[Grayscale]

Originally Posted by tbone

The concept is simple. GLAIVE's attack time rule, in a nutshell, is just this: What's the effective mass to be moved? And what's your effective power for moving it? The ratio of that effective mass to effective power yields the time an attack takes (i.e., its "slowness").

The question, then, becomes what measures to use for that effective mass and that effective power.

The easiest answer for the former is some measure that's linear in weapon mass in lbs. There, that's a good measure of effective mass for thrusts. For swings, you'll want to multiply it somehow for length, and again somehow for unbalance (effectively building moment of inertia into the measure). There, a measure of effective mass for swings.

For effective power... well, ST seems the easy answer, but be careful. GURPS 4e ST doesn't linearly map to ability to move mass; Basic Lift does. So, use Basic Lift together with the above measure of effective mass. OR, use regular ST, and use a measure of effective mass that's based on the square root of weapon mass in lbs. Either way should work.

Finally, note that the power available to the wielder isn't fixed; it can change with something as simple as using two hands instead of one. So you'll want to modify effective power by some appropriate amount for factors like that.

And there you go: You take some measure of effective weapon mass, divide it by some appropriate measure of effective power to move the mass, and you have a result you can tie to "time it takes to attack"...


...Also, for 4e, I think I'd ditch the use of a Recovery that's linear with lbs., and, as noted above, make it map to the square root of lbs. Yes, "square root" makes some people cringe, but we're talking a one-time calculation of a speed factor for weapon tables, not calculation of roots during play. The upside is that you can then use plain ST for all purposes: figuring damage from ST, comparing ST to Min ST (or Wield ST or whatever you call it) to make sure the character can use the weapon, and dividing Recovery by ST to get some measure of time required. Basic Lift can keep completely out of weapon performance. (The wee downside to the method: the Recovery stat for many weapons will appear as figures with decimals, not neat integers.)

Again, very useful insights. I read your GLAIVE system again and hopefully understood it a little better. Following your suggestions, I so far came up with some results that seem to fit the bill. This is what I did:

• Calculated each weapon weight square root
  
• Multiplied it by 15 (I tried other values, 15 seemed to give enough variety between each recovery value, without making the delay between attacks too long - I may tweak this a little more), and then divided by user ST.
  
• The results are displayed here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AmLagTm32rl2gb1M5kjRZ7LSF-2tXg . Values should be rounded up.
  
• Some tidbits: A ST 10 human can attack with a short sword evey 2 seconds (I remember aiming for 3 or 4). ST 10 can attack with a halberd every 6 seconds.
  
• Limitations: attacking every second becomes possible only at ST 15, and then again, only with 1 pound weapons. There is no differentiation, as of yet, for One handed usage vs two handed, or thrust vs swings, or ST < MIN ST.
  These should achievable using some multipliers, similar as TBONE outlines on his GLAIVE article. I'm inclined to make one handed vs two handed have an impact, though not so sure about the others (they are completely reasonable, but the vanilla rules make no distinction between them on how often they allow you to attack). I suppose better damage and risking more fatigue might be enough differentiation for me.

I think now I'll try to fit muscle powered ranged weapons into the mix. If I have some time on the weekend I'll try to stage some testing combats to see how it goes, namely, how my preliminary rates of movement will work with these recovery values (also on the spreadsheet above). I have to say, I'm so far very happy with what you guys helped me come up with!