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The sword I'm talking about is about 7 human heads tall.
In the lore the sword is magical or at least thought to be magical. It is swung around by a creature capable of going invisible, which gives the impression of the sword flying around as if it was possessed by a ghost.

The sword does still have "something magical" to it. The pommel (the round appendix at the end of the handle) is actually a metallic golem's heart/stomach that connects to the "core" of the blade. When the blade strikes something, the heart/stomach is able to absorb minerals and repair the wear and tear of the blade.
It can also protect the user by covering his skin with hard mineral scales that can be detached after a while without much pain or trouble, although they do leave severe scars.

visual representation of the sword from different angles in Blender

The blade is already humongous by itself and thus really heavy, both due to the sheer amount of material and the leverages, but it also makes the user heavier by covering their skin in scales.

It is supposed to be a slow weapon in my game, mostly for "berserk/suicidal tank" kind of play-styles, or for players who just want to smash things down without thinking much about their safety. In the game, one basically gains "defense points" by striking things with this sword. Defense points reduce the damage the player receives from external factors.

Given those "magical" properties, would the blade be useless and unusable due to its sheer weight, or can I somehow make it usable?

I tried playing with a big tree trunk as if it was a sword, very heavy and very hard to grip but only due to the shape of the tree, it was mostly like swinging around a mace rather than a sword though. Seemed very impractical from my experiment, yet the blade is made of more dense materials thus probably heavier than the tree trunk.

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A good answer should apply the in-game sword's "magic" to real life, handwaving away the magic and only thinking about the practical usability of the sword.

The scales form instantly, so ignore the physics of how fast they are created, given that they probably would explode or something like that if they were made at that speed.

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  • $\begingroup$ Small remark on the sideline.. what period in history is your story/scenario set in ? Your picture (mesh work?) shows two swords: on the left is a Roman sword and the right one is bronze age, or Roman sword. Both were much smaller swords. Presenting a giant sword with a handle like that would be out of place (anachronism), A cross-shaped guard would be more appropriate (medieval) $\endgroup$
    – Goodies
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 21:26
  • $\begingroup$ @Goodies it's one single sword viewed from different angles in orthogonal view (no perspective) I thought about a guard for the sword but it doesn't flow with the plastayle of a mindless berserk/tank that doesn't care about their safety. Different populations have different levels of technology in my world, plus there are interdimensional traverlers. In this world technology evolved in a different manner so it's anyway NOT convergent and NOT comparable to earth $\endgroup$
    – Drien RPG
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 21:47
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    $\begingroup$ Ok, I wish you success selling your game to the alien kids.. it was just a remark about the shape of it. $\endgroup$
    – Goodies
    Commented Feb 7, 2022 at 7:15
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    $\begingroup$ To me, the bigger problem is - What do you do with the sword when you're not decapitating monsters in dungeons? Just walking around with that thing strapped to your back is going to be a real hassle. It certainly won't fit in a hip sheath, and a back-sheath big enough for that size blade is impractical, so the blade will just be exposed, leading to accidental injuries when you walk in a crowd, it'll drag on the ground, bump into doorframes when you go to taverns to spend your loot, you might even trip over it while running. Unless you've got Bag of Holding technology, it's a bit unwieldy. $\endgroup$
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Feb 7, 2022 at 14:05

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A 7 foot sword is ok. Claymores could be that long. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Claymore

But your sword is not as heavy as the claymore.
Because your sword is made of glass.

Steel mass: 8 g/cc Glass mass: 2.7 g/cc

Let us assume a big claymore is 4 kg. The glass sword would be 1.35 kg.

A glass sword would usually break. This is where the golem comes in. It repairs the fractures as they propagate and so the sword stays whole. Also the mineral scales on the user are made of glass. The golem can maintain those too while the sword is in the user's hand.

The glass sword is translucent. If the light is right, you can see the golem in there. Only its heart is in our dimension; the rest is in an extradimensional space. If you hang the sword point down by a string so your hand does not dampen the vibrations, you can hear the golem speaking and you can talk to it. Mostly it likes to hear jokes. It is a hard working golem so do tell it some jokes from time to time, as a morale booster.

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    $\begingroup$ Try a top end of 3kg also Claymores weren't that big more like 4-5 feet, for a 7 foot sword you need to look at the Zweihänder and there you do have a 4kg sword. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented Feb 7, 2022 at 1:21
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As said, 7-foot long sword is not out of the realm of practical. The swords of similar length were comparatively popular in Renaissance - not only Scottish claymore, but also German zweihander, Spanish montante and Italian spadone are of the same type (similar swords existed in China and Japan in different periods, but I know less about them).

Modern HEMA practitioners reconstruct their usage as slightly different then that of usual longswords - using the inertia of the weapon to keep it in swing. The length of such a sword allows a person to keep multiple opponents at bay, unable to attack.

https://youtu.be/OtT3sjO0ocU - a solo drill with spadone, showing that a trained person can keep swinging it quite fast. https://youtu.be/s3aAqlzn3PQ - a training bout of a guy with montante against two longswordsmen. As you can see, he capitalizes on superior reach for both offence and defence.

So, the idea of using a very long sword to fight multiple opponents is quite realistic, historically accurate and perfectly fits your 'berserker tank' idea.

Now, the thickness of your sword is excessive. If it were made of steel, it would be much heavier then Renaissance swords. But there are two solutions here - either, as Willk says, it is made of some less dense material then steel, or it is just the artistic license of your game, and all swords are similarly too thick and wide. Not all artistic styles keep all proportions realistic so the time.

PS: it is important to remember that for the Medieval and Renaissance periods HEMA deals mostly with civilian usage of the weapons. So those wide sweeping cuts are supposed to keep unarmored or lightly armored opponents scared. If the you were to fight a fully armored opponent, your would rather use the sword as something similar to the pollax (or quarterstaff). Half-swording, less distance, less cuts, more trusts and plays for leverage and disarming.

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    $\begingroup$ thanks for the video and the half swording info, handy for animation. $\endgroup$
    – Drien RPG
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 17:10
  • $\begingroup$ Of course, since this sword absorbs minerals to repair itself, you probably could swing it at an armored opponent like you would an unarmored one - and freak them out even more! $\endgroup$
    – No Name
    Commented Feb 7, 2022 at 23:07
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The scales that envelope the wielder function as an exoskeleton.

Besides protecting the wielder, the scaly growth also enhances the ability to lift and sling the sword.
This seems to work through means of interlocking scales that are able to anticipate the movements of the wielder, but how exactly this functions is difficult to decipher. What can be discerned are faint illuminations that run through the channels between the load-bearing scales.

It has been rumoured that the golem is able to partially manifest in the space the wielder occupies, and this could explain the scaly armour (which forms a barrier between our physical realm and the 'manifestation' of the golem), the scar tissue (an affection caused by this constantly materialized barrier), and the supernatural strength.

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I see no issue here.

I feel like you answered your own question; the sword is heavy, so requires an inordinately strong wielder, or since you're making it for a game, high STR level; but if you are able/willing to wield it despite its clunk, it gives you bonus magical effects that make up for the disadvantage compared to a normal greatsword.

For connntext here's a video of a guy one-handing a historically accurate two-handed sword: Can the two-handed greatsword (spadone/montante/zweihander) be used one handed? Those things are about as beefy as swords got, excluding ceremonial/decorative/etc. that weren't meant to be used in combat anyway. Granted, this is a highly experienced martial artist who specializes in swords and the like, but he is quite able to use it, and he says in the video that it's a noticeable bit heavier than most swords of that size would have been.

And for further context: michaelcthulhu <--This channel is all about absurdly oversized swords, most of which are too heavy to feasibly wield, as can generally be seen at the end of the build videos. Yours looks like what he would call a "tiny little dinky sword" which is just on the edge of usability.

I would guess that your sword, wielded by a competent swordsman, would look not too dissimilar from the use of a real historic greatsword, just a bit slower. Maybe it'd be like the way greatswords swing in Dark Souls, if the wielder is strong enough but not very skilled, or the way the weapon class of that name is used in Monster Hunter.

Although it does look chunkier than a historic greatsword, I don't think it would be unusably heavy as you're implying, it's not a buster sword.

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