07-13-2016, 07:24 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Swords and plate
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Note here I assume you're talking about Low Tech's "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons" rule; the various houserules bouncing around may or may not address this particular issue. As for axes and polearms, those shouldn't really be able to easily cut through armor either. Their historical performance against armor typically comes down to either using impaling damage (typically at Chinks/Gaps) or relying on blunt trauma. Dan Howard has repeatedly stated he would have preferred to give such weapons more base damage, which would have helped cover the blunt trauma issue. |
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07-13-2016, 07:30 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
The general issue, which has already come up in this thread, is conflating so called evidence with so called common use and forcing those subjective conclusions into quantitative rules. Because GURPS has several constraints already built into this search for quantitative synchronization of your chosen pet theory, where you start will dictate where you will end up. The old saws and tired platitudes in support of these various positions are exhausting in and of themselves, before you even start with the rules as such. Suffice to say, realism cannot be achieved until you square what reality it is you want with the rules as they exist.
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07-13-2016, 07:41 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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But as to your points about "so called evidence","old saws" and "tired platitudes"! what's your evidence for your claim that axe blade were regularly used to cut through plate armour? It seems to me not all positions are equally supported by evidence? *Such is the adaptability of GURPS, I guess! Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-13-2016 at 09:06 AM. |
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07-13-2016, 07:44 AM | #34 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
Axes and polaxes, halberds, glaives, etc are historical weapons used again armored foes. The surviving manuals indicate they were used in armored combat. Did they slice through armor like a hot knife through butter? No, and I don't suggest so. What I do think is the ultimate issue is not armor DR by mm or damage by ST but misunderstanding wounds and the vagaries of HP. A 1" wide and deep wound sounds quite small, but where that wound is matters quite a lot. Further, and this is also important and overlooked, is that bleeding probably also counts for FP loss, too. Further, armor damage should reduce DR, channeling blows into damaged areas, reducing the glancing attributes of armor, etc. The complexity of the whole system really prevents us from modeling much of it in a game rules set assuming we don't start with the same point in mind. Screaming about "evidence" is really not going to get you anywhere in and of itself.
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07-13-2016, 07:47 AM | #35 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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1). it seems bit odd to reduce the DR when applying a rule that's designed to show how bad cutting attacks were against DR. 2). If you don't you end up with a win/win situation in some cases for swords, which again seems to be counter to the point of the rule Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-13-2016 at 09:10 AM. |
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07-13-2016, 08:16 AM | #36 | ||||||||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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The first sentence in your first post in this thread: Quote:
you said: "Basically none of this is true." Quote:
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Basically you came in questioning the very premise of the thread*, telling people they're wrong, but putting up no support for why you are right and we're all wrong. Now if you want to have game playability as the metric to assess all this by and not historical reality**, then OK you don't need historical evidence for axes chopping though plate for that. But instead you need to cite evidence that improving DR vs. melee weapons somehow fails the playability test. Oh and screaming, really? requesting evidence for assertions is screaming now is it. *not a problem, I hasten to add. **despite the fact that you certainly seem happy to argue over what historical reality was Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-13-2016 at 09:12 AM. |
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07-13-2016, 10:03 AM | #37 |
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: New York
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Re: Swords and plate
You know other posts in this thread make me question some assumptions.
I've always thought as axes and halberds as armor piercing weapons... Its more appropriate to call them armor effective weapons, in reality ( I think) these weapons, as well as crushing weapons such as a mace, were used not to pierce armor but just to crush or otherwise bludgeon a person to death. Causing extensive broken bones and internal injuries. Now this is because axes hit harder than swords, as well as maces. Causing more compression force. So with that, I think ill use a modified version of the edge protection. It'll only be effective for metallic armors, and only against swords. To compensate ill make it easier for swords to target chinks. I believe standard is - 10 to hit ? and for the estoc -8 ? I might turn that into -8 and - 6 respectively Swords vs. Leather or cloth has no effect
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07-13-2016, 10:14 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Swords and plate
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The Great Axe is sw+4 cut and the Maul is sw+5 cr, compared to sw+3 for two-handed swords, so maybe those don't need to be adjusted. But if two handed weapons are only dealing one more point of damage than the one-handed version, why bother? This may seem like a lot of damage buffs to be handing out, but if you're buffing armor, it should balance out. |
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07-13-2016, 10:43 AM | #39 | |||||
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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It seems obvious that the mechanism of injury would have been some combination of: 1) concussive damage to tissue, including to bones deep beneath the tissue struck, 2) tears or cuts in the tissue under the armored area, possibly including bleeding injuries sufficient to debilitate an armored man down over time, 3) mechanical damage to the armor, and or the musculature or skeleton system of the target sufficient to compromise mobility, 4) strikes capable of stunning or addling the target. To what degree any of this is cutting damage in GURPS is not clear. Does it seem likely, *** for tat, that a blow from a hammer would do less damage than that of halberd? That's hard to say. GURPS makes those assertions. Reality does not. Quote:
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But, let me try. I'll give an example from history, the battle of Morgarten. This is an actual battle in the early 1300s involving peasants with halberds (that is, yes, swing cutting weapons) slaughtering knights in armor. There are many interesting bits about this battle, but for our purposes, here's the key information: "The penned-in knightly forces could do nothing to protect themselves from the mad onslaught.95 Some of the confederates rammed their long halberd spikes right through enemy chain mail, mercilessly impaling knights on their iron tips; others swung the enormously heavy axes slashing apart body armor, and then splitting open the exposed flesh.96 Knight and horse fell together at the pitiless onslaught of the massed halberds. The rout was so complete that John of Winterthur felt: It was not a battle, but a mere butchery of Duke Leopold’s men; for the mountainfolk slew them like sheep in the shambles; no quarter was given, they cut down all without distinction. So great was the fierceness of the Confederates that scores of the Austrian foot-soldiery, when they saw the bravest knights falling helplessly, threw themselves in panic into the lake, preferring to drown rather than to be hewn about by the dreadful weapons of their enemies." You can read the dissertation about Swiss Halberds here. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ap/10?0::NO...:osu1244264028 Ultimately the Swiss will evolve from pikes and halberd formations, to longer and longer pikes. Nevertheless, they did use halberds and did defeat armored knights in battle. Now, if you insist that we have a History Channel video, or some fat duffer on Youtube swinging a cheap reproduction halberd against an even cheaper reproduction armor as "proof," alas, I know of none. I can only point to primary source material from the period to back my assertions that swing cut weapons were used in armored combat. That, sadly, ought to be enough to tender the suggestion without ridicule, but I'm quite sure the medieval combat experts on these forums will have none of that, which is of course because so many on these forums are veterans of actual live steel medieval battles. |
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07-13-2016, 11:30 AM | #40 | |||
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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armor, hema |
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