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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imperialus" data-source="post: 1006144" data-attributes="member: 893">Haveing actually held a number of european swords from the 12th and 13th century (I had a sweet ass summer job, what can I say) I'd have to agree with mmu1.  They feel a little odd in the hand because the point of the weapon is closer to the tang giveing it an illusion of more weight but it was designed to be used in conjunction with a shield and armour as well makeing parrying less important than moveing your body to allow your armour to best deflect an incomeing blow.  Two edged weapons pounding on each other will do nothing but chip or snap the blades anyhow.  Try it yourself.  Go out buy a really expencive set of carbon steel cooking knives and smack the edges together a few times.  It's an expencive way to prove my point but it should be easy to remember especially after your wife or mom comes home and finds out what you did to her 500 doller knife set <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />.If we really want to get technical about things the best sword design for it's time period would be an English Civil War era cavelry saber.  Armour had largely fallen into disuse apart from other cavelry and pikemen and we all know pikes beat a man on a horse any day of the week anyhow and it's a waste to pit two identically equiped units against each other so cavelry charges among musketteer units were frightfully disruptive.  The Bayonnet hadn't been invented yet and matchlock muskets were a bitch to load so Cavelry of any sort could slap the poor musketteers around like the proverbial red headed step child.  In pretty much every other instance in history a sword was used as a secondary weapon at best.  Knights typically used maces or warhammers brain footsoldiers or unhorse their opponants at which point they would be killed by footmen with daggers or simply trampled by the battle.  In fact there exsist almost as many manuals on how to fight with an axe, hammer or mace as there are swordfighting manuals.  Swords were popular because they wereA: Very expencive.B: Much nicer to look at then a peice of iron on a stickC: They were really handy during a rout or when sacking a town when you were typically butchering unarmed and unarmoured pesants.D: Last and perhaps most important.  They resembled a Crucifix.As for relative speeds.  I can't speak too much for the Katana but if you look at European fencing manuals like the German 13th century Fechtbuch or the Italian 15th century Flos Duellatorum it quickly becomes obvious that you would have to be superhuman to pull off the different moves with a 7 lb sword.  If for example you were reqired to withdraw your sword so the hilt was approximatly a foot or so behind your back (as illustrated <a href="http://www.thehaca.com/pdf/dlr5.JPG" target="_blank">here</a> in the upper left) the weight of an 8 or 9 lb sword would be almost unbearable due to the angle of your wrist and the swords center of gravity due to your own.Anyhow... I think I've babbled on enough here.  I'll shut up now... Maby tommorow I'll actually post some of my ideas for sword stats...</blockquote>

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