Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

[Gerrard of Titan Server]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Sharp pieces of metal kill people and having muscles 20-40% thicker than weak Willy's are well below the margin of error for any reasonable metric, in my opinion.

Well, now you have gone and made me less certain. Are you saying that GURPS is not accurate by giving a damage bonus, even a minimal one, for a ST 10 person vs a ST 12 person for wielding a "bastard sword" against an unarmored human target?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Bruno

This smells of the usual argument about martial artists not needing strength, because of mad skillz yo.

Use of a muscle-powered tool reduces, but does not eliminate, the need for strength on a given task. Heck, even guns, which aren't muscle powered, still need some strength to carry and operate (particularly longarms).

Strength is less important for a swordsman than for a martial artist, because the sword gives you leverage (bonus damage) and concentrates the striking edge (giving you cutting or impaling damage).

But to say that it's somehow not important is just as goofy as saying it's not important in boxing or judo.

There was a scene in Belisarius Series where Rao was rescuing the princess Shakuntala from a prison. Both were martial arts experts. When he got to her cell the guards left her an opportunity to get up and attack the guards. It is noted in one part that she was skillful enough to do dreadful and sometimes lethal damage with barehanded blows. But Rao could actually break bones.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Skill is very important for unarmed fighting too. Surely more than strength. Both are important, of course (otherwise there wouldn't be so much muscle training in every martial arts).

Agreed. However, there's a reason why weight classes are essential to all forms of full-contact unarmed martial arts (striking or grappling) but not to fencing.

I study unarmed martial artsts (including unarmed HEMA) as well as sword-fighting and I can tell you, without hestation, that I can win a swordfight against a much stronger opponent if I'm just a little more skilled. But I'd need to be a lot more skilled to win a boxing match against a stronger opponent and even more skilled to win a wrestling match against a stronger opponent.

You do need strength to use a weapon correctly, and there are ways to use superior strength to you advantage, but in many ways, weapons are a great equalizer.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Agreed. However, there's a reason why weight classes are essential to all forms of full-contact unarmed martial arts (striking or grappling) but not to fencing.

Fencing, which uses very very light weapons, is at the extreme end of the situation.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Gerrard of Titan Server

I have no first hand experience in historical weapon-based martial arts, but I have some second-hand appreciation and fascination for those who do, such as HEMA.

Some of the "experts" and actual experts in the community have said in several occasions that strength is not terribly important. Skill is much more important. Matt Easton of Scholagladiatoria has even stated that during his time of teaching historical European martial arts to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, he hasn't yet seen someone that is too physically weak to effectively wield a longsword (aka a hand-and-a-half sword) with two hands. (He says that a little bit more strength is required for effective wielding of a sword in one hand, but still not that much.)

Is this true?

In terms of GURPS, a very strong person has a ST of 13, for a base Swing damage of 2d-1, which comes out to 2d+1 cut for two-handing a "bastard sword". A weak person has a ST of 7, for a base Swing damage of 1d-2, which comes out to 1d cut for two-handing a "bastard sword". Right? That's over twice the damage, which doesn't gel with my understanding of the above sources.

This is further informed by this one page that I found. It doesn't look terribly professional, but it's the only source that I've found. It claims to be measured impact force of a sword swing and mace swing with proper form and technique, vs "bad technique" aka hitting as hard as you can.

The numbers are quite interesting. According to this author, a mace swing with proper form has 10x less impact force than a full-out, "bad" technique swing, and a sword swing with proper form has 100x less impact force than a full-out, "bad" technique swing! Again, are these numbers accurate? It's incredibly difficult to find numbers on this. I lack all firsthand expertise in this, and it's hard for me to even sanity check these claims, and that's a big reason why I'm here.

If those force impact numbers are to be trusted, then it leads me to the conclusion that swords deal damage because they're sharp and because they hit vulnerable areas with proper edge alignment, etc., and generally not because of of the person's strength - except to the extent that is necessary to get the sword moving at speed.

I would guess that a relatively weak real world person can swing a sword about as fast as a very strong person, and thus the above numbers pass my initial, uneducated, "sniff" test.

If all of this is correct, this would mean that the entire framework and system in place for modeling damage with swords based on strength and swing damage is entirely broken.

Alternatively, maybe I'm coming from the wrong perspective. In a real fight, the first person to get get a cut generally wins, so maybe a very strong person would do substantially more damage with a sword cut with good form because of their strength, but it doesn't matter because the actual flesh wounds from a sword cut from a weaker than average person does more than enough to incapacitate a person most of the time.

I guess I'm just looking for comments, pointers, and general education. I'd like to understand reality before I decide if I want to ignore reality for being cinematic, and exactly what the difference would be.

Thanks for your time!

I don’t have experience with melee weapons either but I’m inclined to think that the general point the force impact numbers are making is probably true, even if their figures are wildly off (and no opinion about that).

While it may not directly correlate to melee weapons, one summer, many, many years ago, I had to help shingle the roof and went from about as bad as can be at it to fairly decent at it before the job was done. (I doubt I could do it now.) The point here is that when I just swung the hammer with all my might, I got everything and anything but a properly driven nail, anything from a bent nail to a bruised thumbnail. Once I was shown the proper technique and got it down, I didn’t need to swing the hammer particularly hard or fast. What I did have to do was line up my arc so the bell of the hammer face landed squarely on the head of the nail. The result was a nail driven in straight, nail head flush with the shingle, in one blow, every time. I think that’s the point they’re making.

For a swung mace, it may be a better analogy to think of its strike as trying to drive a nail with a carpenter’s hammer rather than trying to hit a line drive with a baseball bat.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Agreed. However, there's a reason why weight classes are essential to all forms of full-contact unarmed martial arts (striking or grappling) but not to fencing.

Is that any different than it would be in GURPS? In GURPS, you'd just need to make contact to "score a point". You don't need to batter through someone's armor, or make sure you actually cleaved a guy's arm off. You mention weight classes in striking arts, but in the case of boxing, a more forceful blow is more useful than a less forceful blow, so ST matters there. And in wrestling, in GURPS, ST is necessary to make a pin or to prevent your opponent from breaking free.

The question here is whether ST should matter in GURPS when it comes to swordplay. The primary places it matters are in minimum ST, beats and damage. The experts seem to acknowledge the need for minimum ST, and if I'm honest, I doubt modern sword-experts are really that concerned about damage. They don't need to slice arms off for a living. I expect in reality, when it comes to actual damage, physical strength makes a difference. I'm not saying GURPS is perfect, but the idea that ST "doesn't matter" strikes me as nonsense. It does matter! But clearly skill matters more, and GURPS doesn't disagree with that.

[Gerrard of Titan Server]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

but the idea that ST "doesn't matter" strikes me as nonsense. It does matter! But clearly skill matters more, and GURPS doesn't disagree with that.

I don't think anyone is seriously advancing the first position. The question all along simply has been "ok, it matters, but how much?'. And I've gotten a lot of answers here (thanks again).

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

I don't think you're reading what I wrote correctly and I know Gollum isn't.

Saying unarmed combat favors strength proportionally to skill more than armed combat does does not mean that skill isn't more important than strength there.

It could be the difference between a 6:4 favoring of skill over strength against a 7:3 split or an 8.5:1.5 vs 9:1.

I sometimes don't understand things correctly. English is not my mother tongue, so, even if I can read it quite well (for a French guy) I often lack little nuances that makes sentences more subtle.

But here, I think I perfectly understand what you wanted to mean. I just don't agree. I think the ratio skill/ST may be about the same in karate than in swordplay. Swordsman may have less muscle training exercise (I don't know), they always fight with their sword, which is a weight. So, every time they train, they do muscle building exercises. After 30 minutes of sai or tonkwa handling, my wrists hurt.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It is, however, an all or nothing headline. Realistically, strength is important but it's certainly not the only thing that matters; the aged master who beats the strong but unskilled youth is a real thing, but it involves an enormous skill disparity.

And we often forgot that the aged master is not an ordinary old man. He is a man who did a lot of muscle training exercises and who probably go on doing some, to maintain his fitness as much as possible. My sensei is 67 years old. He remains far much stronger than I am, and probably much stronger than every young and strong karateka in my dojo. I've seen him show how to lift heavy weight more quickly by using abdominal contraction.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Strength certainly matters, but I don't see it as mattering anywhere near as much between skilled oponents as between two people smacking like uneducate apes.
My lady once slammed her forehead against my nose, and she said, "ouch", while I just laughed. When she tried a minor thumb lock, she couldn't exert enough force with her whole hand to overcome my single digit strength. But I don't doubt for a minute that if she had even a tiny bit of combat skill, she could mop the floor with me.

I fully do agree with all that.

If she was skilled, she would know how to use footing, hip rotation and abdominal contraction to lock your thumb or even your arm much more effectively. That is what make member locks far much faster and stronger (and so painful for the victim: properly done, it breaks joints) ... But if she was skilled, she would also be stronger.

It's the snake that bites its own tail.