What you say is accurate, but I would like to add a little odd side note - I used to do quite a bit of (what is now called) LARP fighting, and I did a lot of diving, rolling and generally moving in unexpected ways at unexpected angles - very much the same sort of nonsense our characters engage in. It was surprisingly effective. Moving where and how I wasn’t expected seemed to cause considerable difficulty even for some very good fighters that I could never have stood and dueled against. I even managed to evade and survive in a 3 v 1, continuously rolling and divng until others could get to me and even up the numbers. This doesn’t remotely negate the point being made about actual combat with real weapons (and metal armor would make all of it far harder as well), just struck me that it’s maybe not completely impossible in the right circumstances. (I still wouldn’t want to try it against a skilled opponent with a real weapon - bit high risk if it doesn’t work - but then, if I’m unarmored against someone with a sword, maybe it’d be better than just standing there to get skewered…)
Most real-world martial arts teach you to block or parry with your weapon, shield or whichever object you have at hand that is harder than your body (or capable of trapping the opponent’s weapon, so if you got nothing else, grab a pillow). This way you have something that moves at approximately the same speed as the sword point coming towards you.
The problem is, Conan Exiles doesn’t support blocking with weapons, and the same is true with many games.
Of course, if you’re unarmed and someone is trying to skewer you, getting out of the way is a very good idea. Not easy, but when it’s the only thing you can do to defend yourself, it’s definitely better than doing nothing.
Yeah, my ‘real’ (civilian) martial arts training has been almost entirely unarmed, so body movement was always more my first instinct. My weapon training was much more limited - mostly ‘display’ stuff rather than anything to do with real fighting. The few times I tried proper swordwork I generally wound up trying to pre-emptively ‘parry’, which opponents quickly learned to ignore as just a distraction.
funnily enough, I did quite like wrapping a cloak around my left arm as something to trap with - nice to have confirmation I was doing something right, lol.
One important note is that most manuals of armed combat rank untrained and unbloodied enemies as being quite dangerous.
The Paradoxes of Defense goes into thus at length.
In short, untrained combatants tend to take suicidal actions. Actions any combatant with basic training or even a good amount of experience would never take. This leads to some fighting systems becoming less useless against people who aren’t also trained.
Fiore did a good job patching this in his Urban manual for bodyguards.
On a broader measure, the training one receives for field combat is significantly different from the training one receives for dueling. Even if the weapons in use are the same, the armour (if any) is often significantly different, and many dueling style grew out of unarmored defense concerns. Civil defense concerns. While the right to bear varying degrees of small or personal armaments is well documented across many cultures in history, the privilege of wearing armour was extremely restricted. In short, unless meeting on the battlefield, the chances of foes being armoured, other than textiles, was fairly low and the training systems definitely reflected this.
Wheeling this all around, rolls and pirouettes and tumbling are generally useless on the offense. Except against untrained foes. Which will constitute the vast majority of people out there. A well trained Duelist or Soldier will put you in the ground with a quickness. A moderately or even basically trained combatant with any degree of composure and resolve will use the opportunity to control the distance of the engagement. On the defense and used as a means to occlude movement or gain distance for fleeing they are marginally better. But only marginally. There are a few extreme corner cases exceptions.
But that’s going deep into realism.
This is a game where we can psionically construct a fully dried and mortared wall of steel, masonry, and wood in less than five seconds and a magic hammer.
Also, it’s based of Howard’s works, and Howard had something of a disdain for fancy dueling techniques. We see that more in Solomon Kane, but it holds across his works.
While this one holds the Souls-like combat of roll to win in utter contempt and finds it one of the stupidest, most absurd conceits of that genre… It’s become very popular, and in an era where dive for cover is the only valid defense against real attacks, is as understandable as it is unfortunate.
You’re absolutely right. I’ve seen some local HEMA groups have duels for show, with all the padding etc. to make it safe to the duelists, and the maneuvers they perform show total lack of self-preservation. In most exchanges, both participants would’ve died or crippled if they had been fighting for real.
And then there are HEMA groups who are the opposite. They, too, advocate safety first, but instead of just wearing padding for safety during training, they also train how to defend themselves. As in, use a bloody shield if you have one.
A shield, a cloak wrapped around the arm, a second weapon, an improvised second weapon, ect…
Some duels stipulated specific gear to be used and worn (or not worn, much European dueling was done stripped of all clothing above the waist. On the other hand, self defense tends to be anything goes, which is why we have a manual of arms detailing how to use a sickle as a weapon against a sword.
This one has…
Mixed feelings regarding “HEMA” clubs that are really just boffer play or effectively the SCA part two electric boogaloo. There’s nothing wrong with people bapping each other with pool noodles… It just exceeds what this one considers a Martial Art. Of course, this one also doesn’t consider iaijutsu with antenna to be a Martial Art, which is why sport fencing is a game but not a combat system.
It’s very different from actual fighting.
Yeah. There are “HEMA” clubs who just play with swords with no actual “MA” in their operation; and then there are clubs that take things seriously. The Sword School in Finland (which now has branches all over the world) was run by the Guy Windsor. Everything I know about the rapier and longsword are thanks to him (even though he appears to perhaps show a bit too much favoritism towards Fiore dei Liberi over other contemporaries).
As Windsor is known to have said. If it doesn’t involve kicking in the nuts, it’s not a proper martial art.
To be entirely fair, Fiore left us better and more useful documentation than most contemporaries.
Silver was a jingoist who could barely go three pages without expressing his estimation of the moral inferiority of the Rapier.
Lichtenauer, whom I greatly enjoy, was basically teaching how to show boat as much as fight.
Then we run into the preponderance of manuals that are basically sequels or designed to supplement techniques that one would only learn in person to protect the “secrets of the school”.
The whole situation around these maestros is often hilarious, from an external point of view detached by some centuries. It causes this one to wonder how future historians will chuckle or roll their eyes at our own follies and foibles.
yeah its pretty and looks cool for a shortsword type of weapon, most of them are ugly af.
I only feel this zingaran (and the poitain dlc) are way ahead of time from the hyborian age aesthetic.
I do enjoy the look of this weapon and have been using it on a new character. What I don’t like is the length, but being a Shortsword it has to be shorter. Rapiers in the Hyborian Age were a bit OP (as well realistically they would be) but we have game balance to consider (not to mention avoiding P2W).
The Hyborian Age was not a homogenous one-culture world. Just like in the real world, there are civilizations with different levels of technological advancement. In our world, we’ve seen cultures armed with stone spears fighting cultures with full plate armor and firearms. Even today, when wars are fought in the cyber realm as well as in the kinetic battlefields, there are tribes who have never bothered with nonsense such as metalworking or literacy.
True - but most such tribes are fairly isolated, whereas the main hyborian cultures are all fully aware of each other, trading and warring back and forth (much like Europe throughout history). Zingarans and Poitainians being at a medieval level, while Nordheimers are still in furs and loincloths seems a little more jarring. (And then there’s the Yamatai gear - what 16th, 17th century? If not later. But at least there is some cultural isolation there.)
In the end, I don’t really care - it doesn’t bother me much - but I’d say I agree with Cyrus that those particular sets (and the Barachan, which I quite like) do feel a bit ahead of their time to me. But then, it’s often hard to place Conan’s armour into a ‘timeframe’, even just from the REH stories, let alone the wider canon, so it’s not like it’s a big ‘problem’ that this game has suddenly introduced. (D&D on the other hand, now there’s a game that’ll drive historians of weapons and armour to madness, lol.)
I don’t exactly see any issue with the different cultures having different weapons.
For example the Stygians use Khopeshes. An ancient Egyptian weapon. The Egyptians likely made these out of copper or bronze. The Stygians are using steel as steel is quite common in the Hyborian age. Steel is of different qualities of course. We’ve seen references to Cimmerians having decent steel and the Stygians having inferior. But at the end of the day, its still steel that is being used.
A steel rapier facing a steel khopesh would be an interesting fight and I would probably put my wagers on the rapier. But that’s for a duel. How well do rapiers do in formation combat? How well do they do against other weapons such as spears or shields?
Those are rhetorical questions because just the presence of rapiers doesn’t make other weapons obsolete. Its a highly advanced weapon design made by a culture here (Zingaran) that focuses heavily on sword play.
As for Nordenheimers wearing furs. Well they’re obviously modeled after the Norse who would use furs to keep warm in some pretty harsh winters. But the Norse would dress very much like their southern European counterparts when it was warm enough. I assume the Vanir and Aesir do the same. But for a game its not exciting to go to New Asgarath and see a bunch of people dressed like Bossonians, Potains, or Zingarans.
So just because they are in furs doesn’t mean they don’t have the technology to keep up with their southern neighbors.
The only cultures that don’t really fit this are obviously the Picts and the Darfari. Which given the trouble their real life inspirations gave even at the time of their creation (1930s) to 20th century societies, its not too far fetched to suggest that their primitive means could still be a threat to those around them. Before the advent of explosive based weapons (aka firearms), numbers do matter. And a population that breeds like rabbits has a distinct advantage over those that don’t.
Agility with short sword moves and damage potential. Now the interesting thing is that it’s top tier isn’t star metal but hardened steel so you get it 5 levels earlier.
I was asking @erjoh exactly the same thing.
@wolffspider thanks for asking, you’re in my mind brother 
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Erjoh…
Erjoh…
Crafted agility sword?
Ringing any bell?
Of course they didn’t give it to you as you asked, but in a way they did.
Yet i still wish a crafted agility sword with sword animation. On exile lands there’s none to replace tulwar.
yeah, it just feels odd
Perhaps the cold climate of Nordheim doesn’t encourage wearing full plate. Maybe they don’t have such abundant deposits of iron that they can afford to mass produce metal armor - and their tribal society may not support mass production at all. Poitain and Zingara are wealthy nations/provinces, with lots of international trade, whereas Nordheim is kinda stuck in the north. Aquilonia acts as a barrier between Nordheim and the rest of the world.
The reason ancient Rome was able to field legions of heavy infantry was because the central government was able to provide the means for mass production (even though legionaries had to pay for their equipment). Most of Europe at the time didn’t have such central government.
Yamatai is non-canonical anyway, so I don’t care what they look like.
Exactly. The Spanish Conquistadors had firearms and cannon, whereas the native Mexicans and Peruvians had the numbers. Technology didn’t win those conquests.
The Pictish Wilderness kinda resembles Mexico, in that it’s difficult terrain where mass heavy cavalry is useless, artillery is difficult to transport, missile weapon lines of effect are limited and infantry formations impossible to maintain. Whatever open ground there is can be controlled by the defending army because they know the land. What we see in Beyond the Black River, the Aquilonian efforts to expand towards the Wilderness wasn’t even a war for conquest, it was a half-hearted attempt to colonize hostile lands.
The Darfari are at least somewhat isolated from “civilized” nations, and their culture may discourage adapting foreign inventions. Just like the Zulu in the late 19th century generally disrespected the firearm as a coward’s weapon. Also, “civilized” nations may not be interested in interacting with cannibals in a productive way.
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