Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Charon
Anyway, it's pretty clear that you wouldn't use the Rapier skill with those, or most other examples, but the ones that we have often seem stabby enough for the Smallsword skill to work, and might even work better than Knife or Shortsword (although as noted in the video, you can chop with them). The question in my mind is, is it plausible for a skill that could reasonably be called Smallsword to have been invented during TL1, without that being too cinematic?
My first thought is that sword skills would have evolved from the Knife skill as the blades got longer, but it occurred to me just now that some martial arts styles I've seen write-ups for in GURPS use Smallsword and other sword skills with a baton or a short staff, so it could be that a skilled stick-fighter handling one of these new-fangled 'really long knives' noticed that it handled a lot like a sharpened stick, but was less prone to breakage, and thus adapted that skill to the new weapon.
Thoughts?
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In RAW, Smallsword is a common stickfighting skill so its probably as old as humanity.
As I have said before, the organization of weapon skills in GURPS is not very coherent. I would probably redesign it to turn the Spear / Staff / Lance and Sword / Fencing distinction be about whether you rely on
guardie strette, and give some defensive benefits in exchange for worse thrusts and exposing the hand to strikes and the weapon to beats and grabs. This would mostly get rid of fencing skills for fighting with short sticks. I would shrink the list of Melee Weapon skills as far as possible, and give much less stingy defaults between skills.
You can absolutely cut and slice with these swords although they are not going to take off an arm or a leg like a Naue type II. They might remove a finger though ...