Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[PvK]

Spear convenience would depend a lot on the tunnel. I've tried simply carrying around fairly long (5-foot or 6-foot) poles inside a modern house and found it was fairly tricky to get around without bashing the pole into something.

[HoneyBadger]

PvK: True, that. But, you have to consider that, defensively, it has a lot of potential-and defense is what the dwarfs are all about. You wouldn't see a dwarf carrying around a spear in an area he didn't know well, or a place where it would would be a liability due to space.

Things become different, though, when it's in a tunnel *designed* by the dwarfs, and it's a spear *designed* by the dwarfs.

Personally, I think dwarfs would invent a lot of their own weapons. They're master craftsmen, with lots of time on their hands, and lots and lots of enemies.

There was an old issue of Dragon Magazine that featured new dwarfen weapons. Things like a crossbow that fired sharpened discs of metal-ideal for ricochet damage I would think, in those "hard to reach" places, the dwarfen claymore-a short, stout 2 handed sword, designed for dwarfs by dwarfs-with the phraise "short, thick, and nasty" as a byword, and the ceremonial dwarf battle-club, which-being a dwarf weapon-was a lot more than just ceremonial, made of metal inlaid, lead-cored hardwood, and used by dwarf calvalry mounted on angry mountain goats.

They might very well use axes frequently-I just don't see them as being their primary, be all-end all, weapon.
Maybe for dwarfs that live on the surface? where they need to chop down trees, to make charcoal if nothing else.
But does Gimli really *need* to be carrying around...what, 5 axes or so? What did he use to pick his teeth with? Maybe that's why dwarfs grow beards, to hide all the dental damage...

I think, the deeper down you went in a typical dwarf underkingdom, the less and less "typical" the dwarfs you'd meet would become. There might even be some women down there...

[PvK]

All good points and interesting valid ideas. I'm not sure there's any material disagreement left here.

Seems to me that for ultimate correctness purposes (not necessarily this mod), it doesn't matter much what the head is like on an axe/mace/hammer/pick - it should be possible to make such a weapon as good at length/attack/defense as any other, with the exception that hammer and especially mace don't need to strike in a particular direction, which advantage might or might not be considered to be worth a +1 relative attack mod. However there might be tradeoffs between those values and the resulting damage and resources too.

[HoneyBadger]

Well-and this may surprise you-the greatest advantage that an axe has over all those other weapons is it's ability to be used fluidly. A properly shaped axe, of a good weight, can not only be thrown accurately, but it can also be used in melee to strike much faster than most other weapons, if the wielder is well-trained.

The axe curves down to strike, but that downward chop can be completed into a circle, by rotating it in the hands, which allows the head of the axe to swing back up, carried by the weight of the head (like a pendulum do), which by the way gave the axe-fighter a bit of a break, since the axe would at that point be carried along via momentum; and causing the blade of the axe to function a bit like a rotary saw-albeit in slow motion. It's quite impressive, even when the axe in question is the size of a hatchet-when it's an English Long-axe, it's frankly awe-inspiring.

Imagine a martial-arts movie wherein two fighters are squaring off with staves, and watch as one combatant rotates her staff in a circular motion-now imagine that the staff itself is "only" 5 feet long, but 2 inches thicker, and that one end of that staff is topped by a 4lb axe blade. It takes a lot more strength in various muscle groups, ofcourse-the axe would be swung more from the shoulders and back than the arms and waist, but the idea is much the same.

You can't do the same with a sword, because the sword has too much blade, and you can't do it as well, with a mace/hammer/etc. because of the bulkiness of the head.

It's one of the reasons why the "moon-shaped" head was so popular, though, because it allowed the axe to easily slice both into, and then out of, a given wound, shearing off with less risk of the blade getting stuck in a bone. Which also gave the axe-fighter a chance to engage more than one enemy at a time, since a long enough axe could "cleave" into and out of one wound, only to be carried-again, via momentum-into and out of another wound, on another combatant.

[Aezeal]

as I said.. axes

[HoneyBadger]

Axes are good...just not for dwarfs. Not particularly, anyway. Just like swords aren't very good for giants.

[Saulot]

Indepth discussions of dwarven tunnel battletactics and equipment aside, however interesting it is*, what is everyone's thoughts about giving them an improved axe or axes (as per PVK's suggestion or something similar)?

*There are still a few pieces of dwarven tunnelfighter's equipment left unmentioned

[PvK]

Since nothing of any other size would ever use the proposed "Dwarven Axe", why would it be problematic to make it cost however many resources would be needed to differentiate it from the hammer?

Seems to me it could be even more clear than the difference between the MA Infantry of Ulm with Battleaxe or Maul - more resources for a slightly better weapon. You could also decide that Dwarven axes are more prestigious personal weapons than hammers and so have them cost +1 or +2 gold more to hire troops with those.

[PvK]

Oh, it occurred to me after I wrote that, that another option could be, if the weapons balance mod you mentioned results in addressing this, to simply suggest that the mod be used with that weapon balance mod, and/or make one that does, or failing all that, wait for me to make one that does...

[PvK]

When you wrote, "there's already a balance mod that's quite well developed", did you mean Conceptual Balance mod or a weapon balance mod that I haven't found yet, or ...?