Can anyone please tell me where the stats are for this? The core book has a picture of one but it isn’t listed under axes, as far as I can see.
It is a single-bladed northmen-style battle axe. Many northern-style axes were of the bearded type, other regions had crescent-shaped heads or double blades. It is only a matter of style, fashion, looks in Conan as the stats for such a weapon don’t resolve the differences mechanically.
You can find “bearded throwing axes”, too, those of the Francisca type. This is a bearded axe intended as a ranged weapon.
The online character generator often gives you a “bearded axe” as a starting weapon, but it isn’t given stats in the core book - or in any other book I know.
The mystery is, that I couldn’t find from which book’s starting equipment table the entry “bearded axe” might have originated to find it’s way into the online generator.
Yeah I looked for that too but couldn’t find it. I guess I had just resolved to use the battle axe stats anyway; I was just curious to see if any source book had it listed. On a side note, I am not aware of any historical examples of the double headed axe from the medieval period onwards, only from ancient history. Was this a thing during the Middle Ages? I know it flourished as a motif in the artwork of various Bronze Age cultures and even appears in the archaeological record of BA weapons. Also, now that I think about it, I can’t really see any advantage to having a double headed axe. After all, you can only use one of the heads at any given time, right? Is it a weight/inertia thing? But for that you want the weight to be in the leading edge surely? Conversely, I understand that the point of the bearded axe is to make a lighter weapon which still has the surface area of a larger weapon on its leading edge. Just wondering.
1 Like