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Old 04-05-2021, 04:06 PM   #71
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
Default Re: Advantages of a short sword

The Broadsword / Shortsword split might also have come out of Japanese martial arts which sometimes treat tanto, wazikashi, and katana as three separate units (I think more often they have two of the three or one is quite abbreviated). But a lot of that can be represented with familiarities and with improved skill improving your capabilities with a range of weapons. Improving your Sword skill might involve mastering the wazikashi katas just like it might involve 10,000 blows at the pell.

In GURPS 4e, the Weapon Bond perk can also model someone who has trained extensively with a specific model of weapon and has trouble adapting to slightly different weapons. It would be fair to give many people a modest skill + Weapon Bond.
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Old 04-05-2021, 04:13 PM   #72
Polkageist
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Advantages of a short sword

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I don't think GURPS weapon skills were separated based on game balance - skills like Lance, Saber, and Tonfa are incredibly niche, and seem to be more "Well, this weapon is used a bit different from these ones (respectively, Spear, Rapier, and Shortsword), so it should be a separate skill." Honestly, when it comes to Spear vs Staff, the only reason I see for them being separate skills is that the former also covers one-handed use (which I think makes it unique amongst Melee Weapons skills).
Deferring to any devs that might weigh in, there's definitely a gamified separation of skills that are compromising between realism, point costs, and just needing to draw lines somewhere. I think there's enough separation in how they're wielded to justify a separation of skills, but I will point out that you can make them functionally the same with a nominal point investment. That's like... having spear/staff be the same and one difficulty level higher, more or less. Plus the skill defaults are among the gentlest in the game.

Quote:
That's not enough to count the weapon as unbalanced (otherwise, it would use Polearm), and weapons that have a more pronounced issue (like the bastard sword and long sword, which IIRC have Parry U when wielded one-handed) still use the same skill as their more-balanced relatives (Broadsword in this case). You could also offset the balance issue by making the metal end cap on the opposite end a bit heavier.
No it's definitely not taking it to the 'unbalanced' trait or make it a polearm, just enough to change the methods of usage. So I would definitely agree that you can wield a spear with the staff skill w/o penalty, and wield a staff with the spear skill (also w/o penalty) and that ever so gentle default covers not just that bit of (or lack of) metal but also just the training between those two different ways of holding and moving a (pointed) stick if you're going to go cross-skill.

Quote:
Realistically, the ability to strike with either end is a bit of an advantage, as you can use whichever end works better in this particular instance (due to the specifics of the relative positions of you and your foe, how your weapons are positioned, etc). This is the same benefit one would get while dual-wielding. This is below the resolution of GURPS, however, so it seems odd for it to play some sort of role here but not anywhere else in the rules.
Yes, it is, and in something like a staff where there's not really a distinction between either end and tracking weapon ends being below the resolution of the rules there's no reason to assume that the spear point is in a useful position any more often that it's not. When using the staff skill.

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Double-ended spears were very much a thing, although the two heads were typically designed a bit differently - the Greek dory had a thick spike (called the sauroter - lizard-killer) on the end opposite the head, serving as a counterweight to the spearhead, as a backup if the spearhead were broken, and to dispatch downed foes. Still, if you don't want spearheads (or equivalent) on each end, making the metal endcap on the opposite end a bit heavier should suffice to become balanced again. If that's truly even necessary - a quarterstaff being used at Reach 2 certainly isn't perfectly balanced for the wielder, as a good deal more of the weapon's weight is on one side than the other (as the character is holding the staff close to one end to get more Reach).
I think those are in low-tech! Very cool.
I suppose I was leaning towards a very fantasty styled symmetrical weapon, which would arguably be quite cool.

Anyway, because I do want to avoid talking past each other I do want to recognize that the staff/spear situation hasn't ever really been a problem in any game I've participated in. Usually it comes up when someone has a really specific thing they want to do or wants to get the most out of a particular build. Given how close those skills are and all the perks built to support that stuff, separate staff and spear skills have kept things simple for the wizards and guardsmen who use them without embellishment, and a minimal cost for the characters that really want to make the spear sing.

I think I actually did whip up a character that did some cool spear stuff. Because I wanted to use a shield at the same time, I focused the perk support towards being able to change grips quickly to pop into an overhand/reverse grip and use that metal-capped butt end for I think up to 'C'lose range. Didn't play with the staff overlap since I had the shield to make up the defense.
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Old 04-06-2021, 09:52 AM   #73
acrosome
 
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Default Re: Advantages of a short sword

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Merging Staff and Spear into a single skill is typically one of the first steps anytime I consider consolidating combat skills. At worst, if I wanted to run some sort of 100% RAW campaign, I'd charge a Perk (Weapon Adaptation) to merge the two (although I believe by RAW that's actually a Perk per weapon design, so you'd need separate ones for spears, short spears, heavy spears, long spears, etc).
I'm pretty sure that's wrong- Weapon Adaptation isn't by such a granular weapon type as you depict. I've had questions about Weapon Adaptation over the years and eventually got a great explanation, and in a later thread about favorite weapons I developed a template that uses it extensively. (You were actually in that thread, I think.)

All Weapon Adaptation does is specify a group of weapons that use a certain skill that can now be used by an alternative skill. It's not specific weapons, as I think you are implying- correct me if I am wrong. (This means that Weapon Adaptation does have a misleading name, but what else is new for GURPS?)

For instance, Weapon Adaptation (Spear to Staff) lets you use Staff skill for any weapon that by default uses Spear skill.

Last edited by acrosome; 04-06-2021 at 10:05 AM.
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Old 04-06-2021, 10:28 AM   #74
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Advantages of a short sword

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Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
I'm pretty sure that's wrong- Weapon Adaptation isn't by such a granular weapon type as you depict. I've had questions about Weapon Adaptation over the years and eventually got a great explanation, and in a later thread about favorite weapons I developed a template that uses it extensively. (You were actually in that thread, I think.)
I tend to oscillate between what I think the intent of Weapon Adaptation was - that is, whether it's something that essentially merges two skills into one, or if it's something you have to take per-weapon. It doesn't help that, as with many other traits (like Weapon Master), the examples almost always use a word that could refer to a specific weapon or a skill (like Broadsword, Spear, Shield, etc). However, now that I look again at the actual text for Weapon Adaptation in Martial Arts, it's rather clear it's meant to essentially merge two skills into one, as it talks about weapon groups/classes (I think I was thrown off by remembering the bit at the end about silly options that may be available in cinematic campaigns, which explicitly says Knife to Halberd, with Halberd being the name of a specific weapon rather than a skill). So, I retract that part of the statement, and will try to remember in the future that, indeed, Weapon Adaptation is much more broad than "single weapon design."
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