Seperating your Epees from your Rapiers?

[Scribe Ineti]

A thrust with a smallsword could kill very, very quickly and easily, two inches through the rib cage and you are dead.

As a slight counterpoint, thrusts didn't always kill immediately, even ones to the heart. They were generally fatal, yes, but not always instantaneous.

Here's a couple good tech-y articles:

http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.shtml
http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/kill2.shtml

 

[Driddle]

... Anything that floppy couldn't do more than a surface wound.

Your pointed rejoinders bound me in rapt attention, but I snapped free at your last comment.

"THAT FLOPPY?" ... No more than a surface wound?!

Contrary to the picture painted here, your standard competition epee doesn't dangle off the hilt like Catwoman's pretty li'l whip. It's more than sturdy enough for a powerful straight thrust *through* material/flesh, and actually doesn't bend until the blunt scoring tip stops against puncture-resistant gear.

In fact, seven fatalities in the sport have been recorded since 1937, and most of these have occurred in highly skilled competitors in elite competition. All fatalities have been male fencers; five of seven deaths involved epée, with foil and sabre one each. Although broken blades were responsible for the fatal wound in six of the seven cases, we can reasonably extropolate that a sharpened tip for intentional injury would work just as well.

((I have not been able to independently confirm this particular recounting: http://www.webspawner.com/users/fencerfear/index.html ))

Having taken more than a few shots myself in bouts, resulting from some very deep blunt trauma bruising, I can say with certainty that a SHARPENED epee/foil/saber tip, employed by a skilled fencer intent on hurting someone, could do more than surface wound damage.

 

[reanjr]

Well, the thread about swords got me thinking about, well, swords. Now, I know I'm not as experienced as many of you out there, so I want your opinions on this. As far as I can tell, D&D sort of combines the rapier, epee, foil and all "fencing type weapons" (in case I'm missing some) into the standard rapier. Keeping game balance in mind, how would you go about seperating them into more distinct D&D weapons. For instance (dear God, please correct me if I'm wrong!) as far as I remember, the epee is sharp on one side, and dull on the other, which allows for some pretty cool grapples of the sword itself. How you would work that into the weapon discription...beyond me. However, what are your thoughts on these wonderful light weapons? Feel free to add some comments about the history of the sword and its unique ablility in combat.

Thanks everyone!

T from Three Haligonians

Well, you'd start by realizing that an epee and a foil aren't weapons. They are no more weapons than a hockey stick or a football. Neither epees nor foils (by traditional definition; look it up in a dictionary) have cutting edges or points.

If you really wanted, I'd probably make them d6, but give them a -4 penalty to hit (improvised weapon) as they don't really have the point to poke someone with, but if it did break skin it could cause significant damage. I'd also give it a hardness of like 2 and 2 HP as well, making them targets for sunder. Maybe give them a hardness of 5 due to their flexibility, I don't know.

A rapier on the other hand can pretty much stand with its current rules, it should just be pointed out more clearly that the thing could be like 5+ feet long.

Just my thoughts based on my limited knowledge.

 

[reanjr]

As a slight counterpoint, thrusts didn't always kill immediately, even ones to the heart. They were generally fatal, yes, but not always instantaneous.

Here's a couple good tech-y articles:

http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.shtml
http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/kill2.shtml

Everything I've ever read has stated that thrusts are more deadly than cuts... if you are willing to wait a couple of days.

 

[reanjr]

In fact, seven fatalities in the sport have been recorded since 1937, and most of these have occurred in highly skilled competitors in elite competition. All fatalities have been male fencers; five of seven deaths involved epée, with foil and sabre one each. Although broken blades were responsible for the fatal wound in six of the seven cases, we can reasonably extropolate that a sharpened tip for intentional injury would work just as well.

That's fascinating considering there have been thousands of football injury-ralated deaths in the same period of time.

Just proves that the epees, foils, and fencing sabers are not anything like resembling real weapons and would be useless in combat. Fencers that I have spoken with seem to usually have an overly inflated sense of their hobby. Fencing is nothing like combat. Not even a simulation of combat. Hell, video games are probably more dangerous and closer to the real thing.

 

[Drifter Bob]

As a slight counterpoint, thrusts didn't always kill immediately, even ones to the heart. They were generally fatal, yes, but not always instantaneous.

Here's a couple good tech-y articles:

http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.shtml
http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/kill2.shtml

Thanks for the links, those were interesting.

In my defense, I did say COULD Kill, not that they always did. I know that one reason puncture wounds tended to often be fatal in the long run had more to do with medicine in the period than with the actual injury.

For what it's worth, I think cutting and thrusting weapons are equally effective, I just wanted to emphasize that I think the smallsword and the rapier were both quite lethal weapons...

DB

 

[Drifter Bob]

That's fascinating considering there have been thousands of football injury-ralated deaths in the same period of time.

Just proves that the epees, foils, and fencing sabers are not anything like resembling real weapons and would be useless in combat. Fencers that I have spoken with seem to usually have an overly inflated sense of their hobby. Fencing is nothing like combat. Not even a simulation of combat. Hell, video games are probably more dangerous and closer to the real thing.

Modern sport fencing is a sport, true enough, but I think you are exxagerating here quite a bit, aren't you? A trained sport fencer with a sharpened epee would probably be very dangerous, as you probably know smallswords weren't that much different as weapons and they were notoriously lethal.

Admittedly, that sport is very and does not simulate combat, but you could learn a hell of a lot more from sport fencing than a video game If you'd like to take it further I reccomend WMA.

Incidentally, the word 'fencing' doesn't just mean olympic style sport fencing, it actually refers to the art of defense, incuding a variety of weapons and even wrestling and grappling.

DB

 

[reanjr]

Modern sport fencing is a sport, true enough, but I think you are exxagerating here quite a bit, aren't you? A trained sport fencer with a sharpened epee would probably be very dangerous, as you probably know smallswords weren't that much different as weapons and they were notoriously lethal.

Admittedly, that sport is very and does not simulate combat, but you could learn a hell of a lot more from sport fencing than a video game If you'd like to take it further I reccomend WMA.

Incidentally, the word 'fencing' doesn't just mean olympic style sport fencing, it actually refers to the art of defense, incuding a variety of weapons and even wrestling and grappling.

DB

Yes, I was being quite facetious.

While I was aware that fencing included more than the epee/foil, I was not aware that it included wrestling and grappling. It would just sound weird to talk about two guys wrestling as fencing.

 

[Drifter Bob]

Yes, I was being quite facetious.

While I was aware that fencing included more than the epee/foil, I was not aware that it included wrestling and grappling. It would just sound weird to talk about two guys wrestling as fencing.

Yeah, I remember it sounded really odd to me when I was watching a kirosawa samurai flick, and they were talking about fencing. Was that a botched subtitle I just read? But thats the translation... fencing just means the art of self defense with weapons.

Including wrestling may seem like a stretch, but it makes more sense when you realise that back in the day, wrestling and grappling were inextricably connected with fencing because fencing was a real to the the death no holds barred thing.

Consisder modern "ultimate fighting", when martial arts were still sports, they were still their seperate sides, boxing was boxing, karate was karate, wrestling was wrestling.

When they actually put it to the test in UFC, they learned two things: 1) you need to combine a little bit of everything because you never do know what can happen in a fight, and 2) especially wrestling, because real fights can often degenerate into a wrestling match if you will.

This can happen almost as much with fencing, and those old fechtbuchs are not about sport, they are about killing and defending yourself from being killed, they are full of dirty, dirty tricks and make no assumptions about chivalry, contrary to the way some people may think of those eras

DB

 

[Three_Haligonians]

Drifter Bob, thanks for reminding me of the small sword, I guess this is what I was actually getting into in asking about a D&D equivalent. I'm aware that epees and foils were used by the French, who developed a rigid (perhaps not the word I'm looking for) code for thier use. But how was the small sword used? Was it actually used to inflict damage?

As for modern epees that we use on stage, I can attest to a level of danger involved in using them. I was trained in stage combat with epees and, as our actors typically aren't using a mask or any padding, a high level of saftey needs to be maintained when choreographing fights. We treat epees on stage with the same level of care as we would any other blade and, perhaps, only slightly less than firearms.

T from Three Haligonians