Blunt appreciation please

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

There are several ways you could improve the blunt weapon category really majorly
in the description of the war hammer it says that dwarves use it as a secondary choice to the axe, give dwarves a special bonus to it maybe? make it to where the epic blunt weapons have increased dmg die, i mean they hardly ever crit compared to ESOS but if the dmg dice were a little higher then that may cover the lack in crits.... atm its hardly even a niche weapon, ppl use them on skellies and liches but ppl would rather use their pos2 weapons more, i know that people will look for effects just to destroy undead so they don't have to use a blunt weapon ever in the game and it is just ultimately... sad
the only blunt weapon i ever see being used is the handwraps and sometimes the staff by acrobats, maybe take some time and give blunt users a new weapon type, an exotic one perhaps? they have no exotic blunt weapons in the game atm yet there are 4 ranged types and a bunch of slashing types (dorf axe Bsword khopesh kama) throw the blunt users a bone and try to balance the playing field so its not just GRAB SLASH AND GO!!!!1!1!!!!1

[cheekysmile]

Glue nails to it?

[Vormaerin]

The problem is that p&p makes blunt weapons terrible. They've always been terrible. They were pretty terrible in 1e and became gawdawful in 3rd with the crit system.

The only fix is to just dump the current stats for something more fair or create an exotic weapon equivalent to the khopesh.

[Wraith_Sarevok]

Leave them alone.

They have their niche. Not every two-hander needs to be as powerful as the Epic Sword of Shadow. They just have to be useful.

Remember games like Ultima VII? Remember the Black Sword and how it was the ultimate weapon in that game? That's just how things work. Every game has an ultimate weapon. You don't have to demean its glory and value by making blunt weapons better. Just go out and get your own sword of shadow and be happy with it like everyone else is.

[GoRinNoSho]

Don't diss the Hoe of Destruction or the Death Scythe. I'd say Death Scythe was very close to the Blackrock Sword. Less whiny too.

[Vormaerin]

Who said anything about making an eSoS equivalent? That's entirely different from having an entire group of weapons that are useful only against a few mobs.

All those 20/x2 profiles are demonstrably inferior in every situation except the DR/blunt. Creating some 19-20/x2 or 20/x3 blunt weapons isn't making a new eSoS. Heck, even a 19-20/x3 weapon like the khopesh wouldn't be insane, as long as it was an exotic weapon.

Sure, you can just say 'bah, certain things are just inferior and shouldn't be used', but there's not reason that every blunt weapon in the game needs to fall into that category.

[KillEveryone]

It would be nice to see these things more useful.

My characters only carry the bunt they have for skele beaters and a everbright for ooze and rusties. I have no other reason to use blunt weapons.

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

i never said to make it better than esos, if it had the same dmg die but still had the horrible 20/X2 crit or with impact that they love putting on every good named blunt weapon in the game 19-20/X2 maybe even X3 with a maul im fairly sure your ESOS would be better, much better, we would just hit as hard without crits hmmmm?

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

im not saying to give us a blunt weapon that is better than your ESOS,

http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Bludgeoning_weapons

look through this, now ignore every handwrap or staff in there and what is left, tell me if you see a single epic one handed blunt weapon? one yes Epic flameward, a caster based club that swings like a wand atm

give us something, every good blunt weapon that looks good a slashing barb could use just as well as a blunt barb, because it has impact on it
blunt is seriously not that good, sure they wasn't that good in the PNP either but at least i would hear a huge barb walking up swinging a huge maul once and killing 3 pplz, ever heard of same barb swinging huge sword and doing the same? not that i have heard of
there is so much that you could do to help even the playing field, give us a maul with more dmg die than ESOS that CAN NOT crit, your ESOS critting a bunch would deal probably more dmg than the big maul with more dmg die this might help a little
alchemical war hammer would be nice, was looking through the list and saw VERY few named war hammers the only enhancement lines that i know helps blunt at all would be the orc 2H, halfling thrown (yay for little war hammers that still suck compared to throwing axes) and the fighter stuffs that can be used on any weapon

i am not asking to make blunt better than slashing, im asking that using a blunt weapon won't completely suck compared to that sword

[DrakHar]

The problem is that p&p makes blunt weapons terrible. They've always been terrible. They were pretty terrible in 1e and became gawdawful in 3rd with the crit system.

The only fix is to just dump the current stats for something more fair or create an exotic weapon equivalent to the khopesh.

Really? You could just go into 3.5 and find:

Minotaur Greathammer. Basic weapon - exotic.

Crit profile - 19-20/x4.

Yes, 19-20/x4. I had a warblade that rocked one of these from level 1-11 (when we switched campaigns). Low base damage for 2 handed exotic, 1d10, but come on. with improved crit, 17-20/x4? Can't pass it up!

[TreknaQudane]

Who said anything about making an eSoS equivalent? That's entirely different from having an entire group of weapons that are useful only against a few mobs.

All those 20/x2 profiles are demonstrably inferior in every situation except the DR/blunt. Creating some 19-20/x2 or 20/x3 blunt weapons isn't making a new eSoS. Heck, even a 19-20/x3 weapon like the khopesh wouldn't be insane, as long as it was an exotic weapon.

Sure, you can just say 'bah, certain things are just inferior and shouldn't be used', but there's not reason that every blunt weapon in the game needs to fall into that category.

I'd just like to point out that a Warhammer is 20/x3.

Clubs, Heavy Maces, and Quaterstaves are fairly bad due to them being Simple Weapons. Light Hammers should probably have the x3 crit of a Warhammer since it has a define striking side unlike say a club.

Morning Starts should, and I say should because they don't, bypass Piercing DR if the mob has it.

Warhammer's are ok at 20:x3 as are Mauls at 20:x3.

Greatclub is pretty bad. It requires the same proficiency as a Maul but crits for x2. Due to the sheer size of the weapon and that it's one large striking surface It wouldn't be out of the question to change it to 19-20:x2.


If they were to make new bludgeoning weapons I honestly thing they should retain their 20 crits only, it's a trait common to all blunt weapons. I could easily see making a blunt 20:x4 (Pickish, but how many people use picks, I know I did before the change to autocrit..) or a one handed exotic that would fit in the Dwarven Axe, Bastard Sword niche for glancing blows.

[KillEveryone]

I'd just like to point out that a Warhammer is 20/x3.

Clubs, Heavy Maces, and Quaterstaves are fairly bad due to them being Simple Weapons. Light Hammers should probably have the x3 crit of a Warhammer since it has a define striking side unlike say a club.

Morning Starts should, and I say should because they don't, bypass Piercing DR if the mob has it.

Warhammer's are ok at 20:x3 as are Mauls at 20:x3.

Greatclub is pretty bad. It requires the same proficiency as a Maul but crits for x2. Due to the sheer size of the weapon and that it's one large striking surface It wouldn't be out of the question to change it to 19-20:x2.


If they were to make new bludgeoning weapons I honestly thing they should retain their 20 crits only, it's a trait common to all blunt weapons. I could easily see making a blunt 20:x4 (Pickish, but how many people use picks, I know I did before the change to autocrit..) or a one handed exotic that would fit in the Dwarven Axe, Bastard Sword niche for glancing blows.

I think part of the problem is that with the crit profile and nothing gives any benefits to using them then why bother.

I do think that dwarves should probably have some kind of bonus to hammers. Fits well with that race. They do already get bonuses to great axe and Dwarven axes so it may be a bit much for one race to have that variety in weapon types.

There really isn't much reason to use pounders as a main though. Mostly flavor. I think that more would be likely to use picks instead since they have x4 on crit but I've seen fewer of them since auto crit on held is gone.

[oradafu]

I think this is where the Devs have done a semi-good job with Quarterstaves. There are some named quarterstaves that have increased crit profiles (Rahl's, Epic Soul Eater, Epic Nat Gann), increased crit multipliers (Rahl's), increased damage die (Rahl's), and additional damage besides blunt (Rahl's). Of course, these quarterstaves have a few things that the Devs dropped the ball on, such as Hardness and Boss Beaters. I don't understand why the Devs won't increase the Hardness on named quarterstaves. As for the lack of Boss Beaters (Epic Nat Gann doesn't count since it's only for Dex builds), this wouldn't be a problem if GS and/or Alchemical included some of the above increases (although to be fair, the Alchemical Quarterstaff does have 1d8 damage).

I'd like to see more of the above included (along with DR breaking) to other named blunt weapons (and even Dwarven Axes since those axes shouldn't have been given the shaft for so long). Give an increase the crit and damage of a little used blunt weapon, especially if it's situational, isn't going to hurt anything.

Of course, one of the problems that I think right now with adding these weapons in the future is that it appears they'll only appear in level 16+ (and more likely level 20+) quests, which is way too long to wait for a character to be specced in those type of weapons. That's one of the reason it's really sad that there's so few Dwarven Axes (which should have been sprinkled through out the levels). The same is true of Warhammers, Great Clubs and even Mauls (although I'd say Mauls are probably the bludgeon weapon that needs the least boost).

[xrampage]

A good solution (at least on the qstaff side,IMHO) would be to add a metallic base to qstaffs (silver, cold iron, adamantine, etc) so you could at least create decent beaters via cannith crafting and not depend on artificers so much.

[oradafu]

Randomly generated quarterstaves can have metallic properties. Unfortunately they only appear as a very rare chain end reward for Deleras and Threnal. (Some people have claimed other p2p quests/chains, but I've never seem them drop elsewhere.)

Deleras is the best bet to go to farm these quarterstaves since Threnal has three drawbacks:
1) No one likes to run Threnal so you'll probably solo the whole chain and if you're going to solo either one of these chains, Deleras is the easier and faster of the two.
2) You can easily screw up the flagging for the chain, thus waste at least 30 minutes (but usually alot more) by resetting the flagging.
3) No one likes protecting Coyle for 15 minutes, even at cap.

As I said above, they are rare drops. I've never had a Silver quarterstaff drop for me (although they do drop). I've had Adamantine, Byeshk, Cold Iron and Flametouched Iron quarterstaves drop. However, it's been several months since I've seen a metallic quarterstaff drop for me.

[stoerm]

Yes, quarterstaffs (staves?) are too much weighted toward arcane properties. Please make them more likely to have metalliic properties (silver, adamantine, cold iron).

[Forgeborn]

A good solution (at least on the qstaff side,IMHO) would be to add a metallic base to qstaffs (silver, cold iron, adamantine, etc) so you could at least create decent beaters via cannith crafting and not depend on artificers so much.

Those actually exist, even outside of randomly generated stuff

Either way, they're extremely rare, sorta like threaded/studded handwraps, so you can't really rely on em. Second though, you have the 'blessed silver' quarterstaves from the DDO store, which can be deconstructed and recrafted into a bossbeater, if you're really hard up for a bossbeater, I believe they were like 200 TP, bound to character though.

Randomly generated quarterstaves can have metallic properties. Unfortunately they only appear as a very rare chain end reward for Deleras and Threnal. (Some people have claimed other p2p quests/chains, but I've never seem them drop elsewhere.)

Deleras is the best bet to go to farm these quarterstaves since Threnal has three drawbacks:
1) No one likes to run Threnal so you'll probably solo the whole chain and if you're going to solo either one of these chains, Deleras is the easier and faster of the two.
2) You can easily screw up the flagging for the chain, thus waste at least 30 minutes (but usually alot more) by resetting the flagging.
3) No one likes protecting Coyle for 15 minutes, even at cap.

As I said above, they are rare drops. I've never had a Silver quarterstaff drop for me (although they do drop). I've had Adamantine, Byeshk, Cold Iron and Flametouched Iron quarterstaves drop. However, it's been several months since I've seen a metallic quarterstaff drop for me.

The underlined part is 'optional' so to speak, you only need to do one of the sides, and the lost excavation, you can skip east by disbanding west, or west by disbanding east, south has to be done every time.

[Chai]

Whoever created the crit system obviously did not study martial arts or have any melee weapons education whatsoever. They created an arbitrary system for slashing weapons where curved weapons crit more but for less mulplicitive damage 18-20 x2. If its straight and has a blade, 19-20 x2 and if its blunt, 20 x2. Once they started making specialty weapons they began to deviate away from that, but most blunt weapons still crit only on a 20 even if they are x2.

All plate armor should have DR #/blunt. Warhammers and maces were the best weapon to combat foes in plate. Make it 3 + the plus value of the armor. +5 full plate would be DR 8/blunt.

Giving alchemical weapons stunning +10 as well as the removal of autocrit took away the last bastions of any reasons for any optimizer to ever make a blunt weapon build. You mean I can stun with my khopesh like I can with a warhammer? Brilliant.

[Chai]

Leave them alone.

They have their niche. Not every two-hander needs to be as powerful as the Epic Sword of Shadow. They just have to be useful.

Remember games like Ultima VII? Remember the Black Sword and how it was the ultimate weapon in that game? That's just how things work. Every game has an ultimate weapon. You don't have to demean its glory and value by making blunt weapons better. Just go out and get your own sword of shadow and be happy with it like everyone else is.

Yes yes, I remember that game well. Its not a bad cookie cutter, it just doesnt make cookies with alot of surface area to decorate.

[LightBear]

It would be nice to see these things more useful.

My characters only carry the bunt they have for skele beaters and a everbright for ooze and rusties. I have no other reason to use blunt weapons.

Muck is so close to the IQ and he disagrees.

(Dr: Glass?)