Raineh Daze

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

• Name: Ruins of Hauhazberg, the Mines of the Mountain Witch.
• Brief History: A recent 'dungeon', nobody's quite sure what's happened... only that a remote mining town was, several years ago, razed in a single night, with the survivors only mentioning that the conflagration came from apparently nowhere. More recently, undead have been noticed, but the place is so out of the way that few have investigated
• Layout Summary: The burnt-out shell of a town, with a path leading up to the mines that used to provide its wealth. The mines themselves are old and quite expansive, but the tunnels were built along neat, geometric lines, keeping to them when finished following a seam.
• Threats: The ruins themselves are crawling with undead, though many are burnt and altogether nonthreatening. The mines themselves are quite heavily protected by magic, with several barriers and wards around, and a few magical traps. There's fewer undead here, but they're generally much more intact than down in the town, and properly armed for conflict. Then there's the person behind all this...

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by VitaVitaAR>

It doesn't get much lighter than three pounds. But what does the spell do specifically? The lighter you make the sword, the more we run into the problems I listed earlier. And you can't negate weight but still keep impact.

At this rate, it feels like it would be easier to find a weapon that lends itself to fighters with little muscle.

@IncredibleBee

A wizard did it.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by VitaVitaAR>

Most swords of Repharion's approximate length rarely exceeded three and a half to four pounds, and that's on the larger side. It's harder to guess without knowing an exact blade shape. Most swords aren't as heavy as you'd expect.

The real problem comes from the enchantment to make it more lightweight; "most of its weight being negated" implies it weighs as much as a switch. The lighter a blade is, the less impact it carries when it strikes, meaning that Repharion wouldn't be able to batter armored enemies- a vital tactic in armored combat. Without weight, it's also impossible to knock a blade aside or parry, meaning your defense is diminished greatly.
Slicing would also be a trickier matter without some weight to the swing. A Japanese sword, for example, is designed to be great for slicing, but they're actually thicker and therefore heavier than a European sword of the same length.

Moreover, a nearly weightless sword has no sort of feedback, which means you risk overextending and hurting yourself when you swing it. Jedi also have weightless swords, but this problem is countered by them being psychic.

@IncredibleBee

A wizard did it. Literally. Problem solved, let's carry on with having the STR 10 character having a +5 blade if you want a D&D reference. The mechanics are not important. >.>

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by Raineh Daze>

It matters to me; I've something of a fetish for medieval weaponry. And it only requires some basic knowledge in swords to answer this particular question. Since Vita's playing a swordsman, it's reasonable to assume she's researched at least a little bit about the field, so I don't think it's an unreasonable question to ask.

@IncredibleBee

It is inherently unreasonable to ask someone to have researched the weight of a class of sword that never historically existed, then have combined that range with information on the weight and balance for various styles of historical weapon, furthermore having combined it with typical strength, to have adjusted it for what a short woman would be expected to wield, and then worked out the weight for the resulting weapon with and without magic.

It's an extraneous detail that has no bearing on anything at all, and is completely without merit in calculating. The whole equation is without any actual constants. This is before the problem with the difference in weight between parade weapons and actual implements intrudes and makes everything even worse off.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by VitaVitaAR>

Yeah, but can I get some exact measurements, with and without enchantments? It's been bugging me for a while.

@IncredibleBee

No, no, you can't. It doesn't matter, and it's unnecessarily pedantic, requiring random knowledge in several unrelated fields to give an appropriate answer to.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

How much does Repharion weigh?

@IncredibleBee

Enough.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by VitaVitaAR>

I understand. I considered the idea worth merit as the two sects are very different, one aggressor and one peacekeeper, and should make for interesting inter-service rivalry. To me, it is similar to the contrast between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity which in itself is a fascinating topic and one which merits exploration.

However, keeping the paladin similarity in mind, I made sure to make the characters fundamentally different in terms of fighting style and personality. Speedster versus stone wall, snarky versus upstanding, and so forth.

@Boomrocker

It's more the difference between the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar. The churches don't actually have any theological disagreements.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by Lost Cause>

I am offering a helpful suggestion to avoid confusion over this matter in the future.

@IncredibleBee

There is nothing confusing here. A common video game design feature is not, in fact, a binding definition of the word, and people are free to use it in other ways if they want to. People can happily drop the 'always lawful good' or 'strongly religious' parts of being a paladin, and thus they are perfectly entitled to drop the magic whilst retaining the term if they so choose.

And, again, the word comes from a reference to twelve of Charlemagne's knights, and going back further a hill in Rome. "But lots of video games do it" is not a sufficient reason to lock a word to one set of abilities.

And 'people make assumptions that take one sentence to correct' is not a reason to change the term. "Paladins in this do not have magic" is not a hard thing to say if someone thinks that.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by Raineh Daze>

In that case, "Class" should be replaced with "Occupation" to avoid confusion.

@IncredibleBee

Except there's no confusion if you just look at the ability section of the GM's character. And that it's not a problem because this roleplay's been done several times before and hasn't had any issue. If words having several meanings are too complicated for someone to understand, it seems unlikely that they'll be roleplaying.

Dungeon Crawling Adventure

<Snipped quote by Raineh Daze>

In game terms, paladins are generally defined as a tanky class that relies primarily on melee combat with a touch of white magic to support their allies and boost their own longevity.
You see, historical terms are put aside for games, because it's easiest to associate names with a general set of abilities so you know what you're using. If you selected "Fighter" in an RPG, for example, and found the class wasn't very good at fighting but did have a fireball, most people would be confused or even angry.

In short, a paladin with no white magic is just a fighter.

@IncredibleBee

Except the classes here are blatantly more about their jobs. Otherwise I'd have done 'Cleric'. In essence: the classes aren't intended to be ability shorthand, but character profession.