Combat-Writing Thread

IMHO, you all have it backwards. A weapon's design is determined by it's purpose, and that that determines such things as it's weight. Two handed swords were developed for armor penetration, as the quality of steel improved during the Middle Ages. You dont want a sword that is too heavy because it will be too slow- you need a certain amount of blade speed to build up momentum and be useful for parries. Two-handed swords generally didnt weigh more than 3 pounds or so (Rapiers, by contrast, could be as heavy as 1 and a half pounds).

One handed broadswords were around 2-3 pounds, but the advantage with them is you can wield a shield with the other hand.

Being two-handed offers certain options, most notably in the strength of a blow or block, that a one-handed blade does not. There are a number of sword designs that are light enough to allow a skilled practitioner little penalty in one-handed use, or even so light there's little obvious reason for two-handed use, but still have two-handed grips.

You mean hand and a half swords? Another distinction that I forgot to mention is that one handed broad-swords were generally intended to be used on horseback, while two-handers were for the ground. A hand and a halfer was a general purpose design that could be used either way.

I was actually thinking of the wakazashi in particular, which has a two-handed grip despite not being nearly long or heavy enough to justify that; it was pretty much solely so that you could deal with somebody two-handing their katana at you when yours was not available or impractical. Most techniques that make use of it alone were designed for close quarters where the full-length katana would be impractical.

Asian swords are outside my area of expertise, although I assume similar considerations apply to their designs. Cultural preferences might have something to do with the differences.

Very late, but @Marquis:

Ok, sure thing!

It's probably going to take me a while - I thought it was easy peasy to break down modern infantry combat, but when you put it under the lens of analysis it suddenly becomes much, much more complex!

On the topic of swords and katanas in particular.

What stopped people from putting longer cross-guards or even basket hilts on katanas? It's so rare to see I can't even find many pictures of it online, and yet one of the most common complaints I've heard about the katana is that it doesn't have a sufficient cross-guard.

I can only give a partial answer here: I think the basket hilt wasn't seen on katanas for the same reason it wasn't seen on longswords. Both are two-handed weapons; the basket hilt is optimized for the one-handed rapier and smallsword.

As for the crossguard, I think that may have been a doctrinal design issue. The huge cruciform hilt on a longsword is there for more reasons than just to protect the hands; it provides a counterbalance to the blade, and can be a deadly weapon in its own right when the longsword is wielded for "murder strokes", whereby the swordsman holds the blade of the weapon and uses the crossguard as a warhammer. The katana, on the other hand, was optimized for one purpose only: it was, and remains, the king of cutting and slashing. For that, a minimal handguard might have been considered enough. Certainly it'd tie in with the relatively delicate construction of most katanas. Unlike the longsword, which was likely to be a knight's main, general-purpose weapon, the katana was a backup arm for a samurai (bushido mythologizing notwithstanding); the samurai's primary weapons were lance and bow. Hence, the purpose of the katana was to primarily cut down enemy light infantry, although the design evolved to emphasize a greater degree of antiarmor capability over time; it seems unlikely that it'd be designed with the same emphasis on versatility and defense against an enemy sword that the longsword has.

edited 14th Dec '14 5:45:33 PM by SabresEdge

@Flanker: Let me know if you need any help.

The other thing about the katana and most Japanese blades is that they are not designed for a style of use that would need a crossguard. The kind of sword-against-sword pushing and shoving that makes a good crossguard a necessity is anathema to both the technical aspects of the katana (a light, thin blade that relies on the quality of its edge rather than its weight is too easily dulled or broken in that sort of thing) and to the way its use was taught.

They are also, bluntly, weapons intended for experts. Feudalism in Japan was not so much based on the defense against external threat as the military elite denying both means and training to anyone else, so that one trained man with a katana could defeat a dozen peasants. A strong crossguard makes for a safer, more forgiving weapon. This was not in keeping with the military elite's desire to remain in power and limit admission to its own ranks. Since one's very claim to be one of the elite depends on the ownership of a sword, and swords can be acquired through nefarious means, the skill requirements being high as well is very much intentional.

edited 15th Dec '14 4:07:13 AM by Night

Which didnt prevent ninjas from developing their own version.

Yeah, but the "historical ninja" is kind of like the "historical Jesus"; you have to squint the right way to see it and there's not much support in contemporary texts, only in ones decades or centuries later. Anyone professing to teach a ninja "style" in the modern era undoubtedly just made it up.

edited 15th Dec '14 7:38:43 PM by Night

Armor Magazine back issues. US Army magazine, for all your 20th-21st century warfare needs.

That's not exactly unusual. No matter how hard a society tries to make certain things the sole preserve of the upper class, eventually somebody else is going to get their hands on it. Or failing that, find a workaround.

Probably a little late but from what I remember the guard on a katana was never intended to stop sword blows, it was for thrusting. If a blade happened to meet bone the blade would stop moving forward, your hands however would keep going... Directly onto the sharp end if it wasn't for the small guard.

edited 15th Dec '14 10:26:02 PM by Yewleaf

@Yewleaf: that's the purpose of a lot of guards on bladed weapons...which is a big reason why those tacti-cool folding knives the mall ninjas all tote about are so much bullshit. xD

edited 15th Dec '14 11:09:45 PM by drunkscriblerian

But they are folding knives...

Another reason a lot of folding and "rambo" knives are BS: cheap metal.

Gerber Knives, Ontario, SOG brand, that's the level of construction needed for a real fighting knife.

@Taira: Qualified agreement. As far as knife-as-tool goes, yes; a user wants something of good quality that will stand up to both hard and repeated use. (In speculative/historical genres of fiction where blade combat is the norm and personal combat is a day-to-day reality this would apply too). However when it comes to knife-as-weapon in a real-world modern context, even cheap steel will "git 'er done" once...and really, that's all the user needs. Think of the context of prison; plenty of people have been killed by improvised weapons ("shanks") that were quite likely only a one-shot deal.

Thanks to modern forensics, toting around a weapon you used to murder somebody is a real bad plan. Most criminals know this, which is why they generally ditch/destroy weapons after using them in a fight.

Another factor in the real, modern world is marketing; movies show both heroes and villains using Rule of Cool knife designs, and so actual mall ninjas and gun bunnies want to tote around the same thing. Some of those people know just enough about actual fighting to sound competent - so honest citizens wanting to protect themselves fall prey to the same rhetoric. Thus has an entire industry has sprung up to manufacture them.

Plus, clip-on folders are easy to carry and conceal and are legal in most American jurisdictions - compare one to a non-folding sheath knife where you have to "dress around the weapon" to keep everyone from knowing you're carrying it and you have the actual forces behind the popularity of the "tactical folder".

At least that's my take.

edited 16th Dec '14 6:56:18 PM by drunkscriblerian

The problem (from an author's standpoint this is a goldmine), cheap foreign pot metal kinves will break. Many can't keep an edge or dull quickly.

I used to work for a mail order business that sold baisongs (butterfly knives), folding knives, "rambo" knives and even some exotic fantasy style knives. My boss and the owner admitted that the knives were crap. The good quality were $$$ and so they sold the cheaper ones. They kept the good ones for themselves.

So el cheapo knives tend to break, dull easily and some are made poorly (I had to do the returns and some folding knives fell apart).

When I joined the army, I saw the good knives: Gerber, Ontario, SOG etc.

Fun fact: nothing dulls a knife like cardboard, hence box cutters. Cardboard tends to weaken and dull blades so box cutters are, made for cutting boxes and saving your good knives for other things.

@Taira: Oh yeah... putting one's hero in a "heh, what's a little breakage between mortal enemies?" moment could produce some serious dramatic tension. :D

And yes, there are a lot of badly made knives out there - I was a teenaged boy once upon a time, I've owned quite a few. (These days my first test on a folder is to unfold it, lock it and then try and wiggle the blade. If it wiggles, no sale. Same deal if the thumb pin is loose.)

I was mostly commenting on how folding knives (due to their lack of a crossguard) might not be the best choice for stabbing, seeing as it is too easy for the point to encounter a bone and your hand to end up gripping the blade rather than the handle. I've yet to see a tactical folder with a proper crossguard. Some of them have finger notches and that's better than nothing, but generally not good enough to prevent hand slippage from what I've read.

Having your hero get their hand sliced up from a botched stab (and maybe lose their grip on their knife) would also be a good source of dramatic tension, seeing as it does generally take people some time to die from a knifing and hey look, your hero is standing right close to the person they just shanked, clutching at their sliced-up hand...

:D

Random question.

Here is the context.

The hero, after getting into a gunfight with several dozen fighters and taking out around half of the force, got shot multiple times and was admitted to a hospital for intensive physical therapy. After long period, he was finally about to get to leave the place.

And then, the organization that put the hero in the hospital at the first place figures out that he wasn't dead, found his location, and sent out a hit squad inside the hospital to finish him off. The organization doesn't care about civilian casualty nor about being subtle.

• What would be the most quiet and efficient way to kill someone in the hospital?

• Let's say you see them coming, and calling the police is not an option. How would you respond?

Send in a pretty "nurse" to shoot some air into the guy's IV.

Concealing a bomb in a package of some kind. Depending on where he is, it could be anything from a care package to a EMT's emergency kit.

Assuming you don't know precisely what they're doing (or who they're sending), there's always the option of calling in a bomb threat. Reckless and dangerous, but it tends to derail plans pretty effectively.

There's the old cliche of hitting the fire alarm.