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Badaxes are respected enough to name a city after them: Bad Axe, Michigan.
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While your concerns are near and dear to my heart Edge, I must respectfully disagree with your proposed solution. Clearly, we should be using SI naming schemes here to match PF2E's very timely switch to meters, centigrade, and kilograms in update v1.7. I suggest the following weapon names:
It'd be far more simple and elegant.
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Dagger -> Millisword
Where do I sign?
/Not signed.
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While your concerns are near and dear to my heart Edge, I must respectfully disagree with your proposed solution. Clearly, we should be using SI naming schemes here to match PF2E's very timely switch to meters, centigrade, and kilograms in update v1.7. I suggest the following weapon names:
Greatsword -> Megasword
Longsword -> Kilosword
Shortsword -> Sword
Dagger -> Millisword It'd be far more simple and elegant.
So where does the bastard sword fall in this system?
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So where does the bastard sword fall in this system?While your concerns are near and dear to my heart Edge, I must respectfully disagree with your proposed solution. Clearly, we should be using SI naming schemes here to match PF2E's very timely switch to meters, centigrade, and kilograms in update v1.7. I suggest the following weapon names:
Greatsword -> Megasword
Longsword -> Kilosword
Shortsword -> Sword
Dagger -> Millisword It'd be far more simple and elegant.
It doesn't. It is a BASTARD sword. It does not conform.
Here I thought that there would be people rallying to change weapon inconsistencies that existed throughout editions, like Falchions and Kriegsmessers.
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Also! If we've got a Longbow and a Shortbow, where the heck is my Bow??
Also! If we've got a Longbow and a Shortbow, where the heck is my Bow??
Oh man, you must have missed it.They added the Bow in when they redid the weapons tables in update v1.7.
(No worries, I missed a lot of things in the last update. The errata pdf missed a bunch that they changed in the full rulebook)
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Badaxes are respected enough to name a city after them: Bad Axe, Michigan.
I was going to point this out! Grew up twenty minutes from there. :)
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I want my Bustersword!
Yeah I know, it’s just a large sized greatsword.
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Just waiting for the gigasword and the terasword.
I feel like The Buster sword would be the "Gigasword" and Dragonslayer would be the "Terasword". Because DRAGONSLAYER IS THE END-ALL BE-ALL FOR BFSs!
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While your concerns are near and dear to my heart Edge, I must respectfully disagree with your proposed solution. Clearly, we should be using SI naming schemes here to match PF2E's very timely switch to meters, centigrade, and kilograms in update v1.7. I suggest the following weapon names:
Greatsword -> Megasword
Longsword -> Kilosword
Shortsword -> Sword
Dagger -> Millisword It'd be far more simple and elegant.
I wholeheartedly endorse this suggestion. It will also make unit conversions between weapons much easier.
In the old system, it was very challenging to say how many daggers there were in one greatsword. But in the new system, we can very easily say that there are 1 billion milliswords in one megasword.
1 MSw * (10^6 Sw/1 MSw) * (10^3 mSw/1 Sw) = 10^9 mSw
Just waiting for the gigasword and the terasword.I feel like The Buster sword would be the "Gigasword" and Dragonslayer would be the "Terasword". Because DRAGONSLAYER IS THE END-ALL BE-ALL FOR BFSs!
I thought the Dragonslayer was going to be called "Big Slab of Iron"?
I want my Bustersword!
Yeah I know, it’s just a large sized greatsword.
Just don't get it confused with the Bustard sword.
Let me be first one to suggest we use Rude Sword instead of Bastard.
I suggest Hybrid Sword. Sounds much more eco-friendly.
In!
How do I convert my ultra mega dragonzord tyrannosaurus power sword into the new scale?
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I find that traditional weapon names are following an arbitrary convention and do not appropriately represent their composition.
I suggest we switch to a IUPAC-inspired technical naming system, depicting shape, size, material, number of tips or edges, impact area and handle position and length.
That should give us more clarity when introducing new weapons and allow a better understanding of the weapons we already have.
For example, the longsword should likely be called the 1-hand-2-edgedsteelsword. The shortsword works better as the 1-handpointysteelsword. And so on.
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Smaller Crossbow -Wrist
Small Crossbow -Hand
Crossbow -Light
Big Crossbow -Heavy
Bigger Crossbow -Repeating Heavy
Smaller Bow -Shortbow
Small Bow -Thornbow
Bow -Longbow
Big Bow -Horsebow
Bigger Bow -Siege Ballista
Smaller Axe -Throwing
Small Axe -Hand
Axe -Battle
Big Axe -Great
Bigger Axe -Butchering
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While your concerns are near and dear to my heart Edge, I must respectfully disagree with your proposed solution. Clearly, we should be using SI naming schemes here to match PF2E's very timely switch to meters, centigrade, and kilograms in update v1.7. I suggest the following weapon names:
Greatsword -> Megasword
Longsword -> Kilosword
Shortsword -> Sword
Dagger -> Millisword It'd be far more simple and elegant.
Another advantage is it allows for simpler scaling for different sized creatures by just moving up or down the ladder a number of steps equal to size category difference. The small dagger would be a Microsword while the Millisword is their Shortsword. And then tiny creatures can have Nanosword daggers, and then of course Picoswords for the diminutive. Fine has to use Femtoswords for daggers. On the other end, Colossal critters will be using the Exasword as their heavy hitter.
Hrm, maybe we need SI prefixes for the size categories too. Small becomes Millicreature, large is Kilocreature etc. Then you can match up the prefix to show what the base weapon is for their size. Hrm, you could probably create a specialized slide-rule to speed things up.
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The falchion has always irked me extensively. A falchion is basically a machete. Not a 2h broadsword! If we could fix this I'd be eternally grateful.
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Please don't derail the thread with comments that actually make sense and are PF related... even if it's your own thread. :P
As long as the PrettyGoodSword is 1 handed. Consider me onboard with this.
Lol fair. XD
Falchion as PrettyGoodSword then? XD
Machete as SmallChopper
Falchion as MediumChopper
Space for a BigChopper
This leaves room for a Feat called Chopper Dervish.
It grants a 20' fly speed as long as the wielder makes at least two actions per round making an attacks with the chopper blades. And yes you are allowed to designate an attack against any empty square next to you for purpose of getting the fly speed. If any invisible friend or foe enters the square, you have to roll to hit them as if fighting an invisible/unseen opponent there.
Where is my B'Stardsword?
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I know this is mostly a joke, but I'm seriously hoping for ACCURATE SWORD NAMES in PF2. The historically accurate names for these weapons are widely available and can be found with a simple online search or by opening up a book on Medieval weaponry. But Pathfinder, D&D, and other fantasy games continue to ignore this easily obtained information in favor of using incorrect terms.
A broadsword used in one hand is called an arming sword, not a longsword.
A broadsword that can be used one or two handed is a bastard or hand and a half sword, and is in between an arming sword and longsword in weight and length.
A broadsword used in two hands is a longsword and it is longer than both an arming sword and a bastard sword, but not as massive as a greatsword.
A greatsword is so huge that it can't easily be mistaken for another type of sword and was usually carried propped upon the shoulder due to its size rather than in a sheath or scabbard.
If I can find this information and make a point of using the right terminology in my home games, surely the skilled professionals at Paizo who do this kind of stuff for a living can do the same, so why are they still calling one handed broadswords "longswords" when that is blatantly and verifiably incorrect?
Okay, my HEMA fueled rant is over. Thank you so much if you bothered to read it.
Maybe we should just call swords by the damage they do? "The merchant has two D6swords and a D8sword, but someone just bought his last D10sword."
I know this is mostly a joke, but I'm seriously hoping for ACCURATE SWORD NAMES in PF2. The historically accurate names for these weapons are widely available and can be found with a simple online search or by opening up a book on Medieval weaponry. But Pathfinder, D&D, and other fantasy games continue to ignore this easily obtained information in favor of using incorrect terms.
A broadsword used in one hand is called an arming sword, not a longsword.
A broadsword that can be used one or two handed is a bastard or hand and a half sword, and is in between an arming sword and longsword in weight and length.
A broadsword used in two hands is a longsword and it is longer than both an arming sword and a bastard sword, but not as massive as a greatsword.
A greatsword is so huge that it can't easily be mistaken for another type of sword and was usually carried propped upon the shoulder due to its size rather than in a sheath or scabbard.
If I can find this information and make a point of using the right terminology in my home games, surely the skilled professionals at Paizo who do this kind of stuff for a living can do the same, so why are they still calling one handed broadswords "longswords" when that is blatantly and verifiably incorrect?
Okay, my HEMA fueled rant is over. Thank you so much if you bothered to read it.
Maybe we should just call swords by the damage they do? "The merchant has two D6swords and a D8sword, but someone just bought his last D10sword."
A lot of historical weapons offer similar ways to fight and are mostly regional designs. A greatsword in PF can be a Messer or a Claymore, as one example. Both are big (heavy) swords that deal lots of damage, and having two (mostly) identical purposes and effective results when wielded.
While it might appeal to the HEMA enthusiasts, having 5 different entries in the table of different names doing the exact same thing is counter-intuitive to numerous goals, such as having each weapon with a niche, or keeping the weapons chart clean and uncluttered.
And before we get into "They're not all the same," I can take every HEMA enthusiast, throw them in a room, and argue what a given weapon can and can't do, and I can absolutely assure you that every one of them will come up with a completely different design pattern from one another. And then if I take another weapon, some might design them exactly the same (resulting in our "Great" weapon dynamic we currently have). You can't please everyone, HEMA or not.
I'm not advocating having dozens of different weapons all doing the same thing. I would be perfectly happy if they just started calling one handed swords arming swords rather than longswords. One little tweak to wording wouldn't be too hard.
No, but then you'll have people complaining they don't have Crusader Swords or Tabars or whatever other historical weapon that exist instead of one region of historical weapons. It exists now, technically, but Paizo aren't historians (neither is Golarion an accurate depiction of historical equipment), and the rules are purposefully abstract so that people can flavor things the way they want them flavored without having an unnecessary change to their concept.
A lot of HEMA enthusiasts either don't realize this, or don't care about it enough to understand the importance of generalization and abstraction in a game. Even if Pathfinder is a strongly simulationist game, even that has limits, and it's quite evident when HEMA bashes everything for not being a total conformist to their standards.
I honestly wouldn't object to Longsword's name changing to Arming sword, but people would ask where the 'historical in d&d context longsword' went, so it might merit a mention, which I suspect MidSouthGuy probably wouldn't want a reference to the Arming sword saying something like in prior versions this was sometimes referred to as a longsword in the games.
I just think of it as a long sword is long compared to the short of a shortsword. Not necessarily meaning a longsword being a historical sword called a longsword.
I think we'd run into issues if we renamed longswords to arming swords, and renamed two handed swords to longswords. This would be because, the history of DnD has longswords as one handed weapons, so people would jump from one game to the other and 'treasure' would include a longsword, and people could easily not bother to know or recall that the meaning swapped out between versions. Swapping Longsword for Arming sword, people if they didn't find the name match, they'd look for the one that seemed to fit, which they'd quickly see shortswords would be too short and two handed swords aren't it, so they'd likely quickly guess arming.
Is it worth it. Probably not for me, but it isn't unreasonable change, if drifting away from a potentially historical misnomer of weapons in the games past. The description of the Arming sword would probably say something about being a basic one handed sword, longer than the easy shortsword, and in past games referred to as longswords, despite it more technical name of a longsword meaning a two handed sword.
The primary issue with that, is people tend not to put in writing past inaccuracies. So I imagine it is unlikely to occur. But swapping the single name doesn't really open up any requirement to have more types of swords, since it is just a single renamed weapon.
I honestly wouldn't object to Longsword's name changing to Arming sword, but people would ask where the 'historical in d&d context longsword' went, so it might merit a mention, which I suspect MidSouthGuy probably wouldn't want a reference to the Arming sword saying something like in prior versions this was sometimes referred to as a longsword in the games.
I just think of it as a long sword is long compared to the short of a shortsword. Not necessarily meaning a longsword being a historical sword called a longsword.
I think we'd run into issues if we renamed longswords to arming swords, and renamed two handed swords to longswords. This would be because, the history of DnD has longswords as one handed weapons, so people would jump from one game to the other and 'treasure' would include a longsword, and people could easily not bother to know or recall that the meaning swapped out between versions. Swapping Longsword for Arming sword, people if they didn't find the name match, they'd look for the one that seemed to fit, which they'd quickly see shortswords would be too short and two handed swords aren't it, so they'd likely quickly guess arming.
Is it worth it. Probably not for me, but it isn't unreasonable change, if drifting away from a potentially historical misnomer of weapons in the games past. The description of the Arming sword would probably say something about being a basic one handed sword, longer than the easy shortsword, and in past games referred to as longswords, despite it more technical name of a longsword meaning a two handed sword.
The primary issue with that, is people tend not to put in writing past inaccuracies. So I imagine it is unlikely to occur. But swapping the single name doesn't really open up any requirement to have more types of swords, since it is just a single renamed weapon.
Those people would be alienated and outcast from the hobby because of HEMA standards. Last I checked, this isn't HEMAFinder. and also note that numerous fantasy franchises have incorrectly labeled weapons, meaning this is an issue spread far beyond Pathfinder and D&D. (Whether this is because of them is hard to say, and while it sounds reasonable to conclude as such, this is like saying the man covered in blood did the murder. A potential deduction, but not a smoking gun.)
And again, these fantasy franchises aren't a front for HEMA standards, nor are they a standard that these franchises have to appeal or conform to. If HEMA doesn't like it, they are more than welcome to change it for themselves, or even better, develop their own system that far outclasses anything ever conceived. Maybe they can develop a better game than Paizo or WotC. However, history and statistics will tell you they are probably no better, and the minutiae of focusing on the differences between a Messer and a Claymore when they are treated identically via mechanics will make the game extremely uninteresting and put people into a snooze who aren't HEMA enthusiasts.
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Of course one problem with historically accurate names, is that naming was an absolute mess historically. Using specific names for different types of swords wasn't quite a priority for them like it is for us. Most swords were just called "sword" in the local language. A lot of distinct sword styles really just mean sword in their language like Jian, Talwar, Saif, Kilj, Shamshir, gladius etc. I think all of those are just the local word for sword. "Longsword" is a particularly messy term. Historically it's been used to mean a technique of using two hands on the hilt (as opposed to shortened-sword or half-sword, which is one on the hilt and one on the blade. Mostly used for armored fighting), sometimes it does seem to have been used for what is called a longsword by HEMA people today (which I'd say is the bastard sword in PF terms) but not universally or even prominently. Later it was sometimes used to describe rapiers (I think Silver calls them longswords and calls basket-hilted broadswords and backswords (broadsword is another problematic name) "short swords" because they're shorter than rapiers, even though they're not particularly short). Here's a good blog post about the term (it's apparently gone offline so this is the Internet archive version which loses the images). HEMA has settled on a particular set of terms, but they're not necessarily what was used at the time, but it's useful to be able to distinguish things.
I'd probably just call the current longsword, "Sword" or "One handed sword." Arming Sword is more specifically used for one handed medieval European swords. But the current longsword can represent all sorts of one handed, double edged (usually), straight, cut and thrust swords, which were common all over the place in many eras: everything from the late Roman Spatha, Migration and Viking era swords, arming swords, side-swords, basket-hilted broadswords and backswords, the Chinese Jian, older Arab swords, the Kaskara of the Sahel, Berber Tokoba, etc. It's basically the default sword type. So I'd just call it Sword, everything else is a more specialized type of sword that can use it's own name.
I prefer generic names to specific cultural ones. Especially for types of weapons that are only barely different in the real world, and basically identical in game terms. Short Sword likewise can apply to a lot of different weapons, we don't need a separate Gladius, Cinquedea or Degen. The Cutlass entry was kind of a waste of space, because it was (correctly in my mind) exactly the same as the Scimitar in every way. Maybe the Scimitar should be labeled Scimitar/Saber again like it was back in the AD&D 2nd ed days, that gets across that it's not just a single type of weapon, but almost all one-handed curved swords. In the same principal, I'd rename Bo Staff to simply Staff or Long-Staff. Bo is a very specific Okinawan/Japanese version of weapon that's pretty much universal, a stick about tall as the user. It's weird to use the specific Japanese name, especially in a setting that's mostly pseudo-European. Thankfully the Lucern Hammer doesn't show up in the Playtest book, considering Lucern doesn't exist on Golarion. That should have gone the way of Greek Fire back in 3rd edition. Perhaps Main-Gauche should just be called Parrying Dagger or the like.
I have a copy of a game (Fantasy Imperium for those curious, thankfully given to me for free) that has literally around 100 pages of illustrations of it's very specific weapons. It's mostly just assigning specific names to a slightly different look of the same thing. It's got a full page just for knives. And yes, it does have the Bohemian Ear Spoon (it's just a lugged spear, no need for a different weapon entry). I don't want to go that way. It's not more accurate, and it doesn't add anything to the game except page count.
Armor on the other hand could use a lot of work. Some of the armors are things that didn't exist and wouldn't work well anyway (like studded leather or splint-mail), Mail is used to mean armor while it specifically means interlocking rings (chainmail). Every time I hear the word Platemail for plate armor I die a little inside (although thankfully it hasn't even been in the armor list since D&D 3). Plated mail on the other hand (also called Splinted Mail or Mail and Plate) could take the place of Splint-mail, it's a suit of mail with metal plates embedded over sensitive areas.