Contrary to what AD&D and most things based upon it, a longsword, as with most European swords, was a thrusting (eg., piercing) weapon, not a slashing weapon. Cutting weapons (eg., slashing) were primarily sabres and Japanese swords (although it seems that older Japanese swords were straight edged and thrusting). Also, I'm curious about the weights of the swords. A small sword from Midgaard is 3lbs. Seems kind of odd, since many swords are designed to be light weight. A 21" sword (regarded as short), might weigh a few pounds when using particularly heavy material. Nearly all swords from the medieval period, and seemingly many years before and after, were made lighter to ease swinging. To add to my confusion, a wooden club is 3lbs, as heavy as a short sword? I dunno which would be heavier or lightier, but then you have a long sword at 8lbs. Even further to add to the confusion, you have a damn heavy bastard sword (#5412) at 18lbs. Forget how strong you'd need to be to wield it, to swing the damn thing effectively would be really hard. Now, most confusion would be the rapier (#5414) being 10lbs! I'm certain a rapier wouldn't weigh that much. Someone look up what *exactly* a rapier is... :) It seems to me that because of many of the zones are contributed and most people don't use references to write areas, we end up with a lot of inconsistencies. Primarily some areas have objects that are too light and others have those which are too heavy (more of the latter, it seems). Is the gold ring in Redferne's residence (#7909) supposed to be 20lbs? Imagine a person actually wearing items from zone 79. Hm... a two-handed sword (#7913) - 22lbs a silvery breast plate (#7914) - 70lbs (!) some silvery leg plates (#7915) - 40lbs (!) a pair of silvery gloves (#7916) - 14lbs (!) a silvery helmet (#7917) - 35lbs (!) the shield of the rose (#7918) - 60lbs (!) a pair of heavy plated boots (#7919) - 40lbs (!) some silvery arm plates (#7920) - 40lbs (!) Now, lets just focus on the arms/hands. You'd need to be one damn buff person to even move your arms with 136lbs solely on your arms (including the sword and shield). Now, if you talk about the legs, you get, uhh, what, 80lbs on your legs. Now put your helmet on (am I mistaken in guessing that the helmet is probably 3 times the weight of a person's head?) and the breast plate. That makes a person wearing...ermmm...over 300 pounds(?). I dunno about you, but that's nearly 2 times my weight. While we are speaking, wouldn't it be nice to make it so you can't always have your sword at the ready? Primarily, it seems that cityguards would probably see something wrong with people having weapons at a ready while walking through the streets. Clearly, swords should be sheathed while moving through the city and drawn to fight, otherwise you're going a character should get more than just the cityguard walking by blindly. This brings into call where the sword could be sheathed due to length. I think if you want to permit a lot of flexibility with the sheathing of weapons, a character should be able to choose where they want to sword held on their body. Many would prefer over the back and some at the hip. Problem with having the sword on the back is that if it's longer than 20" inches you'll need damn long arms to get it out quickly. Maybe I'm just calling in a bunch of realism that nobody will care about. I might be wrong about some of these things, but I know for certain that longswords are piercing (as with most [all?] straight swords), not slashing, and that it'd be really, really, really hard to move wearing 300lbs of silver. -- Daniel Koepke dkoepke@california.com Forgive me father, for I am sin. +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: | | http://cspo.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list_faq.html | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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