Rapier Guards

[Korias]

Me and my friends have a question converning Rapiers.

Now, it is known that Rapiers used to have certain handguards that could catch your opponent's blade and snap it, and certain rapiers could split in two.


First question: When snapping an opponents rapier, and the snapper fails to sunder the rapier, does the opponent get an AOO to stab the snapper's hand?

Second Question: If a player is using the rapier that splits apart, what is the likely hood his fingers will be stabbed, as they no longe have the full protection of the handguard?

[kpenguin]

Unfortunately,hand guards and the like aren't covered in the abstract combat system of D&D

Question 1: Sundering provokes AoAs before the attempt, not after.

Question 2:The character no longer has the weapon when sundered, but since a weapon usually doesn't confer AC, then nothing else happens.

[Arbitrarity]

Due to a lack of realism in the system, there is no damage from a rapier snapping on you. If you wish, you can house rule something in.

[Vyker]

While those are good questions, generic D&D isn't well suited towards answering them.

Part of that is because there's a lot of weapons which have nifty traits which, for whatever reason, aren't represented by their D&D counterparts.

Part of that is because that's a bit more in-depth than D&D is normally willing to get. Saying "I sunder his blade" could mean you sundered it with your rapier, with the guard, or by simply grabbing it out of his hands and snapping it like a twig ("Thok smash puny pokey!"). How it works is up to you, and that's a perfectly valid outlook.

If I were DMing, and the sunder question caught me on the fly, I'd say this:

"+2 to your Sunder check (if your rapier is mastercraft or better)." I might throw in an additional requirement to keep it modestly balanced with other weapons, such as...

"...if you can pass a Sleight of Hand (or Dex or somesuch) check with DC equal to your opponent's attack roll."

Or...

"...if you can make an attack roll against a DC of your opponent's attack roll."

Or something.

However, if not on the fly, and my players wanted to do that stuff, I'd turn to a friend of mine who's our resident weapon guru and ask to see his homebrew rules on weaponry. Not only does it list the li'l traits which D&D forgets, but it also has rules for the qualitity of individual parts of a weapon. So in this case, a well-made hilt/guard might very well be suited to sundering, whereas a poor one... not so much. The ability to customize your weapon isn't really necessary in most of our games, but for those that it is... oh man. Ohhhh man. It's so worth it.

[kpenguin]

Houserule is the friend of DMs and players everywhere.

As for customized weapons, I believe that a WotC article mentioned a houseruled-in a spiked shield with hooked spikes.

[Runolfr]

First question: When snapping an opponents rapier, and the snapper fails to sunder the rapier, does the opponent get an AOO to stab the snapper's hand?

No. The attempt would simply fail. The defender may have gotten an AOO against the attacker before the sunder attempt, but not after.

Second Question: If a player is using the rapier that splits apart, what is the likely hood his fingers will be stabbed, as they no longe have the full protection of the handguard?

The weapon being used in a sunder attempt is not considered to be at risk, as far as I know. If a rapier were itself sundered, it would become unusable, but there would be no other effects per the RAW; the exact details of what damage a sundered weapon has sustained are not important.

[SpiderBrigade]

Just to clarify, when you mention a rapier that "splits apart," are you referring to one that has been sundered/broken? Or are you referring to some sort of custom weapon that by design separates into two pieces?

[elliott20]

at first I thought the thread title was "raper guard", which then I thought to myself, "well now that's just inappropriate".

man, I should get some sleep.

[Fhaolan]

Me and my friends have a question converning Rapiers.

Now, it is known that Rapiers used to have certain handguards that could catch your opponent's blade and snap it, and certain rapiers could split in two.

Not quite, though it's a common misconception. It is actually very difficult to deliberately snap a rapier blade. They are tempered steel, and can bend quite well and then return to their regular shape. Rapier blades can break because of poor quality manufacturing, a flaw in the steel itself, bending an extreme amount, or repeated flexing of the blade on a single point. It is very poor planning to rely on your opponent having bad steel in their rapier, the amount of bend necessary to break a good rapier in one go is extremely high, and any opponent who just stands there and watches you bend their blade back and forth is a nitwit. A good rapier can be bent to have the tip of the blade touch the pommel and be perfectly fine. In order to break it, you have to bend it even further than that, turning the blade into a spiral shape. Even with the leverage of a blade breaker, that requires a great deal of strength on behalf of both combantants, and again depends on the willingness of the rapier weilder to just stand there and watch you do this.

Most 'blade breakers' were actually meant to trap the blade, not break it. And that trap was only meant to last a fraction of a second, the time it takes to thrust your own blade into your opponent when he has no ability to parry.

For the second part, I'm not aware of any split-blade rapiers. I have seen split-blade main gauches, but I've never seen one that works more than once. The mechanism that allows the blade to split is relatively delicate, and the hinge is a serious weak point. Once used to trap a blade, the hinge is usually bent slightly so that the main gauche needs to be repaired before it can be closed up again.

The weapon specifically known by the name of 'weaponbreaker' looks like a giant comb, is far more robust, but it's still used for trapping blades, not breaking them.

[Closet_Skeleton]

And this is why *** made the Combat Expertise feat.

Sundering is a very badly designed section of the rules. Snapping is closer to the break DC of an object while sunder is actually dealing damage to a weapon. A sunder attempt could just be forcing your opponent into an edge on edge parry.

[the_tick_rules]

there was a rapier with a basket hilt somewhere, complete adventurer or warrior. gave a +2 against being disarmed.