Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-14-2016, 10:48 AM   #71
safisher
Gunnery Sergeant,
 Imperial Marines
Coauthor,
 GURPS High-Tech
 
safisher's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
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...
These videos are really no conclusive proof of anything, but here, check out the last minute of this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFjBZF-IlY8
__________________
Buy my stuff on E23.
My GURPS blog, Dark Journeys, is here.
Fav Blogs: Doug Cole here , C.R. Rice's here, & Hans Christian Vortisch here.
safisher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 11:01 AM   #72
GodBeastX
 
GodBeastX's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Behind You
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
These videos are really no conclusive proof of anything, but here, check out the last minute of this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFjBZF-IlY8
Right through the Hood on that first blow with an axe blade!
__________________
RPG Jutsu.com - Ninjas Play GURPS
GodBeastX is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 11:33 AM   #73
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
I'm going to reply to this last message, and then quit - your tendency to shift goalposts is too much for useful discussion.
Nice, when have I done this?


Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
I saw every strike being with the back-blade, even on a re-watch.

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.




It is relevant to the point that you are trying to make a conclusion from something that is not comparable. You're taking this as proof towards a thesis you are taking as non-falsifiable.

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.
Fair enough, I think you rather reading too much into my points from the video, there's only so many times I can say some version of I'm not trying to make draw direct conclusions.



Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
It's a GURPS forum. So perhaps general chatter would be a better place for abstract discussions that have little to do with GURPS rules? That sounds flip, but the discussion that generates so much heat and so little light here is derived from the application of GURPS rules to GURPS damage and GURPS DR.
Fair enough only I find that an odd point to make to me, given what you just said about your motivation in discussing the video, and that I was replying to your post made in the same vein?



Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
You'll note that Shawn has also noted that a (0.5) armor divisor would be appropriate - and well within the way GURPS rules actually work - for cutting weapons and armor, as well.
I suggested it as well, only it seem too match up with one of our historical arguments and not the other's!

EDIT: also what was said was

"A simple rule, for those persuaded that swords should never cut through armor, would be to give all sword-like weapons swing damage an armor divisor of (0.5). "


Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
"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 I think you should re read my posts in this thread, especially in the light of your accusation of shifting goal posts. For instance in post 25 I actually used that exact word "sub-optimal" to describe sword etc against such armour.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
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.

And in the context of a thread regarding historical armour are we talking about armour 350 microns thick?

Shifting goal posts much?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
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.
Quite agree, and on that which is better spike or blade generally speaking ?



Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
Not really relevant. My issue with the scaling of melee weapons is that they increase far, far too quickly relative to GUNS. Because a sw+5 weapon by a ST 19 person will do something like the penetration of a modern carbine, which is clearly bunk.

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.")
Fair enough, and yes I agree the AD(0.5) is pretty key here. Oh and I also agree that the edge protection rule can be rended moot by other tweaks, in the case of your house rules lowed ST based damage and AD(0.5).


EDIT: hang on if this has all just been about specific dislike of way the the edge protection rule go about doing something, than OK I bit more on board with that, but I think it kind of went on from there into some rather more fundamental disagreement about historical performance.

Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-17-2016 at 01:08 AM.
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 11:40 AM   #74
Þorkell
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
 
Þorkell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
So it's still evidence you need? (Since I was on my phone, I didn't feel the need to drill down the to the html level.) Very well.
Well, I'm just sitting on the sidelines watching the debate. I was just being curious.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Co-author of High-Tech, and yes a contributor to Low-tech, I was lead playtester on the the first one, actually.
Sorry, I goofed on that one. I later went and changed it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
But the quote certainly makes clear they used the swing cut. You can't seriously be claiming the halberdiers didn't use the edge, can you? I whole unit of guys with massive two-handed axes, and no one strikes with them?
The quote also mentions that they were used to impale. I'm not trying to claim anything, just thought to point out that the halberd has more than one attack mode.
__________________
Þorkell Sigvaldason

Viking kittens | My photos | More of my photos
Þorkell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 11:53 AM   #75
Railstar
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
Yeah to be fair I think that purpose built axes for warfare we basically what would get grouped into shorter pole arms (well barring specific stuff like dane axes, and earlier dagger axes etc).

Axe blades on sticks appear a lot in different ways down the years. It's just the military versions didn't generally look much like civilian axes. So that said it's a bit unfair of me to say "axes weren't battlefield weapons, pole-arms were", because well in a lot of cases pole arms were battle field axes.
I wouldn't call it unfair of you; it's easy and tempting to think of weapons as part of one category rather than both. This highlights another impression I get - that most axes were also something else, so that an axe is a good component of a weapon, but seldom a complete weapon by itself.
Railstar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 12:00 PM   #76
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
I wouldn't call it unfair of you; it's easy and tempting to think of weapons as part of one category rather than both. This highlights another impression I get - that most axes were also something else, so that an axe is a good component of a weapon, but seldom a complete weapon by itself.
Cheers, and yeah I think your right.

My god there seems to be two very different threads going on in here!

Anyway cheers

TD
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 12:03 PM   #77
DouglasCole
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
 
DouglasCole's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
And in the context of a thread regarding historical armour are we talking about armour 350 microns think?

Shifting goal posts much?
http://www.allenantiques.com/Breastp...s%20Study.html

Armor measured here ranges from 28 mils (750 microns) - to 285 mils, or about 7,200 microns. So which "historical armor" are *you* talking about, since it varies by 10x in thickness for those seven breastplates measured, and can vary within the breastplate itself by by a factor of 2-4?

Can the axe cut through the (more or less) DR 2 thin bits? I bet it can. Can it cut through the 1/4" thick parts (probably DR 12-14+)? Well, no. Are all of these historical armors? Obviously. So when you say "can't cut through" which one of these are you talking about? Which PART of which one of these?

You have seemed to be arguing that the axe vs ANY plate is simply a waste of time, could never penetrate. If that's not your position, please feel free to clarify.
__________________
My blog:Gaming Ballistic, LLC
My Store: Gaming Ballistic on Shopify
My Patreon: Gaming Ballistic on Patreon

Last edited by DouglasCole; 07-14-2016 at 12:12 PM.
DouglasCole is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 01:13 PM   #78
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Cutting edges and armor have existed on the same battlefields for centuries. You'd think we'd know from primary sources that this was a lame type of weapon to use against, you know, an armored foe. But outside of Howard's exaggerated claims, we don't really hear that.
Well, a Google image search for "fechtbuch sword" (without quotes, of course) gives a lot of images of swords being swung at unarmored foes. Toss in "armor" to the search string, and suddenly the swings disappear. Are there any documents actually discussing personal combat tactics (as opposed to battlefield strategies) before these? I will admit that there are descriptions of cutting through armor in various old stories, but I think there's almost always something supernal involved, or at least the action occurs alongside other things that shouldn't be possible. For example, in The Song of Roland, Roland and Olivier do the same thing when they first draw their arguably-magical swords - against their first foe they cut each of them from the tops of their heads all the way down through the saddle, killing horse and rider in one blow (while not explicitly stated, it's implied each cut their foe in half). I'd be happy to be proven wrong, however.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
I'd actually like to see where you get this, from a historical point of view. What we do know is that pole edged weapons were used in combat against armor. We know in some cases those weapons were effective against armored foes. I'd like to know where we hear that these weapons never, under any circumstances, penetrated armor.
Second-hand descriptions of things like fechtbuchs, as I don't have ready access to source materials. I may be able to estimate things from physics*, however - to damage armor, you need a pressure that exceeds its yield strength, and to penetrate it you'll need a bit more (as you need to push the damaged material out of the way). A cutting blade is a helluva lot wider than a spear point, so you need a helluva lot more pressure to get through. Granted, not all of the blade is likely to be in contact with the armor when penetration occurs, and once you've started cutting through I think as the rest of the blade follows you only have to deal with shear strength (which is typically- maybe always - less than yield strength; with steel, it's around 58%). A spear sees something similar - the sharp point has to beat yield strength, the rest of the tip has to beat shear strength - but is concentrated down into a much smaller area. Doing a bit of analysis on one of the halberds from this image, and assuming that redheaded guy is roughly 6 feet tall, the tip of the spike is roughly 2 mm wide while the base is roughly 4 cm** wide. An optimal strike with the axe (hitting dead on with the curviest bit, for the highest pressure when dealing with yield strength) leaves about 2 cm in contact with the armor, and the blade would leave a 16 cm hole in a piece of armor if going all the way through. In either case, aside from things like neck arteries, I think the general rule of thumb is that you need around 2 cm penetration for a wound to be something to worry about - the spike is around 1.75 cm wide at that point, while the axe is pretty much already at its maximum width of 16 cm. We'll assume the spike and axe blade are roughly the same thickness. So, you need 10x as much force (to get the same pressure) to start punching through armor with the axe head as with the spike. With shear strength being roughly 58% of yield strength, any penetrating hit will continue until the width of the impactor is at least 1.7x initial... which in both cases in nearly instantly. To get to 2 cm deep, the spike needs around 5x as much force as it took to initially penetrate (8.75x as wide, but up against 58%). For the axe to get to 2 cm deep, it needs 4.6x as much force as it took to initially penetrate (8x as wide, but up against 58%). So, at both data points ("penetrate" and "2 cm wound"), the axe needs between 9x and 10x as much force as the spike. If we assume a character is holding the halberd 60 cm from the base (about as close to holding it at the end as you could manage while swinging it as a polearm rather than as a sword), using the halberd as a lever increases force by around 3.3x. To make up for the rest, you need ST that is around 1.7x higher (for roughly 3x force). Note this ignores the fact that the armor and flesh rob each weapon of energy as it passes through (and will rob the axe of more, with its greater surface area). We're also assuming an optimal hit with the weapon held in a way that maximizes force for the axe swing, while the spike thrust wouldn't need either of these optimizations. If you're reading this again and are confused, I screwed up my math the first time through - when determining the force needed for 2 cm penetration, I thought the initial value for the spike was 1 mm, not 2 mm.

*I am not a physicist - please let me know if I made any grave errors in my assumptions here.

**The actual base is closer to 5 cm; 4 cm is the width around the point where it's all the way through the target's body and is contending with the armor at his back.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Dan's understanding of GURPS is pretty limited. He wanted to increase armor DR, and increase weapon damage, too? For what purpose?
From what I've seen from Dan, his desire to increase DR was to make it interact more realistically with the ST-based damage table. Increasing weapon damage was for unbalanced weapons like axes and maces, in order to improve them relative to other weapons, like swords. Those goals may or may not be appropriate, depending on how you look at things, but they most certainly are not at odds with each other.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
But, let me try. I'll give an example from history, the battle of Morgarten. This is an actual battle in the early 1300s involving peasants with halberds (that is, yes, swing cutting weapons) slaughtering knights in armor. There are many interesting bits about this battle, but for our purposes, here's the key information:

"The penned-in knightly forces could do nothing to protect themselves from the mad onslaught.95 Some of the confederates rammed their long halberd spikes right through enemy chain mail, mercilessly impaling knights on their iron tips; others swung the enormously heavy axes slashing apart body armor, and then splitting open the exposed flesh.96 Knight and horse fell together at the pitiless onslaught of the massed halberds. The rout was so complete that John of Winterthur felt:
It was not a battle, but a mere butchery of Duke Leopold’s men; for the mountainfolk slew them like sheep in the shambles; no quarter was given, they cut down all without distinction. So great was the fierceness of the Confederates that scores of the Austrian foot-soldiery, when they saw the bravest knights falling helplessly, threw themselves in panic into the lake, preferring to drown rather than to be hewn about by the dreadful weapons of their enemies.
"
This may be useful, but fails to look at the specific issue of the thread - cutting through plate armor (technically, swords cutting through plate, but we got away from swords pretty early on). Low Tech states that full suits of iron plate didn't show up until the late 1300's (and this battle was in 1315), while Loadouts notes that in the mid-1300's knights (looking specifically at the 14th century French chevalier, unfortunately, but probably typical of European armies of the era) typically wore a coat of plates - more akin to brigandine than plate. It would be useful to look at the source the paper cites for the bit about hacking apart the armor to get a better idea of what sort of armor was involved (and hopefully how the hacking was done - did the axe heads penetrate the armor outright, bang away at it until breaking it open, or what?), but for some reason it isn't listed - the numerical references on that page skip number 96.

All that said, the text certainly does imply that cutting weapons (or at least halberds and similar) are more effective against armor than LT implies.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Isn't it weird that even a blunt weapon is being swung against armor to which it is impenetrable?
We seem to be having a communication issue. I don't think anyone is suggesting that these weapons were never used against armor, nor is anyone suggesting that these weapons were rendered useless by armor. The claim is that a cutting surface - such as the axe head on a halberd - is nearly incapable of actually cutting through steel plate to get to the wearer's flesh. A blow that fails to damage the armor can still transmit a good deal of kinetic energy into the target's body, albeit over a wider area (you're functionally being struck by your armor plate), which can still cause injury. A blow that damages but fails to completely cut through the armor will essentially dent the armor, focusing the energy back down a bit (you're functionally being struck by your armor plate, again, but the indentation makes it more akin to a flanged mace than a flat slab).

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Please do not tell me that I have not provided evidence that swing cutting weapons were used on the battlefield against plate armor.
I don't think this was ever in question, the question was if swing cutting weapons ever cut through plate armor on the battlefield. Such weapons aren't useless if they're unable to do this - they still perform perfectly well if striking unarmored bits (or bits armored with mail or lesser armor), and the blunt trauma they can deliver through armor (particularly helms) can still be deadly.

Last edited by Varyon; 07-14-2016 at 02:08 PM. Reason: screwed up the penetration calculation
Varyon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 01:39 PM   #79
safisher
Gunnery Sergeant,
 Imperial Marines
Coauthor,
 GURPS High-Tech
 
safisher's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Re: Swords and plate

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
Armor measured here ranges from 28 mils (750 microns) - to 285 mils, or about 7,200 microns. So which "historical armor" are *you* talking about, since it varies by 10x in thickness for those seven breastplates measured, and can vary within the breastplate itself by by a factor of 2-4?
This is the problem of trying to determine DR for something like personal armor. Do you take an average? Do you pick the highest? The lowest? It is also incidentally, one of the criticisms of Alan William's work, which assumes the very specific locations in which he measured hardness could be generalized to all portions of the armor. Thus the thickness, and hardness, are extremely hard to nail down even on one specimen, much less across several.

Quote:
Can the axe cut through the (more or less) DR 2 thin bits? I bet it can. Can it cut through the 1/4" thick parts (probably DR 12-14+)? Well, no. Are all of these historical armors? Obviously. So when you say "can't cut through" which one of these are you talking about? Which PART of which one of these?
Agreed. "Can't cut" is nonsense. Better than piercing? Probably not. Depends on the piercing object.
__________________
Buy my stuff on E23.
My GURPS blog, Dark Journeys, is here.
Fav Blogs: Doug Cole here , C.R. Rice's here, & Hans Christian Vortisch here.
safisher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2016, 01:53 PM   #80
PK
 
PK's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dobbstown Sane Asylum
Default Re: Swords and plate

<MOD>

It looks like I'm coming in as the fire is starting to go out, so let me just throw some water on it to make sure.

Everyone, please keep in mind that this is a discussion about a game. It's not really a big deal in the broad view. So if you can't disagree with someone without getting angry, snarky, riled up, etc. -- just walk away. If one particular person is bothering you, put 'em on your ignore list (though preferably without making a snarky comment about doing so first).

Consider this a blanket Official Warning to play nice, and a reminder that "he started it" isn't a valid defense. Don't rise to bait. If I or another mod has to bust out infractions, we'll be tossing them at everyone involved in the fight.

</MOD>
__________________
Reverend Pee Kitty of the Order Malkavian-Dobbsian (Twitter) (LJ)

MyGURPS: My house rules and GURPS resources.

#SJGamesLive: I answered questions about GURPS After the End and more!
{Watch Video} - {Read Transcript}
PK is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
armor, hema

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:44 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.