Ah yes, the invincible three handed sword technique.

"Extra hand space for a friend" im dead 😂😂

Yah, most RPGs confuse a Long sword for an Arming Sword.

Longswords are truly a great way to bond with your friends and hold the sword together

I like that there's room for another hand so I can fight with my friends.

note that swording by committee tends to be awkward.

Hey Frederick, hand me my sword! - Which one my lord? - The long one! That's definition of long sword :)

I would like to see a game which uses longsword as the default 2-handed sword, and the zweihander as more of a specialist polearm.

Longswords are for sharing

Lindy has discovered shorts and I am all for this.

I have an RPG book, called Via Prudensiae, it's a Danish RPG rules set. And it has an entry for "sværd" (Danish for sword) which is a single handed sword, and an entry for "langswærd" (Danish for longsword) which is a two-hander, quite a bit larger than the sword, and dealing a bit more damage, as befits its larger size.

Longswords; the original three-legged race

Hats off to Torn Banner for making the longsword 2 handed in Chivalry 2.

The "longsword" in most RPGs more accurately refer to arming swords.

What Gygax and Arneson categorized as a "longsword" in Dungeons and Dragons is really more like an "arming sword" or "knightly sword." I'm guessing the error rooted in them having "short swords" as a separate proficiency category, and so it just felt right to them to make the other category of one-handed swords with longer blades be called "long swords."

The joys of a lindybeige upload notification versus The un-joys of seeing it's a short instead of a 40 minute in-depth German longsword manuscript breakdown using real longswords as a teaching aid

"Or for a friend if you'd like" 😂

I'm guessing an arming sword would be closer to the rule set (and ASOIAF) "longsword"

Haha, yes. I've questioned this for many years. I'm a new HEMA player, previously a SCAdian, and a 30+ year D&D player. Thanks for all your many videos, esp giving Wing Chun a little representation in the past.

I was so excited there was a new Lindy video. Im disappointed its only a short.

OK, but why use two hands when you can dual-wield two of them while wearing studded leather armor?

Lindy making a short? Never thought I’d see that but I’m always happy to see you complain

Normally they are not typified as longswords but "Long swords" to contrast "short swords". Their long sword is basically an arming sword in any tabletop rpg.

THANK YOU! I have gone off about this topic way to many times!

It’s like this in the Game of Thrones books also. They keep on saying a long sword and I want to punch GRRM

I just love your sweaters mate. Cool content as usual

Is a Claymore longer or shorter than a long sword. I always loved the line, "It'd take a madman in a kilt with a Claymore to get the better of me!" Cousin McAdder.

Its rather telling that in the Flower of Battle, Fiore has one guard for sword in one hand, which is the positional equivalent to where you would be drawing the sword from the scabbard

For what it's worth, D&D, at least in 4th and 5th editions, actually gives longswords the "versatile" property, so you can use them 1-handed for the listed damage or 2-handed for a boost.

I was looking for some grammatical explanation about poet laureate Mr. Long's words.

Another thing that bothers me about dnd is that everything weighs twice as much as it actually should. >:(

Missed these types of videos!

You brightened my day. Thanks for helping me learn something new

Thank you! Drives me crazy when I see that mistake in the rulebooks lol

To be fair, the hard definitions for what constitutes a longsword or broadsword only really appear in the 19th century. There are plenty of medieval manuscripts referring to long arming swords as longswords in addition to the more usual two-handed sword.

Why am I thinking of Larry Niven's Moties from "The Mote in God's Eye"? "Why's this hilt so long?" "That's so there's room for the *Gripping* *Hand* "

As someone who plays such games, I'm still waiting for the smallsword to get its long overdue recognition. It's such a fun actual one-hander! And an enjoyable pain to draw, which I i consider a bonus. (To be clear, "draw" here meaning illustration, not unsheathing.)

Interesting. And yeah spot-on! I think my favourite weapon rules are in Mophidius' Conan rules, where all weapons are different and can cause effects relating to their type etc (knocking people back etc). The most detailed weapon rules I ever saw were in the Rolemaster (and Middle Earth and Spacemaster) RPGs from the 80s. Every weapon and attack spell had a vast chart showing how it works vs every armour type and how much body coverage that armour type has, plus there were dozens of unique critical effect tables that reflected the weapon type too. It was great fun ... but somewhat undermined by the massively simplistic way that your strength was simply added to your weapon still, rather than separately added to damage.

"Another hand for a friend if you like." the ol reach around and grab his pommel technique.

I'm loving these shorts

When he said "as you can see it's long" I was waiting for "and it's a sword", but that only happened inside of my head.

Dark souls carrying the torch of realism

A good rule to deal with this I think would be to debuff the longsword by half or a third or so if used with one hand

Doing the gods work Lindy!

D&D initially used the terms like this: "Short Sword" (which is not a historical term) represented any sword with a blade length between 15 ad 24 inches. "Broad Sword" represented a one-handed sword used mainly for slashing, heavy at the tip and with a nearly parallel blade, like the spatha, migration era sword, and basket-hilted sword. "Long Sword" represented the sword of the medieval period with a blade of about 30-36 inches for one-handed use that could be used for slashing or thrusting. While historians might use the term "Arming Sword" to refer to them today, this term was not in common use in the 70s. "Bastard Sword" in D&D covers the medieval longsword and various types of hand-and-a-half sword. To be fair, this is a historical term for those weapons, so they aren't entirely wrong. "Two-Handed-Sword (aka "Great Sword") in D&D refers to the massive weapons of the late medieval-early renaissance period with a huge hilt and blade that add up to somewhere between 5 and 6 feet (Zweihander, Montante, etc.)

Galaxy brain: you could use a shield strapped to your forearm and still have two hands to use the sword with!

Bastard swords are the way. Best of both worlds

Alright, the next time I play an RPG that has races with extra pairs of hands I'm three-handing my longsword

That looked like it had room for 2 and a half hands... so perhaps it’d be a great bastard sword ... and that’d be great 👍 a dreihander!

in D&D they have it as a 1-H melee that does 1d8 dmg, but in my game it is a 2-H that can be used one-handed for 1d6 instead. Same rules for applying STR bonuses apply.

I like the black background makes it seems like the short is horizontal

I'm envisioning a warrior just reach out and grab that empty space on his buddies hilt.

Not a patch on our Highland Claymore, literally swinging a skyscraper at them, i also love that huge german double handeled one

This is part of why I loved Dark Souls, you can one hand or two hand your weapons. It's a small detail that completely changes how the game is played. One handed and a shield for defense, two handed for more offensive power.

When it comes to swords, always ask yourself: Can I spam L1?

Someone needs to make a 2+ player co-op VR game where each person has their hands in control of the same sword. Maybe could bump it up to 3 or 4 players, where they all have one hand on the sword and another on a supporting item. Would be hell to get anything done haha.

Try using a longsword with a shield in Kingdom Come Deliverance and you will see exactly why Lindiebaige is right, its just too heavy

Chiv 2 has you use both hands, I was kinda surprised. I was conditioned, as you said, to assume it was a one handed weapon

I played American baseball into college. I trained for 20 years to use a club very effectively. I absolutely benefit from swinging with a 2 handed grip. At my peak of fitness my fastest recorded bat speed was over 120mph. With one hand it was between 80 and 100. It was less consistent, no doubt. But each hit wouldve been what anyone would consider a crushing blow. I have swung swords. Large and small. They are supremely more well balanced than any baseball bat. I still have no real encumbrance when swinging longswords one handed. I am not nearly as fit as I was and I could still draw gasps from a crowd. I've tested this recently. It's a matter of specific training. I did the closest thing to one part of a Knights training people still do. I can tell you what a lifetime spent swinging things gets you: you can swing big stuff real hard. Not very scientific sounding but there it is. It may bear mentioning that I'm also descended from Danes. That could be skewing results. Sword does feel natural to the hand, feels more efficient somehow, more in tune with my body than a baseball bat in some ways. Less in others ways. So yeah two hands if I really wanted to cut a guy in half but one hand if i just needed him dead and nothing fancy to scare his friends.

I always like a friends hand on my sword…

Not to mention the ball on the end of the handle was often used to puncture armor. With proper gauntlets on, a knight would grab the end of the blade and swing it full force to bonk people on the head, and whether or not they were wearing a helmet, is irrelevant.

If only Peter Jackson had a beige man like this.

It seems KZfaq finally made a format - shorts - that suits your older style of snippets and short rambles. And it is good for THE ALGORITHM (TM).

Also important to know is that they are light, and with two hands on it, it will swing faster, more often than pretty much any one handed weapon could and is more manoeuvrable on top. It's not a club with a blade

I mean, the rules also say that studded leather is an armour type so just homebrew it.

This got actually a bit better in D&D 5e, as the longsword is now a weapon with the "versatile" stat, which means you can use it one-handed or two-handed and two-handed will do a bit more damage. The issue is that the only exclusively one-handed sword in D&D is still a shortsword. So arming swords are still missing. It can easily be homebrewed, tough. An arming sword would just have the stats of a longsword used in one hand without the possibility to use it two-handed at all. And it would be cheaper than a longsword, of course.

That's why I like 5e. It has the versatile property. You _can_ wield it one-handed, but it's more effective in two hands and does a bit more dage as a result.

DND 5e longswords have the versatile property, doing 1d8 + STR in one hand (one eight sided die plus a modifier based on how strong your character is), but 1d10 + STR in two hands

"The pointy end goes into the other man?"

That point of it dealing less force with a 1 handed grip is brought up in DnD 5e by the longsword dealing 1d8 in 1 hand or 1d10 in 2 hand

I feel like they came up with short bow and longbow first, and carried the nomenclature over to swords. If I recall, a short bow and a short sword both do 1D6 Damage in D&D 2e, and a long bow and a long sword both do 1D8.

I always leave space for my friend to put his hand on my longsword. wait no

in the pretty popular 5e d&d at least it has stats for both one handed and two handed use. And I think its meant to represent any sword that is practicaly used with either 1 or 2 hands Which I think is what functionally separates a longsword from a greatsword/zweihander/etc anyways, some degree of usable 1 handed dexterity. In the game: one handed sword are between 1d6 or 1d8 versitile 1-2 handed swords are d8-d10 and dedicated 2 handers are 2d6 which I think is a pretty reasonable representation of swords broadly speaking.

iirc you can use two hands for longswords in D&D, which adds another damage die or changes the damage die to a higher-faced one

Looking forward to "The Rules According to Lindy" historical RPG.

D&D existed well before the revival of medieval fencing. According to the wiki page HEMA people started to use the longsword term only in the early 2000s.

In DND 5e there’s definitel an emphasis on using it two handed. You *can* use it one handed, but you’ll deal less damage.

Pathfinder, arguably the second most popular fantasy TTRPG, does do the longsword dirty due its split between DnD after 3.5e but before 4e. However DnD’s 4th, 5th, and 6th/“one” editions have a ruling for longsword that allow the user to deal more damage for using both hands. I think this is a nice hint at it’s real usage while still having fulfilling game mechanics and usability, with it serving the in-game role as the median of a shortsword and greatsword.

In D&D you can choose to wield a longsword using both hands for a bit of extra damage, only a smidge though!

Just throwing this out there, in D&D 5e, the longsword is Versatile which is a weapon property meaning they can be used in one hand or two, if chosen to be wielded in one hand your damage dice is reduced, reflecting the actuality of not producing the same power and leverage...

The three-handed option for when you're swordfighting in co-op mode, of course

I’d love to see a system that allows for shield use with a longsword at the cost of greatly reduced damage potential

If we are talking about the 14-16th centuries then yes a longsword is what you described. However, the terms long and short sword are often applied to any sword that is longer or shorter than the standard of that period. For example, the Roman spatha, which was roughly the length of a medieval arming sword, is referred to as a long sword because it was much longer than the standard gladius. Whereas in the 15th century, a sword the length of an arming sword could be referred to as a short sword. As with many historical discussions, context is important. Many 70s-80s RPGs originally had settings based on early and high middle-age periods and in those periods a "longsword" still would have been one-handed.

There are some fioré one hand longsword techniques, however it’s mostly just for wrestling. For Instance if you close the gap against your opponent after krumphau use your non dominant hand and push their elbow. A knight on horseback would probably use a longsword in one hand if they dropped their polearm or it broke. Lastly I will say 5e does kind of do longswords better by making them versatile where two handed longsword does more damage than one handed longsword.

I think “suki na ko go megane wo wasureta” has some hype though. Looking forward for this season of we watch anime! Amazing lineup you have!!

Dnd 5e takes this into a account, letting you use a longsword one handed, so you could use a shield or something else in your other hand, but allowing for better damage potential if used in both hands

It's almost as if they take place in fantasy settings... But thank you lindybeige for being a terrific human being.

Pathfinder's longsword: one handed: 1d8 + strenght modifier two handed: 1d10 + 1.5 x strenght modifier ... I'd say they really nailed it👍🗡️

I feel personally attacked. Ily Lindy beige ♥️

I had this argument with a friend, he was playing around with his nunchucks and my falchion trying to figure out some nonsense and I pointed out the fact that he was trying to dual-wield 2-handed weapons. He refused to admit the difference between being able to pick up an object and use it properly. I may be naming my weapon incorrectly, as I am going off of D&D terms, it was a scimitar-shaped weapon, with a mild s-curve between the handle and blade, with an 18" handle and 32" blade, so similar in size to the longsword shown. I know them as Falchions or Great Scimitars

Lol “for a friend” omg! 😂😂😂😂

"Two hands on it and another hand in between for a friend if you like" Riley Reid: it's so fucking big.

Longsword: Verstatile 1d10/1d8 In dnd 5e it sounds right on what you are saying. Most effective in two hands but usable with less oompf in 1 hand.

IIRC D&D 5e has separate damage dice for longswords being used with one hand vs 2 hands

i always think of the longsword like the katana; you can use it in one hand effectively from horseback against the horseless plebs, but on foot you need both hands.

To be fair:"longswort" ist used as a terminus technicus for spathae and similar sword forms earlier and later by archeologists. Maybe that's where this idea comes from.

Utterly fascinating! (I Think).

Yes, this is something that has bothered me about games like D&D for ages, I love D&D, I'm an avid player, but the fact that the longsword is treaded like a one handed sword where arming swords exist is crazy. And don't even get me started on "studded leather"

I love this chap

@lindybeige Indeed, most games confuse Arming Swords with Longswords. Although a number of TTG's now have different damage dice for using the sword in one hand versus two hands. They are games and mostly based in fantasy worlds with magic and dragons, so hardly the biggest sin. And lets not forget that in most of these games people without armour on get to to have as good or better protection than people in full plate or chainmail. It is a *game*, not reality