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[Neonivek]

It is probably their size. I mean, scale down a flail and you get something quite tiny.

[Dynastia]

War flails aren't very big to begin with. The head is usually smaller-than-fist size and they tend to only have two or three chain links, so it's more of a hinge action than the proper ball & chain that you see in fiction. Those would be more likely to smash your knuckles, cave in your own head or cave in the head of your allies than actually kill an enemy.

I think the main thing is that flails aren't very dwarfy. They evolved from agricultural tools, so for a culture to really get into flailing they had to round up a bunch of levies who used flails, notice that the flails did some awesome damage, and be impressed enough to create metal weapons modeled after them. Dorfs are just way too industrial and not agricultural enough to be big on flailing.

And as for elves thinking threshing is evil, I've bought flour from them. But their "ethical" methods of processing plants aren't described, so who knows. Maybe they pick the grains out by hand.

[JohnieRWilkins]

Real discussion:

Would fantasy ball&chain theoretically be the hardest hitting weapons? Providing the end ball is massive enough, a soldier could apply a constant tension force on the weapon and accelerate it all the way to the target easily, or spin it above their heads to an enormous tangential velocity. I guess it'd be sort of like a slingshot in principal. Whereas "fixed" weapons could only be accelerated to a maximum velocity allowed by the crappy girlish arms and joints of the soldier. Plus joints of soldiers work just like the chains in the ball&chain anyway, except the mass at the slashing end of the weapon isn't distributed favorably enough. Axes use this mass distribution principal to strike harder than swords, ball&chain would in turn be better than the axe due to having more mass behind the contact point.

[Dynastia]

Theoretically, yes. But in practice you'd never land that perfect skull-shattering blow. It's unwieldy to the point of uselessness. If you're in any sort of cramped, crowded or distracting conditions (like, for instance, a battle) then there's pretty much nothing you could do with it that wouldn't endanger yourself and your allies more than your enemy. Also, it's stupidly big and heavy ; you'd tire yourself out within minutes. A pair of chainlinks is really all you'd ever want to connect the ball to the handle, so that it works more like a hinged mace. Any more than that and you've got a stupid novelty, not a weapon.

[blizzerd]

military flails are closer to cepters then to swords as to the practise of useage, they where more a status symbol, not an actual weapon

flails as a farming tool have been used in history as a weapon, even studded with metal or buit for weapon purpuses, but the typical ball of spikes with a chain roughly equal the length of the handle it attached to is not a weapon at all

[Bohandas]

TBH i dont see the point of gwarves not being able to make flails.
Flails are heavy lumps of metal on a chain.
And they menace (and actually hurt things) with spikes of "insert your material here".

This sounds like a very good point indeed.

[Marshall Burns]

The only (I mean only) reason to use a flail is that the chain wraps around people's guard, making it extremely hard to defend against. Aside from that, it's a rather sub-par weapon. And that's a feature that DF isn't currently equipped to implement.

[Dynastia]

For fantasy ball & chain flails, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cep_bojowy_0211.jpg

This is what actual war-flails look like.

[Bohandas]

For fantasy ball & chain flails, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cep_bojowy_0211.jpg

This is what actual war-flails look like.

So they were actually more like highly asymmetrical nunchaku than like the way flails are depicted in cartoons...

[Dynastia]

Usually. They didn't always look like that. They could be more symmetrical for one-handed use, nearly identical to nunchucks, but used differently. The clubbing part was often more rounded, like a stereotypical caveman's club, and didn't always menace with spikes. It could be banded, weighted with a heavy core, studded, spiked, all of the above or none of the above. Or it could be the metal ball we're used to, with or without spikes (usually without). They could even be the cartoonish ball on a long chain (or several smaller balls on long chains), but those were incredibly rare, and probably only used in tournaments and hung on walls as decoration. Which makes it kind of annoying how all manner of fiction seems to think the long-chain variety is the only flail, instead of an incredibly useless novelty version. Just like how every game designer save a rare few seem to think "warhammer" means "sledgehammer, except bigger".

[Granite26]

It looks good in the art...

[Bohandas]

Just like how every game designer save a rare few seem to think "warhammer" means "sledgehammer, except bigger".

According, to Wikipedia, that is actually an accurate description of a Maul, which is a specific type of war hammer. I think that the real issue is more that any other type of war hammer, such as a Lucrene Hammer or a Bec De Corbin is more likely to be referred to by its actual specific name instead of by the more generic term 'war hammer'.

[Starver]

I.... want gravity....  in that one image....

Given that's a snapshot of flail actually in action I could imagine there being gravity.  But only if inertia had been taking a bit of a holiday.

(Unless that's why stocky dwarfs wear huge amount of plate-mail, to prevent them swinging themselves in orbit around an impossibly massive lump of metal. )

[Marshall Burns]

For fantasy ball & chain flails, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cep_bojowy_0211.jpg

This is what actual war-flails look like.

Yes, yes, I know. But the same goes for those. Aside from their ability to wrap over guards (which you can do no matter how short the chain is, as long as you're trying to do it), there's not much going for them. They're unwieldy -- it's relatively difficult to be accurate with one, and it takes a relatively long time to resume striking stance after a strike.

Ok, ok, and they also send almost all of the striking force into the contact area -- with a solid-handled weapon (sword, spear, axe -- pretty much anything that isn't a flail), a portion of the force is always communicated back along the handle and into the wielder's arm. Due to the chain/thong (however short) of a flail, only a miniscule amount of the force does that.

[Dynastia]

@ Bohandas.

Interesting article. I knew that archers sometimes used mauls to hammer stakes and as improvised weapons, but I never knew they were actually stocked in armouries like real weapons. I always thought a maul was a wooden woodcutting tool, only very rarely used in battle. I think it's still highly overrepresented in fantasy, though.

@ Marshall Burns

Yes, it's not a great weapon by any means, but you forget the main reason to use one ; it's easy to outfit large peasant levies with them. A medieval farming village would be guaranteed to have enough scythes and flails for every able-bodied person to work during the reaping season, and the flail would be a better choice than a scythe or a wooden pitchfork.

If they're added to DF they should either be an early-game weapon made at the woodcrafters, for before you get your metalworks up and running, or a threshing tool needed to do threshing jobs (like the axe or pick for woodcutting and mining) which can be carried into battle when needed.