Many Weapons

Weapons are a key aspect of combat in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). The Player's Hand Book for 5th edition happens to have a table of base D&D weapons on page 149 in a neat table [see figure 1]. As extensive as this list is, it might be lacking for a campaign. We can actually draw from pages 273–279 of the Dungeon Master's Guide that speaks of how to create custom monsters.

Figure 1: Weapon List

How can tips for building monsters be useful? One has to cherry-pick the ripest fruit from such a tree. Most of the steps aren't directly usable, such as challenge rating, damage immunities, and the like. What is usable is the concept of modifying preexisting monster stats. (Dungeon Master's Guide, Step 3, g. 274). Using figure 1, one could play with statistics of weapons, change the name, and have the players be able to use them.

For one NPC type I made a boar spear i.g. With it this type of guard could wield it with one hand or two hands, along with causing both slashing and piercing damage. My inspiration came from the History Channel show "Forged in Fire" season 3 episode 7.

I took the versatile trait as well, as that refers to the item being both one-handed and two-handed. (Boar Spear). For the slashing damage I gave 1d8 slashing damage with one hand and 1d10 slashing damage with two hands. For piercing damage it is 1d10 with one hand and 1d12 with two.

The reason I gave it so much options for attack is that weaponized boar spears could do slashing or penetrating strikes. If a weapon is versatile I think it should be allowed multiple attack types. This goes to game master preferences, but I'm not opposing to say a player stabbing with their sword so it counts as piercing damage rather than the usual stabbing damage, or striking with the hilt to cause half bludgeoning damage.

Whatever you do be sure to test the weapon out with some practice rolls, which will give an idea of power. If you don't have the time for that then just use the same damage rolls as other weapons in the weapon list.

Hopefully this helped get the creative juices flowing.

Works Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Player's Handbook. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

The Boar Spear. Forged in Fire. Host. Willis, Will. Outpost Entertainment, 4 Oct. 2016. History Channel.Television.