01-08-2015, 10:39 AM | #261 | ||||||
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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Fistloads, brass knuckles or gloves, are not weapons in themselves: you have no other way to use them. Tonkwa is a weapon in itself: you have another way to use it. Fistloads, brass knuckles and gloves are only designed to improve punches. Tonkwa is not, even if it can. This is the main difference I see and, to me, it is a huge difference. Last edited by Gollum; 01-08-2015 at 10:48 AM. |
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01-08-2015, 11:27 AM | #262 | |||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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01-08-2015, 11:37 PM | #263 | |||||
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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Do you think that, in reality, it is harder for a shortsword expert to become comfortable with a broadsword than for a karateka, kungfuka, etc., to become comfortable with a tonkwa? The difference between the two in GURPS rules is still awesome. -2 in one case. No penalty in the other (if you apply unfamiliarity to tonkwa, you logically have to apply it to broadsword too, since unfamiliarity also applies to two guns governed by the same skill). And I was wrong about my calculation. A +2 in skill doesn't just cost 2 character points but 8. That makes an average of 1,600 hours of training with a master vs 8 hours without any master. Yes. If only to avoid hurting your foe! ;-) Quote:
And for techniques, I don't think it requires too much time in GURPS rules. My karate master, who was in army (French Parachutists) once said that the problem of army is believing that techniques are quick to learn. Instructor shows it, make you try it one hour of two, and consider that you know how to do. But that is a mistake. A technique, to be really known, must be applicable in all possible situation, with foes of different size and weight. It requires to be repeated thousands of times. Quote:
I think it is a very wise choice. Being enforced to regularly buy again the books you are supposed to own and to read them again (D&D policy, for instance) is not at all a good thing. That prevents to buy new interesting books that you don't have, and also prevents the authors team to write new interesting book because they have to rewrite all the old ones. Precisely. What kobudo teaches is that every new weapon is long to learn. Being able to pick any weapon you find and use it comfortably, like movie heroes do regularly is totally unrealistic. Quote:
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I'm not telling that using a tonkwa is impossible for someone who don't have the skill. I'm just telling that it realistically deserve a penalty. At least the same penalty that when a shortsword expert suddenly take a broadsword (about the same weapon but just more long and heavier; a tonkwa precisely makes your arm heavier and thicker). The penalty for the shortsword expert is -2 to attack (and, thus, -1 to parry). The penalty for the karateka using tonkwa doesn't exist at all. To my mind this is an inconsistency. Edit Note that I also find unrealistic for a GURPS karateka to be able to use a sword in reverse grip to hit with the hilt at no penalty. And I find even more unrealistic for him to be able to cut someone with a shuriken at no penalty. Edit Last edited by Gollum; 01-08-2015 at 11:56 PM. |
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01-08-2015, 11:50 PM | #264 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
Also note that this is pretty physically dubious. The realistic virtues of a flail seem to have to do with impact velocity (due to whip crack like actions -- which the arm can do, but not especially well) and with a tendency to foul parrying objects (it also fouls the flail, but if you're more ready than your opponent, that's probably okay).
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01-08-2015, 11:58 PM | #265 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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The defender can parry the middle of a tonkwa. So there is a difference here. And I do agree. I just wanted to mean that the specific speed of the tonkwa could be handled with the same game mechanism (a penalty to parry), for a different reason, sure (the speed and not the fact that it can turn around the parrying weapon), but it would work without adding too much complexity. Having said that, it is absolutely not an official GURPS rule, of course. Last edited by Gollum; 01-09-2015 at 12:06 AM. |
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01-09-2015, 01:01 AM | #266 | ||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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01-10-2015, 12:56 PM | #267 | ||||||
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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Roleplaying games which use that non linear kind of improvement usually use it for improvement through adventure as well as for improvement through study... Apart from the BRP system and maybe very few others. Quote:
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Contrary to D&D, GURPS authors are a little team. If they had to rewrite the game every 10 years, the largest part of their work would only be rewriting what has already been written... Quote:
Yes. And as I said above (quite far above now), I also find unrealistic the fact that it could be used with karate without any other penalty than unfamiliarity. Last edited by Gollum; 01-10-2015 at 01:09 PM. |
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01-10-2015, 01:46 PM | #268 | ||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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Not that it much matters to me since I've given up on the whole mechanic of insert-time-get-points as fundamentally poisonous for the sorts of games I want to run. Quote:
Things aren't lost in edition changes either, GURPS isn't like D&D which has a history of being different games in different editions. Take a look at those at least 50 third edition books. For how many of them is it actually relevant that it's third edition? Mechanically nearly all of third edition has been repeated, converted, supplanted or something in fourth edition. Things like the historical books don't need to be updated. Sure in infinite resources world it would technically be nice for the historicals to be updated to fourth edition but the lack of that isn't very significant. When fifth edition comes out I'll probably take my mass of fourth edition rules and replace the improved sections. The lack of the edition current tech books doesn't remove my previous edition ones and there's a chance that the stars will align and they can be put out in the right order which would significantly increase their combined usefulness. It may take a long time for all of the extended core books to be published but the books should be improved versions not the fourth edition version with updated rules and it's an excuse to redo some of the ones that really need it (Magic, I'm looking at you). Well that depends on what you consider new. Martial Arts for example is far from just a fourth edition update of the third edition Martial Arts. It also depends on what the new stuff will be. Unlike things like tech books, genre books and expanded mechanical subsection books which are the sort of things that get repeated through the editions and which have a very broad applicability new stuff has a much more niche appeal. |
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01-10-2015, 02:31 PM | #269 | |||||||
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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In the web era, corrections of advantages, disadvantages, skills and weapon lists could be made without having to rewrite the whole Basic Set. Quote:
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01-10-2015, 03:21 PM | #270 | |||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Improving the Tonfa
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And yes, obviously there was a reason the GURPS authors chose to link in game learning speeds with out of game point costs. The consequence of that however is that you cannot derive anything from a combination of the learning mechanics and how long it takes to learn something in the real world because any link between how long it takes to learn something in the real world and in GURPS is incidental. Quote:
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Tags |
house rules, low-tech, martial arts, tonfa, weapons. |
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