Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[Maraxus]

I think what he wants to say is not, that a heavy swinging weapon is a problem for a strong person.

Point is, that it is worse then a small (or) thrusting weapon, because strength actuall matters less on heavy weapons: Those get their force through their own weight and speed.
And the speed they get per acceleration way (as long as you have a minimum strength to lift it), so long arms are an important advantage, while muscle power is a minor advantage (it effects the speed taken to the squareroot, if you what physics F=1/2*m*v² ).

I don't think that armor of the weapon wielder is a factor here: While it hampers your movements in directions it is not designed for, it does not meaningful hamper the moves it is designed for: Swinging a weapon is one such movement.

The armor of the target plays a role, however: I think dwarves will also train to use weapons which are efficient against heavy armor as they have it, and these are swung weapons: axes, military hammers, picks.

I can not agree with the "axe requires more room to swing than a similarly sized sword" because you don't need to compare length here but weigth. Greataxe beats Greatsword in close areas, because it is shorter. Likewise if you compare a longsword with a same weigth axe.

Picks as an alternative to axes?
Sure, they focus the impact on a single point which is why later Warhammers were more like picks then hammers - but the axe has it's advantage, too: A single long spike in your body is not straight out fatal, unless it hits heart, brain, spine. Probably not even disabling. The victim might live with it for another minute but it needs only seconds to hit you. On the other hand, an axe breaks bones where it stikes. Disables the victim better.

I agree that thrusting weapons - spears and maybe shortswords - make some sense for dwarfs as subterran fighters with short arms. However considering their need to also be able to kill heaviest armored targets, I also see the reason to use swung weapons. Among those axe, hammer and pick all have pros and cons and I can reasonably understand if dwarfs would choose the axe to be traditionally important.

[llamabeast]

Aezeal, what's an alinea?

[Edratman]

llamabeast said:
Aezeal, what's an alinea?

I too was curious. A search revealed that it is the Dutch word for paragraph.

[Aezeal]

damn seemed like a somewhat latinish word that might be used in more countries... paragraph was not in my head atm

[HoneyBadger]

Spears are better, because they extend reach, and because they only require a tiny space to thrust forward, which means they can fit into narrow confines, and can be weilded by more combatants, against more opponents, in a given area-thus, the phalanx. And phalanxi are the way to go, underground, where there isn't a lot of maneuvaring possible, or necessary, and where you can usually guess where your opponent is going to come from.

Shortswords are good for dwarfs for the same reason they were good for the Romans-they don't require a lot of room to thrust, preferrably upward under armour.

Machetis are good for three reasons-1: they're versatile, 2: they're tough weapons that can take a lot of abuse, and 3: they're good for clearing underbrush, and when you're a dwarf, not used to being on the surface and having to deal with underbrush, you want to be able to hack through it so you can see, and move.

[Aezeal]

I'd still say a lot of power and a heavy axe is a pretty nice combination as well though

[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.