I personally prefer calling any live combat game “live combat” or “larp-safe combat” over boffer combat. Boffer weapons conjure images of foam lagging around a piece of pvc pipe, which is what a boffer weapon is.
That being said, live combat larp is often referred to as boffer combat simply because that helps seperate it from “live steel combat” or “SCA live combat” because boffer combat has simply been around a long time.
I have often described the popular foam/latex weapons as simply larp-safe weapons. And I describe larp-safe combat as live fighting with moulded foam rubber swords. Without a little bit of explanation I guess this sounds a little childish and the reality is, larp-safe combat is not really that much different from what we did as kids, except that we had better imaginations back then (but know more weird shit now).
As to skill levels, larp safe combat is where OOC and IC merge. Skilled and trained fighters like Derek often have the upper hand in these situations. You can balance this out with HP to some extent. If you have more HP than your opponent, you’re simply more likely to survive. To some extent this can also be balanced out with roleplaying but despite best intentions we rarely fight below our actually ability. Furthermore Larp safe weapons are not like real ones, they’re light and often easily used.
Long weapons vs. short weapons - fighting with a short weapon vs. a long weapon will always favour the long weapon. Certainly some people are good enough that this is a minor handicap but its certainly useful for seperating “IC” skills (for instance a mage is more likely to have a short weapon in a larp because magic skills often mean there is little room for weapon skills) and this encourages more dramatic combat (in theory at least).
Shields - a shield is a great equaliser, favouring those who have one.
Weapon speed - there have been a few games that have used slow motion fighting (50-75% speed) to give less skilled players a chance. Teonn used a ploy of reducing blows to 1 second intervals to discourage machine gunning or drum rolling (larp safe weapons are light and can be used to tap-tap-tap which is unrealistic).
Weapon damage - most current systems have different levels of damage dealt. Normally this is 1 damage per hit, with rules for 2 handed weapons or exceptionally strong characters doing 2 or 3 damage per hit (with an associated call). Some overseas systems have damage levels from 1-8 damage per strike.
The reality is however most people struggle with counting 1 hit each time they’re hit.
None of these are perfect but unless you want lots of rules to dictate the skill at which you wield a weapon then thats what you put up with (and simpler is always better). If you want OOC weapon skills in a game, then you are best using a symbolic combat system and forgetting about actually using weapons.
