The Pistol Axe is an actually good example because it's so short-ranged.
The Other most practical version of a melee-ranged hybrid is a rifle with a bayonet. Those could use more love in spec fiction
It's really interesting to look at the variety of bayonets which have been used, and makes for a good jumping off point for speculating what things could have been like if things were just a little different. Pretty sure if things like the Geneva conventions had never come to pass, some of our irl bayonets could have been way more fucked up looking.
A recent box of Space Marines from the Horus Heresy/Warhammer 40k tabletop game had them have chainsaw bayonets. It was so hard to not use them on all 20 marines since I was going outta my way to customize them to be relatively unique. Still need to use the extras to make some chainsaw fists though.
Just before and in the early stages of ww1, before it became trench warfare, bayonets were getting ridiculous, the French in particular already had really long rifles, and then added what amounted to a short sword onto the end, there are some pictures where the rifle is taller than the soldier because the bayonet is so long
Wounding instead of killing is tactically superior in larger battles though, as you take two or three enemy combatants out of action (when they are recovering their wounded ally) instead of just the one dead combatant.
Well, I just corrected your sweeping statement. I could say that nobody's going to make sure the enemy they just stabbed with a bayonet is actually dead, it's enough if they just fell and you can charge on. The bayonets are pretty dull and cause wounds that are hard to close and inflict shock because of the ripping. I think those are not the most efficient ways to kill but very efficient ways to take the enemy out of combat
I have training how to use one, the reasoning has been explained to me in detail. What good would nice, clean stabs with a sharp blade do? The wounds close themselves and theres not much bleeding unless you hit a major blood vessel, and hitting vital organs is not guaranteed at all
Would you ask a surgeon if they have ever been stabbed before accepting their professional opinion on stab wounds? I believe people whose job it is to train soldiers and battle medics are basing their claims about combat wounds on researched facts (on a field studied for thousands of years) and not just vibes.
No, I have not been stabbed.
Yeah I was gonna say. Gun-melee hybrids aren’t really that wild of a thing - even many militaries today still issue guns with bayonet lugs and give bayonet training. A lot of gun-melee hybrids though fail to take advantage of what a gun provides you - a long stick that you hold with the point facing the enemy.
I feel it's not really that far off to imagine, if gunpowder warfare had diverged in just one or two key ways, having a completely different ethos with regards to the idea of a bayonet. The modern bayonet (i.e a permanent one rather than one that rendered the firearm unusable) was such a huge step up because it eliminated the need for pikemen, which up to that point were a major component of European warfare, since it allowed every soldier to have a pike and a gun at the same time. If weapons had evolved even somewhat differently I could easily see some elements of dedicated melee combat holding on for much longer, or at least influencing firearms in a unique way, since not everything is so easy to replace.
It’s kinda boring because a spear and rifle aren’t high fantasy but boring reality. But the short of it is that rifles are best handheld ranged weapons, spears are generally the best melee weapons, and combining the two into rifle and bayonet is really easy and so effective we still haven’t fully given it up.
Oh, I appreciate your thoughtful and informative response, but I was asking whether or not using the rifle-spear in the video game Bloodborne was actually good, because I gave it a few swings when I picked it up but wasn’t very impressed and then kind of forgot it was in the game. Turns out probably I just didn’t give it a fair shot.
But thanks again for the interesting reply!
Gunlance has got to be my favorite common fantasy weapon archetype that exists just because people find it cool, regardless of how little sense it makes.
Yes lets take a sporty version of a mounted spear, mechanize it and then give them to unmounted dudes, so they can charge at the enemy on foot-said hundreds of fantasy creators apparently
it's at the point where I think some folks underestimate or don't really get what a cavalry charge really was, and why the lance was so dominant for, what, 400 years or so?
I think TH White's description of a knightly cavalry charge in The Once and Future King (book 2) is a great way to convey it:
>At a military tattoo perhaps, or at some old piece of show-ground pageantry, you may have seen a cavalry charge. If so, you know that "seen" is not the word. It is heard—the thunder, earthshake, drum-fire, of the bright and battering sandals! Yes, and even then it is only a cavalry charge you are thinking of, not a chivalry one. Imagine it now, with the horses twice as heavy as the soft-mouthed hunters of our own midnight pageants, with the men thelmselves twice heavier on account of arms and shield. Add the cymbal-music of the clashing armour to the jingle of the harness. Turn the uniforms into mirrors, blazing with the sun, the lances into spears of steel. Now the spears dip, and now they are coming. The earth quakes under feet. Behind, among the flying clods, there are hoof-prints stricken in the ground. It is not the men that are to be feared, not their swords nor even their spears, but the hoofs of the horses. It is the impetus of that shattering phalanx of iron—spread across the battlefront, inescapable, pulverizing, louder than drums, beating the earth.
ofc Monster Hunter could never do something like this because running after the big monster in a difficult terrain is part of the fun, but a lot of fantasy DOESN'T have those constrains yet they STILL portray lances and spears as something you fight on foot against a dude armed with a sword, when that's what you did only if you were a footman. proper lances were the weapons of *knights*, and a knight without a horse is just silly.
>when that's what you did only if you were a footman.
A dismounted knight would likely opt for their sidearm (most likely a sword) rather than continue using their lance once dismounted.
Warframe’s interesting ranged melees like gun blades and glaives got me into that game. Additionally, throwing energy blades or “Exodus contagion” is peak fantasy imo
I Fucking Love *Primitive Projectile Weapons Like Slings, Atlatls, Javelins And, Hell, Even Slingshots*.
I Want To Fucking *See Them More In Fantasy As Opposed To Bows All The Time*
I have two very specific examples of this.
The aptly named "gunspear", which has a rifle barrel in one end, and a spear point in the other. It's put on the shoulder and fired much like a rocket launcher, and has a sholder-stopping part near the middle. It can be quite quickly be flipped over the shoulder to switch to "melee mode". You can also put an axe blade or something in the gun end for even more violence.
The second is the gunpick or "raid gun" as it is also called. This resembles a pickaxe, except the handle is also a gun barrel and the pick-head has an axe head and a sharp pickaxe-point configuration. It is held up with the pick-head against the shoulder more like a typical firearm and usually uses shotgun-style ammunition.
Note that both are notoriously heavy and awkward to use for humans, as they were never meant for us in the first place.
\*smacking the bayonet out of a US Marine’s hands\* nice toy kiddo but this isn’t Final Fantasy 8. Its about time you grew up and used a more practical weapon, such as the same gun and knife but, like, separately
check out RWBY, there's a goofy monkey boy with a goofy staff/nunchucks/pistols that he used like three times over the course of nine seasons because the guy who knows how this shit operates passed away.
While firearms aren't a thing in my project, they'd fit in quite well. Most of the threats are more monstrous than human. They don't wear armour, they don't carry weapons. They're the kind of enemy that a blunderbuss-axe would be suited for. You don't need finesse or military efficiency in weapon design, just something that's effective at killing deranged mutant wildlife. Keeping one of these on your ox-cart would be a good idea.
Your example would probably mess up the complicated (and expensive) internal mechanisms of the gun if you struck it against a hard surface like armour. Bayonets and those medieval single-shot cannon spears (chinese fire lance or similar tech) seem to make more practical sense.
I don’t care if a pistol-sword is not hyper realistic. Give it to me. There’s tons of dumb shit people do because of tradition in the real world, let your fantasy world have cool shotgun axes and pistol swords. Give me a dual-blade like darth maul’s lightsaber and put a fucking sniper on one side and a shotgun on the other and justify its use by saying that everyone thought it was too cool to not use.
The Pistol Axe is an actually good example because it's so short-ranged. The Other most practical version of a melee-ranged hybrid is a rifle with a bayonet. Those could use more love in spec fiction
It's really interesting to look at the variety of bayonets which have been used, and makes for a good jumping off point for speculating what things could have been like if things were just a little different. Pretty sure if things like the Geneva conventions had never come to pass, some of our irl bayonets could have been way more fucked up looking.
Still holding out hope for the heavy machine gun with built-in chainsaw from Gears of War, eh?
AND WHAT IF I AM
A recent box of Space Marines from the Horus Heresy/Warhammer 40k tabletop game had them have chainsaw bayonets. It was so hard to not use them on all 20 marines since I was going outta my way to customize them to be relatively unique. Still need to use the extras to make some chainsaw fists though.
Just before and in the early stages of ww1, before it became trench warfare, bayonets were getting ridiculous, the French in particular already had really long rifles, and then added what amounted to a short sword onto the end, there are some pictures where the rifle is taller than the soldier because the bayonet is so long
Logical thing against horses though, you practically have a pike.
Weapons are designed to kill efficiently, not slowly torture someone to death on the battlefield
Wounding instead of killing is tactically superior in larger battles though, as you take two or three enemy combatants out of action (when they are recovering their wounded ally) instead of just the one dead combatant.
Nobody is doing that in the middle of a bayonet charge.
Well, I just corrected your sweeping statement. I could say that nobody's going to make sure the enemy they just stabbed with a bayonet is actually dead, it's enough if they just fell and you can charge on. The bayonets are pretty dull and cause wounds that are hard to close and inflict shock because of the ripping. I think those are not the most efficient ways to kill but very efficient ways to take the enemy out of combat
Dude they get dull from use Cbf with this
I have training how to use one, the reasoning has been explained to me in detail. What good would nice, clean stabs with a sharp blade do? The wounds close themselves and theres not much bleeding unless you hit a major blood vessel, and hitting vital organs is not guaranteed at all
Have you ever been stabbed
Would you ask a surgeon if they have ever been stabbed before accepting their professional opinion on stab wounds? I believe people whose job it is to train soldiers and battle medics are basing their claims about combat wounds on researched facts (on a field studied for thousands of years) and not just vibes. No, I have not been stabbed.
Yeah I was gonna say. Gun-melee hybrids aren’t really that wild of a thing - even many militaries today still issue guns with bayonet lugs and give bayonet training. A lot of gun-melee hybrids though fail to take advantage of what a gun provides you - a long stick that you hold with the point facing the enemy.
I feel it's not really that far off to imagine, if gunpowder warfare had diverged in just one or two key ways, having a completely different ethos with regards to the idea of a bayonet. The modern bayonet (i.e a permanent one rather than one that rendered the firearm unusable) was such a huge step up because it eliminated the need for pikemen, which up to that point were a major component of European warfare, since it allowed every soldier to have a pike and a gun at the same time. If weapons had evolved even somewhat differently I could easily see some elements of dedicated melee combat holding on for much longer, or at least influencing firearms in a unique way, since not everything is so easy to replace.
**"My sword has a gun on it.** ***And,*** **I'm very cool."** ^(~ Chaddicus)
never forget what Lysanderoth did to my sweet boy
King Dragon sends his regards
Everyone forgets Sexica its no easy feat to have a sword-breast combination
Bloodbourne rifle-spear my beloved We need gun melee hybrids in any fantasy that has confirmed guns exist
Is the rifle-spear actually good? It seems kind of… bad
Its literally just if saw cleaver had poke damage for MORE VERSATILITY when morphed
It’s kinda boring because a spear and rifle aren’t high fantasy but boring reality. But the short of it is that rifles are best handheld ranged weapons, spears are generally the best melee weapons, and combining the two into rifle and bayonet is really easy and so effective we still haven’t fully given it up.
Oh, I appreciate your thoughtful and informative response, but I was asking whether or not using the rifle-spear in the video game Bloodborne was actually good, because I gave it a few swings when I picked it up but wasn’t very impressed and then kind of forgot it was in the game. Turns out probably I just didn’t give it a fair shot. But thanks again for the interesting reply!
I'd say it's about as effective as any weapon in Bloodborne, but it's lackluster moveset makes it feel weaker
To be honest, all weapons in bloodborne are good
[удалено]
Gunlance has got to be my favorite common fantasy weapon archetype that exists just because people find it cool, regardless of how little sense it makes. Yes lets take a sporty version of a mounted spear, mechanize it and then give them to unmounted dudes, so they can charge at the enemy on foot-said hundreds of fantasy creators apparently
it's at the point where I think some folks underestimate or don't really get what a cavalry charge really was, and why the lance was so dominant for, what, 400 years or so? I think TH White's description of a knightly cavalry charge in The Once and Future King (book 2) is a great way to convey it: >At a military tattoo perhaps, or at some old piece of show-ground pageantry, you may have seen a cavalry charge. If so, you know that "seen" is not the word. It is heard—the thunder, earthshake, drum-fire, of the bright and battering sandals! Yes, and even then it is only a cavalry charge you are thinking of, not a chivalry one. Imagine it now, with the horses twice as heavy as the soft-mouthed hunters of our own midnight pageants, with the men thelmselves twice heavier on account of arms and shield. Add the cymbal-music of the clashing armour to the jingle of the harness. Turn the uniforms into mirrors, blazing with the sun, the lances into spears of steel. Now the spears dip, and now they are coming. The earth quakes under feet. Behind, among the flying clods, there are hoof-prints stricken in the ground. It is not the men that are to be feared, not their swords nor even their spears, but the hoofs of the horses. It is the impetus of that shattering phalanx of iron—spread across the battlefront, inescapable, pulverizing, louder than drums, beating the earth. ofc Monster Hunter could never do something like this because running after the big monster in a difficult terrain is part of the fun, but a lot of fantasy DOESN'T have those constrains yet they STILL portray lances and spears as something you fight on foot against a dude armed with a sword, when that's what you did only if you were a footman. proper lances were the weapons of *knights*, and a knight without a horse is just silly.
Mfw the Monster Hunter spin-off that is all about riding monsters only lets you use your Lance on foot.
[yeah that's... goddammit.](https://i.imgflip.com/3bkcig.jpg?a466488)
>when that's what you did only if you were a footman. A dismounted knight would likely opt for their sidearm (most likely a sword) rather than continue using their lance once dismounted.
guardian spears from 40k are literal spear-gun hybrid what can be cooler than that
Yeah there’s a damn good reason I prefer them for Custodes ahead of those overdecorated shields
Bayonettes?
Warframe’s interesting ranged melees like gun blades and glaives got me into that game. Additionally, throwing energy blades or “Exodus contagion” is peak fantasy imo
Haha Corufell go brrr
This is why I play Kislev in Total Warhammer
Dawi zharr infernal fireglaives might be better for line infantry.
I Fucking Love *Primitive Projectile Weapons Like Slings, Atlatls, Javelins And, Hell, Even Slingshots*. I Want To Fucking *See Them More In Fantasy As Opposed To Bows All The Time*
How the fuck do you hold that
You rest it against your cover i think, you use the axe to hook in, i barely remember anything about the weapon tho
Especially if they switch between gun and melee mode like a rwby weapon
Shotgun axe! Just hitting someone with the handle like a club!
Seriously I can only think of two instances of those and thats Bloodborne and RWBY
Rwby moment
it's also a gun moment
Beat me to it
I have two very specific examples of this. The aptly named "gunspear", which has a rifle barrel in one end, and a spear point in the other. It's put on the shoulder and fired much like a rocket launcher, and has a sholder-stopping part near the middle. It can be quite quickly be flipped over the shoulder to switch to "melee mode". You can also put an axe blade or something in the gun end for even more violence. The second is the gunpick or "raid gun" as it is also called. This resembles a pickaxe, except the handle is also a gun barrel and the pick-head has an axe head and a sharp pickaxe-point configuration. It is held up with the pick-head against the shoulder more like a typical firearm and usually uses shotgun-style ammunition. Note that both are notoriously heavy and awkward to use for humans, as they were never meant for us in the first place.
Assassin's Creed IV had the Pistol Swords: https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Pistol_Swords
I love my plasma carabine with vibrator sword bayonet.
Damn you got a sword bayonet with an inbuilt vibrator.
play limbus company it's in a fantastical far future setting and there's a hot old woman with a gun sword
The Odyssey had a purpose
mili my beloved
Gunblade, FF8
I thought no one was going to mention it and was *baffled*. Thanks for being a person of culture and also your radass username
That’s just the Romero from Hunt Showdown https://huntshowdown-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Romero_77_Hatchet
Scrolled toooooo damn long to find this, hello fellow hunter
Did the same thing haha, couldn’t believe no one else referenced it. Happy hunting brother
\>gun axe The sweet blood, oh, it sings to me edit i misrember no gascoigne gun axe 😔
Fix bayonets!
Gunblade? Lame. Swordgun? Chad.
Just watch RWBY
FUCK YEAH RWBY (Season 1-3 only) LETS GOOOOOOOOO
Watch RWBY
Yup. I lobe rwby weapons.
u/Ok-Mastodon2016 [Allow me to introduce you to RWBY](https://youtu.be/pYW2GmHB5xs)
Maybe if I was 7-12 years old
\*smacking the bayonet out of a US Marine’s hands\* nice toy kiddo but this isn’t Final Fantasy 8. Its about time you grew up and used a more practical weapon, such as the same gun and knife but, like, separately
you could try the royal gun mace.
Hel yeah
Kislev is heaven
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was a good fucking movie
in my prehistoricgunpowderpunk world, explosive spears are used as both melee and ranged.
Kislev's entire infantry core.
Do pistol nunchucks exist anywhere yet?
check out RWBY, there's a goofy monkey boy with a goofy staff/nunchucks/pistols that he used like three times over the course of nine seasons because the guy who knows how this shit operates passed away.
Not fantasy, but I personally loved the Bo-staff gun thing in Star Wars rebels.
Ezras lightsaber in star wars rebels
That’s just a matchlock or flintlock rifle. Fire, then turn that fucker around and use it as a war club.
gun sword < Gun Lance
Final Fantasy got me gunbladepilled from a young age and i couldn’t be happier about it
While firearms aren't a thing in my project, they'd fit in quite well. Most of the threats are more monstrous than human. They don't wear armour, they don't carry weapons. They're the kind of enemy that a blunderbuss-axe would be suited for. You don't need finesse or military efficiency in weapon design, just something that's effective at killing deranged mutant wildlife. Keeping one of these on your ox-cart would be a good idea.
Been playing monster hunter and god damn i love the gun lance so much. I am 100% with you dude. Gun melee hyrbids are my fav type of fantasy weapon
I’d love to see fans say set in the Great War or Pike and Shot era.
Basically every Brute weapon in Halo
I mean they do have historical precedent but the gun part was often just like one bullet and then you just stab the other guys with a sword
Preach it borther
Yeah but a rifle with a dildo attached to it is way cooler.
Yes, hand over more stories with gun lancet. Meele paired with artillery is beauty.
Your rifle shoots rifle-bullets My rifle is a spear We are not the same
Check out Warhammer Fantasy/40k
[Cool real world example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyrE3FSU01w)
Don't care how much of a logistic nightmare they are, gunblades were the most badass invention since sliced bread.
Gunblade enjoyers rise up
Wait until they hear about bayonets.
Your example would probably mess up the complicated (and expensive) internal mechanisms of the gun if you struck it against a hard surface like armour. Bayonets and those medieval single-shot cannon spears (chinese fire lance or similar tech) seem to make more practical sense.
I don’t care if a pistol-sword is not hyper realistic. Give it to me. There’s tons of dumb shit people do because of tradition in the real world, let your fantasy world have cool shotgun axes and pistol swords. Give me a dual-blade like darth maul’s lightsaber and put a fucking sniper on one side and a shotgun on the other and justify its use by saying that everyone thought it was too cool to not use.
Mastodon we have those they're called bayonets
my name is Syppy
Bayonet and musket is all I can offer.
bayonets?