[DouglasCole]

I'm going to reply to this last message, and then quit - your tendency to shift goalposts is too much for useful discussion.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Yes he did, he tried both? And while you can't empirically compare either to much outside of the test, you can campare them to each other?

I saw every strike being with the back-blade, even on a re-watch.

Note that I'm not saying it would have punched through. I'm saying *we can't tell, because it's not there to see.* You can extrapolate and say "well, if it penetrated they would have shown it!" But that's an assumption, and the results may well have been "it went through, but wasn't impressive enough to show on our marketing video," or "we tried it, and knocked the entire stand over because it was never well secured in the first place," or "we wanted to do it and our lawyers said no."

Given the crap these guys do in other videos, pretty sure that third one didn't happen, but there's no way to tell.

As I said I'm not trying to make a precise extrapolation here, and I'm sure you right about the construction of car bonnets, but it not really relevant to my point. (well unless you are saying car bonnets are as resistant to swung cutting attacks as historical plate?)

It is relevant to the point that you are trying to make a conclusion from something that is not comparable. You're taking this as proof towards a thesis you are taking as non-falsifiable.

My overall message to this video was "don't take it too seriously, and I'd bet dollars to donuts Shawn doesn't either." It was a fun film of people bashing thing with a halberd. That's all.

My point was just if my new armour piecing round just barely makes it through one layer of a tin can, it doesn't bode well for it getting through armour designed to withstand bullets. And so while you obviously can't categorically state anything until you test, it's not unreasonable to make some preliminary assessments. I wasn't really talking about GURPS at all.

It's a GURPS forum. So perhaps general chatter would be a better place for abstract discussions that have little to do with GURPS rules? That sounds flip, but the discussion that generates so much heat and so little light here is derived from the application of GURPS rules to GURPS damage and GURPS DR.

Not quite sure what you mean here I wasn't tying my point about the video into any precise rules tweak (well not beyond that it tangentially seems to support that cutting through material with swung weapons is generally sub optimal)?

You'll note that Shawn has also noted that a (0.5) armor divisor would be appropriate - and well within the way GURPS rules actually work - for cutting weapons and armor, as well.

"Suboptimal" is not what you've been arguing - no one disagrees with that. You've been saying "can't be done." And that does not hold with period accounts of halberds vs armor in actual battle.

And frankly, the "can't be done" assertion is flatly bogus, because the GURPS definition of armor is "that which has DR." A DR 1 plate is probably about 350 microns thick (14 mils if you're going for inches). Will an axe cut through that? Absolutely it will, especially attached to a six-foot stick.

What about quarter-inch plate (6.35mm)? Well, of course, no. Eighth-inch (DR9 ish, about 3.1mm)? I'd expect no to that as well. 1.5mm? Maybe, maybe not. But all of those have DR, and are both "armor" and "plate" according to GURPS definition.

The question is really at what point there's enough protection to stop a given blow, and that obviously has to do with the force, momentum, and energy of the blow and - most importantly for the discussion of spike vs blade - how much of the edge actually strikes the armor.

Also I'm pretty sure you have you yourself suggested reducing the current ability of hand held weapons against DR

Not really relevant. My issue with the scaling of melee weapons is that they increase far, far too quickly relative to GUNS. Because a sw+5 weapon by a ST 19 person will do something like the penetration of a modern carbine, which is clearly bunk.

But still, let me indulge you with my house rules and homebrew calculation. I'm not sure what kind of strength multiplier I'd give a pole weapon - probably about 2x. If we say swung damage is 1d per ST 10 (my preferred conversion) then a ST 12 guy swinging a pole weapon would be ST 24 on impact, which would thus have a raw penetration number of about 2d+1. Average penetration DR 8.

If you tack on an armor divisor for a cutting blade that's (0.5), your penetration will go down to DR 4. That's light plate, or mail. DR 4 plate is probably 1.3-2mm depending on steel quality, which is not crazy-talk in either thickness or material quality.

A much stronger individual (say ST 17) on that scale would double to ST 34, or 3d+1, average 11.5. With our armor divisor of 0.5, that means DR 6 will be proof against it in GURPS terms. That's medium plate.

The thicker DR8/9 plate that represents something like 4mm of steel will require an average penetration of 16-18 to get there, which is on the order of 5d or so - ST 50. With doubling for leverage, that's still out of the reach by a full die of a ST 20 guy - the conclusion using this construction is that DR7 and higher is not penetrable with a cutting blade at up to ST 20.

That's enough verisimitude for me, and variations in thickness and angle and force are subsumed into the damage roll.

But a sufficiently strong blow will put that blade through the plate. That's just basic. The question of what constitutes a sufficiently strong blow is rather than the binary is/is-not that seems to be a frequently-offered position.

So, that's all for me. If I want to house-rule my GURPS game, I'll do it as above, and absolutely not use the edge protection rule - because that rule violates at least one basic GURPS premise - if you get through the DR of armor, you've breached it.

(and if you want to say, as Shawn and Dan have both said, that we need a better mechanic for representing non-penetrating blunt trauma, I will add my voice to the chorus of "yes, I agree.")