>What is the reason that almost all weapons weigh around
>14-17lb. Is there an Theranian standard organisation? Thera is
>populated by a large array of creatures yet the majority of
>weapons weigh just so that they can not be dual wield by
>none-spec’ed warriors.

Because area writers make them that way. There is no suggestion or standards for weapon weights.

>Oh, yea, one more thing I have been wondering about.
>Is it true that you fight best with a weapon that have a level
>just around your own level?

I believe that is correct.

>And if so what’s the argument for that?

So a level 1 guy can't pick up an average 28 sword and do mangles. Toss it under the umbrella of game balance.

>I realise not all swords are equally easy to use, but
>lets face it, if you are a master of a broadsword, odds are
>you will be a master of another broadsword as well – even if
>it use to belong to a dead elven lich.

I don't buy that. It's obvious that the average 12, level 15 broadsword is far inferior to the average 28, level 50 broadsword. They handle differently, they hit differently, one is obviously a superior weapon that a low-level is likely NOT trained well in.

>Søren

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

The heavy weapons are giant oriented i suppose.
I do think the weapon weights should be varied a bit. Whats the deal with the 9 lbs dagger? Just for kicks i guess.

About weapon level and tanking i noticed that too. I was wielding a jagged short sword and was getting raped by feareds with my rank 21 assassin. When i switched to a jeweled bs i could tank 4-5 before resting. Not sure if its a coincidence but if it is, its not fair.
It kind of reminds me of 'Green Destiny' from the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She kicked ass with that sword, more than with other swords...and it was above her skill. ....but its a movie so who cares.

>About weapon level and tanking i noticed that too.

> Not sure if its a coincidence but if it is, its not fair.

Well, seems to me it's a reasonable way to balance the effect of lowbies looting heroes. They still get the stats and other benefits, but the reduced weapon effectiveness helps limit the extent to which they can dominate their ranks completely.

If you want a thematic excuse, you could think of it in terms of the level indicating how unusual the sword is compared to others of its type. Even with mastery of swords you aren't perfect, and people still dodge, parry or otherwise evade your hits. You might have mastered one kind of sword as a lowbie by practice, and most broadswords are similar so you can get away with switching around some, but you still don't have the breadth of experience that makes a hero able to adjust to the differences in unusual swords and make maximum use of them anyway.

But that's just a justification for what is probably a balancing decision.

>Whats the deal with the 9 lbs dagger?

It weighs less than the dagger which weighs 15 pounds 3 ounces?

Their's lighter weapons out there, of course -- I was kinda amused by the two handed staff that weighs 2 pounds 3 ounces.

If any of you were around, and/or remember it back in the days of the First age, the hot weapon to always have, especially for us Ninjas was the heron marked blade.
It was a very powerful sword, with a VERY low level.
The lower the level was, the greater and easier it was to have mastery to understand the weapon, similar to how jewelled broadswords are today.

I actually was glad when A-P's had first got curse weapon (the rival of enchant weapon) because it lowered the level of the weapon, vs enchant weapon raising the level of the item for every successful cast/scroll.
I rolled up an AP that day to use that ability, lower level then fade weapon... Levels of weapons have always played a major role in the affect of the damage and mastery over it.
I doubt today is any different than then.



>The heavy weapons are giant oriented i suppose.
>I do think the weapon weights should be varied a bit. Whats
>the deal with the 9 lbs dagger? Just for kicks i guess.
>
>About weapon level and tanking i noticed that too. I was
>wielding a jagged short sword and was getting raped by feareds
>with my rank 21 assassin. When i switched to a jeweled bs i
>could tank 4-5 before resting. Not sure if its a coincidence
>but if it is, its not fair.
>It kind of reminds me of 'Green Destiny' from the Crouching
>Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She kicked ass with that sword, more
>than with other swords...and it was above her skill. ....but
>its a movie so who cares.

The rapier (a sword most people assume was a light and
quick weapon) could easily weigh 30 lbs.

F=Mass * Acceleration.. You need a heavy weapon
to inflict damage.

A 30 lb. rapier? You may be right, but I am calling you out on this one. Could you please cite your sources?

Also, F=ma is all well and good, but you don't *need* a heavy weapon to inflict damage. Massive, shearing, bludgeoning damage yes, but what about a pierce from a dagger?

Like Valguarnera, it's a tradeoff between how fast you can move the weapon, and how much mass you can handle. With baseball bats, there has been an evolution and they've reached a balance. With weapons, there are more things to consider.

When you consider how dangerous a weapon is, you also have the size of the wound. It's all about moving / slicing / bruising / squashing the most flesh. With armor considered, you really do need a large and heavy weapon to inflict killing blows. An arrow has high mass, and high speed.. But it doesn't have much stopping power because the wound it inflicts is small.

The rapier is a hefty sword, that can be wielded with dexterity, and can be thrust through armor, and makes a large wound (the blade whole blade is tapered.. the farther you push in, the larger + deeper + deadlier the wound). There's a good chance you're gonna kill the guy with the right stab. Lots of training, and practice will let you know how to get that fatal blow.

Axes weigh an ASSLOAD. Any idiot can get out there and swing an axe. It's nearly impossible to avoid a blow from an axe. The weight + speed means that the axe is going to cut a vicious chunk out of you. VERY high chance of a fatal blow.

No, You do not need a heavy weapon to inflict damage. Heavy weapons infict more damage then light weapons.

In the end we've got many variables
Speed
Mass
Area of Collision
Type of Collision
Size of Wound
Density of Material (you hitting bone? muscle? fat? platemail?)
+tons of misc considerations (range, reach, ease of use etc etc)

And one goal= a dead guy

What do they tell you in algebra? You need a 1:1 ration of equations to variables to solve it =). Hence, many weapons!

Tell the blacksmith to use something besides lead next time. Or to not confuse a claymore with a rapier.

I'm tired of the verbal diarrhea you come up with. A hunting knife ways one pound. Think it can't kill? Your equation would only apply if it was the phyical trauma of the force that did damage. Why do you think the damn things have sharp edges, and pointy tips?

nt

1) Carrion Fields weapons are almost universally heavier than real-life counterparts. We're not interested in recalibrating this because it would be a huge volume of work for no gain - it's easier for us to just adjust how much you can wield, and we're comfy with how that formula works.

2) I did a quick Google on rapiers, and all historical examples I found quickly were 5 pounds or under.

3) Pet Peeve: People who quote physics formulae but don't understand them. Couple things:

- You don't inflict more and more damage linearly as your weapon gets heavier. If I gave you a 300 pound broadsword, it would be useless. This is because F=ma also applies to you getting the object moving, and your muscles only produce a fixed ceiling of force. This is why baseball players use lighter bats than they used 80 years ago, despite the fact that they are much stronger. M goes up, a goes down.

- For neuro/mechanical reasons, you also have a limit on how fast you'll move your muscles. Thus, giving you a 0.001 pound broadsword doesn't result in you moving the weapon at Ludicrous speed. You still have to move the weight of your arm, air resistance matters more for lighter objects, and there's only so fast your muscles will respond in any case.

- You don't care about force in an impact weapon. I could roll a 300 pound boulder at you on a level field and apply all of my muscular force through it, and it wouldn't be a good weapon. You care about kinetic energy (ask a ballistics expert), specifically the amount transferred. And knowing the formula for kinetic energy doesn't help so much either- too many variables are in play, including the shape of the weapon (and thus the location of the center of mass), the amount of energy used in moving or rotating your target rather than damaging it, the size of the cross-section of impact, etc.

This is why throughout history, people have been lethal with weapons ranging in weight from the negligible (bullet, arrow, dagger) to cleaving and bludgeoning weapons at the limit of what they can swing. If it was all "F=ma", people would be fighting with boulders.

As for the main topic, it's not broken and doesn't need fixing. You're not supposed to be able to dual wield just any pair of weapons, and we want strength to be a critical variable there.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com
Pretty close to a physicist.

The preceding note that elicited this response was an ill-fated attempt a joke. Apparently everyone thought I was dead serious when I said "30 lbs rapier", and the irony escaped them. My apologies, and in the future I will try not to be sarcastic.

About the Physics of it:
In addition to the points Valguarnera made, the rapier was designed as a thrusting weapon. The primary strength of the weapon was in lunging & stabbing attacks. The rapier was long, and in a process of one-upping, the rapier got longer and longer. It is meant to be a long rigid spike to thrust through your opponent. It's a heavy cumbersome blade.. But by no means is it 30 lbs! =)

I did learn that those light-weight swords that they use on tv are not rapiers, and not even representative of historical swords. They're just flimsy really light junk that "looks" good on tv.

This, from Conquest on the history channel.

When clearly proven to be an idiot, claim it was a joke and the one who prooved your idiocy to be a dense humorless pig-dog.

POSTER'S DISCLAIMER: "Of course....I don't play anymore, but its just my 2 cents."

all the fencing done on 'modern' tv is done with foils.
they are just toys to entertain. i think those are theones you are talking about. though a whole bunch of movies now are getting more into 'period' costuming. guess enough folk complained that they decided to make stuff more 'realistic'

i remember reading about the rapier thing getting out of hand. the idea was longer = you got your blade in first = you win. but they got outrageous and in england i think they passed a law fining anyone with a blade over 'don't remember think it was 3 feet?' mainly becausefolk in court were getting tripped, bonked, poked etc..
ya just gotta love it.

though i don't know why they did away with the 'old' italian style.
1 rapier, 1 chainmail glove. grab other guys sword, run his @$$ through.
guess it made too much sense.

4) Obviously insane immortals that spend too much time thinking about weapons.

You worry me sometimes. Not cause you thought all this up, but cause this all made sense to me. I dunno what scares me more the fact that you spent such a long time discussing this or the fact that I understood it and agreed whole heartedly.

Insane in da membrane

kads

With questions of faith and thirsting ideals
they might call me a priest if I wasn’t a drunk

a 30 lbs sword. You need either a slow heavy weapon or a light very fast weapon. There are two factors in that equation, usually you cannot have them both. Just like heavy people cant punch very fast but a lighter more suple person can send you a 90mph punch.

I think heavy weapons should be hard to parry and easy to dodge. Light weapons should be easy to parry but very tough to dodge. Shield block would be equally good for both kinds of weapons.

#1 no rapier EVER in the history of this planet was 30#
rapiers did damage by being able to slip in through armor it was a piercing weapon, not slashing.
if you want to see what an average weapon wieghed check out museum replicas, above and beyond that: probably no weapon excepting the maul was very heavy, who the hell wants to raise that over your head over and over?
a two-handed sword take a claymore for instance, IRL wieghed about 8# on the average. now of course that's avg so it goes up a bit eh? rapier wieghed about 2-3.5 #
maces and such still did not weigh all that much.
now for the weapons in game, think theran physics. if the game interally justifies itself.. cool, if not maybe something is wrong.
a 50# axe irl: no way, in game makes perfect sense when you consider half the population can walk around with 300+# of junk much of it not in a sack or anything. the weakest theran would probably eat us alive, yes a 30# weapon would do more damage than a 5# one IF you are moving it fast enough.

lets take into acct what you have to say by way of eq.
we all got mass i think but acc?

Force and Motion
Speed
Speed is the amount of distance covered in a certain abount of time. It is purely travel. That's it. For example, 30 m/sec means that in one second the object would travel 30 m. So, what if an object went 50 m in 4 seconds. How could you figure out this object's speed? Remember, speed is distance per time ("per" is another way of saying "over" or "devided by"). 50 m per 4 sec or 50 m / 4 sec. 50 devided by 4 = 12.5. So the object is traveling at 12.5 m/sec. It also doesn't have to be just meters or seconds, it could be meters per hour, or cm per second.
s = d/t where s = speed, d = distance, and t = time.
Velocity
Velocity is almost the same thing as speed. Velocity is a combonation of speed and direction. It is essentially speed in what direction. That object that I mentioned above that was travelling at 12.5 m/sec, maybe it's direction is at 50°.
v = d/t where v = velocity, d = distance travelled, and t = time.
Vectors
Vectors are lines that show velocity or force. Vectors show three things: In what direction the force/velocity is going. The length is called the magnitude. The length represents how much force of velocity there is. And last each vector line represents a certain amount of time. For example, if an object has a velocity of 30 m/sec and one cm = 10 m and each vector line represented a time of one second and it was going 45°, then the velocity vector line would be 3 cm long, and be facing toward the upper right hand corner of the screen. Like this:

Now, if there were two of them, looking like this:

This means that it is about 45°, traveling at 30 m/sec for two seconds. How far has it gone?

Acceleration
Acceleration is a change in velocity. So, speed up, slow down, or change direction are all accelerating. When something accelerates, it has a velocity, then the velocity increases/ decreases. In the next second, it increases/decreases with same rate as before. You could think of it as velocity per second. If you were to simplify that, it would become m/sec (for velocity) /sec. M/sec/sec is the units in which we express acceleration and it is represented as 'a'. To figure out velocity based on acceleration and time, the formula is
v = at
where v is velocity, a is acceleration, and t is time.
To find distance based on acceleration and time the formula is:
d = .5at2
where d is distance, a is acceleration, and t is time.
for more info on formulas, go to formulas
Force
Force is a push or a pull. It is what actually moves things, gives them velocity or acceleration . The units for is kg m/sec/sec, or Newtons, abbreviated N. The newton is the unit of force. One newton is defined as the amount of force it requires to accelerate a 1 kg object at 1 m/sec/sec. If a 10 kg object is accelerated at 8 m/sec/sec, then how much force does it have?
F = ma
Where F is force, m is mass, and a is acceleration.
F = (10 kg)8 m/sec/sec
F = 80 kg m/sec/sec
F = 80 N

now a 20kg at same speed 160n
now 10kg at 16 m/sec/sec 160n

so it comes down to how heavy is it and how fast can you make it move
though this applies more for bludgeoning weapons as when it hits the surface area where it impacts makes a difference on how far it goes in. so a heavy whatever is good only as long as you can still move it fast. if its too heavy to swing its bad if it is too light to do a damn thing.. bad.
either way doesnt do you any good if you can only swing it a couple of times before collapsing in exhaustion.

lets say bob hits someone with a warhammer that's about 2 sq inches at the impact site, then using a short sword (that amazing enough wieghs the same amount)stabs with the exact same amount of force
what happens? oops now it depends on where they hit.. enough..