stress for grip/torso/saddles during couched lancing

[Plane]

This is a gritty realism sort of concern which comes to mind for a situation discussed on B397 which applies when using lances.

In this situation, instead of using the thrust based on your Striking ST (the B272 standard) you use your mount's collision damage, akin to a Slam though I don't know if standard Slam rules (like unique knockdown rules) would apply, since it doesn't actually state this.

The usual approach of using Striking ST probably on some level covers "I have the grip strength required to not lose hold of my weapon when delivering damage with it: I can at least briefly grip it tightly enough". People with lower Striking ST (for example: an Extra Arm with 1/4 your usual strength) can't inflict as much damage.

About the only "Basic Set" situation which might fall outside that is the bonus you get from a Stop Thrust (B366 under Wait) since that gives a bonus based on attacker move, which could take you far beyond normal damage parameters since there's no cap listed.

One interesting thing to note is that a normal cap on damage (B270: the max striking ST your thrust can be calculated on is 3x the ST needed to wield) doesn't appear to be limited by a Stop Thrust, and similarly seems to be ignored if you're subbing collission damage.

It seems like the intent of B270 is something along the lines of (using ST 5 since that's the lowest req I can see) is since ST 15 gives thrust of 1d+1, a "thrust-1" dagger is never meant to be be able to do more than 1d impaling basic damage. However going by the letter, it seems like a Stop Thrust is able to exceed this by an unlimited amount with no chance of losing a grip on your dagger.

Lances due to ST 12 can apply up to ST 36 worth of Thrust, which is (B16) 4d-1, so adding B272's +3 bonus brings the maximum up to 4d+2.

Since B397 ignores ST though (using collision) I don't know if the 4d+2 impaling cap would be in effect anymore, since you're actually not using ST. Perhaps "couching" is a means to acquire potentially unlimited damage, so long as you have a mount who is adequately heavy (high HP) or fast (yards moved) to get proper collision dice?

At some point I'd wonder if a normally 1d / 4d+2 dagger/lance is going to bend/break when you get into the realm of delivering something like 100+ damage...

But beyond that (let's say you're using indestructible 10,000 DR dagger/lance which has no concern for this) there's the issue of "can I be expected to keep a grip on my dagger?" if normally Striking ST is our guideline for "how much thrust can I deliver without losing a grip from the rebound".

Uncouched lances share that concern, but I don't think couched ones would, at least not to the same degree, since you tuck the handle of a lance under your armpit which takes pressure off your hand.

Since you tend to have a bent elbow (at side) instead of straight (in front) when doing couched lance strikes, there's less arm-bone leverage to absorb the impact, so Arm ST might be of less help.

Lances with long handles tend to have them tucked under the armpit for stability but I don't think that would significantly slow down the backward movement of the handle: there's just not that much friction unless you want your flesh ripped off (picturing a topless lancer here, you never know when that might come up) though a chainmail hauberk might change that since the links could give friction?

Instead there seems to be two key pieces of equipment to consider for enhancing handle>pit force transfer and friction:

1) the "lance rest" or "arrêt de cuirasse" (ADC) attachments for breast plates
2) the "grapper" or "arrêt de lance" (ADL) which is widening/padding behind where the hand grips the lance hand

In combination I think this helps prevent, even though the "pommel" of the lance extends behind the body, of preventing it sliding back relative to the torso: the widened grapper/ADL makes contact with the ADC and the stability of the structure transfers the force to the upper chest.

A 3rd consideration is probably the wide circular "guard" of many lances (in front of the hand) which appears to be called a "vamplate".

A possible secondary purpose of it (besides protecting the hand) could also be so that the handle does not slide backward relative to the hand: basically if you aren't gripping the weapon hard enough to prevent that, the cone shape basically allows you a sort of "punching alignment" to exert forward pressure with your knuckles.

I think that's actually a secondary purpose for all thrusting weapons: if you couldn't grip a handle well (low grip ST or maybe it's slippery with gore) then your thumb and index finger (and the webbing connecting them) are going to smash into your guard, preventing your hand from sliding further forward.

Your thumb/index/web are already probably touching the guard in most cases (a weapon is better balanced that way) except maybe when transitioning from 2H to 1H on some swords (where only one hand can be that close, the other is further from the guard and closer to the pummel in "hand over hand" grips) so there wouldn't be appreciable momentum for such slides, you'd get "smushed" immediately, I think?

The cone-like guard of lances seems possibly built in some way to emphasize this (in addition to helping lance tips slide off)

That's probably aided by the DR/padding of your gauntlets, though you wouldn't want to rely on it too much for uncouched thrusts since you're still exerting stress through your wrist at a weird angle for those "finger-free punch thrusts" (not sure what to call them) and you probably would avoid grip/punch anti-slide once you had it couched because in the end that's stress which will travel up through the shoulder anyway.

About the only reason I could see using grip/punch anti-thrust would be in cases where you would want to minimize stress on your ADC/ADL (chest plate) like in cases where you have fragile armor and super-strong arms. It falls outside realistic human concern but could be something that could come up for some superhumans out there.

I think I'm possible wrong about the vamplate though, when I look at https://www.historicenterprises.biz/misc/vamplate2.jpg

Here you can see the handle actually widens prior to the actual vamplate, so it's actually the widened handle which would impact the thumb/index/web trinity and prevent forward-slide when some combination of smooth/lubricated handles or weak finger flexors causes handle/palm slide.

A widened handle curve like this would basically try to rip the fingers open and better let you apply your grip strength compared to a handle which doesn't widen forward of the hand.

Unfortunately I'm not really sure what the term for this portion of a handle is, just that it occupies an area between the narrow part which you grip and the vamplate.

It's almost like a "reverse pommel" of sorts, since I think that's one of the roles a pommel serves (aside from preventing you from accidentally stabbing yourself with a narrow handle-tip) for making it easier to pull a thrusting weapon backward when your fingers can't grip slippery handles enough to stop it.

I think that's also why we see widening at the rear of the handle in the JPG above: you wouldn't really need it for ceremonial lancing, but in cases where you actually did impale a foe, it would help in keeping a grip on the lance if they were pulling away from you... like if they fell to the ground and were pulling your lance down, and you had to pull it rearward/upward.

In searching for a term, I would probably call it a "concave handle" due to how it's narrow in middle and wider approaching guard/pommel, as contrast to a a "convex handle" which is thickest in middle and narrows near guard/pommel, like this sword.

Maybe there's some existing term to represent this concave/convex contrast but I haven't found it yet. Concave handles seem ideal for pure thrust/pull combat whereas my guess is that convex handles hold some advantage for fine swordplate where you might use fingerwork to "roll" the handle to speak? Swings and disarms?

An expert historian might no, pure speculation here, unless convex handles are purely decorative and used to show off how strong your fingers are s that you don't need to rely on concave trickery to prevent your hand from sliding around...

Eventually even concave handles DO widen so long as you have a guard/pommel (as in the auctioned militia sword) so maybe there's some purpose to having two "convex points" between those extremes, rather than being convex at only a single point in the middle?

A term I also came across for grips is "fluting" which I think refers to indented lines on a handle which may slightly lighten a handle but I think is primarily done for increasing friction. Ironically it seems to have the reverse effect of a blood groove on blades: by giving a channel for liquid/soft to occupy you increase pressure against the thicker portions. I believe the reason for that difference is the direction of the lines: they are perpendicular to the thrust whereas blood grooves are parallel.

[Plane]

It seems like the "ring of leather" which is the ADL might actually occupy space before this widening, meant to cushion the impact and provide extra friction) between the the rear of the hand (the "knife edge" on the pinky side, the part a "karate chop" hits with) and the hard pommel-ish widening.

this PNG shows that, but also shows that similar leather rings sometimes occupied the spot ahead of the hand too.

Seems like you could actually have BOTH although I can't find an example of it. You can see that the 1st example in the middle is reflected in the top image of the lance, while the 2nd example at the bottom is not.

A wide handle behind the hand (convex handles resulting in widening both in front of AND behind the hand it normally seems) would perhaps even prior to a vamplate contacting your armpit (this would mean your elbow was pushing back behind your body, stretching your chest/anterior delt muscles) might perhaps make contact with the armpit at several points:

1) the top part of the handle with the anterior part of shoulder armor (pauldron or spaulder or besagew)

2) the medial part of the handle would contact the lateral aspect of the upper breastplate/brigandine/cuirasse

3) the lateral portion of the handle with "aftarm" armor like the rerebrace ("upper cannon")

A 4th consideration is the "couter" atop the elbow. If you look at the position of the elbow in a couched lance example it seems like the medial portion of the couter might add in some kind of friction where some of the force might travel through the humerus.

Anyway to wrap up this delve, I guess I'm thinking about places which would take punishment from high-damage lancing (talking like 100+ damage and so on between magically superstrong knights wearing cheap armor) due to how they would facilitate the "couched" grip that GURPS has special rules for.

It seems like the force on the upper body would tend to cause the spine to hyperextend, extend, which you count counteract with your abdominal muscles if unarmored. If you have a solid breast plate though (chest connects to abdomen) the armor rigidity would substitute for your rectus abdominis and help transfer force from your thoracic region to your lumbar region.

That would still tend to cause hip extension (because your breastplate and cuisses aren't a solid mass) which I think is one of the big value of the combination of stirrups with the elevated cantle (rear saddle) of war saddles: so that you don't either "tilt off" or "slide off" your horse, and transfer the rearward momentum to the horse's front chest via some combination of the Breast Collar (upper) and "Belly Band" (lower) I would assume (not an equestrian)

That force transfer makes me wonder if at some point mounts should be at risk of suffering some kind of slam-related injury (blunt trauma?) via saddle stress if there is such an efficient transfer of force from the jouster to the mount.

Basically the less flexible the knight is (breastplate-to-cantle's "belly-to-buttox" transfer, so to speak, no extension ROM to allow knight's muscles to "cushion the blow") the more jolting it seems like it would be on the warhorse. An especially big concern when you're talking about adding the velocities of 2 mounts charging at each other in a high-speed collision neither could've managed charging a stationary foe.

Pg 10 of GURPS Low-Tech mentions the role of the cantle in stirrupless warsaddles in terms of accuracy (improvised equipment, penalty to hit) so since there's no mention of doing couched lance striking with normal non-war saddles, maybe that's just not an option?

"thigh muscles" seems kinda vague here, I figure that means hip adductors (brevus/longus/magnus) to hug the horse's torso so you can apply hip extension directly through femurs instead of the foot>shin>femur chain of pushing down on stirrups?

Another aspect of Low-Tech possibly relevant here is pg 55's "Using the Pike" option of "Planting a Spear". Despite "that of a couching lance" I'm not aware of this having any special meaning besides "use collision damage". Certainly there are none of the special considerations of "armpit hugging the lance" or of special concave/convex lance handles (or ADC v ADL) since all you have to think about is the pummel-ish tip of the handle is braced against the ground.

It seems like the type of terrain could matter here: if you were trying to "plant a spear" in ungiving ground (ie concrete, metal hull of a ship) you couldn't rely on the handle to be driven into the ground (like with earth) and it might skid, for example? You're basically allowing for some damage to the "wielder" (the ground) of the lance to allow the "tip to travel past the armpit" (the surface of the ground) so that the wider and more stable portion of the lance handle is in contact with the top?

Seems like one possible "anti-skid" trick on hard ground if I'm interpreting this drawing right might be to place the instep of your rear foot behind the butt of the planted spear? Basically allowing some of your bodyweight to substitute for "earth behind the handle" when you can't plant something deeper.

[Donny Brook]

I'm not going to try to delve through all the rule convolutions, but in real jousting several outcomes would occur to account for the excess force a charging horse could produce relative to its much weaker human rider and the mechanical interactions of the weapon:

-lances often broke and even more frequently glanced off,
-the shield/arm of the opponent would absorb some of the force,
-riders would often be forced out of the saddle,
-more rarely, horses could be forced off their footing (particularly the rear legs), and
-even though GURPS doesn't acknowledge it, 'blow through' penetration of the opponent could occur.

So, given those common occurrences, the force distribution resulting from jousting was very different from, say, charging your lance into a cliffside or castle wall.

[Plane]

aside from couched lancing / planting your spear, collision/slam damage based on HPxMove subbing for Striking ST's thrust is also a Move and Attack option for all melee weapons in martial arts, so this makes me similarly curious about how we should account for people keeping their grip in those situations.

For example: I could have arms with a striking ST of 13 (1d thrust) by having 25% ST weak arms on a ST 52 creatures who buys his HP up to 60 and at Move 5 (60x5/100) has collission/slam dice of 3d (triple the striking ST)

Does it begin to become difficult to handle that weapon recoil generated by running at a foe that I could never train for based on arm movements?

Maybe there's a great deal of leeway since critical strikes can do triple damage (B556 result 3 is 1/216 of the time, which is pure force and not lucky placement: it causes knockback AFAIK) so "1d thrust arms" might be assumed to be capable of up to 18 damage (or maybe even 24 if you're talking triple the 1d+2 you'd get on AOA strong) but you might have triple damage on your slam dice too (18*3=54 or 21*3=63) so it could still exceed "assumed no arm problems" parameters even if those account for those rare triple-crits.

The triple-crits actually bring up an interesting idea: if that's the "true force" of blows, the majority of the time blows are only delivering 1/3 their actual potential and wasting 2/3 of force?

That's an interesting consideration for dice too: if "6" is the "true force" of a blow, then your average hit of 3.5 is barely more than half the potential.

Viewed together: if the "true force" of a 1d blow is 18 (best result 6 tripled) then 3.5/18 is under 20% force delivered on average.

To get higher performance I'm wondering if we could somehow get higher performance options with less randomness, but with a cost.

B347 lets you buy critical successes for CP (though it emphasizes GMs can choose to forbid that for combat) and it seems like once you do have a critical success that perhaps "player guidance" might let you choose which B557 result comes up ("plausible element" and all) but maybe not?

Impulse Buys pg 5 reiterates that warning ("GM will usually want to forbid") though I think a bit issue of that is just how you get no defense at all against critical hits (pg 6 "fairer than allowing bought critical
successes in combat, as the target had his chance to avoid being affected, and failed.")

You can buy stuff like "No Active Defense" cosmic via "Temporary Enhancements" but that has success rolls (not automatic) and FP costs.

Impulse Buys expands on this for the base dice (pg 6: 1 cp buys 6 on 1d damage) so this is one hole in my theory: if it costs 3 cp to make 3d come out 18 then it shouldn't be cheaper to choose result 6 (max normal damage). It also makes comparison to the FP cost for Mighty Blows.

One might look at that as "I'm buying 2.5 damage per CP" based on expectations (6 instead of 3.5 avg) so perhaps one could allow that to go beyond the actual maximums in cases of a critical hit?

Subbing skill for FP is something I think you could do by builting in a "Reduced Fatigue Cost plus Time-Spanning" tax into something like Temporary Enhancements: it will cost FP on a failure but on a success you retroactively waive it. TE might perhaps be broadened to be based on something other than Will/HT when you're improving based on finesse, like IQ/Per/DX.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

-lances often broke and even more frequently glanced off,

Makes sense, if we had rules for weapons breaking (or even bending) this could limit both the damage they deliver and also the "recoil" (as it were) on the wielders.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

-the shield/arm of the opponent would absorb some of the force

Sort of like a "roll with blow" which in exchange for reducing damage to your shield (and arm holding it) might for example, result in a "reach 1" shield being knocked back to "reach C" or even hitting your (hopefully armored) torso, so that you could take some of that momentum to your body and not rely 100% on what's held in the hand (or worn on the forearm) to neutralize it at point-of-connect?

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

-riders would often be forced out of the saddle

Do you think this was because they went directly back (low cantles) or just that since you're not really hit direct-center that you'd just tend to rotate/twist off to one side or the other, in which case the cantle doesn't stop you from shifting?

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

-more rarely, horses could be forced off their footing (particularly the rear legs)

Do you mean like the horse rears up onto rear because their front footing is lost?

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

-even though GURPS doesn't acknowledge it, 'blow through' penetration of the opponent could occur.

Do you mean like exceeding cover DR of a shield and hitting breastplate?

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

So, given those common occurrences, the force distribution resulting from jousting was very different from, say, charging your lance into a cliffside or castle wall.

Yeah, seems like there's dozens of possible variables we could crunch if wanting a 'Technical Jousting' weapons/armor expansion of Low-Tech.

sup Cole

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Plane

...
Do you think this was because they went directly back (low cantles) or just that since you're not really hit direct-center that you'd just tend to rotate/twist off to one side or the other, in which case the cantle doesn't stop you from shifting?

Probably many different angles and outcomes would occur with torsioned out sideways or lifting out backwards being the two that seem likeliest to me.

Do you mean like the horse rears up onto rear because their front footing is lost?

The saddles and other gear and methods were designed to transfer much of the force through to the rear quarters of the horse. With sufficient force this could sort of buckle the hips and rear legs of the horse so it would momentarily sort of squat back. Imagine a dog squatting to poop -- it looks like that, but the horse (unless it was additionally injured) would stand back erect immediately.

Do you mean like exceeding cover DR of a shield and hitting breastplate?

I mean like driving the lance through the opponent's torso (and whatever is protecting it) and out the other side.

[DanHoward]

Richard Alvarez wrote a very good paper a few years ago demonstrating that the amount of energy delivered from a couched lance had nothing to do with the momentum of the horse and everything to do with the strength of the rider - even when using the two arrets in question. In order for the horse's momentum to come into play, the rider would have to be locked into a fixed position and be made of a completely rigid material. In reality, the rider acts as a buffer between the horse and lance.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

The saddles and other gear and methods were designed to transfer much of the force through to the rear quarters of the horse.

Didn't really think of that... checking some diagrams now my best guess is this is called the strap I've alternately seen referred to as "back billet" or "English billet" or "flank billet" or "rear billet"

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

With sufficient force this could sort of buckle the hips and rear legs of the horse so it would momentarily sort of squat back. Imagine a dog squatting to poop -- it looks like that, but the horse (unless it was additionally injured) would stand back erect immediately.

Was only thinking of transfer to the chest, but either way that force could definitely cause the horse to squat as a means of keeping it's balance like this guy

My initial thought of "pressure on chest would just raise it in the air" is something that would only make sense for an immobile horse statue with rigid hip/shoulder joints, but since they would flex under pressure (except when muscles pervent) you'd just have them falling into a sitting position.

Probably one key difference with a quadriped (since their running is in a prone/crawling posture) is that knockback into a supine on-back position should take a LOT more force to accomplish, since you effectively need to first knock them into a standing/sitting posture FIRST before flipping them. It's 180 degrees rotation vs 90.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I mean like driving the lance through the opponent's torso (and whatever is protecting it) and out the other side.

Other than High-Tech in 2007, MA106's "run himself through" (also in 2007, not sure which came out first) seems like the only thing which addresses this.

It was super-weird though because you lack any consistent amount of damageHPrequirements to impale torsos under that approach: instead it's "maximum possible injury" and roughly "max damage your foe could wield using your weapon must exceed his back DR".

The thing is if you lack back DR (1 exceeds 0) the "max damage" is always adequate due to non-crushing attacks always having a minimum basic damage of zero, so even if the 'maximum possible injury' is 2 HP (the x2 multiplier impaling gets against torso attacks) that's always going to be adequate to "stick out the other side"

It seems like all Impaling Attacks (except "No Wounding" ones) have MPI of 2 against 0 DR targets since you have a minimum basic damage of 1 for non-crushing attacks (although "Armor Multiplier" limited impaling attacks treat DR 0 as DR 1 so they're excepted too)

This even seems the case for C-reach impaling weapons which might be perceived as lacking the length to do that without plunging the handle/hand into the wound... even though we know there are spearheads which DO prevent this (MA221: Partisan) and partisans seem like they might have spearheads longer than many daggers.

HT162 optional "Body Hits" rule seems apt, clearly a consideration for Low-Tech for Impaling attacks (arrows, lances, rapiers) in addition to High-Tech for Piercing attacks (bullets) and Ultra-Tech for tight-beam burning (lasers)

Since then you get "lost excess" injury much like crippling limbs.

Using the Limb Hits precedent (impale/pierce/TB burn need double the usual damage to sever a destroyed limb like cutting) I could also see maybe introducing a similar cap for cutting damage at twice the amount (2xHP if you use bleeding, 4xHP if you don't) as there's only so much destruction that a thin slice can cause.

Basically so there isn't any "guaranteed death" for some 100d cutting attack to some HP10 guy's torso.

If you cap that at 20 HP lost then he's still going to drop from full to -10 (-1xHP) so he'll be making a death check as soon as he loses 1 more HP from blood loss.

If you don't use blood loss then the cap would be 40 HP and by dropping to -30 he's passed -1xHP and -2xHP and needs to make TWO death checks.

To get super-gruesome "chopped you in half" effects that ignore such caps should require targetting the spine, otherwise you could be assumed to just be slicing up the obliques, which should cap damage.

Alternatively: you allow spine to be targeted from front/sides with cutting attacks (legally it's rear-only allowed)

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Richard Alvarez wrote a very good paper a few years ago demonstrating that the amount of energy delivered from a couched lance had nothing to do with the momentum of the horse and everything to do with the strength of the rider - even when using the two arrets in question. In order for the horse's momentum to come into play, the rider would have to be locked into a fixed position and be made of a completely rigid material. In reality, the rider acts as a buffer between the horse and lance.

The fact the rider* isn't completely rigid wouldn't mean the horse's momentum would therefore be negated, it could just mean not all the energy would be transferred through the rider as part of the 'horse, saddle/stirrups, rider, lance, target' system

Lots of points of transfer and potential limiting factors here, (including the rider's strength since the rider is part of the over all system). So don't get me wrong I wouldn't completely replace the riders ST with Horse's either.

But have you got a link for Richard Álvarez's paper because I'd be interested in seeing the maths behind how the speed and momentum of the horse has nothing to do with energy of the impact of the lance tip




*or all other parts of the system

[DanHoward]

I worded that poorly. I meant that the rider's strength is the determining factor in how much of the horse's momentum gets transferred into the lance. Changing to a bigger/faster horse will do nothing if the rider isn't strong enough to take advantage of it.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I worded that poorly. I meant that the rider's strength is the determining factor in how much of the horse's momentum gets transferred into the lance. Changing to a bigger/faster horse will do nothing if the rider isn't strong enough to take advantage of it.

In other words, the rider is usually the weak link.