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Old 10-28-2013, 12:47 PM   #21
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Well, specialised jousting maille is DR6 (LT111). So it takes 7 damage to make the armour yield, but 7 damage is not enough to knock back or disarm a ST 13 lancer, especially a braced one. And I think the (real, not Art/Sport) lance should be able to handle more than that.
That's a problem with the knockback rules. Slams should be cruddy at doing damage, very good at knocking things back.
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Old 10-28-2013, 12:52 PM   #22
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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That's a problem with the knockback rules. Slams should be cruddy at doing damage, very good at knocking things back.
Normal slams should be. But a 'weapon slam' (charge)?
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Old 10-28-2013, 12:59 PM   #23
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Normal slams should be. But a 'weapon slam' (charge)?
Also should be. Penetration is mostly going to depend on the kinetic energy of the lance -- which isn't all that heavy, and isn't moving particularly fast. The additional energy of the rider and horse is applied fairly slowly.

It might work to just give a lance fairly high damage and a poor armor divisor.
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Old 10-28-2013, 01:32 PM   #24
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
And that's what I mean. If a character has e.g. a 4d weapon slam while on foot, he shouldn't get a limit of 3d while on horseback. See Martial Arts, p. 107.
A character should have a similar limit while on foot, except then he can't brace using his legs. This does introduce a problem, however - if we use the TG chart, that means a character using a one-handed weapon would have his armed slam limited to 0.5xST, which is half what he'd get by just thrusting.

Reconsidering things a bit, an armed slam on foot should have a damage cap that is greater than thrusting. Properly bracing for impact would mean you're bracing the weapon against your torso (all-out/committed attack) and bracing your foot against the ground at the moment of impact. One hand is normally 0.5xST, but we know for one-handed weapons this should really be 1xST for striking purposes. Your foot isn't going to be properly grappling, but it's still got some good Basic Lift to go off of; we'll say halve its BL, meaning you're dealing with a cap of 1.3xST (before bonuses). Two handed should be around 1.5xST for the arm part, so a total of 1.7xST probably isn't too far off. Considering that for a lance, where you can properly grapple using your legs (for 1.5xST), you're looking at a cap of around 2xST instead. If you can somehow manage using both arms, 2.5xST is your cap instead.

Of course, there's also the question of if charging on foot would actually result in more damage. Thinking further, I'm fairly confident I'd do more damage punching somebody than running into them at top speed with my fist. I honestly don't think the small amount of additional momentum I'd get from running while punching is going to make much of a difference (in fact, the inability to use my hip muscles to improve the punch, as well as the general instability I'd be dealing with, would probably make the punch weaker). So, I'll stand by my original calculations (although I still think they're a bit too high) and call what I posted here highly cinematic.


EDIT: I'll second Anthony's "high damage, low penetration" for the lance. If we give the lance from my previous example AD (0.5) instead of (2), it doesn't seem quite as far off.

Last edited by Varyon; 10-28-2013 at 01:36 PM.
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Old 10-28-2013, 01:44 PM   #25
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

FYI pass limb allows full CP to be maintained with one arm after a two handed grapple. In this case, a ready maneuver should be assumed to be sufficient to provide full ST for this purpose.
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Old 10-28-2013, 02:00 PM   #26
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
A character should have a similar limit while on foot, except then he can't brace using his legs. This does introduce a problem, however - if we use the TG chart, that means a character using a one-handed weapon would have his armed slam limited to 0.5xST, which is half what he'd get by just thrusting.

Reconsidering things a bit, an armed slam on foot should have a damage cap that is greater than thrusting. Properly bracing for impact would mean you're bracing the weapon against your torso (all-out/committed attack) and bracing your foot against the ground at the moment of impact. One hand is normally 0.5xST, but we know for one-handed weapons this should really be 1xST for striking purposes. Your foot isn't going to be properly grappling, but it's still got some good Basic Lift to go off of; we'll say halve its BL, meaning you're dealing with a cap of 1.3xST (before bonuses). Two handed should be around 1.5xST for the arm part, so a total of 1.7xST probably isn't too far off. Considering that for a lance, where you can properly grapple using your legs (for 1.5xST), you're looking at a cap of around 2xST instead. If you can somehow manage using both arms, 2.5xST is your cap instead.
Seems low. It would mean, e.g., that a 10-ton ship ramming another ship at Mach 3 with some sort of striker will only do about 31d to 39d of damage (+1/die for a striker).

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Of course, there's also the question of if charging on foot would actually result in more damage. Thinking further, I'm fairly confident I'd do more damage punching somebody than running into them at top speed with my fist. I honestly don't think the small amount of additional momentum I'd get from running while punching is going to make much of a difference (in fact, the inability to use my hip muscles to improve the punch, as well as the general instability I'd be dealing with, would probably make the punch weaker). So, I'll stand by my original calculations (although I still think they're a bit too high) and call what I posted here highly cinematic.
That's because your slam damage is something like (5×10/100) = ½ of a die, and your thrust is 1d-2 or more. But if your slam damage were e.g. 2 dice, that would be different.
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Old 10-28-2013, 02:12 PM   #27
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Seems low. It would mean, e.g., that a 10-ton ship ramming another ship at Mach 3 with some sort of striker will only do about 31d to 39d of damage (+1/die for a striker).
Really, a ST-based damage cap is 'maximum damage you can do without hurting yourself'; if you're willing to turn yourself into a projectile your ST doesn't really matter.
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Old 10-28-2013, 03:31 PM   #28
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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FYI pass limb allows full CP to be maintained with one arm after a two handed grapple. In this case, a ready maneuver should be assumed to be sufficient to provide full ST for this purpose.
Oops, missed that. In that case, we'd be looking at 2 arms and 2 legs, back to my initial assumption of 1.5xST.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Seems low. It would mean, e.g., that a 10-ton ship ramming another ship at Mach 3 with some sort of striker will only do about 31d to 39d of damage (+1/die for a striker).
That's an entirely different story. I'm looking at the limitations of a human on a horse holding a lance. A ship with a ramming prow (I'm assuming that's what your "striker" is here) is going to be limited by what the prow, mounts, or ship itself can withstand, depending on which is the weakest point. Were we dealing with some sort of 10-ton giant holding a properly-scaled lance and riding on a ship traveling at Mach 3, that 31d-39d might be appropriate.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
That's because your slam damage is something like (5×10/100) = ½ of a die, and your thrust is 1d-2 or more. But if your slam damage were e.g. 2 dice, that would be different.
Slam is .6d (sprinting), thrust is, using the alternate progression of ST/20, .5d. This means if we use the alternate progression, Slam damage may well need to be decreased.
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Old 10-29-2013, 03:29 AM   #29
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
(emphasis mine)
I think that should clear up any confusion.
No confusion, the article may be talking about jousting, but our conversation is about couched lances in general. And as I said already I assumed the article was talking about tournament jousting with tournament horses and people who can do it, you know just in case there's still confusion

Also none of these make those term being relative, unless you're saying that everyone in the Joust will have the same ST and all their horse will have the same ST?

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If you are slowing the horse down enough that you aren't going to do as much damage as a weaker person, the horse isn't strong enough to effectively carry you - lose some weight or get a stronger horse so you don't kill the poor beast you're trying to ride.
If you can't keep the weapon on target during an impact, you're too weak to joust. In fact, the article notes the tests they put would-be jousters through before they let them actually joust, which would weed out anyone too weak.
Yes and that's great given optimal everything and larking about in the lists, but again, in general terms it stops being relevant very quickly when sub optimal is all you have.

Remember what the assertion is, that the horse's ST (and size etc) is not relevant. If that was true in abstract then you'd riding Arabian 3 year olds for the speed. Only they didn't, because there were limiting factors. So the basic premise that Horse ST is not relevant, is based on the the unspoken assumption that the horse has to be of a certain strength and size to be there in the first place (just as the rider does). I.e When you apply a limiting factor (in this case a lower one) making abstract assertions doesn't work because your automatically narrowing the data set and positively selecting.

Its like saying being a line backer isn't a function of strength, but then setting the minimum requirement for line backers at 6'4" 300lbs and an ability to punch press X00lbs, and making you calculations then,

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A lot of the problem is slam rules in general. Slams have enormous total energy (a human doing a slam can easily exceed a kilojoule, a horse in a charge can exceed ten kilojoules) but are extremely poor at applying that energy for purposes of damage. If, somehow, you were to apply the entire kinetic energy of the horse behind a lance, you'd be doing 10+ dice of damage, but what actually happens is that the lance hits and starts compressing, and then force builds up until something yields, generally the weakest link. Unless the weakest link is the armor, it won't penetrate armor.

True, I think slam makes this weird one as I said on my first post this is a slam pretending to be a weapon attack. However on the armour point not all weak points are equal in terms of the force being applied to them. Obviously forces reduce through each transmission (but can also get augmented at stages), so the force at the tip of lance is not the sum of all input forces in the system, but then it is being concentrated at a very small point on the armour. So the force being applied at different break points in the system can differ. They didn't charge any slower with blunted lances after all, they just blunted them.

Basically the armour doens't have to be the weakest point in abstract, just relative to the force it's having to withstand.

TBH I look at this at a complex system involving horse, rider, lance and armour,

The special equipment and skills seem to me to be designed to strengthen the weak points here.

You need a proper saddle etc to help transmit horse's force to the rider (or the rider goes flying)

You need a reasonably high ST of the rider in order to use a lance that is strong (and therefore heavy) enough to transmit the force without breaking, the riders ST also adds theoretically adds to the system as well.

Lance skill helps the rider:

A). Position the lance on target, but also importantly for this system
B). Work the system as smoothly as possible not interrupting the transmission of force (interruptions will lead to "a break" point and bad things).

Not to mention on top of this your riding a horse which not only involves staying on here but maximising it's movement for the system (riding skill as a limiting factor of combat skill).

TBH looking at all that there's no way I can see horse ST not being factor.

But I can certainly see why Lance is a separate skill, and why great jousters were renowned!

Armour we know had to be at it's thickest in the Joust, including not just the thickest plate, but extra pieces, specialised shields (for want of a better term), and sloping! This was against jousting tips as well.

Now while tolerances for injury were less in the Joust than In actual combat charges, so obviously safety was maximised in ways probably not possible in combat. But a lot of this protective equipment was not developed during the period when a lot of combat couched charges took place.

So unless I'm running GURPS tourney, I'm more interested in combat charges with war lances against combat armour.


So to go back to the original point as you say Slam RAW is a very inefficient way to turn force into damage in terms of penetrating armour, but by starting high and reducing a lot you still get a reasonable result.

Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-29-2013 at 04:05 AM.
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Old 10-29-2013, 03:50 AM   #30
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Well, specialised jousting maille is DR6 (LT111). So it takes 7 damage to make the armour yield, but 7 damage is not enough to knock back or disarm a ST 13 lancer, especially a braced one. And I think the (real, not Art/Sport) lance should be able to handle more than that.
Well if you have a blunted lance that probably got a 0.5 DR multiplier so your talking 12 points damage that can be used to knockback without penetration, or even 18 using jousting plate

Also in a joust you're doubling the speed because it's "head on". Well actually not quite the hits were at an angle but there would be significant increase in total speed I'd argue as rule of thumb I'd multiple average speed by 1.5 so our ST25 horses at Move 8 will be doing 3d6+3, or 3d6 with my hybrid version) so given a blunt end with 0.5 DR multiplier you should be pretty safe in jousting plate.

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Also should be. Penetration is mostly going to depend on the kinetic energy of the lance -- which isn't all that heavy, and isn't moving particularly fast.
well it's pretty heavy, and pretty fast certainly in terms of hand held weapons of the day.


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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
The additional energy of the rider and horse is applied fairly slowly.
Not sure it's that much slower than that of the lance, the vast majority of the speed is being supplied by the horse (and rider) here so not sure how much slower the application of this additional force here could be? In fact I'm not show how additional this force would be, it would seem to me to be pretty inherent?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It might work to just give a lance fairly high damage and a poor armour divisor.
Which assuming we're talking blunted lances for jousting that's what RAW does. (EDIT: actually you'd have to assume jousting lances were the equivalent of training weapons to get the 0.5 multiplier)

Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-29-2013 at 05:50 AM.
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