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[RenoFox]

I know that as in Dwarf Fortress, in reality blunt weapons were more efficient against armored targets. However, shouldn't a smaller contact area still give better penetration, so why are maces and warhammers ever better than an edged weapon of same weight?

[Dsarker]

My bad guys.

[Vector]

Edged weapon has to cut through a curve that's bowed out, meaning it really doesn't want to be moved by a little tiny edge.

Bash a guy's armor effectively enough and it kills him for you.  More contact area, more internal bleeding, and the dude is picking his own metal out of his flesh.

On the other hand, bodkin arrows are pretty cool, too, so a lot of this depends on the type of armor.  For chainmail, you definitely want a good old morningstar.

[Strife26]

Might want to move this to DF general discussion.

Nah, it's about real world armor penetration values, so it's GDy enough, I'd say.

But yeah, trying to use an edged weapon for straight kinetic force isn't that efficient, especially because, when compared to the build of a hammer, a sword has a tendency to break. However, a lot of the reason why bigger swords got used, even when they were unwieldy was so there'd still be enough kinetic force to fuck someone up through armor.

[Heron TSG]

Well, there's the problem of armor. Swords cut pretty nicely through flesh and softer armor, but not usually so well through thick plate or chainmail. A heavy warhammer or mace can dent in plate armor and cause serious damage from the flesh being unable to 'bounce back' against the armor, or in the case of chainmail, the force just spreads out and leaves bigger wounds. Swing hard enough, and you just cause a massive wound instead of a smaller one. Harder to recover from, that.

[Vector]

Heck, the old swords weren't even very sharp at all.

[MaximumZero]

Except the thrusting swords, like the Estoc, which were made to pierce plate, body, and then the backside of the plate. You could get better range with a spear, though. Edged weapons were extremely useful in places and periods when armor was not well developed, like with the Vikings, Celts, or Persians. The Falchion was great at chopping through leather armor and being sharp all the way down the blade, the hand and a half sword was heavy enough to lop an arm off with no problem, and the shamshir was long and wickedly curved for leaving huge slash marks across an unarmored target.

It's all in who you're fighting, man.

[Strife26]

And that's why you don't see many heavy swords or blunt weapons in a lot of Asian (especially Japanese) history, crappy armor.

[Soulwynd]

It's all about mass x speed (ek=mv²/2). The speed in which you can swing a weapon is somewhat constant to a wide range of weight weapons can have. You can feasibly swing a 3kg mace as fast as you can swing a 1kg katana, not that you can recover from the swing as well, but effectively, the energy delivered is 3 times larger. Plus flanged & spiked maces were pretty common, which adds a small area of contact & penetration to it.

[G-Flex]

Edged weapon has to cut through a curve that's bowed out, meaning it really doesn't want to be moved by a little tiny edge.

I'm confused by this "doesn't want to be moved by a little tiny edge" statement. What are you trying to say here? Even if the edge is "tiny" it's the same amount of momentum.

More contact area, more internal bleeding

Why would this be the case for two weapons of equivalent mass and contact velocity? If anything, smaller contact area with a given momentum would result in worse injury at the impact site, for obvious reasons.



I think one issue here is that it's probably hard to get a terribly square hit on solid armor with a sword; more of the impact glances off. Also, the leverage and momentum you get out of something like a hammer is different, because more mass is concentrated toward the end, so you get better leverage and that's where the inertia winds up being concentrated. Against something flexible but not-very-penetrable like mail, another problem is that if you hit with the edge of the blade, the impact is spread out along the entire edge of the blade that hits; not much blunt trauma is inflicted because it's over a wide area. You want something with a lot of momentum, over a relatively small area, and a lot of leverage.

It's all about mass x speed (ek=mv²/2). The speed in which you can swing a weapon is somewhat constant to a wide range of weight weapons can have. You can feasibly swing a 3kg mace as fast as you can swing a 1kg katana, not that you can recover from the swing as well, but effectively, the energy delivered is 3 times larger. Plus flanged & spiked maces were pretty common, which adds a small area of contact & penetration to it.

As I said, leverage and inertia are important too, which change when most of a weapon's weight is concentrated right at the end.

[Kay12]

Yep, it's very much about whom you fight. Iron ring mail will do a fairly good job preventing cuts from swords and will also make thrusting attacks more difficult, because ring mail is somewhat flexible (ruining the advantage of having a sharp blade) but still tough enough to last a few blows. But it won't dilute the shockwave much, and the shockwave will be much more effective if the weapon is heavy.

[scriver]

I know that as in Dwarf Fortress, in reality blunt weapons were more efficient against armored targets. However, shouldn't a smaller contact area still give better penetration, so why are maces and warhammers ever better than an edged weapon of same weight?

War hammers are made like that. They look like this, for reference, in case what you're thinking of is mauls (seeing as how common it is to do so in fiction and media). Many war hammers is practically on the verge of being piercing weapon, but all of them is made with a small contact area that can break through armour.

It was also rather common for maces to have sharp corners and flanges to easier pierce armour, or knobs/studs (I'm not good with the terminology) to give them a smaller contact area, backed up by the blunt force of the head. And then there's always these. Same concept, but with spikes instead of knobs.

On the subject, one of my biggest disappointments with games is that they almost never (almost because M&B, the only game I've played that has them) have real war hammers. Which is sad, because I think they're awesome. Instead they have those stupid maul-likes (mallets, I call them ) that really is a kind of mace. Even more aggravating because such weapons - mauls and mallets - were basically only used as weapons by people who used them as tools to begin with (archers, for example).

BIG pet peeve. Very rant-inducing.

[Max White]

Well, apart from the physics behind why you can apply more force to a blunt weapon, making it more effective against armour, there is also the fact that it is a lot easier to make an effective blunt weapon then a sharp blade. There is a lot of work involved in making steel from hand (So to speak) then sharping it into a blade, as opposed to the fast, cheep option of an iron mace.

[Aqizzar]

I remember Diablo had proper warhammer looking warhammers.  I remember thinking they were kinda silly looking, because I had no idea how that was supposed to work.  They also had mauls that looked like sledgehammers too though, so all bases covered.

Anyway, one more strategic reason (like the construction argument) why I can think of blunt weapons being better than edged, at least for maces, is that they're easier to use.  You don't have to worry about striking true like you do with a blade (or warhammer), you just grasp the handle and swing.  This makes them better for soldiers with less training.

[olemars]

Well, there's the problem of armor. Swords cut pretty nicely through flesh and softer armor, but not usually so well through thick plate or chainmail. A heavy warhammer or mace can dent in plate armor and cause serious damage from the flesh being unable to 'bounce back' against the armor, or in the case of chainmail, the force just spreads out and leaves bigger wounds. Swing hard enough, and you just cause a massive wound instead of a smaller one. Harder to recover from, that.

This is why the Mordhau was a common technique in medieval armored combat. The knight would grab the blade of his sword and bash his opponent with the pommel.


On a related note, the most satisfying weapons in Assassin's Creed 2+ are easily the hammers.