Ways you can use a sword without holding the hilt

There's a character in my story who's a master swordsman. He fought in a major war a long time ago and his side was on the verge of losing. In one last desperate act he begged the gods to allow him victory. They said that they couldn't win the battle for him, but they could let him go out in a blaze of glory. They charmed him with a special affliction. From the moment he next grasps his sword by the hilt, he will be granted extraordinary skill and luck in battle, however, he is also cursed to die in that very same battle aswell. He accepts these terms and is ready to fight, when suddenly his army makes a comeback and they win. He's now stuck unable to use his sword properly lest he die, (even if he grabs it when no one is around he'll suddenly be attacked by thieves or something and die in the scuffle somehow) to compensate, he develops a style where he fights without ever grabbing the sword's hilt. I have a few ideas, but i wanted to hear if there are any cool ways to fight with a sword if you can't actually hold it like a sword

Remove the hilt, and hold the tang, provided it's a full, fat, quality tang.

edited 11th Jun '11 4:14:30 PM by annebeeche

okay changing the definition, if he holds the sword so his palm is touching anything below the blade it activates

There are ways to use a sword without grabbing the hilt of it. You could hold it by the blade and use the crosspiece (assuming it has hone) as a hammerhead. Depending on how strict this prophecy thing is, he could half-sword by gripping the pommel or hand-guard, if they protrude to the sides.

yeah i thought that if crap got serious he'd grab it by the blade itself, cuz it would hurt him yet allow him to use it most like a normal sword. Holding it by the protruding bits sound good, it's like a samurai sword he has

If the sword is suitably long you could grab it by the ricasso and use it as a sort of improvised pole-arm. The grip wouldn't be great though.

If you're slicing the palm of your hand open by holding the blade, you aren't going to be fighting very well. It's not a question of skill or ability, it's a question of anatomy and physiology.

He wouldn't have to worry about cutting himself if the sword was sheathed—just hold it by the scabbard and use it as a bludgeon like Gault suggested.

edited 11th Jun '11 4:31:05 PM by annebeeche

Well he's supposed to be ungodly good at swordfighting, so he'd only have to hold the blade in a serious fight for a few seconds.

Here's an idea: wear special protective gloves.

These are gods who created the curse, they took the concept of him wearing gloves into account, it doesn't work.

Can he never even to much as touch the hilt, or just not grab it to use it like a proper sword? Because if it's the latter he could grab one of the protruding sides of the crosspiece with his right hand the ricasso with his left, almost like a gun. That would make for a pretty decent stabbing weapon. That's pretty much how the Estoc was designed to be used, solely as a thrusting sword.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc

Think of him using one of those protruding sections of the hand guard.

edited 11th Jun '11 4:55:47 PM by Gault

The sword doesn't have to be sharpened all the way down — you could just have, say, the tip sharpened, or only one of the sides. Mind you, it wouldn't be a comfortable grip, like, at all, but he might avoid slicing his hand in half that way.

But the feasibility of doing this kinda depends on what sort of sword he's trying it with. I imagine using a scimitar might be a bit easier than a long sword, but in tern a flamberge would be murder on his hands.

edited 11th Jun '11 4:55:29 PM by Dec

he can't touch the hilt with his palms while gripping it with his fingers, so basically yeah, he can't hold it like a sword, at least not by the hilt, he can grip the hilt using only his fingers though

You will not find a traditional warrior in any culture who wasn't trained in the use of several different swords, as well as different weapons entirely like axes or hammers or archery or hand-to-hand.

Just have him use something else.

Very good point.

Is it restricted to just a sword? What about an axe? A mace? A hammer? Daggers? Crossbow or bow and arrow? I'm sure that, if he's famous and someone of import, he could get a weapon custom-built to neatly circumvent the curse.

Sure he's best skilled with a blade, but surely there's at least a bit of overlap between a sword and other medieval weapons.

edited 11th Jun '11 7:05:33 PM by Gault

What kind of sword is this again? ?_?

Yeah, that is very important.

If it's a katana or some other kind of curved weapon, it's probably designed with sharpness in mind. So grabbing it by the blade isn't a great idea. If it's a straight sword, it won't be anywhere near as sharp. Straight swords were about utility and inflicting deep wounds. Sharpness was secondary to resilience, and it shows in sword designs.

With a European longsword, for instance, you could grip the blade with no damage to your hands as long as it didn't slip. With leather gloves, your hands will escape unharmed. As mentioned above, this allows you to use the sword as a mace or hammer if held closer to the end of the blade, or as a staff if held in the middle.

edited 11th Jun '11 10:31:16 PM by MadassAlex

Zweihanders and the like were commonly used with non-blade techniques, such as the bludgeon idea above, and more notably, using either the crossguard or parierhaken (hooks just above the crossguard) to pull at an opponent's leg or weapon and pull back, dropping the person or disarming them.

Also, zweihanders were typically kept dull along much of the blade's edges, as they were very often used as thrusting weapons, with the grip centered on the crossguard and parierhaken, which is a variation of the common technique of "half-swording".

edited 11th Jun '11 10:40:19 PM by Five_X

He could use an aforementioned pair of gloves to grip the blade itself, but even if he's an insanely skilled swordsman, he'll probably lose a lot of the weapon's functionality if he can't touch the hilt or the crossguard at all.

A good enough pair of gloves and a firm grip would probably ensure he wouldn't be harmed by the edge, but unless there is a special reason to use this sword over any other weapon, he'd pick something new up, and maybe keep this one around in case he ever found himself in a position where a heroic sacrifice was once again his only apparent option.

If you're going to have him gripping the blade, though, and give the sword a different magical property to make it preferable over other weapons even without the hilt,absurd sharpness probably shouldn't be your first choice...

I'd imagine the most practical, albeit less fun, thing to do would just be to switch to another weapon. However skilled he is with a sword, a different weapon used properly is going to be more effective than a sword used improperly.

Gilgamesh from Fate/stay night throws them as if they where javalines.

^^

On the basis that a blade-gripped longsword is being used improperly, you'd be correct.

Longswords were overtly designed with versatility in mind, however, built by swordsmiths that knew that the pommel had to be as deadly as the blade.

Warning, NSFW due to language◊. It's the one image of this sort I had a definite link to, so I beg pardon for the language, but here's an illustration of one possible maneuver.

edited 12th Jun '11 1:13:31 AM by Morgulion

Speaking of deadly pommels◊

edited 12th Jun '11 1:12:17 AM by annebeeche