Quote Originally Posted by gkathellar View Post
A buckler, or a dagger, or a well-made leather glove can keep your opponent's sword just as busy, and do so without requiring you to keep all the fighting within one range while your attention is divided.
No, they cant constrain the sword effectively.

By constrain i mean to force your opponent to take an action that will give you an opportunity to strike, this action is often predictable or controlled by the constraining weapon.

A dagger is about 1/10th as long as a sword, requiring you to be in closer and thus be closer to harm, it is also far harder to effectively constrain your opponent with than a full length sword.

A buckler is hard to use to control the sword, it can certainly deflect a thrust, but that often simply moves the point of impact from one hurty bit to another one.

As an avid user of the off hand in rapier combat i can firmly state that the offhand is not only limited by its tiny reach, how slow it is compared to a sword, and its inability to constrain on its own, but its also your hand a piece of meat and bone, and it gets hurt accordingly.

Nothing constrains better than a sword, two swords constrain almost twice as well with proper training. I don't mean to say that two swords is always better, but someone with proper training and understanding of how two swords work and how one sword works will have an advantage over an opponent only using one sword.

DM