Bonus points if the barbarian gets the parrying dagger and a musketeer vest.
You just described Porthos...seriously
You have a good point, fits the bill pretty well.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I have a homebrew martial weapon table. I did this specifically to give some flair to weapons that had no "property" to work with. I, for instance, have the morningstar the bludgeoning/piercing damage type. ( this was the case in earlier versions of d&d). with flail I gave it the thrown property (short range 10/30 I think). anyway building the table made me feel better about flair and options but honestly... it isn't necessary. if you can describe your weapon and how your character weilds it.... then you are enjoying the game with flair!
Wouldn't be that hard or that unbalancing to work in the old bonuses from 3.5, handing those more exotic weapons things like bonuses to disarm or trip (either flat bonuses or advantage on the attempt), heightened crit ranges (wouldn't let those stack with other crit range expanders if I were you), extra crit damage die, hybrid bludgeoning/piercing or slashing/piercing damage types, etc. Be warned that it might flip the decisionmaking at your table to something like "why would I ever use a longsword when I could use a flail???", but the increased availability of magical longswords, and the bonuses or proficiencies that certain races and classes get while using them, should be enough to keep them the 1H Martial MVP.
I'd like to see the morning star revised to do both piercing and bludgeoning damage. It seems odd to me that it doesn't. Such a weapon ought to be hell against a skeleton, but it's not. Oh well.
It's a cool idea, but it doesn't do what it used to. One thing I dislike about 5e is that almost no monsters have Vulnerability anymore. If you search for all monsters with any Vulnerabilities you get 2 pages. There are 47 pages of monsters! That includes double entries for multiple vulnerablities.
Almost all of them can be summed up with Skeletons are vulnerable bludgeoning, plant monsters are vulnerable to fire, and some Fire monsters are vulnerable to Cold and visa versa. That is 90% of the use cases.
Of monsters with resistance to Slash/Piercing/Bludgeoning, most of them are swarms so resist all 3 or are plant monsters and resist all but Slashing.
Yeah, it does seem like an unnecessary artifact of prior editions, slashing/piercing/bludgeoning could definitely all be simplified down to "physical."
For me I've given Morning Stars Piercing and Bludgeoning damage, the Versatile property and made them cost only 10gp (they don't need as much work or steel as a sword, but are similar to a battle axe). While for Flails I let them essentially ignore shields (gain +2 to attacks vs opponents using shields, thus ignoring the shield but not any magic bonus from the shield). Sure it's not historically accurate but seems to feel accurate.
All in all players still rarely use them :).
Much of the limitations with flails/morning stars I suspect is simply the history of them being 'Cleric weapons' back from when Clerics could only use blunt weapons by default.
The coolest/most fun thing I have seen done with a flail was in the form of a magic item. They gave it a similar ability to bugbears long arms feature that allowed the chain to extend to 10ft reach when attacking (it does nothing for attacks of opportunity) it had other abilities but they were pretty vanilla.
The other reason to use flails is because Athrogate is the coolest dwarf out there and he dual wields them to great effect.
I love Athrogate, but he has morningstars not flails!
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I'm the idiot that decides to make Phil Swift in DnD.
The coolest/most fun thing I have seen done with a flail was in the form of a magic item. They gave it a similar ability to bugbears long arms feature that allowed the chain to extend to 10ft reach when attacking (it does nothing for attacks of opportunity) it had other abilities but they were pretty vanilla.
The other reason to use flails is because Athrogate is the coolest dwarf out there and he dual wields them to great effect.
I love Athrogate, but he has morningstars not flails!
Depends on your definition of "morningstar" and "flail". Flails are the "hitty thing at the end of a chain" weapons, while morningstars are the "spikey thing at the end of a stick" weapons. Unfortunately, sometimes the word "morningstar" is used to describe a flail with a spikey head. =/
A flail may, if of sufficient length or number of heads be considered flexible enough to wrap an arm, potentially allowing you to avoid the need for a hand free to be able to grapple (again same as whip but a lot more bashy) In the happy event that is accepted you could not then use the weapon to attack until the grapple was ended, either by you or other circumstance. I would not suggest you allow trips or disarms with any weapon currently as you end up diminishing the battlemasters abilities.
Other than that, flails are cheap skeleton bashing option for shield and smash players but not the best for stealth with the tendency to clink a bit. The usual reason to use any non favourite weapon is because it turns up as an enchanted or silver option when you have few or no other such weapons.
The coolest/most fun thing I have seen done with a flail was in the form of a magic item. They gave it a similar ability to bugbears long arms feature that allowed the chain to extend to 10ft reach when attacking (it does nothing for attacks of opportunity) it had other abilities but they were pretty vanilla.
The other reason to use flails is because Athrogate is the coolest dwarf out there and he dual wields them to great effect.
I love Athrogate, but he has morningstars not flails!
while morningstars are the "spikey thing at the end of a stick" weapons.
Isn't that a Mace? ;)
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The coolest/most fun thing I have seen done with a flail was in the form of a magic item. They gave it a similar ability to bugbears long arms feature that allowed the chain to extend to 10ft reach when attacking (it does nothing for attacks of opportunity) it had other abilities but they were pretty vanilla.
The other reason to use flails is because Athrogate is the coolest dwarf out there and he dual wields them to great effect.
I love Athrogate, but he has morningstars not flails!
while morningstars are the "spikey thing at the end of a stick" weapons.
Don't even worry about it, I made a mistake. Now the internet will never let it be forgotten.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I've actually used a barbarian/rogue multiclass with a rapier to take advantage of both rage and sneak attack damage and could always get advantage from reckless attack.
You have a good point, fits the bill pretty well.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I have a homebrew martial weapon table. I did this specifically to give some flair to weapons that had no "property" to work with. I, for instance, have the morningstar the bludgeoning/piercing damage type. ( this was the case in earlier versions of d&d). with flail I gave it the thrown property (short range 10/30 I think). anyway building the table made me feel better about flair and options but honestly... it isn't necessary. if you can describe your weapon and how your character weilds it.... then you are enjoying the game with flair!
Jesus Saves!... Everyone else takes damage.
Wouldn't be that hard or that unbalancing to work in the old bonuses from 3.5, handing those more exotic weapons things like bonuses to disarm or trip (either flat bonuses or advantage on the attempt), heightened crit ranges (wouldn't let those stack with other crit range expanders if I were you), extra crit damage die, hybrid bludgeoning/piercing or slashing/piercing damage types, etc. Be warned that it might flip the decisionmaking at your table to something like "why would I ever use a longsword when I could use a flail???", but the increased availability of magical longswords, and the bonuses or proficiencies that certain races and classes get while using them, should be enough to keep them the 1H Martial MVP.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I'd like to see the morning star revised to do both piercing and bludgeoning damage. It seems odd to me that it doesn't. Such a weapon ought to be hell against a skeleton, but it's not. Oh well.
Recently returned to D&D after 20+ years.
Unapologetic.
It's a cool idea, but it doesn't do what it used to.
One thing I dislike about 5e is that almost no monsters have Vulnerability anymore.
If you search for all monsters with any Vulnerabilities you get 2 pages. There are 47 pages of monsters! That includes double entries for multiple vulnerablities.
Almost all of them can be summed up with Skeletons are vulnerable bludgeoning, plant monsters are vulnerable to fire, and some Fire monsters are vulnerable to Cold and visa versa. That is 90% of the use cases.
Of monsters with resistance to Slash/Piercing/Bludgeoning, most of them are swarms so resist all 3 or are plant monsters and resist all but Slashing.
Yeah, it does seem like an unnecessary artifact of prior editions, slashing/piercing/bludgeoning could definitely all be simplified down to "physical."
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
For me I've given Morning Stars Piercing and Bludgeoning damage, the Versatile property and made them cost only 10gp (they don't need as much work or steel as a sword, but are similar to a battle axe).
While for Flails I let them essentially ignore shields (gain +2 to attacks vs opponents using shields, thus ignoring the shield but not any magic bonus from the shield). Sure it's not historically accurate but seems to feel accurate.
All in all players still rarely use them :).
Much of the limitations with flails/morning stars I suspect is simply the history of them being 'Cleric weapons' back from when Clerics could only use blunt weapons by default.
- Loswaith
I love Athrogate, but he has morningstars not flails!
I'm the idiot that decides to make Phil Swift in DnD.
Depends on your definition of "morningstar" and "flail". Flails are the "hitty thing at the end of a chain" weapons, while morningstars are the "spikey thing at the end of a stick" weapons. Unfortunately, sometimes the word "morningstar" is used to describe a flail with a spikey head. =/
I have no idea who Athrogate is, but after doing a quick google image search, I can tell you with certainty that he uses flails and not morningstars.
Edit: Uh, nevermind… some depictions have him holding flails, some morningstars. Whatever.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
A flail may, if of sufficient length or number of heads be considered flexible enough to wrap an arm, potentially allowing you to avoid the need for a hand free to be able to grapple (again same as whip but a lot more bashy) In the happy event that is accepted you could not then use the weapon to attack until the grapple was ended, either by you or other circumstance. I would not suggest you allow trips or disarms with any weapon currently as you end up diminishing the battlemasters abilities.
Other than that, flails are cheap skeleton bashing option for shield and smash players but not the best for stealth with the tendency to clink a bit. The usual reason to use any non favourite weapon is because it turns up as an enchanted or silver option when you have few or no other such weapons.
Isn't that a Mace? ;)
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Mace is shorter, and usually not spikey. :)
In official books Athrogate is described as using morningstars, although they could have been flails, I don't know. Just tryna share my opinion
I'm the idiot that decides to make Phil Swift in DnD.
Jesus I sound like a d**k
I'm the idiot that decides to make Phil Swift in DnD.
Don't even worry about it, I made a mistake. Now the internet will never let it be forgotten.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
The error is Salvatore's, he did this to us.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Absolutely true. Flavor matters a lot more than people give it credit, especially when the difference between 'optimal' and 'sub-optimal' is so small.
I've actually used a barbarian/rogue multiclass with a rapier to take advantage of both rage and sneak attack damage and could always get advantage from reckless attack.
I kind of like the original Warhammer Fantasy RPG concept of "hand weapons" - basically swords, spears, axes, maces, etc. are all treated the same.