[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by safisher

<sarcasm>It does? Why, I had no idea that the rules included hit locations! Thank you for pointing out the obvious flaw in my thinking.<sarcasm>.

It was your point, but yes I agree it seemed obvious.

Originally Posted by safisher

See it's this sort of pedantry that makes the conversation more difficult than it should be. .

If you don't want the points to be addressed don't raise them.

Originally Posted by safisher

.Armor piercing is not just the function of getting through armor in any way whatsoever, but in doing damage through the armor. So yes OF COURSE how much damage you do and what type matters very much. Is it likely that axes and so forth caused 12" rips in plate? No, I don't see support for that.

It seems obvious that the mechanism of injury would have been some combination of: 1) concussive damage to tissue, including to bones deep beneath the tissue struck, 2) tears or cuts in the tissue under the armored area, possibly including bleeding injuries sufficient to debilitate an armored man down over time, 3) mechanical damage to the armor, and or the musculature or skeleton system of the target sufficient to compromise mobility, 4) strikes capable of stunning or addling the target.

To what degree any of this is cutting damage in GURPS is not clear. Does it seem likely, *** for tat, that a blow from a hammer would do less damage than that of halberd? That's hard to say. GURPS makes those assertions. Reality does not.

Actually reality does make this distinction, more over so do we, and as you say so does GURPS to an extent

Originally Posted by safisher

That's actually not true. Getting through the armor is only part of the equation. The damage and DR are simplistic systems intended, of course, to be integrated with the injury system. Effectiveness, as a metric, has many variables.

For some one who dislikes pedantry you just cut a sentence in half and responded twice?

Anyway bleeding is very much going to more of a factor if the cutting edge / piecing point physically penetrates the armour and into the flesh far enough to hit blood vessels. Now yes blunt trauma can cause internal bleeding it's true. But hey we have rules for blunt trauma and bleeding, neither of which require cutting blades to cut through DR as they currently do.

Originally Posted by safisher

You've given your subjective conclusion. Thank you.

On the subject of how complicated rules are yes it's going to be subjective, only you have been arguing from position of objective fact. Note I pointed out that most of the tweaks are actually just the revisions of the existing rules so no more complicated that what already exists

Originally Posted by safisher

I've explained that these weapons were used in armored combat. I pointed to fighting books from the period supporting that assertion. You still want evidence. I'm really at a loss as to what it is will satisfy your demands.

Something that supports your specific claim, not the more general one which has not been contested.

Originally Posted by safisher

But, let me try. I'll give an example from history, the battle of Morgarten. This is an actual battle in the early 1300s involving peasants with halberds (that is, yes, swing cutting weapons) slaughtering knights in armor. There are many interesting bits about this battle, but for our purposes, here's the key information:

"The penned-in knightly forces could do nothing to protect themselves from the mad onslaught.95 Some of the confederates rammed their long halberd spikes right through enemy chain mail, mercilessly impaling knights on their iron tips; others swung the enormously heavy axes slashing apart body armor, and then splitting open the exposed flesh.96 Knight and horse fell together at the pitiless onslaught of the massed halberds. The rout was so complete that John of Winterthur felt:

It was not a battle, but a mere butchery of Duke Leopold’s men; for the mountainfolk slew them like sheep in the shambles; no quarter was given, they cut down all without distinction. So great was the fierceness of the Confederates that scores of the Austrian foot-soldiery, when they saw the bravest knights falling helplessly, threw themselves in panic into the lake, preferring to drown rather than to be hewn about by the dreadful weapons of their enemies.

"

So impaling vs. mail, not cutting vs. plate.

hewing into exposed flesh.

Slashing apart body armour is likely slashing apart the bindings thus exposing the flesh (or also chinks etc which we've discussed), all made easier because most importantly what's being described is not combat (as the quote is at pains to point out). It's very much the aftermath and all that goes with it.

But the thing is you are not arguing this in a vacuum, you're arguing this in a context of god alone knows how many threads where this assertion has been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Moreover when ever anyone does any serious experiments it again does not support your assertion.

More over, even daft stuff like 'deadliest warrior' gets this stuff right (to the surprise of their presenters I might add)

Originally Posted by safisher

You can read the dissertation about Swiss Halberds here.
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ap/10?0::NO...:osu1244264028

Ultimately the Swiss will evolve from pikes and halberd formations, to longer and longer pikes. Nevertheless, they did use halberds and did defeat armoured knights in battle.

EDIT: OK cool had a quick look, OK the writers position in regards to halberds cutting through plate can reasonably be summed up thus:

"So, the iron halberd was the first versatile pole-weapon that put the foot soldier at
a distinct advantage over the knight: it could crack through armor. An expressly
offensive weapon, its value, then, was that it significantly decreased the protective appeal
of plate armor" (pg241)

Which is pretty unambiguous, however as the writer points out:

"According to Schmidtchen’s controversial thesis, the halberd was first created in
the Middle Ages as a response to the development of plate armor. But this is simply
inaccurate. Some sort of prehistoric halberd existed as early as the Bronze Age in SouthEast
Spain,464 and it is not exclusive to the West." (pg240)


So one wonders why if such a weapon existed (and had existed for such a long time), and was way cheaper to manufacture and equip than armour, why armour actually out lasted the halberd?


Don't get me wrong I don't think the writer is wrong, certainly in regards to the wider point about drilled Swiss halberdiers defeating armoured knights, just overstating the point regarding slashing through armour. And to be fair the dissertation is not focused on the minutea of armour penetration


In similar context there are various claims about how the Roman legions feared the Dacian Falx for it's ability to hew through legionary armour. And yeah I don't doubt that of the weapons they faced the heavy blade on a stick was better against armour than most (leaving aside the fact that some legion armour wasn't great). But again its all relative. The Falx did not revolutionise warfare, nor did it render body armour obsolete.



What I think we have is halbards of all slashing weapon are most likely to effect armour (but still not very likely) in GURPS terms a factor of their very high damage bonus (+5), and slashing apart or defeating armour doesn't necessarily mean in GURPS terms penetrating its full DR.

Originally Posted by safisher

Now, if you insist that we have a History Channel video, or some fat duffer on Youtube swinging a cheap reproduction halberd against an even cheaper reproduction armor as "proof," alas, I know of none.

No I'd like some actually proof of your assertion that such weapons regularly cut through plate, again that is not the same as saying did halberds or other pole arms that included amongst other things a heavy cutting blade get used against armoured opponents. The latter is not in doubt

Remember this thread is not concerned with the rules for targeting chinks, it's not talking about blunt trauma (directly), it's not talking about hooking, nor armed grappling, it's specifically talking about cutting through armour.

Now you linked to whole lot of manuals, but can you link to one where it recommends using a blade to cut through anything but the weakest bits of a foe's plate?

Originally Posted by safisher

I can only point to primary source material from the period to back my assertions that swing cut weapons were used in armored combat. That, sadly, ought to be enough to tender the suggestion without ridicule,

It's not because again we're talking about two different things. Also there's no ridicule, just a request that you support your specific assertion about blades cutting through plate (not that weapons that included blades were used in combat with armoured opponents again that is not in doubt)

Originally Posted by safisher

but I'm quite sure the medieval combat experts on these forums will have none of that, which is of course because so many on these forums are veterans of actual live steel medieval battles.

Well unless your claiming to be a veteran of live steel medieval battles that really does nothing to support you own claim.