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Musashi was exploiting a rule. The rule of physics.
Bokken is lighter than a katana. By using a bokken he was physically faster than his opponent.
Its arguable that if he'd have been using a katana instead that his fight record may have looked significantly different.
Not only could he beat you with raw speed, he could spare your life at the same time and appear to be far more badass for having chosen to club you to death in the face of the most reputable steel in the hands of the most reputable warriors of his day.
As a practiced wielder of both bokkens and katanas I can personally guarantee the difference in speed as a result of weight, even with an english oak bokken: still far superior to the speed and weight of a folded blade. The aikidoka's use of the jo is a perfect example of this.
Like Musashi, my experience lends me also to believe I'd have a superior victory count using the speed advantage of lightweight wood. Even moreso if I knew my skill was superior to my opponent. Even a bamboo (ostensibly far more lightweight thana katana) shinai is a slow clumsy piece of garbage compared to a bokken.
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Pathfinder is a game where you can have four arms, and wield a Laser Rifle, a chainsaw on a stick, and a pointy metal beard.
You can, without magical aid, create complicated chemical compounds, in 6 seconds.
The game is littered, with weapons, and fighting styles, that their ability to be used in real world combat, is inconceivable.
Somehow, the trusted weapon of many real world civilizations, is too damn hard for you to imagine being used in each hand?
This is not the game for you.
Is this madness?
No.
This is Pathfinder.
This doesn't make Jamie the special snowflake for wanting to play a girl, despite the fact that the other players don't want female characters in the game. It's not against the rules. It doesn't exploit other players. Sam has a responsibility to tell Chris, Pat and Alex that they're going to have to stop being sexist and "suck it up" if they want to play, because Jamie is allowed to have fun, too.Well we differ here. If the majority of the players (and I include the GM) are so set against a player's choice that it will spoil their enjoyment, I do not see that the player has the right to impose his will on the others. Personally I would find another group to play in in that particular situation. What you describe, however, is not one against the majority, but a 50:50 split.
I have left gaming groups where the gaming style is so contrary to my own that I wasn't having fun. I didn't demand that everyone plays to my particular way of doing things.
My apologies, Sadurian, but I don't value "mob rule" in role-playing games, where one player desires to play a character that doesn't exploit other players or break the rules. Regardless of the fact that a majority of players may not want to play a game with a paladin does not mean that when someone else wants to play a paladin, it's going to spoil everyone else's enjoyment. I don't believe that role-playing games are that fragile and so easily shattered. The player has a right to play the kind of character that they want to play (provided that they don't violate my reiterated caveats regarding not exploiting other players), and other players lack the "right" to impose their will upon another player, regardless of how many they have in their corner.
I think you may also have missed the deliberate care with which I chose the hypothetical players' names; they're all unisex, and so they could be male or female players. Aside from that, Jamie wanting to play a girl going against Pat's, Chris' and Alex's desire that Jamie not play a girl is not a 50:50 split (even though Chris and Alex didn't chime in; I did express that they were all in opposition to Jamie's choice), even if Sam (the GM) is willing to take a side. At best (for Jamie), it's a 40:60 split.
That still doesn't excuse Pat's, Chris', Alex's or even Sam's sexism (even though I portrayed Sam as being capable of suppressing his or her opinion because there's nothing that violates the rules), despite the fact that they form the majority. Sure, in a situation like that, I'd encourage Jamie to stop playing with sexist players, but that doesn't make Pat, Chris, Alex or Sam not sexist (or wrong).
That goes for playing characters not your own gender, characters that grossly violate the game's theme, or two-dimensional characters whose only quality is they must be better than everyone else. Every style has a group that will accept it, but it is not for you to impose your style on a group that rejects it.
I find it unfortunate that you are seemingly willing to accept playing characters not of your own gender, women not being able to play male characters and vice versa, to be worthy of rejecting a player's role-playing wishes. It seems to go counter to the two-dimensionality that you also reject, but maybe that's just inconsistency that doesn't bother you.
Pathfinder has a pretty wide theme. You can hunt dragons, hobnob with androids, run away from chthonian entities, fling fireballs, wield a laser torch, fight alongside kobolds riding bears... There's very little that I can think of that would "grossly violate the game's theme". Certainly, a character with two shields, an android sorcerer, or a hermaphroditic character wouldn't violate that incredibly loose rubric.
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Yeah. If I outlawed everything in the game that my players did that struck me as being ludicrous or 'silly', we'd never have a game session. I dont think of dual shields as silly, but even if I did. Stopping it from being a choice is stepping ouside your job duties as a gm.
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Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?
Some people genuinely do, yes. I'm not sure why, but its a fairly common thing.
Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?Some people genuinely do, yes. I'm not sure why, but its a fairly common thing.
I'm not against it altogether, but I have wanted to, on more than one occasion, ban particular players from doing it because their character turns into an absolute caricature of the gender they're portraying. This tends to happen with more immature players.
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Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?Some people genuinely do, yes. I'm not sure why, but its a fairly common thing.
I was guilty of it once, and I was wrong to forbid my female player from playing a male character. We played an entire campaign where she played a male character, and when we ended that campaign and moved on to a new one, I requested that she play a female character because it was easier for me (and possibly others) to get keep from making mistakes regarding identity.
I'd like to reiterate that I was wrong because it made things less fun for my player, and for what? So I could keep the pronouns straight? It's a really lousy reason to tell a player what kind of character they have to play.
A real combat style is not realistic?There is a difference between a real fighting style and a fighting style that is a realistic fighting proposition. Boxing is a realistic fighting style but no army would expect its warriors to go out onto the battlefield armed only with a pair of boxing gloves.
And yet "punching people" is a fighting style sanctioned by a class, a combination class, at least two archetypes and a magic item, soooo...bad example?
Do the DMs just run an all male/female world?Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?Some people genuinely do, yes. I'm not sure why, but its a fairly common thing.
True story: I once wrote a novel with something like sixty named characters. Not a one was female.
I had some problems back then.
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Do the DMs just run an all male/female world?Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?Some people genuinely do, yes. I'm not sure why, but its a fairly common thing.Usually they just have a problem with players playing the opposite gender.
And to play devil's advocate, it's probably usually from having watched or heard about "That Guy" who is generally creepy and acts out his terrible socially awkward issues with attractive women and sexuality via a terrible sex-object character.
But that doesn't make it right.
Well, the creepy guy, playing terribly, can be done with any gender.
I'm a bit confused by this whole topic, namely a dev coming in to say that "two shields together is stupid" with the implication that there is some rule stopping it, which doesn't seem to exist as shields count as light or heavy weapons unless I missed something.
I'm confused that this is still brought up after a couple years. I also wonder which dev you are referring to because you shouldn't be talking about James Jacobs. He does say stuff, but not really what you suggest
Dual Klars.
/thread
Do the DMs just run an all male/female world?
True story: I once wrote a novel with something like sixty named characters. Not a one was female.
I had some problems back then.
So did your setting in a generation or two. :P
Wait, you have something against players playing PCs of a different gender?
Which player? I know a couple of guys I would never let play chaotic neutral; and others I would probably encourage to play lawful evil if they wanted.
I know some gms who dont like seeing CN on your character sheet because their previous experience would make the alignment seem like the player had 'moral/ethical tourettes'
Kinda gettin off topic though.
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I know some gms who dont like seeing CN on your character sheet because their previous experience would make the alignment seem like the player had 'moral/ethical tourettes'
Kinda gettin off topic though.
True. Though to be on topic (which, as someone made demonstrable above - is a brick wall vs brick wall situation):
I find it very bemusing to see an insistence that soldiers in an era before the assembly line would all necessarily use what was most effective as opposed to what was most available. With insistence against boxing, scythes, so forth.For a long time, the common soldier had what they could grab (or their lord had cheaply made), maybe some colours, and they damn well shut up. It seems tenuous to suggest we should insist on verisimilitude and demand people play with certain styles only. If it kept you alive for at least a few minutes; I don't think it'd be seen as suicidal.
That said, training is a thing, and it costs. Hence the prominence of shields and polearms on medieval battlefields: It's mostly wood, some not especially shapely metal and your training is "block with the slab; the point tip goes in the other guy".
Adventurers in roleplaying games are well, a different game. They have training (not least by virtue of combat) and manage their own equipment. Given we've had examples of two shield fighting styles, I just don't see a reason to go against it. Beyond an aesthetic "I don't like it".
And well, why even bother arguing aesthetics? I know people who like Brutalist architecture for pity's sake - not everyone can have good taste.
I know some gms who dont like seeing CN on your character sheet because their previous experience would make the alignment seem like the player had 'moral/ethical tourettes'
I would bet that the majority of GM hangups on particular alignments, concepts, or playing a character that's a different gender from the player ultimately stem from having had a session with "That Guy" at some point.
I know I'd probably be a lot warrier of letting guys play female characters if my first GM experience with it had been a neckbeard who wanted to use a class out of The Book of Erotic Fantasy and kept talking about how big his character's breasts were and how much sex she had. Lucky for me, my first couple experiences in that field were guys who just played female characters as actual human beings (or Elves, Dwarves, etc).
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The fact that there are no records of the warriors of any nation in history regularly and deliberately equipping themselves with two shields speaks volumes.
You are incorrect, and it would fantastic if you could come to realise this.
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Dual Klars.
A Shoanti dual Klar style would be so much cooler (and so much *less* of an 'exploit' than) that Thunder & Fang feat that lets you dual wield an Earthbreaker and Klar.
That said, I'd totally approve of a Shield & Spear style. Allowing someone to one-hand a spear or even longspear, and equip a shield in the other hand, would simulate several real world fighting armies (like the Romans), and be less mechanically 'optimal' than being able to one-hand an Earthbreaker, which, both visually and mechanically, seems a bit over the top.
Yes, and it's not very good.
I think its halarious that there is a feat that lets a character one-hand a sledgehammer, but the only way of one-handing a spear is to play a particular archetype of fighter or barbarian.
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So.
I realized with Swashbuckler finesse you can dex to hit with a shield that has shield spikes on it. Can't you? One-handed weapon, and with the spikes it becomes Piercing...
I wonder if you can get dex to damage somehow, or if it's just gonna require agile on the spikes...
I think I'll build a dex based shield brawler now haha. capn america style. Assuming none of the shield feats require str aas a prereq. be nice to get away with just 13.
Yes, a Swashbuckler, or Daring Champion Cavalier, can finesse a Heavy Shield.
Anyone can finesse a Light shield, and it can be enchanted with the Agile enchantment.
It also makes me very happy. I feel some swashbuckler build ideas coming together.
Like a daring fellow adorned with sashes, belts, buckles and shields. His swash will be legendary. He cares not for bladework, he has his finesse shields.
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Pathfinder has the Madu - which is based off of an indian weapon / shield used in Silambam also referred to as the maduvu or maan kombu.
Here's a article with photo (grainy) showing a man dual wielding the maan kombu which includes the following:
An action where the horns held in both hands are swirled across the chest while moving back and forth, sideways and lifting the legs alternately, is called ‘bavala’ or a feint. During the course of the class, I learn that ‘Maan Kombu’ is an integral part of Silambattam, but is rarely used because of its deadly nature. Most of the steps are designed to block a stick attack with one horn, and attack with the other. Any serious attack with these horns can inflict mortal wounds. Horns are no longer made for this martial art and the ones in circulation belong to Silambattam instructors who got them many years ago. The ‘Maan Kombu’ set with Manoharan was handed down to him by his uncle 45 years ago.
So yes - Silambattam / Silambam includes a martial art that utilises dual wielded 'shields' / madu.
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Maduvu (Deer Horns):
It is a short defending weapon usually made of deer horns. Since the horns are very rare to get, the players usually use the weapon made of hard wood or soft iron bar. The exponents with a single maduvu or double can defend him against all chops, strikes and hits. A very skilled person will be able to defend and counter. Usually in India, maduvu will be played with long stick called "Puli Attam" where a man wears a costume like a tiger and defends against a single or double attacker.
My apologies, Sadurian, but I don't value "mob rule" in role-playing games,
You call majority voting 'mob-rule', I call it democracy....
I think you may also have missed the deliberate care with which I chose the hypothetical players' names; they're all unisex, and so they could be male or female players. Aside from that, Jamie wanting to play a girl going against Pat's, Chris'...
It's actually completely irrelevant. Gender does not make an opinion more or less valid.
You are incorrect, and it would fantastic if you could come to realise this.The fact that there are no records of the warriors of any nation in history regularly and deliberately equipping themselves with two shields speaks volumes.
I would welcome any evidence that I am incorrect. Not, 'my mate did this when LARPing', not posed photographs that are probably dancing, not weapon-shield combinations, not twinned defensive weapons like jitte, and not modern martial arts techniques that even describe themselves as 'unique'.
Some that will invalidate my point that 'there are no records of the warriors of any nation in history regularly and deliberately equipping themselves with two shields'.
As for the historical standard being 'goodrightfun', that isn't what I said at all.Yes it is. It totally is. The ENTIRE COMPLAINT is about two shields being BadWrongFun.
If you and your table want to include twin shield wielding fighters then all power to you. You can have chicken player races and singing horses, it's your game and your table. Our group wouldn't want them as we value the thematic aspect of our games too much to let such ahistorical rule exploits creep in.
As I've said before, each table/group has a different tolerance to such things. I am not trying to stop from playing your favourite 'kewl karacter', whether he has two shields or two bunches of flowers as his build. I am saying that it wouldn't be welcome in our group.
And if you check upthread there are historical examples of legit armies using twin shields. I mean that's the real joke here:
No there aren't. John Jacob's challenge has still to be met. A random photo of a guy carrying two shields, even dancing with them, does not show that 'legit armies used twin shields'.
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As for the historical standard being 'goodrightfun', that isn't what I said at all.Yes it is. It totally is. The ENTIRE COMPLAINT is about two shields being BadWrongFun.If you and your table want to include twin shield wielding fighters then all power to you. You can have chicken player races and singing horses, it's your game and your table. Our group wouldn't want them as we value the thematic aspect of our games too much to let such ahistorical rule exploits creep in.
As I've said before, each table/group has a different tolerance to such things. I am not trying to stop from playing your favourite 'kewl karacter', whether he has two shields or two bunches of flowers as his build. I am saying that it wouldn't be welcome in our group.
And if you check upthread there are historical examples of legit armies using twin shields. I mean that's the real joke here:No there aren't. John Jacob's challenge has still to be met. A random photo of a guy carrying two shields, even dancing with them, does not show that 'legit armies used twin shields'.
Here you go:
http://plumblossom.net/Articles/Inside_Kung-Fu/Jan2008/
Eat your words. Eat them up. With two shields as dishes.
"The Twin Metal Shields are same as the Double Tiger Head Shields or Seung Fu Tau Pah in Cantonese. This pair of metal shields is one of the unique, traditional Chinese kung fu weapons. Each shield is worn on the arm for warding off attacking weapons and can be used for attacking as well. Each metal shield is about fourteen inches wide by twenty-five inches long. The top of the shield has a straight edge. The bottom of the shield is like the shape of a gWh, because it has two sharp, pointed tips at both sides of the bottom. Near the top of the shield on the back there is a big ring for the arm to go though. Near the bottom also on the back the shield has a horizontal bar for the hand to grasp. In the old days, the shields were made with copper. The front of the shield had a Chinese tiger face design, therefore the weapon was called the Tiger Head Shield. Because the martial artist wore the shields on both arms the weapon was even more unique."
"The original Twin Metal Shields fighting set is not a very long one. It has only 57 steps or movements and contains kicking and shoulder rolling techniques. The major techniques in the form are: Kwa (back hand strike), Kup (stamping), Jong (uppercut), Peet (downward cutting), Pood (fanning strike), Tsop (poking), Jit (downward blocking), poon (front blocking), Pek (hammer strike), Biu-jong (sideway strike), chuin-jong (long uppward strike), Wang-sow (horizontal swing). Double hand techniques are: Seung-fun (double left and right cutting down), Suit-fa-koi-ding (snow flakes over the head), Seung-jong (double uppercut) etc.."
Eat your words. Eat them up. With two shields as dishes.I'll happily concede that this proves that an obscure martials school taught the style from 1836.
Third, only a few kung fu systems ever taught this weapon
It does not, however, prove that any fighting organisation 'regularly and deliberately equipping themselves with two shields', which was the challenge. I'm sure that I can link to all sorts of weird martial arts styles that utilise peculiar tools, from flutes to fans and garden implements. None of it means that the weapon style is a serious fighting prospect.
As I said back at the start, a player with a good background story (i.e. not, 'because I get a cheesy advantage') would probably get away with playing such a character.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that kung-fu cannot be used to fight, but it is not exactly the first choice of technique when in battle. Knowing how to fight with a musical instrument means you can fight, but if that is your primary weapon then you'll likely to chopped to pieces by someone with a 'real' weapon. What I am looking for is evidence that the fighting style was good enough that it was used in real, deadly, combat. That's the real test for any weapon or style, not sports or leisure applications.
Video 1 and At 40 seconds and 1 minute 50s and a third for good luck.
Very entertaining, but those are not shields.
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And its important to point out that 'not welcome at your table' is surprisingly germaine to the nature of the op's question.
In most threads logical fallacies are not germaine to the discussion so things like James Jacobs using argument of ignorance fallacy "you can't prove it exists so it doesn't"... wouldn't be relevant
When that was thoroughly trounced we moved to ad hominem: its not right but keep doing it at your own [silly] table. Also wouldnt be germaine to the thread because what you do at your own table isnt a ruling. But the OP isnt asking for a ruling.
The op's posted in an advice thread instead of a rules thread. The advice he actually asked for is 'is there any reason not to'... and 'because our table would think it looks foolish' is a valid answer to that question. Certainly wouldnt be enough to stop me from doing it... If your table thought I looked foolish i'd kinda want to do it even more... But only if I didnt have an option to stay with my much more... liberal table.
I wondered when the 'you're using ad hominem' argument would crop up, but I'm still a little sad to see it arrive. It's a little like Godwin - it tends to suggest that the real arguments have exhausted themselves and people are resorting to just getting pissy. It is also generally used, as here, incorrectly.
For reference, an 'ad hominem' argument is a personal attack that suggests the opponent's views are invalid because of factors completely unconnected with his ability to present the case.
Were I to say opponent A delights in using silly characters it would not be an ad-hominem because the argument is about silly characters.
Were I to say that opponent B is smelly and lives in his mother's basement, it would be an ad-hominem because those factors do not affect his argument about running silly characters.
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There is no point in this discussion anymore. No matter what video or document anyone posts, Sadurian will again ignore evidence and say "it's not viable in real combat", despite the fact that not only the combat style exists, it's also been used in real combat.
Sadurian won't concede because he doesn't want to, not because of lack of evidence.
I can't believe this is still being discussed. It's not even optimal to do, you're far better off taking a high crit offhand and a large shield mainhand to trigger more shield attacks on crit.
If you're saying this isn't welcome at your table, then you're only encouraging players away from something sub optimal they might want to try. Why not give them more options than two kukris or kukri/large shield?
I love the "You can't prove this exists" thing in here... no one was ever asked to provide historic evidence of magic spells being used on the battlefield. It's fantasy, and fantasy is inherently built in the minds of the players.
Video 1 and At 40 seconds and 1 minute 50s and a third for good luck.Very entertaining, but those are not shields.
PRD would disagree - it's RAW
Here's the wiki and here's one in real life
It's RAW, it's real... it's done.