09-07-2015, 09:09 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vermont
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[MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
So, as I've mentioned in another thread, I've been studying historical sword fighting for the last half-year.
Among the styles I've been studying have been a significant amount of Rapier and Dagger (Main-Gauche) and Sword and Buckler. And I've notice that the draw-backs and benefits of dual-weapons or sword and shield are different than those assumed by GURPS. I'll lay out those differences here, and I'll propose new house rules to fix this discrepancy in my next post. GURPS Benefits: 1. Two un-penalized parries (or a parry and a block) in a single turn. 2. Dual Weapon Attacks (attacking with both weapons at once). 3. Cross Parries. GURPS Drawbacks. 1. You have to learn two weapon skills. 2. Your off-hand weapon is penalized without a quirk. Real Life Benefits: 1. Counterattacks (double time) and Ripostes (single time) are easier and more effective when you can parry with one weapon and attack with another. 2. Beats are much more effective because you can attack simultaneously. 3. You can perform hard to defend against attacks that would be too risky without a parrying weapon. (Let's call them Committed (Determined) Deceptive Attacks). Real Life Drawbacks: 1. While training in one or both weapons singly is a helpful foundation, using two weapons simultaneously is a separate and more difficult skill.
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09-07-2015, 09:20 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vermont
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
My House Rules Proposal:
Fighting with two weapons or a weapon and a shield is a separate skill, one difficulty class higher than the harder of the two weapons. This skill defaults to either weapon at -4, but if you know both weapons separately, the default is -3. EXAMPLE: Rapier and Main-Gauche (DX Hard) Default: DX -6, Rapier -4 (-3 if you have 1 point in Main-Gauche), Main-Gauche -4 (-3 if you have at least 1 point in Rapier). New Rules: In any turn when you have used neither Dual Weapon Attack or Cross-Parry, you have +1 Skill for the purposes of Counterattack and +1 Parry for the purposes of Riposte. If you perform an All-Out Attack (Beat and Attack) and win the contest to Beat, your margin of victory is treated as being 1 higher. Additionally, when you use Committed Attack, your defense with your off-hand weapon is -1 instead of -2. Looking at it now, it seems over-powered, perhaps I need to make some of those benefits techniques or perks. What are your thoughts?
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09-07-2015, 10:25 AM | #3 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
Dual Wielding came up a lot in Cherry Blossom Rain, mostly Katana/Wazikashi, so I thought I'd toss my two cents in.
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As for committed attacks, I will note that Dual Wielding already makes that more effective. The rules for Committed Attacks is that you can't parry with the weapon you used to make the committed attack, and you're at -2 to any other defenses and you cannot retreat. So if you make a committed attack with your rapier, you can still parry with your main gauche. I do think there are rooms for house rules, definitely (my own game used some as well). I particularly like the idea of learning a pair of weapons as a single skill.
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09-07-2015, 11:02 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
One option would be to say that guards with the sword and buckler hand or sword and dagger hand together are Cross Parries (from Martial Arts) in GURPS even if the weapons do not touch.
I think that the number and difficulty of melee weapon skills in GURPS needs to be drastically reduced not increased (its already impractically expensive to be a typical elite warrior who can make himself useful with any common weapon in his society, because there are few and hard defaults between weapon skills).
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09-07-2015, 11:40 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
Dual wielding styles seem like a great candidate for the Weapon Adaptation perk. For that matter, letting Weapon Adaptation (parrying dagger in off hand, to Fencing) entirely replace the separate Main Gauche skill seems like it would solve a lot of the issues that come up around that skill, and provide a model for a lot of other cases of this.
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09-07-2015, 11:55 AM | #6 |
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
I've considered allowing a sort of Counterstrike at -3 following an off-hand parry of a thrusting attack with a Reach C weapon, an empty hand, or a small buckler. Gives -2 to parry with the weapon parried. I came up with that after watching a sparring match with rapiers that included quite a bit of left hand work.
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09-07-2015, 02:14 PM | #7 | ||||||
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Location: Vermont
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
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But I can see how I'm not helping matters by making dual weapons an additional skill. However, the reality is, when I started learning Giganti's rapier and dagger after learning his single rapier, I had to unlearn a lot of my rapier habits--people who fight rapier and dagger using single rapier techniques get skewered. Furthermore, now I'm pretty good with rapier and dagger and able to pull off some pretty nice tricks in free-sparring, but I don't know the first thing about fighting with a main-gauche alone! I could probably hold it in my left hand and parry with it, but I wouldn't stand a chance in a knife fight with someone who knew what they were doing. Those are the experiences that make me feel like dual weapons are a separate skill. Quote:
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RyanW, why wouldn't you receive the same bonus after parrying with a medium shield or cloak?
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09-07-2015, 02:57 PM | #8 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
To be honest, I haven't put a lot of thought into it. I was mainly thinking about bare hand or parrying dagger defense and added buckler in because rapier and buckler is so iconic. I might actually drop buckler, and limit it to weapons with a crossguard (and bare hands).
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09-07-2015, 03:11 PM | #9 | |
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Location: Vermont
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
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And if you're allowing it for bare hands at all, you should allow it for cloak as well. Most cloak techniques are just bare-handed parries with a cloak wrapped around as extra protection. Personally, I'd allow it for any off-hand weapon or shield. Take a look at the technique in this video at around 3:05 for an example of why. *Blade grabs are another topic entirely, they're really effective and much safer than people think--many longsword manuals teach them. But no rapier manuals I know of do (I think it's Agrippa who said, "it's a miserable way to defend yourself") and I don't know why. Maybe it's easier to cut yourself grabbing a narrower blade, or maybe it's just unfashionable.
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05-31-2016, 11:46 AM | #10 | ||||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: [MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.
I'm usually not one for reviving dead threads, but this one piqued my interest when it was linked in the Gritty/Realistic thread. I originally wrote a reply for there, but felt it would be better to post here than derail that thread.
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Note this also would apply to unarmed attacks - a character who has just Parried a sword strike can use (fully-trained) Counterattack and Deceptive Attack to make an impressive -4/-6 attack (-4/-5 if the target opts to Dodge/Block), unless the target was paying attention to your hand (for -5/-6 or -6/-6 instead). Quote:
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GURPS weapon skills, while sometimes overly narrow (like the difference between Shortsword and Broadsword), are actually quite broad in that they allow you to defend against any other sort of weapon (from a knife to a halberd to a biting dragon). Allowing you to use them with or without another weapon in your other hand doesn't seem like much of a stretch there. Personally, I'd either handle it as a familiarity, or I'd have each skill have a favored off-hand skill ("none" being an option, of course), and using it with anything else is at -2. |
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Tags |
dual weapon, hema, martial arts |
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