The probem I have with the foam and the thrusting tip is that people call them light.
It's covered for your
safety. Calling it light is taking
deliberate advantage of an opponent's
safety-consciousness.
Any behavior that takes deliberate advantage of an opponent’s chivalry or safety-consciousness, or that takes deliberate unfair advantage of an opponent, is prohibited.
By the rules calling
any padded weapon (tip or sides)
light is illegal
Behavior on the Field but it's followed all the time.
What I've seen on the Archive follows a pattern:
1. "I don't allow my squires to use thrusting tips, they don't work."
2. "If we don't pad the weapons or use thrusting tips, there will be death and mayhem and big people bleeding internally and spears stuck clean through dukes and kings."
There is a VERY easy way to make sure the thrusting tip stay on the weapons for safety.
ANY padded weapon CANNOT be called LIGHT and any touch is good. Otherwise take OFF the padding and then see what happens. People scream and run.
Those with padded weapons would tone down their shots because the extra effort isn't necessary, and the shots would land lighter. Or we can go to solid rattan weapons and throw lighter shots that hit reasonably hard because we don't have the safety foam.
The situation with just going to the "Scottish Tips" on spears rather than straight PVC pipe ends with some duct tape for splinters shows that people are taking deliberate advantage of safety regulations to call something "light" due to the padding when they would yell "MEDIC!!" if we removed the pad and did the same shot...and drag you to Marshal's court for your lack of chivalry and safety.
It's sleazy IMO. And I'll say it again, it's
gamesmanship. When you make something
safe but still demand to be hit with a clack it's odd.
People can hit me with rattan swords willy-nilly but I've had to hit people hard enough to take them off their feet to accept a shot with my padded pollaxe. It's not them, it's the weapon. When I've added clackers I've had to put much less effort into the shot to get acceptance. If we took the foam away entirely it would act like a pollaxe, the feared weapon of the Middle Ages.
That was the problem I had on the other thread discussing the "Scottish Tips".
I've wanted to go to a solid rattan pollaxe for awhile and see what the change is in acceptance levels. We have solid swords, why not solid pollaxes?
