Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Long Swords.....two handed weapons?!?!

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I confess to being a bit confused. I'm an old, old, OLD-SCHOOL D&D player (1st & 2nd Editions back between the mid 80s to mid 90s), & back then the progression of bladed weapons went Dagger (1H)-->Short Sword (1H)-->Long Sword (1H)-->Bastard Sword (1H/2H)-->Great Sword/Two-handed Sword (2H). Yet now I see that Long Swords in BG3 are 2 handed weapons. Is this the case in the current P&P edition of D&D, or is this an oversight by Larian?


Even if its the former, I'd love it if Larian could bring back the 2nd edition progression for bladed weapons. Just a thought.

It’s actually correct though. D&D got it wrong and everyone else copied their error for decades.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword

Dagless is correct, in reality they are 2-handed. But they have been versatile (More damage if you wield them 2-handed) weapons in D&D for a long time.

Ah, I see....so D&D 1st & 2nd Edition got it wrong, not Larian. See, this is what comes of being away from the franchise for so long . So what is the equivalent of the 2nd edition long-sword in 5th edition?

Effectively, in 5e the longsword functions like the bastard sword of earlier editions.

In reality what old school D&D called a long sword would be called broad sword, arming sword, or just a sword. These are not in D&D.

They got rid of bastard sword, since a bastard sword is a longsword, and long swords can now be wielded as a two handed weapon or as a one handed weapon as the player wishes.

Yep, I get it now. As I said, the danger of being away from the franchise for so very long. So maybe they'll have broadswords in the game? If so I haven't seen any. Then again, I've not seen a longbow yet either .

Longbows, yes. They'll start dropping eventually. Broadswords sadly aren't a thing in 5E; basically every type of sword has been condensed into shortsword, longsword, greatsword, rapier, or scimitar.

I’m not sure. I’ve not played pen and paper since 2nd edition. I was just aware that it was technically wrong and surprised to see it was changed.

PS. Did I really start a pedantic post with an “actually”? Christ, what have I become?

Sad to hear. Even if it breaks with 5e canon, I wouldn't mind if Larian got a bit creative with the varieties of weapons in the game .

Broadswords aren’t in 5th Edition, so probably not. We have daggers, short swords, rapiers, scimitars, longswords and great swords, so the absence of broadswords isn’t a big deal.

There are other "versatile" weapons in 5e, the ones you can wield one or two-handed, with different damage dice: From battleaxes to warhammers to quarterstaffs.

If you want a classic fencing one-handed sword maybe you can pick the rapier.

broadsword is just another type of longsword anyway, what he presumably means is the ARMING sword, which proably is what a short sword best represents

Sorry, but this is wrong on both accounts. A broadsword is absolutely not a type of longsword and an arming sword is nothing like short sword.

What today is typically called a broadsword is actually a name for a later style of basket-hilt sword that has been retroactively applied to cross-hilt swords of roughly the same dimensions. Historically, this isn’t accurate, but lots of the names for different types of swords are purely retroactive. What was sometimes called an arming sword, now often referred to as a broadsword, but in its day was most often just called a sword was shorter than a longsword but longer than a shortswort. Hence, why they were just called swords.

I think we'll see some! There's already at least one.



Hoping for more, for sure, though.