7 ms·

The True Weight of Medieval Weapons – Fact and Fiction

81 points by BerislavLopac 2y ago

Retric 2y ago
Article has a minor misconception, D&D sword weights include the scabbard which mostly brings them in line with historical weapons. The ‘large’ weapons are excessively heavy, but players can be a lot stronger than actual humans.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Have to remember that average human is 10 on usual scale in these games. And any character using any type of weapon getting bonus from strength has at minimum 12 or most likely 16 or above stat. Which means they are lot stronger that average.
Neywiny 2y ago
There was a video, I don't remember who the host was but it was a STEM educator, who picked up a medieval sword at a museum (with permission) and remarked at how light it was. Since then I've internally thought about how unrealistic so much of everything is. Of course it needs to be light, just like everything in modern day. They lug it around the countryside, swing it, etc. Heavy swords just don't make sense.
- smogcutter 2y ago
  In fairness, that misconception doesn’t just spring from imagination. Prop weapons generally are heavy, because they need to be thick to have blunt edges.
  - vasco 2y ago
    I don't think something needs to be thick and heavy to be blunt, I've used (and I think many people have) blunt kitchen knives and sharp kitchen knives and without inspecting the blade edge I think it's very hard to tell. Sharpening a knife or sword also doesn't really change much in its weight from my layman knowledge.
    - pseudosaid 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      "Blunt" in a stage fighting or practice sparring context is completely different from blunt in a kitchen context. You are still swinging these swords are very near full speed at another human being. In a stage context, they might be wearing very minimal protective gear. You blunt kitchen knife will cut through meat just fine if you overhand swing it down. For example, here's a practice sword that has 1/16th in (1.6mm!) thick edges: https://www.reliks.com/functional-european-swords/practical-knightly-sword/ https://www.reliks.com/functional-european-swords/practical-... With the degree of difference in edge thickness, you can probably see how the cross section of a sword (and therefore its weight) will vary substantially, especially if you keep the maximum thickness about the same. It's absolutely possible to craft these types of swords that are both safe and well approximate the real shapes and weights and handling of a "real" sword. But it's also easy to just... go for look and safety to try to save money.
      - vasco 2y ago
        Thanks for the insider knowledge!
    - watwut 2y ago
      Blunt kitchen knife is pretty sharp sword tho. I know as I got cut with a training sword - it was significantly more blunt then what you would call blunt kitchen knife.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Prop weapons can be made of plastic.
    - pseudosaid 2y ago
      they can be, but they were not as being recanted above. Prop weapons can be made of aerogel too but im not making a lame point about it.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    It depends what your prop is aiming to simulate. $10 halloween costume prop? Hollow plastic, super light. Training weapon for self defence against knife attacks? Solid plastic, several times the thickness of a real knife, probably bright blue. Olympic fencing weapons, which simulate duelling? Pretty light, you only need a light touch to score a point and bending is desirable. Live Action Role Play where they want to whack each other, but not hard? Anime cosplay? They mostly go for foam-covered plastic which is kinda light, but they're often thick and also they often simulate unrealistically large weapons, so they can end up kinda heavy. Ornamental/replica things that are just for show? Could go either way. You could make an extra-light sword out of aluminium, or an extra-heavy ornate dagger out of pewter. Less steel means a lower material and shipping cost - but a bit more heft that feels realistic to buyers might get you better product reviews. Apparently some HEMA/renaissance fair folk wear full suits of metal armour, metal longswords that are blunt-but-authentically-weighted, then try to whack each other pretty hard? Looks like concussion city to me.
    - foobarian 2y ago
      I got a suit of chainmail at one point to possibly wear for Halloween/Renn fairs etc. It was heavy! I could not stand it for longer than about an hour, it was a real workout. Certainly made me gain new respect for all the stereotypical medieval knights wearing full metal armor suits.
      - kstrauser 2y ago
        Huh, wonder if you could turn that into a fitness fad for runners. Improve safety against attackers, get a better cardio workout. Forget Under Armour. Let’s go for Over Armor.
      - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
        Like replica swords, replica armour is also often too heavy. Especially maille (the correct term for chainmail). Proper maille has the rings riveted closed so you can use thin rings. Many cheap replicas use bent (butted) rings. They need to be thicker so they don't bend open. I have a full hauberk which goes to my knees with long sleeves. It weighs 6-ish kilo. Add a kilo for the coif. A decently made late medieval full plate armour is maybe 15-ish kilo complete with helmet. The heaviest armours are probably late 14th century armours. They are essentially an almost full plate over a (partial or full) maille hauberk. Some are maybe 25 kilo. That's still a lot less than the 40 or so kilo that modern soldiers lug around.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    You imagine you’ve held prop weapons
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I think some of these misconceptions appear in popular media predating the reenactment scene. Mark Twain in particular is guilty of it. Connecticut Yankee has a bunch of stuff like knights needing cranes to get on their horses and whatnot. The whole book is about how crude and simple minded medieval people were.
- ulnarkressty 2y ago
  I recommend to go to a medieval fair, there you can touch and handle melee weapons freely to get an idea how they feel. I remember that I once handled a parade sword which had a very thick and ornate blade, my arms were hurting immediately. Then the guy handed me his own short sword which was used in the fighting demonstrations and it was literally like picking up a can of beans: much lighter weight than expected and I couldn't feel at all the "length" of the blade when I swung it around - it was perfectly balanced in the hand.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    Medieval fair weapons still tend to be heavier than historical weapons because they (at least most of the ones that are handed to the public) are blunt.
    - eddd-ddde 2y ago
      Surely taking a sharp sword and blunting its edge yields a safe weapon of similar weight, right? Are they purposely making them more massive?
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Depends on how blunt. With momentum behind it you can overcome a lot of bluntness so you want it even more blunt...
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        They not only have a blunt edge but also a blunt tip. To appreciably blunt the tip while keeping the same length you have to add more metal to the tip.
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      And because they use crap alloys and their forging technique is crap. Customer demand drives the quality of the product. A thousand years ago, the customer demanded lightweight, durable, sharp tools, in order to survive their profession. Today, they just want something that looks and feels cool. (For comparison: a Renn Faire sword sells for $200, and a traditionally-made Japanese sword costs as much as a car)
- brudgers 2y ago
  Here is Adam Savage picking up swords and making similar remarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJypHnsEn8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJypHnsEn8o Maybe that is what you saw.
delichon 2y ago
But the part where my character can carry 300 pounds of inventory while fighting is legit, right?
- zdragnar 2y ago
  True, but your weapons still need to be light to be able to carry the 20 wheels of cheese you'll be eating mid-fight to heal up because you can't be bothered to learn alchemy.
chuckadams 2y ago
Now let's tackle the similar misconception about armor weight: this myth got so absurd that some still believe knights actually had to be hoisted up with cranes onto on their horses. Whereas in the real world, I've seen people doing backflips in full plate.
- Sander_Marechal 2y ago
  Absolutely, see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI
  - paleotrope 2y ago
    The horse isn't going to like that mounting method if the knight has spurs on.
- dghf 2y ago
  Henry VIII (in his younger, athletic days) could leap into the saddle in full armour without using the stirrups, and was very proud of it.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    In his later days though... he might have needed that crane ;)
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    Supreme leader played golf this weekend and got 17 hole-in-ones. Remind me who history is written by.
    - waveBidder 2y ago
      The losers. The winners are too busy governing to give a shit. https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/ https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/
mhd 2y ago
Honestly, I doubt that a Strength 20 D&D barbarian cares about the wrong weight of his Greataxe, given that they can probably deadlift a horse. Their player probably does care that the chosen implement of murderous doom looks cooler than a plain Daneaxe… One problem that D&D and videogames have, is that weight in lbs is a pretty poor simulation of the burden involved. The sheer bulk or lack of proper carrying opportunities seems factored in a bit into several RPGs, even those where you can carry 111 spears in your backpack. The (vastly underrated) tabletop RPG RuneQuest once ditched "lbs" and went with a more abstracted "encumbrance" (ENC) statistic. And of course lots of videogames plus several tabletop games go with a slot- or grid-based inventory as a main or secondary source of being overburdened. Weapon weights and similar issues (too short rapiers, non-existant back scabbards) seem to be the "not every weapon is a AR-15/mind your trigger discipline" of the HEMA crowd.
- sylos 2y ago
  Related, the new edition of Pathfinder ditched weight in lbs and picked up a system of encumberance called bulk, I think, better represents real objects a bit more than just plain weight
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  Ah, Runequest! Happy memories.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > even those where you can carry 111 spears in your backpack. That's what magic items like the Efficient Quiver are for. :-)
elric 2y ago
The myth of the heavy sword is a stupid one, and I was convinced that it had died out a long time ago. I'm not sure who still believes otherwise? DnD's weights are hardly a reference, as those weights are important for the mechanics of the game, not for historical accuracy. The comments regarding Game of Thrones blurb don't make much sense either. At no point in that quote does Syrio claim that Westerosi swords are unreasonably heavy or that knights are clumsy. But a knight in full plate with a longsword is certainly much less agile than someone with a rapier and no armour.
- digging 2y ago
  > But a knight in full plate with a longsword is certainly much less agile than someone with a rapier and no armour. No, that's not really true either.
  - hermitcrab 2y ago
    IIRC a full set of plate armour weighs about 60lbs. How is that not going to make you less agile (no matter how well made)? And yes, I understand the old trope about knights lumbering around, not being able to get up if they fell over and not being about to mount a horse is all garbage. And that 60lbs is roughly what a modern combat soldier carries. But it is still 60lbs!
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      A huge number of people are 60lbs or more overweight and they still get around fairly well.
      - hermitcrab 2y ago
        'get around fairly well' != 'agile' ;0)
        digging 2y ago
        A huge number of people are 60lbs or more overweight and are still very agile, too. It's silly to keep picking this fight this way.
harimau777 2y ago
At the other end, I wonder what the minimum weight would be for an impact (as opposed to edged) weapon to be able to reliably damage an unarmored opponent.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Well, a sling can whip a small stone hard enough to do serious damage. Otherwise, look into the cosh / blackjack / billy club style clubs. Light enough to swing at a high speed, small enough to hide under loose clothing, with just enough weight at the end to cause deep impact trauma. Anything too light means that the force is dispersed in soft tissue, leaving surface bruises. That added inertia of some extra weight at the end causes the energy of the swing to transfer deeper to bone. I doubt you'll get a scientifically derived number of any certainty, but I'd hazard a guess at two pounds or so at a minimum, and that would need some careful aim to be debilitating.
- b_t_s 2y ago
  The old prison favorite of a lock in a a sock can very easily be fatal & probably weights 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound. I once reforged a ball peen hammer into a 1 handed warhammer. It was either a 12 or 16 ounce head, so quite light, really too light to get full power. It was shocking how much adding 6 inches to the handle increased the power. The spike end would easily do 1.5 to 2 inches through plate steel(maybe 3/16 or 1/8 inch) & even the sharp(90 degree) corners of the hammer head would pierce that plate if the strike wasn't flush and peel it back can opener style a half inch. It really takes very little mass to break bone provided you can get good speed, a relatively hard small impact point, and no armor/padding in the way. Skulls, hands, forearms, and shins are very vulnerable.
anthk 2y ago
BIg swords weren't made to cut down an enemy in half. They were made to bring down a knight riding a horse. You didn't club it, but bashed it down with a swing. Also, the Middle Ages weren't as dirty as you think, the British wrote a Black Legend about them. The 20th century movies didn't help neither. I'm not talking about Monty Python, but the supossedly serious dramas set on that era. For instance, I'm pretty sure the 13-14th centuries were completely different to the 8th or 9th ones in technology, development and culture. This thinking school was almost in the Enlightenment era, but we can perfectly place it at the end of the Middle Ages as the kickstart of the modern rights born in the Enlightenment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca And, of course, before these there were the Italians and the Humanist movement.
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  I suspect that the huge 2 handed swords favoured by the Landsknecht, were intended to intimidate people into not laughing at their clothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht
  - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
    Serious answer: They are for opening up blocks of pike men. You use the 2 handed swords to destroy the pikes and/or push them aside, then send your guys with short swords into the gap to destroy the pike block from the inside.
  - anthk 2y ago
    In Spain the big swords were called mandobles, they were used kinda like a maneuvereable spear with a far better angle cover to bash/defend. Also maybe to crush down infantries under a rush.
- aldarion 2y ago
  Early Middle Ages were probably a point in history where Europeans were at their highest level in terms of overall health and quality of life. Antiquity and Renaissance were both overcrowded, urbanized, with bad living conditions and worse food.
some_random 2y ago
The interesting modern flipside to this is that people very consistently underestimate the weight of firearms.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  And how does ammo add up. Cartridge weight of 7.62×39mm is about 16 grams, one magazine is 30 rounds. Meaning more than half a kilo per each. Or with 3-4 magazines 2 kilos.
hermitcrab 2y ago
If you are in the UK there are 2 incredible collections of ancient and medieval weapons and armour. The Royal Armoury (Leeds) and The Wallace Collection (London). Both are well worth a visit. Some of the armour is a work of art. I heard that NASA studied some of the late medieval armour to get ideas about how to articulate space suits (citation required).
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Parade / decorative weapons being heavy and that translating into thinking all weapons from then were like that makes sense, these are the ones that will have been kept around as heirlooms, whereas the practical ones will have been recycled with very few exceptions.
lenkite 2y ago
D&D characters are super-humans that "level-up" who have to use heavy weapons to fight against monsters with tough hides and natural armor. There is no such magic on Terra.

81 points by BerislavLopac 2y ago

Article has a minor misconception, D&D sword weights include the scabbard which mostly brings them in line with historical weapons. The ‘large’ weapons are excessively heavy, but players can be a lot stronger than actual humans.

Ekaros 2y ago
Have to remember that average human is 10 on usual scale in these games. And any character using any type of weapon getting bonus from strength has at minimum 12 or most likely 16 or above stat. Which means they are lot stronger that average.

Neywiny 2y ago

There was a video, I don't remember who the host was but it was a STEM educator, who picked up a medieval sword at a museum (with permission) and remarked at how light it was. Since then I've internally thought about how unrealistic so much of everything is. Of course it needs to be light, just like everything in modern day. They lug it around the countryside, swing it, etc. Heavy swords just don't make sense.

smogcutter 2y ago
In fairness, that misconception doesn’t just spring from imagination. Prop weapons generally are heavy, because they need to be thick to have blunt edges.
- vasco 2y ago
  I don't think something needs to be thick and heavy to be blunt, I've used (and I think many people have) blunt kitchen knives and sharp kitchen knives and without inspecting the blade edge I think it's very hard to tell. Sharpening a knife or sword also doesn't really change much in its weight from my layman knowledge.
  - pseudosaid 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    "Blunt" in a stage fighting or practice sparring context is completely different from blunt in a kitchen context. You are still swinging these swords are very near full speed at another human being. In a stage context, they might be wearing very minimal protective gear. You blunt kitchen knife will cut through meat just fine if you overhand swing it down. For example, here's a practice sword that has 1/16th in (1.6mm!) thick edges: https://www.reliks.com/functional-european-swords/practical-knightly-sword/ https://www.reliks.com/functional-european-swords/practical-... With the degree of difference in edge thickness, you can probably see how the cross section of a sword (and therefore its weight) will vary substantially, especially if you keep the maximum thickness about the same. It's absolutely possible to craft these types of swords that are both safe and well approximate the real shapes and weights and handling of a "real" sword. But it's also easy to just... go for look and safety to try to save money.
    - vasco 2y ago
      Thanks for the insider knowledge!
  - watwut 2y ago
    Blunt kitchen knife is pretty sharp sword tho. I know as I got cut with a training sword - it was significantly more blunt then what you would call blunt kitchen knife.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Prop weapons can be made of plastic.
  - pseudosaid 2y ago
    they can be, but they were not as being recanted above. Prop weapons can be made of aerogel too but im not making a lame point about it.
- michaelt 2y ago
  It depends what your prop is aiming to simulate. $10 halloween costume prop? Hollow plastic, super light. Training weapon for self defence against knife attacks? Solid plastic, several times the thickness of a real knife, probably bright blue. Olympic fencing weapons, which simulate duelling? Pretty light, you only need a light touch to score a point and bending is desirable. Live Action Role Play where they want to whack each other, but not hard? Anime cosplay? They mostly go for foam-covered plastic which is kinda light, but they're often thick and also they often simulate unrealistically large weapons, so they can end up kinda heavy. Ornamental/replica things that are just for show? Could go either way. You could make an extra-light sword out of aluminium, or an extra-heavy ornate dagger out of pewter. Less steel means a lower material and shipping cost - but a bit more heft that feels realistic to buyers might get you better product reviews. Apparently some HEMA/renaissance fair folk wear full suits of metal armour, metal longswords that are blunt-but-authentically-weighted, then try to whack each other pretty hard? Looks like concussion city to me.
  - foobarian 2y ago
    I got a suit of chainmail at one point to possibly wear for Halloween/Renn fairs etc. It was heavy! I could not stand it for longer than about an hour, it was a real workout. Certainly made me gain new respect for all the stereotypical medieval knights wearing full metal armor suits.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Huh, wonder if you could turn that into a fitness fad for runners. Improve safety against attackers, get a better cardio workout. Forget Under Armour. Let’s go for Over Armor.
    - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
      Like replica swords, replica armour is also often too heavy. Especially maille (the correct term for chainmail). Proper maille has the rings riveted closed so you can use thin rings. Many cheap replicas use bent (butted) rings. They need to be thicker so they don't bend open. I have a full hauberk which goes to my knees with long sleeves. It weighs 6-ish kilo. Add a kilo for the coif. A decently made late medieval full plate armour is maybe 15-ish kilo complete with helmet. The heaviest armours are probably late 14th century armours. They are essentially an almost full plate over a (partial or full) maille hauberk. Some are maybe 25 kilo. That's still a lot less than the 40 or so kilo that modern soldiers lug around.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  You imagine you’ve held prop weapons
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I think some of these misconceptions appear in popular media predating the reenactment scene. Mark Twain in particular is guilty of it. Connecticut Yankee has a bunch of stuff like knights needing cranes to get on their horses and whatnot. The whole book is about how crude and simple minded medieval people were.
ulnarkressty 2y ago
I recommend to go to a medieval fair, there you can touch and handle melee weapons freely to get an idea how they feel. I remember that I once handled a parade sword which had a very thick and ornate blade, my arms were hurting immediately. Then the guy handed me his own short sword which was used in the fighting demonstrations and it was literally like picking up a can of beans: much lighter weight than expected and I couldn't feel at all the "length" of the blade when I swung it around - it was perfectly balanced in the hand.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  Medieval fair weapons still tend to be heavier than historical weapons because they (at least most of the ones that are handed to the public) are blunt.
  - eddd-ddde 2y ago
    Surely taking a sharp sword and blunting its edge yields a safe weapon of similar weight, right? Are they purposely making them more massive?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Depends on how blunt. With momentum behind it you can overcome a lot of bluntness so you want it even more blunt...
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      They not only have a blunt edge but also a blunt tip. To appreciably blunt the tip while keeping the same length you have to add more metal to the tip.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    And because they use crap alloys and their forging technique is crap. Customer demand drives the quality of the product. A thousand years ago, the customer demanded lightweight, durable, sharp tools, in order to survive their profession. Today, they just want something that looks and feels cool. (For comparison: a Renn Faire sword sells for $200, and a traditionally-made Japanese sword costs as much as a car)
brudgers 2y ago
Here is Adam Savage picking up swords and making similar remarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJypHnsEn8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJypHnsEn8o Maybe that is what you saw.

delichon 2y ago

But the part where my character can carry 300 pounds of inventory while fighting is legit, right?

zdragnar 2y ago
True, but your weapons still need to be light to be able to carry the 20 wheels of cheese you'll be eating mid-fight to heal up because you can't be bothered to learn alchemy.

chuckadams 2y ago

Now let's tackle the similar misconception about armor weight: this myth got so absurd that some still believe knights actually had to be hoisted up with cranes onto on their horses. Whereas in the real world, I've seen people doing backflips in full plate.

Sander_Marechal 2y ago
Absolutely, see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI
- paleotrope 2y ago
  The horse isn't going to like that mounting method if the knight has spurs on.
dghf 2y ago
Henry VIII (in his younger, athletic days) could leap into the saddle in full armour without using the stirrups, and was very proud of it.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  In his later days though... he might have needed that crane ;)
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  Supreme leader played golf this weekend and got 17 hole-in-ones. Remind me who history is written by.
  - waveBidder 2y ago
    The losers. The winners are too busy governing to give a shit. https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/ https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/

mhd 2y ago

Honestly, I doubt that a Strength 20 D&D barbarian cares about the wrong weight of his Greataxe, given that they can probably deadlift a horse. Their player probably does care that the chosen implement of murderous doom looks cooler than a plain Daneaxe… One problem that D&D and videogames have, is that weight in lbs is a pretty poor simulation of the burden involved. The sheer bulk or lack of proper carrying opportunities seems factored in a bit into several RPGs, even those where you can carry 111 spears in your backpack. The (vastly underrated) tabletop RPG RuneQuest once ditched "lbs" and went with a more abstracted "encumbrance" (ENC) statistic. And of course lots of videogames plus several tabletop games go with a slot- or grid-based inventory as a main or secondary source of being overburdened. Weapon weights and similar issues (too short rapiers, non-existant back scabbards) seem to be the "not every weapon is a AR-15/mind your trigger discipline" of the HEMA crowd.

sylos 2y ago
Related, the new edition of Pathfinder ditched weight in lbs and picked up a system of encumberance called bulk, I think, better represents real objects a bit more than just plain weight
hermitcrab 2y ago
Ah, Runequest! Happy memories.
pdonis 2y ago
> even those where you can carry 111 spears in your backpack. That's what magic items like the Efficient Quiver are for. :-)

elric 2y ago

The myth of the heavy sword is a stupid one, and I was convinced that it had died out a long time ago. I'm not sure who still believes otherwise? DnD's weights are hardly a reference, as those weights are important for the mechanics of the game, not for historical accuracy. The comments regarding Game of Thrones blurb don't make much sense either. At no point in that quote does Syrio claim that Westerosi swords are unreasonably heavy or that knights are clumsy. But a knight in full plate with a longsword is certainly much less agile than someone with a rapier and no armour.

digging 2y ago
> But a knight in full plate with a longsword is certainly much less agile than someone with a rapier and no armour. No, that's not really true either.
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  IIRC a full set of plate armour weighs about 60lbs. How is that not going to make you less agile (no matter how well made)? And yes, I understand the old trope about knights lumbering around, not being able to get up if they fell over and not being about to mount a horse is all garbage. And that 60lbs is roughly what a modern combat soldier carries. But it is still 60lbs!
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    A huge number of people are 60lbs or more overweight and they still get around fairly well.
    - hermitcrab 2y ago
      'get around fairly well' != 'agile' ;0)
      - digging 2y ago
        A huge number of people are 60lbs or more overweight and are still very agile, too. It's silly to keep picking this fight this way.

harimau777 2y ago

At the other end, I wonder what the minimum weight would be for an impact (as opposed to edged) weapon to be able to reliably damage an unarmored opponent.

zdragnar 2y ago
Well, a sling can whip a small stone hard enough to do serious damage. Otherwise, look into the cosh / blackjack / billy club style clubs. Light enough to swing at a high speed, small enough to hide under loose clothing, with just enough weight at the end to cause deep impact trauma. Anything too light means that the force is dispersed in soft tissue, leaving surface bruises. That added inertia of some extra weight at the end causes the energy of the swing to transfer deeper to bone. I doubt you'll get a scientifically derived number of any certainty, but I'd hazard a guess at two pounds or so at a minimum, and that would need some careful aim to be debilitating.
b_t_s 2y ago
The old prison favorite of a lock in a a sock can very easily be fatal & probably weights 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound. I once reforged a ball peen hammer into a 1 handed warhammer. It was either a 12 or 16 ounce head, so quite light, really too light to get full power. It was shocking how much adding 6 inches to the handle increased the power. The spike end would easily do 1.5 to 2 inches through plate steel(maybe 3/16 or 1/8 inch) & even the sharp(90 degree) corners of the hammer head would pierce that plate if the strike wasn't flush and peel it back can opener style a half inch. It really takes very little mass to break bone provided you can get good speed, a relatively hard small impact point, and no armor/padding in the way. Skulls, hands, forearms, and shins are very vulnerable.

anthk 2y ago

BIg swords weren't made to cut down an enemy in half. They were made to bring down a knight riding a horse. You didn't club it, but bashed it down with a swing. Also, the Middle Ages weren't as dirty as you think, the British wrote a Black Legend about them. The 20th century movies didn't help neither. I'm not talking about Monty Python, but the supossedly serious dramas set on that era. For instance, I'm pretty sure the 13-14th centuries were completely different to the 8th or 9th ones in technology, development and culture. This thinking school was almost in the Enlightenment era, but we can perfectly place it at the end of the Middle Ages as the kickstart of the modern rights born in the Enlightenment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca And, of course, before these there were the Italians and the Humanist movement.

hermitcrab 2y ago
I suspect that the huge 2 handed swords favoured by the Landsknecht, were intended to intimidate people into not laughing at their clothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht
- Sander_Marechal 2y ago
  Serious answer: They are for opening up blocks of pike men. You use the 2 handed swords to destroy the pikes and/or push them aside, then send your guys with short swords into the gap to destroy the pike block from the inside.
- anthk 2y ago
  In Spain the big swords were called mandobles, they were used kinda like a maneuvereable spear with a far better angle cover to bash/defend. Also maybe to crush down infantries under a rush.
aldarion 2y ago
Early Middle Ages were probably a point in history where Europeans were at their highest level in terms of overall health and quality of life. Antiquity and Renaissance were both overcrowded, urbanized, with bad living conditions and worse food.

some_random 2y ago

The interesting modern flipside to this is that people very consistently underestimate the weight of firearms.

Ekaros 2y ago
And how does ammo add up. Cartridge weight of 7.62×39mm is about 16 grams, one magazine is 30 rounds. Meaning more than half a kilo per each. Or with 3-4 magazines 2 kilos.

hermitcrab 2y ago

If you are in the UK there are 2 incredible collections of ancient and medieval weapons and armour. The Royal Armoury (Leeds) and The Wallace Collection (London). Both are well worth a visit. Some of the armour is a work of art. I heard that NASA studied some of the late medieval armour to get ideas about how to articulate space suits (citation required).

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Parade / decorative weapons being heavy and that translating into thinking all weapons from then were like that makes sense, these are the ones that will have been kept around as heirlooms, whereas the practical ones will have been recycled with very few exceptions.

lenkite 2y ago

D&D characters are super-humans that "level-up" who have to use heavy weapons to fight against monsters with tough hides and natural armor. There is no such magic on Terra.