Why swords?

[Anthony]

Swords tend to be significantly more expensive than spears and axes, but there's really nothing about them which would cause them to do more damage than hafted weapons. So, why are people willing to pay the extra?

Durability? I suspect a metal blade is tougher than a wooden haft, but I don't know how relevant it is.
Strength? Weight for weight, lots of woods are stronger than steel.
Smoothness? It's probably a lot harder to grab or catch a blade than a haft.
Other?

[trooper6]

There are also social considerations.

Wearings swords is also often a mark of higher status.
Also in quite a few times and places swords were acceptable to walk around town carrying while larger hafted weapons were not.

[Sam Cade]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Other?

A sword is easier to carry, quick to deploy and able to be used against assailants that are immediately adjacent to you.

Originally Posted by Anthony

but there's really nothing about them which would cause them to do more damage than hafted weapon

A sword has more cutting edge and is able to be swung with much more speed. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

A sword is easier to carry, quick to deploy and able to be used against assailants that are immediately adjacent to you.

Ah, I didn't think about drawing weapons.

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

A sword has more cutting edge and is able to be swung with much more speed. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity.

Kinetic energy for a swung object scales with angular velocity^2 * moment of inertia, and a tip-weighted weapon like an axe has a lot higher moment of inertia than a hilt-weighted weapon. In any case, the energy of a strike is equal to force * distance, so unless you can somehow apply more force to a sword than you can to a hafted weapon, it's not going to make a difference in total energy. The sword does have a somewhat larger sweet spot (to use sports terminology), which might be a factor.

[Sam Cade]

Angular velocity increases as radius decreases. Nicht wahr? :-)

This is why felling axes don't have eight foot handles.


...and then we have the elastic behavior of the haft and such.

A tip-weighted weapon like an axe has a lot higher moment of inertia than a hilt-weighted weapon.

The POB on a spear isn't anywhere near the tip. POB on most swords will be well forward of the hilt.

[Kitsune]

I supect that things depend to a good deal on the degree of armor worn. If two completely unarmored men duel each other, a spear of a bit over 2 meters length should be the most dangerous weapon, superior to any kind of sword or axe. If extremely encompassing armor is worn, the spear would be less advantageous, an axe would be superior to a sword, but the best weapon would probably be a warhammer.

As far as one-handed weapons are concerned, the best weapon for entirely unarmored duelling would probably be a rapier, which should outclass any other sword, any axe and warhammer. But the more armor is worn, the less point would there be in using it. A longsword should be a rather versatile weapon, almost as good against unarmored opponents as the rapier, but much better against partially or largely armored ones (although the swordsman would have to change his fighting style as when fighting better armored opponents).

But to use a sword or not was not necessarily the question. Expensive as they were, swords were often used as back-up weapons. For combat, a fighter might have used a polearm (halberds or similar weapons have range, versatility - meaning, they can thrust or cut - and enormous slicing power if swung in an arc), an axe, or a warhammer, keeping his trusty sword in the scabbard. This also kept the sword out of harms way, since fighting is always rather hard on a weapon. It would only be taken out when the primary weapon was broken or lost, or the sword seemed for some reason the better choice (like preferring it over a warhammer to fight a lightly armored opponent). Out of combat and armor, the sword could still be worn on the belt with some comfort, so it was a nice symbol of high rank and status.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

Angular velocity increases as radius decreases. Nicht wahr? :-)

Sure, but in the end it works out that the axe blade will have more energy than a similar mass sword blade.

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

This is why felling axes don't have eight foot handles.

Mostly it's because the blows will be really slow, and beyond a certain point you don't get a lot of benefit from it.

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

...and then we have the elastic behavior of the haft and such.

Generally speaking, the part of the weapon that actually has most of the energy is stiffer on an axe than it is for a sword.

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

The POB on a spear isn't anywhere near the tip. POB on most swords will be well forward of the hilt.

By "hilt weighted" I meant "POB is closer to the hilt than the tip".

[Sam Cade]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Mostly it's because the blows will be really slow, and beyond a certain point you don't get a lot of benefit from it.

Exactly.



So this is a socketed thai-style chopper I did. Hafted in 1" CE micarta, pinned and epoxied to the fitted haft, overwrapped with a resin doped jute twine.

Blade is heavily distal tapered, about 12" long, 27" OAL.
http://imgur.com/v7PTVMD

It is a chopping beast.


With a 4" haft, it loses most of its chopping ability and is pretty poor at handling green vegetation due to the lack of tip speed.

http://imgur.com/WJfWUr2


....

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

With a 4" haft, it loses most of its chopping ability and is pretty poor at handling green vegetation due to the lack of tip speed.

A light fast tool is key on lightweight targets (such as vines, grasses, and other greenery), because you get inefficient energy transfer if your weapon is heavy compared to the target. When attacking humans, this probably matters somewhat for the limbs, not generally for the torso.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Swords tend to be significantly more expensive than spears and axes, but there's really nothing about them which would cause them to do more damage than hafted weapons. So, why are people willing to pay the extra?

Durability? I suspect a metal blade is tougher than a wooden haft, but I don't know how relevant it is.
Strength? Weight for weight, lots of woods are stronger than steel.
Smoothness? It's probably a lot harder to grab or catch a blade than a haft.
Other?

Prestige is one thing, as trooper6 points out. Ever since the early medieval period, swords have been the weapon of choice of the nobility. And in the Viking Age, men would use swords if they could get them. Perhaps earlier too there was a prestige element.

I also vaguely recall some discussion, long ago, either on here, or on the old Pyramid v2 discussion boards, or on the RPG-Create mailing list (or possibly Usenet), that arrived at the conclusion that swords are the most versatile low-tech melee weapon. Something like spears and other polearms being better suited for formation fighting than swords, but you can't always rely on being in a formation. Likewise swords may be better (was the conclusion) at hurting unarmoured targets than maces or axes, but inferior towards armoured targets (e.g. as represented in Sagatafl by swords doing more damage-per-Success than axes and maces, but having a lower Pierce Armour value, and a slightly higher Roll Difficulty for Precise Strike).

Also, as you point out, it's a lot harder for an unarmed victim to grab your sword and prevent you from victimizing him with it, compared to if your weapon is some kind of hafted type. In fact unless the would-be-victim is very well trained, even just trying is likely to end up with him being called The Nine-Fingered or something.

So apart from the prestige element (a hero with a sword is more heroic than a hero with another type of weapon) it's the compromise weapon, the one that you bring with you because it's fairly good in all tactical situations.

They are also more expensive to make than axes, maces or polearms. That in itself gives them an air of prestige, quite apart from any historical connonations. Any poorly trained village blacksmith can make an axe (or a flanged mace, for that matter) that'll withstand being used for dozens of attacks against bone or shield or even armour, but to make even a shortsword that can be used for that without bending, that takes some skill, and even more so for the longer broadsword blade preferred in the medieval period (forget about parrying, though, unless the blade is of above average Quality).

Cost of acquisition is one thing. But if a sword breaks, it's the metal part that's broken, and so you'll usually have to discard it completely and have a new one made. Whereas if an axe or mace or speak (or other polearm) breaks, then it's usually the wooden part that breaks, which means you just need to get someone to attack the expensive metallic head to a new cheap wood shaft component.

Weapons break, during heavy use, far more often than is usually depicted in tabletop RPGs (although again, it'd make sense that weapons of above-average Quality breaks more rarely), so cost isn't just about cost of buying it, but also the running cost of replacing a weapon that may break twice per year or four-five time per decade or whatever. That's a lot more doable for a cheap axe (a few pennies for a re-shafting) than for an expensive sword (where the entire blade is recycled as scrap metal, perhaps to make knives, and a new blade must be forged). Making it a prestige weapon.

Also, lots of metal surface area helps you achieve the shininess.

You can polish a spear blade too, or an axe head (or possibly a mace head, although I'm unsure about spiked morning stars), but swords have more metal surface area, if you want to parade around and look blingy.

Prestige is generally important in medieval settings. We're so used to egalitarianism that it might be difficult for us to wrap our heads around just how comprehensively un-equal the medieval period was.

First impressions count for a lot. If you meet 5 guys or 30 guys carrying spears and axes, they'll give you the impression of ruffians, maybe outlaws. Whereas if they have swords instead, then they may very well be assumed to be gentlemen.

As metallurgy improved throughout the medieval period, though, swords probably became cheaper. That's certainly the case in my Ärth setting, where there's a minor revolution in sword-making on the way, giving more consistent sword quality (as suggested in GURPS Middle Ages 1, actually) compared to the older and more intuitive approach to swordsmithing. It's just started but eventually it'll enable smiths to make average Quality (Q3) swords somewhat faster, or to consistently produce somewhat better (Q4, Q5, even Q6) swords if they so desire, taking more time to do so and requiring more materials (and a bit more Skill, somewhat proportional to Quality). So prices are likely to drop over the next couple of centuries.

By the late medieval period, in our timeline, swords were probably quite cheap. They wouldn't be particularly good swords, but not particularly bad either, I think. Fairly good, probably Q4'ish (halfway between what GURPS designates "Good" and "Fine"), and readily available in stock in any large city.