This is an insightful comment, but I don’t think you can just ignore the sci-fi part of things when talking about the realism of fighting with “light” blades.
Like, when you talk about ending a fight via thrusting. With a thrusting-only sword, or even a sword with a point and an edge, the amount of damage you can do with a thrust is pretty limited. You can poke a hole in someone, or open a cut, but you can’t easily remove a limb. But, with a light saber it’s different. If the tip wiggles around a bit as part of the thrust, it could easily take off a limb because every surface of the “blade” is a cutting surface.
With a real sword, your slash needs to be aligned with the cutting edge of the blade, and needs to have a bit of force behind it. What they’ve shown us with light sabers is that the merest touch will cut almost anything in half. If it’s something super solid like a massive steel wall / bulkhead, it can require a little bit of pressure.
To me, that says that in a battle against a light saber, if any part of the blade touches any part of your body, you’re probably dead. IMO that massively changes how these weapons would be used.
As for a light-spear, even if a spear isn’t the best one-on-one weapon in the real world, if the point of the spear is this thing that cuts through anything it touches without resistance that might be different, especially if the spear tip is the length of a sword. I’ve never done any spear training, but I did some work with a staff a long while ago. There are a lot of slashing type attacks with a staff, but there are also a lot of poking type attacks. Those don’t leave you very open, and they let you probe at someone while staying well outside their range (unless they’re doing the same thing). With a staff they don’t do much damage, but if the last meter of the staff were this magical cutting surface, that would be different.
I don’t know what exactly a fight would look like with a real light saber, but I strongly suspect that the fighters would spend as little time as possible with any part of their body within the range of the other person’s blade. I also suspect that dramatic big movements would be suicidal. Any second you spend without your sword pointing directly at the other person and keeping them from closing the distance allows them to close in and lop off your arm with the slightest flick of a wrist.
This is an insightful comment, but I don’t think you can just ignore the sci-fi part of things when talking about the realism of fighting with “light” blades.
Like, when you talk about ending a fight via thrusting. With a thrusting-only sword, or even a sword with a point and an edge, the amount of damage you can do with a thrust is pretty limited. You can poke a hole in someone, or open a cut, but you can’t easily remove a limb. But, with a light saber it’s different. If the tip wiggles around a bit as part of the thrust, it could easily take off a limb because every surface of the “blade” is a cutting surface.
With a real sword, your slash needs to be aligned with the cutting edge of the blade, and needs to have a bit of force behind it. What they’ve shown us with light sabers is that the merest touch will cut almost anything in half. If it’s something super solid like a massive steel wall / bulkhead, it can require a little bit of pressure.
To me, that says that in a battle against a light saber, if any part of the blade touches any part of your body, you’re probably dead. IMO that massively changes how these weapons would be used.
As for a light-spear, even if a spear isn’t the best one-on-one weapon in the real world, if the point of the spear is this thing that cuts through anything it touches without resistance that might be different, especially if the spear tip is the length of a sword. I’ve never done any spear training, but I did some work with a staff a long while ago. There are a lot of slashing type attacks with a staff, but there are also a lot of poking type attacks. Those don’t leave you very open, and they let you probe at someone while staying well outside their range (unless they’re doing the same thing). With a staff they don’t do much damage, but if the last meter of the staff were this magical cutting surface, that would be different.
I don’t know what exactly a fight would look like with a real light saber, but I strongly suspect that the fighters would spend as little time as possible with any part of their body within the range of the other person’s blade. I also suspect that dramatic big movements would be suicidal. Any second you spend without your sword pointing directly at the other person and keeping them from closing the distance allows them to close in and lop off your arm with the slightest flick of a wrist.