Bludgeon Blade

Some blades, to be frank, suck at the "blade" part, often working much better as a blunt weapon for one reason or another. Sometimes this is by design, but sometimes, this is just Epic Fail on the part of those who made the blade for stabbing or slashing.

For blades that work better as projectiles, see Throwing Your Sword Always Works. For ridiculously large blades that may make better bludgeons due to their sheer size/mass, see BFS.

Examples of Bludgeon Blade include:

Anime and Manga

• The "sword" Kenshi creates for himself late in Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar by compressing an entire mountain into a superdense rod a hundred or so feet long; only the Anti Gravity device that also serves as its guard makes it usable, even by his Humongous Mecha. Despite being universally described as a "sword", it obviously has no edges or point -- until the last episode.

Literature

• In Starlight and Shadows Forgotten Realms trilogy, Fyodor carries a sword which is not sharp at all and so big he has a problem swinging it, even though he's an apprentice smith and looks accordingly. He can use it esily in berserk rage, however. Later he explained that a blunt sword is given to any berserker who lost control, so that he won't easily cut his friends or himself while raging (which would be a big disgrace), and then this warrior gets to lead the way into battle, so that there aren't any friendlies before him in the first place. Which is to say, it's a honorable death sentence, if in a more useful (and satisfying) way than plain seppuku would be. Of course, Fyodor is also sent on an important quest, so his sword got an enchantment that's strong enough to chop golems, but ignores his compatriots - thus it's made more useful without breaking the custom.

Video Games

• In Gothic 3, the orc blades are so crude they are swung more like clubs than blades, especially by human characters.
• Guan Ping wields an over-sized broad sword in Dynasty Warriors. Thing is, though, is that it often does more blunt force trauma damage according to the animations than it does by bladed damage.
  • Xu Huang's Great Axe gets more bludgeon like as the series has progressed, with the blade being used more as a hook to catch the enemy on as he pounds thems to death.
  • Cao Ren's buckler shield has some bladed attachments, but these are supplements to his main attacks, which involve shield bashes and football style charges.
  • Lu Bu wields a halberd most of the time, and at least half his attacks with it involve him using it more like a mace/staff than as a blade, especially in DW8.
• Cloud Strife's Hardedge blade from Final Fantasy VII looks more like an abbreviated girder with a hilt than any type of blade, and even though it makes a cutting noise in-game, in reality, you'd be better off using it to club your enemy to death.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, while some weapons are bladed, their animation tends to look far more like a blunt weapon. Claymores typically are swung like a baseball bat with a hilt and long swords have an overhead bashing animation that can induce a knockdown effect like a club would. Granted, blood effects like a slash attack do occur, but every attack has this as a default damage animation.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, axes are grouped under maces as blunt weapons, as according to an in game manual, the battle drill and technique are considered nigh identical, despite axes having a blade. In fact, with the exception of one kill animation^[1], most hits with axes use the exact same motion and impact as maces.
  • Strong attacks with claymores are more like clubbing attacks than slashes.
• Adray's sword in Star Ocean 3 never leaves the hilt, as the attack animation has Adray use the hilt and scabbard to attack, but never the blade itself. Either that's just how he fights, or the blade is too dull for slashing/stabbing. In any event, the blade is only used as a bludgeon.
• Poo's Sword of Kings in EarthBound never seems to be used for slashing/stabbing, it's either just there to give him an attack boost like an accessory, or he just uses the flat parts to attack with.
• Dwarf Fortress has training weapons - these are made of wood and have great contact areas (i.e. are extra-blunt), which allows sparring without serious accidents (at least, if the participants wear armor).
• The Bumper Sword in Fallout: New Vegas is literally a car bumper with a hilt in rough sword like shape, and still hits more like a club than a blade.
• Kingdom of Loathing has the skill Iron Palm Technique which allows a character to treat swords as clubs. This is beneficial because it allows the player to use certain useful skills that only work with an equipped club. There are no such skills for swords, making clubs the objectively superior category. Every sword in the game is better if it is treated as a club.

Real Life

• Can happen to any bladed weapon if you let it get dull enough.
• In medieval times, any sword was effectively this if used against an opponent wearing plate armor. In fact, most sword users practiced a technique call 'half-swording", which meant the sword was aimed at points between the plates or in-between the jointed sections of the plate. Attacks directly on the plate turned even the sharpest sword into a pathetically ineffective club.
  • This trope was intentionally invoked in medieval tourneys, where blades were blunted on purpose, as the point was show how kickass you could be in a real fight, not actually to kill the opponent.
• Halberds were basically designed more for dismounting riders from horses, using the blade as a hook, and as a polearm with a blade on the end for utility purposes. The blade did see use at times, but it was mainly a blunt weapon with long reach, with the blade used to compliment it's other attributes.
• Butter knives and any knife made out of extremely dull materials to begin with generally make poor weapons overall and qualify as this trope by default. Knives made of stone or ceramic can avert this, as it is possible to give them very sharp edges, but this would especially apply to knives made of soft plastic or safety scissors, which are blunted by design.
• Most axes used in combat were partial aversions of this trope. While the geometry of axeheads generally makes it a bad idea to make the weapon slashing specific, it did have some utility when cutting off limbs at the joints. However, many axes used in combat were meant to also be used to shatter armor, with the bladed end being used to focus the attack against weak spots on the enemy armor.
• Any shield with bladed attachments is mostly used as a defensive bashing weapon, with the bladed parts merely used to increase the damage done to lightly armored opponents.

1. ↑ and that's aimed at the neck, which even a fairly strong blunt weapon could deal fatal damage to IRL