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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1650496" data-attributes="member: 12744">Good clarification Vig. Also, if you ever get a chance check out the old Discovery channel documentary 'Deadly Duels';  not only does it have some decent swordwork in a few places, but there is one segment with this older (50+) gentleman puts on his plate-and-chain (half-plate by d20 game standards) and then proceeds to attempt to disprove the notion of the unwieldlyness of knightly armor by doing rolling flips, long jogs, jumping fences, and mounting a running horse in it.  Pretty eye-opening.  I think a lot of the misnomer surrounding european armor comes from people misinterpreting plate-and-mail, half-plate, and full-plate armors of latter medieval periods with earlier tournament armors; there was quite a difference between them.  It's about the equivalent of a modern person watching a police dog trainer in one of those Sta-Puffed marshmellow man training suits and saying "gee, how does the cop drive his car and apprehend criminals wearing that body armor?  Poor guy, I bet they have to winch him onto his motorcycle...".  Of course followed by: "A katana would just cut that stuff in half anyway"  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> So yeah, there is a good bit of romanticized, um, 'notions' about the popular use or misuse of pretty much every weapon statted up in the d20 system, most of them propagated by misinformed writers or later, movies.  Like Chuck said, trust but verify.  Or do a quick search and figure out that a greatsword don't wiegh no friggin' 15 pounds <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I always liked the article that John Clements wrote a while back on the 'rapier vs katana; who would win' topic (I believe Clements wrote it, I could be wrong).  His point pretty much said "well, the better swordsman would.  The tool is irrelevant".  I happen to agree.  I once handily thrashed an SCA-practitioner who fought with 'sword and shield' using a bamboo shinai, and then on another occasion got completely trounced by another who was half his size and in significantly worse physical condition (not only with sword and shield, but with heavy epee/rapier vs. shinai too); man, that guy was good.  Of course, that was just sparring with rattan and bamboo toys and not even a remotely good indicator of the real thing, but I think it still proves the point. Dont get me wrong, I love the katana.  Having done a lot of work with it, and some rapier, smallsword, and two-hander, it suits my build and physique a lot better than the others so it is IMO much better *for me*, but that doesnt mean it's always better.  A much taller guy with the arm/wrist strength born of long practice with a rapier would definitely make me extremely careful <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.</blockquote>

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