Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
But wielding any object fast takes strength.
|
Is that even true in a real and meaningful sense? For a heavy object, I can more easily buy that, but swords only weigh 2 to 4 lb. Historical one-handed maces weighed 2.5 lb or less. Etc. Real historical lowtech melee weapons are exceptionally light compared to modern expectations.
Consider an out-of-shape person, and take an Olympic athlete strength trainer of some sort, and compare how fast that they can swing a bat. Would the difference really be that large?
According to some random sources found via google, children in little league can swing a bat up to 60 mph (tip speed?), and adults who play baseball professionally only swing a bat up to 80 mph (tip speed?). That's not a big variation. The kinetic energy difference would be larger because kinetic energy is the square of speed, but IIRC GURPS damage is generally treated as the sqrt of kinetic energy, so we're back to about 60 vs 80. (And there's the whole problem of using kinetic energy or momentum as a baseline for determining damage.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
And if anything is in the way of that flesh, it will take more force to poke through it.
|
Here, my naive understanding has some sympathy, especially for lighter armors, like clothes, or leather, or something, but even then I don't really know, because I am grossly ignorant on the matter.
What really complicates the issue for me is part of the above link, where it claims that proper form with a sword delivers like 100x less impact force than simply swinging it as hard as you can. My question also gets into the whole problem of chopping vs slashing aka draw cuts, and it might even be the same question.
This also gets to my understanding of the realism but not RAW of Balanced vs Unbalanced weapons. From my understanding, one can swing a sword very hard like one might swing a battleaxe, and then the sword would be out of position and unable to be used in parrying, but most sword strikes are not full out like that, which allows the sword to be quickly repositioned, which is why swords can be used for "simultaneous" attack and parry, but battleaxes cannot.