Swords and plate

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Note that Shawn frequently - and in this case, I think - links to these mocking them as authoritative, not asserting them. "I sawz it on the YouTube!" being not exactly the rigorous standard he's used to as a PhD in history.

I took this as linked almost entirely tongue in cheek, but I could be mistaken.

I agree I think it was, but interesting that the chap with his recreation halberd while capable of piercing the car bonnet pretty well with a thrust was pretty bad as cutting through it with a swing. Demonstrating the basic premise that cutting through metal with a hand held swung weapon is pretty much a non starter, and certainly sub optimal compared to other attacks.

Now of course no one is going to try and extrapolate precise results against real armour from that video, but come on if you can't get through a car bonnet* what does that say for cutting through actual armour.


It's a bit like if I came up with a great new cartridge and made great claim's for it ability to pierce modern body armour. But if when messing about shooting tin cans with it is only just gets though one, no one's going to expend much time and effort assessing how well it does against modern body armour.


*now if we theoretically argue the halberd used was as proportionally sub par compared to historical halberds as the car bonnet was to historical plate armour well then OK, but I see no evidence to support that rather tortuous justification (leaving aside that if that was the case it would still have not got past any underlying arming garment).

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I agree I think it was, but interesting that the chap with his recreation halberd while capable of piercing the car bonnet pretty well with thrust was pretty bad as cutting through it with swing. Demonstrating the basic premise that cutting metal with hand held swung weapon is pretty much a non starter

He never made the attempt, so you cannot make this conclusion at all, for or against.

Now of course on one is going to try and extrapolate precise results against real armour from that video, but come on if you can't get through a car bonnet* what does that say for cutting through actual armour.

It says nothing. A car bonnet is a complicated, modern piece of sandwich material often with energy-absorbing polymers between otherwise stamped and tack-welded sheet steel. It's a fun video of people bashing on irrelevant things for marketing purposes.

It's a bit like if I came up with a great new cartridge and made great claim's for it ability to pierce modern body armour. But if when messing about shooting tin cans with it is only just gets though one, no one's going to expend much time and effort assessing how well it does against modern body armour.

Here's the thing - if you came up with a new cartridge using the GURPS DR model - where if you get through DR you then subject the target to follow-up attacks, behind-armor explosions, etc. you would be able to use the basic cartridge stats of energy, cross-section, and relative hardness and the definition that DR 70 = penetration (not denting, penetration) of 1 inch of RHA = 20d to come up with gameable stats that work with the GURPS rules.

You can't do this with hand weapons very well, and least of all with the "you only penetrate if you do double the DR" which really isn't how GURPS works at all.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

He never made the attempt, so you cannot make this conclusion at all, for or against.

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

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

It says nothing. A car bonnet is a complicated, modern piece of sandwich material often with energy-absorbing polymers between otherwise stamped and tack-welded sheet steel. It's a fun video of people bashing on irrelevant things for marketing purposes.

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 roughly as resistant to swung cutting attacks as historical plate?)


EDIT: ignore the above you're right he didn't try and cut through the bonnet with the axe blade, sorry!

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Here's the thing - if you came up with a new cartridge using the GURPS DR model - where if you get through DR you then subject the target to follow-up attacks, behind-armor explosions, etc. you would be able to use the basic cartridge stats of energy, cross-section, and relative hardness and the definition that DR 70 = penetration (not denting, penetration) of 1 inch of RHA = 20d to come up with gameable stats that work with the GURPS rules.

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 directly, it's not unreasonable to make some preliminary assessments. I wasn't really talking about GURPS at all in this.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You can't do this with hand weapons very well, and least of all with the "you only penetrate if you do double the DR" which really isn't how GURPS works at all.

Not quite sure what you mean here (EDIT: sorry I mean I get your point about the different ways GURPS goes about modelling Bullets compared to hand held weapons and the inherent differences and difficulties in doing so)

What I mean is 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)?


Also I'm pretty sure you have you yourself have suggested reducing the current ability of ST based hand held weapons against DR for those who desire more realism.

[RyanW]

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?

The video showed no attempts to use the axe blade against the car hood/bonnet. He used the spear point and the beak. The axe blade was only used against the pig carcass, the dowel pretending to be a spear shaft, and the mannequin.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The video showed no attempts to use the axe blade against the car hood/bonnet. He used the spear point and the beak. The axe blade was only used against the pig carcass, the dowel pretending to be a spear shaft, and the mannequin.

Ah damn, sorry yes you are completely right it was the beak wasn't it, sorry folks!

But OK does anyone imagine the axe blade would have done better, worse or the same. Or why he didn't attempt it (especially as has been stated this is a PR piece to demonstrate the ability of the weapon to chop, and piece it way through things)?

[GodBeastX]

Again, not a master physicist or martial artist =) Not even half a master!

I wanted to point out one thing that doesn't happen in any video I saw:

The armor never ran at the guy with a 180 lbs of body behind it.

Armor against a log, half a dummy, or similar objects isn't the same as the forward momentum of a guy coming against a sudden stop thrust, or even a swinging weapon for that matter.

I also noticed everyone seems to swing weapons oddly in videos. The assumption is these guys know how to use a weapon, but part of a swing is technique.

I'll give you a real work analogy. I was at a fair and they had those strong man bell deals where you grab the mallet and ring the bell. I watched these big strong dudes slam the mallet into it over and over with all their might! No one rang it. Then I noticed at the smaller one for kids the guy running it was showing a little girl how to swing and her went straight overhead...

I grabbed the mallet after I saw that... overhead, straight horse stance two handed, and swing the mallet and --- DING! My wife got the video (Will link it sometime). Was I stronger than those guys? No. But there's definitely more technique to swinging an axe or sword than just putting all your might into it. I watched this one guy use a claymore and had an odd swing style showing how well it cut clean and it had a dull edge. It seemed like because his swing generated a slice instead of an impact it was deadlier to fleshy materials. Maybe the sword is seen as inefficient simply because people are making assumptions on how it was used?

My point about "People wouldn't use the stuff if it wasn't effective" was basically to that point. Someone must have used it and it worked or vice versa (Weapon versus armors) otherwise nobody would spend all the resources and months (Unlike today) making these weapons only to be completely devastated.

"Yes, I will spend everything I have to show up in battle and do nothing!"

At least I'm assuming people didn't live like Dungeon Fantasy where you get so much cash you have no idea what to do with it =)

Edit:

I'll give another example that isn't sword versus armor, but how people thought ancients did things a certain way and were wrong. Egyptians and their massive blocks come to mind. Took everyone until 2014 to figure out what was right in their face. I'm sure to the Egyptians it was obvious, but to us looking back thousands of years, with physics and stuff, "That's impossible!" which tends to be the reason for 90% of History Channel shoving aliens down my throat :P "I don't get it, so it must be aliens or wrong".

http://phys.org/news/2014-04-ancient...ones-sand.html

Why not assume the images of people being cut through by swords are real and maybe we simply have no real idea yet?

[safisher]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think the issue for the context of the thread (which is after all simulation in a game) is that this distinction doesn't matter. In what way would the rules change? You can't simply stop with armor is "impenetrable" because clearly people in armor could be fought with these weapons successfully, and that has to be modelled too. I suppose you could make the edge protection and chinks in armor rules even more complicated, but they're already pushing if not over the limits of tolerable complexity for most games.

That's more or less the problem, as I see. Dan made the comment "cutting weapons can't cut armor" which is a grossly exaggerated and controversial view, and then created a rule which mishandles DR in GURPS and changes blunt trauma and so forth, while also increasing the armor DR of the poor quality medieval armor (while also claiming modern metals were hardly better, etc.). We see the same questions coming up again and again because it's a poor way to play the game, and a poor way to represent reality.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Note that Shawn frequently - and in this case, I think - links to these mocking them as authoritative, not asserting them. "I sawz it on the YouTube!" being not exactly the rigorous standard he's used to as a PhD in history.

I took this as linked almost entirely tongue in cheek, but I could be mistaken.

It's certainly mocking, and it says something of the posters that they take them at face value.

[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.")

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by safisher

It's certainly mocking, and it says something of the posters that they take them at face value.

Eh, I took it as "person trying to sell X didn't even make an on-camera attempt of thing you said X was 'well known' for." If you had posted a link to an advertisement for a floor cleaner that didn't feature any attempt to show it was effective at cleaning floors, for example...