[tbone]

Before this thread drifts off to wherever forgotten threads go, I thought I'd take a look at the top post once more.

Sure, a lot of players find it fine that cinematic heroes' swords slice through armor in high fantasy, but the numbers that ArmoredSaint points out are indeed a little crazy for anyone wanting more realistic interactions. Out of curiosity, let's see how people's suggestions would change that for the damage monsters in Delvers.

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I'll bypass Argua, who wields a very large axe with insane strength. Her axe chopping through plate doesn't strike me as unrealistic.

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Miao Miao (MM) and Yvor are the two with impressive damage (sw 2d+4 cut and sw 2d+7 cut, respectively) despite swords of modest cutting potential. They both gain a big +4 sw damage from cinematic Weapon Master, so that's the first thing to toss. Without it, MM's edged rapier drops to just 2d, Yvor's longsword to 2d+3.

That's still just enough for MM to penetrate plate, and Yvor epic plate, on average rolls!

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So say we hack the system to lessen swing damage in general, lessening its advantage over thrust. You could reset sw damage to 2 points more than thr, as Doug suggested. Or use my suggested system, which varies this added amount by weapon - but for edged rapier and longsword, it comes out to the same 2-point addition.

So either way, we now get MM dealing sw 1d+2 cut, and Yvor dishing out 1d+4 cut. That's no longer enough for MM to penetrate plate and Yvor to penetrate epic plate on average rolls – but they can do so on good rolls, and Yvor can penetrate plate on even an average roll.

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If that's still an unwanted effect, I suppose there's nothing left to do but bring in the "armor buckles but doesn't break" options. Using either Low-Tech's BTEW option, or my Edge Protection with EP set the same as DR (to mirror BTEW), plate is dented past 6 basic hits, penetrated past 12; epic plate is dented past 9 basic hits, penetrated past 18.

With an average damage roll, Yvor (1d+4) can dent but not penetrate plate. With maximum damage rolls, MM (1d+2) can dent plate; Yvor can dent plate and epic plate.

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That armor effect really makes the difference for realism. Even without any mucking with basic swing damage, just by implementing that armor effect and dropping Weapon Master, MM (2d) is capable of denting either armor but penetrating neither; Yvor (2d+3) can penetrate plate on a good roll but can only dent epic plate.

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And that's that. In short, GURPS/DFRPG clearly lean toward the cinematic in letting hand weapons penetrate armor, which is probably a good thing for game fun. But the system is readily hackable here; with just a tweak or two, armor/weapon interactions can behave a lot more realistically.