Actually, I'm pretty sure Naproxen is the same medication that's in Aleve, just at a higher dose.

Yep, exactly that.

Am I wrong in thinking we have lots of people in this thread who know lots of stuff about swords and sword fighting?

Cuz I was just reading a Highlander novel, in which Duncan with his claymore faced a female opponent with a rapier. Something about that feels so very wrong. I keep getting mental pictures of the claymore's momentum carrying the rapier to the ground, rather than being parried by it. Also, some of the fighting, as described, sounded far too close-quarters for the claymore to be at all useful. Am I just totally ignorant here?

Naproxen is indeed the active ingredient in Aleve. It does a good job at killing the pain. Unfortunately, it also does a good job of making my throat swell shut, so no Aleve for me.

WindSparrow, I'm certainly not a sword expert, but here's a claymore, and here's a rapier. Rapier's a stabby sword, claymore's a swingy sword. I would think that the claymore would outweigh the rapier, but after reading at that site, I don't know if the claymore is as heavy as I thought.

The advantage the rapier has is that it's faster. You could hit someone several times with rapier before getting one hit in with a claymore because the claymore is so much bigger and heavier.

I have a hard time thinking that you could parry a claymore with a rapier, but it would depend on the angles, I guess. I have parried a rapier with a dagger and that worked. I've also parried a broadsword with a quarterstaff. But never a broadsword with a rapier.

t high fives Miracleman

I'm pretty sure Naproxen is the same medication that's in Aleve, just at a higher dose.

Yup, and Aleve will fuck my shit up if I'm not careful. I end up feeling like I'm high sometimes, which is why I rarely take it.

I have a hard time thinking that you could parry a claymore with a rapier, but it would depend on the angles, I guess.

I'm not seeing it at all. The rapier is too flexible, isn't it?

I'm not seeing it at all. The rapier is too flexible, isn't it?

Rapiers are not as flexible as foils, but they do have some bend. The claymores could easily break a rapier or at least bend it so that it isn't effective.

The only parrys I could see working are when you push a blade to the side with your own blade.

Andi, that's a silly sword fight that the Claymore wins if its weilder is even remotely compotent. If the rapier wielder was a master, and the claymore weilder a novice, maybe.

See the sword fight at the end of the otherwise silly Rob Roy.

Well, Ailleann's links gave me a much better mental image of the respective weapons. My original, flawed, thinking was making the rapier into something more like a foil. But still, the bits of actual knowledge I had were telling me it was a silly match. I would guess the opponents were, if not perfectly matched in skill, at least in the same order of magnitude - it was Duncan after seven years studying with Connor (and finally besting him) against a female Immortal of indeterminate age who had a male partner for centuries, if not millenia. Telling against her ages of experience would be that she and her partner believed themselves gods rather than Immortals and said they did not care about The Game.