Usually in a military situation, during the time periods being discussed, Spear and shield, with a sword at your side was the most useful, however there are accounts of people using two weapons while in battle. You say no one in history using dual weapons has ever prospered. The chinese utilized dual weapons, the japenese utilized dual weapons, the morro's use dual weapons. Today the philipino army and united states marines
have all trained in philipino martial arts which consists of dual weapons, two shorts swords or sword and dagger. The main gauche that you mention as useless was a very resourceful defensive and offensive weapon.

You keep commenting on how the second hand would be weaker and less accurate, but these people would have trained every day of their lives with both hands. I will agree with you that two longswords is ludacris, but two short swords, sword and hand axe, two daggers, Rapier and maine gauche, two clubs, etc... are all very realistic and historically used forms of fighting.

You also commented about how during the time of the rapier armour wasn't being used anymore, actually it was quite common for duelists who didn't fight to the death to wear a tightly knit chain shirt. As well as certain calvary still wore leather and plate breastplates. The rapier was designed to seek out the weak spots in armour but it was not the cause of the decline of armour, the long bow and use of gunpowder are what made medieval style armour useless.

Also a person wearing a full suite of armour was not as slow as many people seem to believe. There are accounts of knights boasting about their ability to vault onto their horses and do cart wheels.

Go to a pilipino martial arts school, or a chinese martial arts school, hell even an SCA event and watch just how useful dual wielding really is.

Anyways, on topic, I was dissapointed that there was no dual wield skill offered in the game simply because it limits the possible variation of fight styles and the use of weapons. I hate having two really nice one handers in my inventory and only being able to use one of them.

Last edited by Morgeth; 01/09/04 02:14 AM.