I Wish 1000/1000 weapons didn't exist

[Pizzasgood]

So in otherwords you want people's hard work over many years to master sword-handling to account for a small edge over more normal people?  Aside from the cap-issue of course, because in real life you can never cap out, though you could approach an asymptote.  When I'm in shape, I consider myself to be moderately fast.  Should Olympic sprinters have a slight edge over me, or should they leave me in the dust? 

I understand that you don't want people to feel pressured to hit max levels, but that can be dealt with in other ways, such as making the high levels much harder to attain and having their impact diminish, but somebody twice as skilled should definitely have a major advantage.  What should keep ordinary people from "mastering" it is a combination of large amounts of work, very high caps (if any), lesser affect, and other things to do.  You wouldn't need to be maxed out to fight, unless you want to fight other maxed out people.  You don't go out and challenge a karate master when you only have moderate fighting ability and expect to win.  Besides, why shouldn't people practice and hone their abilities?  If you want to be the best, you need to do the work.

[emeraldfool]

Face it: RPGs can't be realistic.

In real-life, you cut someone with a sword, no matter how much 'endurance' they have, and they convulse in pain, fall to the ground and bleed to death, whether you just found the sword a few seconds ago, or have been training for 20 years.

Fights are won by the first person to make a decent hit, which is dependant mostly on luck. And no matter how 'skilled' you are, you can't compensate for inferior weapons or armour. But almost contradictorily, a person with a broken toothbrush has maybe a 40:60 chance of killing someone with a broadsword. That's the way life is.

Fighting with lethal weapons in RL just isn't fun. That's why most people don't do it. There's no such thing as 'special agents' that can kill a hundred grunts without taking a scratch. An active special forces operative has a life expectancy of about 2 years or so.

Now you can have realism, or you can have fun. Which do you like?

[Nikodemus]

You do realize you don't know what you are talking about in most of your post? ;P
There are answers waiting on you on this forum and what you just said, was said already and arguments was brought.
In short, you are wrong and this has been proven.

[emeraldfool]

You do realize you don't know what you are talking about in most of your post? ;P
There are answers waiting on you on this forum and what you just said, was said already and arguments was brought.
In short, you are wrong and this has been proven.

Proven how? Sure, the army invests a lot in training because it's been proven to help people to kill - their reactions are sharper, and their technique is more comfortable.

That doesn't prove that a 'newb' with 3 sword skill and 3 Light armour skill could be absolutely creamed by a veteran with 80 sword and 80 Light armour.
Yet that is a staple of RPGs. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to severly damage or kill someone by cluelessly swinging a rusty dagger at them, no matter the 'skill' involved.

Sure, I could kill a fully-trained, fully armed SAS man with a screwdriver given the right circumstances. He could be distracted, drunk, on drugs (both supposing he's off-duty), sick, diseased, injured or anything else that an adventurer in Planeshift might have occur. In order to make combat realistic, you have to account for all sorts of factors, not just 'skill' and equipment.

[Zan]

In dueling and with two fully armored opponents ... you're not very likely to hurt someone with a dull blade when you're unskilled. Your examples are modern ones where we don't bother to wear protective clothing anymore. On equal ground when it comes to equipment and physical condition, skill matters gravely. Luck becomes a large factor when the skill of both opponents are relatively close to one and another.

If we want realism there is no way a short sword or dagger will stand up against a longsword though, let alone a claymore. You'd be slashed, pierced and gutted before you get within range.

[Datruth]

In dueling and with two fully armored opponents ... you're not very likely to hurt someone with a dull blade when you're unskilled. Your examples are modern ones where we don't bother to wear protective clothing anymore. On equal ground when it comes to equipment and physical condition, skill matters gravely. Luck becomes a large factor when the skill of both opponents are relatively close to one and another.

If we want realism there is no way a short sword or dagger will stand up against a longsword though, let alone a claymore. You'd be slashed, pierced and gutted before you get within range.

It's all about skill, You can't tell me that the longest swords always won against the average sized swords.

That's not true.

A medium sized sword actually works better than those big 2 handed swords held by medieval knights.

A Good example of this sword is the Katana, versus let's say your longsword.

A Skilled Katana Master, and a skilled Longsword Master, would ultimately lead to the Katana masters win.
How do i know this? The Katana flows alot easier, and is more than long enough and strong enough to do what the master wants.
While the longswords is alot more bulky and limits movement of the master to a few slashes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So i understand if you say, a Dagger beating a longsword is very very hard, yet very easy in game.

But you can't act like Longswords are the end all be all.

I'd actually take a short sword, anyday, to a Longsword, or maybe a Broadsword which is about the same size as a katana.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a nice picture of the weapon i'm talking about


~~Datruth

[Zan]

Length matters, if you ever sparred with weapons you couldn't disagree with this.

I beat your short sword or katana with a simple broomstick with ease

I'm not saying that the longer the sword the better in all situations ... throw a shield in and the entire equation changes, dual weapons .. same thing. One on one the longest weapon has the advantage as long as the person knows how to wield it somewhat.

Your discussion of Katana and longswords is a bit off since they are practically equal in length. A katana is not a japanese short sword, a wakizashi is. Between a katana and longsword it would depend on the combat skill and armor type. Heavier might mean less maneuverability but it also means more speed and strength in a swing.

Also please next time don't insult me with showing me a picture of a simple katana .. who doesn't know what a katana is nowadays?

[Parallo]

Who doesn't own a Katana these days?

[Zan]

I don't .. I only own three crappy reproductions

*drools while dreaming of an actual handcrafted katana*

[Mindari]

pretty picture though

[swordsbane]

Point of interest, armies started using the spear because it didn't take a lot of skill to use and reduced the edge highly 'trained' men with swords and axes and such had.

That having been said, one of my primary beefs with any discussion about weapons in combat is people frequently forget that battles between armies require different training than duelling.  If you had an armored knight against an unarmored man who used the florentine style of fencing, my money would be on the fencer, every time.  He may not win every time, but I give him at least a 70%.  You put a hundred fencers on the battlefield and put them up against a hundred knight on foot with their armor, my money would be on the knights.  The reason why swords got lighter as time went on was that heavier blades were slower.  When everyone ran around in armor, this wasn't a problem, but as armor began to loose its advantage (against crossbows and later, gunpowder) mobility was more of an equalizer.  Fighting on a battlefield has way more dynamics than a duel.  You've got formations, friends, enemies, differences in terrain, in numbers.  All of these affect how you fight.  In a duel, you've got you, and yoiu've got the other guy, you're both on the same terrain usually and you're usually in a controlled field that limits distractions.  A lot of the random factors are cut down and you can concentrate on the fight.

Also a hundred peasants with spears have a good chance against cavalry, but I wouldn't give you twenty cents for the chances of one peasant with a spear against a cavalryman off his horse.  Spears, axes, swords... whatever.  Length matters, but not that much.  The determiner is skill.  I've had enough fights with different weapons to know that your chances of winning are most affected by TWO things, knowing how to use YOUR weapon, whatever it is and knowing what the enemy might do with his.  There are plenty of tricks to mitigate the length of weapons in combat.  An expert knife fighter is going to wipe the floor with someone of average skill with any weapon, spear, club, sword, dynamite.. whatever.  I'm sorry, as far as the broomstick vs katana/shortsword analogy goes, if I'm better with the sword than you are with the broomstick, your first attempt to block me or hit me and you're going to pull away a much shorter broomstick.  A spear is better than a broomstick, but well trained soldiers are not just given a spear, but also some kind of sword in order to use when things got too close for spears.  The big disadvantage of any pole arm is that they are unweildy.  If you're unskilled or not very well trained, you will not realize this until it's too late and you would have been better served fighting with the same skill level with some other weapon.  Skill with a weapon is not simply being able to hit the other guy with the sharp end.  It's knowing and using your advantages while trying to limit the advantages of the other guy.  Whoever can do that better usually wins.

[John80sk]

er, what most everyone else is saying here

Training matters, look at what happened when the 4 seals took on some 800 insurgents.  You look through history and three things seem to matter more than anything else: tactics, training, and morale.

I also took a number of weapons training classes, I've seen people take down opponents with staffs using their bare hands, length of the weapon doesn't matter.

[Datruth]

Length matters, if you ever sparred with weapons you couldn't disagree with this.

I beat your short sword or katana with a simple broomstick with ease

I'm not saying that the longer the sword the better in all situations ... throw a shield in and the entire equation changes, dual weapons .. same thing. One on one the longest weapon has the advantage as long as the person knows how to wield it somewhat.

Your discussion of Katana and longswords is a bit off since they are practically equal in length. A katana is not a japanese short sword, a wakizashi is. Between a katana and longsword it would depend on the combat skill and armor type. Heavier might mean less maneuverability but it also means more speed and strength in a swing.

Also please next time don't insult me with showing me a picture of a simple katana .. who doesn't know what a katana is nowadays?

1) Your wrong

Equal skilled longword, equal skilled katana, Katana wins every time.

2) That picture wasn't soley for you, the universe revolves around us all, and you might want to remember there are others here who don't know what a katana looks like.

3) Anyone who thinks a broomstick can easily beat a katana hasn't studied japanese history.

~~Datruth

[swordsbane]

1) Your wrong

Equal skilled longword, equal skilled katana, Katana wins every time.

2) That picture wasn't soley for you, the universe revolves around us all, and you might want to remember there are others here who don't know what a katana looks like.

3) Anyone who thinks a broomstick can easily beat a katana hasn't studied japanese history.

~~Datruth

Depends on what you mean by equal skill.  A samurai was taught to a far greater degree of expertise than most who knew how to use a longsword.  On the other hand, if you mean both have an equal understanding of the capabilities and limitations of their own weapons, then there are going to be several factors involved in who wins, not just length or weapon or the fact that the katana looks cooler than the longsword.  If I knew how to use a broomstick better than katana-boy knew how to use his sword, I'll probably win.

There are a lot of factors involved in who wins a fight.  Length of a weapon AND skill are both factors, but an idiot in possession of the finest sword the world has ever known can and should be defeated by an expert in fighting with plastic sporks.  I will always bet on training more often than what kind of weapon is being used.

I have sparred with weapons... lots of them.  I used to teach.  Nine times out of ten, the best man won, not the best weapon.

[Zan]

*ignores Datruth's glorification of the katana*

Of course training matters but it also takes time and effort, the more training you've had the more effort you need to improve. Changing weapons to gain strategic advantages over your opponent does not take any effort, providing they are present.

Skill only becomes the deciding factor when there is a rather large difference. Of course I'm not talking about completely untrained people here, they should be holding mining picks instead of swords Any fighter has picked up enough skill at one point or another to stand a fighting chance though .. then it is my opinion that the determining factor becomes the weapon. Even more so when we move away from dueling and into actual battles.

Either way skill is already taken into the Planeshift equation, in my personal opinion a bit too much ... I'd like to see weapon types gain substantial advantages over other weapons and armor. Eventually other things that have been mentioned like morale or terrain could also yield certain advantages and disadvantages.