A weapon fit for slaying dragons and huge beasts

Dragons have to rest, feast and what not.
Agonize a dragon and it will retaliate, not flee

Coat the weapon in some sort of poison so it can't fly away once it has been struck

Maybe an enchanted sword that was made to cleave through dragon scales and was forged by a man who had an extremely deep hatred for the beasts? Or are you avoiding magic items entirely?

Have two birds harass the dragon and force it to land. Something to grapple it, giant dog? slime? and a really long spear to stab it

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gáe_Bulg

Halberd or pollaxe.
You'd want axe blade for lightly armored targets, backspike for heavy armored and long center spike to keep fuckers at bay.

But you if you want to hunt dragon, just shoot him with the cannon or capture him with harpoons and metal webs. There is really no point to fight elephant in melee.

Drillspear. Powered by magic or clockwork.

If you're high magic, a hammer enchanted to massively amplify and carry the force of the strike.

You land a heavy blow and shatter the dragons bones and rupture its internal organs while leaving the scales and teeth and other valuable bits more or less intact.

I like the idea of a big, fuck-off chisel/pick/hammer to crack through the scales.

Small cannons.

Well what is the defining characteristics of a dragon?
The more common media is:
Flys more then short distances
Armoured
Breathes fire

So you would need some sort of ranged weapon unless it is stupid enough to fight on the ground or you can get it caught in a tight enviroment.

Its armoured so your projectile would either need to be blunt to get concussive forces through the armour but that is un-areodynamic; or a very fine point made of very dense material to punch through but then that would be the equivalent of pinpricks.

Finally you would need fire proof sheilding that can quickly be moved around so you can track a moving target and so the operator/weapon doesnt get damage.

If your needing this to be a single person operation and moveable then your pretty screwed.
Really you need a ballista seige weapon but even that is easily damaged by fire and hard to move.

If they cant fly or only for a short period then a crouched lance (a combat lance not a jousting lance) from horse back into one of its legs/wings. Climbing picks to reach its neck or head, then an auger to breach its spinal column. Thats if it doesnt roll over and crush you agaisnt the ground

Gunlance is the best weapon

Why are you assuming dragons are indestructible tin cans?

Have you bought into the powercreep that's been happening over the last 40 years?

Remember when people could kill dragons with swords?

Well, how do you want the feel of your story? Berserk and Monster Hunter are very different in tone.

Realistically, you're restricted to polearms and ranged weapons because the injuries you get from a huge ass dragon will put you out of a fight. Swords are generally for fighting human-like things. A lot of things will also depend on how your dragons work.

From a writing perspective, different weapon types have different associations. Swords are the default main character weapon, bows are handed to the female party members for stupid reasons, that type of stuff. Maybe look up some myths for inspiration.

Or, what I'd recommend, work on the myth of the weapon. You can do it regardless of weapon type, and it will probably give you the inspiration needed. Look at the Fatalis or Magala weapons, shit's dope.

As I said, im going off the recent depictio s in popular media; so yes im 'buying into' the power creep.

Ok if a sword can peice a dragons scales (on a thrust or a slice?) Then flying is still an issue, a large arrow or bolt with poison or alcemical charge would be the choise then, though the added weight would make it harder to hit with.

Looking at the origins of the dragon slaying idea is also interesting.
One of the earliest (or The earliest) depictions is of Saint George from the Catholic faith. Often depicted with a spear on horse back but then the dragon is generally depicted as the size of a crocodile (proberly the origin of the story) not 10x the size of a person

To be honest, if a dragons armor is roughly on par with plate the biggest problem is how much meat it has to it.

Katana

FF-style Dragoon. Give him a halberd.

Something like this, maybe make the haft detachable depending on what he's fighting?

go with polearm or go in the grave

Shield with fire protection enchants and heavy axe with piercing stabby bit.

I have just the thing

Ornstein had the right idea.

Have polearms gone too far?

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Polearms can never go too far. Depending on how magical or technical your setting is, and how fueled by Rule of Cool it is, you could go for something like
suggests, focus on penetrating the scales and blowing it the fuck out with a magical blast or something once you've got something through there, or do the same thing with a Barret .50 style spear, because damn.

Make the character use a large pile bunker. Have it be large enough to serve as a quasi shield for blocking blows or debris or fire and use the action part to quickly blow a hole in the dragon.

A big Bloodborne stake driver would be pretty incredible for killing dragons, and you could build the shielding around it like pic related.

>a weapon for slaying huge beasts

Your fists.

That's just a halberd with a sword on it though.

One thing I see is that people talk about is how to get the dragon through its scales. A good part of the body of a dragon is not covered in scales and would bring down s dragon down not only temporarily but permanently; the wings.

Flecette bombs that turns wings to leather spaghetti. Throwing spears with really jagged serrated points that tie down so if they are pulled out, they are taking a good chunk of wing flesh. Acid pots that eat through flesh maybe not instantly but to.prevent regeneration of the wings if your dragons are as good as frogs or lizards at regrowing.

If you can ruin a dragon's wings enough that it cannot easily get out of a pit or some type of trapping terrain, you can be assured its not going to fly away and you have to start tracking it down again.

This is basically assuming your guy can handle dragons in the ground and not depending on instant kill weapons.

I'm with Shoot yourself at it with a ballista, or trebuchet or something. Punch right through its ribs.

Few of these options are possible with just one man, though. If I was one man told to bring a dragon down I'd have some sort of explosive spear throwing device that I could shoulder mount like a bazooka, blow them apart and it should interfere with its ability to fly. Then you have the problem of dealing with it when it's on the ground, and maybe you don't have the prep time to put together a trap large enough for a dragon as just one man. I like where you're going with it, though.

OP specified Berserk plus Monster Hunter, so we're assuming the one man in question is not a regular person by any definition of the word.

We can safely consider massively oversized weaponry and one-man artillery cannons.

A giant fuckoff hammer. Bash and beat the dragon until it dies of internal bleeding. Make it clear the weapon is useless against humans. Maybe he carries a sword for fighting people. One side of the hammer is sharpened into a pick, to pierce soft tissue.

If this is like Monster Hunter, then bash the monster's head in with a hammer. Every dragon is just a head with obstacles.

Wings would probably be packed full of blood vessels, so punching a hole in them would ruin a dragon.

Polearms are probably your best bet, allowing you to stay at range from the beast/make sure it can't attack you from beyoond your range, and it contains some very powerful striking and piercing weapons.

First question is, do you want a shield or not? Against physical attacks thrown by a dragon it won't be of much use, but a light but large shield, covered in something fire resistant, might help with flame breath. Preferably something without a strap, so you can throw it away once it catches fire. Carrying a shield does limit you to just spears however, as most polearms need 2 hands, if only for leverage. Still, a 8 foot pole with a pointy end is not a bad weapon.

If you go without a shield hwever, you can go for some fun toys. The most basic is the pike, which is a spear, only twice as long. boring, but surprisingly effective. Then there are dozens of variations of "like a spear, but with hooks/spikes/crossguards/etcetera attached (pic related). one favourite oddball of mine is the awlpike, which is a 6 foot spearhaft with a 3 foot long metal spike on top. It's essentially a rapier on a stick. If you want to kill a dragon, push the tip beond it's scales and drive all of the spike between it's ribs, i can guarantee you you will hit something vital.

One of the characters I've played is a warrior who uses a bow, a sword, and a spear, all of which have the general shape of a winged spear-head. In his culture, certain prey demand certain weapons, and using the wrong weapon is a big taboo.
He says "Animals are slain with arrows. Men are slain with swords. Monsters are slain with spears."
At one point he fought a guy from his village that was killing children, and stabbed him with an arrow, which was just a huge "fuck you" to him.

right in the voolnerables

Oh yeah, sure, but how are you going to throw it with your toes?

He could always go the Shadow of the Colossus route, where the knight in question is trained in free-climbing and physical agility so he can scale the dragons and attack their weakspots.

I always found that style of dragon slaying far more interesting than building some impossibly massive weapon to crush its head in.

>these beta spears

Git gud.

Of course, there is more to life then simply stabbing, so people have been trying to combine the functionality and reach of the spear with big two handed striking weapons for centuries. Two of the most succesful combinations are the halberd and the lucerne hammer. A halberd is a spear with a big axe head on on side and a hook on the other, whille a lucerne hammer is a spear with a big spiky hammerhead on one side and a thinner spike on the other. Whiile the specific design difers, not just between individual smiths but also troughout the centuries these were in use, many of these have a very long spike in top, to make it more effective as a spear. Some cruel bastards even added small spikes to the side of the head, so there is literally no safe point to get hit with.

Fuck Spears, fuck Polearms. This is for pussies. A real dragon slayer uses a good (prefarably magical) long sword to jump on the beast's back. Plus, you can use it one or two handed, as needed. Yeehaw!

I think the problem with that is if the dragon decided to just roll on the ground and crush him. It's not something brought up in SotC, just because the monsters are so slow and inflexible.

Go for the Guts style, but with a glaive instead of a FUCKHUEG sword.

Have a glaive as your main weapon. Rely on it when the fucker is on ground.

Have a light bowgun and shoot piercing arrows to dragon's vital organs, eyes, wings etc.

Have a hammer/pick to get the scales and leather after you hunt it.

Javalins,they are sorely under representated in media. Perhaps the protag carrys a few of them, each slightly different.

>Dragon swoops low
>protag hurls a wieght javalin into it's wings,suddenly the dragons balance is all fucked up and it hits the dirt.

I'm too lazy to go into all details but maybe he carries to more with unique traits for other factors in a fight. Something about javalins just scream ancient hero to me,like something an old mediteranian god would use.

>Fuck Spears, fuck Polearms. This is for pussies. A real dragon slayer uses a good (prefarably magical) long sword to jump on the beast's back. Plus, you can use it one or two handed, as needed. Yeehaw!
Gee those dragons sure fly high. Howwami gonna get on above it????

Holy shit is that a warpick someone used? Throw me a bone and tell me where that is from

this, has a dragon scale shield too.

This, iberians pierced armored knights from side to side with javelins, it's ridicuolously OP

Slay it in its cave, grasshopper. When it's in the air, your spears are not very useful either.

Harpoon launcher. And then you climb the rope.

I thought it was a hilt and this was some weird kind of rapier

>Often depicted with a spear on horse back but then the dragon is generally depicted as the size of a crocodile (proberly the origin of the story) not 10x the size of a person

In the Golden Legend (a medieval text describing the lives of saints), it takes four ox-carts to pull the dragon out of the city, which suggests it was considerably larger than a crocodile. Medieval artists weren't great with scale at the best of times and sometimes depicted things as smaller or larger for symbolic reasons, not because they were literally small or large.

It does says he uses a spear to defeat the dragon though, and that he was on horseback.

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Granted. But personally I prefer it when giant monsters move like that. Makes them seem less like living action scenes and more like forces of nature.

Poison and cunning

My brother from another mother.

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