10-22-2018, 08:55 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
Of course, at the time that using a gun as a blunt weapon was invented, most firearms were single-shot weapons, and you used it as a club because it had already been discharged. This is one of the reasons that the butt-ends of many 16th/17th-century pistols had knobs or other bulges.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. Last edited by Prince Charon; 10-22-2018 at 09:55 PM. |
10-23-2018, 12:49 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
Note that HT gives the normal use of a rifle to smash people with the butt as using the Staff skill. I would allow sw+1 swung attacks as well (that's the same same as a Jo stick, which seems fair - rifles are heavier, but not as wieldy which should balance out). I would not give rifles the +2 to parry that staves normally get - while not generally badly balanced, they are not nearly as well balanced as staves.
As for using a rifle like a big mace, with a modern rifle I really wouldn't do it unless it was jammed and had done so very early in the fight. Aside from potential damage to the rifle, gripping the barrel after you've a magazine or more through it will result in some really nasty burns on your hands, and probably enough pain that you'll drop the rifle. Better to swing the barrel into the other guy's face, staff-style.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
10-23-2018, 06:19 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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Or would you even need to disarm them at all to be able to grapple the weapon and get your hand around the intended handle and start pulling the trigger to try and shoot them? |
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10-23-2018, 06:31 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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10-23-2018, 07:17 AM | #15 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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If you're going to use your gun as a melee weapon, the bayonet is the best choice for open battlefield conditions. In the 1700's, battle's were decided by the charge of the bayonet more often than by firepower. It reaches farther than using your gun as a club, it does more damage, and it allows better parrying. The drawback of the bayonet is that its long. In WWI (which is where the entrenching tool rose to prominence), melee combat tended to happen in bunkers, foxholes, and trenches, which are extremely tight quarters. Effective weapons for this type of fighting tend to be short and brutal. In this case, smashing someone with your riffle can be a better option than stabbing with the bayonet, because of space concerns. I've always understood this to be holding the gun with widely spaced hands and hitting your foe with whatever part is convenient, not swinging like a club or a baseball bat, which is slow and requires room.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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10-23-2018, 07:45 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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10-23-2018, 07:48 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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10-23-2018, 08:07 AM | #18 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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Yes and No. A lot of bayonet charges ended in one side or the other yielding. That's just the way battles work. Its all about breaking the other side. And yes, the volley to soften up the enemy before hand was critical. It opened up gaps in their ranks, disrupted their formation, and gave them a taste of blood before the charge came. But the battle was won by the charge, and if you could have fended it off with short shovels, swords, or axes, you bet someone would have figured that out and used it. But the idea that spear (and later bayonet) formations never stood and fought each other is speculation about a very poorly understood aspect of warfare at best and an unsupported myth at worst. the 1700's and 1800's were, contrary to popular belief, a great time of military innovation. Militaries played around with technology and tactics, and if they'd found a better weapon than the bayonet, you'd bet that they'd use it. A weapon does not dominate the battlefield for 200 years because it is ineffective. Firepower is harder to run away from, harder to defend from, and it tends not to produce decisive imbalances that prompt routes. So I can see why some casualty numbers would give more firearm causalities than bayonet. But we're comparing the bayonet to other melee weapons, not to smoothbore muskets.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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10-23-2018, 08:15 AM | #19 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
If someone has started hitting you with a gun that's still loaded and in a fireable state, they're an idiot who deserves to be shot.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
10-23-2018, 09:26 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: Rifle Butt and Pistol Whipping attacks
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But indeed for all normal weapons, if the weapon is usable and ready to fire, firing it is the way to go.. |
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Tags |
on target, pistol whip, pyramid, rifle butt |
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