You can fight a crowd with any kind of weapon - from a fencing blade to an axe but the problem, as has been pointed out, is one of mobility. The answer seems to be that you just have to keep moving very fast.
Well this sounds fine but try it some time for more than a couple of minutes. I fenced a lot of melees which is light weapons, no armour - probably the least tiring form of melee. I was _really_ fit, doing 15 hours of cardio martial arts, fencing and other stuff per week and I was near puking after a heavy melee. Sure I could fight three guys at once but it means you have to move constantly, change postion keep your weapon shifting and this is just so damn tiring. I'd have been dead if wearing armour.
As for no weapon use, thats REALLY hard, all it takes is for someone to be slowed down even a fraction in their movements and they get swarmed.
In RQ things are a little different because of the destructive power of certain weapon magics - you can boost a weapon to do horrible bodysmashing damage to the point where you can simply smash your way through even an enveloping crowd if your skill is high enough to split the attacks.
Take Onslaught as an example: With spells hes about 350% with axe and sword - the Sword, with Truesword and Bladesharp 10 + his damage bonus does 2d10+20+10+2d6 and the axe does 1d10+2+10+2d6. Assume he doesn't parry and splits his attacks with each weapon 3 times (ie around 115% each) then he does an average of 47-48 points with the sword and 24 with the axe. So against a group of soldiers, its not unfeasible that he could kill 4-6 of them a round while they might get 2-3 attacks on him at best. The knockbacks alone would smash them into each other.
Now plainly this is a gross example but this is the kind of guy you are talking about in RQ who can do this kind of thing - anybody else is going to get swamped. Even mosts Swords of Humakt have a few initiates with them to cover their flanks, same with Storm Khans.
Basically even the toughest guy can be brought down by a crowd if they have the balls to do it but it means some of them are going to get hurt bad before he's down and how many people are ready to accept this? Not many, so thats how a Sword can win a fight against many - because each crowd is made up of individuals and individuals can be intimidated. Each man will think "shit, this guys a full Sword, he'll carve me to dogsmeat" and will wait for his buddies to make the first move. Of course, they are all thinking the same thing so if the Sword (a man fearless of death) decides to pound one, then he may well break the rest into rout.
Psychology in combat is perhaps more important than skill IMO.
Martin Laurie
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