As a registered equity holder for specialist extra work i've done an awful lot of sword fighting and so it is with some authority I can say that the plausability of a weapon is not based on the cosmetic.
So the weapons above that are useable? Well potentially all of them.
When wielding a sword the single most important aspect as to the useability of the sword is it's point of balance. A good sword is typically balanced a hand a half down the blade from the guard or 7-8 fingers.
Personaly my own sword is 8-9 fingers, it is (and the swear word here is unavoidable because that is what it is) a replica bastard sword of a Viking find from about 900AD and I name it 'Valkyre Kreis' - or 'Kiss of the Valkarie'. It has many dents despite being made of EM45 Steel.
The extra length on the balance makes a suprising change in the swords performance. It is far slower to wield than a sword which is balanced nearer the hilt - however it's extra range more than compensates for this.
Although the sword is a bastard sword (hand-and-a-half - meaning it is for either 1 or 2 handed use) I find it most effective when being wielded 1 handed, this again is because of the point of balance - any further down the blade and I would have no choice but to use both hands.
So what determines the point of balance?
Well that's simple really. The weight of the blade when compared to the weight of the handle. So without knowing the materials and mass that each of the samples swords are made of, there is no way of knowing if these swords are really wieldeable.
What does this mean for RPG games?
All weapons are plausable. You might need a black hole in the handle to wield some of them, but theoretically anything can be a highly effective melee weapon if it is correctly balanced and the right weight for the wielder.
Pneumatic Dryll, Outrageous epic cleric of EQ/Xev
God made the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
