Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Swords have Long swords and Great swords.
Axes have Battle axe and Great axe.
Blunted have Warhammer and Mauls
Then you jump to polearms, mostly assumed to be halberd, glaive style (leaving out Lucerne Hammers, reaper/battle scythes and others), Trident should also be more of a polearm rather than just a different spear.
But flails are only assumed to be the short handled, short chain, weighted blunt/piercer (and yeah, you should be able to chose damage type!) leaving out the pole-flail (2-handed) completely left out or for homebrew, but why? These would be great cleric or pali weapons.
In a lot of ways, i think the weapon categories were overly simplified, for example yes a Lucerne Hammer (mentioned above) is not overly different from halberd other than damage type. Katana can be grouped with long swords, etc. but then you have more specialized weapons that sorta don't fit to the given "types". Parrying Daggers/Knives are longer blades, not typically good for throwing because they would typically have better hand protection. The Scissor is a bladed weapon, but also armor (also for game play a stat like "can not be dropped" or something.). There are evolutions of Rapiers that give them more of a blade (slashing not piercing) that still maintain light, finesse, elegant weapon craft.
And why oh why, are Scimitars listed at a heavier weight (3lbs) in the game over Rapier (2lbs), but THEY have LIGHT, where Rapier (by your own admission) a lighter weapon does not?
Trident is a spear, because spears can be one handed in the rules, and Gladiator movies showed Tridents and Nets as a weapon pairing, and no exclusively 2handed weapon has the throwing property. You can thank/blame Hollywood for that.
The Light property leans into the concept that they well suited for Dual wielding. The length and weight of the Rapier are due to them being modeled on Fencing swords; hence they are finesse and piercing.
Trying to argue realism and history in a game based on fantasy and movie tropes is a fast track to proving you're not paying attention to game design. Failure to account for game design is a good way to lose the argument, because it would result in something that doesn't make sense in the context of the game rules. Flail is half the weight of the Mace, and yet it does more damage, even though both weapons is you swinging a stick with metal on the end. Logically the mace should do more damage because it has more inertial. And Long swords should have Graze, since you can thrust with it, and the edge can still cut an enemy you didn't stab; while Greatsword should have Cleave, and Great Axe should have Eviscerate, and Halberd should have Topple, and Glaive should have Vex.
And none that would matter anyway, because a Gun should be doing 5d6 damage and at least 3 attacks per round.
and as a thought..... should pole flails be simple weapons, since peasants can use them? Or should they be martial because they require training to use?
The weapon table is deliberately simplified. Each weapon is mechanically distinct from the others and there are certain other requirements (simple weapons are worse than martial), and there probably isn't space for yet another blunt weapon. We've already got clubs, great clubs, light hammers, mace, quarterstaff, flail, maul, and warhammer. What set of attributes would characterize a great flail and make it distinct from all those?
The assumption is that you can rechrome a weapon to make it fit your character. If you want a great flail, take a maul and call it a great flail.
There are a few gaps in the types of weapons, but some of these are very easy to fill. There is a group of weapons which have the reach, 2-handed and heavy properties and do d10 damage. Two of these (the pike and the lance) do Piercing damage; the other two (the glaive and the halberd) do Slashing. In 2014 rules, the glaive and the halberd were identical; in 2024, they’re distinguished by their weapon mastery properties.
As the OP identified, there are no similar weapons which inflict Bludgeoning damage and they noted historical examples which would seem to fit that gap (the Lucerne hammer and the pole flail). So, the rules for those weapons pretty much write themselves: heavy, 2-handed, reach, doing d10 Bludgeoning damage. Choose a different weapon mastery property for each one (from Cleave, Graze, Push or Topple) and assign appropriate weights and costs, and you’re done.
(We’ve done similar: e.g. our Kender Paladin wielded a “sabre”: finesse, d8 slashing. We also made a “war spear” in the 2014 rules: martial, versatile, d8/d10 piercing, which is essentially what the trident has become in the 2024 update.)
Pole flails were mostly farming implements, not weapons of war, but polearms that included a blunt head are certainly historical. Mostly they were combination weapons (D&D notwithstanding, many weapons are capable of multiple damage types; you can find pollaxes that are slashing on one side, bludgeoning on the other side, and piercing on the tip). There's not a lot of reason to even give them different stats from halberds.
Really, you could simplify the list a bit more. Why have a Flail at all? Mace with chain or Morning Star with chain, call them flails and you have both your flail options covered. Early versions of the game had most of those options and you had a table of Weapons against Armor Type to look up "To Hit" bonuses and penalties based on that chart. You had Speed Factors, where Light weapons really had a positive effect on your Initiative to balance out their lower damage.
While I do miss the old charts sometimes, the game has evolved away from it's wargaming roots.
That's not the only example of the listed weights not making sense. The Greatclub is one of the heaviest melee weapons, beaten only by the Pike, but does not have the Heavy property despite being heavier than the Greataxe, Glaive, Greatsword, Lance, and Halberd, all of which do.
Thanks all for the comments. It's nice to get feedback and see different perspectives.
Way back in the "Days of Yore", there were hundreds of different weapons in D&D. Just the polearm category alone had dozens of options, many of them just combinations or slight variations of others, some of which an 11 year old me could barely pronounce. Seriously, who knew how to pronounce "guisarme-volgue" the first time you saw it in print? And to make matters even worse, there were expansive charts listing the different to-hit modifiers that had to be applied to each weapon when targeting each different kind of armor!
It was all just a bit much. Like most people, I play D&D to have fun, not to practice filing my taxes. A polearm is a big painful weapon. That's all I need to know. If you want a long-handled pole-flail, that's fine. It's just a flail with the Heavy, Reach, and Two-Handed properties. And maybe you can talk the DM into buffing it up to 1d10 damage.
And when's the last time anyone's character equipped themselves with the trusty old Man-Catcher?
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
For a long time, I assumed that the Great Club was Heavy.. However, there are in fact no Heavy Simple Weapons. I suspect that might be a deliberate design decision.
The Great Club does seem to be on the list more for completeness: it seems more intended for monsters than PCs. If it were made Heavy, then its damage die would probably need to be a d10 (as Simple weapons usually use a damage die one size smaller than their Martial counterparts - with the exception of the hand-axe), which would have an effect on the damage output of, e.g. the Ogre.
Most weapon weighs in this game are nonsense, but the 'light' category appears to be based on suitability to dual wield, not actual weight, and it would be very inconvenient to dual wield two rapiers, even if very light.
^^ this. You can't let yourself get too hung up on the name. The "scimitar" as you mention, is a light, 1 handed slashing weapon. The "shortsword" is a light, one handed thrusting weapon. As far as the game is concerned, the roman cavalry spatha, the migration period viking sword, the early medieval arming sword, the falchion, kriegsmesser, saber, shamshir, etc etc etc are all 1h slashing weapons: scimitars in game. The later medieval arming sword, smallsword, gladius, spadroon, are 1h light thrusters....shortswords.
Same thing with the two handed flail. If you view it as a crushing weapon, it's a maul or greatclub. If you view it as a piercing weapon (ala Morning Star), it's a pike. That's not the answer I know you want to hear OP, but that's the intent of the design.
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Tasha
two rapiers was actually not uncommon. It's commonly referred to as case of rapiers IIRC and it's discussed in several treatises.
If we're being honest, the reason the rules are what they are is so that people could dual wield scimitars out of the box, ala Drizzt. It's not a mistake that scimitars got the nick property.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Pole flails were a very common weapon by peasant levies: they could be easily weaponized by adding spikes or iron bands to the head, and were thus very cheap to make while providing good reach and power. They also had the advantage of being something that the peasants were already familiar with using. There are even records of knights using pole flails. The one-handed flail, by contrast, was a much rarer weapon if it even existed at all, and many depictions of it in Medieval art may have been the result of the artists confusing the flail with the morningstar or mace.
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.
Knowing how to use an agricultural flail to thresh grain does not imply knowing how to use it as a weapon. There is very little evidence for combat flails, either one or two handed, other than as a novelty. Peasant levies mostly used spears.
Sorry, but that is simply untrue. The two-handed flail was not a common weapon, but its use in the Late Medieval Period was well documented in Central Europe. Peasants mostly used spears, but they overall used a wide variety of weapons, most of which were based on existing peasant tools, because that was cheap and training them how to use a weapon based on a tool they were already familiar with was easier than training them on a weapon that was nothing like what they were used to.
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.
speak for yourself , many tables enjoy tactical combat. I could flip it back at you and say if you enjoy roleplay so much why comment on the battle tactics.