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Been thinking about lightsabres lately. When you see someone fight with them, they're alway dealing blows from the side or top, as if they were using a healy broad sword or a cleaver. Not an extremely light-weight weapon. Wouldnt it be much more effectice to fence with them, poking at your enemy?
I'm not a sword fighting expert, and there are soooo many illogical things in Star wars that this really shouldnt matter, but I cant whatch starwars anymore without thinking about that. Argh!

What do you think?

MrMerlin wrote:Been thinking about lightsabres lately. When you see someone fight with them, they're alway dealing blows from the side or top, as if they were using a healy broad sword or a cleaver. Not an extremely light-weight weapon. Wouldnt it be much more effectice to fence with them, poking at your enemy?
I'm not a sword fighting expert, and there are soooo many unlogical things in Star wars that this really shouldnt matter, but I cant whatch starwars anymore without thinking about that. Argh!

What do you think?

Because it looks more dramatic.
100% sure about it

It would make more sense to fence with them because a poke from a lightsabre would probably be fatal anyway. In the films they swing them like they are chopping wood, but it looks better for the fight scenes.

Beaten to the punch! Luna nailed it, its for the cinematic wow factor.

LunaHound wrote:

MrMerlin wrote:Been thinking about lightsabres lately. When you see someone fight with them, they're alway dealing blows from the side or top, as if they were using a healy broad sword or a cleaver. Not an extremely light-weight weapon. Wouldnt it be much more effectice to fence with them, poking at your enemy?
I'm not a sword fighting expert, and there are soooo many unlogical things in Star wars that this really shouldnt matter, but I cant whatch starwars anymore without thinking about that. Argh!

What do you think?

Because it looks more dramatic.
100% sure about it

This.
If you were half as experienced as someone like Mace Windu with a lightsabre, you'd know that a fencing-like style would be deadly. Just think - you you got a masterful enough stroke and the opponent caught it, you could cut his sabre and bam you win.

Of course, you do realize, the movies were made with the actors swinging metal poles that had fancy hilts....

yeah, thats propably it..... After all, its common knowledg that the movies were done with almost nothing but merchandising in mind.... oh well.....

Why do they even need to hold the lightsabres?

Howard A Treesong wrote:Why do they even need to hold the lightsabres?

I dont know, I always thought a master Jedi could use force to hold like 100 light sabers simultaneously

LunaHound wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:Why do they even need to hold the lightsabres?

I dont know, I always thought a master Jedi could use force to hold like 100 light sabers simultaneously

but that would be too overkill. It wouldnt look cool anymore

but it would make sense.....

MrMerlin wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:Why do they even need to hold the lightsabres?

I dont know, I always thought a master Jedi could use force to hold like 100 light sabers simultaneously

but that would be too overkill. It wouldnt look cool anymore

but it would make sense.....

xD

Luna, you know perfectly well that posting a smiley face and an image is considered spam.

wtf?

It looks a little ridiculus.....

It makes more sense in the old films. In the new ones everything changes because the combat becomes much more frantic.

It's hard to believe Vader beating Grevious in a duel, for example. He would probably just crush his skull with the force, but that doesn't fit into a PG movie!

In saying that, old George did manage to get child murder and spouse abuse into a family film.

Medium of Death wrote:It's hard to believe Vader beating Grevious in a duel, for example. He would probably just crush his skull with the force

Wont the force from the Jedi sort of cancel that out?

LunaHound wrote:

Medium of Death wrote:It's hard to believe Vader beating Grevious in a duel, for example. He would probably just crush his skull with the force

Wont the force from the Jedi sort of cancel that out?

Yeah, I didn't make that very clear.

What I meant to say is.

Even though it's hard to believe, Vader would probably just crush Grevious' skull with the force.

I dont know much about starwars, but I always enjoy watching it if its on tv.

To be fair, not even the fans seem to be able to get it right.

The Jedi were semi-based of Samurai, so while its not accurate, their use of a lightsaber resembles what Lucas thought samurai sword fighting should look like (the word Jedi comes from Japanese film). Hence, the sweeping motions, which make sense with Japanese swords which tended to be designed for cutting, but Lightsabers are indeed more similar to rapiers as weapons.


Also, for Force wielding lightsabers: Darth Traya

AFAIK in actual sword fighting the point beats the edge...
As for lightsabres i'd guess it's an entirely different game...
With the ability to use the force compounded by an essentially weightless weapon with the ability to slice as far as you need it to on any part of its 'blade'...
Basically it'd be difficult to do that with modern built swords and such but with a weapon like that i'd say it would seem like a good idea...

Death By a Thousand Cuts has always been my preference, personally.


For movies, no real life experiance.

also, given the premise of the lightsaber as described by the fluff is so unrealistic that I consider it nonsense. It's easier to believe the handle projects electrons and an enclosed gravity field holds them in a set shape. I actually brought this point up in a table-top game I'm working on, where megnetic energy is used to contain the electrons. Anything but just having light diffract through a crystal, continue for a few feet and have it make a dead-stop...

MrMerlin wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:Why do they even need to hold the lightsabres?

I dont know, I always thought a master Jedi could use force to hold like 100 light sabers simultaneously

but that would be too overkill. It wouldnt look cool anymore

but it would make sense.....

Because just like many of the things you can spam in 40K now (dreadnoughts, termnator armour, various wargear items, etc.) lightsabers are suposed to be rare and near sacred artifacts...

Actually there is a style designed on fencing.

Squidmanlolz wrote:also, given the premise of the lightsaber as described by the fluff is so unrealistic that I consider it nonsense. It's easier to believe the handle projects electrons and an enclosed gravity field holds them in a set shape. I actually brought this point up in a table-top game I'm working on, where megnetic energy is used to contain the electrons. Anything but just having light diffract through a crystal, continue for a few feet and have it make a dead-stop...

They cap it with the force.

That's why only a Jedi can use them

(Hell if I know, but that's what I was told.)

purplefood wrote:AFAIK in actual sword fighting the point beats the edge...
As for lightsabres i'd guess it's an entirely different game...
With the ability to use the force compounded by an essentially weightless weapon with the ability to slice as far as you need it to on any part of its 'blade'...
Basically it'd be difficult to do that with modern built swords and such but with a weapon like that i'd say it would seem like a good idea...

Depends on the sword really. Some are designed for stabbing, some for cutting and others for simply hacking into meat. Rapiers are good for stabbing. A Roman Gladius would be good at both stabbing and hacking. A Claymore is meant for hacking hands down. You run someone through with that, and your going to be screwed on the battle field.

I think it's entirely stylistic. Lucas drew heavily from the samurai when designing Jedi, so the lightsaber is basically a futuristic katana, and they use it in much the same way (well... way more flashier, but still...).

The thing that always bothered me was how come the Pros dont turn their lightsabers on and off during duels? No more blocking for you.

I had a serious 'good point!' moment when i thought of that a couple years ago, now i'm sharing it with you.

As to the force 'capping' lightsabres? No, it's a neat solution but not the canon one. The reason only a jedi can use one is something to do with force sensitive emmitter crystals and the whole 'weightless weapon' thing someone brought up earlier.

EDIT: Roman Gladii were used near exclusively for Stabbing btw. Roman legionairres were trained to simply stab at either the face or groin whilst walking forward sheild raised, no fancy tricks. The Roman army would cause few deaths amongst the enemy but many horrific incapacitating injuries.

purplefood wrote:AFAIK in actual sword fighting the point beats the edge...

As a fencer, I can attest to this. In combat, economy of motion is key. It is much easier to simply poke at someone than to try to swing something into them. It's why spears and the like were always much more effective than other weapons. length aside, it's easier to stab someone than to cut them, and more often fatal.

Of course, it does look much more impressive on screen to have two blokes swinging glowing light sticks around at each other than have them engage in classical fencing style combat.

prime12357 wrote:

purplefood wrote:AFAIK in actual sword fighting the point beats the edge...

As a fencer, I can attest to this. In combat, economy of motion is key. It is much easier to simply poke at someone than to try to swing something into them. It's why spears and the like were always much more effective than other weapons. length aside, it's easier to stab someone than to cut them, and more often fatal.

Of course, it does look much more impressive on screen to have two blokes swinging glowing light sticks around at each other than have them engage in classical fencing style combat.

Though as KC said certain weapons (Claymores and heavy weapons) are better suited to hacking rather than stabbing...
But i stand by what my dad taught me. Point beats edge...

Yes Purpse, we get your point.

Slarg232 wrote:Yes Purpse, we get your point.

So you say my scaly aquatic friend...