What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

[Accelerator]

Due to story and thematic constraints, there aren't any electronics. However, the metallurgy and engineering tolerances are basically equivalent to today's modern earth. The wearer is basically meant to fight against monsters, giant scorpions, and other **** you see in a DnD earth.

I'm right now thinking of spears and warhammers perfectly balanced with counterweights and specialised alloys to make them rust-proof. And then the armour would be rust-resistant, with padding underneath it, and with extra thickness with the usage of foaming agents to make them filled with air so they can be thicker than normal.

Thoughts?

[J-H]

You can make much more powerful crossbows/arbalests using spring steel and modern gearing and winch mechanisms. Scorpions/ballistas can use spring steel (the classic "modern" example is making one out of truck suspension).

Although inaccurate, a Centrifugal Gun can be made without gunpowder or electronics, and may serve as an AOE weapon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_gun

Layers of kevlar weave will be a much more effective underlayer for armor than regular padding. I know kelvar can be cut, but I've also seen cut-resistant kevlar gloves.

If not banned by some equivalent of the Geneva Convention, war arrows will have spring-loaded barbs in them to make them much harder and more damaging to remove, like some hunting arrows/bolts used today. Modern hunting arrows are in general superior to what was in use 200 years ago, with sharper points, straighter flight, etc.

If you don't have gunpowder or rocketry or electronics, then you have no air power, no smart weapons, no drones, and no mobile/long-range artillery. Hot air balloons will still be in service for spotting along with either the telegraph or semaphore systems. The railroad will be king of logistics, and large armies will find it hard to operate too far away from their railheads unless they can forage for sufficient food locally.

[snowblizz]

An important thing to remember, you can't really make (much) better medieval weapons with modern technology.

You can fiddle around the edges, you can improve some of the aspects, you can probably mass produce faster and more consistently armour and weapons (though if watching stuff like Forged in Fire, while modern tools speed things up it just means you get to the screw it up phase faster).

Kevlar may not be easily cut but that's not it's use here. The metal armour cannot possibly be cut at all. If you're making kevlar padding you need to remember padding is to absorb shock, not resist cutting. What modern materials could help with most I think would be in heat transfer, it doesn't matter if your armour is inpenetrable if you get heatstroke using it, which regularly happened.

Of course if you don't have gunpowder you probably don't need as much metal armour anyway, fun historical fact, metal armour really grew in popularity and robustness as it developed alongside firearms.

Armour bulk is as bad as armour weight so "thicker but lighter" isn't necessarily a desired goal.

[factotum]

I don't know if it would actually work as it did in the books, but Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" (set in the far future) has a large, heavy sword which has liquid mercury running down a channel in the middle to supposedly make it easier to swing--e.g. the weight balance would tend toward the hilt as you raised the blade, then would move outward toward the end as you swung it down. Said sword is an executioner's sword rather than something designed for battle, though.

I suppose you could make something similar with a spring-loaded weight inside the blade, though.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't know if it would actually work as it did in the books, but Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" (set in the far future) has a large, heavy sword which has liquid mercury running down a channel in the middle to supposedly make it easier to swing--e.g. the weight balance would tend toward the hilt as you raised the blade, then would move outward toward the end as you swung it down. Said sword is an executioner's sword rather than something designed for battle, though.

That sounds like it'd deliver a heck of a punch, but there is no way to recover from the swing with any kind of speed. Execution, yes; battle, probably not.

An important advancement not mentioned above is plastics: there is a lot to recommend to hardened plastic visors in helmets, and transparent shields, because the big issue for medieval armour is that it really restricts your ability to know what the hell is going on. In fact, riot police are in many ways wearing the best medieval-like armour money can buy these days.

Grey Wolf

[Lvl 2 Expert]

You can make much more powerful crossbows/arbalests using spring steel and modern gearing and winch mechanisms. Scorpions/ballistas can use spring steel (the classic "modern" example is making one out of truck suspension).

Although inaccurate, a Centrifugal Gun can be made without gunpowder or electronics, and may serve as an AOE weapon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_gun

Layers of kevlar weave will be a much more effective underlayer for armor than regular padding. I know kelvar can be cut, but I've also seen cut-resistant kevlar gloves.

If not banned by some equivalent of the Geneva Convention, war arrows will have spring-loaded barbs in them to make them much harder and more damaging to remove, like some hunting arrows/bolts used today. Modern hunting arrows are in general superior to what was in use 200 years ago, with sharper points, straighter flight, etc.

If you don't have gunpowder or rocketry or electronics, then you have no air power, no smart weapons, no drones, and no mobile/long-range artillery. Hot air balloons will still be in service for spotting along with either the telegraph or semaphore systems. The railroad will be king of logistics, and large armies will find it hard to operate too far away from their railheads unless they can forage for sufficient food locally.

I think this post demonstrates pretty well where this question is headed: you're not going to be making medieval armor and weapons with today's science. Even if you remove a few parts, like gunpowder, electronics, internal combustion as well as steam engines end whatever else you can think of, most of the improvements you find will lead to different looking armor and weapons than what you imagine when thinking about the middle ages. You can see this within that time period as well. Plate armor replaces chain mail as the armor of choice for knights. There is a shift in metal working, tactics, weapons technology, available budgets or whatever, people think those new options through, start experimenting and end up adopting a completely different looking design because that's what makes sense under the new circumstances. Chain mail and plate armor look completely different and work completely different, yet are solutions to the same problem under a different set of conditions. I'm sure that whatever restrictions you invoke a large enough group of people with access to all medieval techn plus some of today's technology could develop better weapons and armor than purely medieval people could, but I doubt they'd look medieval. Without any kind of explosives today's ships might have used railguns instead of canons, or steam catapults, or something entirely different we never thought off because we didn't need to. But they wouldn't be using large crossbows but they're made of titanium and kevlar and now they take 6 people to wind up instead of 2.

[Radar]

I don't know if it would actually work as it did in the books, but Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" (set in the far future) has a large, heavy sword which has liquid mercury running down a channel in the middle to supposedly make it easier to swing--e.g. the weight balance would tend toward the hilt as you raised the blade, then would move outward toward the end as you swung it down. Said sword is an executioner's sword rather than something designed for battle, though.

I suppose you could make something similar with a spring-loaded weight inside the blade, though.

Not a good idea, since the shifting balance mass will sap the velocity out of the tip of your sword and generally will act as a dampener. It will feel as if the tip was pulled back, when you try to swing and then the handle will be pulled in the direction of the swing when you try to stop your sword. All in all, more difficult to use and without additional power behond the swings. In principle you will be able to swing hard but you lose a lot of energy on it and precision of your moves as well, which would make it more difficult to parry with such a sword.

I second the motion that crossbows would rule the battlefield. With the modern materials and precise manufacturing you can make some seriously powerful ones that can still be pretty compact and easy to operate thanks to pulley systems. If giant monsters are a common threat, then I would also expect similarily modernised ballista as the staple of stationary defences.

There is also the option of using various chemical weapons either in gas form, or as filling of shattering arrow tips, or simply a dip for the arrows (althoug this would give enough of an effect only with potent toxines).

Another question: how would flamethrowers fit into the whole scheme? The key requirement for them to work is oil rafination and ability to pressurise fluids.

[Fat Rooster]

The biggest difference for dealing with monsters would probably be Kevlar or steel rope. Immobilise and then neutralise.

Armour would probably be more like sports pads than what we would normally think of. If you get hit with a 500lb club it is more like getting hit by a car than a typical medieval weapon. There might be some reinforcing loops to make crushing injuries less lethal, as those will be a concern too.

Not that it is particularly modern, but asbestos would be the go to material for dealing with dragons. We still can't really do better in terms of flame resistant, and in a world with dragons people dying in mines is worth it to fight the dragons.

You might be able to deal with giants with ballistae, as they would have relatively soft skin, but thick plates or scales might deflect them in angled hits. Depends on whether the giants are of the armoured variety, either of their own construction or allied. Depending on geology, uranium cores surrounded by hardened steel jackets could make your bolts pack quite the punch.

Armour tended to be quite expensive, and looked after relatively well. Rusting isn't a major problem. All you do by making your armour out of stainless steel is ensure that you can still find useful armour by digging up battlefields from years ago. This can be a down side if you are the invader, as it means the defender has supplies after you withdraw.

Other than the differences in tactics caused by the different enemies, I don't see modern materials being game changers. They can do things better, but not much different. Obviously if you include gunpowder, or engines, or understanding of flight this changes a bit, but I don't see much about medieval armour or weapons that was material constrained.

The thing about tolerances is that it isn't really the important thing. Medieval craftsmen were capable of extremely high tolerances. The question is how economic they are. There is a big difference between being able to create the perfect crossbow, and being able to cheaply give 10,000 militia good ones.

[Brother Oni]

Due to story and thematic constraints, there aren't any electronics. However, the metallurgy and engineering tolerances are basically equivalent to today's modern earth.

How do you get the metallurgy quality and manufacturing tolerances to modern standards without electronics? I can't think of a modern steelworks that isn't significantly automated. Without electronics control, you're capped to about 1940s-ish technology.

A lot of comments on 'use kevlar' - so how do you make it? Kevlar came about in 1964 and without modern mass production methods and oil refining, you're essentially limited to a production level akin to silk manufacture, only you're harvesting a single cocoon at a time.

I know you said 'no electronics', but the implication is also 'no gunpowder'. In my opinion, the crossbow would then be king except in cold environments, where bows and melee weapons might more of a look in.

Depending on the portability of air compressors, the standard military armament might be variants of the Girandoni air rifle.

You might be able to deal with giants with ballistae, as they would have relatively soft skin, but thick plates or scales might deflect them in angled hits. Depends on whether the giants are of the armoured variety, either of their own construction or allied. Depending on geology, uranium cores surrounded by hardened steel jackets could make your bolts pack quite the punch.

Armour tended to be quite expensive, and looked after relatively well. Rusting isn't a major problem. All you do by making your armour out of stainless steel is ensure that you can still find useful armour by digging up battlefields from years ago. This can be a down side if you are the invader, as it means the defender has supplies after you withdraw.

Other than the differences in tactics caused by the different enemies, I don't see modern materials being game changers. They can do things better, but not much different. Obviously if you include gunpowder, or engines, or understanding of flight this changes a bit, but I don't see much about medieval armour or weapons that was material constrained.

The thing about tolerances is that it isn't really the important thing. Medieval craftsmen were capable of extremely high tolerances. The question is how economic they are. There is a big difference between being able to create the perfect crossbow, and being able to cheaply give 10,000 militia good ones.

Uranium isn't a good material for hitting things with. Depleted uranium is, but how do you depleted it in a reasonable timeframe without a nuclear power plant? They also pack a punch if you can accelerate them up to a speed where the physical properties of DU (density, self sharpening nature, pyrophoric,etc) win out over steel, like in 20+mm shells; you're not getting anywhere near those velocities with a ballistae. If anything, you'd get a poorly performing bolt as it's too heavy to be made long enough for the ballista.

Stainless steel is also really bad for body armour as it's very brittle. It sees some use in modern contexts where corrosion resistance is paramount (butchers aprons, anti shark attack gear for divers), but generally not for situations where being attacked is an every day occurance (armoured vehicles use RHA steel if they're not using composite armour).

I do agree with you that the main thing about modern manufacturing methods is that they can consistently create lots of good quality material. This is a opposite to medieval manufacturing methods where the quality of individual items is better, but the consistency of producing those items is poor.

[DavidSh]

Uranium isn't a good material for hitting things with. Depleted uranium is, but how do you depleted it in a reasonable timeframe without a nuclear power plant? They also pack a punch if you can accelerate them up to a speed where the physical properties of DU (density, self sharpening nature, pyrophoric,etc) win out over steel, like in 20+mm shells; you're not getting anywhere near those velocities with a ballistae. If anything, you'd get a poorly performing bolt as it's too heavy to be made long enough for the ballista.

As far as I know, the practical differences between depleted uranium and natural uranium are that depleted uranium is somewhat less radioactive, and is less expensive, being a byproduct of nuclear fuel manufacture. What differences do you see?

[Brother Oni]

As far as I know, the practical differences between depleted uranium and natural uranium are that depleted uranium is somewhat less radioactive, and is less expensive, being a byproduct of nuclear fuel manufacture. What differences do you see?

I suppose I'm being a little semantic, but DU is produced from already refined and enriched uranium, so by default has already gone through the processing and purification steps that required to make nuclear power plant grade uranium.

Prior to nuclear technology, uranium itself, as far as I can tell, was only used as a colour glaze or a substitute for molybdenum for steel alloys used in artillery barrels, because they had run out of molybdenum (mainly during WW1). I can't find any reference to them using it in metal form - either nobody had found a use for it, nobody had thought to use it or it was simply impractical, as there were better/easier/cheaper materials to refine or work with.

[Aedilred]

I don't know much about modern crossbows, but how are they for rate of fire? Historically, crossbows tended to have a tradeoff in ROF vs power, which led to a niche for longbows (and their relatives, like composite bows), as they had a much higher ROF without sacrificing power (and therefore range) to the same extent.

The main reason longbows (etc.) weren't adopted* universally was the amount of training required rather than any particular inferiority in the weapon itself. It could take years to train a decent longbowman, which compared poorly with the time taken to train a decent crossbowman.

This was also the decisive factor in the rise of gunpowder after it became possible to manufacture handguns relatively cheaply: their ROF and accurate range were terrible, but they had stopping power, and because using them required relatively little skill compared to bows of any kind, it became much quicker and cheaper to levy musketeers than archers.

But if modern crossbows can maintain a decent ROF without meaningfully sacrificing power or range, then they would definitely be the weapon to turn to in a non-gunpowder environment.


There is of course that other ranged weapon, wildly popular in antiquity but falling out of use during the Middle Ages for some reason: the sling. Probably somewhere between the two in terms of ROF/power tradeoff, requiring more skill to use effectively than a crossbow but not so much as a longbow. It might be that armour developments made them obsolete, but they still pack a punch and I would have thought they'd remain effective against all but gunpowder-proof armour. I'm not sure how you'd "upgrade" them with modern technology but there must be something.


*Or perhaps, rather, the reason longbows were supplanted during the Middle Ages by crossbows across most of their range; longbows had been around for millennia before the crossbow was invented.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

their ROF and accurate range were terrible, but they had stopping power, and because using them required relatively little skill compared to bows of any kind, it became much quicker and cheaper to levy musketeers than archers.

I understand that far more important that their RoF or their accuracy (both of which were abysmal compared to both bows and crossbows), early gunpowder weapons had amazing morale effects. It was easier to put to flight enemy troops (especially non-professional levies) with loud enough cannon fire or amassed gunpowder weapons. Thus the need to every gun in a line to be shot at the same time.

Grey Wolf

[Tvtyrant]

Lethally powerful piston air rifles were around in Napoleonic times and briefly looked like they might take center stage before rifling became cheaper and Minié balls were invented. I imagine those would be very common without gunpowder around.

The same simple level applied to crossbows would increase rates of fire, so who knows which would be better in mass combat without a few real wars to try them out? Repeating crossbows existed in China but had a weak draw strength due to being cheap wood and hand made. Something similar with modern tech would probably exist. However air guns could hold 50+ shots so while the rate of fire is more like 10 rounds a minute the output is steady for nearly an hour.

There is a device called a lever axe that doesn't get stuck in rounds, I imagine a thinner one of those to use picks against armor would probably exist.

Flamethrowers and chemical sprayers.

[Brother Oni]

I don't know much about modern crossbows, but how are they for rate of fire? Historically, crossbows tended to have a tradeoff in ROF vs power, which led to a niche for longbows (and their relatives, like composite bows), as they had a much higher ROF without sacrificing power (and therefore range) to the same extent.

A modern pulley crossbow uses the same sort of spanning procedure as a medieval stirrup crossbow; there's a loop at the front you put your foot into, then you just pull back the string. There's a speed shooting comparison on youtube which gets 10 arrows versus 6 bolts (link).

The video shows a very light draw crossbow by medieval standards (130lb draw); depending on period, a medieval military-grade crossbow started at 250lbs and often around 500lbs was the standard. Higher draw weights were possible (1250lbs is the heaviest I've seen, but there were rumours of up to 1500), but they tended to be more for siege situations where the size of the crossbow and speed of the spanning (maybe 2 - 3 shots a minute) was less of an issue.

Most modern hunting crossbows cap out at around 200lbs draw, making the span time probably about equal (maybe 5 bolts off instead of 6 as they get tired more quickly). However modern crossbows are far more efficient than medieval ones, so would give a far more powerful shot than their comparative draw weight would indicate.

You are however, shooting something that looks like this:

Spoiler: Tenpoint Vapor RS470, 225lb draw weight

Show

[Rogar Demonblud]

Due to story and thematic constraints, there aren't any electronics. However, the metallurgy and engineering tolerances are basically equivalent to today's modern earth. The wearer is basically meant to fight against monsters, giant scorpions, and other **** you see in a DnD earth.

I'm right now thinking of spears and warhammers perfectly balanced with counterweights and specialised alloys to make them rust-proof. And then the armour would be rust-resistant, with padding underneath it, and with extra thickness with the usage of foaming agents to make them filled with air so they can be thicker than normal.

Thoughts?

What do you have for a chemical industry? Even basic chemistry gives you gunpowder and Greek fire, not to mention more exotic things like tear gas and phosgene.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Lethally powerful piston air rifles were around in Napoleonic times and briefly looked like they might take center stage before rifling became cheaper and Minié balls were invented. I imagine those would be very common without gunpowder around.

Nice, thanks for saying that. Today I learned air rifles with a higher muzzle velocity than a musket were created and used by hunters and specialized military snipers as early as the late 16th century.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yup. If you remember your Sherlock Holmes stories, Col Sebastian Moran uses one to kill people (the first urban sniper story that I'm aware of).

Now, use modern precision machining on a air rifle built with current day materials science, and maybe frangible bullets...

[NotASpiderSwarm]

What do you have for a chemical industry? Even basic chemistry gives you gunpowder and Greek fire, not to mention more exotic things like tear gas and phosgene.

I was going to say, chemical warfare(and high-end chemistry in general) seems like a likely option as well. While electronics help, a lot of chemistry these days has more to do with lots of funding, easy access to refined raw materials, easily shared information between researchers, and several thousand years of iteration. You can do a lot with well-made glassware and a lot of identical rodents to test your concoctions on. I'm also picturing all the humorous compounds you could make to counter specific dragons' breath weapons.

[Tvtyrant]

Nice, thanks for saying that. Today I learned air rifles with a higher muzzle velocity than a musket were created and used by hunters and specialized military snipers as early as the late 16th century.

Austria also used them as none-lethal weapons for police in the mid-Nineteenth Century, firing large low velocity rounds. Prior to that they just shot people so it was a big step up.

@OP, there is also the much wider availability of radioactive substances to consider. Even the more common ones ground up fine and used in bombs or air dispersed will cause slow, horrific death. At one point governments didn't know about Delta Rays and thought hazmat was enough to prevent radiation poisoning, and with fallout it is mostly beta rays so ingestion is the most lethal part. Dirty bombs everywhere!

[Rogar Demonblud]

I think you mean gamma particles there. Alpha is stopped by your skin, beta soaks in a little, gamma goes right through you and the eight people behind you without slowing.

[Tvtyrant]

I think you mean gamma particles there. Alpha is stopped by your skin, beta soaks in a little, gamma goes right through you and the eight people behind you without slowing.

Yes I did. Somehow Delta Waves and Gamma Particles got swapped in my head, leading to great shame.

Also if you want a nifty read I suggest cold war post-apocalyptic survivor manuals. For instance it was expected that after 6 weeks of hiding in a bomb shelter the survivors would dig up and bury the world's top soil in 6 hour work shifts, leaving no soil for farming behind but eliminating most of the fallout.

So our faux medieval moderns have lots of weapons available.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Also if you want a nifty read I suggest cold war post-apocalyptic survivor manuals. For instance it was expected that after 6 weeks of hiding in a bomb shelter the survivors would dig up and bury the world's top soil in 6 hour work shifts, leaving no soil for farming behind but eliminating most of the fallout.

If I want to be horrible depressed, these days I can just read the news.

Grey Wolf

[Tvtyrant]

If I want to be horrible depressed, these days I can just read the news.

Grey Wolf

Spoiler: This is the news!

Show

On that note, does this hypothetical world have modern populations?

[Rogar Demonblud]

*headdesk*

Obviously, whoever wrote that has never had to move dirt.

Yes I did. Somehow Delta Waves and Gamma Particles got swapped in my head, leading to great shame.

I was wondering, because some comic book 'verses have "Delta" radiation as the source of superpowers.

[Kaptin Keen]

With a nice pressure tank, you could have fully automatic air rifles firing armor piercing flechettes coated with the nerve toxin of your choice. How much armor they would pierce I cannot even guess. Kevlar I suppose would be doable - but ceramic plating seems unlikely.

That would make infantry battles similar to today. That's maybe not the direction you want.

I feel if melee was more common in our time, we'd ... augment it. As in, there's be smoke and gas grenades, flash-bangs (those require gun powder, I know), support weapons of various kinds - flamethrowers, water cannon, caltrops, traps of various kinds. Controlling and shaping the battlefield would be as important, or more so, than is the case with rifles and so on.

It's all hypothetical, so all answers are equally good. Maybe there'd be all manner of trained beasts, dogs and bears and hyenas.

[Xuc Xac]

Due to story and thematic constraints, there aren't any electronics. However, the metallurgy and engineering tolerances are basically equivalent to today's modern earth. The wearer is basically meant to fight against monsters, giant scorpions, and other **** you see in a DnD earth.

I'm right now thinking of spears and warhammers perfectly balanced with counterweights and specialised alloys to make them rust-proof. And then the armour would be rust-resistant, with padding underneath it, and with extra thickness with the usage of foaming agents to make them filled with air so they can be thicker than normal.

Thoughts?

With modern materials and tolerances but no electronics, you can make a B-17 Flying Fortress and bomb those giant scorpions into dust. Up until about the 1960s or 1970s, "flight computers" were made of cardboard and functioned like a circular slide rule and large planes featured a window in the top so the navigator could point a sextant at the stars to verify their position.

Traditional medieval armor already had padding under it. You don't want the solid plates to be thicker than normal. You want them to be thinner and lighter. "Fluted" plate armor was originally made for the sake of fashion, but they discovered that the corrugated shape was stronger (like having a plate made of I-beams) for the same weight.

You can make much more powerful crossbows/arbalests using spring steel and modern gearing and winch mechanisms. Scorpions/ballistas can use spring steel (the classic "modern" example is making one out of truck suspension).

A truck leaf spring is a good piece of material for a crossbow prod, but if you want to use the whole spring with several leaves layered together, remember that the leaf spring is backwards compared to a crossbow. A crossbow prod is mostly straight and it resists being bent. You bend it and it shoots by straightening out again. A leaf spring wants to be curved but it straightens under a load and pushes back to a curve. A crossbow made from a truck suspension would curve forward instead of backward (unless you just take one leaf out of the spring and use that for the crossbow prod).

I don't know if it would actually work as it did in the books, but Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" (set in the far future) has a large, heavy sword which has liquid mercury running down a channel in the middle to supposedly make it easier to swing--e.g. the weight balance would tend toward the hilt as you raised the blade, then would move outward toward the end as you swung it down. Said sword is an executioner's sword rather than something designed for battle, though.

If you look at the description in the book, the shifting weight of the "mercury" doesn't make it easier to swing. It makes it easier to hold the sword up and pose dramatically for a long time. You hold the sword up and pose, the weight flows into the hilt by your hand, and your arm gets less tired than it would if the weight was at the end of the long blade. If you had a 5 foot long stick with an 8 pound weight on one end, you could hold the stick out by the heavy end for much longer than you could by the light end.

That sounds like it'd deliver a heck of a punch, but there is no way to recover from the swing with any kind of speed. Execution, yes; battle, probably not.

The sword isn't any heavier but the center of gravity moves around a lot. You could swing it and redirect it fairly easily (it's got a long lever for a handle after all), but it would feel wobbly and awkward as the tip gets heavier and lighter. I don't think it would take that long to get used to it, but it would definitely throw someone off if they picked it up to use in a fight and hadn't already used it. A professional swordsman could probably get used to it after a day of practice (although they probably wouldn't like it as their regular weapon).

I don't know much about modern crossbows, but how are they for rate of fire? Historically, crossbows tended to have a tradeoff in ROF vs power, which led to a niche for longbows (and their relatives, like composite bows), as they had a much higher ROF without sacrificing power (and therefore range) to the same extent.

If I needed a crossbow for fighting monsters but built with modern materials and technology, I would use a reverse leaf spring (so it bends like a regular crossbow) with all the pulleys and extra limbs I can fit onto it to increase the strength (like a Penobscot double bow made of steel or titanium and mounted on a crossbow stock). Add a box magazine like the Chinese repeating crossbow, but put a spring in it so it doesn't have to rely on gravity to feed it. Then mount a winch and an electric motor on it to reload it in seconds. Shoot with the trigger finger, flip a thumb toggle to activate the winch and reset the string, pull the lever (or slide a bolt to cycle the magazine) to load the next projectile, shoot again. It would be big and heavy, but you could launch sharpened tungsten rods straight through a dragon.

It would probably be easier just to use an airgun though.

If there is a reason you need to keep everything "medieval-shaped" and can't use guns and B-17 bombers, you could still do a lot of upgrades. The steel they used in late medieval armor is already almost the best we could do, but with modern tolerances and knowledge, we could do it consistently and quickly. Instead of one craftsman making a suit over many months, we could crank out high quality knightly gear in factories and have entire armies of peasants armed like dukes. We could add transparent visors with no eyeholes for full protection and full field of view at the same time. We could add a 9V battery and some little fans to the helmet to keep them aerated so they don't need to open the helmet for fresh air. If you're going up against a fire breathing dragon or something, you could use an asbestos suit under your armor like a racecar driver wears.

For weapons like swords and battle axes and whatnot, I don't think we can really do anything to improve the blades (other than make them to a consistently high quality), but we can definitely improve the handles. Just imagine what a modern sports equipment manufacturer could do with a sword hilt or battle axe handle. You could probably make some incredible spears just by retooling a golf club factory for longer, thicker shafts and bladed heads instead of blunt.

[Kaptin Keen]

If you look at the description in the book, the shifting weight of the "mercury" doesn't make it easier to swing. It makes it easier to hold the sword up and pose dramatically for a long time. You hold the sword up and pose, the weight flows into the hilt by your hand, and your arm gets less tired than it would if the weight was at the end of the long blade. If you had a 5 foot long stick with an 8 pound weight on one end, you could hold the stick out by the heavy end for much longer than you could by the light end.

I just happen to be reading it just now. Since it's very long, that's less of a coincidence than one might think. But it's a case of both being right.

Yes, when you raise Termines Est, it's light because the weight flows from the blade to the hilt.

But when you swing it, it's heavy, because the weight flows to the tip of the sword, making it hit ... quite hard.

It .. sounds reasonable enough, but whether it would work in real life I have no idea. But then on the other hand, Baldanders has a lightning mace, and 'breathing water is nothing to him.'

So real life science isn't key =)

[Xuc Xac]

I just happen to be reading it just now. Since it's very long, that's less of a coincidence than one might think. But it's a case of both being right.

Yes, when you raise Termines Est, it's light because the weight flows from the blade to the hilt.

But when you swing it, it's heavy, because the weight flows to the tip of the sword, making it hit ... quite hard.

It doesn't hit any harder than it would if the weight were always at the tip. The act of shifting the weight to the tip doesn't make the weight any heavier. You still have to swing it just as hard and you actually lose a little energy because you waste some moving the weight along the blade instead of just moving it towards the target. There's no free energy there.

It takes less effort to hold the sword dramatically over your head before you decapitate someone with it. It still takes just as much effort to swing it and it hits with the same force.

[factotum]

I disagree there. Moving the weight from the hilt toward the tip changes the moment of inertia of the blade, which is relevant when you're swinging it in a circular arc. There's a reason they generally build flywheels with as much mass as possible toward the outside of the wheel, after all--it makes for a higher moment of inertia and thus more kinetic energy stored when the wheel is rotating at a fixed speed.