Combat in Fantasy, Part One
Top Ten Tips for Pointy Things
Writing combat is easy. Writing good combat is harder. Below are ten points – some of them tips, some of them common mistakes – to make sure your fighters are doing/using/hitting what they should be.
1. If you’re an archer, stay out of the melee.
If you have brains, and want to keep them, stay at range. A lot of range is good, but further down the dungeon corridor will do, if there’s no other option. Also bear in mind a) you can’t shoot through people (well you can, but not in a good way), b) unless you’re Jeremy Renner, you can’t use a bow as a quarterstaff and c) while you can stab someone’s eye out with an arrow, you’d better be pretty damn quick to get away with it.
Also – re-enactor bugbear – you don’t ‘fire’ an arrow, unless you set it alight. You shoot or loose it. Yelling FIRE! to a bunch of archers may get some very interesting results.
2. Spears have two ends.
Spears are excellent pokey sticks. Keeping someone on the business end of your spear is a good tactic, and works best if you have a friend or friends who can finish them off while you’re prodding them (hence spears work best in groups). If you’re by yourself, however, remember that (unlike a longbow) a spear makes an excellent quarterstaff and whacking someone round the head with the non-pointy end is frequently very effective.
Spears are not, however, terribly useful in a confined space. This goes for pole-arms in general. I’m sure you know the comedy that can ensue.
3. Axes are nasty.
They’re also unbalanced, top-heavy and require considerable forearm strength to wield effectively – list under ‘not usually used by skinny warriors/anything with pointy ears’. They also, despite popular opinion, don’t throw effectively unless they’re specifically made to do so. All that, and their hooked heads make them an easy disarm for a skilled opponent.
On the plus side, they’re very good for taking apart opposing a) shields b) walls and c) faces.
4. Shields are excellent offensive weapons.
You can punch people with your shield-rim, or with the big metal bit in the middle (also useful for filling with booze, but usually not at the same time). Please remember, however, that larger shields are a) bulky b) heavy and c) hence best used in units. If you want to move light and fast, carry a little one.
Plus, unless you’re sporting the star-spangled banner about your person, I wouldn’t advise using one as a Frisbee.
5. Always carry a second weapon.
Seriously, this stuff isn’t rocket surgery.
6. On average, a woman has less upper body strength than a man (I said average).
This isn’t a sexist comment, it’s is a fact. She does, however, possess speed and hand-eye co-ordination that are just as good or better, and every bit as much aggression as her male counterpart. Of course, if you’re creating your own reality, you can chuck that straight out the nearest window and write whatever the fuck rules you please. And quite right too!
7. Fencing is a sport. Re-enactment is a hobby.
Both teach a great deal, and you’ll learn a lot about good reflexes/reaction. There’s nothing stylised or controlled about a real fight, though, it’s you or them. And they’ll use any damn weapon to take you to pieces, so you’d better get there first! Chuck the rules out the window, use knees, elbows and headbutts. Bite their bollocks off, if that what’s gets the job done. Failing that, see point 8, below.
8. The best defence is a good offence – if you’re a military strategist.
If it’s just you, and/or if you’re heavily outnumbered, then the best defence is called the ‘Air Gap Technique’. This describes the action of putting as large an air gap as possible between you and the persons/monsters that are trying eat your face. In short? Run like hell. There’s no shame in it.
9. Combat high is a real thing.
Adrenaline is a massively powerful drug. When you’re charged, you really can fight through wounds, ‘frame’ speed your opponent, and react to things before you consciously see them. It also, like all drugs, has a karmic price, a come-down, if you like. That’s the point when you remember you’re down to five hit points from a starting total of forty and you’re really, very badly messed up. And that’s when you get the shakes, throw up and can’t walk, quite apart from any sustained injuries.
Maybe that’s why the ‘instant healing’ thing has become such a narrative necessity…
10. Battles are chaotic.
If you’re slap-bang in the middle of a melee combat (particularly a large one) then everything is instinct. Even leaving aside the dry ice/green screen that’s used in EVERY single television production of a fight scene, it’s hard to tell what’s actually going on. It’s all about flashes of recognition, of colour and reaction. You’ll know your friends by their movements and combat-styles; if you’ve been fighting with them a long time, you’ll move together instinctively, protect each other’s backs. You’ll know your enemies by their colours or attitudes, and your strikes and blocks will be subconscious. With enough adrenaline (see above), you really can block blows before you see them.
Well, you’d better hope you can.
If you’re writing, live the fight. Understand the weapons and how they’re used, how they really feel in your hands. If you want to write battle as a clinical exercise in tactics, then that’s absolutely your choice (and it’s advisable to have a scratch-map, whatever you choose to do), but I really feel that battle scenes are better when you and your reader can taste blood in your mouths and adrenaline in your bodies and fire in your hearts.
Generals are good for overviews. But grunts get all the fun.
Note: This is not a new post. It originally appeared on Fantasy Faction in November 2013.
Reading: Picked up completely at random, Matt Haig’s The Humans, which I’m really enjoying. Not read anything of his before, but loving the precision of his descriptions and how astutely observational he is.
Watching: Terminator Zero, an excellent riff on the original, but still very much its own thing. Only one episode in, but it seems sharp and visceral, and very good at hyping up the tension.
Playing: Space Marine 2, which has the absolute worst bloody combat interface, I keep tying my fingers in knots. Other than that, though, it does exactly what it says on the ceramite, and it’s a lot of scuttly-blatting fun!