Impaling and Cutting vs. armor

[JazzJedi]

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't thrusting attacks with swords and spears penetrate armor (sometimes even plate) much more easily than cuts? The RAW inverses this relationship with cuts (doing swing damage) penetrating DR better than impaling attacks (doing thrust).

How would someone fix this?

[ErhnamDJ]

I'm not aware of any historical evidence of swords, either thrusting or swung, penetrating armor. Are you talking about gaps or holes, like the eye slits in a visor? You might be able to find an example of a lance from a mounted man penetrating an unspecified armor. It's very rare for any type of weapon to penetrate armor (if it was easy, the man would wear thicker armor).

There are already the optional edge protection rules in Low Tech, page 102.

If I were doing new rules from scratch, I would probably give different weapons an armor divisor based on the surface area of the striker and the hardness of the weapon.

[JazzJedi]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'm not aware of any historical evidence of swords, either thrusting or swung, penetrating armor. Are you talking about gaps or holes, like the eye slits in a visor? You might be able to find an example of a lance from a mounted man penetrating an unspecified armor. It's very rare for any type of weapon to penetrate armor (if it was easy, the man would wear thicker armor).

There are already the optional edge protection rules in Low Tech, page 102.

If I were doing new rules from scratch, I would probably give different weapons an armor divisor based on the surface area of the striker and the hardness of the weapon.

This video shows a guy using a spear vs. plate armor and getting some penetration by bracing the blade with his hand. A cut could still never do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osTQrJ_axfc

Here is a video of an iron age spear vs. 16 gauge armor (DR 5 or so) and getting some penetration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8vFfDuG-iA

The penetration is similar to bodkin tipped arrows fired from warbows. Bodkins get a (2) armor divisor. Should thrusting swords/spears/polearms also get armor divisor, or should cutting attacks which do not penetrate armor as well get a (0.5) armor divisor?

[trooper6]

Have you checked out the edge protection rule that was mentioned? That may deal with your concerns.

[JazzJedi]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Have you checked out the edge protection rule that was mentioned? That may deal with your concerns.

I hadn't. After looking at it, it seems to do the job very nicely. Thanks. How would an armor divisor work with this rule?

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

This video shows a guy using a spear vs. plate armor and getting some penetration by bracing the blade with his hand.

At what time in the video does that happen?

Here is a video of an iron age spear vs. 16 gauge armor (DR 5 or so) and getting some penetration.

16 gauge iron should be 0.0598 inches thick (edit: the video description says it's 1.6mm, so possibly slightly more than this). For cheap iron (at 52 DR/inch), that would be DR 3.1 which is on the low end for armors. And even then, those aren't what I would consider to be penetrations. Penetration is when the weapon goes through the armor and causes an injury to the person wearing the armor. If we assume that the rules in Low Tech Companion 2 are correct, then those strikes are for three damage exactly, and the armor--but not the person wearing it!--is being injured.

Maybe that is a good steel breastplate in the video, but even then, that's still only ~DR 4.2 and it doesn't make much difference.

Once you get into actual good armors, like steel, or even thicker iron ones, you don't see these sorts of small holes appearing. And even with that thing in the video, I don't think you would be in any danger wearing that into combat.

Should thrusting swords/spears/polearms also get armor divisor, or should cutting attacks which do not penetrate armor as well get a (0.5) armor divisor?

The problem we run into here is that the numbers we're dealing with are quite small and don't divide well. We could give a divisor of (.25) or (.3) or (.35) or whatever we decided we needed if we were dealing with numbers like 100 or 200, but we're often dealing with numbers like 2, 3, or 4.

It might well be the case that a sword should have a divisor of (.1) against steel armor, and that an iron spear should have (.8) and other weird things like that, but how do we make rules for those numbers? This is fine for guns, where we often do have those large numbers that we can apply those divisors to.

If our only options are (.5), no divisor, and (2), then it might be more accurate to give the normal arrow (.5) and the hardened steel arrow no divisor, even if it should have, I don't know, (1.3).

[Tomsdad]

Personally if was going to revamp this I'd do the following:

1). Have x0.5, x1, x1.5 and x2 (i,e -, na, +, ++) for all damage types. so you can have Cut-, Cut, Cut+ and Cut++, and so on,

2). make spilt DRs much more the norm, and have a wider range of them.

Coupled with different damage stats for weapons and the thrust and swing stats* this way you have more than enough viable that should be able to model the effects of different weapons vs. armour and flesh without having to deal with actually changing the system


Thing is we have this to an extant anyway, I think they are the simplest way to model difference, so should be rolled out more widely.

But yes it would need to rewrite some weapons (but some would probably stay the same anyway, since none of this is actually new rules) and armour.

Some combinations maybe redundant as well (Not quiet sure what Cr++ would be for instance), but at the moment we have a half way house between all the options for Pi, and none for Sw, Imp and the rest. So we can nicely model different things in Pi based sources of damage, but all Cut is x1.5, all Imp is x2, and that restriction I think has a knock on effect.

Equally with armour we have most mail types being -2 vs Cr, and some lighter cloth and leather being -1 vs Imp/Pi but do we think that's the limit of armours variable protection vs. different sources of damage.

Take armour vs Cutting. Now edge protection works (I always champion its use in these threads) but it is a touch clumsy and as an add on, it's one size fits all. Personally I think it would be simpler just to have Armours getting a higher DR vs. cutting.


*see latest Pyramid on this as well

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't thrusting attacks with swords and spears penetrate armor (sometimes even plate) much more easily than cuts? The RAW inverses this relationship with cuts (doing swing damage) penetrating DR better than impaling attacks (doing thrust).

How would someone fix this?

I posted my solution here.

[Erling]

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't thrusting attacks with swords and spears penetrate armor (sometimes even plate) much more easily than cuts? The RAW inverses this relationship with cuts (doing swing damage) penetrating DR better than impaling attacks (doing thrust).

How would someone fix this?

Check GURPS Low-tech. There is an optional rule under which cutting attacks influct cut damage only if basic damage was at least twice higher than target's DR. Otherwise it's cr damage.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Take armour vs Cutting. Now edge protection works (I always champion its use in these threads) but it is a touch clumsy and as an add on, it's one size fits all. Personally I think it would be simpler just to have Armours getting a higher DR vs. cutting.

Just giving all armours higher DR vs. Cutting will produce Murphy'ish situations, where hitting someone with a 2-lb mace deals 1 injury past DR, but sharpening that mace to an ax-head (without changing mass) will suddenly do 0 injury.