As far as the original topic, one of the best sources you can find to look into weapon damage, speed, and other gameplay factors is in Dungeons and Dragons. If anything, you''ll have a good place to start from there.

Like people have been saying in this thread, a weapon is only as powerful as it''s user. I think it was Fallout that had a system like this. The more you used it the more accurate you were with the weapon, and the more damage you could do. I might be thinking of Final Fantasy II(j). Could be both games though.

Personally, I''d watch with overcomplicating your systems in the game. As cool as it would seem to the hardcore gamer and even yourself, it really alienates people, maybe even makes your game tedious.

Technogoth, as far as the sword being too heavy, remember, in those days, people did more physical work all their lives. Something like a sword wouldn''t be that difficult. Just take a look at how much a soldier packs around these days. I agree that lance, spear, and missle weapons were in greater use during any war though. From what I can remember, it was archers to open filre, a charge with lances, and then the battle was in close quarters, most troops had short swords to back them up. The sword seems more commonplace when the numbers are not great, or when a lance/spear is too big (such as defending a castle). Really, most movies set in that era would have a good representation, as most storytellers like an accurate depiction.

Argh! I had a big post all set up for this topic last night and lost it because my computer decided to lock up.

Anyways, I think the most commonly used weapons were probably improvised jobs. People who aren''t expecting a fight will take whatever they can get. Plenty of armies used commoner troops / militia, who would be using normal tools and farming implements as weapons.

Weapons for professional troops varied by their role. All purpose troop seemed to follow either the "take them down as fast as possible" or the "wait for an opening" approach. The former would go for the heaviest weapon possible. The idea is if you can take the guy down fast enough, you don''t don''t have to worry about defense. In fact, Iajitsu has this as it''s central premise. The idea is to cut your opponent down in the first stroke (granted this is more speed than power, but the approach is similiar). The problem with this was it your first attack failed, you were left open to your foe''s counterattack.
Because of this risk, many soldiers prefered the later method. By selecting weapons with quicker recovery times, the fighter is less exposed and can defend themselves more readily. This generally means have a lighter weapon relative to the character''s strength. However, the mass could get higher if the weapon''s center of balance was closer to the weilder''s grip. End-balanced weapons were generally harder to control and took longer to pull back, despite their extra power. Thus, cautious warriors would prefer weapons with a more even distibution of mass.
For overall power, this meant using a form of club, since the swinging motion benefits from lever action and can take advantage of gravity. From there the club could be modified for extra penetration, either by adding spikes of by narrowing the edge. The sword is basically a club with a sharp edge. While not as penetrating as the spikes, the blade is thicker on average, and thus less likely to break. Because the blade covers the majority of the weapon, more of the length can be used as a striking surface. Not that swords didn''t become feasible until metal working, and didn''t really come into their own until the iron ages.
Balanced, thrusting weapons came down to the spear. Unlike with swung weapons, thrusting weapons had comparatively few heads. The advatages here were in terms of penetration and reach. A solid spear strick could break through most armors, usually before an opponent could close. Unfortunately, the longer the spear, the slower it became and the easier it was to block, at least on a one on one basis.
Looking at this, it''s no wonder swords became popular dueling weapons. They were well balanced, fairly sturdy, and enlikely to catch in the opponent, while still providing a good amount of leathality.

That being said, I am getting a little tired of seeing everyone use a sword. Granted, that may be because I play a fair share of crpgs and it seems like it''s always the primary weapon, at least for the main character. One of the things I liked about Castlevania was the use of a whip as the primary weapon.

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The idea is if you can take the guy down fast enough, you don''t don''t have to worry about defense. In fact, Iajitsu has this as it''s central premise. The idea is to cut your opponent down in the first stroke (granted this is more speed than power, but the approach is similiar). The problem with this was it your first attack failed, you were left open to your foe''s counterattack.

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Not quite. Iaijutsu was first started as an art in which the attack was unsuspected, so the sword (of both opponents) were still sheathed. In fact, Iaijutsu had a rather bad reputation because it just didn''t seem honorable to cut one''s opponent down while his sword was still unsheathed. There were many cases of amoral samurai using iaijutsu to cut down unwary commoners or other samurai, and the term "crossroad cutting" came about.

But many budo-ryu taught iaijutsu in order to defend against it. The ability to sense that your opponent is about to attack is the other primary skill of iaijutsu, and hence why Iaijutsu survived as a martial art. It was the level of awareness that has made it popular even today, as it requires the utmost concentration as well as sensitivity to one''s surroundings (which paradoxically, these two things are generally mutually exclusive....try intensely concentrating on something while letting all of the outside information also be easily accessible without distracting you). Iaijutsu slowly developed more into an art (or do-form rather than jutsu-form) that stressed total absorption in the moment, and total awareness. Speed is the outward result, but the primary aim of iaijutsu (at least by the 17th century) wasn''t all-out speed and taking advantage of your opponent, but instead on the zen concept of being 100% absorbed in the moment. While iaijutsu techniques were fast and assumed the unwariness of the opponent, they were not inherently more "vulnerable" after the first or second strike than in any other style. All combatants are vulnerable right after the initiation of an attack, as they have already committed themselves to an action, and a good defender realizes this.

Moreover, at least historically, one didn''t learn just iaijutsu. It was simply a part of the more broad tachijutsu (tachi is synonymous with katana...the only real difference being in how one wore the sword....the katana tucked through the belt so that it was nearly parallel with the ground, and tachi being mounted more like a european sword would be with it pointing down to the ground).

The only way to really make this work would be to use realistic injury stats and have armor and damage be sort of an all-or-nothing deal. A great character might be able to avoid being slashed, but if you catch his flesh with your blade, he gets hurt just as surely as a newb.

If your weapon hits armor, then your weapon gets a little bit chewed up, and if it hits another weapon, they both get a little dinged. Sometimes they''ll crack or break, especially with katanas, and something like a sword would be useless broken.

You really can''t emulate melee combat with the control interface that an RPG has unless you innovate the entire thing. Go ahead and try, but don''t kill yourself if you have to have a few conventions, like HP or simple weapon strikes.