Old Man

No snow here. Of any color.

The hell are they dueling with? Katanas?

Here in America we use fences and trenches to contain rhinos, not human guards. Must be a hell of a guard if he can hold back a flock of rhinos.

But what kind of armor? At Crecy the French wore mail with some plate. The full plate worn at Agincourt was effective against arrows but lethal in mud.

No, it was me. You're welcome.

Why are pigeons always missing toes?! What happens to the toes?!

Compared to other melee weapon types, yes. Most melee weapons can only effectively be used to swing or thrust but not both. Conversely swords can be used to stab and cut. Many swords have a preferred mode of use but at Hero levels of granularity it usually doesn't matter. Note that the 4th ed weapon chart was the one most clearly built from HKAs and advantages. The resulting chart was boring, but at least it was balanced. Charts in subsequent editions have been more...arbitrary.

Yeah, but are they as fun?

Or that a group of crows is called a "murder"? Or a group of ferrets, a "business"? (Shouldn't that last one be changed to "law firm"?)

Back when we invented spears (okay, sharp sticks) the primary use was as a throwing weapon. That puts an upper limit of about 2m on any spear that is intended to be used one-handed with a shield, and even then it'd be awfully unwieldy to use in non-massed combat. If you want a pike or spear that is too long to be used one-handed, then you quickly find that it might as well be extremely long, because then (again when used en masse) you don't need a shield--your opponent is held at bay by the forest of pikes. Regarding the OP, I would actually say that there are few, if any, real world examples of actual two-handed spears being employed with shields. For a while there was a nice rock-paper-scissors thing going with cavalry-pikemen-archers in Europe. A gross oversimplification but there is some truth to it.

Or would you rather be eaten in person?

You haven't met the little girl yet.

I wouldn't hold the futurist blind spots against Miller. When the game was written there was no internet and no Moore's Law. Computation is the biggest blind spot in SF in general, and that's key to all kinds of critical tech like surveillance, AIs, cybernetics, genetic engineering, autonomous vehicles, and weapons that don't miss.

Never did understand why Americans have such a hangup with nudity. Especially when violence is a-ok.

Don't those give the richest flavor?

Jackie Chan is probably the ultimate source for such tricks. Using your opponent as a shield. Using your opponent as a weapon. Dodging an opponent's attack such that it hits another opponent. Using your opponent's weapon (while he is still holding it) against another opponent. Entangling an opponent in his own clothes. Using terrain or stationary objects as a shield. Flipping off walls/over opponents to enable an attack from behind. Using your opponent as a ladder.

Chess boxing then.

Got the same as Cancer and Pariah. How boring.

Ten years since Dimebag Darrell was gunned down.

The Navy's pretty far along on that front. I read this week that they're investing in further development of capacitor and rapid-discharge battery tech specifically in anticipation of those weapon systems. One laser is already operationally deployed on a ship in the Gulf. Meanwhile, reactor-equipped ships rarely use all the power available to them from those reactors, so adding this fuel distillation capability would hardly affect combat operations--just the space and weight for the gear, and for the fuel produced.

The Running Man of La Mancha Citizen Solomon Kane Conan the Terminator Sling Blade Runner 28 Days a Slave

I would have paid money to see the look on the guy's face when he realized he had the wrong lunchbox.

This is the point when the porn music should start.

There's always that one parent.

Hmm, kickstarter. Maybe we could crowdfund a new version of Fantasy Hero.