Basic Trope: All types of sword are portrayed as being similar and requiring the same skills.
- Straight: Bob fights with a longsword, but he can switch to using a katana or scimitar and perform just as well with them.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob goes from using a tiny dagger to a BFS with no effort.
- It's not just swords, but melee weapons in general that are all considered the same. Bob's skills with the sword translate directly to mastery of maces, spears, and axes.
- The reach, damage, and size of all blades are treated interchangeably meaning a dopplesword is just as concealable and damaging as a straight razor.
- Downplayed:
- Bob can only use swords of a similar size to his longsword.
- Although swords have their stengths and weaknesses specialiation is restricted to a favorite sword type skill bonus for matching the one they are most familiar with.
- Swords are divided into broad types like slashing focused for scimitars, sabers, cutlasses, and katanas, thrusting focus for rapiers, daggers, gladiuses and balanced for arming swords and jians.
- Justified:
- Bob actually took time to learn how to use many types of sword, making him a Jack of All Trades.
- Bob's superpowers allow him to learn any new weapon on the fly via Awesomeness by Analysis.
- Inverted: Bob's longsword breaks and he has to get a new one, but even though it's the same type of sword, he has to learn to use it all over again.
- Subverted: Bob drops his longsword, picks up a katana, and immediately fails at using it.
- Double Subverted: After a few practice swings, Bob is just as good with the katana as he was with a longsword.
- Parodied: Bob can use wooden swords as if they were real blades.
- Zig Zagged: Bob can use a longsword, katana, and scimitar, but he needs special training to learn how to use a rapier and BFS.
- Averted: Bob has to spend a considerable amount of time learning how to use new types of swords.
- Enforced:
- Showing Bob learning how to use every type of sword would slow the pace of the story too much.
- Adding individual skill trees and special attacks for every type of sword would be too hard to balance and unfun, so a video game only has a single "swords" skill that covers all bladed weapons.
- Lampshaded: "That's an entirely different weapon! How are you good at it already?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: "Shouldn't I train with the scimitar as well?" "No need. Once you learn one sword, you've learned them all".
- Conversed: ???
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