Ha Ha Ha, yes of course. The absolute final word on facts!! Wikipedia references are about as valuable as a Luke Walton basketball card.

So where did you get these facts? I've got a british sabre and it weighs approx 15 ibs and its nowhere near as big as a regular longsword. I have say those weights don't seem real at all

This sounds a little odd as sabres in general were more along the lines of 2-3 pounds in weight. Having a 15 pound sabre would be impossible as the amount of metal to reach 15 pounds simply isn't there.

Unless it's made of lead

That's never been stated. In the games, the weight units used for encumbrance are never named. While I can understand one assuming they translate into pounds (Or any other real weight limit, for that matter. But a sword weighing 20 kilograms makes even less sense.) since if not told otherwise, you might naturally equate an unspecified unit of anything with one you're familiar with, that really doesn't have to be the case. Though that doesn't mean we can't question whether the item weights make sense, just that unless we're ever told that one unit of encumbrance is one pound, we shouldn't judge them based on the assumption that items are weighted in pounds. Rather, what we should do is look at the reletive weights of items. Because while we don't know how much an Elder Scrolls encumbrance unit is, we woulsd logically assume that if we take an item which exists in our every day life, say, a carrot, in the Elder Scrolls it should have roughly the same weight as a real life carrot. Now that we have the carrot, we can compare it to a sword, how many carrots does it take to get the same amount of weight as the sword in the game? Now, how many carrots would it take to balance out the weight of a real life sword of similar design and material? If there's a significant difference, then it probably means that the weight of the sword in the game isn't realistic.

But I didn't see any mention of the weight of weapons in the game not being accurate, if we assume that weight in the game is rendered in pounds. It seems that the main issue here is a misconception on the part of forum posters, using the notion that swords are heavy, unwieldly weapons as an argument on which to base how melee combat should work. Myself, I'm not an expert on the matter, but if people who actually took the time to research the matter are saying that the OP is correct, I'm not going to disagree with them. It seems logical to me that swords wouldn't be as heavy as some people seem to assume they are too, because you have to not only carry you're weapon, you have to swing it too, and carrying heavy objects is tiring, swinging them around is even more so, thus, logically, you'd want you're weapon to be light enough and well balanced enough to be practical to use. So in conclusion, swords aren't as heavy as people seem to assume they are. But how much bearing that has on the game is uncertain, since Bethesda is probably more concerned with fun and game balance than accurately simulating real life sword play. So evwn if they took the time to research the weight of historical swords, they may choose not to reflect this in the game.



That's not something I'd know about it, but I'd certainly put far, FAR more stock in any given article I read on it than forum posts by random people who provide absolutely no source for their information and don't support their supposed "facts" with any real evidence.

It seems to me that there's a disturbingly common trend to assume that any information found on Wikipedia is automatically wrong, even though I actually can't think of any case where I've found information on Wikipedia that I know to be wrong, I've seen articles which don't give enough information, certainly, but I can't remember having experiences with blatently wrong articles. Now, certainly Wikipedia shouldn't be used for serious academic research, but that's far from what we're doing here, all we're doing is discussing an upcoming fantasy game.

I can tell you for sure that a warhammer has a much greater mass than 2.5 pounds. They are equivalent to a sledge hammer, so you're looking at 20lbs+. I own a few swords, (battle ready replica's) and my largest, a 2-handed Scottish claymore weighs in around 30 pounds.

I have a uranium doubled bladed battle axe that's about 60 kilos.

war hammer: 2.5 pounds

2 and a half pounds, seriously? thats a joke, the handle alone on a medieval warhammer would be around 4 to 5 pounds, the head would probably be around 10 pounds to be effective. 2.5 pounds? I dont think so.

A saber that weighs as much as my saw? http://www.stihlusa.com/chainsaws/MS362.html

Well you see, the problem with this is that most gamers with a stock of medieval weaponry are malnourished and weak from never seeing the light of day, and thus a 2 pound sword is the equivalent to 30 pounds for them.

2 and a half pounds, seriously? thats a joke, the handle alone on a medieval warhammer would be around 4 to 5 pounds, the head would probably be around 10 pounds to be effective. 2.5 pounds? I dont think so.

It did seem a bit odd in Oblivion, where we had one hand swords weighing almost 30 pounds. YES I SAID POUNDS. Why?

Fallout 3/ New vegas..Strong Back Perk "Allows you to carry an extra 50 pounds of equipment" aka those units of weight were in pounds.

Yes its fallout...buts its the same engine, the same physics. Weights in Fallout made sense. So i will assume we will not see this issue in Skyrim.

Case Closed.

2 and a half pounds for a warhammer, seriously? thats a joke, the handle alone on a medieval warhammer would be around 2 to 3 pounds, the head would probably be around 10 pounds to be effective. 2.5 pounds? I dont think so.