One thing that has bothered me lately, is reading all of the posts describing how heavy medieval swords and weapons are. I read that blocking with a two handed sword is impractical because the weight of the weapon would make it entirely to slow. This is entirely false. Swords and other weapons of the era where fairly light and usually well balanced. I'm hoping when Bethesda designs the weapons that the swords are slender and realistic looking, and not the ugly anime style.

weight of medieval era weapons:

average 1 handed sword: 2.5 to 3.5 pounds
average 2 handed sword: 4.5 pounds
battle axes: 1 to 6 pounds
war hammer: 2.5 pounds
halberd: 5 pounds
1 handed mace: 2.5 pounds
2 handed mace: 5 pounds

Another thing I hope Bethesda takes into account is European style swords where not meant to be used as slashing weapons, but for thrusting (hence the strait blade). Swords such as sabers, scimitars, and the katana where meant to slash.


sources...

links broken see sources in my next reply, will fix once I get access to a computer (to much of a pain to do using a phone)

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

When did encumbrance translate into pounds?

actually the OP is pretty accurate, the catalog of swords from the Wallace Collection Museum in London names most swords around those weights.

EDIT: http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

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. It also stands 5 and a half feet tall and is made of steel. All those weights you said above are well under the norm. My claymore is perticularily heavy due to it being double cast blade (1 inch blade width tapered to edge) and 3 inches wide.

EDIT: For a two handed sword, you're looking at more of a 5 - 6 pounds.

Those weights seem made up, or at least from very very poor sources.

5lbs for a 2 handed mace? That made me laugh a little... Why would I need two hands to swing something that weights 5lbs?

Actually OP did grab some fairly accurate data. I know wikipedia is not seen as a scholarly resource, but until someone comes in here with a team of medieval combat historians it will do.

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

According to the standard longsword, average weight was 3 pounds.

Edit: In fact, from the other items on his list, most of the data seems to be gathered from wikipedia.

BURN . . .
That is what we like to call a truism, and you are absolutely correct. If encumbrance = = pounds, then I would be walking around with 400 lbs. of stuff on my back.

To the OP, you have a point regarding weapons and blocking, but you are basing the rest of your argument on a misconception. Although many weapons are very light, heavy weapons and 2-handed weapons are usually quite bulky and heavy. Physics my boy. If I swing a 2 lb hammer at you it will mess you up for sure, but If I swing a 10 lb hammer at you there will be more inertial force to blow up your brainy bits. Have you ever tried to throw a tennis ball as hard as you can???? You damn near rip your arm out of the socket. The ball is lighter (and less dense) than the rest of your arm, so it makes for a terrible pendulum. Same principle applies to weaponry buddy.

You forgot hacking them as a blunt.
Wich is surely how most untrained men wouldve used it.

People with no training on a battelfield, with a weapon in their hand will most certainly have used the 'club' mechanics rather than sophisticated 'slash' ones

In fact, Im almost positive that the average melee fighter will have had a polearm or spear, and a dagger if hes lucky.

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

I happen to own a Claymore.

length: 52 inches
weight: 4.8 pounds


sources...

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_axe
http://www.kampaibudokai.org/DragonPreservationSociety/Swordheavy.php

and hundreds of others if you bother to look yourself

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm. There are more sources.

You guys are incorrect and the OP is correct. Visit a museum, dear lord. Do you HONESTLY believe that warriors would be hefting around 15 pound weapons? A sledge hammer is around 10 pounds, and we all know how hard those are to carry.

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

People just post their beliefs before researching. Check the 4th post, most people went right by my post and kept going on about how wrong the OP was.

Wikipedia has less mistakes then the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Physics is my point. If a sword weighed more than 10 pounds it would become awkward and exhausting to use. AS to a 10 lb hammer, well I work for a living and have frequently used hammers that weigh 10 to 40 pounds. I know how heavy they are, and how difficult it would be to use in a combat situation. Your 10 pound hammer would take a long and heavy wind up leaving you exposed. The swing would be slow and easily dodged, and the swing would be very difficult to alter in mid flight. Meaning if you took a swing with a 10+ pound hammer more than likely you would end up with your entrails spilled or a dagger in the kidney.

I saw that link and read it. The argument (for me) was more about the assumption that encumbrance = = pounds. Most weapons are very light, of course. Some are quite heavy. What constitutes an "average weapon"? Heavy weapons are generally heavy (duh), but they are not exactly standard issue for every soldier across every culture throughout history are they. Anyways the OP does have a valid point, I will concede that. I just have issues with wikipedia being used as any kind of real reference.

:bowdown:
That is a point I can't disregard, and this argument is becoming moot anyways. But just because I like to have the last word, here you go: Hammertime!

what do you need a forty pound hammer for? :mellow:

i have always wondered what the es unit of measurement is tho,

I use a 40 pound maul to drive spikes through limestone every once and a while.

Wood handle with a solid iron/steel head. You can get a crap ton of force behind that. Look at a modern nail hammer. Weighs less then a pound and it exerts enough force when swung to pound nails through wood. Try that with your hand. (Yes i know there is a guy that actually can use his hand)

Also I have a real Katana and it weighs about 2 pounds.

I use a 15 pound chainsaw all day in lot clearing scrappy bush and large tree removal. Its pretty damn heavy after a day and feels awkward to swing around getting vines and slash out of my way. I can't imagine using something that heavy in combat.

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.

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

"From ordinary hands-on experience we know full well that swords were not excessively heavy nor did they weigh 10 or 15 pounds and more."

"For example, the lengthy catalog of swords from the famed Wallace Collection Museum in London readily lists dozens of fine specimens among which it is difficult to find any weighing in excess of 4 pounds. Indeed, the majority of specimens, from arming swords to two-handers to rapiers, weigh much less than three pounds."

"Despite frequent claims to the contrary, Medieval swords were indeed light, manageable, and on average weighed less than four pounds. As leading sword expert Ewart Oakeshott unequivocally stated: "Medieval Swords are neither unwieldably heavy nor all alike - the average weight of any one of normal size is between 2.5 lb. and 3.5 lbs. Even the big hand-and-a-half 'war' swords rarely weigh more than 4.5 lbs. Such weights, to men who were trained to use the sword from the age of seven (and who had to be tough specimens to survive that age) , were by no means too great to be practical."(Oakeshott, Sword in Hand, p. 13)."

So there you have it, two-handed blades aren't all that heavy. There's no reason an axe would be much heavier either, considering most of the weight in an axe would be distributed to the severe end, serving as quite a good 'pendulum', as The Hedonist put it. War hammers and maces wouldn't be much different to an axe. If a wooden staff is capable of messing people up, then a stick with a weight on the end can easily do the same without being exceedingly cumbersome. And if that is the case, then there is no reason to make a weapon too heavy to wield. Personally, I think anything heavier than 20 pounds is just pointless.

Edit: Ahahha! In the time it took me to write this stupid post, ten people already posted the exact same thing. Shame on me.

Sledgehammers are designed to crunch rocks or driver poles down into the ground, They dont need speed, just impact. Warhammers are designed to hit moving targets, if you used a sledge weight weapon the enemy would step aside they you did your swing and move in afterwards.