Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-203.14.52.144-20150518014116/@comment-27087951-20151101030034

Phantomlink959 wrote:
 * sigh

A slab sword is not a real type of sword, it is how i refer to ridiculously huge swords in fiction which would be useless in real life. While massive blades do exist, they were designed very specifically to still be usable. Or to be for show. Surana is right, there are many BFS that look like pulled straight out of TV, that are just as useless as you'd expect, but were not meant as weapons, but as ceremonial items for show. The swords big enough to be huge and yet not useless are not quite "slab swords".

Well.....that's what you would say at first. But....

Most daos were at least 5ft long and weighted 5lbs.

And let me mention the Nodachis, oversized katanas meant to be used against cavalry. Over 5ft long, longer than the average japanese is tall.

And there's also the more legendary Zanbato. Similar to the Nodachi, but with a ricasso 12-18 inches long, so it could be used as a short polearm. You know, like Zweihanders.

And the scottish two-handed claymore. 140cm lenght.

Actually, even the actual Zweihanders could count as Slab Swords beyond possibly the "useless" part. Up to 6ft long, and weight of up to 3Kg.

Actually, the only Real-Life BFS I've been able to find that was truly, 100% useless, were Buster Sword replicas. But of course, when you make something that weights over 20Kg, what do you expect? A man breaks their back just lifting that thing.