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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6433706" data-attributes="member: 4937">Dsetreza emphasized lateral motion compared to French and Italian.  Attacks were expected to be delivered along unexpected lines, and much more so than French or Italian this meant moving ones body out of line and not merely ones blade.  Consequently, the Spanish art made the cut as important as the thrust, since the thrust was based on linear motion.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, it also made it's en guard position with a fully extended arm that would look more like the mid-thrust position in modern fencing.  The Spanish art also made finer distinctions in the distance between the fighters, probably again because of greater emphasis on the cut, but paid less attention to the diversity in parry and thrusting motions that a swordsman could use.  Over time it tended to lose favor, because its easier to quickly move your hand than your whole body.   Italian looks like modern fencing in many respects.  It highly prioritizes linear motion away from and toward the target over lateral motion around the target and emphasizes economy of motion and the timing and tempo of attacks.  Compared to other forms though, there was a heavy emphasis on what you were doing with that other hand, which was assumed not merely to provide balance, but to have a defensive role, either with a shield, a gauntlet, another blade used to parry, or at least a cloak.   Note that while Italian styles are associated with the use of two hands, it's not really usually 'two handed fighting' in the D&D sense.  It's more sword and board with improvised boards if needed.French and English look a lot like Italian, but English fencing - at least in the Elizabethan era - puts even heavier emphasis on tempo preferring weapons either shorter or longer than the Italian rapier in order to match the weapon to the stride of the fencer, and puts an emphasis on natural motion - stances more like walking than the hyper affected posture of Italian school.   French can be considered basically a refinement of the Italian ideas, but dropping the emphasis on two weapons - probably mostly in response to the sword becoming less and less of an important martial weapon and more focused on ritual dueling.   As such, it eventually dominates over all other schools, just because no one bothers with the other weapons or other situations you can get into melee combat.  There is I feel a marked decrease in quality of the swordsmanship and swords beginning in the late 18th century, because it just no longer matters as much (similar decreases can be seen in sport fencing once it becomes electronic, because the actual swordlike quality of the weapon no longer matters as much when you can use it like a wand).It would however be more appropriate to speak of the schools of individual sword masters, as really there is no one single style for a country.  I'm not sure that D20 is well suited to a fencing simulation.  I think you'd want something with a lot more potential detail and less abstract combat if you really wanted to simulate such minor differences in theory.</blockquote>

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