Reality check on an example of destroying objects

[awesomenessofme1]

So, this is a situation that came up in a game of mine recently, and I want some feedback on whether it would be reasonable in real life. (I don't think that's quite what "reality check" means, but I couldn't think of a better phrase.)

My character was faced with a wooden door and after several other attempts to get through failed, he ended up deciding to try to chop through it with his sword. With effective ST of 15 and a longsword with Weapon Master, he dealt 3d+2 cut. I used the stats given in the Basic Set for 10 sq ft of 2" in thick wood, 29 HP and DR2*. It turned out he was actually able to get through it incredibly easily. Four All-Out Attacks (Strong) were able to bring it down to -41 HP and it failed its first death check.

So, is this remotely plausible? It isn't a super-realistic game, so I'm not too worried about the answer, but I am interested if there would be any way a strong but well within human norms person wielding a regular sword could do something like this easily.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

So, is this remotely plausible? It isn't a super-realistic game, so I'm not too worried about the answer, but I am interested if there would be any way a strong but well within human norms person wielding a regular sword could do something like this easily.

GURPS doesn't really scale damage in a very realistic way. A broadsword wielded by a ST 10 person averages 4.5, equal to the HP of a 0.18 lb homogeneous object. A broadsword wielded by a ST 15 person with weapon master averages 13, equal to the HP of a 4.3 lb homogeneous object (24x as massive). Realistically, destroying a 24x more massive object can be expected to need 24x more energy, and the energy you can put into a fixed size object is not linear in lifting to start with (square root is a closer estimate), so one or both of ST damage scaling and object toughness is off by a lot.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Anthony

GURPS doesn't really scale damage in a very realistic way. A broadsword wielded by a ST 10 person averages 4.5, equal to the HP of a 0.18 lb homogeneous object. A broadsword wielded by a ST 15 person with weapon master averages 13, equal to the HP of a 4.3 lb homogeneous object (24x as massive). Realistically, destroying a 24x more massive object can be expected to need 24x more energy, and the energy you can put into a fixed size object is not linear in lifting to start with (square root is a closer estimate), so one or both of ST damage scaling and object toughness is off by a lot.

Well, to be fair, a large part of that is Weapon Master, which is inherently cinematic. Without it, an ST 15 character will average only 9 damage, or 1.4 lb. But there is something a bit off about it. These kinds of things are hard to scale.

[Anaraxes]

Were you using the Overpenetration rules (B408)? Damage in excess of 2 + 29 / 4 = 9 is wasted (going right through to hit whatever's behind the door, should something happen to be pressed up against it listening to all the chopping noises). Since the door has DR 2, 7 of that applies to the door's HP.

Doesn't really change the situation a lot. (Five hits minimum -- barely! -- but five hits is over 99% likely to total 29 or more.)

ST-based melee damage is widely thought to be too high for strict realism. It's scaled for fantasy battles, not chopping down doors. It's also high compared to other energetic means of damaging things, like guns, and scales up very quickly, as Anthony mentioned. There are o some past threads with rescaled damage tables.

So, strictly realistically, Conan might not be breaking through an oak door in 5 seconds. But then, on the GURPS combat time scale, he'd likely be dead if he spent five seconds hewing at a door while ignoring the enemies that were hewing at his rear (not to mention having to then crawl through the 3'x3' hole he made, because 29 HP is only half the door). Should your cinematic Weapon Master hero be able to get through that door in time to escape, or to have any hope of catching the fleeing villain that just slammed it in his face?

In real life, I expect a firefighter would attack the area of the dead bolt rather than try to chop out a big hole in the door itself. A good kick can break the door frame holding an exterior door. But they're also trained in ventilating rooms, hence efficiently taking out large holes. For the reality check, ask your friendly local emergency personnel how long it would take them :)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

dealt 3d+2 cut
Four All-Out Attacks (Strong
bring it down to -41 HP

3d+2 is (on the favorable side) an average damage of 13, which would be boosted to 15 by AOA strong, so I would expect no more than 60 basic damage from 4 such attacks.

Going from 29 HP to -41 HP is a loss of 70 HP.

That's on the favorable side of course. 3d6 is actually average 10.5 so half the time you get 10s and half the time you get 11s as the average.

You wouldn't need above-average damage rolls if I take into account the +50% wounding multiplier...

(note below I am subtracting DR from basic damage, which ablates from 2 to 1 after first attack if he hit the same spot)
15-2=13 .. 13*1.5 = 19
15-1=12 .. 12*1.5 = 18 .. 18*3=54
19+54 = 73

It seems on average you would just barely make it, even if I subtract 3 points for the 2*1.5 you would've lost if your average on 3d was a 10 instead of an 11.

I'm not sure I see the problem with that though. A 3d+2 cutting attack is a pretty strong attack. It's hard to get damage that high.

It doesn't really seem wrong that your weapon master is able to chop down a door in 4 swings.

If I have any problem at all, it's with the idea that he took 4 seconds to make those swings.

I know from experience that if you chop into a piece of wood hard enough, the wood grips into your axe and makes it hard to pull it out. You end up either needing to plant your foot on the wood to be able to pull your axe out without lifting the log, or else you just lift the log along with the axe and then smash the log and axe on the ground together.

That's one mechanic basically missing from swing/cut weapons. There's at best something resembling it in swing/impale ones.

If we used this mechanic it would help with slowing down chopping through doors, as these high-damage swing-cuts would often result in the weapon lodging in the wood and needing to be pried out before making the next attack.

Wood obviously should grip an axe better than flesh though, so statistically I don't know how to represent that.

Flesh bleeds, and blood is a slippery liquid, so page 7 of GURPS Technical Grappling comes to mind. "Sweat, Clothing, and Armor" mentions:

Being sweaty results in Control Resistance 2,
while being oiled is Control Resistance 4!

There's no guidelines for "being bloody" that I can see, but I imagine it falls somewhere in that range. So if we had rules for wounds inherently causing some amount of Control Points on a weapon, blood CR could be subtracted from what those rules produce.

"Injury Tolerance: No Blood" things like wood clearly would not have slippery wounds, so they would not subtract the CR from whatever Control Points we decide a wound should automatically apply to a weapon.

On the other hand... does freshly cut wood (full of sap... maybe that's like blood for trees) grip an axe better than dry wood?

Maybe that's because sap is sticky so unlike sweat/blood/oil it would not be slippery and impart CR?

Come to think of it... blood can be sticky too. So maybe it should actually impart less CR as sweat, maybe just CR 1? I still think it should impart some CR compared to being completely dry.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Were you using the Overpenetration rules (B408)? Damage in excess of 2 + 29 / 4 = 9 is wasted (going right through to hit whatever's behind the door, should something happen to be pressed up against it listening to all the chopping noises)

B408 is for piercing/impaling/TBburnig so I dont' think it would apply to cutting damage.

[awesomenessofme1]

One of the issues I had was that I know swords are pretty poor at chopping through large, hard objects. I feel like either axes should get a bonus here or swords should get a penalty of some kind.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

One of the issues I had was that I know swords are pretty poor at chopping through large, hard objects. I feel like either axes should get a bonus here or swords should get a penalty of some kind.

B271's minimum swing/cut for Axe/Mace is the hatchet (no bonus, straight swing+cut) which is probably the best example most of us have since a lot of us have 1-handed hatchets for light work to compliment a 2-handed axe for heavier work.

In terms of blades, we have B262 Small Knife (-3 penalty) and Large Knife (-2 penalty) while we see a mere -1 penalty (relative to the hatchet's straight swing damage) for the Saber (B273)

It is the Shortsword/Cutlass (also B273) which tie the hatchet. So I guess the question we should be asking is how would a Cutlass and a Hatchet function differently when attacking wood.

Even though they have the same basic damage, and both attack at reach 1, there's clearly a dimensional difference since a cutlass blade is much longer than a hatchet blade...

For that reason it's actually strange a cutlass is reach 1, rather than reach c,1 like a Small Knife or Large Knife. It seems like per basic set a cutlass couldn't attack or parry in close combat, or would be -4 to skill per the new MA rules.

I would expect all edged swords to have reach C in terms of their cutting damage, even if they were non-C in terms of their impaling damage. That's one tweak I would like to see: different ranges for different damage types.

Swords (cutting along the entire length) should usually have more versatility in close-range cutting compared to axes where the edge is just at the tip. Similarly, blades (daggers OR swords) should only be able to impale from their tips, so have a single impaling range equal to their length, and penalties to do wrap-shots for impaling at closer distances.

That's sort of what we see already (a fixed impaling reach), for Katana/Bastard or Small/Large Knife it's 1 fixed range for impaling and 2 ranges for cutting...
*actually it looks like the "cr" instead of "imp" for the Bastard Sword's thrust... which I assume is a mistake?
**the Bastard + Thrusting Bastard sword makes the most sense to me, with impaling being the highest of it's variable cutting range. We also see this for the Greatsword + Thrusting Greatsword on B274
***the Katana + Small Knife + Large Knife make the least sense to me, I don't understand how it works having a blade whose impaling range is LESS than it's cutting range.
****if anything, I would always expect impaling to be equal or greater than cutting, given that if you want to do cutting damage at a greater impaling reach you CAN, using the Tip Slash rules in MA.

The only exception I can find (2 impaling ranges) is the Rapier. I guess that's kind of like having a reach of just 2 and being "+4 to skill on wrap-shots"

Except... the "Long Weapons in Close Combat" doesn't actually address how to use reach 2+ (lacking reach 1) weapons such as thrust-impale with a Thrusting Greatsword at an enemy merely 1 hex away...

It's not RAW but I imagine most people fudge that as -4 to skill per effective -1 to reach you're using it at, so instead of being -8 to impale with a greatsword in close combat, you'd be -4 to impale with a greatsword at reach 1. Is this approach made canon anywhere?

Even though it's probably a more dramatic difference, we could say for simplicity that the length of a cutlass blade representing it's damage is twice that of

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

One of the issues I had was that I know swords are pretty poor at chopping through large, hard objects. I feel like either axes should get a bonus here or swords should get a penalty of some kind.

Yeah, due to the shape of the door you can't really get a good swing on it with a sword while it's closed (you have to basically hit with the tip, which generally isn't the sweet spot for a sword), but an axe can get a decent enough one. Some sort of damage reduction - perhaps -1 per dice - might be appropriate when you can't get a side-on swing with a sword. An ST 15 Weapon Master is still going to hack through a door in fairly short order, but that's an exceptionally strong (over twice as strong as the average man) person with a further cinematic boost to damage, on top of ST-based damage being unrealistically high to start with. Also, realistically, abusing a sword to hack through a door is probably more likely to result in a damaged/broken weapon than using a weapon-grade axe would (and that in turn is probably more likely to result in a damaged/broken weapon than using a proper wood axe).

[khorboth]

So... I have some real-world experience which is near this.

During my days as a property manager, we had somebody install an old-fashion solid wood door. It was about 2" thick; I eventually measured when the opportunity presented. It was secured with a fairly standard deadbolt. They then went on vacation and had a major water leak which flooded the floor below. The downstairs tenant called the fire department. The fire department tried to kick down the door. No luck. They got out a handheld battering ram and took turns trying to beat the door down in teams of two. The door was slightly dented. Experienced firefighters said that their axes would be a total waste of time on a solid wooden door like that. Eventually, the firefighters used a ladder and gained entry through a window. The door was not even majorly damaged, but the lock didn't quite work right any more.

I know, it's not a sword. It's not quite the same situation. But it gives an idea how tough a solid wooden door really is.

Disclaimer: I don't know what type of wood this door was. That could make a real difference.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, due to the shape of the door you can't really get a good swing on it with a sword while it's closed (you have to basically hit with the tip, which generally isn't the sweet spot for a sword)

This kinda feeds into my idea that swing/cut reaches for sword should be always 1 less than their thrust/impale and you need to rely on 'Tip Slash' to cut with Just The Tip, which does less damage than cutting with a broad edge in the middle of the blade.

But that actually doesn't leave me with a mechanic of "to cut with a sword, your impaling tip actually has to go PAST your opponent" which a closed door would prevent doing...

It would probably be simple enough to design though. If you were approaching opponent on a hex map, it would just mean that the hex to the left or right or above an opponent would be unoccupied (no narrow walls or short ceilings) so that you could actually do the swinging motion of your long blade through that arc to cut them.

A flush wall that a closed door is part of has that problem, because directly above the door is the ceiling and directly to the left and right are the walls, so there's no room to chop from. You can only stab, or maybe tip-slash it.

Axes though, often have somewhat of a curve blade to allow to attack at an angle. I imagine curved swords would also fare better here for chopping, because that prevents the tip of the sword from impacting before the edge does when you're chopping at someone.

So it's more straight swords than curved swords which should be facing a problem here. Anyone get what I mean?