LE No more overswing / better weapon swings

[skeithgaming]

Before I get to quoting, let me just put this forward: What strict advantage do you have with DW? An open hand can grapple and control an opponent or reinforce a swing, a shield can relegate the sword to be more focused on being an attacking weapon or it can also be used to cause concussive blows to the enemy which can disorient / break bones, but the only gain a second blade can give is another cut (provided you do hit with both). It doesn't offer more strict control or defense, only potential offense, which is why it is so risky. Additionally, DW subtracts the amount of force each weapon can deal especially when swinging both at once, which is much easier to feel than to say. It's also why the Sai are able to be used in two hands as they are a very defensive weapon by design, but they are not meant for cutting which also changes the dynamic of using two of them.

For a fighting example, if you are DW and you manage to get in close to your opponent, you will very likely have one weapon that can do a very quick but less powerful attack and another that can do a more powerful otherwise normal speed attack, but if you use both you subtract the time and force from both. Yet, you are at the same time to grab your opponent, so physically dropping/throwing the sword in the opportunistic hand can let you take control of part of your opponent and can give you the time you need to get the few cuts in that will bleed your opponent out or seriously injure them to be followed up with a "free" killing blow afterward. This applies to a target moving to you or you moving to them. Notice how this scenario did not require the secondary blade (or a shield). In the case of the shield, you could bash your opponents opening to keep that area exposed.

 

Moving along.

 

 

Except that he said the TERM was modern. The term "sulphuric acid" is also a modern term, but just saying it's a modern term is NOT saying that sulphuric acid itself is in any way modern. They just called it something else before it was called "sulphuric acid". (In that case, the old term was "oil of vitriol", sometimes just "vitriol".)

The term "dual wielding" IS older than Matt thought, but not by that much. The term traces back to the early '70s, where the people at TSR pulled it straight out of their asses. Never the less, it's a good term, and it works well enough.

By the same logic, Ye Old is a modern term.

In the early ages of the printing press, we had a lot of warring and a lot of technicalities. One of the original letters of what we have found as the oldest English alphabet included Þ or "Thorn" (some languages still use this, it's not a "dead letter"). At the time, printing presses did not have a stamp for Þ, so it was instead replaced with the closest thing Y (complicated). This made Þe Old (The Old) turn into Ye Old which still means the same thing.

So we replaced a term that was used in the English language for a long time with another one that means exactly the same thing. It is not more modern.

Additionally, in order to describe the process of using two weapons in each hand a language will almost always converge on a term. What was used to describe using one Sai versus using two Sai? I've no idea, but there was a the very least slang for it - a term for it.

It unfortunately is indeed not modern.

Also, the word "vitriol" is still used in place of sulfuric acid, which is also used in place of H2SO4 which much more accurately describes what we are talking about.

 

 

You don't have to *STOP* an attack, you just have to make sure it doesn't hit you. All that takes is deflection, and the two weapons together ensures you catch the weapon and can redirect it towards whichever side it happens to be closer to.

Semi-correct. You only need one blade to let the opponents slide off, not two. This is best seen in two handed sword fighting as the movements are more clear. Using both weapons can cause the "unfolding scissors" style effect and has the same sort of logic as blocking with a sword and a shield at the same time.

The issue is what exactly do you do with the other sword during this time. You don't have the ability to put any of your body into the attack as moving during the parry might very well open you up, so you're limited to a very basic cut with the second weapon. I'll simply use the first bit of my post as a reference here without copy/pasting it.

 

You keep assuming this is a static block. It is not. It's just used to catch the opponent's blade for a split second, and then push it down away from you. That's IT.

Pray tell, what is a "static block"? I don't seem to understand you here. Otherwise this statement is correct.

 

All of this is flat-out wrong, because you are NOT TRYING TO STOP THE ATTACK. You are just REDIRECTING IT, as you should be doing with EVERY parrying method. Because, and I hate to break it to you, but making a static block is NEVER effective. No, not even a shield. A static block is a good way to end up with a broken arm, and that's about all it's good for.

Stopping the attack and redirecting it are one in the same. By moving the attack away from you or moving away from the attack, it has been stopped.

The point of the unfolding motion from using two blades to stop one is that it was unnecessary (see above). If you focus both blades into - I'll word it more "properly" - preventing the strike from connecting, at the very least you're wasting a blade.

Now if by the term you are using "static block" you mean a bind where one or both opponents have stopped, then maybe I am understanding this term more. However, I've yet to know of a fighting style that does stop moving outside of a bind. The pause is often short during the bind, but a blade on either side will attempt to move the opponents blade in the desired direction, often with each side reacting to each others attempted deflection.

As for breaking an arm when preventing a strike form connecting, outside of a war hammer making contact like a head of a nail or a good swing of a gothic mace, breaking a bone is excessively difficult on a shield, especially since many were designed around this literally never happening. Similar to the face of a sword, the shield is designed to make the opponents attack slide off rather than make full contact.

 

 

And now you have hit the point where you can't even pretend to have a point anymore, and have resorted to personal attacks without any argument to back them up.

 

You use one weapon, your offhand weapon, to parry the incoming attack, then COUNTER ATTACK WHILE YOU DO IT, MORON.

 

This coming from the guy who doesn't know what the term "tempo" means.

Please don't act righteous and moral and then say these things at the same time.

I don't refrain from being quite impolite when a thread gets hijacked, but I don't assume knowledge without evidence of the lack thereof or level insults unless otherwise warranted.

I say I can't take Matt seriously and I say he does not know what he is talking about in that video because he has poured through evidence, bought rather nice blades that match his topic(s) and failed to understand the underlying principles. I didn't say he didn't know what he was doing out of the hostile reaction to a counterpoint. I laughed at the video because it was insulting itself more as it progressed, which was funny in a sad way to me.

 

The first bit where you called me a moron I already touched on, but

 

And the other option Matt actually missed was that you can attack with one weapon while keeping the other up and ready to defend, so you can parry any counterattacks made.

The problem is that it leaves you very open and to what advantage this stance may have I am very unsure and am skeptical of.

Yes, I did watch the video and yes I did pay attention.

 

 

1. The idea that arrows magically ignore armour, when in reality they had great difficulty penetrating plate, which is part of the reason why crossbows were so revolutionary. There's a reason armour existed and was used at great expense despite its downsides, against enemies whose principle weapon was the bow. And it's not because arrows went right through it. Even your precious idiot Lloyd admitted that, and he loves to play up the power of the bow.

2. Your instant death arrow bulls***. Arrows have TERRIBLE stopping power, less than almost any other weapon out there. They leave a fairly small wound, and cause little in the way of secondary damage. You'd be more likely to stop somebody right away with a good sized knife. That's just a thing to remember, in general. Just because a weapon is fatal does not mean a weapon is immediately incapacitating. In fact, the amount of damage it takes to kill is SO much less than it takes to immediately incapacitate that it seems silly to even compare the two.

While overly aggressive, there are a lot of truths to be had here.

First, Lloyd is far obsessed with bows, but I wouldn't go as far to say he is an idiot.

Second, if you read my bit about projectiles in general involving instant deaths, that's my fault as I miscommunicated. So more accurately: A regular bow will not pose as much of a threat to an armored opponent unless they strike an open area (which with most armors would be by sheer luck), however they can still provide the historical equivalent of covering fire or if against a less armored opponent an arrow can still cause bleedouts or sever tendons (if not more). Longbows however don't have that 80lbs draw strength and a few inches of draw length, instead they have hundreds of pounds in draw strength and could be drawn back a few feet, allowing the projectile to pass into or through the unfortunate receiver, rupturing vital organs, severing veins and arteries or completely disabling a limb and it wasn't about to just bounce off heavy armor like a standard bow. The same happens with a crossbow at short and medium range, as the weapon was designed around the idea of punching armor with deadly accuracy.

Third, if I shot you with a .45 I'd likely see the bullet go through and through meaning no fragmentation. A small wound, yet regardless of where you were hit the hole it just made in you isn't a joke. Furthermore, the idea of the bow wasn't really ever about stopping power as stopping power is literally blunt force trauma and not the slice of the arrowhead. Oddly enough, you bring up a knife which has even less stopping power unless you thrusted it into the target with an unnecessary amount of force as daggers are superb at cutting and stabbing with almost literally no effort. They're shaped and sharpened to glide through flesh like a hot knife through butter, not hit them and push them over. A nice chef's knife cutting a large piece of meat will show this off superbly, with the weight of the light blade actually cutting through it by just pushing it or pulling it, no downward pressure needed. Arrowheads are intended to do the same thing essentially.

Lastly, with a wound from one of the aforementioned weapons you can easily expect to not live long unless you do something about it quick. A well placed attack could leave you with ~15 minutes to live if it didn't rupture organs, with a fair portion of that time including you being passed out from bleeding to death. Almost no conflicts end abruptly, even in modern combat where guns that "shred people apart" can still let said shredded person fight on for a good few minutes if left unchecked, but you're still royally screwed if you don't get medical attention. You can get get hit by a high power rifle in the leg and it could be barely hanging on, but those ~3 minutes awake you may have still let you fire your gun too. Push the time period back and you still have the same situations.

 

 

Yes, yes. But there's a big difference between the weight of a shield and the weight of a dagger. There's also a difference in size. Owning a horse may make this whole miserable mess easier, it's basically a requirement for an adventurer to use a shield, but it can't stay on the horse all the time or it's doing you no good.

...Why would you leave the shield, let alone any relevant equipment, on the horse?

 

 

Imagine yourself in a typical Skyrim barrow. Can you pull a lever or a pull chain with your shield arm? NO. You have to either sheathe your sword or put the shield down. Either one will take a while.

Yeah actually it isn't too difficult. Plus you don't even have to sheath your sword, just grip it differently or angle it so you can hold both and you're probably fine. Neither of these things really even take a while even if you do take off whatever weaponry.

 

 

Say there's a ladder you have to climb, can you do that with a shield? NO. You'd need to leave the shield behind or strap it to your back.

Depends on the ladder. Most of them are going to be constructed so that you can climb it with a shield, mostly because the people who are occupying the area might want to climb with their shield ready too.

 

 

What if you need to pick a lock, can you do that with a shield? NO.

It's pretty hard to pick a lock with anything on, considering you often use both hands. On top of that, I wouldn't be too awfully worried about the door pulling a sword on me and trying to hit me.

 

 

How about searching the chest? NO.

Same kind of deal as above, but you may only need one hand to open and search the chest. Maybe if there's something of interest or something that can't be lifted with a single hand you may set your shield down, but otherwise what's the point in taking it off?

 

 

What about sifting through books? NO.

If you have the time to open up books and read a few pages, open another and read some more, all combat situations long passed. You're taking a lot of time to sift through a library, even a small one.

 

 

Can you even fit through the narrower passageways without a serious struggle? NO.

If you couldn't fit through the passage with the shield, you probably can't without it.

 

 

A dagger? Takes a second to take out, a bit longer to put away. Much faster than a shield.

The shield was already "taken out" and "putting it away" either involves lower your arm or if you are comfortable that there is no threat of an enemy, strap it to your back (and you don't really care about time taken when there's no threat).

 

It also can be ready at hand when climbing a ladder, or swimming, or any of a number of similar tasks, and won't get in your way.

Have you ever seen someone clench a dagger with their teeth so they can have both hands free? Clearly if the dagger doesn't get in the way they wouldn't have to.

 

It'll also be out faster than your primary weapon if something comes at you while you're reading some dead thief's journal, or picking a lock, or rooting through a chest.

If you're reading a journal, picking a lock, sifting through containers or doing any other task that leaves you completely open, possibly making large amounts of noise and there are armed combatants floating around all over the place, you've possibly made it farther than you otherwise should have. If you HAVE to read that journal or HAVE to grab that item from a chest when there are enemies around, you want everyone in the room dead and you might flip that book open with one hand and desperately try to read it before reinforcements come.

 

 

Oh, and the dagger, in case you forgot, is also a tool. A tool so valuable you'd be a fool not to carry one, so it's not extra equipment.

Yeah in front of your lockpicking set, probably at your weak hand side that's covered by the shield so nobody can easily snatch it off you at any point in time. Wait...

 

 

And if you don't have a horse, then how are you carrying your shield in the first place? On your arm? Do you even have a shield, sir? Strap it on your arm and go walk around with it for a couple hours. Now, tell me how much of your arm still has feeling. Yeah, that's not happening. So, on your back? Have fun getting a weapon out from your back when a bandit is coming at you with an axe. A shield may be easier to get off your back then a sword, but it'll still take some effort, and by the time it's out you've got an axe in your collar. So neither of those is really reasonable.

No I don't have one anymore, but I did own one yes. Carrying it on your arm for a few hours is a good idea if you're worried about something coming at you, on your back the thing might as well not exist in terms of weight. If you have no feeling in your arm after carrying something with well distributed weight that doesn't weigh much in the first place, you had it strapped on wrong most likely.

And getting a weapon out from your back? Are you mad? You're going to have to reach higher than your arm can go to fully draw it, you'll leave yourself entirely open throughout the whole process, it's a complete nightmare. The thing came with a scabbard that hooks to your waist for a reason. Even a two handed weapon you don't may not "sheath", you'll just rest it on your shoulder (or a couple of other ways) which leaves the weapon at the ready there too.

And if we're in this scenario, the bandit would have stalked you out of sight and then ambushed you, that is to say you wouldn't have known you were going to fight a bandit until the bandit murdered you. Why he would murder you right then and there rather than take you hostage and demand you drop everything is beyond me, as it's in the bandits overall interest to not kill you (a murderer will have a much higher bounty than a thief). Plus, unless your head is rolling on the ground, despite a slit throat you can still very well fight back for a few moments and our trusty dagger that you've seen to have glossed over is a fine fit for the job. You're going to end up dead, but if that bandit wants your life you probably want his.

Also if you were wearing heavy armor the strike to your protected neck from an axe would have hurt and pissed you off much more than killed you. Swords are for cutting and thrusting (including half swording to stab an opening in armor), axes are for chopping and dismembering, and maces are good for staggering and dealing with armor via blunt force trauma. An axe is quite possibly the worst choice of weapon against an armored opponent.

 

 

 

And yes "Supposedly" it is about my great interest in seeing realism in the game that isn't someone's new ENB preset or retexture of Whiterun or new color of glass armor.

Now I'm not even sure you agree with me, which makes this a very, very confusing thread. Two people can agree they want the other one dead and also agree that Jägermeister is the best drink.

I'm also pretty sure that the overall community isn't exactly interested enough in the overswing fix at this point, all things considered.

[Seattleite]

Before I get to quoting, let me just put this forward: What strict advantage do you have with DW? An open hand can grapple and control an opponent or reinforce a swing, a shield can relegate the sword to be more focused on being an attacking weapon or it can also be used to cause concussive blows to the enemy which can disorient / break bones, but the only gain a second blade can give is another cut (provided you do hit with both). It doesn't offer more strict control or defense, only potential offense, which is why it is so risky. Additionally, DW subtracts the amount of force each weapon can deal especially when swinging both at once, which is much easier to feel than to say. It's also why the Sai are able to be used in two hands as they are a very defensive weapon by design, but they are not meant for cutting which also changes the dynamic of using two of them.

For a fighting example, if you are DW and you manage to get in close to your opponent, you will very likely have one weapon that can do a very quick but less powerful attack and another that can do a more powerful otherwise normal speed attack, but if you use both you subtract the time and force from both. Yet, you are at the same time to grab your opponent, so physically dropping/throwing the sword in the opportunistic hand can let you take control of part of your opponent and can give you the time you need to get the few cuts in that will bleed your opponent out or seriously injure them to be followed up with a "free" killing blow afterward. This applies to a target moving to you or you moving to them. Notice how this scenario did not require the secondary blade (or a shield). In the case of the shield, you could bash your opponents opening to keep that area exposed.

 

Almost all of this is wrong, and it's a faulty premise, but alright. I'll explain it *again*.

 

There are THREE advantages to dual wielding.

 

1. Every benefit to having a shield, but less so and without needing as much gear. (Because carrying too much gear IS A f*#@ING PROBLEM, whether you're willing to admit it or not.)

2. You can attack and defend at the same time. You can have one weapon ready to defend against an opponent while you attack with the other. This doesn't even take effort. Just attack with one weapon and keep the other up.

3. You get a free hit single time an opponent with one weapon attacks you. Every time they attack, you can parry and then stab them while their weapon is still out of the way and can't defend them. The only condition is they need to be within your reach, and that's it. It's the same concept as a riposte, but with a shorter delay. You can do this with a shield, as well, but there's a huge difference between the damage you deal hitting somebody with a shield and the damage you deal stabbing somebody with a sword. There's also a difference in speed and reach, so you're more likely to connect doing this with a sword than a shield. And because of the way these weapons are aligned, it's easy to do this even against an opponent with a shield, if you stand on their weapon side and parry their weapon towards their shield, stab from the outside, their arm is between your weapon and their shield. This would also prevent them from parrying with their offhand weapon if they are also dual wielding.

 

There's a reason dual wielding WAS done historically. Yes, there's also reasons it was never done in a military context, but for civilians it worked well enough to become popular in various parts of the world for most of human history.

 

Semi-correct. You only need one blade to let the opponents slide off, not two. This is best seen in two handed sword fighting as the movements are more clear. Using both weapons can cause the "unfolding scissors" style effect and has the same sort of logic as blocking with a sword and a shield at the same time.

The issue is what exactly do you do with the other sword during this time. You don't have the ability to put any of your body into the attack as moving during the parry might very well open you up, so you're limited to a very basic cut with the second weapon. I'll simply use the first bit of my post as a reference here without copy/pasting it.

Except that this is wrong. If you parry the opponent's weapon off to the side, you can step in towards them so they can't reach you with their weapon and do a draw cut. By the time their weapon can move again, you are on their side right in their face, with your sword on their throat. This is easier to do if your offhand weapon is a dagger, though, since a dagger is shorter and easier to use that close to them, and you'd also be able to thrust with it.

 

Pray tell, what is a "static block"? I don't seem to understand you here. Otherwise this statement is correct.

We're going to be here all day.

 

A static block is a block that is static. As in, not moving. As in, just holding the weapon up in place and taking the hit without moving your weapon. It means exactly what it says.

 

Stopping the attack and redirecting it are one in the same. By moving the attack away from you or moving away from the attack, it has been stopped.

No, it has been redirected. Stopped means it isn't moving anymore. When I say you don't have to stop it, I mean you don't have to keep it from moving. All you have to do is make sure it doesn't hit you. In fact, it's in your best interests if it retains all of its momentum right into the ground.

 

The point of the unfolding motion from using two blades to stop one is that it was unnecessary (see above). If you focus both blades into - I'll word it more "properly" - preventing the strike from connecting, at the very least you're wasting a blade.

Now if by the term you are using "static block" you mean a bind where one or both opponents have stopped, then maybe I am understanding this term more. However, I've yet to know of a fighting style that does stop moving outside of a bind. The pause is often short during the bind, but a blade on either side will attempt to move the opponents blade in the desired direction, often with each side reacting to each others attempted deflection.

You don't *need* both weapons, no. But it makes it easier to direct the weapon the way you'd prefer it to go. Sometimes, it matters if the weapon is deflected to your left or to your right, especially if you intend to immediately step in close to the opponent. This stance lets you decide which way the weapon is going to go.

 

As for breaking an arm when preventing a strike form connecting, outside of a war hammer making contact like a head of a nail or a good swing of a gothic mace, breaking a bone is excessively difficult on a shield, especially since many were designed around this literally never happening. Similar to the face of a sword, the shield is designed to make the opponents attack slide off rather than make full contact.

Except that broken arms DO happen. Especially with a strap-on shield. The kind of break you'll most likely get is called a spiral fracture. That is to say your arm breaks because it was twisted. This takes VERY little force, and in this case will occur when a weapon strikes the rim of your shield. It's less likely with a larger shield like my hoplon, but with a tiny little shield like that one you link to down below, it'll happen really easily. Also, a shield made of wood and hide like the one you're showing won't last long in combat.

 

The problem is that it leaves you very open and to what advantage this stance may have I am very unsure and am skeptical of.

Yes, I did watch the video and yes I did pay attention.

This is the dumbest thing I have heard in my life. "The problem WITH KEEPING A WEAPON READY TO DEFEND YOURSELF is that KEEPING A WEAPON READY TO DEFEND YOURSELF leaves you very open BECAUSE IT'S NOT LIKE YOU HAVE A WEAPON READY TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR ANYTHING and to what advantage this stance OF KEEPING A WEAPON READY TO DEFEND YOURSELF may have I am very unsure and am skeptical of."

 

I call you a moron because of statements like this.

 

While overly aggressive, there are a lot of truths to be had here.

First, Lloyd is far obsessed with bows, but I wouldn't go as far to say he is an idiot.

I would, and have, frequently. Have you seen his video on dagger grips? Oh, what a load of tosh. He simply can't admit when he's wrong, it's not something he's capable of, and since he doesn't do much research and he's almost as stubborn as you so it wouldn't do him any good if he did.

 

Second, if you read my bit about projectiles in general involving instant deaths, that's my fault as I miscommunicated. So more accurately: A regular bow will not pose as much of a threat to an armored opponent unless they strike an open area (which with most armors would be by sheer luck), however they can still provide the historical equivalent of covering fire or if against a less armored opponent an arrow can still cause bleedouts or sever tendons (if not more). Longbows however don't have that 80lbs draw strength and a few inches of draw length, instead they have hundreds of pounds in draw strength and could be drawn back a few feet, allowing the projectile to pass into or through the unfortunate receiver, rupturing vital organs, severing veins and arteries or completely disabling a limb and it wasn't about to just bounce off heavy armor like a standard bow. The same happens with a crossbow at short and medium range, as the weapon was designed around the idea of punching armor with deadly accuracy.

Once again, wrong. I am totally aware of the strength of a war bow. They STILL don't penetrate plate. Plate armour is much more expensive, much heavier, much more restrictive and much less comfortable than chain, lamellar or textile. Yet it quickly became the preferred armour for those capable of affording it, even in militaries that were attacked with bows more frequently than all other weapons combined. If it didn't stop arrows, this would not be the case. And testing it quickly reveals this. Late medieval plate armour is double layered steel over the vital areas, and this double layered steel stops just about everything available during the period at the kinds of distances they'd be getting hit at. That includes war bows, crossbows and early firearms.

 

Third, if I shot you with a .45 I'd likely see the bullet go through and through meaning no fragmentation. A small wound, yet regardless of where you were hit the hole it just made in you isn't a joke. Furthermore, the idea of the bow wasn't really ever about stopping power as stopping power is literally blunt force trauma and not the slice of the arrowhead.

And once more, you say something INCREDIBLY stupid. Stopping power does not mean blunt force trauma. Stopping power means physical damage to the target's body. Stopping power is how much the person is immediately impaired. Bows, crossbows, non-expanding modern bullets, these things have very little stopping power because they leave a very small hole in the target, not because they cause less blunt trauma. The draw cut of a sword doesn't cause any blunt trauma AT ALL, and it has vastly superior stopping power to all of these combined, since it severs the muscles in the damaged area.

 

Oddly enough, you bring up a knife which has even less stopping power unless you thrusted it into the target with an unnecessary amount of force as daggers are superb at cutting and stabbing with almost literally no effort. They're shaped and sharpened to glide through flesh like a hot knife through butter, not hit them and push them over. A nice chef's knife cutting a large piece of meat will show this off superbly, with the weight of the light blade actually cutting through it by just pushing it or pulling it, no downward pressure needed. Arrowheads are intended to do the same thing essentially.

Again, you don't know what "stopping power" means. Any knife long enough to get all the way through (bowie knife, any middle-age dagger, tanto, so on) has BY FAR better stopping power than an arrow. It causes more damage to their body, and it will impair them more right away. It doesn't need to cause blunt injury AT ALL.

 

Lastly, with a wound from one of the aforementioned weapons you can easily expect to not live long unless you do something about it quick. A well placed attack could leave you with ~15 minutes to live if it didn't rupture organs, with a fair portion of that time including you being passed out from bleeding to death. Almost no conflicts end abruptly, even in modern combat where guns that "shred people apart" can still let said shredded person fight on for a good few minutes if left unchecked, but you're still royally screwed if you don't get medical attention. You can get get hit by a high power rifle in the leg and it could be barely hanging on, but those ~3 minutes awake you may have still let you fire your gun too. Push the time period back and you still have the same situations.

This doesn't contradict my statement at all. But in case you didn't know, people getting shot all to hell, continuing onward anyway, and then getting medical attention and SURVIVING is not uncommon. (And you keep assuming battles. Why?) Three easy examples off the top of my head are Yogenda Singh Yadav, Simo Hayha and Wenseslao Moguel. For civilians, I'll also list Alexis Goggins and Angel Alvarez. Each of these people was shot all to hell (except Simo, but he had half his frontal lobe blown off and his circle of willis damaged) and still managed to continue under their own power for several minutes. One of them, Angel Alvarez the "Swiss Cheese Man" holds the world record for survived gunshot wounds and still managed to get to cover before he collapsed. And Alexis? She was seven when she got shot up, and despite six gunshot wounds (including two in the head) she was still fully conscious when the paramedics removed her from the vehicle over ten minutes later. Simo went hours without medical attention, Yogenda fought the entire rest of the battle, and Wenseslao got up after being executed by firing squad (with his arms bound, no less) in the middle of a battle and walked all the way to a doctor to get help with eight bleeding holes in his chest, a hole in his brain, a broken jaw and a nicked carotid artery, and did I mention his arms were bound and he couldn't put pressure on his wounds?

 

I'll say it again. Just because a wound can be fatal doesn't mean it stops somebody. And if somebody isn't stopped, then they have a better shot at surviving their wounds. These people are all proof.

 

...Why would you leave the shield, let alone any relevant equipment, on the horse?

 

Because it's heavy as all hell and gets in your way for a lot of things you'd be getting off the horse to do.

 

Yeah actually it isn't too difficult. Plus you don't even have to sheath your sword, just grip it differently or angle it so you can hold both and you're probably fine. Neither of these things really even take a while even if you do take off whatever weaponry.

Because it's not like that lever or pull chain actually requires significant force to move, huh? Sorry, but it's in the way. Even a fairly short shield gets in the way for a pull chain, and you'll need your whole hand for the mechanisms you're working in game. Especially in a nordic barrow where the mechanisms are unmaintained for ages.

 

Also, THAT is the shield you're envisioning? I was envisioning something that would actually last in combat without needing to be replaced after the very first fight. You know, something with a metal boss. (Mainly, the banded iron shield from the game, and my old Hoplon from my re-enacting days, were what I was thinking of.) Even so, that shield is too much for most of this.

 

Depends on the ladder. Most of them are going to be constructed so that you can climb it with a shield, mostly because the people who are occupying the area might want to climb with their shield ready too.

There's no such thing as a ladder designed to be climbed with one hand. Which is what you are talking about, since the shield protrudes in front of your hand and prevents you from getting a grip on the rungs. Oh, and with heavy armour, while weighted heavily towards the side you aren't gripping the ladder with. You're liable to get halfway up the ladder and fall to your death with that set-up. You WILL need to put the shield on your back and sheathe your weapons to get up the ladder, and it will take you entirely too long to get the shield ready at the top of the ladder. End of story.

 

It's pretty hard to pick a lock with anything on, considering you often use both hands. On top of that, I wouldn't be too awfully worried about the door pulling a sword on me and trying to hit me.

 

And with your shield off of your arm, you are 10+ seconds from having it ready for use. You will not get that much time. If you pick the lock on a door and find a pair of draugr on the other side, your shield will not do you any good in the fight against them because you WILL NOT GET IT ON. A dagger, on the other hand, can be out in about a second and in your left hand ready to use, while you simultaneously draw your sword. You can delay them reaching you long enough to draw your sword and dagger, but not to get your shield up off the ground (or worse, off of your back) and get your arm through the straps. You are about to get hacked down, plain and simple. The same is true if you're picking the lock when a draugr comes along from somewhere off behind you while you were trying to avoid suicidally fighting the whole damned barrow, but once again you can get your dagger and sword ready the moment you hear them coming but the shield will take too long. You can also draw the sword and dagger quietly enough that it won't guarantee a fight if they haven't spotted you yet, the shield makes more noise.

 

Same kind of deal as above, but you may only need one hand to open and search the chest. Maybe if there's something of interest or something that can't be lifted with a single hand you may set your shield down, but otherwise what's the point in taking it off?

 

You'll need to get the contents of the chest into your backpack, which you can't do with one hand.

 

If you have the time to open up books and read a few pages, open another and read some more, all combat situations long passed. You're taking a lot of time to sift through a library, even a small one.

Unless you're trying to get the important information out of a single book so you can continue. Say, you're quickly skimming Arvel's journal to figure out what that claw is for, but there's some draugr a couple rooms ahead who might have heard him yell when you stabbed him. Maybe you're thumbing through Daynas Valen's notes trying to figure out what the hell's going on in Folgunthur, but those coffins could pop open at any minute. Maybe you're in the midden and are trying to find out what's going on with this strange gauntlet coming out of the ground, but there's a good chance you missed a skeleton or two somewhere in that maze.

 

Reading notes and journals is something that you may need to do in a hurry, that takes both hands to do in a timely manner and comes up frequently in Skyrim in areas complicated enough you may well have missed an enemy somewhere in there, especially if you're being a reasonable person and taking steps to NOT have every enemy on the premises converging on you within the first five minutes.

 

If you couldn't fit through the passage with the shield, you probably can't without it.

With a buckler, this may be a reasonable statement. But try it with anything else, and we'll see how that goes.

 

The shield was already "taken out" and "putting it away" either involves lower your arm or if you are comfortable that there is no threat of an enemy, strap it to your back (and you don't really care about time taken when there's no threat).

Except that you will, frequently, need to put the shield down or put it away to complete a task. And if you end up being surprised while completing that task, you'll need to make due without a shield. A dagger, on the other hand, will take a second, as in LITERALLY one second, to draw and have ready while also drawing your sword. In fact, it'll be ready faster than your sword will. As a dual wielder, if you have time to draw your sword you will have time to draw your dagger as well. As a shield user, you're right f*#@ed if they don't give you at least ten or fifteen seconds.

 

Have you ever seen someone clench a dagger with their teeth so they can have both hands free? Clearly if the dagger doesn't get in the way they wouldn't have to.

"Ready at hand" does NOT mean "in your hand". It means "where you can reach it if you need to". And in this case, I mean in its sheath where it belongs and it'll still take one second to draw.

 

If you're reading a journal, picking a lock, sifting through containers or doing any other task that leaves you completely open, possibly making large amounts of noise and there are armed combatants floating around all over the place, you've possibly made it farther than you otherwise should have. If you HAVE to read that journal or HAVE to grab that item from a chest when there are enemies around, you want everyone in the room dead and you might flip that book open with one hand and desperately try to read it before reinforcements come.

The "noise" part of it is BS. And remember, you DO NOT have control over your environment, and if you aren't suicidal you aren't going around with a shield and heavy armour letting everybody and their mother know you're coming. Nobody who wants to live takes on all their enemies at once. If you have half a brain, you'll take things one room at a time, be quiet about eliminating those inside, and do it quickly so they can't get reinforcements. You'll do whatever it is you have to do in each room immediately, be quick about it, and make sure the doors are closed and you're as quiet as possible. And if you do raise the alarm, and you do get spotted, you'll run like hell and get out of there, only fighting as much as you need to in order to reach the door and run to safety.

 

Every step of the way, heavy armour and shields make this more or less impossible. They both make it hard to move around quietly and not give your enemies enough warning to raise the alarm. And, of course, if one of them does run for help through the narrow hallways you'd find in most historical buildings, you are NOT catching them with heavy armour or a shield, much less in time to prevent them from getting reinforcements. And when you do end up having to run, your enemies will all be faster than you in your heavy armour, especially when you're also squeezing a shield through a narrow hallway, and you won't be able to run quietly so they'll not only know you're there, they'll know exactly where you are.

 

And what if you don't have a horse? Then how are you going to get away if the alarm is raised? The simple answer is, if you're wearing heavy armour or carrying a shield, especially both, you won't. They'll slow you down, and they'll get in your way. The pursuing enemies will be able to track you with ease you because you're a loud, noisy, shiney thing with all that on. You can't get over obstacles as quickly as they can, you'll be slower and you'll tire sooner. They WILL catch up, all running is doing is making sure you die tired. If you were in light armour, and didn't have a shield, you would stand a MUCH better chance of outrunning them, outmanoeuvring them, or hiding from them.

 

If you're in heavy armour with a shield, fleeing is not an option. Your options are "fight" and "surrender". Realistically, these are both really shitty options if the alarm is raised and every draugr in the barrow or every bandit in the fort is coming at you at once. Heavy armour and a shield will get a lone adventurer killed.

 

Yeah in front of your lockpicking set, probably at your weak hand side that's covered by the shield so nobody can easily snatch it off you at any point in time. Wait...

Except that you won't have a shield if you're an adventurer and have half a brain. The dagger is useful, the shield is a lodestone that will be cast aside the moment the stupid thing lets the enemy raise the alarm and you have to run for it.

 

No I don't have one anymore, but I did own one yes. Carrying it on your arm for a few hours is a good idea if you're worried about something coming at you, on your back the thing might as well not exist in terms of weight. If you have no feeling in your arm after carrying something with well distributed weight that doesn't weigh much in the first place, you had it strapped on wrong most likely.

A hoplon, the shield I had when I did reenactments isn't a very heavy shield, and it weighs ~5kg. Stick a hoplon on your arm and walk around with it for a couple hours. The weight is all on the straps, it will be very uncomfortable for a while and eventually your forearm will go numb from the upper strap pressing on the blood vessel.

 

And getting a weapon out from your back? Are you mad? You're going to have to reach higher than your arm can go to fully draw it, you'll leave yourself entirely open throughout the whole process, it's a complete nightmare. The thing came with a scabbard that hooks to your waist for a reason. Even a two handed weapon you don't may not "sheath", you'll just rest it on your shoulder (or a couple of other ways) which leaves the weapon at the ready there too.

That's part of my point, moron.

 

And if we're in this scenario, the bandit would have stalked you out of sight and then ambushed you, that is to say you wouldn't have known you were going to fight a bandit until the bandit murdered you. Why he would murder you right then and there rather than take you hostage and demand you drop everything is beyond me, as it's in the bandits overall interest to not kill you (a murderer will have a much higher bounty than a thief). Plus, unless your head is rolling on the ground, despite a slit throat you can still very well fight back for a few moments and our trusty dagger that you've seen to have glossed over is a fine fit for the job. You're going to end up dead, but if that bandit wants your life you probably want his.

That's a lot of wrong in a hurry.

1. Who's to say that's how it went down? Maybe you were riding up along the road and there's a bandit camp along the side, and they come out to rob you. If you intend to fight them, your shield is useless. It will take you 10+ seconds to get it out and ready, and they'll be on you and have hit you multiple times by then. And them being upon you will make getting your shield on impossible.

2. You're forgetting what bandits are. They don't come out of nowhere, you know. Most of the time, they're ex-soldiers. They entered the military in times of war and were ejected from it for one reason or another, and they have no other skills outside of organized mass murder war, so they apply those skill to organized small scale murder and robbery banditry. Usually the reason they were ejected from the military is the war ended and they don't need them anymore, which puts a lot of potential bandits into the population at once while they're in contact with one another and can organize. (Skyrim really shouldn't have so many bandits. Sure, the great war ending left a LOT of soldiers with no war to fight being dumped out on the street with no other skills, but the civil war should have fixed that as far as Skyrim is concerned. The only reason I can think of is that these people became bandits before the civil war started and then neither side would allow them to enlist or hire them as mercenaries.)

3. The reason it's important that they're soldiers, not random ruffians, is it means they are trained to kill without question and since they are inherently extra-legal and their organizations are fairly large and organized, they don't give a s#*! about their bounty. If you do anything they find even remotely threatening, they'll kill you. The only way to get through a confrontation with bandits without a fight is to be very submissive and placative, make no threatening movements and do whatever they tell you to do. Now, are you doing that? I didn't think so.

 

Also if you were wearing heavy armor the strike to your protected neck from an axe would have hurt and pissed you off much more than killed you. Swords are for cutting and thrusting (including half swording to stab an opening in armor), axes are for chopping and dismembering, and maces are good for staggering and dealing with armor via blunt force trauma. An axe is quite possibly the worst choice of weapon against an armored opponent.

 

There's a lot of wrong here, too. Axes are actually pretty damned effective against armour, if not as good as hammers. In fact, the medieval "general purpose" weapon designed to be good against all kinds of opponents with all kinds of armour WAS an axe. Specifically, the pollaxe. Axes get a lot of force into their swings, and focus it all into a fairly small cutting surface. They work on armour for the same reason maces do.

 

And yes "Supposedly" it is about my great interest in seeing realism in the game that isn't someone's new ENB preset or retexture of Whiterun or new color of glass armor.

Now I'm not even sure you agree with me, which makes this a very, very confusing thread. Two people can agree they want the other one dead and also agree that Jägermeister is the best drink.

I'm also pretty sure that the overall community isn't exactly interested enough in the overswing fix at this point, all things considered.

I do agree with you on the animations. It's your stance on dual wielding, which you made sure to pointlessly insert into your original post, that I take issue with.

 

Look, these animation replacements are a good idea. I'd certainly love it if somebody made them. But at the same time, you have to understand that this will only be made if somebody comes along and reads this thread who cares about realism, knows what the hell realism really means in this context, is capable of making a sophisticated animation replacing mod and will do it for its own sake instead of for views, downloads, endorsements or comments. The odds of that are astronomical.