Scythe, war Scythe, and sickle.

[kevingranade]

These would be quite rare in the modern/future New England countryside, possibly in barns and such, but the thematics of them are too much to pass up. Also other agricultural tools, like billhooks etc

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

I can do this, easy.

Only one question before I do: Where should these things spawn? We don't have a 'barn' item group.

[kevingranade]

Sounds like we need one now, just a matter of adding a new group to the json and adding some item spawn code to barn mapgen.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

Okay, but I have no clue how to do any of that.

[NaturesWitness]

I'd suggest these also show up occasionally in hardware stores. It's not unheard of for stores to still sell these, particularly in rural areas.

[NaturesWitness]

When these go in, would anyone like me to do Heatblades for them? I could use a project that's actually in my skill range after the whole upgrade-the-kitchen-unit-PR debacle. I also heartily approve of more agricultural tool/weapons. A good addition would be the brush-hook (I have one, haven't had much chance to use it but it's been handy when I have used it). I'd also like to particularly request the Kama, I have one my dad bought from a Smith and Roebuck catalogue many years ago and it's an incredibly useful tool for clearing paths in the woods clogged with tall grasses, weeds, and bushes. I'd even say in many situations it's more useful than a machete, as against lighter obstacles like tall weeds and bushes a machete tends to just "push" them out of it's path as opposed to cutting them down, whereas the Kama slices right through them, and in addition takes far less energy to swing to do so.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

If I ever figure out how to add a special 'barn' spawn group I'll totally add these in.

NaturesWitness: If you're looking for another 'heatblade' project, have you considered the nodachi? It's already in-game and has no gas-powered variant.

[NaturesWitness]

Actually, I wasn't sure if I should do one for that one or not. From what I read about them, it's a very long, thin-bladed sword that wouldn't easily support having a bunch of gas pipes welded to it. That's why I didn't do a rapier either, the blade doesn't have enough mass to support it. It would be cool though, so does anybody else think I should do these? I'm also worried about overloading iuse.cpp with a lot of entries, as each Heatblade has to have two unique functions to work.

[kevingranade]

I'm going to look at making that unnecessary, it should be possible to just have a transform iuse method and define the transformation data in the item definition. But hard, like rubik's cube hard :D

[AnderHammer]

Flaming scythe, please.

Could these farm weapons also be crafted with a metalworking forge?

[NaturesWitness]

I kinda hope someone decides to get these made soon. I'm considering doing a Heatblade expansion to cover some of the weapons I missed before (nodachi, rapier, and I'm thinking of doing a semi-silly Heat shovel and calling it Smokey's Bane after Smokey the Bear), but I'm waiting until this is done so I can include the scythe.

Also, I'm a little uncertain on the idea of a "War scythe". A scythe is a very nasty thing to get smacked with, but almost by definition it is NOT a weapon of war. Peasant rebellion yes, but it's not something you issue to a real army. I would suggest a name like "reinforced scythe" and have it be craftable from a regular scythe, to stress the point this is not a normal tool.

Finally (and I admit this is a bit nit-picky), for just flavor purposes it would be nice if the description of the regular scythe mentioned it was a STRAIGHT handle scythe with a BRUSH blade. The straight handle thing is just so any potential crafting recipes can use a regular stick as a component, otherwise we're going to have to add steam boxes and other tools for bending wood so as to make double-curve handles. The brush blade thing is just to make this somewhat realistic, the more common grass blade is just too flimsy to be of any use against a zombie.

[kevingranade]

To turn a scythe into a war scythe, you take the blade (attached perpendicular to the handle) off, and reattach it parallell to the handle so it's more like a billhook or halberd.

[ianestrachan]

A scythe is [...] NOT a weapon of war.

Sounds like you've never met Sigmund. ( http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/bots )

[NaturesWitness]

I meant historically in RL. I know scythes as weapons are a fantasy staple, which is kinda my point; this isn't D&D or Morrowind, this is Cataclysm. We don't do wizards, elves, or unicorns here; we do zombies, aliens, and angry bears.

[kevingranade]

We also do beating zombies to death with their own shoes. Everything is a weapon, it's just a matter of appropriate stats.

[NaturesWitness]

@kevingranade I think what you said about stats was the point I was trying to make and just couldn't put into words. Most fantasy games treat scythes as some sort of perfectly balanced, razor-bladed, massive-reach weapon of doom. A scythe is not like this; it's big, it's slow, it's awkward as hell and was never meant to do battle with anything more dangerous than a particularly stubborn weed. The super-effective fantasy scythe wielded by some big brooding warlord just doesn't feel like it belongs in Cata; the slow, clumsy, yet dangerous farm implement wielded by the average guy who snatched it from an old barn and is just trying to survive in a world turned upside down is what I'd like to see. A REAL scythe is not a weapon of war, it's a tool of peace. It might be wielded as a weapon of anger, or desperation, or rebellion, but no soldier is going to strap on his cuirass, put on his helmet, and march off to the front line with his scythe on his shoulder. I think that's why the name WAR scythe bugs me, it's just not something you carry in an army.

Okay rant over.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

It may bug you, but it has massive historical precedent:

War scythes were a popular weapon of choice and opportunity of many peasant uprisings throughout history. To name just a few examples, ancient Greek historian, Xenophon, describes in his work (Anabasis) the chariots of Artaxerxes II, which had projecting scythes fitted. Polish peasants used war scythes during the 17th-century Swedish invasion (The Deluge). In the 1685 battle of Sedgemoor, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, fielded a 5000 strong peasant unit armed with war scythes. They were used in the 1784 Transylvanian peasants' Revolt of Horea, Cloşca and Crişan, in the war in the Vendée by royalist peasant troops, in the 1st War of Schleswig in 1848 in Denmark, and again in various Polish uprisings: Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, when in battle of Racławice scythemen successfully charged and captured Russian artillery. In that year Chrystian Piotr Aigner published a field manual Short Treatise on Pikes and Scythes, detailing the training and operation of scythe-equipped forces, the first and probably the only such book in the history of warfare. War scythes were later used in the November Uprising in 1831, January Uprising in 1863 and Silesian Uprising in 1921. The description of a fighting unit as "scythemen" was used in Poland as late as 1939, however the Gdynia "kosynierzy" were armed with hunting guns rather than with scythes.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_scythe

[NaturesWitness]

Wow guess I goofed on my history a bit there, I always figured they were more of a trope than a real thing. I concede the issue and withdraw my objection, sorry about that.