How do you flavour you weapons?

[ominak]

When I ask this, I mean when you use a weapon, how does it look? For example, my hand crossbows are attached to your forearm-wrist area, and are fired like how spider man shots his webs, and your hands are free to grab stuff, reload the other hand crossbow you are duel wielding, etc
So, how do YOU flavour your weapons? How do you flavour your current/previous character’s weapons? I would love to know!

[Unoriginal]

When I ask this, I mean when you use a weapon, how does it look? For example, my hand crossbows are attached to your forearm-wrist area, and are fired like how spider man shots his webs, and your hands are free to grab stuff, reload the other hand crossbow you are duel wielding, etc

That's not flavoring, though. You're adding mechanical benefits to the weapon.


Flavoring weapons is great (and I like doing it as a DM), but if it modifies how the weapon work then it's not flavoring.

[ominak]

That's not flavoring, though. You're adding mechanical benefits to the weapon.


Flavoring weapons is great (and I like doing it as a DM), but if it modifies how the weapon work then it's not flavoring.

i dont want to start a argument about hand crosbows, but they have the light property, and that why i thint that they can be dule weilded. anyway, what are some of you favoret flavoring of wepons? any charictor spesific flavorings?

[GooeyChewie]

i dont want to start a argument about hand crosbows, but they have the light property, and that why i thint that they can be dule weilded. anyway, what are some of you favoret flavoring of wepons? any charictor spesific flavorings?

The thing that is a mechanical benefit is making your hands free to do other things. That part does go beyond flavoring.

I tend to flavor my weapon to whatever suits my character. For example, my clerics will often have their deity’s emblem worked into their weapons somehow. It might be worked into the filigree, or embossed on the business end, or (with DM permission) enchanted to appear as a glowing spectral symbol when I strike.

I once had a Silver Dragonborn Ancients Paladin who claimed his weapon and armor was made with precious metals mined from goldfish and silverfish. Of course, that was nothing more than a fishing tale, though some of his other boastful claims were actually true. (Fisher background.)

[Psyren]

That's not flavoring, though. You're adding mechanical benefits to the weapon.


The thing that is a mechanical benefit is making your hands free to do other things. That part does go beyond flavoring.

+1
If you wanted to make a pair of custom hand crossbows that left your hands free I would probably let you do that, but it would most likely require a quest of some kind.

OT: My go-to weapon flavors are things like eastern weapons, like turning a halberd into a naginata or a greatsword into a nodachi or a whip into an urumi. I never liked the idea in previous editions of eastern weapons being "exotic" and needing a bunch of extra bandwidth to remember how they're different when a simple reflavor would do.

[kazaryu]

how do you flavor your weapons
in the blood of my enemies, obviously.

seriously i think the only reflavoring of equipment i've done, specifically, is that I replaced a clerics shield with an old school censor. essentially they carried around an incense burner on a chain that they could light as an action. the smoke combined with some handwavy divine magic mumbo-jumbo is what caused the +2 to AC. obviously the censor also functioned as their holy symbol.

[ominak]

The thing that is a mechanical benefit is making your hands free to do other things. That part does go beyond flavoring.

I tend to flavor my weapon to whatever suits my character. For example, my clerics will often have their deity’s emblem worked into their weapons somehow. It might be worked into the filigree, or embossed on the business end, or (with DM permission) enchanted to appear as a glowing spectral symbol when I strike.

I once had a Silver Dragonborn Ancients Paladin who claimed his weapon and armor was made with precious metals mined from goldfish and silverfish. Of course, that was nothing more than a fishing tale, though some of his other boastful claims were actually true. (Fisher background.)
cool. what is a filigree?

[ominak]

just to share my own, i had a fighter who's greatsword looken like an exicutioner blade

[Witty Username]

I have a mace on my bard that is a jester's poll by description, at least when it is not in flametongue mode.

[Trask]

Describing a longsword as a katana is one I've done before. For whatever reason my group isn't really into refluffing weapons though, we tend to take the descriptions more strictly. I remember once a friend of mine was playing a life cleric with a mace reflavored as a scimitar, and we teased him about it always. "Oh your scimitar-mace, one of a kind." Not sure why now that I think about it! Just feels a little too much like playing pretend I suppose (the irony of saying that is not lost on me)

[KorvinStarmast]

That's not flavoring, though. You're adding mechanical benefits to the weapon.
Flavoring weapons is great (and I like doing it as a DM), but if it modifies how the weapon work then it's not flavoring. +1

in the blood of my enemies, obviously.
I add some cinnamon and turmeric, usually.

[GooeyChewie]

cool. what is a filigree?

Filigree is fine metalwork, often used as decorations. In this context, the filigree would appear on the guards and pommels of weapons.

[RSP]

I like to have some flavor to weapons, but really enjoy stuff like Pact Weapons, Shadow Blades and Spiritual Weapon, where I can really dig into why said magic is forming in this specific way, in this form. It’s a little tougher to reflavor mundane weapons so much as they’re usually starter stuff, or a magic something you found (in which case why am I deciding what it looks like?). Though I have had “art work weapons” that I’d ask the DM if my PC could buy (like a 200 gp rapier, for example). In those cases I’d explain what the value was from.

[Dalinar]

Not a weapon, but functionally similar: owing to my Warlock's backstory where he spent a lot of his youth in sewers, his eldritch blasts are bolts of sewer water. Really great for taking arrogant villains down a peg :)

Also had a PC make a whip out of some chains and a cursed dagger. We were in a dungeon with a lot of incorporeal undead and we were lacking on magic weapons that would be effective against them, so that let me pass my magic longsword off to another party member (and before you ask, I had seen what that cursed dagger did to the NPC who had last owned it, and I was NOT gonna handle it raw haha).

[Bohandas]

I would imagine that adding salt or vinegar would make the wounds more painful

[Mastikator]

I once made a character with daggers flavored as cats. (a swarmkeeper who had a swarm of cats and threw cats at people)

[Leon]

On Tasty weapons I have had a character who used legs of Ham as weapons because that was what was on hand.

My Armourer Artificer was very Ironman themed so had functionality mimicking the repulors and chest arc reactor (Telekinetic Push and Ligntning attack respectively) and the armour was effectively at the Ironman Two suit case stage. Would have liked to do a Mandalorian themed Artificer as-well with the Artillerist.

Always entertained the idea of a character with a great club themed as a big solid staff (Inspired by the Warstaff in the Diablo D&D handbook)

[Skrum]

i dont want to start a argument about hand crosbows, but they have the light property, and that why i thint that they can be dule weilded. anyway, what are some of you favoret flavoring of wepons? any charictor spesific flavorings?

They can be duel-wielded, but they can't be duel-reloaded. They have the loading property, and it takes two hands to load. So....fire your bows, but then you have to put one down/away to load.
========
My favorite bit of weapon flavor I did was a character that grew up in a town that had been historically plagued by vampires. The whole culture of the area was about fighting vamps, and the favored weapon was a morning star (which traditionally have a wooden handle). These guys would hide a stake under a pommel attachment. Fight with the morning star like normal, but if need be, the bottom could be taken off for a wooden stake.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Not a weapon, but functionally similar: owing to my Warlock's backstory where he spent a lot of his youth in sewers, his eldritch blasts are bolts of sewer water. Really great for taking arrogant villains down a peg :)


Similarly, my emo goth warlock's patron was a unicorn, so all of his magic was tinged with flowers and tinkly bells, much to his disgust.

[Phhase]

I'm fond of reflavoring bow type weapons (cross or otherwise) into mechanical, spring-driven rifle-like weapons, reflavoring the bolts as "rails". No real mechanical benefit (in fact, it makes the weapon susceptible to rust attacks, if one is uncharitable), but gives you some cool sniper vibes.

[Oramac]

I played a Hawkeye Fighter once and flavored all the Battlemaster maneuvers as "Trick Arrows". That was quite fun to describe.

More often, I'll describe a weapon/armor/shield in a character driven way, though. A mace is a mace, but its colored and wrapped in the colors of my deity, for example. Or the shield is painted with the face of my god. Perhaps as a Dragonborn fighter, my sword's hilt is wrapped in dragon leather from a different (enemy) dragon. Things like that.

[Elenian]

I played a brass genasi (mechanically warforged) wildfire druid who wore salamander scale armor and whose fire bolts were swarms of burning dragonflies.

My arcane archer was roughly modelled on Arjuna and the Indian mythic epics, so the arcane shots were fluffed as astras.

And I had a tabaxi armed with a macuahuitl, although I don't recall what mechanics it actually used.

[Monster Manuel]

my clerics will often have their deityÂ’s emblem worked into their weapons somehow. It might be worked into the filigree, or embossed on the business end, or (with DM permission) enchanted to appear as a glowing spectral symbol when I strike.


I also do this for my Divine casters, but I find it can push you into a gray area between "flavor skinning" and "mechanical benefit" when the question of whether the diety's holy symbol embossed on your shield can act as a divine focus, and since you can present your holy symbol without having to explicitly hold it in your hand, since it's on the Shield or the Mace you're already holding, is that an exploit?

RAW it works, because the description of the Holy Symbol focus in the PHB equipment section says that the holy symbol can be held, worn visibly, or stamped on a shield. The other spellcasting focus items don't make that distinction. To be safe, I will generally require that the cost of the holy symbol is added to the cost of the item it's etched on...just scrawling a symbol on your shield in crayon won't cut it.

It means this is more of a mechanical issue than a simple re-flavoring.

I often reflavor the weapons on my Artificers, to make them more in-line with their artificer focus, especially with my Warforged artificer; I describe them as integrated into their form, inspector gadget style, but they are detachable and visible when "stored", so it stays well within the realm of flavor text and not mechanical change; the dagger is clipped into my forearm, rater than tucked into a belt.

I also get pretty creative with arcane foci; I've used a feather quill as a "wand" for a scribe wizard. My minotaur Evoker pirate used a belaying pin as a "rod" for his arcane focus, and tended to use it as an improvised weapon to smack people with. He also had a Broom of Flying that I re-skinned to look like a fisherman's bill-hook. He didn't ride it like a witch on a broom, but it would hook him by his belt and carry him around, aligned vertically not horizontally, so he could hold on with one hand. It was a little goofy.

[Sindal]

I'm playing a bugbear monk currently
So my weapons are currently: my legs.

Humorously though
I had managed to nab some greaves that give me an extra 1d6 if cold damage in unarmed hits.

This means that my legs currently count as a frost imbued mauls. (2d6+dex damahe per hit)

A frozen maul with reach (bugbears got long limbs)

I've told my dm atleast once "I finish him off by kicking them over and Elsa stomping his neck"