Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
The thing is, the situation being assumed here is a single fictional traveling knight with some sort of probably small retinue as imagined at the time. Lances as weapons are much more useful when you have supply trains full of them, and your lance charge is backed by a whole bunch of people next to you. One person, traveling alone has less use of a lance, and within that specific context the sword makes a lot of sense. It certainly upends assumptions made based on armies. Moreover, the sword's exaggerated role in fiction is actually relevant to how a fictional character at the time would be pictured.

The point is, the huge role of lances in an army setting is really of questionable pertinence. What would support this is lances described in period writings about knights, which largely means poetry and the occasional romance, with early novels at the late medieval period. That still supports lances fairly strongly, given the prevalence of representations of Pas d'armes in later works that strongly resembled jousting.

As you yourself noted, the stories, novels, songs, and artwork of the late medieval period are full of depictions of knights with their lance. The lance is the primary weapon of the knight, both individually and in formation. It's use is not limited to formations.

from the East







to the West





Here you see the value of the sword (or falchion), note the lance has broken into several pieces after stabbing the dragon, so he must be finished with the blade



And in the center




(The flagpole here is a lance)



People in period knew very well that the lance was the primary weapon of the knight, it was closely linked in all the iconography. The sword was the personal weapon of the knight, almost equally important. But not every knight carried a sword - every knight carried a lance, at least until pistols became available.

For some reason in more modern times the idea of the lance has fallen out of favor. Modern audiences of fantasy or 'historical' fiction can't relate to it somehow. Maybe because there wasn't a lot of cavalry in DnD, I'm not sure. The point of having some other primary weapon than the sword is to attack first. Really important, that first attack! Other primary weapons would be a bow, for example, mostly in the East.


On a tangentally related note, (I hope it's ok to post here) for those interested in more realistic combat in games,

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

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