07-14-2016, 09:23 AM | #61 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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Now of course no one is going to try and extrapolate precise results against real armour from that video, but come on if you can't get through a car bonnet* what does that say for cutting through actual armour. It's a bit like if I came up with a great new cartridge and made great claim's for it ability to pierce modern body armour. But if when messing about shooting tin cans with it is only just gets though one, no one's going to expend much time and effort assessing how well it does against modern body armour. *now if we theoretically argue the halberd used was as proportionally sub par compared to historical halberds as the car bonnet was to historical plate armour well then OK, but I see no evidence to support that rather tortuous justification (leaving aside that if that was the case it would still have not got past any underlying arming garment). Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 09:53 AM. Reason: that's 'no one' not 'on one' |
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07-14-2016, 09:29 AM | #62 | |||
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
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Re: Swords and plate
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You can't do this with hand weapons very well, and least of all with the "you only penetrate if you do double the DR" which really isn't how GURPS works at all.
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07-14-2016, 09:53 AM | #63 | ||||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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EDIT: ignore the above you're right he didn't try and cut through the bonnet with the axe blade, sorry! Quote:
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What I mean is I wasn't tying my point about the video into any precise rules tweak (well not beyond that it tangentially seems to support that cutting through material with swung weapons is generally sub optimal)? Also I'm pretty sure you have you yourself have suggested reducing the current ability of ST based hand held weapons against DR for those who desire more realism. Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 10:21 AM. |
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07-14-2016, 10:00 AM | #64 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Swords and plate
The video showed no attempts to use the axe blade against the car hood/bonnet. He used the spear point and the beak. The axe blade was only used against the pig carcass, the dowel pretending to be a spear shaft, and the mannequin.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
07-14-2016, 10:05 AM | #65 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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But OK does anyone imagine the axe blade would have done better, worse or the same. Or why he didn't attempt it (especially as has been stated this is a PR piece to demonstrate the ability of the weapon to chop, and piece it way through things)? Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 10:14 AM. |
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07-14-2016, 10:22 AM | #66 |
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Behind You
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Re: Swords and plate
Again, not a master physicist or martial artist =) Not even half a master!
I wanted to point out one thing that doesn't happen in any video I saw: The armor never ran at the guy with a 180 lbs of body behind it. Armor against a log, half a dummy, or similar objects isn't the same as the forward momentum of a guy coming against a sudden stop thrust, or even a swinging weapon for that matter. I also noticed everyone seems to swing weapons oddly in videos. The assumption is these guys know how to use a weapon, but part of a swing is technique. I'll give you a real work analogy. I was at a fair and they had those strong man bell deals where you grab the mallet and ring the bell. I watched these big strong dudes slam the mallet into it over and over with all their might! No one rang it. Then I noticed at the smaller one for kids the guy running it was showing a little girl how to swing and her went straight overhead... I grabbed the mallet after I saw that... overhead, straight horse stance two handed, and swing the mallet and --- DING! My wife got the video (Will link it sometime). Was I stronger than those guys? No. But there's definitely more technique to swinging an axe or sword than just putting all your might into it. I watched this one guy use a claymore and had an odd swing style showing how well it cut clean and it had a dull edge. It seemed like because his swing generated a slice instead of an impact it was deadlier to fleshy materials. Maybe the sword is seen as inefficient simply because people are making assumptions on how it was used? My point about "People wouldn't use the stuff if it wasn't effective" was basically to that point. Someone must have used it and it worked or vice versa (Weapon versus armors) otherwise nobody would spend all the resources and months (Unlike today) making these weapons only to be completely devastated. "Yes, I will spend everything I have to show up in battle and do nothing!" At least I'm assuming people didn't live like Dungeon Fantasy where you get so much cash you have no idea what to do with it =) Edit: I'll give another example that isn't sword versus armor, but how people thought ancients did things a certain way and were wrong. Egyptians and their massive blocks come to mind. Took everyone until 2014 to figure out what was right in their face. I'm sure to the Egyptians it was obvious, but to us looking back thousands of years, with physics and stuff, "That's impossible!" which tends to be the reason for 90% of History Channel shoving aliens down my throat :P "I don't get it, so it must be aliens or wrong". http://phys.org/news/2014-04-ancient...ones-sand.html Why not assume the images of people being cut through by swords are real and maybe we simply have no real idea yet?
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RPG Jutsu.com - Ninjas Play GURPS Last edited by GodBeastX; 07-14-2016 at 10:27 AM. |
07-14-2016, 10:25 AM | #67 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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07-14-2016, 10:28 AM | #68 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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07-14-2016, 10:33 AM | #69 | |||||
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
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Re: Swords and plate
I'm going to reply to this last message, and then quit - your tendency to shift goalposts is too much for useful discussion.
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Note that I'm not saying it would have punched through. I'm saying *we can't tell, because it's not there to see.* You can extrapolate and say "well, if it penetrated they would have shown it!" But that's an assumption, and the results may well have been "it went through, but wasn't impressive enough to show on our marketing video," or "we tried it, and knocked the entire stand over because it was never well secured in the first place," or "we wanted to do it and our lawyers said no." Given the crap these guys do in other videos, pretty sure that third one didn't happen, but there's no way to tell. Quote:
My overall message to this video was "don't take it too seriously, and I'd bet dollars to donuts Shawn doesn't either." It was a fun film of people bashing thing with a halberd. That's all. Quote:
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"Suboptimal" is not what you've been arguing - no one disagrees with that. You've been saying "can't be done." And that does not hold with period accounts of halberds vs armor in actual battle. And frankly, the "can't be done" assertion is flatly bogus, because the GURPS definition of armor is "that which has DR." A DR 1 plate is probably about 350 microns thick (14 mils if you're going for inches). Will an axe cut through that? Absolutely it will, especially attached to a six-foot stick. What about quarter-inch plate (6.35mm)? Well, of course, no. Eighth-inch (DR9 ish, about 3.1mm)? I'd expect no to that as well. 1.5mm? Maybe, maybe not. But all of those have DR, and are both "armor" and "plate" according to GURPS definition. The question is really at what point there's enough protection to stop a given blow, and that obviously has to do with the force, momentum, and energy of the blow and - most importantly for the discussion of spike vs blade - how much of the edge actually strikes the armor. Quote:
But still, let me indulge you with my house rules and homebrew calculation. I'm not sure what kind of strength multiplier I'd give a pole weapon - probably about 2x. If we say swung damage is 1d per ST 10 (my preferred conversion) then a ST 12 guy swinging a pole weapon would be ST 24 on impact, which would thus have a raw penetration number of about 2d+1. Average penetration DR 8. If you tack on an armor divisor for a cutting blade that's (0.5), your penetration will go down to DR 4. That's light plate, or mail. DR 4 plate is probably 1.3-2mm depending on steel quality, which is not crazy-talk in either thickness or material quality. A much stronger individual (say ST 17) on that scale would double to ST 34, or 3d+1, average 11.5. With our armor divisor of 0.5, that means DR 6 will be proof against it in GURPS terms. That's medium plate. The thicker DR8/9 plate that represents something like 4mm of steel will require an average penetration of 16-18 to get there, which is on the order of 5d or so - ST 50. With doubling for leverage, that's still out of the reach by a full die of a ST 20 guy - the conclusion using this construction is that DR7 and higher is not penetrable with a cutting blade at up to ST 20. That's enough verisimitude for me, and variations in thickness and angle and force are subsumed into the damage roll. But a sufficiently strong blow will put that blade through the plate. That's just basic. The question of what constitutes a sufficiently strong blow is rather than the binary is/is-not that seems to be a frequently-offered position. So, that's all for me. If I want to house-rule my GURPS game, I'll do it as above, and absolutely not use the edge protection rule - because that rule violates at least one basic GURPS premise - if you get through the DR of armor, you've breached it. (and if you want to say, as Shawn and Dan have both said, that we need a better mechanic for representing non-penetrating blunt trauma, I will add my voice to the chorus of "yes, I agree.")
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07-14-2016, 10:35 AM | #70 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Swords and plate
Eh, I took it as "person trying to sell X didn't even make an on-camera attempt of thing you said X was 'well known' for." If you had posted a link to an advertisement for a floor cleaner that didn't feature any attempt to show it was effective at cleaning floors, for example...
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armor, hema |
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