Reality check on an example of destroying objects

[DangerousThing]

The door might even have extra DR. Having seen some heavy wooden doors, I would give them a high dr and some extra hp

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

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.

I just responded to this in your other thread, so won't go into it here.

Originally Posted by Plane

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...

Eh, GM judgement calls should work fine here. "There's no way to get the tip of the sword past the target without going through it first" isn't too difficult to judge if you've got the scene playing out in your mind's eye to some extent. It's really only going to happen when attacking a wall (or something pressed against a wall) or similar, and perhaps if engaging a really big foe.

Originally Posted by Plane

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.

The khopesh would have no problem, and a rather-curved falchion or perhaps a highly-curved scimitar may be at a lesser penalty, but lesser-curved weapons like sabers, katanas, etc would be treated just like straight swords.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Eh, GM judgement calls should work fine here. "There's no way to get the tip of the sword past the target without going through it first" isn't too difficult to judge if you've got the scene playing out in your mind's eye to some extent.

This^^. Sometimes the GM just has to use some common sense when the RAW produces a bizarre result. Kevin Siembieda used an example decades ago that I thought summed it up: a normal, unmodified baseline human cannot break into a bank vault with his bare hands by force, no matter how many 'natural 20s' he rolls.

Sometimes the rules produce weird results that just don't make sense and the GM has to wing it.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Sometimes the GM just has to use some common sense when the RAW produces a bizarre result. Kevin Siembieda used an example decades ago that I thought summed it up: a normal, unmodified baseline human cannot break into a bank vault with his bare hands by force, no matter how many 'natural 20s' he rolls.

Sometimes the rules produce weird results that just don't make sense and the GM has to wing it.

I don't really like that approach, because RPGs don't always deal with baseline humans and often deal with borderline cases between normal and gods, so it's good to have mechanics for how to resolve them.

Having ST 15 is definitely not a baseline human, so them being able to bash down a door doesn't bother me too much.

ST15 gives swing 2d+1 normally... although "longsword" is mentioned under B208/B209 (broadsword, 2-handed sword) I can't find it on 271/273... *checks LT66* okay it does swing+1 cut so a normal person with ST 15 using it would do 2d+2...

B99 can give either +1 or +2 to the damage if your DX is high enough, which could bring it to 2d+3 or 2d+4...

I'm actually not sure how OP got 3d+2, come to think of it. I know "dice plus adds" lets you convert +4 to 1d, but that should only be 3d...

I think I realized my mistake in previous calculations, I was adding +2 to 3d+2 but I think OP had already included the +2 for AOA:Strong when calculating 3d+2.

So the average per hit would be 12.5 not 14.5...

12-2=10
12-1=9
10+9*3=37 penetrating damage, *1.5 wounding multiplier = 55 HP lost.

Since 70 HP was lost, even for a ST15 Weapon Master (+2) using AOA:Strong, they probably rolled above-average damage to down the door that quickly.

Of course... that +2 which I shouldn't have added... you could get that back by doing Springing Attack, but that would double the amount of time it took to make an attack, since you need to spend a turn (I assume like a ready or concentrate, never specifies maneuver) prepping for the extra damage.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Plane

I don't really like that approach, because RPGs don't always deal with baseline humans and often deal with borderline cases between normal and gods, so it's good to have mechanics for how to resolve them.

Having ST 15 is definitely not a baseline human, so them being able to bash down a door doesn't bother me too much.

ST15 gives swing 2d+1 normally... although "longsword" is mentioned under B208/B209 (broadsword, 2-handed sword) I can't find it on 271/273... *checks LT66* okay it does swing+1 cut so a normal person with ST 15 using it would do 2d+2...

B99 can give either +1 or +2 to the damage if your DX is high enough, which could bring it to 2d+3 or 2d+4...

I'm actually not sure how OP got 3d+2, come to think of it. I know "dice plus adds" lets you convert +4 to 1d, but that should only be 3d...

I think I realized my mistake in previous calculations, I was adding +2 to 3d+2 but I think OP had already included the +2 for AOA:Strong when calculating 3d+2.

So the average per hit would be 12.5 not 14.5...

12-2=10
12-1=9
10+9*3=37 penetrating damage, *1.5 wounding multiplier = 55 HP lost.

Since 70 HP was lost, even for a ST15 Weapon Master (+2) using AOA:Strong, they probably rolled above-average damage to down the door that quickly.

Of course... that +2 which I shouldn't have added... you could get that back by doing Springing Attack, but that would double the amount of time it took to make an attack, since you need to spend a turn (I assume like a ready or concentrate, never specifies maneuver) prepping for the extra damage.

Weapon Master is +2 per die. So 2d+1, +1 for longsword, +4 for Weapon Master is 2d+6, which becomes 3d+2.

[Aldric]

So, if you wanted something more realistic it would not have ST 15, it would not have Weapon Master, and it would probably be forced to use a Tip Slash to deal Cutting damage to the door ?
I guess a character without a very high skill might also want to line up his attacks to hit the same spot, which may be an Evaluate ?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Weapon Master is +2 per die. So 2d+1, +1 for longsword, +4 for Weapon Master is 2d+6, which becomes 3d+2.

Ah you're right, forgot the 'per die'.

A HUGE gap between it's benefit to thrust/swing when they are different dice amounts, found with ST13+

Or even with just thrust damage when you look at the leap from ST 18 to ST 19.

Per-die is easier but sometimes I think a +% might lead to more continuity...

+% wouldn't be so hard to implement if we did a "per damage rolled" concept.

Using the Dice+Adds swapping...
2d=7 so
+1 per 2 die could be looked at as "+1 per 7 rolled"
+1 per die could be looked at as "+2 per 7 rolled" (may as well tweak Weapon master to get the "or +2 whichever is better" like AOA:strong gets)

You could also round up fractions to make sure the low-ST guys still get the bonus.