The Witcher

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How would the characters of The Witcher fight IRL? Any resources? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.net to c/thewitcher@lemmy.world

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I've almost finished reading the book series, and also played all games.

In the books, the fighting scenes were pretty detailled, with all combos (pirouette, counter attack, etc.) and all last and lethal mistakes their opponent did explained.

Thing is, I have zero clue what all attack patterns are, and looking at YouTube isn't helpful too, sadly.

Do you have any clips of in real live people, who practice swordsmanship, replicating those combos and maybe even fighting against each other?
I think those attack patterns are well known jargon for everyone fighting with swords.

In theory, would it be even possible to fight like Geralt or Ciri IRL, just thinking about how much a real sword weights and stuff?

I mean, for someone like a mutated witcher, that shouldn't be a problem at all, but how does that compare to someone like Ciri or Bonhart, who are excellent fighters too, but without the extra reflexes, strength and stuff? Especially regarding strength and endurance (men vs women)? Would women (just "women" in general, not necessary specific characters) even have a fair chance of winning a battle against a stronger opponent, usually men? Isnthat compensated by different fighting styles and just experience?

How would their fighting style be different than one of a witcher or a unskilled gang member?

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[–] illi@lemm.ee 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If I remember correctly the youtube channel The Swords Path tried to somewhat recreate the witcher fencing style. You can check some of their older vids.

The issue is, the witcher fencing techniques would not really work that great. There is no realistic fencing school that would resemble it. Even in the books, the style is developed not to fence with humans - it's to fight monsters. It's what witchers do, so it's what they learn. It works for witchers because they are inhumanly quick.

In real life fencing, you don't really want to do pirouettes and expose your back to your enemy. There might be a situation where you could get away with it, but not consistently, at least not with longsword or similar weapons. There are weapons, like a zweihander where you do spin around but that's because you have a bigass sword which would have longer reach and you would really only use it to keep enemies away from you.

The witcher style looks good on page or screen, but it is not how a real person would fight with a sword. Look up some HEMA (historical european martial arts) sparring videos to see swordfighting based on historical sources. You probably mostly want to see longsword fights.

If you have questions, feel free to ask. I'm a bit rusty as I'm on a bit of a hiatus from HEMA but I can try answering for sure.

[–] Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.net 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That was the answer I needed. You're a real champion, thank you very much my friend!

Just wondering: Ciri was trained by Witchers, to walk, think and fight like Witchers.

She doesn't have the same abilities like them tho, so having this unique fighting style should be a real disadvantage against humans, which she fights most against.

How the hell did she even survive the fights against Bonhart? I mean, she only survived the first one because of his mercy, but at least she wouldn't have been killed in seconds, like her companions did.

And in the end, she won, but he always knew she was trained by witchers because of her fighting style.

Ciri still had a huge kill list, even though she hadn't any advantages like mutated witchers have, so I believe her, as you call it, disadvantageous fighting style, could have been a real advantage because normal humans couldn't predict her next move, even trained ones. Except Bonhart, because he already killed quite a few Witchers and therefore maybe knew their tricks?

[–] illi@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

While Ciri didn't go through the Trials, she had the "Trials lite" herbal treatment she got on Kaer Morhen. She doesn't quite have witcher abilities, but also has higher potential than your average human.

While discussions like this are quite fun, you also need to remember it's really just trying to find in universe reasoning to explain something which is working well, but in reality it wouldn't. Rule of cool also applies heavily.

Also, it was only around the time Sapkowski wrote the books the historical fencing manuals were found and studied by people to recreate the techniques and understand them as we do today. So Sapkowski didn't have the benefit of research of how actual longsword (and other weapons for that matter) fencing looked like.

I don't remember the details (long time since I read the books last time), but what I like about the Bonhart fight is that it took place on the wooden planks up high and Ciri could use her training from Kaer Morhen well, if you remember when she trained with all the pendulums on the narrow wooden planks (not sure how to call these thingsproperly in English, sorry - but I hopenyou get what I'm referencing).

Also good point on the fighting style being unpredictable for people training standard swordfighting. It's similar in reality too, when an experienced fighter fights with a newbie, the expert might get cought unprepared by some dumb stuff the newbie does because they don't know any better and the expert knows something like that is stupid, so doesn't expect anyone to do it

Edit: another great (better than I used even) example for a different style throwing you off is fighting left handed people! Most people are right handed so you also train with right handed people - so when you suddenly fight a leftie it can fuck with your mind quite well, even if you are just doing drills. And that's a person who uses same techniques and school, but is just mirror image to what you expect. (Fun fact I was told, since lefties also train with right handed people most of the time, leftie fighting a leftie has the same handicap)