Serrated Sword

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Varyon

History, and I believe human nature, contradicts you here. Plenty of warriors - and their leaders - have purposefully inflicted undue suffering onto their enemies, be it due to a desire to instill terror/damage morale, to force the enemy to expend more resources for treating survivors, to satisfy personal vendettas, or simply due to sadism. If a serrated edge does indeed make a wound heal more slowly, or make it more likely to get infected, that is indeed an advantage to such warriors and leaders... just like coating a punji stake in poison or feces (or, some might argue, using punji stakes in the first place).

This does have the potential to backfire, of course, as it may result in increased fervor to defeat your side, and may also mean your opponent no longer follows the established laws of war when facing you. The above warriors/leaders may well consider that an acceptable risk (or just not care, particularly when a personal vendetta is involved).

Perhaps I should amend that by saying a warrior who is motivated by desire for victory rather then malice. Japanese used to tie up wounded allied soldiers to trees, torture them and leave a sign saying, "it took him a long time to die." That did not help their cause one bit but only made sure that they would be treated more mercilessly when they started to lose.

In the above example the Viet-cong were hoping to win by harrassment because they were fighting an ideological war and could afford to do so. Equally to the point they could only afford to give battle on occasions. Moreover they were aimed at the enemy army not it's men, the hope was to cause intimidation and restrict traffic, much like land mines. And they were an actual attempt to wound someone. Whereas the extra wounds caused by a serrated blade are irrelevant compared to the main point which is that you did in fact wound them. And making a wound heal more slowly is of dubious benefit because if your side wins the peasants will just strip him and knock him on the head and there's an end to him. Likely that will be the case even if your side loses. To put it another way the fact that a punji stake was poisoned did not make men behave appreciably different from the fact that it was there. The soldiers would watch their feet. The generals would watch which road a collumn was ordered down. But the effects of poison were only felt at the hospital and would often be so slow that the victim would be evacuated to the States and been replaced. And in any case the victim has already been impaled and so what is the point of the poison?

Furthermore few Indian prince's could fight a guerrilla war, because guerrilla warfare necessarily means surrendering your kingdom to occupation, the population did not have enough nationalist sentiment to fight under those circumstances, and if it did the ruler who abandoned his people to head for the bushes could not count on whether a more popular leader would arise. The exception were mountain tribesmen but they were not "fighting guerrila wars" so much as going thieving and they had no concern with increasing the recovery time of a wound.

Punji stakes were however a local name for a weapon that is often used in conventional warfare to make earthworks, or (as with English longbows) to temporarily fortify a formation. More elaborate versions of this are, abattis and chivaux de frise. In such a case they are not meant to cause a dribble of casualties and certainly not to cause wounds to heal slower. They are simply meant to be a block to enemy advance.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

During WWII my grandfather hand-sharpened a serrated back into his combat knife. He served as a radioman island-hopping his way across the Pacific and never actually saw any action, but he was ready if he had to. My father still has that knife, and I have no doubts about how terrible an abdominal wound it could have inflicted.

I have to wonder if the reason for the serrated back was more utilitarian - many modern Ka-Bar designs are serrated near the base for ease of cutting rope, as well as stripping/cutting wire. The latter sounds like something a radioman might do a good bit of for maintaining communication equipment.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Not a sword or knife, but carnivorous animals with blade-like teeth (sharks, monitor lizards, non-avian theropod dinosaurs, sebecid crocodylomorphs) usually have serrations along the edges. The serrations are usually attributed to adaptations for helping the teeth cut through skin, muscle, and sinew (although the mechanism for this is usually not described).

Tooth enamel, like most biological materials, probably isn't very good at holding an edge. Serrations are a great way to make such a material function similarly to having a sharp edge (via mechanisms others have described since the post I'm quoting), which is probably why we see it on such animals.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Perhaps I should amend that by saying a warrior who is motivated by desire for victory rather then malice.

Apologies, I thought you meant "No warrior would ever do such a thing." Of course, I'll note that inflicting such suffering can be motivated by a desire for victory, if the warrior in question believes it will frighten the enemy forces enough to reduce their combat capabilities (I suspect this is part of what the Japanese were going for with torturing GI's and leaving behind those signs). Such gambles are rather unlikely to pay off, however - and in the case of serrated edges, if there's any effect on healing time and/or infection rate, it's unlikely to be enough to cause any real difference, as you note.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG may already have something.

Hobgoblins and Orcs (grouped with Goblin-Kin) wield "saw-toothed falchions that leave nasty wounds."

Their damage is appended with "+ follow-up 1 HP of bleeding injury from rough edge."

Yes. I asked about that weapon feature here (wondering whether it was a one-off DFRPG bit of color, or a GURPS rule established elsewhere), and was directed to its original appearance in Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1.

The effect is +1 damage (after DR and wound modifiers, so it's a follow-up effect), for +1 CF.

Every self-respecting damage munchkin is sure to want one!

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tbone

Y

The effect is +1 damage (after DR and wound modifiers, so it's a follow-up effect), for +1 CF.

Every self-respecting damage munchkin is sure to want one!

It's +1 damage after 1 minute. Armies might want it for strategic reasons but for individual combatants it's pretty much irrelevant.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's +1 damage after 1 minute. Armies might want it for strategic reasons but for individual combatants it's pretty much irrelevant.

After 1 minute? That makes sense as a more detailed effect, and, I agree, would be irrelevant on the frenzied timescale of adventurers' hackfests.

But FWIW, I don't see any mention of delayed damage in Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1 or in DFRPG Monsters. Is that from another book?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tbone

After 1 minute? That makes sense as a more detailed effect, and, I agree, would be irrelevant on the frenzied timescale of adventurers' hackfests.

But FWIW, I don't see any mention of delayed damage in Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1 or in DFRPG Monsters. Is that from another book?

It's in the Basic set. After 1 minute is when bleeding occurs. Maybe 30 seconds for the most severe types of wounds if you use optional rules from Martial Arts.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's in the Basic set. After 1 minute is when bleeding occurs. Maybe 30 seconds for the most severe types of wounds if you use optional rules from Martial Arts.

You're confusing two unrelated things. The bleeding rules also have HT rolls involved and etc. This is Dungeon Fantasy Treasure as in it's fantasy and has nothing to do with the bleeding rules. The important thing is that since the descriptor is "bleeding", if you have No Blood you don't take the extra damage.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Bruno

You're confusing two unrelated things. The bleeding rules also have HT rolls involved and etc. This is Dungeon Fantasy Treasure as in it's fantasy and has nothing to do with the bleeding rules. The important thing is that since the descriptor is "bleeding", if you have No Blood you don't take the extra damage.

The descriptor doesn't have 'bleeding'. It's just a flat +1 HP injury from cutting weapons after modifiers.


The interesting thing is that this is after DR... I suspect it's meant to be +1 HP injury if any damage is done, but it reads to me as +1 HP injury even if no damage is done.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Bruno

This is Dungeon Fantasy Treasure as in it's fantasy and has nothing to do with the bleeding rules. The important thing is that since the descriptor is "bleeding", if you have No Blood you don't take the extra damage.

I agree. The BS bleeding rules are clearly written as optional, and there's nothing in the saw-tooth weapon damage bonus that asks GMs to invoke those rules. So, I assume the DF/DFRPG sawtooth blades are intended to inflict an immediate +1 damage, as a simple, fantasy "it just bleeds more" effect.

(That said, if the GM is using the optional BS bleeding rules and likes bloody detail, it makes sense to integrate sawtooth weapons with those rules. Let the extra damage start flowing after a minute, as Fred suggests. Or perhaps the toothed edge should just place an extra penalty on the HT roll to avoid bleeding - a nice and simple way to handle it.)

Whatever bleeding rules are or aren't used, I agree that the toothed edge should have no special effect on No Blood targets. Makes sense.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I think the point I'm making is not that serrated teeth aren't used to saw a larger prey into smaller more manageable chunks for those animals that need that, (they certainly are as you point out) but that can be that for some animals, serration can also be for maintaining an initial grip as well, especially in situation were powerful jaws (and conical teeth that are well suited to transmitting that force) are not about. BUt yes I do also agree there are other teeth development that do that as well as you pointed out!

Although note that animals that need to hold on to slippery prey (dolphins, garter snakes, pikes, etc.) without the need to process said prey into smaller bits (so excluding ground and lamniform sharks, salvator water monitors, and so forth) do not have serrated teeth. They have simple recurved cones or spikes with a typically near-circular cross section.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

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as you say some are more analogous to bird teeth, generally speaking none of those birds feed by grabbing a large (relatively so) prey and shaking it apart into smaller chunks*. But instead have to contend with grabbing and keeping in place slippery fruit, water plants or fish (and in the case of fish fleeting) food items.

Mergansers are fish-eating ducks. The merganser "serrations" act more like the teeth of other fish eaters than what I would consider serrations, although I suppose this is a matter of semantics. They are specific adaptations to hold onto slippery prey. To the point of this thread, any such structure on a sword (and again I would call this a toothed sword rather than a serrated one if I found it) would not have the same effect because you don't have a pincer action from the opposite jaw helping to clamp the victim in place.

The "serrations" of goose beaks (and most duck beaks) are filters or strainers, used to separate small aquatic animals and plants out from the water so the goose can eat said small animals and plants. I can't think of a reason any sword would need to filter fluids in this fashion - maybe a necromancer trying to harvest the blood cells of his victims?

I am not as familiar with toucans. I will note that the serrations on their beak point in the opposite direction normally used for teeth, which normally point backwards so food items can more easily slip into the gullet than out the front of the mouth. Why toucans have such an adaptation I cannot say. Since swords probably won't be gripping things, it probably makes little difference which way the serrations point, and in fact on steak knives and bread knives the serrations are generally symmetric and don't point any particular direction at all.

Luke