Making slings and thrown weapons realistic brainstorming

[Flyndaran]

After reading the wonderful article on bows in the latest pyramid, I started thinking about slings and thrown weapons.

Until, and unless someone, (hint you know who), makes an article for them, I wonder what would work as a first order approximation.

Any ideas?

[DouglasCole]

Simplest way to go (meaning, totally void of physics) would be to alter the thr/sw progressions for damage.

If you take damage for thrown weapons that do sw damage (slings and axes) as being something like ST/10 dice, and then take any "adds" and use that to do a multiplier for ST, you might get something better scaled to other things.

So, take something that does sw-1 or sw+2 damage. -1 might be a -1/3 per die multiplier, and +2 is +2/3.

So a ST 13 guy throwing each would be adjudicated as (0.67 x ST = 8.7) or 0.87 dice; sw+2 would be sw+2, or ( 13 x 1.67 = 21.7).

So the first one would do 0.87 dice, the second 2.17 dice. Likely 1d-1 and 2d respectively.

There are many issues with this, but a thrown axe does sw+2, which is a lot o' damage.

[Diomedes]

I made a spreadsheet a couple years ago looking at weapons, including slings and thrown projectiles, based on tbone's GLAIVE/GULLIVER rules.

Edit: Here it is. Wow, I hadn't realized that was three years ago.

[Flyndaran]

Those are all nice options, but I was looking for realistic adjustments to slings and thrown weapon damages. That's my favorite part of the bow article.

[jacobmuller]

I honestly thought that was what DC was suggesting, ie a quick and easy way to get more realistic damage.
If you want to leave out the maths, use the damage for 1.5xST and the weapons damage adds are per 2 dice. If DCs suggestion is for the cinematic scale of damage, then just use ST as is.

[Flyndaran]

Oh, Ok. I was misreading his post. I forgot how much absurdly high damage thrown axes inflict.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Oh, Ok. I was misreading his post. I forgot how much absurdly high damage thrown axes inflict.

They inflict the same damage as they do in melee. The thing is, if you revise their thrown damage . . . do you also revise their melee damage? If not, why not? Is hurling an axe less damaging than swinging it and not letting go of the handle when you do?

If you do revise both, you end up needed to revise all melee damage, and then start thinking about about ST costs.

It's kind of a slippery slope, because the fundamental assumptions of what damage is and means go back to the pre-1st edition GURPS, aka Man-to-Man.

Doug and I had exactly this conversation by email not long ago. :)

[Flyndaran]

I would certainly expect thrown damage to be somewhat less than hitting someone with it and pushing through.
I suppose those numbers make sense if you don't use bleeding rules.
They just get extreme when dealing with characters noticeably weaker or stronger than strength 10.

I think I remember someone's house rules about that.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I would certainly expect thrown damage to be somewhat less than hitting someone with it and pushing through.

What the damage is, isn't testable. We don't have HP. What the penetration is, is, and it can then be compared to GURPS object DR and HP. So the way to check it would be to see how axes penetrate when thrown, and when swung. You can at least gauge from that kind of testing if they hit equally hard.

I train people for power and strength, and I know that impact training (swing and hit something, hard) is a viable and acceptable substitute for throwing training (throw something at maximum force). Both of them equally remove the "try to decelerate the object so you don't get hurt" aspect of training with resistance. The main difference between using them is control - if I swing a hammer but hold onto it, I can control where it goes after the hit. If I throw a ball, I can't control random bounces. But they seem to equally generate force. So I'm less convinced that holding on to something makes it hit harder. In fact, because people tend to hold back a bit on things they have in their hands from conscious or unconscious concerns for controlling it afterward and/or impact shock, it's plausible that throwing the object might allow for more imparted energy.

Peter

[Flyndaran]

Makes sense. But I was assuming that hitting someone at "point blank" range versus throwing something at someone feet or yards away must take some of the energy out of the penetration. But that's what half damage range is for.