[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
I read in the Space Gamer an article where Steve Jackson wrote that he realized in reality a rapier could do more damage than a broadsword, but that he intended to ignore such things. He wanted the weapons table to simply show increasing damage as ST increased and didn't worry about such details.

In GURPS he DID worry about such things. He has thrusting weapons, swung weapons. Impaling weapons. Impaling+ weapons. Impaling++ weapons. Swung impaling weapons, etc. And rules to make all of these fine distinctions work.

Thinking about this, I occurred to me that impaling weapons could do a LOT of damage if they hit the right spot (important organ, major blood vessel), or they could do very little damage (small point hits armor, or does a small localized wound in some less important flesh).

I didn't want to write a tonne of special rules for different types of weapons but I decided that I did want to capture that impaling weapons have a high range of damage.

So I retooled my weapons table so that impailing weapons did damage like 3d-5 (about 5.5 hits on average) and blunt impact weapons did damage like 1d+2 (exactly 5.5 hits on average).

So in my campaign a Horse Bow (ST 11) does 2d-3 damage. (From 0 to 9 damage.) Where as a small ax (ST 11) does 1d+2 (from 3 to 8 damage).

(I thought longbows needed a high ST to fire so they got moved to 15 ST, where they do 3d-4 damage.)

With ZERO overhead in rules, I have captured the idea that impaling weapons do a wider, less predictable range of damage.

As an additional bonus, this gives the weapons table more variety. Weapons feel more different from each other.

Warm regards, Rick.