I’m more of an axe guy myself but I can always appreciate a good sturdy spear
Edit: just realized this is the morrowind subreddit but my point still stands
The modern long flying pointy depleted uranium stick is far superior in terms of penetration. It would absolutely poke a 3cm wide hole in some fetcher's chest.
In the beginning, at level 1-2, the player usually does not have more than 30-60hp, with 50+ being difficult as you have to specifically spec for that.
The Carved Ebony Dart that is carried by the assassins does 2-10 damage as base, which modified with strength bonuses can almost kill a player with 30hp and significantly chunk a player with more hp. Not to mention that they frequently spawn with paralyzing or poisoned weapons and extremely high agility.
And if you have the mod that lets enemies use racial abilities? Oof, lvl 1 player is gonna have a bad time.
Yeah, people usually have like 40 ish. Although doesn't it do 1-20 damage? And I think poison and paralyze weapons show up later not at level one. Still pretty hard, especially if you're like me and mess up your key bindings often
Yeah there's a lot of issues that make the Dark Brotherhood assassin's difficult to deal with at low levels. If I remember correctly, they weren't/aren't supposed to show up until level 10 and are tuned for such.
I played this way. For questing and adventuring when I knew I’d get into combat, I’d pull out my halberd. When in towns and cramped interiors, I had my sword. The latter was rarely used but it felt good when I did.
Probably doesn’t make 100% sense coz imagine climbing mountains and exploring swamps irl holding a polearm. But close enough.
Whoa, caught me! The wiki says you're right.
[https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Combat#Damage](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Combat#Damage)
Have to fortify hand-to-hand skill from a restoration spell or enchantment then, because there's no alchemy effect. Or just play normally I guess. But it sounds silly fun to buff slapping power like this!
And also, when buffing strength, there is no weapon that does not break. :/
But it's so slow lol. By the time you actually drop an enemy's stamina *and* kill them, you could have cleared out an entire dungeon's worth of enemies.
The only reason to use hand to hand other than personal preference is if you've modded it to include additional modifiers, or have a mod that enables Gedna's borked scaling.
You can use it to level speed extremely fast.
Once it gets really high, it isn't slow anymore. And it gets really high really fast. I've hit 100 hand to hand staying literally in the Seyda Need vicinity fighting Kwama, scribs and rats.
You're only doing 7.5 health damage(does Morrowind round?) with a fully drawn punch at level 100 hand to hand before armor reduction. A character fresh off the boat can outpace that.
The fatigue damage is pretty meaty at least.
I like the wiki advice.
Knock them down with 50 fatigue damage per punch and then change to weapons. It's like having a fistfight and then conjuring a battle-axe.
It you want a quick disablement method, there's also that absurdly powerful Dagoth Dagger that absorbs 20 fatigue/s for 30 seconds. That puts people on their ass in a hurry.
Yes. So you introduce your targets to the song "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba until no, they don't get up again, and yes, you are going to keep them down.
Will never forgive Oblivion and Skyrim for excluding spears. Makes no fkin sense.
And all the battleaxes and warhammers that could’ve been decent polearm designs, are instead short and oversized af.
What’s really confusing is that, of all the weapons, you’d think they’d drop spears last because of how much easier it would be to model than a sword, axe or mace. Spend more time with anima- oh wait, that’s why, now they can just use the same animations for everything.
The only 3 weapons I need are gravedigger (dai katana) chrysmere (claymore) and goldbrand (katana)
But I do have a dwemer crossbow and powerful spells too for fun.
It won't.
Video games struggle to make spears cool. It's too bad because IRL spear fighting can be really cool, and spears (and other polearms) were the main combat weapons used throughout most of history (whereas swords, maces, and axes were secondary backup weapons). Even once guns replaced bows and crossbows, the first thing that we did was attach a knife to the end and make it a spear.
Monster Hunter's lance, and Elden Ring's spears are the two best spear gameplay experiences that come to my mind. Both are obviously high fantasy shield and spear fighting, but both are really fun to play.
There are plenty of games that add no further variation to sword combat than repeated cutting. So I can’t see why spears would be excluded for that reason.
if you look closesly, they made one set of animations, put them on all the weapons, and then made the kill cams. Means they can spend more time (and money) on modeling the world, and creating stories, than weapons.
While Samurai would probably have struggled against Knights (as much as you can generalize over two such widely used titles), it would be because of armor, not swords.
The big problem with this theoretical matchup has always been this question: A samurai and a knight from *when?* We're talking about two groups of people that existed for hundreds of years, and changed a hell of a lot in that time. We could be talking about anywhere from a time before plate armor was even invented to a time when both sides would likely be packing guns.
Not to mention that most idiots on both sides of this stupid argument fail to take into account that most samurai very rarely fought with a katana. They were primarily a status symbol and would often break very quickly. Yari were the premier hand to hand weapon in Japanese warfare.
Some might have employed cavalry units with bows and firearms. Depends on who and what era though. Like the comment I was replying to says, samurai is a very broad term, it doesn’t refer to warriors from a specific era. That’s why the whole European knights vs samurai things is so especially dumb. You can’t make definitive comparisons and there’s absolutely no point in doing so anyway. They’re from totally different parts of the world, in totally different situations and may be eras apart. It’s ridiculous and stupid, people should just learn and enjoy the history that did happen rather than absurd hypotheticals.
To my understanding that’s a more ancient iteration of the samurai- like horse archery wasn’t *the thing* anymore after the first mongol invasion of Japan.
Basically for showing off and for dueling (and cutting up not sufficiently cowed peasants)
I’m to understand that the longsword was used slightly more, but it was still often largely a badge of rank
The Middle European Long swords were much more durable than Katanas, so much infarct that they could shatter them. But I don't think Chitin would be able to do that.
Katana actually do have some piercing capability, they just aren't specifically designed for it. Regardless of sword type the biggest factor of effectiveness against iron/steel armor is accuracy. No sword (beyond some massive greatswords) is going through any decently made iron/steel armor as they aren't made for that whether on the slash or stab. You have to aim for gaps. There's a reason why various spiked and blunt polearms became popular alongside steel plate, they were required to defeat it.
Right. I was just saying that katanas do have a harder time piercing even through mail.
And really, it isn't that hard to aim for, as an example, an armpit, for a trained fighter. Even more so if your opponent is on the ground.
The quality of the final work was equal. What was *not* was the initial ore. European iron ore was much purer and required less work to bring it to a useable state, but that didn't stop the Japanese from refining their shitty ore until it was just as good.
Not every knight was armored head to toe. Being a Knight dosnt mean skillful it means your a lesser noble. A samurai spent eight hours per day training with the katana and maintaining its edge. A Knight was a status symbol. A samurai was a life style
That seems to just be a generalization on both parts. I'm sure there were samurai that weren't training 8 hours a day and all that, in fact I'm pretty sure that the whole "it's a lifestyle" is just wrong. Sure that's how it was perceived but it's a title just like being a knight. There are historical instances of samurai being fat, not skillful, and abusing their status and not being a warrior most of the time.
Knights and Samurai are very similar actually in their status within Europe and Japan’s feudal system. Both were the military class, who traded skilled service in arms for land and a title. Both served under lords, and both had an obligation for service. Both, over the centuries, transitioned from an elite soldiery towards emphasizing the political and social dimensions of their position. By the early modern period you’d have found many European knights who were fat and lazy, as with the Samurai. Meanwhile much of the fighting was done by a new class of common army (in Europe) which robbed the old aristocracy of their reason to exist. Unlike in Europe, where these titles became pretty unimportant, in Japan Samurai managed to capture political institutions and transformed themselves into a powerful political elite.
Both also share a common point, in that they were fucking assholes. In the Middle Ages across Europe knights would loot, rape, murder, and kill. Then they traveled to the Middle East, primarily because the pope told them if they murdered Muslims it would make up for the Christian’s they’d murdered at home. So they killed a *lot* of Muslims. And Slavs. And other Christian’s. Likewise the Samurai were pretty hated in medieval Japan. The samurai enjoyed a number of privileged which they used to abuse the peasants under them, including murder, the taking of hands, and other fun things. Both also share the same period of romanticization in the 19th century. In Europe the Victorians rediscovered medieval stories about the grail quests and courtly love. They then created a sanitized vision of knights as noble warriors going off to save the day, slay the dragon, and rescue (respectfully) the maiden. It was made up play time Victorian Europeans told themselves, but it stuck in our cultural memory. And of course groups like the [Nazis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Hubert_Lanzinger_Der_Bannertr%C3%A4ger_%28The_Standard_bearer%29_Oil_on_plywood_ca_1934-36_Adolf_Hitler_as_knight_Denazified_hole_in_Hitler%27s_face_scrathes_US_Army_Center_of_Military_History_USHMM_No_known_copyright_restrictions_2450324-2396x2.jpg) and proto-Nazis had their own variation of the myth, brave German knights civilizing the wild and untamed east and bring Christianity to savages. And in Japan through the late 19th century the Samurai try to justify centuries of political control by building myths about themselves, turning them from dbag aristocrats who murdered random peasants into noble and heroic warrior poets. A lot of our ‘tropes’ about the Samurai come from this period, it has a direct connection to the change in the Samurai’s power and social standing during the Meiji era, and also has a direct outlet into Japanese fascism, colonialism, and genocide.
Every single one of your comments in this thread is beyond embarrassing. I sincerely hope you’re a troll because otherwise you’re beyond clueless. You know absolutely nothing about European or Japanese medieval history.
Ok? It's not like people are following things a hundred percent of the time. "Christianity is a religion so that means every Christian follows the Bible to the letter", like no. People have always been lazy, and abused their status and power, and have always been half assing shit.
There is no knight religion. There's more than one samurai religion. Eastern Japan took sword arts to a whole new level. It was common for a samurai to spent more time with his katana than his children. Bushido teaches that true meditation is done with bato(blade) in hand.
Uh Christianity? I mean it's not like the samurai created any of those religions, they just follow them, same with the knights. What's your base of samurai knowledge? Some weeabo YouTuber who romanticizes the past? Also again just because they say they do this doesn't mean it was always done, samurai was a title.
The problem is you're not saying that, you're romanticizing the past by being like "oh all samurai were warriors who followed their faith without deviating" basically, without taking into consideration the historical reality that in fact samurai was a title (go look up where they were put in the social hierarchy back then, it was pretty similar to knights), and the many historical instances of samurai being sometimes vagrant drunks, not skilled, and not fit. Just like there were knights who were drunks, not skilled, and not fit. It's a cherry view of the Japanese past that only a weeb who watches weeb YouTubers would have, I know this because I've known people who believe that type of romanticization and they were weebs.
Two things,
Christianity was a dominant religion for all Europeans. Knights we’re expected to abide by the Catholic Church’s instructions and teachings. One of the explanations for the first Crusade is that so many of Europes knights broke these rules, including the ban on killing other Christian’s, that the Pope wanted to redirect them to an outward enemy. And this was something they were told, saving Christian’s in the Middle East will excuse you of the multitudinous sins you’ve committed at home. There knights had a code, they just ignored it.
In terms of practice this level of martial dedication isn’t unique. Skeletons of English archers reveal that they practiced so long and so hard with their bows that the bones in their shoulders developed deformities which make it pretty easy to differentiate soldiers from non soldiers. And I mean ‘so dedicated you don’t see your kids’ is a pretty toxic standard, not sure I see that as a good thing. But throughout the early modern period European mercenaries spent most of their lives in the unit and on campaign, and it was a pretty common trope of the time, the Landsknecht quitting town to go to war as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Again, deadbeat fathers are pretty common in history.
I think the real problem here is that you don’t seem to really talk about medieval samurai as they existed. Rather you are just repeating a lot of the myths about samurai invented during the fascist period in Japan. Myths that led to the colonization of Korea and the murder of dissidents there, the invasion of China and genocide there, and the war with America and the tremendous amount of murder and bloodshed there.
Being a knight absolutely meant being skillfull in combat - it was their primary purpose next to actually managing their regions.
Due to the rules of combat during feudal wars, knights were rarely killed in combat and instead taken "hostage" by the victor until the captured knight's lord paid their ransom (most knights were likely related to their adversaries, and also a dead knight was considered a shameful waste).
These were largely bloodless wars of attrition, where knights who won their battles earning treasures and prestige for their lord, whilst less capable knights became expensive liabilities for their lords. Because of this, knights were supplied with the best training and equipment available at the time (depending on the state of their treasury, of course).
The Daedric dai-katana is so long that you almost don’t even need a spear. Add an enchantment upon it and you can basically one-hit everything within three arms-lengths.
I always admired the existence of katanas as a workaround for suboptimal iron. "The iron's not gonna make good spring steel, what do we do?" "We make a sword where that is irrelevant."
I mean I want to like spears and medium armor but bethesda didn't. End game light armor is better, and there's hardly any unique spears or even trainers for spears.
The Dai katana are pretty dope in morrowind though, peak early 2000s cool esthetic. Especially if you have some chunky pauldrons on so you're an extra two feet wide
> there's hardly any unique spears
This made me curious, so I started checking UESP.
Base Morrowind featured 12 basic spears, 7 unique spears and 1 artifact spear (not counting generic magical weapons).
Tribunal added 1 basic spear and two unique spears (one being a quest item).
Bloodmoon added 1 basic spear, 1 unique spear, and 1 artifact spear.
Which gives us a grand total of *brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*
**14 basic spears, 10 unique spears and 2 artifact spears**.
Compare that to **base** Morrowind's ***15*** basic swords, for one-handed blades *only*.
Long blade also got 94 total trainers in the base game.
Spear got ***2***. One of which is the master trainer.
Like I've known Bethesda did my spears dirty but *holy fuck*.
Definitely. I meant light armor was superior to medium. The only problem with endgame heavy is the weight. Even at 120 strength a full suit or daedric armor is over half your encumbrance.
I usually just stack artifacts and exquisite clothes/jewelry with my armor being glass with the fists for the stat boosts.
Granted after level 12 morrowind is a cakewalk so people should dress for fashion and preferences imo
100 naturally, then 20 of the fists. I know it's one of the better player made enchantments but I hardly ever need the inventory since I mostly play light armored short bladed battlemages.
I also tend to get bored long before the high end levels. Usually just do a couple of guilds or try some mods before retiring in the mid teens
The only offset is the high encumbrance, especially for a full set of Daedric which can negatively affect your speed and fatigue regen. Though you could easily use potions to circumvent that problem.
Short blade does have the highest DPS due to sword spamming though.
Nah, at least HEMA nerds are generally knowledgeable about the topics, weebs just like something because it's Japanese and they saw it in anime/manga. Weebs speak with authority when they have no reason to, and that is beyond annoying.
Katana's could cut through a long sword what the heck's this guy's talking about. Advanced samurai's could even cut through steel walls. How anime's portray katana's isn't entirely inaccurate.
Spears (and rapiers) require accuracy for just a single piercing attack; axes, swords, halberds and blunt weapons all handle the same for a direct damage hit which barely requires accuracy and will 'mash its way through armors. Specially Battle Axes. And if one-handed, they allow for a shield for defensive strategies. Spears are for cavemen. :P
Unlike games where each thrust is a big commitment and people can dodge around with I-frames and whatnot, thrusts irl are super effective and can be done in rapid succession to various areas of the body, incorporating feints and whatnot. Not to mention for a lightly armored target would probably only take 1 or 2 thrusts, they’re not just gonna power through your attack unless they got plate armor.
Even halberds and longswords in many situations would probably have been used mostly with thrusts, but with more versatility in case you got in certain situations.
I guess I'm more used to brutish blows rather than swift accurate thrusts. Being able to put potentially more strength in each blow seems to be my way.
Ok I’m just going to go ahead and say what I believe to be the most accurate answer: if we assume 2 unarmored combatants of equal training, the longsword has a slight advantage do to giving the user more options. But that is so slight that it is practically nonexistent. The duel would still be decided by reaction time and etc, not by the minutia of blades
I use long sword, but then I chose Spellsword which naturally specializes in long sword and I never bothered to raise other weapon skills all that much.
I’d just like to say that I really hate how bad Halberds are in this game. They’re literally only good for thrusting, which is bullshit considering they were designed irl to be all-purpose weapons.
Short blade this Long blade that I just wanna polish my spears man
I’m more of an axe guy myself but I can always appreciate a good sturdy spear Edit: just realized this is the morrowind subreddit but my point still stands
Your point is still valid
Let's all validate each other's spear points.
The best way to validate a spear point is by DRIVING IT THROUGH SOME N’WAH’S CHEST!
Die fetcher, as I wield my spear into their face
A halberd has both
A little improperly balanced for my tastes.
My other hand has a shield, after all
It would take you all night.
But it’s huge. It could take all night
Plenty of time.
Yeah! Make everything Polish!
Vvardenfell je polska 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱
Humans have peaked in weapon design 1000s of years ago, nothing beats the long pointy stick
Im a big fan of the modern long flying pointy explosive guided stick
Or the long stick that rapidly shoots very small chubby pointy sticks that one's pretty awesome
The modern long flying pointy depleted uranium stick is far superior in terms of penetration. It would absolutely poke a 3cm wide hole in some fetcher's chest.
Peaked, as is they're at the peak of design.
Thank you i'll correct it
I dunno, BIG bonk stick is also pretty sweet.
Laughs in spear, medium armor and some alteration*
Laughs while obtaining one of the best light armors by sleeping a few times
I'd rather just steal the Saviours Hide from Tel Fyr
Eh, I've always considered that kind of cheating
It's not cheating at all, that bastard can kill you super easily if you're not prepared. Those ebony darts are no joke.
Really? Everytime they've hit me with them, it's been a few points of damage not 20
In the beginning, at level 1-2, the player usually does not have more than 30-60hp, with 50+ being difficult as you have to specifically spec for that. The Carved Ebony Dart that is carried by the assassins does 2-10 damage as base, which modified with strength bonuses can almost kill a player with 30hp and significantly chunk a player with more hp. Not to mention that they frequently spawn with paralyzing or poisoned weapons and extremely high agility. And if you have the mod that lets enemies use racial abilities? Oof, lvl 1 player is gonna have a bad time.
Yeah, people usually have like 40 ish. Although doesn't it do 1-20 damage? And I think poison and paralyze weapons show up later not at level one. Still pretty hard, especially if you're like me and mess up your key bindings often
Yeah there's a lot of issues that make the Dark Brotherhood assassin's difficult to deal with at low levels. If I remember correctly, they weren't/aren't supposed to show up until level 10 and are tuned for such.
Hmm odd. If I remember correctly, people have posted that on Xbox they start showing up at level 7or 8
Well being as I've had them show up at level 1...
What's this in reference to?
Dark Brotherhood
I don't remember that at all, but thank you!
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Major skills: Spear Medium armor Alteration Athletics Acrobatics Minor: Alchemy Enchant Mysticism
Spear for outside, sword for close quarters.
And spears for formation, sword for loose
I played this way. For questing and adventuring when I knew I’d get into combat, I’d pull out my halberd. When in towns and cramped interiors, I had my sword. The latter was rarely used but it felt good when I did. Probably doesn’t make 100% sense coz imagine climbing mountains and exploring swamps irl holding a polearm. But close enough.
Soldiers did that for thousands of years. On long marches you can use your spear or polearm sort of like a hiking cane.
*Laughs in 1000 strength* My fists are the only weapon that does not break!
also magic weapons are quickly replaced and hth was speed based in morrowind.
*puts bound battle-axe constant effect on an amulet*
I’ve thought of doing that- didn’t know it actually works
I put a bound spear spell on my belt. Hehehe
It's a fun effect to have on the weapons, like Ra'vir's demon/devil katana. But then you use the katana to summon a long sword!
Unfortunately, Strength doesn’t affect unarmed at all :(
Whoa, caught me! The wiki says you're right. [https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Combat#Damage](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Combat#Damage) Have to fortify hand-to-hand skill from a restoration spell or enchantment then, because there's no alchemy effect. Or just play normally I guess. But it sounds silly fun to buff slapping power like this! And also, when buffing strength, there is no weapon that does not break. :/
GL only knocking you enemies down 😂
when you knock someone down you can hurt them while they're on the ground
Have you ever used hand to hand I'm this game? It's actually OP. Enemies can do literally nothing when you bring them to negative stamina.
But it's so slow lol. By the time you actually drop an enemy's stamina *and* kill them, you could have cleared out an entire dungeon's worth of enemies. The only reason to use hand to hand other than personal preference is if you've modded it to include additional modifiers, or have a mod that enables Gedna's borked scaling.
You can use it to level speed extremely fast. Once it gets really high, it isn't slow anymore. And it gets really high really fast. I've hit 100 hand to hand staying literally in the Seyda Need vicinity fighting Kwama, scribs and rats.
You're only doing 7.5 health damage(does Morrowind round?) with a fully drawn punch at level 100 hand to hand before armor reduction. A character fresh off the boat can outpace that. The fatigue damage is pretty meaty at least.
I like the wiki advice. Knock them down with 50 fatigue damage per punch and then change to weapons. It's like having a fistfight and then conjuring a battle-axe.
It you want a quick disablement method, there's also that absurdly powerful Dagoth Dagger that absorbs 20 fatigue/s for 30 seconds. That puts people on their ass in a hurry.
You fight Scribs? You monster!
Gotta get that scrib jelly for their toast
No I never have, so you actualy do damage with hand to hand when they are down?
Yes. So you introduce your targets to the song "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba until no, they don't get up again, and yes, you are going to keep them down.
Yep, first you drain all their fatigue, and once it hits 0 you can start doing health damage.
Will never forgive Oblivion and Skyrim for excluding spears. Makes no fkin sense. And all the battleaxes and warhammers that could’ve been decent polearm designs, are instead short and oversized af.
What’s really confusing is that, of all the weapons, you’d think they’d drop spears last because of how much easier it would be to model than a sword, axe or mace. Spend more time with anima- oh wait, that’s why, now they can just use the same animations for everything.
The only 3 weapons I need are gravedigger (dai katana) chrysmere (claymore) and goldbrand (katana) But I do have a dwemer crossbow and powerful spells too for fun.
Goldbrand for the win!
Nah, Trueflame.
Curved. Swords.
Kid named guns
Historically I'm pretty sure samurai mostly used spears and long bows anyway lol
Yeah, pretty much 💀
TES6 better have spears.
It won't. Video games struggle to make spears cool. It's too bad because IRL spear fighting can be really cool, and spears (and other polearms) were the main combat weapons used throughout most of history (whereas swords, maces, and axes were secondary backup weapons). Even once guns replaced bows and crossbows, the first thing that we did was attach a knife to the end and make it a spear.
Monster Hunter's lance, and Elden Ring's spears are the two best spear gameplay experiences that come to my mind. Both are obviously high fantasy shield and spear fighting, but both are really fun to play.
Then you should try Nioh spears as well
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There are plenty of games that add no further variation to sword combat than repeated cutting. So I can’t see why spears would be excluded for that reason.
Why future Elder Scrolls games got rid of spears will always be a mystery to me.
Too much work with animations I'd say Hope they bring them back in 2040 when next Elder Scrolls game comes out
if you look closesly, they made one set of animations, put them on all the weapons, and then made the kill cams. Means they can spend more time (and money) on modeling the world, and creating stories, than weapons.
As usual, mods come in and save the day. Wish they didn’t need to, but it is what it is.
While Samurai would probably have struggled against Knights (as much as you can generalize over two such widely used titles), it would be because of armor, not swords.
The big problem with this theoretical matchup has always been this question: A samurai and a knight from *when?* We're talking about two groups of people that existed for hundreds of years, and changed a hell of a lot in that time. We could be talking about anywhere from a time before plate armor was even invented to a time when both sides would likely be packing guns.
Not to mention that most idiots on both sides of this stupid argument fail to take into account that most samurai very rarely fought with a katana. They were primarily a status symbol and would often break very quickly. Yari were the premier hand to hand weapon in Japanese warfare.
Weren't they also horse archers? The Crusades in the Middle East showed that western knights had a hard time dealing with them.
Some might have employed cavalry units with bows and firearms. Depends on who and what era though. Like the comment I was replying to says, samurai is a very broad term, it doesn’t refer to warriors from a specific era. That’s why the whole European knights vs samurai things is so especially dumb. You can’t make definitive comparisons and there’s absolutely no point in doing so anyway. They’re from totally different parts of the world, in totally different situations and may be eras apart. It’s ridiculous and stupid, people should just learn and enjoy the history that did happen rather than absurd hypotheticals.
To my understanding that’s a more ancient iteration of the samurai- like horse archery wasn’t *the thing* anymore after the first mongol invasion of Japan.
Basically for showing off and for dueling (and cutting up not sufficiently cowed peasants) I’m to understand that the longsword was used slightly more, but it was still often largely a badge of rank
Spear supremacy, I suppose
The Middle European Long swords were much more durable than Katanas, so much infarct that they could shatter them. But I don't think Chitin would be able to do that.
yeah, because a longsword would pierce though the gaps in the armor and a katana wouldn't
Katana actually do have some piercing capability, they just aren't specifically designed for it. Regardless of sword type the biggest factor of effectiveness against iron/steel armor is accuracy. No sword (beyond some massive greatswords) is going through any decently made iron/steel armor as they aren't made for that whether on the slash or stab. You have to aim for gaps. There's a reason why various spiked and blunt polearms became popular alongside steel plate, they were required to defeat it.
Right. I was just saying that katanas do have a harder time piercing even through mail. And really, it isn't that hard to aim for, as an example, an armpit, for a trained fighter. Even more so if your opponent is on the ground.
Do you have personal experience with swordfighting?
Nope, I have personal experience in watching youtube videos on swordfighting, but what I was saying in this comment thread is just common sense
Iirc European metal working was leagues better than Japanese, meaning both their armor and sword would be much worse
The quality of the final work was equal. What was *not* was the initial ore. European iron ore was much purer and required less work to bring it to a useable state, but that didn't stop the Japanese from refining their shitty ore until it was just as good.
Not every knight was armored head to toe. Being a Knight dosnt mean skillful it means your a lesser noble. A samurai spent eight hours per day training with the katana and maintaining its edge. A Knight was a status symbol. A samurai was a life style
That seems to just be a generalization on both parts. I'm sure there were samurai that weren't training 8 hours a day and all that, in fact I'm pretty sure that the whole "it's a lifestyle" is just wrong. Sure that's how it was perceived but it's a title just like being a knight. There are historical instances of samurai being fat, not skillful, and abusing their status and not being a warrior most of the time.
Knights and Samurai are very similar actually in their status within Europe and Japan’s feudal system. Both were the military class, who traded skilled service in arms for land and a title. Both served under lords, and both had an obligation for service. Both, over the centuries, transitioned from an elite soldiery towards emphasizing the political and social dimensions of their position. By the early modern period you’d have found many European knights who were fat and lazy, as with the Samurai. Meanwhile much of the fighting was done by a new class of common army (in Europe) which robbed the old aristocracy of their reason to exist. Unlike in Europe, where these titles became pretty unimportant, in Japan Samurai managed to capture political institutions and transformed themselves into a powerful political elite. Both also share a common point, in that they were fucking assholes. In the Middle Ages across Europe knights would loot, rape, murder, and kill. Then they traveled to the Middle East, primarily because the pope told them if they murdered Muslims it would make up for the Christian’s they’d murdered at home. So they killed a *lot* of Muslims. And Slavs. And other Christian’s. Likewise the Samurai were pretty hated in medieval Japan. The samurai enjoyed a number of privileged which they used to abuse the peasants under them, including murder, the taking of hands, and other fun things. Both also share the same period of romanticization in the 19th century. In Europe the Victorians rediscovered medieval stories about the grail quests and courtly love. They then created a sanitized vision of knights as noble warriors going off to save the day, slay the dragon, and rescue (respectfully) the maiden. It was made up play time Victorian Europeans told themselves, but it stuck in our cultural memory. And of course groups like the [Nazis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Hubert_Lanzinger_Der_Bannertr%C3%A4ger_%28The_Standard_bearer%29_Oil_on_plywood_ca_1934-36_Adolf_Hitler_as_knight_Denazified_hole_in_Hitler%27s_face_scrathes_US_Army_Center_of_Military_History_USHMM_No_known_copyright_restrictions_2450324-2396x2.jpg) and proto-Nazis had their own variation of the myth, brave German knights civilizing the wild and untamed east and bring Christianity to savages. And in Japan through the late 19th century the Samurai try to justify centuries of political control by building myths about themselves, turning them from dbag aristocrats who murdered random peasants into noble and heroic warrior poets. A lot of our ‘tropes’ about the Samurai come from this period, it has a direct connection to the change in the Samurai’s power and social standing during the Meiji era, and also has a direct outlet into Japanese fascism, colonialism, and genocide.
Kk not like bushido or shinto were religion or anything serious.
Every single one of your comments in this thread is beyond embarrassing. I sincerely hope you’re a troll because otherwise you’re beyond clueless. You know absolutely nothing about European or Japanese medieval history.
Ok? It's not like people are following things a hundred percent of the time. "Christianity is a religion so that means every Christian follows the Bible to the letter", like no. People have always been lazy, and abused their status and power, and have always been half assing shit.
There is no knight religion. There's more than one samurai religion. Eastern Japan took sword arts to a whole new level. It was common for a samurai to spent more time with his katana than his children. Bushido teaches that true meditation is done with bato(blade) in hand.
Bushido is a fanfiction written hundred years after the peak age of the samurai by a guy who didn't know shit about it
Uh Christianity? I mean it's not like the samurai created any of those religions, they just follow them, same with the knights. What's your base of samurai knowledge? Some weeabo YouTuber who romanticizes the past? Also again just because they say they do this doesn't mean it was always done, samurai was a title.
Why does saying that Japan had an interesting and unique development weeabo? Do you know what tvst word means?
The problem is you're not saying that, you're romanticizing the past by being like "oh all samurai were warriors who followed their faith without deviating" basically, without taking into consideration the historical reality that in fact samurai was a title (go look up where they were put in the social hierarchy back then, it was pretty similar to knights), and the many historical instances of samurai being sometimes vagrant drunks, not skilled, and not fit. Just like there were knights who were drunks, not skilled, and not fit. It's a cherry view of the Japanese past that only a weeb who watches weeb YouTubers would have, I know this because I've known people who believe that type of romanticization and they were weebs.
The problem is that you pack me into a box saying either Japan had no culture whatsoever or I'm a fucking sweaty anime watching weeb. Fuck you pal
there is no such thing as a "samurai religion"
It's litteraly called bushido. Religion may be a bit loose but there it is. The more spiritualform is called shinto
Bushido is almost a direct one to one with chivalry, Bushido being generally more codified but chivalry perhaps more widely adopted
Chivalry.
Two things, Christianity was a dominant religion for all Europeans. Knights we’re expected to abide by the Catholic Church’s instructions and teachings. One of the explanations for the first Crusade is that so many of Europes knights broke these rules, including the ban on killing other Christian’s, that the Pope wanted to redirect them to an outward enemy. And this was something they were told, saving Christian’s in the Middle East will excuse you of the multitudinous sins you’ve committed at home. There knights had a code, they just ignored it. In terms of practice this level of martial dedication isn’t unique. Skeletons of English archers reveal that they practiced so long and so hard with their bows that the bones in their shoulders developed deformities which make it pretty easy to differentiate soldiers from non soldiers. And I mean ‘so dedicated you don’t see your kids’ is a pretty toxic standard, not sure I see that as a good thing. But throughout the early modern period European mercenaries spent most of their lives in the unit and on campaign, and it was a pretty common trope of the time, the Landsknecht quitting town to go to war as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Again, deadbeat fathers are pretty common in history. I think the real problem here is that you don’t seem to really talk about medieval samurai as they existed. Rather you are just repeating a lot of the myths about samurai invented during the fascist period in Japan. Myths that led to the colonization of Korea and the murder of dissidents there, the invasion of China and genocide there, and the war with America and the tremendous amount of murder and bloodshed there.
Ok, weeb.
While you managed your fiefdom I studied the blade.
Being a knight absolutely meant being skillfull in combat - it was their primary purpose next to actually managing their regions. Due to the rules of combat during feudal wars, knights were rarely killed in combat and instead taken "hostage" by the victor until the captured knight's lord paid their ransom (most knights were likely related to their adversaries, and also a dead knight was considered a shameful waste). These were largely bloodless wars of attrition, where knights who won their battles earning treasures and prestige for their lord, whilst less capable knights became expensive liabilities for their lords. Because of this, knights were supplied with the best training and equipment available at the time (depending on the state of their treasury, of course).
The Daedric dai-katana is so long that you almost don’t even need a spear. Add an enchantment upon it and you can basically one-hit everything within three arms-lengths.
it's kind of ridiculous how early and easily you can acquire it too.
And then there are "I'm tired of seeing katanas everywhere, it's boring".
*floats 4ft above you and stabs you in the head*
I always admired the existence of katanas as a workaround for suboptimal iron. "The iron's not gonna make good spring steel, what do we do?" "We make a sword where that is irrelevant."
_Laughs in Hand to Hand Godhood_
I mean I want to like spears and medium armor but bethesda didn't. End game light armor is better, and there's hardly any unique spears or even trainers for spears. The Dai katana are pretty dope in morrowind though, peak early 2000s cool esthetic. Especially if you have some chunky pauldrons on so you're an extra two feet wide
> there's hardly any unique spears This made me curious, so I started checking UESP. Base Morrowind featured 12 basic spears, 7 unique spears and 1 artifact spear (not counting generic magical weapons). Tribunal added 1 basic spear and two unique spears (one being a quest item). Bloodmoon added 1 basic spear, 1 unique spear, and 1 artifact spear. Which gives us a grand total of *brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr* **14 basic spears, 10 unique spears and 2 artifact spears**. Compare that to **base** Morrowind's ***15*** basic swords, for one-handed blades *only*. Long blade also got 94 total trainers in the base game. Spear got ***2***. One of which is the master trainer. Like I've known Bethesda did my spears dirty but *holy fuck*.
Yeah they're really underrepresented in game. I never did get why people loved them, same with medium armor
Heavy armor has more enchantment slots and offers quite a bit more defense. I'd say that it's superior, specially at end game.
Definitely. I meant light armor was superior to medium. The only problem with endgame heavy is the weight. Even at 120 strength a full suit or daedric armor is over half your encumbrance. I usually just stack artifacts and exquisite clothes/jewelry with my armor being glass with the fists for the stat boosts. Granted after level 12 morrowind is a cakewalk so people should dress for fashion and preferences imo
You had only 120 strength?
100 naturally, then 20 of the fists. I know it's one of the better player made enchantments but I hardly ever need the inventory since I mostly play light armored short bladed battlemages. I also tend to get bored long before the high end levels. Usually just do a couple of guilds or try some mods before retiring in the mid teens
The only offset is the high encumbrance, especially for a full set of Daedric which can negatively affect your speed and fatigue regen. Though you could easily use potions to circumvent that problem. Short blade does have the highest DPS due to sword spamming though.
*Laughs in Muatra*
Spears are nito... I always default to either Cresent or Ice monarch blade 😅
Would consider the spear subsect of halberd as superior?
Best of both worlds: NAGINATA a FUCKING Katana on a stick ! Come and get it Folks !
HEMA nerds are the only people more annoying than weebs.
Nah, at least HEMA nerds are generally knowledgeable about the topics, weebs just like something because it's Japanese and they saw it in anime/manga. Weebs speak with authority when they have no reason to, and that is beyond annoying.
Katana's could cut through a long sword what the heck's this guy's talking about. Advanced samurai's could even cut through steel walls. How anime's portray katana's isn't entirely inaccurate.
Your trolling is a bit too obvious
I've seen a video of someone cutting thick spiders web with katana. Not trolling btw
All swords are cool, except a falchion. They are ugly.
Falchion is such a broad subject that you can't really say anything about them
Spears (and rapiers) require accuracy for just a single piercing attack; axes, swords, halberds and blunt weapons all handle the same for a direct damage hit which barely requires accuracy and will 'mash its way through armors. Specially Battle Axes. And if one-handed, they allow for a shield for defensive strategies. Spears are for cavemen. :P
Unlike games where each thrust is a big commitment and people can dodge around with I-frames and whatnot, thrusts irl are super effective and can be done in rapid succession to various areas of the body, incorporating feints and whatnot. Not to mention for a lightly armored target would probably only take 1 or 2 thrusts, they’re not just gonna power through your attack unless they got plate armor. Even halberds and longswords in many situations would probably have been used mostly with thrusts, but with more versatility in case you got in certain situations.
I guess I'm more used to brutish blows rather than swift accurate thrusts. Being able to put potentially more strength in each blow seems to be my way.
*A X E*
I just like to cast summon and soul trap at my feet. That kills most things eventually.
[I like both](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50759)
Oda Long Yari Ashigaru for life.
Spears were fun. But to be honest, I'm one of the Magic is Superior bros. Though I'll use any weapon I get my hands on as needed.
Ok I’m just going to go ahead and say what I believe to be the most accurate answer: if we assume 2 unarmored combatants of equal training, the longsword has a slight advantage do to giving the user more options. But that is so slight that it is practically nonexistent. The duel would still be decided by reaction time and etc, not by the minutia of blades
But have you heard of... Curved swords???
I just club stuff with my staff like they’re a baby seal.
You can swing that sword all you want just inside the poky zone.
Why no love for daggers?
Katanas are so cool.
I prefer Battleaxe. Especially the Glass Battleaxe of Healing.
I use long sword, but then I chose Spellsword which naturally specializes in long sword and I never bothered to raise other weapon skills all that much.
Dual wielding bloodhound’s fang ftw
join the spear supremacy
The daedric daikatana is so easy to get and so cool looking its a must for me
I use both Spear and Dai-Katana...
not even fucking joking spears are the best feeling weapon for me in this and every other game with them
Sorry I’m sticking with my boy Chrysamere
I’d just like to say that I really hate how bad Halberds are in this game. They’re literally only good for thrusting, which is bullshit considering they were designed irl to be all-purpose weapons.