Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-26863727-20160714041222/@comment-26863727-20160715032956

TheShade6 wrote: Aramir, are you trying to say Kylo Ren could beat Count Dooku?

And sure give a child with no previous training whatsoever a greatsword, they'll totally be able to effectively swing it That's another matter entirely. Fighting styles, as opposed to actual blade shape. A blade of pure energy as wide as a Mainz gladius and the length of a zweihander will cut as well as it would the width of a rapier and the length of your index finger. And by the way, we have actually never seen Kylo engage in lightsaber combat when he hasn't just taken the blast of Chewbacca's bowcaster, which until then was a one-shot one-kill weapon that sent the target flying several feet through the air. Furthermore, the novelization reveals that killing his father only increased his inner conflict, the opposite of what he thought should have happened. So he's out of the zone and already dying when the fight begins. We cannot make assumptions based on the most circumstancial duel in all seven films. And that's saying a lot.

But yes, I am saying a smallsword is inferior. There's literally accounts of both Scottish basket hilt broadswords and Japanese katanas cutting the things in two. They're not useful against armor either. If you took 100 random 1770s British officers and  put them against 25 random English men-at-arms from 1400, with no firearms, the men-at-arms would win.

Conan's sword weighs like a greatsword, but is nowhere near the size. The main reason for difficulty in use is thus removed, as 5 pounds isn't really that much. Even if she had difficulty taking the weight at first it would quickly become less of a problem, eventually nonexistent. Besides, since the weapons in that universe are far more practical designs, mostly based firmly in history, there's numerous kinds of sword with much better weight-size ratios while still remaining one handed.

I won't even get into the fact that she's being trained to use a smallsword by people who have likely never even heard of one before.