On Swords, Blades and the Song of Swords

[cbower]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Weapon Control† [New]
You are adept in controlling your unbalanced weapon and avoiding over-commitment in your attacks. When using an Unbalanced weapon, you may remove the U tag from the thrust attack mode of your weapon, if any. You may also elect to make a swinging attack at -1 damage that ignores the U tag of your weapon.
You must specialise by Weapon, such as Weapon Control (Dao) or Weapon Control (Large Falchion). This Perk is only available for weapons approved by the GM, generally only unbalanced swords. At the GM's option, it might also be available for dueling polearms, axes and impact weapons, but in that case it is recommended that it only works with Fine (Balanced) versions of such weapons.

What do forumites think of it? Overpowered? Badly worded? Needs something more or less?

Pretty neat, but I'd probably prefer a Technique based on Defensive Attack instead of a Perk. It seems just a bit too good to me.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Icelander

What do forumites think of it? Overpowered? Badly worded? Needs something more or less?

I don't like it much. It seems overpowered to me.
Dueling polearm can use defensive attack, remaining useful and versatile.

I prefer to accomodate the issue in another manner. Falchions (and so-called bastard swords) are U only on swing, and not on thrust. There are "middle falchion", too; they have -1 thr and +0.5 sw, and no U at all. Half-points reduce granularity.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by cbower

Pretty neat, but I'd probably prefer a Technique based on Defensive Attack instead of a Perk. It seems just a bit too good to me.

It's easy enough to make it a Technique instead (it would come to Skill-2 default, improvable up to full skill), but ultimately, I went with Perk in order to limit the versatility. A Technique would work with any weapon used with the appropriate weapon skill, but Perks canonically can be limited to a single type of weapon, i.e. Falchion or Dao.

Seems more appropriate that way, as this is very much about specialised training with a weapon rather than a specific move you can pull off in combat regardless of whether you have a long stick, bastard sword or khopesh.

I'm sensitive to the price difference between a 1 point Perk and the 3 points it would cost to increase a Hard Technique to full skill, however. If GMs feel that anyone who wants this will only ever want it for one weapon anyway, that could be a reason to prefer the Technique. In a campaign where characters may frequently use different weapons*, however, the necessity to 'spend' one of your Perk slots combined with the limitation of working only with one weapon type out of many that are covered by a skill, more or less balance it out.

I might consider making this a leveled Perk, with one level of it negating the U on a thrust attack and making it possible to make swing attacks using the Defensive Attack rules without taking the Defensive Attack maneuver** The second level would then allow a swing attack at only -1 to damage.

Personally, though, I would consider that unrealistically severe. It would require an investment of 20 points in a style and the use of both Style Perks for just this before someone could use a dao and have it be at least as effective*** as a cavalry saber or broadsword.

*Both because I have a variety of small house-rules that reward or penalise the use of appropriate weapons for each specific situation and because it is a fantasy campaign and characters can't choose what form a magic weapon comes in.
**Relevant if the attack with a U weapon is not your only attack on your turn.
***On average, though each weapon has its niche and a skilled user can leverage the small differences.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It's easy enough to make it a Technique instead (it would come to Skill-2 default, improvable up to full skill), but ultimately, I went with Perk in order to limit the versatility. A Technique would work with any weapon used with the appropriate weapon skill, but Perks canonically can be limited to a single type of weapon, i.e. Falchion or Dao.

Seems more appropriate that way, as this is very much about specialised training with a weapon rather than a specific move you can pull off in combat regardless of whether you have a long stick, bastard sword or khopesh.

Just to play devil's advocate (I'm fine with the perk), it's perfectly acceptable to rule that a technique is only usable with certain weapons or with weapons that have certain characteristics. Hook and Bind are the obvious examples.

Then, you'd open the door for Technique Adaptation perks (Weapon Control with Khopesh, for example), but that's more of a feature than a bug. It costs regular price with a Dao or Falchion, but costs extra and requires GM approval for other weapons.

[Icelander]

I realised that cavalry sabers are still listed as being TL4 in Low-Tech. I didn't notice this in the playtest.

While the European weapon with that name is TL4, I'm pretty sure that weapons using those stats would have been available by TL2 and certainly by TL3.

Am I way off base in this? Or was this simply an oversight and ought to be reported as errata?

[DanHoward]

Should probably be TL2. The buff coat had the same problem in Basic Set but was fixed in Low-Tech.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Should probably be TL2.

My feeling, at least, is that some single-edged, curved blades of TL2 are not sufficiently heavy to be considered falchions, but still heavier than a shortsword. Cavalry saber stats look just right for a light maichara, but I have no idea if there is any extant example of such a thing. There are plenty of Chinese sabers too short and light to be modelled by the LT Dao, though.

And by mid-TL3, weapons that would clearly count as Cavalry Sabers have started to be used by a lot of cultures, on the steppes and down into the Middle East.

Should this be reported as errata? It's simple to fix, at least.

[DanHoward]

Not sure. Probably not until it is determined whether it should be TL2 or TL3.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The buff coat had the same problem in Basic Set but was fixed in Low-Tech.

Out of interest, what is a buff coat, in LT terms?

Even using the lighest leather available, i.e. Medium Leather, one gets a weight that is prohibitive if it has to cover both arms, the whole torso and the legs down to the knees.

I'd really like to have the option of DR 1* leather, to match the DR 1* Padded Cloth+. Sure, I guess that DR 2/1* is fair for buff coats that are thick across the chest, but if that's used for the limbs too, we get 23-24 lbs. as the lightest possible buff coat.

+Since layered fabric provides better protection for its weight than leather, it seems that around 8 lbs. base weight would be a fair estimate of DR 1* leather.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Not sure. Probably not until it is determined whether it should be TL2 or TL3.

At what point are the Chinese considered to have attained TL3? By the Tang dynasty, at least, there are examples available that would certainly use Cavalry Saber stats.