What medieval weapons would skeletons really use? FANTASY RE-ARMED 

I would go with a more tank-y build, since you used a 100kg man as an example I will too, as you said a 15kg skeleton with the strength of a 100kg man would be very mobile but add 85kg of armour and you have merely reduced his mobility back to what it would've been if he had flesh... except his flesh is armour. now since skeletons don't get tired he can tire out his opponents (or starve them if it really comes down to it) and with all the armour he will be fairly protected from damage. now for the weapon, a war hammer is going to be used because it can do lots of damage in a short amount of time

The scariest thing about skeletons is their ability to hide inside ordinary human beings, think about it, you mom, your dad, even your best friend, might have a skeleton inside them.

A skeleton warrior rushes to its skeleton commander. "There's a group of adventurers entering the crypt!" The commander replies "Do they have any paladins?" "No" "Then we're fine" "No its worse!" The warrior insists frantically, "they've got dogs!" "Well...were boned" laments the commander

Says bows are good for skeletons, Minecraft players: “don’t let go of your shield!”

I just love the idea of having wandered into a dungeon and being met with a dozen of skeletons screeching "En'garde" with their rapiers up

I just realised something. Inside Shad is a skeleton, talking about skeleton fighting

If a skeletons run out of weapons it can always re-arm itself with the other arm. *rips off own arm and clubs with it*

But Shad, what about DRAGON SKELETONS???

"The skeleton could feel really confident" I love this series

A lot of comments are talking about how a skeleton could wear a shitton of armour since they don't have to lug around all the fleshy bits humans have, but why not take the concept further? The way skeletons are being imagined here sound essentially like a magically powered animatronic chassis. There are no moving parts, complex structures or power sources required to move the bones, and the only logical way to damage them would be to break the bones themselves. So forget wearing armor- you could cast steel directly around the skeletons' bones to make invincible humanoid war machines, or a particularly evil necromancer might even build skeletons directly into the mechanics of a siege engine to act as an immortal, tireless equivalents to a hamsters on a treadmill. The possibilities are honestly endless, yet these guys always end up as derpy canon fodder in fantasy media.

Shad doesn’t want to make skeleton jokes :( And here I thought he was a humerous person

"Skeletons with leather straps"... wouldn't that just be a slightly more expensive mummy?

I generally assumed it was "whatever they died and/or were buried with" as that's usually how it's done in some works.

Malitia: "Dear God, how am I to defeat this monster!?!?" Skeleton soldier: "Ihopehedoesn'thaveahammer..."

I had never considered the speed element. It's just one of those assumptions that never gets looked at. Another thing this this leads to... fast movement + good jumping + lack of muscle fatigue + low weight would make climbing along walls, or possibly even ceilings really, really viable. Give them a set of ninja style climbing claws and suddenly you have to be vary wary of verticality when fighting them as they may not be simply rushing you along the ground.

Assuming there's enough of them, I'd say pikes. A fearless pike formation that is impervious to arrows and other pike formations, that would be a near impossible thing to defeat.

To my knowledge the best weapon for a skeleton to use is a large spiked wagon wheel.

I imagine most of them are already pretty good at bare-knuckle fighting.

You know what would help a skeleton protect itself from blunt weapons? A glorious gambeson.

Shad: They're intelligent. They're able to speak. "The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent."

Only a year behind. Its not if the skeletons are smart enough to pick out weapons and armor. Its what the discerning necromancer chooses to protect his bony automatons.

2:46 Don't worry Shad, I won't make any puns like some bonehead. I don't have the guts for it.

"Skeletons' lack of muscle fatigue would make them pretty good archers..." Is there _any_ fantasy race that wouldn't do well with a bow?

It's funny as soon as you said they'd be faster and lighter, I thought "well than they should use a rapier" and then you named axes and stuff and I was like "nahhh rapier man" but then you brought it up and I was happy.

My Maximum Skeleton Survival Build™ (assuming you need to rip apart their joints or break their bones in two): >Use cords to bind the joints together for support >Wrap all the bones in cloth, treated to survive the elements. Basically mummy-style. >Use full plate armour, including a thick gambeson and chain. Preferably treated against the elements, and possibly made fire resistant too. Go extra thick on the armour. >Kite shield for 100% shieldy goodness. >Spear as primary weapon, rapier as backup. Maybe even carry a bow and arrows. >Top off the build with a doot doot. All skeletons need a doot doot.

From my experience with roleplaying games, the most effective weapon you can give a skeleton in a medieval fantasy setting is the gun. No one expects the skeletal wizard to pull out a 1911.

*skelly draws bow* *bow string slips between joints in their fingers* *arrow shoots inacuretly* *skelly bro is sad*

If skeletons are moving with the help of magic, wouldn't it be more advantageous for the dark wizard who's created the skeletons to just make weapons fly instead? I mean, a typical skeleton has hundreds of bones. Imagine that instead of cooperating the movement of a hundred bones, you would cooperate the movement of a hundred daggers!

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU ARE WATCHING THIS VIDEO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE BUT YOU IS SLEEPING, AND SHAD SHOUTS D R A G O N S

THIS is why I sub to this channel. Not afraid to ask the really important questions!

Welcome to the *_B O N E Z O N E_*

Maybe we don't see a lot of inteligent skeleton because the smarter ones just become mummies to better hold their body together.

considering that skeletons are held together with magic (either from a castor or their own soul, which may affect their intelligence), it could be assumed that skeletons would make for very effective mages. typically the most powerful magics are shown to have devastating side effects on the persons health, but a skeleton doesn't have to worry about that. in fact it is usually the skeletal Lich who is depicted as the most intelligent and powerful spellcaster, because they shed their limitations of the flesh and have full control over their actions because their own soul is what powers them.

It's not proportional strength so they actually could wear armor weighing 80 kilos as that would be roughly the weight of the flesh that has been removed and so they would move almost as if they were a normal human with no armor

I like the way they portrayed the skeleton Brook in the anime one piece. They took into account the fact that he would have been faster and lighter by giving him much higher movement and attack speed and jump height. And for his weapon he has a very light cane sword and very fast fencing/dueling attack style.

When it comes to applications with skeletons, one of my more favorite examples would be used in one of the novels I read which was to send skeleton armies underwater to suddenly overwhelm cities near oceans and other bodies of water

Best weapon for skeleton would be a giant spikey wheel

I just found the perfect weapon against skeletons! WATER BOTTLES!!!!!! Because water bottles are for sophisticatedghagdadfifa people, and skeletons aren't sophisticated at all, they fight naked!

In this one fantasy story/series I'm working on, one of the characters I have is an animated skeleton called Skelly, who works as a city guard. His background is that he was a barbarian warrior who fought a necromancer, who, with their dying breath, cursed the barbarian into becoming an animated skeleton. Of course, after this, no one wanted him in their village - the other undead get more respect - and after a hundred years of wandering, he'd forgotten his own name, which is very sad. One day, he smuggles himself into a city, in a wagon filled with other skeletons destined for the wizards/apothecaries, and wanders the streets, where he ends up assisting in the capture of an Unlicensed Thief (basically, if you are part of the Guild and have a license, you're free to steal within reason, but if not, don't get caught by an Official Thief as they will break your bones), and thus comes to the attention of the Commander, who has the habit of looking past one's race, and basically gave him a job, and a name. Granted, the job isn't glamorous, because he's among the first ones sent to see just how upset a crowd is, depending upon if he comes back with arrows stuck in his armor in normally fatal areas, and is the training dummy the new recruits end up finding out from that real people fight back in a fight. It tends to poke fun at the usual stereotypes.

I really liked the 'physics' of skeletons in Dark Souls, where they were some of the most lightweight and athletic enemies (especially in Dark Souls 3), leaping all over the place and doing very acrobatic maneuvers with their lightweight frames, but the impact of a heavy weapon would cause their bones to scatter and leave them vulnerable while the magic keeping them animated took a moment to put them back together, and they fought with fittingly lightweight, dexterous weapons - shamshirs, falchions, sabers, and shotels (and bows). So not exactly a rapier, but the same general train of thought as to their agile fighting style.

They could wear a very thick gambison. They wouldn't be affected by heat and it would protect them from blunt damage. Their low weight is a disadvantage for close range combat, so they would need a weapon that is light and give them some range why they exhaust their opponent. A rapier is a good idea, but I think that a spear and shield might be better.

I just realized something during the discussion, Skeletons wouldn't be able to wear plate armor. Plate armor is resting on your flash and muscles, not your bones, and even at places where it is interacting with your skeletal structure it's either straps, like over your collar bone, or heavily padded, like over the hips. Skeleton would be just rattling inside of it, it wouldn't be able to move properly. It would be able to wear mail Armour, but even that would be probably sagging to it's knees, impairing it's movement. Greaves, pauldrons and gauntlets are simply out of the question as is knee and elbow protection, all those things are made to fit your muscles.

Fast skeletons? *Dark Souls Carthus Catacombs flashbacks*

*looks down at himself* "There's a lot missing."

+Shadiversity 1. Coat bones in metal, wolverine stile, or metal plates; e.g. bronze, brass, copper, maybe even steel, etc. 2. Use something to stabilise joints and spine with something: several leather strips, cordage, wire, etc. 3. Wear tight-fit gambeson (lots of flexible fabric, bound like tatami, to simulate flesh and bolster bones from heavy hits) covering the whole body. 4. equally tight fitted metal armour over that, e.g. chainmail or plate. 5. Fill the skeletons rib-cage with with straw or cloth-scraps to further lessen heavy blows, or find another way to do that.

Because skeletons are so light and nimble the could be really stealthy. A short sword, small sword or dagger would enable them to sneak up on a foe more easily than with a pole arm. They'd be able to hide in small spaces and wait in ambush. No peeing or eating required!

Mr. Burns has the perfect solution for defeating skeletons. “Release the hounds.”

I remember during one D&D session - Dwarf Druid grabbed one skeleton, and swung it against another, shattering them.

Any time Shad gets quiet the first thing I do is minimize my volume levels.

BUT WHAT ABOUT SKELETON DRAGONS?

My skeleton dnd character actually uses this logic behind how he’s so agile as an assassin, and why he can take so much damage (apart from the titanium armor of the Bearer of The Curse) from swords, and why he uses a katana (half katana) and he’s a ranger because his dried bones can not be pierced

Skeletons best for rouge or other stealth character Writer/game designer: yeah lets give him an axe and a shield

You know how in Dark Souls the skeletons fall apart when you hit them and then come back together moments later? I wonder if this could be used to absorb blows. So whenever a skeleton actually does get hit it loses all rigidity and behaves like a bunch of hanging stones. I mean, without anything to connect or stabilize them, their bones are just floating in the air through magic anyway right? Maybe fighting a skeleton could be a little like fighting a puppet where each limb is independent of the rest of the body. You could "shatter" an arm into all of its skeletal components only to have it reform from the broken pieces while the other runs you through. Just a thought.

"They always are portrayed as fast and mobile as humans" I have scars of the Catacombs and Nito's lounge, and a friend with a violin and an afro who would like to disagree! Joking aside, skeletons are some of my favourite monsters in fantasy. There is something about these phyiscal incarnations of both death and defying nature being kind of silly looking while still being intimidating and relentless killing machines. A particular setting I was working on had some heavy focus on the undead, and its core concept was that skeletons that were reanimated had their memories during life kept in their bones, and as they grew older and the bones got damaged, they would become more feral and insane. Add to it some necromancers feeling it would be funny to mix and match bones between corpses to create interesting looking abominations of calcium, mixing their minds with one another and forcing them into this constant existential crisis, if not outright madness. That way the usually boring first line redshirts of an undead army suddenly become a pretty fascinating fantasy "species"

"HA HA! YOU CAN'T KNOCK ME APART BECAUSE I'M A SKELETON WITH ROPE AROUND MY BONES!!!" -Shad, 2018

He briefly mentioned zombies at the beginning of the video, so I wanted to kind of put forth the logic I use in my fantasy setting. In my setting, zombie do rarely occasionally have weapons. However, it is quite literally whatever object rigor mortis locked their fingers around when they died. Usually I make these sticks and rocks, and the occasional rusty broken weapon or tool, which they don't wield with any amount of skill beyond just flailing their arms. Their brain function is so basic, they don't even know they're holding something. It's just stuck on their hand

You've trained me well. I turned the volume on the intro down this time.

I'm gonna go out on a "limb" here but I'm thinking the best weapon against them might be a dog.

1:32 "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." Qui-Gonn Jinn

"Alright, because I'm lazy" - 4:15 I'd salute you, but I'm also lazy.

To anyone making any skeleton jokes, I'm warning you. A single joke and I'll have a bone to pick with you, and I don't care how humerous it was.

Skeletons always have a bone to pick with someone.

Aim for the joints! They're a severe weak point! Especially since there's no cartilage to hold the bones together. Edit: I meant if you had a sword. If you have a hammer or mace, do as Shad says.

They're pretty lethal if they have a wheel attached to them.

Always great! Now I kind of want to use a disguised skeleton for a formal duel. His opponent stabs him "Aha!" The skeleton is unphased and stabs him back.

You raise some great and valid points but I think you're missing the obvious, true skeletal choice of weaponry: The Russian RPG-7. A dinky old warhammer or mace would stand no chance against a glorious pale-boned skeletal warrior with an RPG-7. You can't deny it: It's cheap and effective, one of the best anti-armor and even anti-tank kits you could use. And with Skeletons not having muscle fatigue, what's stopping them from carrying several RPG-7s, loaded and ready to blast into the general direction of a would-be hero or even British Army observation post, if your campaign happens to be set in Northern Ireland.

For some reason I've always thought skeletons were more threatening than zombies despite having considerably less muscle matter than zombies. I suppose it may be because skeletons are definitely reanimated by magic, whereas zombies could be reanimated by any number of means (and are always stupid)

Depending on the setting, if a skeleton utilizes magic / mana to move and hold together, then they could potentially get tired just like living humans. Mana is just a type of energy, and most stories state that mana depletion makes you progressively more tired. Since they don't have any physical energy, as they are skeletons, you could say that moving uses mana, wielding heavier armor and equipment could use more mana than using lighter equipment, moving faster could use more mana, etc. At that point, anything could be wielded by a skeleton, but it would be more dependent on their mana reserve, and they could easily be taken down if you stall them long enough.

If I was a skeleton and a blacksmith, I'd reinforce myself with thin steel joints and supports on the major areas, then cover myself in padding.

I've always liked the idea that a raised skeleton isn't even aware that they're dead, so they perceive their flesh as intact. Imagine how terrifying that would be: you're a skeleton that thinks it's still alive, but you're really light and easy to kick around. You'd think these adventurers had the strength of 100 men!

Shad: “I can’t think of any skeletons that talk” Me: “Skeletor or SKELETON WARRIORS!”

I love that you made a 17 min video on what weapons and armor magical fighting skeletons would use.

Only THIS channel can upload a 17 minute video about what sort of weapons Skeleton's should use and it be completely normal.

I enjoyed this video. You “humored” my imagination, but I’ve got a bone to pick with the lack of puns.

No one Shad: what medieval weapons would skeletons use? Me: curious af

Undead yes! Unhuman no! I hope someone gets it...

One other the existential threats an intelligent skeleton would worry about (depending on the magic) is that they might not heal. Every nick of damage from weapons of weather would eventually wear them down to dust. If they wanted to last longer they might try to cover themselves in clothing or glazes. Imagine how tough a skeleton would be if they coated their bones in steel, that would be pretty awesome if they could survive the process.

The katana did not snap because the bone was so hard! The noble spirit of the katana just felt the cow had already suffered enough and broke itself instead of mutilating the leg.

Based on this video, for 5e D&D, I would make these changes to the regular Skeleton: - Change hit points to 26 (4d8+8) - Add 2 to Armour Class (Natural) - Add damage Resistance: slashing, piercing - Movement +15ft - increase damage to 1d8 for a rapier and a longbow - (Optional) When hit by bludgeoning attack for 5 or more points, they are pushed back 5 ft. - increase CR to 1 (200xp)

A video about skeletons involving a random tangent about drinking water from a bottle. I can't even put a joke to that. Pure Shad.

Seeing how this is fantasy, I'd just enchant my sword with the magical power of osteoporosis.

one of the main things to consider would probably be who's arming them. They're receiving magic from somewhere and are probably being deliberately maintained for some purpose. Also in most of the media i've seen they actually seem to be a bit feebler than usual humans, but i guess that would be a bit relative to how much power they're being fed, maybe you can adjust their strength depending on how much magic you wanna expend? Maybe as some are killed the remaining ones get stronger as magic is freed up? Also he mentioned skellys underwater at one point, which raises the interesting idea of unconventional tactics and ambushes only they could pull off.

3:50 And that's what happens when a skeleton picks up a sword on Minecraft, a true nightmare

"Skeletal archers would work quite well" Ah, I see that you have heard the tale of minecraft.

I think a discussion like this requires a much more in-depth analysis. Since animated skeletons are the result of a necromantic spell, the magical strength to animate the skeleton and provide it its own strength would vary greatly depending on the skill and innate magical power of the necromancer who raised it. So in terms of their weight, we COULD treat the magical animation as a replacement for tendons, muscles, etc all depending on the power of the spellcaster. A novice necromancer would not be able to raise a skeleton with as much physical strength as a master necromancer. Therefore the weight of the weapon being a percentage of their own bone-weight seems to me at least to be highly variable. But... just going off the "comparable strength of a ____" In that regard, I think that the best kind of weapon used would depend on what kind of skeleton it is. (Human, Dwarf, Snakeman, etc)

I can confirm the living bone being much easier to cut thought than dry bone, I have cut both with a cleaver (worked for a butcher) and holy crap wet bone is much easier to cut. Edit( thought it depends because some dry bone is easier to cut it just depends on bleaching method used and how old/worn are we talking)

at 1:42 i thought you were gonna say undertale

Something pretty cool in dark souls is that you can make skeletons fall apart from the sheer force of an impact. A heavy attack, usually with a big, heavy weapon will make them simply fall apart, which is both very funny and a cool little detail.

A skeletons worst enemy is a hungry dog.

You forgot the most overpowered combination for a skeleton. A violin, an afro and a sad backstory. This will crush everyones heart. And good thing Brook does have a rapierlike weapon. The guard isn't neccisarry anyway.

Now, it would be interesting if the skeletons disguised themselves as humans. Like, full plate armor and a helmet that completely covered their head, and just when you thought they were an ordinary human just going about their business, they suddenly start sprinting at you with crazy skeleton speed and attacking you.

"skeletons are what you get when you start with a fully functional human, and you start taking things away." :P

All bones? Just a flesh wound.

One of my favorite series on RU-vid! Please add spider-people as next one to be RE-ARMED!

Given the reduced weight and increased stamina. I would think skeletons could use an aggressive fighting style with a lot of strikes (swings, stabs and feints). Concerning defense skeletons would probably rely on footwork and speed to time the strikes of blunt weapons as thier primary defense.

I'm just imagining super speedy hordes of skeletons sprinting at you with daggers like world war z zombies. They could be modified with blades implanted in the bone and such.

Now I know how to equip my armies as a necromancer. Thanks!

What about a skeleton wearing a gambeson? It's like it has flesh but that flesh is armor!

“It’s very odd,me talking this quietly.not used to it...DRAGONS!”

Great stuff. I finally had to break down and order a shirt. Thanks for the videos keep em coming.