Damage and wounding readjustment

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

A rectangular bar with a 2mm wide edge will concentrate the striking force better than a rectangular bar with a 4mm wide edge.

Not to a meaningful extent. In general, if you're seeking deformation of armor rather than cleaving through armor, all that matters is a radius of curvature smaller than the radius of curvature you want to impose on the armor.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Not to a meaningful extent. In general, if you're seeking deformation of armor rather than cleaving through armor, all that matters is a radius of curvature smaller than the radius of curvature you want to impose on the armor.

Cleaving through armor (or failing to of course) is what I'm talking about.

Armor is no different than cheese. A sharper edge concentrates the force more narrowly than a blunter one.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Cleaving through armor is what I'm talking about.

Well, in that case it makes no sense to compare cutting with crushing, because crushing is making no attempt to cleave through armor.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, in that case it makes no sense to compare cutting with crushing, because crushing is making no attempt to cleave through armor.

Though that is a theoretically messy situation, since GURPS rules will give crushing damage for a mace even if it is thrown hard enough to punch entirely through a half-centimeter of steel plate.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, in that case it makes no sense to compare cutting with crushing, because crushing is making no attempt to cleave through armor.

What do you mean about 'attempt'?

I'm talking about damage types and rescaling them with armor divisors. I'm proposing to leave crushing damage unchanged and therefore need to scale cutting damage up from there imo.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

While \, some of the discussion on the thread has digressed in the direction of whether cutting is 'good' against armor, my only concern is that cutting is better relative to crushing, in terms of a GURPS armor penetration characteristic.

Well, the Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons rule (LT103) manages to both significantly reduce the ease of penetrating armour with cutting weapons, and retain some measure of superiority of cutting over crushing damage. (It was also written by Dan Howard, being in the armour section of LT, right?)

It does cause some minor quirks, such as Cutting Innate Attacks suddenly becoming less desirable, but that's a somewhat different matter. I suppose it could be easily fixed by declaring that the effect only applies to mundane weapons.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

What do you mean about 'attempt'?

I'm talking about damage types and rescaling them with armor divisors. I'm proposing to leave crushing damage unchanged and therefore need to scale cutting damage up from there imo.

The point is that being injured by a crushing weapon should not be taken to imply that the crushing weapon actually penetrated your armor.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

What do you mean about 'attempt'?

Basically, there's a couple of methods that can be used to get through armor, and different weapons optimize for different methods. Blunt weapons optimize for bending or breaking the armor, cutting weapons optimize for slicing through armor.

Slicing sucks against metal armor; there is a decent chance a cutting will do better using bending or breaking, and a cutting weapon is worse at doing that. Therefore, cutting weapons should be worse against hard armor than blunt weapons.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Anthony

... there is a decent chance a cutting will do better using bending or breaking, and a cutting weapon is worse at doing that. Therefore, cutting weapons should be worse against hard armor than blunt weapons.

This seems to be the nub of what you're saying, but I don't understand it. What is a cutting weapon worse at?

[gilbertocarlos]

If you want to cleave through armor you're going to need ultra high ST, I doubt DR 2-3 can be cleaved through with a sword.