t a ton of them still in existence in museums and such is because those peasants who wielded them took them back home afterwords and continued using them in the fields as tools.
The reason you use a peasant tool as a weapon is because it's what you have, not because it's a good weapon. The mark of a good weapon is that people actually bother to purpose-build it for the task and use it frequently (purpose-built war flails did exist but were very rare). The flail should be in there... as a simple weapon that does 1d6. Same for the trident (it's a fishing tool sometimes used by gladiators, not a good weapon), and a whip isn't really a weapon at all.
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I've always had the impression that flails consist of a heavy metal orb attached to a chain attached to a handle. If so, why is this not a weapon with the Reach and Heavy properties? And shouldn't a heavy metal ball on a chain do more damage than a morningstar?
In reality, most flails had a much smaller head and a short chain, but were attached to a longer polearm handle. The D&D version should really be a 1d10 bludgeoning polearm.
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In which case, it would have the Reach property, correct? While it makes sense for the Whip to have Reach, I never understood why the Flail in turn does not.
Look at pictures of flails ... the one handed ones clearly represented in the stats, no reach.
Look at a whip ... you'll see reach.
It's a short length of chain, not the length Scorpion uses in Mortal Kombat. D&D flails behave more like nunchaku without IRL or cinematic versatility nunchaku puportedly have. It does not produce a whirlwind of death. Whips do reach out and lash, due to the mechanics/physics behind a whip. The flail if used to such length, so to speak, doesn't have physics on its side.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I believe the variation of the weapon the game developers envisioned was an ~ .5 to .75 meter handle and .25 to .5 meter chain with either a mace head or spiked orb. They consider the morning start to be a mace like weapon with sharpen spikes that can pierce the target. Similar in designs but deals different damage type.
Google tends to bring up a two handed flail, which sounds like what you are envisioning. I don't think there is an official game design for that weapon (I am probably wrong here), but there probably should be distinction between the standard flail and a two handed flail.
Let's assume arguendo that the flail as depicted--a one handed weapon with a ball on a chain--is a real weapon within the D&D world (even if, in the real world, they were effectively non-existent. There are some real-world historical examples, but they are extremely uncommon). Such a weapon would have had a relatively short chain--a longer chain would make it slower to use (longer arch necessary to make a swing) and more likely to hit you if you missed. Thus, it would still be something that you are hitting someone adjacent to you with--not something that you would overextend to reach something over 5 feet away with.
Think of it less like a weapon where you are doing large, sweeping arcs, and more like nunchaku where one of the sticks is replaced by a spiked metal ball.
In terms of cinematics, I was more thinking about the one used by the Ringwraith in Peter Jackson's LOTR: Return of the King.
Having just educated myself a bit more on YT videos, it seems there were three weapons referred to as flails. The one depicted in the illustration posted by Sposta is the peasant's flail. A peasant weapon that is used otherwise for threshing wheat and similar grains. The military version just adds spikes or metal studs to the business end or replaces the wooden head with a metal head. The one-handed flail was less commonly used. In fact, some claim that it's military use was apocryphal. Then the third is the mangual, documented only in use on the Iberian peninsula. It has multiple metal orbs attached to chains and is described as being used in war like a great sword but with the reach being close to a polearm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGiJLk5DfPM
Would be nice if the PHB depicted the weapons, and many more items, in the equipment list.
To be fair on the point of long chained flails, people can easily mess themselves up with whips too, but I've also seen someone get an orbital fracture from mishandling a collapsible baton. But proficiency is proficiency and the hazards for lack of proficiency are the blanket deficiency for such lacking in 5e.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah, the “peasant flail” was really the one most commonly used in actual combat for the most part. The design was ideal for getting over the shield guard of a knight, and then swing down to crack ‘im in the head. The heavy head of the weapon could easily dent in the knight’s armor and basically crush him inside of it. A small handful of relatively untrained but determined peasants with those flails could seriously threaten even the most well armored knight. Faced with those odds, a knight would often surrender to be ransomed back to his family rather than suffer serious injury, or even possibly death. While it did have some reach advantage over shorter weapons, it really wouldn’t have been any more than an average greatsword or spear.
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So I would venture that a peasant flail (simple melee weapon) ought to be a 2-handed, bludgeoning weapon doing 1d8 bludgeoning and the "military flail" would be a mangual, a 2-handed, Heavy, bludgeoning Reach weapon doing 2d6 damage. The difference between the two would be accounted for by the mangual, being a Martial, would deal more damage and have a longer built-in chain. Does that sound about right?
I would skip the reach property, but yeah, probably.
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For further context, the Japanese had a weapon called a Kusarigama with a small metal orb attached to a long chain and a short handle that also had a sickle on the end. It was generally considered a peasant's weapon, though some claim that ninjas also employed it.
A lightweight version is shown here:
Yeah flails are much more weaponized farm implements than military weapons - they take regular practice with toperm decently as weapons. My definition for them is simple - two weights connected by a cord/chain. What those weights are and how long the connection is determine how they are used. At one end you have things like nunchaku that you can whip around the body easily and quickly either singly or in pairs. At the other end are things like the kusari gamma with a blade on one end and a steel ball on the other and a long (10’-30’) chain connecting them that is used more like a whip or a recoverable thrown stone or blade. Then there is everything else in between including war flails, three section staves and variations on the ball and chain.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Most of the weapons ninjas used were peasant weapons. That Kusarigama you mentioned was originally a farm implement, a combo of a sickle for cutting grain and a flail for threshing it.
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I have doubts that it was ideal for much of anything important, because if it was we'd see it used more than it actually was.
You can doubt all you want, makes no nevermind to me whatsoever. I know they were used, and I know they were relatively effective for their cost and the limited training their wielders had. The reason there aren’t a ton of them still in existence in museums and such is because those peasants who wielded them took them back home afterwords and continued using them in the fields as tools.
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Building off the above, as a general rule, if something was a farm implement it was also used as a weapon. In the case of flails, they’re a tool used to thresh wheat. Dedicated weapons were expensive - it’s why regular armies were so expensive to maintain, and fielding even a single knight was beyond the reach of even some minor lords.
Now, as to their efficacy against a knight? Peasants didn’t do so well against knights generally - that armour wasn’t for just for show and (unlike in many modern film portrayals or with your slightly unfit guys at Ren Faires) knights were still really fast in their fitted armor.
Even a farm flail reinforced with some additional iron would have a hard time with a knight’s on foot. But a hard time is better than no chance at all - a good, struck whack to the helmet could possibly kill in its own right (though padding would make that harder), but, more importantly, it would be disorienting and allow one of your fellow fighters a possible opening with a spear or other implement which could slide between armoured plates.
More importantly than for to foot combat, however, is the flail’s ability to dismount a knight on horseback. Something long that you can hit a horse (to force it to buck) or its rider with could help you dismount a knight without being trampled on first, allowing folks to finish off the prone knight.
Granted, all things considered, I’ll take the knight’s position over a peasant with a flail—there’s a reason they were considered worth the unfathomably high costs (until the English longbow and eventual musket led to a revolution in how warfare was fought).
In a game where the weapon you buy at first level is likely to be the same weapon you have at 20th level, no matter how many years later, where wear and tear is not a factor, where the origin of a weapon could have completely and utterly different from the one it has here on earth, where indeed, the weapon that may actually be in use could have no earthly counterpart, where the appearance of a weapon and the diversity of them has been intentionally simplified in order to erase many of the practical differences for the sake of a mechanics system that allows the exchange of attacks and defense's to be a narrative component and represents it with a general and overall number that sorta acts as a catch all fo the same issues around a physical body, the way we can all go into excruciating detail and have minor arguments over the kinds and nature of weapons that were historically used on a place that is not the place in question never ceases to provide me with amusement.
I say that a flail on my world is composed of one rounded handle,, a short length of braided leather, and a flat wooden head that has had hard tacks driven into it, and is a total of 20 inches from the tip of the handle to the end of the head, and is used for punishing disagreeable proles. Has nothing to do with threshing, some to do with thrashing, and was never a farm implement.
Now, the best part is that the answer there is exactly as useful and real as the one about the flails from Earth. The answer to the question lies not here, but in the world and with the DM who is running it.
Also, I have an NPC who has a weapon that consists of two large spiked balls on 2' chains attached to a 12 inch long shaft (can use it one or two handed). He calls it his Wife. he is single, never married, and it is likely easy to figure out why. His weapon does not have reach. It is, as noted above, rather useful for removing the benefit of a shield as an action in combat, allowing for his punch with knockback effect that forces a save or be prone as either a bonus or re-action.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
That and people didn't find preserving peasant tools to be all that exciting.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The reason you use a peasant tool as a weapon is because it's what you have, not because it's a good weapon. The mark of a good weapon is that people actually bother to purpose-build it for the task and use it frequently (purpose-built war flails did exist but were very rare). The flail should be in there... as a simple weapon that does 1d6. Same for the trident (it's a fishing tool sometimes used by gladiators, not a good weapon), and a whip isn't really a weapon at all.