Sword fight? Fanning at each other, crossing and smacking swords.
Just watch Olympic fencing; you get a very fast exchange that you can’t follow, and then someone has a point. In a real sword fight, without armor, that’s about what would happen. OTOH, when everyone is wearing armor, it gets a lot messier.
And of course, the classic gunfight where nobody hits anything.
That is surprisingly common. Most people are really bad shots when they’re stressed out. It’s physiological; when your body dumps adrenaline into your bloodstream, you lose fine motor control. So unless you’ve trained extensively under stressful conditions, you’re gonna have a hard time doing shit.
Just watch Olympic fencing; you get a very fast exchange that you can’t follow, and then someone has a point. In a real sword fight, without armor, that’s about what would happen. OTOH, when everyone is wearing armor, it gets a lot messier.
That is surprisingly common. Most people are really bad shots when they’re stressed out. It’s physiological; when your body dumps adrenaline into your bloodstream, you lose fine motor control. So unless you’ve trained extensively under stressful conditions, you’re gonna have a hard time doing shit.
When I see armor fights I always think of how exhausting it would be very fast. I’d love to see exhausted people gasping for air. :P
Still, blunt weapons can still be 1-hit KOs or heavy hitters. But you don’t see that either.
I read an interesting article about historical armor fights. Basically some researchers got special forces members to wear replica historical armor and simulate battle as described in various surviving epics and identified the armor to be surprisingly effective