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I've got a few crits for it... - The hilt of the scimitar is far too thin. It'd snap. Make it thicker, so it's not like he's just holding apiece of string. - Scimitar blade is too thick. It should be thinner so you can see the curve more. Don't add the crescent at the point of the blade, because that really isn't needed and makes the whole thing look like a bent rectangular piece of metal. - The main person has no chin, or at least a very weak one. - Armour doesn't look like plate mail at all, just a glorified metal set of clothing. Divide it into plate sections and you'll have plate mail. - Clouds need a bit of work on shading.

Oh, so suddenly we're tossing out suspension of disbelief just so we can have what some people say is "cool"? Right. Let's stop having pseudo-realistic motivations for quests, then, and have NPCs tell players, "Fetch my pants, because I'm an NPC." We could try cooking fish in water, because natural laws don't have to apply. Of bloody well course they don't have to apply. You'd like them to be used, though, otherwise the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever, and it'll end up feeling like some random mash of stupidity that someone put together on impulse. You want an immersive feel in an RPG - that's the point of them. To be immersive, you have to make as few changes to established systems as possible. Magic, dragons, whatever. That's fine, because they don't actually exist, so you can do what you want with them and sod everyone else's opinions because there's no concrete definition of them. Weaponry, on the other hand, exists in real life. And as far as not having to adhere to physics is concerned, I'd like to point out that you still stick the business end of your sword into the enemy, so chances are, your character's probably doing something right. As for your poorly constructed argument about shields - no. Holding two would restrict your mobility and make it HARDER to block attacks from someone who has a baseline knowledge of actual combat. Don't agree? Try it out at your local SCA, or anyone else who would know how to swing a weapon at someone with a shield.

Been working on this since last night, and finished it up when I got back from school today. Halfling Captain Lashkar Ansalios Shalhar orders the charge at the Battle of Tir Sarthus.

You could do with a bit more shading on it, define a few scales here and there. Props for the great red wyrm reference, though.

Why not just carry one shield, then? Trying to use two at a time would restrict your vision, weigh you down, and give you a bloody huge profile. Contary to popular belief, you DO have to move a shield around to defend yourself. Shields don't project some sort of magic defensive field. What is it with people here and thinking that carrying two things to serve the same purpose magically doubles the effect? Magic I can understand, because, as I said earlier, this is a fantasy game and magic is a fantasy element. Suspension of disbelief allows it to become "realistic". Cooking I can also understand, because JAGeX has a reputation for creating poor animations. Dual-wielding as a viable combat style, I can't understand, because it is an actual method of fighting which is damned useless against all the sorts of enemies you find in this game. Suspension of disbelief. Learn it.

The first one's absolutely beautiful. The second one, however, ruins the effect, because all the blood suddenly makes the whole scene looks very busy.

Go with the flow. If nothing else, you've got your honour and your dignity. And... Don't type like a moron.

You really need to work on proportions. And chins. Everyone you draw, pixel or otherwise, seems to have a receeding chin. Also, her eye looks like it's actually her left eye. The lower line on it shouldn't be such a neutral curve. There's something wrong with the legs, but I can't quite put my finger on it. The feet are too small.

how to get laid Oh. I take it you're failing. On-topic: It seems a little more fair if you were able to use it on humanoid NPCs as well. Equal rights and everything. Maybe have the minions take a constant 1 damage every ten seconds or something instead of having a flat time limit.

I could do it. Platemail doesn't cover joints as well as everything else, and plate sections are angled so that striking upwards would allow you to score a hit. That, and I'm bloody fast. But that isn't the point you're making, is it? Swinging two longswords WOULD be more dangerous to yourself than using a longsword and a smaller weapon, or the former on its own. You'll tire out quickly, and you sure as hell won't be half as accurate or strong with two of them to worry about.

We don't have ostriches in Australia, and Aborigines sure as hell didn't use bolas. Bascially, what the OP is suggesting (I hope) is that out of one log, you can make one set of bloas, since they are usually made of two or three wooden or lead spheres, connected by light rope. As for balance, reduce the bind length to 3 seconds. 5 is too much.

It should be affected by in-game actions, not by choice. Chaos in itself is not evil in anyway. You can be chaotic and good (rebelling against authority but doing good things, a la Robin Hood), and you can be lawful and evil (upholding tradition and the status quo, for your own ends, a la Hitler). Give a cookie for the reference to D&D when you suggest it.

Suspension of disbelief is needed if you want to have fun with a game. If you can't reasonably assume that something would be able to exist, like dragons and magic in a fantasy world, then you can't honestly expect to have much fun. If you had weapons that didn't make sense, like a sword that looked like a shovel, then nobody's going to find it credible enough to use. It'd be plain stupid. A decent quality katana is only - at the most - a pound lighter than its european equivalent. That's only because the hilt construction is different, and the hilts on katanas don't quite have as much weight to them as European ones. Balance is dependent on the weaponsmith, but I daresay the good European weaponsmiths were on par with the good Japanese ones. In the end, you've got a hand-and-a-half sword with a pound off the weight which isn't even as effective. Put it up against a full-blown greatsword and it'd break. Think about it. The katana is nothing more than a glorified, elongenated two-handed scimitar without the courtesy of a steel hilt. Katanas are good for cutting flesh because the curve focuses all its force into the striking area. They're horrible against armour or metal in general; itd survive at most three hits before the katana fractures or breaks outright. Also, you can't take hits on a katana's crossguard, because it has none. The only hilt guard you've got is a small circular piece of laminated wood. I'll say it again. Katanas are no better than other swords. In some situations, they're actually worse.

About an hour for both of them. About the right arm, you can't see it because of the angle. It's pulled back slightly to be able to hold the greatsword so close to his body.

I was bored, so I decided to draw, as usual. I get bored a lot, actually. I decided to go nuts on contrast in Photoshop, because my scanner makes paper look bluish, and that's boring.

They're light. All five pounds of 'em. You'll strain your arms trying to swing one in one hand, let alone two of them. They're about as fast as the wielder can swing them, and if you're only going for speed, you won't get anywhere with a katana. You'd die. Accuracy is again dependent on the wielder. For game-mechanical purposes, accuracy is also dependent on the opponent's armour, which katanas are absolutely useless against. Compare it to a European hand-and-a-half sword, which is its practical equivalent, but with two edges and no curve. It's a little heavier, but at least it won't shatter on plate mail. You make it sound like you're one of those people who actually thinks that katanas are any better than other swords. Greatswords are only two or three pounds heavier than your vaunted katanas.

You need to work on proportions and composition. Look at pictures of people and try to learn how big some pieces of anatomy are in relation to other bits. Also try to learn how muscles relate to each other, because this affects the things that people wear. Plate mail in particular is one of the things that a lot of people here make mistakes on. It's not solid. It was never meant to be solid, because you have to be able to put it on. Think of plate armour more as a series of metal pieces that fit over each other to protect muscles and target areas, not as a glorified rigid set of clothing. Plate armour is usually secured by straps and backed with chainmail, so resist the urge to cover every inch of your characters with solid metal. Use chainmail to cover joints and try not to put any plates where you wouldn't reasonably expect to be hit often. Composition-wise, you could do with better placement of characters. Maybe have the archer slumped over a rock, and the swordsman standing over him, because at the moment, he's running at a corpse. Try not to have background colours that are the same as the colours on characters. Contrast is often better than having "ubar leet equips and wildy". On that, try to be different and not use Runescape as a source for equipment designs. JAGeX is bad at that.

1.5x speed, half power, half accuracy for each weapon used. That'd balance it. I'd type out the whole argument about the practicality of dual-wielding, but it's tedious and I doubt half the people here would pay attention to anything with more than two sentences anyway.

Dictionaries. Lots of them. And guides for how to type without cussing or being a general moron. I think that pretty much covers most PKers' needs.

Plate mail by definition already has a chainmail underlayer to cover joints where you can't have any solid metal plates. An elementary knowledge of armour would have allowed you to know that. Your shield bears your arms, that is, the main design of your coat of arms. The entire coat of arms is never applied to any battlefield equipment, because it simply is far too large and complex for easy recognition. For more on heraldry, see this.

Hooray, more fuel for our ego-fire. Go us.

How about you grow a sense of humour and stop abusing punctuation? Engineering has been applied for AGES. Think about how you could apply it to a pseudo-medieval time-fram like RS. Instead of the ICBMs and assault rifles everyone and their dog with an IQ lower than their shoe size is mouthing off about, think of ballistae, catapults, player-defined construction, etc. Granted, it is impossible or unfeasible to implement any of these things into RS as it is, but just pointing out that just because there is machinery, it doesn't have to be futuristic. Hell, a crossbow counts as machinery.

The weight of a shield in comparison to a longsword (say, 15lb. as opposed to 4lb.) is offset by the fact that you don't actually have to move the shield as much. A sword relies on moving your upper body along with the rest of your arm in order to get any force behind anything. A shield only relies on your arm tensing whenever you block or deflect anything. It also straps on to your arm in addition to you holding it, so the weight is distributed a lot better than holding a sword. Also, if a two-weapon fighter were to attack a shield fighter, the latter would have no trouble in closing an opening with his shield (turn with shield advanced and sword at the ready, or hold position with shield covering the target area with the sword in six ready to parry any other attacks) or just stepping back and letting momentum take care of his opponent. On armour, light armours like leather would be far more useful than mid-range (chainmail) and high-range (plate mail) because you will be fatigued a LOT less. Chainmail will offer you very limited mobility as the weight is concentrated along your shoulders, which you need for bladework. You're also going to tire extremely fast under 40lb. worth of metal if you fight for longer than a minute or two. Hardened leather, on the other hand, offers you superior mobility and fair protection at only about 15lb. Basketball is a poor example. I play too, and my left is about as useful as my right, but unless you are naturally ambidextrous, you won't get the same advantages with two large swords, as movements are different and a blade actually relies on strength as well, not just co-ordination. A large blade in your dominant and a small blade in your off-hand minimises this strength requirement and gives you even more mobility to take advantage of, in case someone's smart enough to knock you to the ground (which is easy, considering weight) and wrestle with you using a dagger. As for speed, a heavy fighter won't need to rely on it, as he can just take defensive actions until the dual-wielder tires himself out from trying to attack. Also, he can still use an alarming amount of speed, as the weight of all his armour (about 50lb.) and his shield don't stop him from moving as quickly as anyone else. He'd be a lot less maneouverable, but he can put in a few controlled bursts of speed which are helped along by momentum.

Actually, no. A sword could theoretically block more than a small shield, but you're forgetting that it's a fairly narrow piece of metal. There is a lot of co-ordination involved in actually parrying something and not having your weapon slammed into you by the force of the attack. There are also feints and disengages to worry about, as your sword can only defend so much of your actual body. With your off-hand sword, you're not likely to deal much damage as that arm will not be as strong as your dominant, so you're going to relegate the off-hand weapon to defensive work anyway. A shield, on the other hand, prevents your opponent from striking by virtue of physically covering far more area than a blade, and you can easily block cuts as well as thrusts without much variation in arm position. A lot of sword/shield tactics are based around the fact that your enemy can only attack what he can see, and you can block whatever attack it is with your shield without worrying too much about fine co-ordination, because of the large area of protection. Swords require a lot of concentration to work properly. Also, while you are on the attack, you can use the shield to obstruct your opponent's field of vision, so they don't know where the attack is going to come from. Zones of protection while wielding two swords vary a lot, and are vastly inferior to a fighter with a sword and a shield. A sword (at best) can cover about a third of your body with its arc of movement. A quarter in most circumstances, if you actually want to attack with it as well. With two swords, this obviously translates into half to two-thirds of your body covered by your weapons. However, with the point of a dominant hand, your off-hand weapon is going to be able to cover less and dividing your concentration between two weapons will hamper your main hand as well, so you're looking at about a third to half your body protected. Your opponent here has a number of options. Firstly, he can rely on raw speed to rip through your defenses. Secondly, he could disarm your off-hand (fairly easy) and then fight you on his terms. Thirdly, he could just go on the offensive and wait for you to make a blunder and either hurt yourself or leave a huge opening for him to stick a piece of sharp metal in your side. With a decent-sized shield, you're looking at about two-thirds of your body guaranteed to be protected in the worst circumstances. Three-quarters in most cases. If you're fighting with your shield off to the side so you can bring your weapon into play easier (ie, an offensive action), then your weapon adds its own arc of movement, and you cover your entire body with that defensive field. What your opponent wants to do in this case is either to go defensive and try to disarm you when you attack, or attempt to disable your shield by breaking your arm with a nice strong attack. The (theoretical) offensive capability of two weapons is far outstripped by the sheer defensive ability of a single weapon used with a shield. (PS: I do like these combat discussions a lot)

only if you are two weak to do this, in order for dual wielding there would have to be a strength requirement, like 20 for 2 daggers and hatchets, 30 for shortswords, 40 for maces, 50 for long swords and scimitars, 60 for axes, and if you use two their would a 1.5 times increase in the weapons attack, but you cant use spears, 2hs, or halberds, because they are already 2 handed. It's not a question of strength. You can be extremely strong but it would still affect your balance. With two longswords, you've got to keep track of footwork and arm balance for both, without even getting to the part where you swing them. It's harder to work two large weapons in tandem than it is to use two smaller weapons or a large weapon and a small weapon. Also, even the strongest people tire out. Swinging a weapon at any enemy for any length of time (say three minutes) is going to tire you out a lot. Swinging two HEAVY weapons is going to fatigue you even faster. Runescapians seem to be right-handed. Not too sure on that, since people hold their bows in their right hands as well and draw with their left (JAGeX mistake, I'd say). However, the fact stands that whenever you equip a weapon, it is held in a right-handed fashion. Two-handed swords seem to be swung left-handed as well as right-handed, but I'll chalk that up to poor JAGeX design as well. Dominant hand affects your ability to use anything in your "weak" hand, like weapons and pens. Think of rapier/main-gauche combat in the renaissance period. There is a reason why they didn't use two rapiers instead, and those things are slightly lighter and shorter than longswords. The dagger in the left hand is used mainly for defence and surprise attacks, so that the rapier can focus on offense. Fighting with two weapons is almost exactly like fighting with a weapon and a shield, but you have a slightly worse option of defense as well as attack. However, it is a lot better than using only one weapon, if you do it right.