Weapons in Hyrule Warriors

NPCs Only
Since the Master Quest DLC, characters will be encountered wielding a different Weapon than what they are used to in certain mission squares in the Adventure Mode's Master Quest, Twilight and Termina maps. For Example; Zelda can be found fighting with Link's 8-bit sword and Shield, or Sheik's Harp, Sheik can be found using Zelda's Rapier, Lana can be found using Cia's Staff while Cia is using Lana's spellbook, and Impa can be found using Link's Sword and shield or with Zelda's rapier.

Glitch
There has been a Weapon Swapping Glitch found in Hyrule Warriors where players can swap the character's Weapons but only if the characters they are using have more than one Weapon like Link, Zelda, Impa and Lana. It simply requires the 2-player function, where the first player first selects a character and weapon and the second player cancels connection after selecting a player and weapon as well.