The combat mechanics in bannerlord are a vast improvement from warband with chain attacks, animation variance and other effects such as speed and stance modifiers and weapon / shield bash being useful however one thing that I feel could be improved on is how stabbing works. currently stabbing is not very effective as the modifiers used to determine damage are somewhat limited compared to slashing with distance also being the greatest issue with stabbing. if an enemy ai or multiplayer are the right distance away from you then timing a stab can be useful however it may not be deadly especially considering the weight of the weapon and its piercing ability however if they are up close to you and there is no space to stab it is redundant. currently there is only 1 stab attack shield to side and elbow flared stab which uses forward thrust to do damage. I believe using overhead or under hand thrusting could be useful in other circumstances e.g behind shield stabbing and rotating hips or coming down from above head to generate speed. a weapon that his highly balanced and has weight to it should do a lot of damage with thrust especially shorter swords where speed can be generated with less distance. take the short ridged gladius you can construct its short has weight and balance to it but unlike its real life counter part it doesn't see the same penetrating capability in game take a looter for example right up against your shield if you have shield up in block and then go to stab them you should be able to 1 shot kill them with a stab and finding timing between their swinging of weapon to get a stab in should be easier. I would like to see experimentation with more options for stabbing to make all swords that were designed for piercing more affective compared to swords designed for slashing so as to make tactics work around equipment e.g. shield wall improvements. slice damage blunt damage and piercing damage all had different affects on armour so what was good as stopping slices was poor at stopping piercing and what was good at stopping piercing damage was bad at stopping blunt damage so on and so forth.
