I am a fighter. I have 100 in every stat but Intelligence (duh) and I'm not overloaded and am at full stamina. And yet, I cannot beat the danged Weapon Master for anything. I've tried everything I can think of. Dodging. Not dodging. Attacking constantly. Slashing. Thrusting. Alternating slashes and thrusts. He's just too fast and too persistent. I can't push him back for anything. Now I remember playing from years ago and with the speed patch, he wasn't nearly this impossible. So what am I missing?
Dang it. This was meant to be a question. Too late to change it now?

I believe it is too late to change it to a question.

Try mashing the Numpad. The 7 key and 9 key are attack keys; that might give you an edge. I remember also not being able to win on the first attempt, for whatever reason, but my memory may be faulty.

I finally solved it. I had to drop everything I legally could to the ground. All my silver, food, potions, even my armor. Keeping only my sword and shield, the dispel potion (which the game wouldn't let me drop) and my gold plus one silver (same problem). Even so, it was a tough fight. I did manage to retrieve my gear afterwards, thankfully.

OOooooo... weight was affecting the fight? This is information I need to look into. :D

I personally long ago gave up on this. The amount of training required for this just wasn't worth it just for an optional fight. I had decided that if I could get the highest possible score without this fight and without fighting a saurus rex (getting my experience points up to 1000 also wasn't worth it for me when I can easily beat the game with far fewer experience points), then I would be satisfied. I got the perfect score as a mage and as a thief so it's not like I never got the perfect score.

That said, it must be very satisfying to beat the sword master. Personally though, I wish we could see Elsa kick the swordmaster's ass. It would be funny to see his reaction after losing to Elsa. Sadly, we never get to see a fight between Elsa and the swordmaster.

Yeah, I remember reading about it before.

Wasn't there a bug in the initial release of the game where you couldn't defeat the Weapons Master? And didn't Sierra have a patch for this bug?

It wasn't a bug so much as "We didn't anticipate computers becoming so advanced so we tied the speed of his fighting style to your processor" or some such.

What would happen is, you would challenge the weapon master and, powered by your mighty processor, he would push you to the end of the screen in the literal blink of an eye.

However, your player character's speed was fixed (as in, NOT tied to the processor), so he couldn't fight back nearly as quickly.

There was a patch released that fixed this (as well as a door timer bug that made completing the game literally impossible) but it wasn't made by Sierra. This patch is included in the GOG and Steam releases.

Though to be honest, it's also a little redundant because the game is also being played in DOSBox, which regulates the cycles of the game.

Well, any other ideas for defeating him? (I tried dropping all my items but nothing changed).

You're going to want agility, vitality, strength, and weapon use as high as you can get them. These are, realistically, the only things that matter in defeating the Weapon Master.

Next, you're going to want to spam the thrust attack. Slash takes too long and doesn't do enough (and tends to be glitchy for whatever reason)

And it really does help if you drop things before the fight. Just be careful - if you leave the screen, they'll disappear forever, so don't forget to pick them up before that happens.

Thanks

Also parry. Parry is good to counter-attack him.

In my experience, parrying is just a waste of time and stamina that you could've been using to thrust more.

This is good advice for real life, too.

Actually fencing is all about parrying and evading, so unless you're making an innuendo, no, it's very bad.