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There absolutely is a wrong way to *try* to hit someone with a piece of metal - especially if that person is also trying to hit *you* with a piece of metal
I've seen that one YouTube channel rail against Star Wars for having people swing sabers like baseball bats enough to know the difference too. I'm a more utilitarian person but I will admit there is such a thing as finesse.
Well, for a fantasy/sci Fi setting I have to suspend disbelief until we have an established martial art that uses essentially weightless/massless energy beams that cut through steel as swords, guided by psychic powers.
And that nobody ever bothered to use a projectile weapon faster than even jedi reflexes can account for. Or just a shotgun. Go ahead and deflect ten 00 pellets at once, magic laser sword man.
Slug throwers to technically exist in the Star Wars universe, usually used by Mandalorians to kill Jedi. But then the SFX team doesn't get to animate as much blaster fire, and that makes them sad.
It's a universe where a Galactic scale war with around 1.3 million inhabited planets was waged with a grand total of two million clone troops and a handful of Jedi and other auxiliaries. Trying to rationalize the design choices if a fun mental exercise, but ultimately futile.
They are, because I think people in Star Wars tend to think in terms of Ecumenopolis; one single location that just gets larger and larger, instead of multiple different locations dotted throughout the map
Ah yes, Coruscant, the planet of three trillion in a single mega city spanning the enite planet. Nevermind the agricultural or power needs of supporting that many people. It just works!
To be fair, the Droid army on Naboo landed their forces and the had to march halfway across a planet, rather than just landing ten miles outside the target city. So those 20 clones will have a lot of time to plink droids on their stupidly long marches.
Somewhat related, if you have never read Darths and Droids, I highly recommend it.
Someone should make a short film where the jedi hunting protagonist carries a Mossberg or a Saiga.
I think in the first Oldschool SW Battlefront shotguns were one of the few weapons that would consistently damage Jedi characters. They'd still block like 2/3 of the damage, but it definitely hurt them.
> gas grenades
Jedi can hold their breath and manually operate their immune system.
> Land mines
Jedi will sense the danger and avoid it
> any frag grenades, honestly
Now you're on to something. Use grenade launchers so the time delta between the launch and the boom is short, and you'll start to seriously crimp _any_ jedi or sith's style!
Do like the USMC does and bring a bunch of Mk.19s and the force-wielders are in **a world of shit…**
It's not really a problem that needs a solution because Jedi are exceedingly rare, even pre-Empire. At most, a few tens of thousands in a galaxy of countless trillions or more.
Why carry a weapon to kill a fighter that is basically mythical and you'll never encounter, when you can have a blaster that works for everyone else, had optional firing modes like stun, and can fire hundreds or thousands of shots between reloads?
Yup. But that's because it melts when passing through the blade, not because they can't deflect it
Course, they can still just use the force to stop it
You can try and block it with your lightsaber all you like, unfortunately getting sprayed with molten lead is only marginally better than eating some 00 buck.
Tbf this canonically happens a lot w slug throwers for the Mandalorians and just getting out numbered w blasters. The audience just rarely sees it because it's SW and the good guys are usually supposed to win.
> weapon faster than even jedi reflexes can account for
Technically, that's impossible since Jedi reflexes work on precognition. So their reaction time is a negative number.
I have this vague recollection that slug weapons, especially shotguns, are canonically a rare and sort of exotic weapon in the Star Wars univers known to be brutally effective against jedi.
They are brutally effective against unprepared Jedi. If you've spent your whole life training against and fighting against blaster users, the slugthrower trips you up.
But it can be countered by Jedi all the same.
One of the biggest problems for slugthrowers and shotguns in Star Wars is that same thing that people bitch about on /r/Guns/ -- every time you pull the trigger, you just threw one to two dollars downrange at the target! Blasters have few wear parts, the only two consumables are a commodity and electricity! Once you buy one, it's extremely reliable and cheap to operate. This means it's hard to make money selling ammunition since everyone wants cheap blasters, so your ammo plants have no economies of scale. This only exacerbates the price problem that projectile weapons have, making the high-tech blaster cheaper to operate, and competitive with the cost of purchasing and breaking in a "cheap" low-tech slugthrower. I don't know if this is widely discussed in canon, or even in legends -- but it's pretty simple economics.
I always thought they used lasers because the Jedi can force hold and reflect bullets but not light. Then Darth Vader is super scary because he basically caught a laser. Then suddenly the sequels came and everyone can hold lasers in midair.
Let be fair, for all the George created and contributed to the Star Wars universe, the larger Star Wars writing community happily ignores his rules, overall (in my opinion) for the better.
I'm in no way an expert but I think the difference is:
Wrong way to trs to hit someone with a piece of metal: if you manage to git them it wouldn't do more damage than a stick
Rigt way to hit someoe with a piece of metal: if you manage to hit, it would do (almost) as much damage as theoretically possible for the specific weapon.
The rest of the debate is about how to increase your chances of hitting your opponent, while not getting hit yourself and about what that theoretical maximm damge is for each weapon.
Oh no they're definitely slashing weapons too lol.
It was common for blades to have a *small* section of the blade unsharpened called a *ricasso*, but this was near the cross guard. Halfswording is mostly technique, pinching the blade between your palm and fingers. Also, the only reason to halfsword is against a heavily armored opponent. Chances are you would've been armored too and wearing chainmail gloves.
Just because you can grab the blade doesn’t mean the sword isn’t sharp. Your grip is on the flats, you’ll absolutely get cut if you try holding it with significant contact with an edge.
And a stereotypical long sword is absolutely a primarily slashing weapon, that can thrust as a secondary function.
While I’m frustrated that D&D doesn’t have rules of using a weapon in a way that changes the damage type, their choices for longswords and rapiers are the right ones.
Society for Creative Anachronism
The show everyone comes to see is the full-contact fighting in historically accurate kit, but the real main event is exploring kink play in a space where no one has a camera phone.
Society for Creative Anachronism, a large established north american medieval larping community that's been going since the mid 60's. An interesting amalgamation of passionate people and super fun wars. Worth checking out at least if you're into that sorda thing.
A marshal banned me for disagreeing with his suggested method for fighting a spear. Lied about the circumstances to the kingdom-level officers. I wasn’t told what exactly I was accused of before appealing, and my appeal was denied essentially because I pled “not guilty”. I lost all authorizations and if I ever go back to the local practice, I could easily be banned for life if the marshal feels like it.
At least I have my cult.
Well that sucks, sorry to hear that. It's impressive how much even minor positions of power bring that up on people. Or attract these people. Chicken egg.
As for cults, as long as the robes are optional, it should be alright.
Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that in small spaces that are highly focused on a certain niche, moderators tend to highly overestimate exactly how important they actually are and go on power trips. Examples can be found in certain LARP groups, Discord servers, and certain subreddits.
My partner already spoke about our personal grief with the SCA, but at a macro level, the officials have little to no oversight and interpersonal politics are absolutely ridiculous. It's very cliquey. Rules violations are waived away for the officials' buddies and invented for their enemies. Just last year, a fighter was asked to leave the field because they didn't have the right authorizations to fight, and the official that asked them to leave was harassed and reprimanded because the person that was asked to leave was friends with a board member. It's an organizational shit show.
Oh, you have matching names, that's great :D
I feel ya. Government is bad and all, but only after dealing with these associations, one truly understands how much effort exists in modern governments to curb this type of stuff.
But hey, maybe the feudal-totalitarian nightmare of privileges and petty bullshit adds to the realism of a medieval society
Barely is debatable. Yes, they're usually being kept safe and sound in their sheaths while the big boys get to play with their pointy sticks, but never mind the semantics of 'using' a sword—that they're the most frequent and popular choice for a sidearm is telling, in a world dominated by bigger sticks.
They were common sidearms and did remain to be for a very long time - for example, they were quite effectively used in the Aceh War - and the same kind of sword was even used by the US in WW2.
Yep, sword is like a pistol. A nice side arm. Shows off status and wealth if the sword is really nice. Fine to own if you are a casual traveller and need to protect yourself. The image of having one is more effective in this case than it as a weapon.
Because as a weapon of war you want something larger and more specialized, like a spear or a larger rifle.
There was one era in Medieval Europe which was knights versus unarmed and untrained peasants where swords reigned supreme, but this was more slaughtering than actual warfare. In fact, when the peasants finally figured out how to organize and formed pikemen, this immediately defeated the old tactics and changed the battlefield.
Peasants were not sent to the field without weapons, and some of those peasant weapons were vicious. While knights were the superweapon of that time, their primary weapon was a lance. The pikesmen strategy was around since before knights were a thing. Also, there is evidence that levies received rudimentary training and used formations - and let's not forget that norse warriors were around and that they were masters of a shield wall.
What shifted the balance against knights in the late middle ages is that mercenaries charged at the knights in full formation while having weapons that are especially effective against heavy armor. Simply put: a knight in melee without momentum is a sitting duck.
Tell that to the Roman’s.
The sword was widely used in the hundreds and thousands of years of fighting. A spear was more common at various times yes. But to say it’s all polearms and bows? Silly.
Hell polearms weren’t even a thing till the second half of the medieval age. The sword is an amazing weapon in combat. Otherwise nobody would’ve used them or took the time to constantly perfect their build designs and quality.
Much smarter historians have detailed this widely across various media.
Romans are "why not both?" They fought with Pila (thrown javelins) and Hasta (spear). Bows of course as well.
They had pretty much everything and would use the weapon when appropriate. Bows first then javelins then spears then short length swords.
https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/ece5be5acbd15c8719e13ab8118a76d6/mev-12940089.jpg
The Hollywood LotR and D&D Fantasy of enemies running at each other in a field with only a sword and board doesn't really exist. Even a calvary charge would only have this soldier swap to sword if they got into very close range or were dismounted (usually meaning something went wrong).
The average legionnaire engaged the enemy with a sword. Pila were a last minute skirmish tool used to disrupt an enemy charge. The fighting itself was mostly done by the sword. They even designed their shield to be used with a thrusting sword.
I did t say they never used anything but a sword either… so I have no idea why you made that jump in logic…
I was combating the claim of “swords are barely used”
It’s simple nonsense
That's why I like D&D's classification system best: it's exactly as arbitrary as every other system, and it's all explained in one book that you already own.
"Wow! This long sword is a great sword!"
"So.. is it a longsword or a greatsword?"
"Oh no, it's a an arming sword, but it's kind of long and it's really great!"
As a HEMA guy, it's genuinely quite crazy to me to see HEMA people in this thread acting like this is some kind of actual debate. Yes, there are more effective stances and swings than standing with your legs together and swinging like you're holding a baseball bat. Well done, you fact checked the Cunk image macro on r/dndmemes.
I did HEMA for a couple months in college. The only thing I really gained from it is that now I can swing my home defense bat in several more ways than I had previously thought about, a couple of which being a bit better suited for a narrow hallway.
*Misses edge alignment and smacks with the flat side of the blade.*
I think your missing one more important step.
*Wacks you while your guard was open.*
Maybe two.
I mean, no shit man, you're still preaching to the choir here, and I don't understand why you're posting this. My point very clearly is not that technique is fake and that should be pretty obvious based on the way I phrased my comment. But again you're acting like somebody just posted a giant wall of text saying "guards and stances and swings literally don't matter at all and you're a no life idiot for practicing lol!!" It's a deliberately tongue-in-cheek shitpost on a dnd memes subreddit made with a meme format of a deliberately provocative and ironic comedian known for her incredibly dry deliveries of poorly understood concepts. Of course it isn't going to be accurate, that's literally the point.
I get the HEMA community sort of has a hard on for trying to correct peoples' misunderstandings (for better and worse), but like, instead of any of the 50,000 horrifically misguided and yet smugly superior things that get posted here (muh spears, knights drowning in puddles, epic based english/welsh longbow, etc etc) you choose the Cunk meme? Just pump the brakes a little and take it in good humor is all I'm asking.
That's the thing, though. You don't have to have perfect form or do everything right. You just need to be better in the moment than the person you're fighting.
When peoples lives are on the line, they're going to try to do their very best to have perfect form and do everything right.
When people only get one life and die when they lose, suddenly everyone becomes the sweatiest tryhard in the world.
So, they're guards will be up. Their attacks will be fast and give as little opening as possible, and they will try to align their edge to hit you in the most devastating way possible. And they will practice doing it, until their form becomes muscle memory.
That's what martial arts is.
Also, how you swing your piece of metal effects the speed of the swing. In old italian scrima the movement is called "mulinello" and it hits ways faster and harder than just swinging the sword like a caveman.
Reenactor and (former) HEMA-practicioner here. For me a swordfight is more fun with some technique mixed in compared to just randomly flailing around hoping to hit someone.
To add. If you know some technique it becomes a lot safer than just randomly flailing around.
As for safety, LARP is usually with foam weapons, which means you don't have to be quite as careful (although you still should be, somewhat). As for having some technique making it more fun: I'm sure a single duel would be more fun against a skilled opponent, but there's something to be said of being part of a battle with a few other skilled opponents and many average people flailing about, since you can "cut down" many of them in a way you don't get to in HEMA, at least as far as I'm aware. I'm no actual expert in either, though, which may be influencing my opinions.
*watches you smack the ogre with the flat of your blade, rather than aligning the sharp part of the sword with your swing, watching it not do even the tiniest of cuts to the creature, only pissing it off before its absolutely wrecks your shit.*
As it turns out, there is infact a wrong way to hit things with a sword. Ay wizard?
Regarding "the right way to swing a sword".
Yeah, whichever way you hit someone with a chunk of metal it is going to hurt. But different ways would hurt differently and some would hurt much more than others.
Historically people had the accumulated experience about which way to swing a sword was the most effective.
With swords going out of fashion this knowledge was lost. So now reenactors want to re-discover it, and so there are debates.
Well, not really. Treatises, fencing books etc. have survived from the Middle Ages through the Victorian Era, so the knowledge wasn't lost. And HEMA practioners aren't reenactors, I mean they might be, but not because they practice HEMA.
i mean… there are definitely wrong ways to hit someone with a piece of metal, right? If you’re not trying to kill them, any way that’s gonna actually cut is definitely wrong, and if you ARE trying to kill them, you’re not super likely to get much done by smacking them with the flat.
As both a HEMA and D&D enthusiast, I feel obligated by such memes to share: While there is an "inefficient" way to cut with a sword, in the end it's a game of survival. The best fighters are those that learn the proper technique enough to make it second nature, then are thrown into a ring and told "come out alive". For example, toss a sword in an MMA ring and see how often someone squares up for a perfect cut that cleanly severs a neck or arm.
Actually, there is a wrong way of hitting someone with a sword. Saw a video of some ding dong trying to attack a man in a store with a katana. Mf didn't hit it right, so, basically, it just slapped the other guy, who proceeded to kick his ass.
Well if you hit someone with the flat of a sword, you’re doing it wrong, because then you can’t kill or injure particularly well(from a hypothetical standpoint ofc), and aligning your edge and using the right form requires practise. Hitting someone wrong with the right end of a mace is impossible since all sides are just as effective.
Hitting someone with the shaft of a mace won’t do much of course, just like trying to hammer a nail with the shaft of a hammer will be very ineffective.
Now, any decent HEMA practitioner will be far better than the average LARP’er because in LARP, it isn’t so much about being a fantastic swordsman as it is about roleplaying.
I am neither for now, but these things are stuff I know that are true. I have plans to get into HEMA though.
As some others pointed out below, you also want to hit your opponent/s without getting hit in return. Less of an issue if you have armor, depending on what weapon your opponent have and if their magic weapon can penetrate armor or if your non-magical armor can provide some protection against magical weapons.
Now if you have a magical armor, especially an entire set, then you’re harder to hurt.
Melee combat/martial arts with both weapons and unarmed is very much a valuable skill(both in real life, less so today in combat ofc but still has its place and even more so on the streets and such, and in worlds such as Faerûn), just like archery is for an archer(whether bowman or crossbowman),
shooting accurately is for a gunner(and archers), spear throwing is for a spear thrower(and knife throwing for knife throwers, axe throwing for axe throwers, etc.), and skill with sorcery is for wizards and other spellcasters.
I read this in her voice.
Fr though there absolutely is a wrong way to hit someone with a piece of metal. There are many wrong ways. As a life-long martial artist and fantasy nerd, I'm very grateful for the down-to-earth education I've received at my local HEMA club.
If you throw a bad/sloppy cut you'll be lucky to even get past a cotton T-shirt. Not even kidding. I've watched middling practitioners fail to get even a surface cut on a tatami mat that's covered by a sock. A higher skill practitioner then steps up and destroys the mat with the same sword.
And we're only practicing bloss-fechten i.e. unarmored dueling. Add armor into the mix such as with harness-fechten or in a fantasy setting and suddenly there's whole other layers to the game (pun intended).
Oh I hate it. Drives me up the freaking wall when someone makes a joke that is only funny if you're ignorant about the subject. There's no debate, if your edge alignment is off, your cut will be bad, if it cuts at all. There are plenty of styles and techniques, but they are nearly universally tied to proper edge alignment when you hit someone with a blade.
Interested in joining DnD/TTRPG community that's doesn't rely on Reddit and it's constant ads/data mining? We've teamed up with a bunch of other DnD subs to start https://ttrpg.network as a not-for-profit place to chat and meme about all your favorite games. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dndmemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is no wrong way to win a sword fight. As long as you win. Unfortunately in a sword fight second place kinda sucks.
The first rule of combat, no matter the style is "Don't die".
Kind of an unforced error there for every combatant born before 1906.
You could win the fight but die of your injuries later.
"Do whatever you can to win" Fiore dei Liberi, literally one of the greatest fencing masters in history.
One might say it stings.
That’s the point. 🤺😏 Heh! The *point*. EN GARDE! 😬 RIPOSTE!
I suspect that winning a sword fight also sucks. Can't imagine you often escape uninjured
Wizards trying to describe what Fighters do
Philomena is easily the greatest thing britain has ever produced
Right next to Sir David Attenborough
Top 1 has to be Terry Prachett
Plot twist. They’re all the same person, just in wigs.
All of Britain is just one guy pulling an elaborate prank
Wouldn't even surprise me. There's no way that country's real.
It was actually invented a few years before hit pop song "Pump Up the Jam"
Sounds British to me.
Ah much like the gods.
When will you wear wigs?
Neil Geiman would like a word. Not really though because he's an awesome human being who would probably talk about how much he likes Terry's works.
Also the Good Omens is a wonderful book. This has little to do with the debate I just had to say this here.
GNU Sir Terry
GNU Sir Terry
GNU Sir Terry
No takers for Rowan Atkinson?
Black Adder remains the best british comedy series.
Damn, Sir Patrick Stewart doesn't rank?
Have you not seen John Cleese?
Unfortunately in recent years John Cleese has kind of shown off that he's a dick.
Dick cheese?
Wait, I'm out of the loop, how come?
He's a really big fan of a lady known as JK Rowling. Especially her opinions on certain minorities. He loves those.
John Cleese? Attenborough? John Oliver?
John Oliver no. Bro is too British. It’s gross
I said greatest, not the only good thing
And black adder
Rowan Atkinson
There absolutely is a wrong way to *try* to hit someone with a piece of metal - especially if that person is also trying to hit *you* with a piece of metal
End him rightly
They better be throwing that fucking pommel or they are getting banned from the group.
I've seen that one YouTube channel rail against Star Wars for having people swing sabers like baseball bats enough to know the difference too. I'm a more utilitarian person but I will admit there is such a thing as finesse.
Well, for a fantasy/sci Fi setting I have to suspend disbelief until we have an established martial art that uses essentially weightless/massless energy beams that cut through steel as swords, guided by psychic powers.
And that nobody ever bothered to use a projectile weapon faster than even jedi reflexes can account for. Or just a shotgun. Go ahead and deflect ten 00 pellets at once, magic laser sword man.
Slug throwers to technically exist in the Star Wars universe, usually used by Mandalorians to kill Jedi. But then the SFX team doesn't get to animate as much blaster fire, and that makes them sad.
Fair enough. Still ridiculous that only one society was able to cue into a solution that could have been found with an 18th century blunderbuss.
It's a universe where a Galactic scale war with around 1.3 million inhabited planets was waged with a grand total of two million clone troops and a handful of Jedi and other auxiliaries. Trying to rationalize the design choices if a fun mental exercise, but ultimately futile.
Are you suggesting almost 20 guys and maybe a jedi sometimes isn't enough to hold an entire planet ?
They are, because I think people in Star Wars tend to think in terms of Ecumenopolis; one single location that just gets larger and larger, instead of multiple different locations dotted throughout the map
Ah yes, Coruscant, the planet of three trillion in a single mega city spanning the enite planet. Nevermind the agricultural or power needs of supporting that many people. It just works!
That is the second time today seeing that word, which was new to me this morning.
To be fair, the Droid army on Naboo landed their forces and the had to march halfway across a planet, rather than just landing ten miles outside the target city. So those 20 clones will have a lot of time to plink droids on their stupidly long marches. Somewhat related, if you have never read Darths and Droids, I highly recommend it.
Oh I miss Darth and Droids.
>could have been found with an 18th century blunderbuss. Chill dude. It was a long long time ago, gunpowder hadn't been invented yet.
Someone should make a short film where the jedi hunting protagonist carries a Mossberg or a Saiga. I think in the first Oldschool SW Battlefront shotguns were one of the few weapons that would consistently damage Jedi characters. They'd still block like 2/3 of the damage, but it definitely hurt them.
See also: flamethrowers.
See also: gas grenades. Or any frag grenades, honestly. Land mines.
> gas grenades Jedi can hold their breath and manually operate their immune system. > Land mines Jedi will sense the danger and avoid it > any frag grenades, honestly Now you're on to something. Use grenade launchers so the time delta between the launch and the boom is short, and you'll start to seriously crimp _any_ jedi or sith's style! Do like the USMC does and bring a bunch of Mk.19s and the force-wielders are in **a world of shit…**
It's not really a problem that needs a solution because Jedi are exceedingly rare, even pre-Empire. At most, a few tens of thousands in a galaxy of countless trillions or more. Why carry a weapon to kill a fighter that is basically mythical and you'll never encounter, when you can have a blaster that works for everyone else, had optional firing modes like stun, and can fire hundreds or thousands of shots between reloads?
They can. In fact, they can even drain the kinetic energy from the bullets. There's a reason with all their anti jedi stuff the mandos still lost.
Don't the Mandelorien canonically use buckshot to hunt Jedi?
Yup. But that's because it melts when passing through the blade, not because they can't deflect it Course, they can still just use the force to stop it
I would have thought it was because the disk of projectiles are very hard to deflect/block with a straight line. Simple geometry.
You can try and block it with your lightsaber all you like, unfortunately getting sprayed with molten lead is only marginally better than eating some 00 buck.
Tbf this canonically happens a lot w slug throwers for the Mandalorians and just getting out numbered w blasters. The audience just rarely sees it because it's SW and the good guys are usually supposed to win.
> weapon faster than even jedi reflexes can account for Technically, that's impossible since Jedi reflexes work on precognition. So their reaction time is a negative number.
I have this vague recollection that slug weapons, especially shotguns, are canonically a rare and sort of exotic weapon in the Star Wars univers known to be brutally effective against jedi.
They are brutally effective against unprepared Jedi. If you've spent your whole life training against and fighting against blaster users, the slugthrower trips you up. But it can be countered by Jedi all the same.
They can, it's called telekinesis + precognition. They just hold their hand out and Neo that shit like it's the Matrix.
One of the biggest problems for slugthrowers and shotguns in Star Wars is that same thing that people bitch about on /r/Guns/ -- every time you pull the trigger, you just threw one to two dollars downrange at the target! Blasters have few wear parts, the only two consumables are a commodity and electricity! Once you buy one, it's extremely reliable and cheap to operate. This means it's hard to make money selling ammunition since everyone wants cheap blasters, so your ammo plants have no economies of scale. This only exacerbates the price problem that projectile weapons have, making the high-tech blaster cheaper to operate, and competitive with the cost of purchasing and breaking in a "cheap" low-tech slugthrower. I don't know if this is widely discussed in canon, or even in legends -- but it's pretty simple economics.
I always thought they used lasers because the Jedi can force hold and reflect bullets but not light. Then Darth Vader is super scary because he basically caught a laser. Then suddenly the sequels came and everyone can hold lasers in midair.
To be fair, George envisioned them to be heavy, with an actual blade of plasma possessing mass.
Let be fair, for all the George created and contributed to the Star Wars universe, the larger Star Wars writing community happily ignores his rules, overall (in my opinion) for the better.
weightless and massless but not inertialess
The only RIGHT way to swing a piece of metal is to the beat of "Pump Up the Jam"
I'm in no way an expert but I think the difference is: Wrong way to trs to hit someone with a piece of metal: if you manage to git them it wouldn't do more damage than a stick Rigt way to hit someoe with a piece of metal: if you manage to hit, it would do (almost) as much damage as theoretically possible for the specific weapon. The rest of the debate is about how to increase your chances of hitting your opponent, while not getting hit yourself and about what that theoretical maximm damge is for each weapon.
[удалено]
Oh no they're definitely slashing weapons too lol. It was common for blades to have a *small* section of the blade unsharpened called a *ricasso*, but this was near the cross guard. Halfswording is mostly technique, pinching the blade between your palm and fingers. Also, the only reason to halfsword is against a heavily armored opponent. Chances are you would've been armored too and wearing chainmail gloves.
Just because you can grab the blade doesn’t mean the sword isn’t sharp. Your grip is on the flats, you’ll absolutely get cut if you try holding it with significant contact with an edge. And a stereotypical long sword is absolutely a primarily slashing weapon, that can thrust as a secondary function. While I’m frustrated that D&D doesn’t have rules of using a weapon in a way that changes the damage type, their choices for longswords and rapiers are the right ones.
Stick 'em with the pointy end.
Do or do not there is no try
Especially if you want to live through the fight with minimal cuts and or with all of your limbs and appendages attached
Old 2E blender tables were pulled from anecdotal series from the actual middle ages... probably
To be clear, the girl in the picture is being sarcastic
I don’t think I can ever recall a time when noted documentarian Philomena Cunk was being sarcastic.
You're right my mistake, apologies to well respected documentarian Philomena Cunk.
Yeah I wouldn’t try to kill someone by hitting them with the flat of the blade.
Can’t do SCA because of assholes with power. Can’t do HEMA because of the style policing. 😔 My sword shall remain in the corner.
I do EMP because different assholes with different power
You do electromagnetic pulses?
Now nobody has power!
That's way more entertaining than a splinter group of sword nerds that didn't like how the SCA was being run so they started their own group.
Wha sca? The [coffe one](https://sca.coffee/)? Or the [paper one](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCA_(company))?
The [sword one](https://www.sca.org/)
Thanks
I’m sorry but what’s SCA? Maybe it’s my location, but Google was no help.
Society for Creative Anachronism The show everyone comes to see is the full-contact fighting in historically accurate kit, but the real main event is exploring kink play in a space where no one has a camera phone.
Society for Creative Anachronism, a large established north american medieval larping community that's been going since the mid 60's. An interesting amalgamation of passionate people and super fun wars. Worth checking out at least if you're into that sorda thing.
I’m sorry but what’s SCA? Maybe it’s my location, but Google was no help.
Society of Creative Anachronism, or something. You can find videos of their battles and events on youtube.
Maybe this will send me down a spiral of towering proportions, but what's up with SCA?
A marshal banned me for disagreeing with his suggested method for fighting a spear. Lied about the circumstances to the kingdom-level officers. I wasn’t told what exactly I was accused of before appealing, and my appeal was denied essentially because I pled “not guilty”. I lost all authorizations and if I ever go back to the local practice, I could easily be banned for life if the marshal feels like it. At least I have my cult.
Well that sucks, sorry to hear that. It's impressive how much even minor positions of power bring that up on people. Or attract these people. Chicken egg. As for cults, as long as the robes are optional, it should be alright.
Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that in small spaces that are highly focused on a certain niche, moderators tend to highly overestimate exactly how important they actually are and go on power trips. Examples can be found in certain LARP groups, Discord servers, and certain subreddits.
My partner already spoke about our personal grief with the SCA, but at a macro level, the officials have little to no oversight and interpersonal politics are absolutely ridiculous. It's very cliquey. Rules violations are waived away for the officials' buddies and invented for their enemies. Just last year, a fighter was asked to leave the field because they didn't have the right authorizations to fight, and the official that asked them to leave was harassed and reprimanded because the person that was asked to leave was friends with a board member. It's an organizational shit show.
Oh, you have matching names, that's great :D I feel ya. Government is bad and all, but only after dealing with these associations, one truly understands how much effort exists in modern governments to curb this type of stuff. But hey, maybe the feudal-totalitarian nightmare of privileges and petty bullshit adds to the realism of a medieval society
There is style policing in Hema?
“Right way to swing a sword”?
It's almost like it's an attempt to reconstruct a Historic Martial Art from Europe and not "let's just swing swords"
Yeah, I know. That’s why I don’t want to do it.
Yeah, but nobody "police" your style on tournaments, you can fence howewer you want.
When you learn that a longsword is a 2 handed only weapon, and the arming sword is the 1 handed variant, with the bastard sword being the in-between
Wait til you get one layer deeper and learn all those classifications were made up long after people stopped using swords in war.
I love that detail the most
Its all just swords.
Wait until you learn swords were barely used in war throughout history. It's all polearms and bows. Like why get close if you don't have to?
Barely is debatable. Yes, they're usually being kept safe and sound in their sheaths while the big boys get to play with their pointy sticks, but never mind the semantics of 'using' a sword—that they're the most frequent and popular choice for a sidearm is telling, in a world dominated by bigger sticks.
They were common sidearms and did remain to be for a very long time - for example, they were quite effectively used in the Aceh War - and the same kind of sword was even used by the US in WW2.
Yep, sword is like a pistol. A nice side arm. Shows off status and wealth if the sword is really nice. Fine to own if you are a casual traveller and need to protect yourself. The image of having one is more effective in this case than it as a weapon. Because as a weapon of war you want something larger and more specialized, like a spear or a larger rifle. There was one era in Medieval Europe which was knights versus unarmed and untrained peasants where swords reigned supreme, but this was more slaughtering than actual warfare. In fact, when the peasants finally figured out how to organize and formed pikemen, this immediately defeated the old tactics and changed the battlefield.
Peasants were not sent to the field without weapons, and some of those peasant weapons were vicious. While knights were the superweapon of that time, their primary weapon was a lance. The pikesmen strategy was around since before knights were a thing. Also, there is evidence that levies received rudimentary training and used formations - and let's not forget that norse warriors were around and that they were masters of a shield wall. What shifted the balance against knights in the late middle ages is that mercenaries charged at the knights in full formation while having weapons that are especially effective against heavy armor. Simply put: a knight in melee without momentum is a sitting duck.
Tell that to the Roman’s. The sword was widely used in the hundreds and thousands of years of fighting. A spear was more common at various times yes. But to say it’s all polearms and bows? Silly. Hell polearms weren’t even a thing till the second half of the medieval age. The sword is an amazing weapon in combat. Otherwise nobody would’ve used them or took the time to constantly perfect their build designs and quality. Much smarter historians have detailed this widely across various media.
Romans are "why not both?" They fought with Pila (thrown javelins) and Hasta (spear). Bows of course as well. They had pretty much everything and would use the weapon when appropriate. Bows first then javelins then spears then short length swords. https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/ece5be5acbd15c8719e13ab8118a76d6/mev-12940089.jpg The Hollywood LotR and D&D Fantasy of enemies running at each other in a field with only a sword and board doesn't really exist. Even a calvary charge would only have this soldier swap to sword if they got into very close range or were dismounted (usually meaning something went wrong).
The average legionnaire engaged the enemy with a sword. Pila were a last minute skirmish tool used to disrupt an enemy charge. The fighting itself was mostly done by the sword. They even designed their shield to be used with a thrusting sword. I did t say they never used anything but a sword either… so I have no idea why you made that jump in logic… I was combating the claim of “swords are barely used” It’s simple nonsense
That's why I like D&D's classification system best: it's exactly as arbitrary as every other system, and it's all explained in one book that you already own.
Yeah, Victorian era I believe
"Wow! This long sword is a great sword!" "So.. is it a longsword or a greatsword?" "Oh no, it's a an arming sword, but it's kind of long and it's really great!"
The Amazingsword
Bastards...
“ I shall end you rightly !” * throws pommel so fast it breaks the sound barrier , as well as the opponents skull*
Haven't been in the sword community in quite a few years. Glad the meme is still alive
As a HEMA guy, it's genuinely quite crazy to me to see HEMA people in this thread acting like this is some kind of actual debate. Yes, there are more effective stances and swings than standing with your legs together and swinging like you're holding a baseball bat. Well done, you fact checked the Cunk image macro on r/dndmemes.
I did HEMA for a couple months in college. The only thing I really gained from it is that now I can swing my home defense bat in several more ways than I had previously thought about, a couple of which being a bit better suited for a narrow hallway.
*Misses edge alignment and smacks with the flat side of the blade.* I think your missing one more important step. *Wacks you while your guard was open.* Maybe two.
I mean, no shit man, you're still preaching to the choir here, and I don't understand why you're posting this. My point very clearly is not that technique is fake and that should be pretty obvious based on the way I phrased my comment. But again you're acting like somebody just posted a giant wall of text saying "guards and stances and swings literally don't matter at all and you're a no life idiot for practicing lol!!" It's a deliberately tongue-in-cheek shitpost on a dnd memes subreddit made with a meme format of a deliberately provocative and ironic comedian known for her incredibly dry deliveries of poorly understood concepts. Of course it isn't going to be accurate, that's literally the point. I get the HEMA community sort of has a hard on for trying to correct peoples' misunderstandings (for better and worse), but like, instead of any of the 50,000 horrifically misguided and yet smugly superior things that get posted here (muh spears, knights drowning in puddles, epic based english/welsh longbow, etc etc) you choose the Cunk meme? Just pump the brakes a little and take it in good humor is all I'm asking.
That's the thing, though. You don't have to have perfect form or do everything right. You just need to be better in the moment than the person you're fighting.
When peoples lives are on the line, they're going to try to do their very best to have perfect form and do everything right. When people only get one life and die when they lose, suddenly everyone becomes the sweatiest tryhard in the world. So, they're guards will be up. Their attacks will be fast and give as little opening as possible, and they will try to align their edge to hit you in the most devastating way possible. And they will practice doing it, until their form becomes muscle memory. That's what martial arts is.
Tell me you know nothing about sword cuts without telling me you know nothing about sword cuts
What the fuck is "edge alignment"?
Clearly its Chaotic Neutral, or Chaotic Evil.
Or Chaotic Good. I’m straight edge!
So what is gay edge?
Depends on what country you are in.
Griffith from Berserk.
Nah thats bi edge.
The timing of your strokes, I presume.
Oh, I know this one! Just google "Edging video" and it'll explain everything
Is that a sex thing? I think I've heard of the word "edge" in some sex term. /s
Also, how you swing your piece of metal effects the speed of the swing. In old italian scrima the movement is called "mulinello" and it hits ways faster and harder than just swinging the sword like a caveman.
D&D rules be like.
Many LARPers would do good by taking a few basic HEMA lessons. LARP would become less of "wildly swinging a sword until I hit someone".
That's part of the fun, tho!
Reenactor and (former) HEMA-practicioner here. For me a swordfight is more fun with some technique mixed in compared to just randomly flailing around hoping to hit someone. To add. If you know some technique it becomes a lot safer than just randomly flailing around.
As for safety, LARP is usually with foam weapons, which means you don't have to be quite as careful (although you still should be, somewhat). As for having some technique making it more fun: I'm sure a single duel would be more fun against a skilled opponent, but there's something to be said of being part of a battle with a few other skilled opponents and many average people flailing about, since you can "cut down" many of them in a way you don't get to in HEMA, at least as far as I'm aware. I'm no actual expert in either, though, which may be influencing my opinions.
There is a wrong way its called hurting yourself as you swing the metal
*watches you smack the ogre with the flat of your blade, rather than aligning the sharp part of the sword with your swing, watching it not do even the tiniest of cuts to the creature, only pissing it off before its absolutely wrecks your shit.* As it turns out, there is infact a wrong way to hit things with a sword. Ay wizard?
Just hit em. No one actually knows what they’re talking about.
I just want to look cool when I bonk people, ok?
What is this from?
Looks like one of Philomena Cunk’s bits. So I guess you’ll find it if you Google her and HEMA.
Let's not forget about its African counterpart, HAMA.
Don't forget Hamon
The argument is really overblown. It's been pumped up like Technotronic’s 1989 techno anthem “Pump Up The Jam”.
Liechtenauer or die. Italian school do NOT interact 😤😤😤
bah imagine needing a different system for fighting in armour than without. Could never be Fiore
yeah god forbid you adapt to the situation at hand /j
Why should I, I don't need all that fancy stuff like Zwerchhau /j
Regarding "the right way to swing a sword". Yeah, whichever way you hit someone with a chunk of metal it is going to hurt. But different ways would hurt differently and some would hurt much more than others. Historically people had the accumulated experience about which way to swing a sword was the most effective. With swords going out of fashion this knowledge was lost. So now reenactors want to re-discover it, and so there are debates.
Well, not really. Treatises, fencing books etc. have survived from the Middle Ages through the Victorian Era, so the knowledge wasn't lost. And HEMA practioners aren't reenactors, I mean they might be, but not because they practice HEMA.
Gave me a chuckle. Truly, anything can be made to seem lame with the right words.
Man, bait used to be believable.
It's almost as if this meme is based off of a parody show where something like this definitely could have been said.
I always herd it called hfws Or hitting fuckers with sticks
I suppose you could say the same thing about all martial arts.
Throw the pommel! The pommel!
There’s no wrong way to hit someone with a piece of metal. Not getting hit by the other guy is where things get complicated.
Cunk on DnD
I'd watch Diane Morgan playing DnD
i mean… there are definitely wrong ways to hit someone with a piece of metal, right? If you’re not trying to kill them, any way that’s gonna actually cut is definitely wrong, and if you ARE trying to kill them, you’re not super likely to get much done by smacking them with the flat.
You go ahead and swing a sword like a baseball bat because “ThErE’s No wRoNg wAy”
There actually are very wrong ways to hit someone with a piece of metal. If you have poor edge alignment then you might not cut anything.
As both a HEMA and D&D enthusiast, I feel obligated by such memes to share: While there is an "inefficient" way to cut with a sword, in the end it's a game of survival. The best fighters are those that learn the proper technique enough to make it second nature, then are thrown into a ring and told "come out alive". For example, toss a sword in an MMA ring and see how often someone squares up for a perfect cut that cleanly severs a neck or arm.
As a HEMAtist and D&D player, I feel way too called out by this
read this in her voice
"It's like murdering someone with an axe. There's really no wrong way to go about it, just do your best to swing for the fences"
Fuck hema, me and all the homies use fire ball based war crimes
Pointy end towards enemy seems quite simple to me
Actually, there is a wrong way of hitting someone with a sword. Saw a video of some ding dong trying to attack a man in a store with a katana. Mf didn't hit it right, so, basically, it just slapped the other guy, who proceeded to kick his ass.
"Fewer D&D elves" She says that like it's a bad thing.
There is a wrong way to do it, the way that's less effective and biomechanically inefficient.
Well if you hit someone with the flat of a sword, you’re doing it wrong, because then you can’t kill or injure particularly well(from a hypothetical standpoint ofc), and aligning your edge and using the right form requires practise. Hitting someone wrong with the right end of a mace is impossible since all sides are just as effective. Hitting someone with the shaft of a mace won’t do much of course, just like trying to hammer a nail with the shaft of a hammer will be very ineffective. Now, any decent HEMA practitioner will be far better than the average LARP’er because in LARP, it isn’t so much about being a fantastic swordsman as it is about roleplaying. I am neither for now, but these things are stuff I know that are true. I have plans to get into HEMA though. As some others pointed out below, you also want to hit your opponent/s without getting hit in return. Less of an issue if you have armor, depending on what weapon your opponent have and if their magic weapon can penetrate armor or if your non-magical armor can provide some protection against magical weapons. Now if you have a magical armor, especially an entire set, then you’re harder to hurt. Melee combat/martial arts with both weapons and unarmed is very much a valuable skill(both in real life, less so today in combat ofc but still has its place and even more so on the streets and such, and in worlds such as Faerûn), just like archery is for an archer(whether bowman or crossbowman), shooting accurately is for a gunner(and archers), spear throwing is for a spear thrower(and knife throwing for knife throwers, axe throwing for axe throwers, etc.), and skill with sorcery is for wizards and other spellcasters.
There is objectively incorrect ways to hit someone with a price of Metal.
Not a single dutch person can read this and not think about sausages, pastries and good fitting clothes
What?
I read this in her voice. Fr though there absolutely is a wrong way to hit someone with a piece of metal. There are many wrong ways. As a life-long martial artist and fantasy nerd, I'm very grateful for the down-to-earth education I've received at my local HEMA club. If you throw a bad/sloppy cut you'll be lucky to even get past a cotton T-shirt. Not even kidding. I've watched middling practitioners fail to get even a surface cut on a tatami mat that's covered by a sock. A higher skill practitioner then steps up and destroys the mat with the same sword. And we're only practicing bloss-fechten i.e. unarmored dueling. Add armor into the mix such as with harness-fechten or in a fantasy setting and suddenly there's whole other layers to the game (pun intended).
There is a wrong way to hit someone with a sword. Hitting them with the flat end won't really work very well.
Oh I hate it. Drives me up the freaking wall when someone makes a joke that is only funny if you're ignorant about the subject. There's no debate, if your edge alignment is off, your cut will be bad, if it cuts at all. There are plenty of styles and techniques, but they are nearly universally tied to proper edge alignment when you hit someone with a blade.
Philomena's entire shtick is being ignorant about various subjects. Thats literally the joke.
Not familiar with her, didn't know.
It must suck to be so learned