Two weapon fightin? (dual wielding)

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But it's different contexts. Civilian weapons wouldn't face armour, therefore the cuts from a rapier are highly effective regardless of whether the edge is sharp or not. The sheer power of a C13/C14 sword with regards to the weight & mass of the weapon belong in another context where the weapons face leather & steel armour. They have to be of such a mass/size to be able to soak up the impact of a strike/parry without snapping like a twig against weapons of a comparable mass/weight or steel armour. In each of their contexts the weapons excel at what they do best - it's why weapon designs became famous, because they did a job in a set context, or contexts, very well.

When talking about military rapiers, it's best to remember that they came about at the close of the 1400s, where artillery & auxillary soldiers needed a weapon that they could defend themselves with but was short & light enough that it would not interfere with their regular duties. The emphasis there, and with military weapons right through to the late C16 was on using the edge. It was only in the civilian context that the weapons began to move towards using the point over edge. Swords have always been a 'fashion' item, a display of wealth, but the rapier took that to new heights, and from there on they became de facto a set part of someones daily clothing.

As military tactics changed, and armour was worn less and less, along with the rise in use of firearms & ranged warfare, a light, short cutting or thrusting weapon was far more reasonable for a soldier or officer to carry into battle - even when making a bayonet charge they were hardly likely to be used as many units would break or retreat before the charge made contact. So the evolution of the rapier as a civilian weapon changed to being that of both civilian & military.

Err, if I stop rambling for a moment and try to bring this back round to the sub-discussion in hand, rapiers were not built to fight primarily with the point until the 1620's onwards when a slew of Maestro's, Capo Ferro included, started to promote it for the benefits it offered in a non-armoured civilian context. In effect it was a revolutionary idea and took a while to gain prominance in being an excellent style in its context, but once it made its mark, it effectivly revolutionised how swords were made & how combat was fought for over two centuries.

...I'm beginning to hate the word context >.<

And to the guys above, this topic is now about rapier fighting. Discuss :grin:
 
Two weapon fighting would be EXTREMELY easy to implement. the shield blocking is already directional, so say you had a rapier/parrying dagger combo, you could parry with the dagger, and pierce with the rapier :grin:

then you have to think about sword swinging in multiple directions.. you should be able to chamber both attacks going in opposing directions, but your character would just smack his hands together like a dork :wink:. For dual weilding to really work, some players would  learn to attack with both weapons in the same direction, like a double slash or something, pretty much like a two handed sword attack but with two swords. other players would swing opposing hands in opposing directions, making them like a whirlwind, unless stamina were implemented. they should have a hard time blocking piercing weapons, especially at speed. the only way to block a jab would be to attack their weapon out of the way, like a parry.

and for stamina, the more your stamina wears down, the slower your attacks could become :wink:

dual weilding would be really cool if implemented correctly, but ****ty if not.
 
I think another thing with rapiers and thrusting, is how hard it is to defend against a thrust, compared to a slash.

if you step back from a slash, your opponent has to recover before attacking again.
if you step back from a lunge, your opponent merely has to stamp forward another pace to be lunging again: no recovery time needed.

a slash offers a large cross-section of attacking blade to be parried, or blocked with a shield.
A lunge offers only a very small cross-section, namely the thickness of the blade, to be blocked.  It offers slightly more to a parry, but only in direct relation to the skill of the defender.  An unskilled defender will be hard put to parry any decent lunge, even if a skilled defender could parry it with ease.

The force of the blow is distributed across a wider surface area when a slash makes contact, therfore will have less effect on the same target than a lunge, where the force of the blow is concentrated in a very small surface area.

All taken together, lunges would be the move of choice for amateurs who needed to land a decisive blow, with minimal chance for the defender to dodge, block or parry.

 
One thing you have neglected to consider is that the thrust is very easy to displace. It has little structural strength and even a light blow will turn it from its intended line of attack.

If you step back from a cut and your opponent's cut leaves his point in presence, you're still buggered.
If you step back from a lunge, your opponent has to recover to lunge again. A fairly long tempo by any means.

A cut strikes with a great deal more power. It's trivially easy to blow through an unstructured defense, and even if a strike like that doesn't wound it's going to clear the opponent's weapon and leave them on the defensive.
That is patently false. The thrust also offers the entire length of the blade for an opponent to act against.

More surface area, but more power too. And honestly, a cut doesn't need very much power behind it to incapacitate immediately.

Yes, if said amateur was capable of recovering smoothly from a missed lunge. That would make that amateur a trained person. :razz:

And yes, context is a penny whore. :lol:
 
Kengeki mod has duel wielding, it works exactly how I suggested how to implement it. It simply takes a "shield" which looks like a sword. So while its not actualy duel wielding its closest you can get without having to alter the engine.
 
That style of modding in dual wielding has been around for ages. The reason we're still arguing about it ( though not really anymore) is because that is such a craptastic way to do it.

 
If there's a way to completely take away the "arrow-blocking" effect of such weapons then it wont be a bigger advantage then a shield but its a possible way to fight.
 
There isn't a way to do that. You can make it count as a very small shield, though, and then most arrows will fly past it but the arrows that hit it will remain stuck in it. Which is silly.
 
That doesn't change the fact that it's easily the most fail thing we could possibly be doing. Unfortunately it's also the ONLY thing we could possibly be doing.

Thus the 100 year old thread.

With the suggested shield improvements, it woulden't be bad to do this. But since, as of now, shields are basically the mental projection of your will to be protected...:: Shrug ::
 
Night Ninja said:
One thing you have neglected to consider is that the thrust is very easy to displace. It has little structural strength and even a light blow will turn it from its intended line of attack.

If you step back from a cut and your opponent's cut leaves his point in presence, you're still buggered.
If you step back from a lunge, your opponent has to recover to lunge again. A fairly long tempo by any means.

A cut strikes with a great deal more power. It's trivially easy to blow through an unstructured defense, and even if a strike like that doesn't wound it's going to clear the opponent's weapon and leave them on the defensive.
That is patently false. The thrust also offers the entire length of the blade for an opponent to act against.

More surface area, but more power too. And honestly, a cut doesn't need very much power behind it to incapacitate immediately.

Yes, if said amateur was capable of recovering smoothly from a missed lunge. That would make that amateur a trained person. :razz:

And yes, context is a penny whore. :lol:

I would point out that during grappling actions, the utility of thrusting is increased.

Personally, during combat with large swords with significant cutting ability, I feel that thrusting is mainly useful as a method to counter the forward motion of a very aggressive fighter or as a finish of a grappling action. But it is still only one technique among many other very important ones. (As an aside, one of the five "master cuts" of the "German school" is particularly suited to simultaneously striking a blow to the head while deflecting a thrust)

Concerning the rapier, the thrust is easily the most important technique. The dull "blade" could still be used to deal damage through percussive strikes, yes. However, the lethality of a thrust from a rapier is much higher than that from a "cut" from a rapier.

Graylord said:
Tsukana said:
But since, as of now, shields are basically the mental projection of your will to be protected...
:neutral:
I think he is poking fun at the fact that the shields in the game are actually "force-fields" and do not accurately represent the physical model in-game.


All that said, Star Wars Jedi Academy implemented dual wielding and it was pretty cool, so therefore MnB should also implement it. Seriously, who in his right mind wouldn't want to wield a couple of lightsabers on the medieval battlefields of MnB? Or how uber 1337 would it be for me to be a Nord dual wielding great long great axes? We should definitely do this!
 
Graylord said:
Don't you know? Everyone should be fighting as Jedi's in M&B.
dude totally. Now if only we had force powers too...

Tsukana said:
That doesn't change the fact that it's easily the most fail thing we could possibly be doing. Unfortunately it's also the ONLY thing we could possibly be doing.

Thus the 100 year old thread.
actually, there are a number of things that could be improved. For example, making shields more fun to use would be one area of improvement... (my suggestion: accurately represent the physical size of the shield allowing people to strike around it much easier, but also allow for simultaneous stirke/directional-block. But that is for another thread)

The reason this thread is still around? Simply because we are entertained by all the noobs and continue to feed them with arguments. In short, this thread is fun.
 
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