Greatsword

Game Stats

• Range: melee
• Base damage: 1d12 (slashing/impaling)
• Secondary: none

• Concealable:  no

• Civilian Carry:  no

Description

The greatsword is the largest sword in the Circle, a monstrous two-handed weapon as tall as a man. It is almost unknown outside of the Harkanian League, and is a rare weapon even there.  Despite its appearance as an oversized longsword, the Harkanian greatsword appears to predate the Sevillan occupation, suggesting that it was independently developed.

Use and Characteristics 

The greatsword is characterized by its great blade length.  While small "greatswords" are sometimes forged with blades as short as 40 inches, a true greatsword has a blade length of 50 to 60 inches, with a hilt anywhere from 18 to 24 inches long.  The sword thus literally stands the height of a man.

Though many greatswords actually have fairly narrow blades, the sheer size of the weapon makes them quite heavy.  Even a light greatsword typically weighs over four pounds, and some particularly heavy examples weigh as much as seven pounds - a truly massive weight for a sword.

Despite their monstrous size, a greatsword is still a sword rather than a polearm made of steel.  Forging a functional greatsword thus requires great skill, as the blade must be able both to cut and to thrust; it must be stiff enough for thrusting with such a large weapon yet flexible enough to parry.

Greatswords lack the agility and frightening speed of a longsword, but they are exceptionally well-balanced and far from ponderous.  A greatsword's manner of use shares a number of similarities with armored longsword techniques, such as the use of "half-swording" to shorten the weapon's effective length at close quarters and striking with the pommel and cross-guards.  In fact, half-swording is so critical to a greatsword's use that almost all greatswords have long ricassos protected by "parrying lugs," which serve as a sort of second cross-guard to protect the hand gripping the blade.

Combined with their enormous reach - longer even than that of the longest rapiers - a greatsword can provide an effective defense even to an unarmored man against multiple opponents.  In fact, their principal use in battle is by bodyguards or the honor guard of a standard, when a small number of men might need to be able to threaten a large number of attackers.

Advantages

A greatsword's principal advantage is its reach, which is greater than that of any melee weapon other than a polearm (and greater even than some polearms).  Its great reach both in thrusting and cutting means a greatswordsman can threaten many attackers at once.  At the same time, half-swording techniques prevent a greatswordsman from being overwhelmed at close ranges.

Disadvantages

Though a greatsword is far from ponderous, it is also far from fast.  A bold opponent can overwhelm a greatswordsman through swift and repeated attacks, though he places himself in the weapon's killing zone to do so.  Another disadvantage of the greatsword is that it requires a good deal of space to wield for some of its techniques, limiting the density of this weapon on the battlefield.  A greatsword is capable of handling multiple opponents, but the nature of the weapon almost guarantees that a greatswordsman will be outnumbered.

Variants

Like most blades in Harkania, arming swords are produced in high-quality steel (referred to as "steel" colloquially) and low-quality steel (referred to as "iron" colloquially).  Greatswords are rarely produced with crystal edges, though this may be simply because the weapon itself is quite rare.  A few Dolotai steel blades in Harkania are greatswords, including Barak'ul.

Greatswords are not cast from bronze.  Bronze is too heavy to make such a weapon practical, and too inflexible for the blade to withstand the force of more than a handful of strikes.

Party Associations

Kelein Follendorfer wields a Dolotai steel greatsword: Barak-ul, legendary sword of St. Cuthbert.

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