Use "Knowing Your Own Strength" damage rules or not?

[Boge]

My ultimate goal is to give ourselves more reason to thrust. I never find that thrust is comparable to swing, not even for vitals.

What about armor penetration for melee weapons? They mention that in history and movies all the time, how swords with points are good for penetrating heavy armor, but I haven't seen that in Gurps other than a +1 thrust for a thrusting weapon. Seems an Armor Divisor would make more sense.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Boge

My ultimate goal is to give ourselves more reason to thrust. I never find that thrust is comparable to swing.

What about armor penetration for melee weapons? They mention that in history and movies all the time, how swords with points are good for penetrating heavy armor, but I haven't seen that in Gurps other than a +1 thrust for a thrusting weapon. Seems an Armor Divisor would make more sense.

They are not. They might be good for sliding between gaps, hence half-swording techniques existed but actually puncturing heavy armour is not what swords are good at. That job is much better undertaken by swinging a strong metal spike on a pole to maximise impact onto a small spot.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Boge

They mention that in history and movies all the time, how swords with points are good for penetrating heavy armor.

Sword points are better than sword edges at penetrating heavy armor, largely because edges are super crappy, but neither is especially good at it.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by Boge

My ultimate goal is to give ourselves more reason to thrust. I never find that thrust is comparable to swing, not even for vitals.

What about armor penetration for melee weapons? They mention that in history and movies all the time, how swords with points are good for penetrating heavy armor, but I haven't seen that in Gurps other than a +1 thrust for a thrusting weapon. Seems an Armor Divisor would make more sense.

KYOS will definitely make thrust competitive with swing. On average a thrust will do 1 less raw damage than a swing with a sword, with the impaling wounding modifier (x2) being higher than the cutting wounding modifier (x1.5).

As for armour penetration, realistically points don't puncture the armour directly.

In Low-Tech, the harsh realism rules for armour gaps is usually a penalty of -6 or -8, or just using the Chinks in armour rule is -8 to gain an Armour Divisor of 2, or -10 for Vital Chinks. An All-Out Attack: Determined (+4), stacked with Telegraphic Attack (+4) for a total of +8 will offset the penalty. The rules for Defensive Grip can reduce the penalty for attacking gaps as well.

Since this is risky, normally you'll do a Judo Throw or a Sweep or otherwise knock the guy down first to reduce their attack and defence.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Railstar

KYOS will definitely make thrust competitive with swing. On average a thrust will do 1 less raw damage than a swing with a sword, with the impaling wounding modifier (x2) being higher than the cutting wounding modifier (x1.5).

As for armour penetration, realistically points don't puncture the armour directly.

In Low-Tech, the harsh realism rules for armour gaps is usually a penalty of -6 or -8, or just using the Chinks in armour rule is -8 to gain an Armour Divisor of 2, or -10 for Vital Chinks. An All-Out Attack: Determined (+4), stacked with Telegraphic Attack (+4) for a total of +8 will offset the penalty. The rules for Defensive Grip can reduce the penalty for attacking gaps as well.

Since this is risky, normally you'll do a Judo Throw or a Sweep or otherwise knock the guy down first to reduce their attack and defence.

Yep exactly (also techniques)

[GodBeastX]

I use knowing your own strength in a Dungeon Fantasy-like game, and I am absolutely pleased with it. It not only affects weapons, but natural weapons of creatures.

I also think swing damage in general becomes far out there on some attacks. I have no mathematic evidence of this, but having 16 ST become the maximum for basic humanity helped curb a lot of the damage output.