And I apologise, I misremembered that video.

It’s all right. Pretty entertaining one, that.

Dug it up just for you, though. :)

Thanks.
I’d take a video featuring weapon demonstrations over flowers any day.;-)

I’m sure a saif would manage.

Cool. What were they made of?

The weapon of choice for a Cavalrymen (Pre-Gunpowder) was the Lance and keep in mind that the large, fast and heavy charging horse does most of the damage.

But did the Turks also use lances?

double-bladed axes do not exist outside of fantasy.

Wait, what? Since when? I think a lot of loggers would disagree.

Wait, what? Since when? I think a lot of loggers would disagree.

Okay, modern ones yes, but not battle/war-type axes, and only rarely outside of symbolism

Saifs were made from steel.

Oh okay.

Yes, yes they did

Those lances probably looked a bit different from those used by jousting knights, right?

Well yeah, the real fancy weapons were used more for ceremonial purposes than practical war ones.

Sacrificial daggers, anyone?
Also, there was a triple-bladed axe in that video – Awesome but Impractical!

I was talking about the Turks. What I meant was that their lances probably had a different design than those of your medieval European guys (France and Britain and so on).

If you’re talking early Men-at-Arms the Lances would have been about the same size and length. If you’re talking later Men-at-arms then yes the Man-at-arms would have a much longer, heavier and thicker Lance.

Could you maybe tell me where the distinction between “early” and “late” is (as in which century)?

Also, Jousting is an organized, regulated sport.

Meaning that the lances were made to just knock someone of his horse, as opposed to killing him as well as the unfortunate fool behind him. Right?

Now I ask a question, because Western technology isn’t something I’ve had much experience with.

In terms of application, were battle-lances sharpened or capped like spears, or were they designed for point-bludgeoning force like the padded jousting lances?

Yeah, Jousting Lances were ‘safed’ if you will.

Thought so.

For the purposes of this argument Early is from the 1100’s to the 1300’s. Mid is from the 1300’s to the mid 1400’s. Late is from 1444 to the 1580’s (1699 if you count the Polish Husaria)

Oh okay.

Around Hastings they were basically spears, since they were designed and intended to be used more than once.

Reminds me of the spears used by the Carthaginian infantry (Hannibal’s army). Those were huge – something like 3m long – with very sharp tips. Also, IIRC, the spear-wielders were the only natives in Hannibal’s army; all the other men were hired Gauls, Celtics, Nubians, what have you.

Since they were intended to break on impact there wasn’t much point to adding a metal head to a one-shot weapon.

Yeah, but the Romans made one-shot spears with metal tips, didn’t they? I read somewhere that this was on purpose – you throw your spear and kill/injure someone/screw up his shield and then his mates are unable to use your own weapon against you.

It depends on the Pilum.

Oh okay.

Hmm, if you were a knight, say, a medieval knight, and you had to choose between a mace or an axe, which one would you choose and why?

Your enemy is wearing plate armour, by the way. If they were wearing chain mail, a sword would do just fine.

Hmmm, you have a very good point there, Wulf. :)

Oh really? I didn’t know that and I sure didn’t get that impression from the earlier comments about axes (first page of this thread, someone asked whether double-headed axes exist outside fantasy).

Thanks!

Well, from the videos I saw (and here I’m treading on thin ice), the plates that make up the armour doesn’t actually seem that thick; maybe 1cm thickness on average? 2cm maximum. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say plate armour could easily be as thin as 0.5cm. I’m not sure, I’ll have to check with my history classmates. However, arrows can pierce through plate armour.

.... Therefore, a mace would be generally better than an axe against an armoured foe, and would do just as well against an unarmoured foe.

Wow, that was extensive. Thank you, Taku. :D

I think you mentioned this before, but where would swords fall in that classification? Under clubs, I assume, because they’re basically a very, very thin club. And how do rock/spear differentiate from club?

In my system (which is suspiciously similar to the Chinese martial arts system¹), I use ‘rock’ to classify thrown or projectile weaponry, because a rock used in melee is basically a tiny club, whereas the single most common projectile weapon before arrows was river rocks and occasionally lumps of wood. Prehistoric settlers used to stockpile river pebbles the right shape and size for effective throwing, and evidence suggests they were used with great effectiveness against enemies, predators and prey. Even after the advent of arrows, rocks were still used a lot, because they are so readily available.

Swords generally fall under ‘club’, because of the way they are held, as well as their size. Some clubs can be held two-handed and thrust forward, but spears cannot be effectively held one-handed at the end, and can only really be thrust forward (unless you combine two weapon types by putting a slashing blade on the end of a spear, which is a step upwards from what we’re talking about right now).
In my opinion, the only time a sword will fall under the ‘spear’ or ‘long’ weapon category is in the renaissance half-sword grip. Otherwise, the grip and range of motion between the two classes are just too different. A sword with an extra-long handle and a shorter blade becomes a spear, and a spear with a very short pole becomes a club. One possible exception would be the greatsword variety, which are more like spears with sharpened sides than like traditional swords/short weapons.

¹ In kung fu, weapons are divided into four categories, ‘short’, ‘long’, ‘flexible’ and ‘thrown’. Short weapons include all kinds of clubs, swords, knives and so on, long weapons include poles, spears and such, flexible weapons include whips, rope darts, rope, chains and so on, and thrown weapons include anything you can hurl at a target with any kind of consistent accuracy, including darts, throwing knives, arrows/crossbow bolts, small rocks, bullets and so on.

Yes indeed. You’re getting the hang of it!

Maybe not the wisest idea. You should have at least asked us for our sources, first. :P A lot of what I’ve said is common sense and personal experience/anecdote, so you can’t really use me as an academic source. Especially if your teachers come looking. (Hi, Mr. Eade!)

Go to thearma.com and check out their resources. They are a knowledgeable source you can reliably reference in an essay.

Something not ceremonial. Really, if a sword was not effective, than I wouldn’t use it, and you wouldn’t find any examples. However, while people may think the sword was a multi-purpose weapon, they tended many were specilized. For example, viking age swords did not face much armor, so they tended to be thin and broad, with a profile designed for cutting, but not very “durable” when fighting armor. Early medieval swords adapted to thrust better, and fight armor, while maintaining effective cutting ability. Later medieval swords faced more armor, mail first, than plate, so designs adapted for this. Sheilds dissapeared as armor improved to allow you to “wear” your shield, and giving you two hands to manipulate weapons. Than with pike and shot formations, large swords start dissapearing, and as guns become more prevalant, armor dissapears as well.

tl:dr There is no such thing as the “Best” sword.

Arer you talking about European two-handed swords? Because the Chinese dadao/great chopper is a two-handed sword. The Japanese katana is a two-handed sword.

TheArmourer says it well, sword types were often highly specialised and therefore judging best is difficult. The katana is good at very fast, powerful slashes and cuts, but the French longsword is better for thrusting and stabbing and manoeuvring around plate armour.

Of course, but I was focusing on the relative merits of the swords, not of the class of warrior as a whole. The advantage of range gained by arrows, spears, javelins and other long-range or projectile weapons means the the sword is only really a consideration if the enemy gets too close.

No worries, I might have said the same thing.

At any rate, I am in a perpetual state of annoyance that so many historical fiction/fantasy books overlook the grace and power of an elegant hand-carved ironwood club. All of the weapons in my world are either wood or stone-tipped because of the limited technology, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re less effective. One good tap with a New Zealand patu on the head is enough to seriously injure you, as well as affecting your balance and coordination. A single strike (to the right target) with a proper Samoan tafesilafa’i can knock a person unconscious or even kill them.

Clubs are far too underappreciated

The Samoans made some wicked weaponry with the local ironwood.

Best part is, they have throwing clubs.

Throwing. Clubs.

:mind is blown:

Love you guys :)

Aww.
hugs

Are you talking about European two-handed swords?

No. Any two-handed sword, because the character it’s going to belong to isn’t from our world. Obviously it will resemble some type of sword IRL, which is why I asked, in order to give some level of realism to it.

The katana is good at very fast, powerful slashes and cuts

Sounds like the fighting style of the MC in question; a former torturer who is now a good guy whose usual opponents include a lot of immortals who can heal. Therefore he repeatedly hacks at them to keep them down. When he’s fighting a normal, he opts for either killing him/her as quickly and cleanly as possible or just knocking them out – depending on the situation. Also, he doesn’t use the sword/s unless as a last resort.
However, I’m a little wary of putting a katana in a story, because they’re used ridiculously often.

That is a beautiful and effective looking weapon. : )

Yes, it is.

Throwing. Clubs.

Ouch...

The claymore design was influenced largely by the local culture of ‘big and powerful’ over ‘small and fast’

Because these are Scots we’re talking about, after all. Subtlety is not their strong point. :D

D:

One cannot use a sword as a saw. They don’t work like that, unless you are instead using a saw for a sword. Saws need to be serrated to have any impact. The edge of a sword would not cut through anything tougher than flesh with any kind of finesse. Certainly not neatly enough for potions ingredients, let alone skinning an animal. A knife, maybe, but swords are not sharp enough, and are generally too long and broad for delicate etching-work. Granted, serrated swords could be an interesting development, but there is a reason you won’t find one around; they are far too difficult to make and maintain, and they generally would not be as effective in multiple-aggressor combat as a smooth-edged weapon.

And I object strongly to the presence of a BFS ( with runes!) as your main character’s WOC. Not only terribly, terribly cliche, but simply unimaginative and boring. It also runs the risk of becoming a Deus Ex Machina or a Magical McGuffin, especially if it has magical abilities.

Lastly, swords are not very effective as beheading unless under very strictly controlled circumstances (and then, they are usually too heavy to be used in actual combat). An axe would be better, but you would still need to tie your victim to a solid, unmoving surface like a chopping block. Otherwise the force gets dispersed too much, and while you may wound or kill, you won’t actually behead or dismember. A sword sharp enough to do that in a fast-paced battle situation would not keep its edge for very long.

In short, I highly recommend you re-think your approach. You are straying far too close to the realm of shoddy DnD-based trashfic for comfort.

Kind of off-topic, but I always wondered whether the pretty knives/swords used by elves in Lord of the Rings were actually practical for anything:

SWQ: yes, very practical. It was based most likely on some of the middle Eastern or later Chinese designs, like the saif, talwar, willow-leaf sabre and the Song dao. As with any one-sided slashing/chopping two-handed polearm (pudao, halberd, poleaxe, naginata, glaive, etc), I tend to think there’s a problem when you have to either partially let go of it or cross your elbows over in order to swing from the other side (with any grace, fluency or power), but it’s certainly an effective design. Good for unarmoured opponents, I would think. Quick but powerful circular slashes to exposed tissue such as the neck, abdomen and arms.

As for whether Tolkien describes the swords, he might well have somewhere, but I think for the most party the movie weapons were the creative interpretation of the WETA designers.

Another non-sword I particularly like:

Simple, unadorned, but extremely practical. A Japanese weapon, evolved from oars that were used as improvised weapons during pirate attacks. I don’t really like the aesthetics of the kata, but as Japanese weapons go it is really nice.

alas, I don’t really know enough about it to write an article. Maybe one article about the benefits of non-swording weapons and how they’re largely overlooked in fantasy, but not an article for each type of weapon.

Sure, why not? I’ll add i to the list.

Maybe I’ll do a short piece on it, entitled “Don’t Panic! Coincidence Isn’t Always Plagiarism”. A short, sweet PSA about people like me who used to be paralysed with fear that someone, somewhere had the same idea as me.

ANYWAY.

Back to weapons!

I want one of these so much. It’s an Amu’amu paddle/club from Samoa.

Um, I thought it was really easy to use a bow competently. I’ve shot targets with a bow (I think it was a long-bow) and while my arrows were off the mark a little and I didn’t pull the string back hard enough (I was only in year 5 – 6 back then) but I’m sure with a little bit of practice you could be really capable of using a bow.

Maybe?

That reminds me, maybe I’ll take up archery as a sport.

Um, I thought it was really easy to use a bow competently.

That actually depends on the person. Some people have a natural ability (and it sounds like you’re one of them :) ) and can pick up a bow and, with a little coaching, be very good archers. I’ve also seen that done with firearms, too. However, for most people, archery is a skill that requires a lot of work. I took archery as a PE course in college, and even after three months, there were people in my class who could not consistently hit the hay bale, let alone near the bull’s-eye.

Also, not having large boobs helps.

So true! ;)

^That’s very true.

is not really feasible for a real situation.

Since when has there ever been a real situation in the modern society where archery comes in really useful? :)

^Fair point. But you said ‘real situation’, so I just naturally assumed you meant in real life. Sorry, my bad.

it’s another thing entirely to read about an untrained conscript killing almost 200 armed and trained soldiers with a single spear and without rest.

And it was my favourite scene.

I could laugh for days about that bit.

it’s another thing entirely to read about an untrained conscript killing almost 200 armed and trained soldiers with a single spear and without rest

Was that in Sword of Truth?

Also, Taku – I hear you, man. Guess I just wanted the weapon to stand out from the other boring-but-practical ones. But still, there’s a diffrence between a Magical Macguffin and a DEM, wouldn’t you say?

If you want a weapon to stand out, make the wielder stand out. Not by performing impossible feats, but by being good, or noble, or honourable, or inversely, by being shockingly cruel, evil or ignoble. People don’t really remember Hrunting because it was a sword; They remember it because it was Beowolf’s sword, and he (attempted) to do great things with it. Mjolnir is only memorable because its owner was a God, and Excalibur is only remembered because King Arthur was its master.

Nope, Inheritance. Eldest, more specifically.

Sorry, I got it confused with the scene in SoT where Richard “Our Hero” Rahl uses a super-sharp magic sword to kick 30 highly trained soldiers’ asses – even though he has almost no experience wielding said BFS. Also, as far as I know, the sharper a blade is, the more dangerous it’ll be to the wielder as well. Unless the wielder is Darth Maul very good.

Mjolnir is only memorable because its owner was a God

Gonna disagree with you there. It was a magic hammer that could always hit its target and also return to the hand that threw it, and it was made by dwarves – using stuff like the footsteps of a cat and the beard of a woman.

Taku, I really like that distinction.

Me too. I was going to do that anyway, but still – good advice overall.:-)

archery in combat against a living target is much more difficult than archery against a target on straw. It’s easy to loose an arrow at a target, and even become fairly accurate with not all that much practice (far less than with a spear, for instance). It’s the moving target aspect that people have to train a long time for.

I guess I’m one of those weird people that are the opposite of the norm. XD

If a target is stationary, I have Issues hitting it consistently. If, however, the target is moving, I almost always hit it where I want to hit it. Most other times, I hit it, but not in the place I wanted to, though still fairly close. This holds for both archery and shooting.

It might have to do with how near-sighted and motion-sensitive I am. XD

Also, I feel inspired to write an article on hunting after reading this thread. And I’m still wondering whether the serrated knife thing Thea proposed was in reference to finishing off the kill or cleaning it. In both cases, it strikes me as impractical because for finishing, you’ve got the whole weapons change thing which is pretty dangerous unless the fight was on-on-one, and for cleaning, serrated knives suck. The only people who use serrated knives to clean kills are those who don’t know better.

Serrated knives are easy to dull and not so easy to sharpen. They also tend to snag on things like tough bits of connective tissue, and they require a sawing motion to be most effective. A nice, smooth, sharp knife with a narrow tip and slight curve to the edge is best for cleaning and skinning kills. The tip is used for working the knife into places, the curve makes slicing apart tissues easier, and the sharpness makes an already fairly easy task much easier since you can skin an animal by quite literally just peeling the skin off, once you get it started.

/ends early morning rambling

Serrated knives are easy to dull and not so easy to sharpen. They also tend to snag on things like tough bits of connective tissue, and they require a sawing motion to be most effective. A nice, smooth, sharp knife with a narrow tip and slight curve to the edge is best for cleaning and skinning kills. The tip is used for working the knife into places, the curve makes slicing apart tissues easier, and the sharpness makes an already fairly easy task much easier since you can skin an animal by quite literally just peeling the skin off, once you get it started.

As an ex-chef, I agree completely and wholeheartedly.

This is pure supposition, but I suspect it might have something to with muscle tension and inability to be “steady” when aiming at a stationary target. If you’re trying really hard To Aim Properly while the target is still, your body gets all tense and you have less control. If your muscles are staying loose while aiming at a moving target, you’ve got more control over yourself.

As a practitioner of both kung fu and tai chi, I agree completely and wholeheartedly. To add to it, in my style of kung fu we focus a lot on close-quarters touch-reflexes. You can’t use touch-reflexes if your arms are tense, because you’re not able to feel changes in energy or position nearly as easily. Secondly, if you tryy to hard to get a strike in, you telegraph and tense and make it much less effective, so your opponent who is relaxed can easily recognise it and deal with it. A punch that is trying to hard and thrown with tension is much slower and less powerful than a punch thrown with intention and relaxation (tensing upon impact, rather than through the delivery).

If you’re not focused on winning, that’s when you tend to win, in my experience. None of my many medals were won because I was singlemindedly focused on winning, but because I was having fun and enjoying myself.

if your character is supposedly very skilled with guns, don’t have them waving them around or pulling fancy tricks with them or not having the safety on or otherwise not treating them with the respect they deserve as a deadly weapon.

This. A thousand times, this. Goes for every other weapon, too.

Yesterday I got my hands on an unsharpened yang tai chi dao. It gave me warm fuzzies. I’m going to buy one, seeing as I’m learning yang tai chi and eventually plan to learn the dao form.

Hmm.

Well, female athletes aren’t usually all that busty anyway.

bustiest of Amazons cut off one breast to make it easier to shoot

No, they didn’t. They burned it off.
Left one, to be precise. Also, they all did it; not just the busty ones.

Sucks to be them.

Actually, it would suck even more…
sunglasses
...to be one of their babies.
YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I had to.;-)

Thanks!
:-)

Ooh.

So why’s the blade wavy? I would have thought a straight-edged blade would be more efficient/easier to make, but I’m assuming the waviness is more than just for decoration, right?

Oh, that makes sense. If you’re not fighting against metal armor, then that wouldn’t be as big of a deal, I guess.