The point always beats the edge and other optional combat rules

[Icelander]

I’ve been playing a lot more low-tech (TL 3-ish) GURPS recently than I’ve ever done before, so I’ve had reason to look at the weapons from the period and how they’re handled in GURPS. I’m not a hoplologist by training and my interest in weapons is merely a secondary (tertiary?) hobby, ranking below a host of others, so I don’t pretend any authority on the subject.

However, it seems to me that the damage treatment, as it has been done in previous editions and continues to be done, at least, in the Basic Set, is lacking a few more details to make it more fun for those of us who are obsessively devoted to the most minor points of simulationism. By that, I don’t mean that I would necessarily sacrifice all fun from a gaming session for the sake of being exactly like reality, complete with the complexity, but that rules should emulate, at the very least, enough complexity so that the GM and player are satisfied that they are close to the genre being portrayed. Perhaps such additional rules, doubtless much more intuitive, simple and usable than mine; are already included in the GURPS Martial Arts book, but until such time as that eagerly awaited tome is released, I have no recourse but my own tinkering.

The following, then, are several optional rules I’m going to incorporate into my TL 3 fantasy campaigns from now on. The rationalisation for each of them is also discussed in some detail.

First, there are three basic damage types for melee weapons in GURPS, cr, cut and imp. To that, we may add pi-, pi, pi+ and pi++ if we wish to discuss missile weapons and well and in addition (but beyond the scope of this post), there are also other kinds of damage which apply to special weapons.

None of my special rules so far apply to the cr type of damage or weapons utilising such. These weapons, I have found, are accurately represented (at least accurately enough for my purposes) and do not need optional rules that make their use more versatile at the cost of added complexity.

The cut and imp types of damage, however, I find lacking some extra detail that would make their use more distinct and tactically important. As it is, a one-handed thrust and slash with a katana made at the same force have the exact same chance of penetrating armour and since humans generally have a better sw damage rating than thr, it is usually much more efficient to slash with a blade at heavy armour than it is to stab at it. This contradicts much of what arms-masters traditionally taught, both in Europe and elsewhere, where a light blade might be good at slicing an un-armoured man, but would not be as good at slicing against armour.

It is my intention, then, to assign a light, slashing weapon; including, but not necessarily limited to, both knives, shortswords, sabres and almost every sword that is covered by the broadsword skill; an armour divisor of (0.75) when they are used to slash. This means that armour DR is multiplied by 1.33 against the attack. This represents the difficulty of slicing through heavy armour.

Edit: Playtesting has led me to decide that DR is always rounded up in these rules. Additionally, I would say that some materials, which do not provide any DR against normal attacks, might provide DR 1 against slicing attacks. This could include thick, wet clothing; thin leather and similar. That last complication is even more optional than the preceding rule, however. ;)

Heavier cutting weapons, including axes, polearms and such, retain their normal armour divisor of (1) under these rules. So do two-handed swords and the heavier examples of longswords and other “hand-and-a-half” swords, which were popular precisely because of their greater ability to punch through heavy armour. The line between this is one for the GM’s careful adjudication and some GMs may even like to introduce an intermediary step of armour divisor, (0.8) for those weapons on the brink. I will leave that up to those with truly anal-retentive minds. ;)

In a similar vein, I feel that the lower thr damage compared to the sw progression discourages players from stabbing with their weapons, which does not do justice to many historical fighting styles and weapons. The penalty suffered by cutting attacks against heavy armour should do something to fix this, but I feel that it would be warranted to give a further bonus to imp type weapons against armour. Currently, imp weapons are best against unarmoured opponents and the best weapons against heavily armoured foes are heavy cutting weapons. That ignores the specific role of weapons such as the Lucern hammer and other spiked warhammers in penetrating heavy armour.

I submit that imp weapons be treated as having an armour divisor of (1.5). This simulates both their documented ability to easily penetrate leather armour that would deflect a cut, their performance against mail, especially butted mail, and the ability of a spiked warhammer to punch through even a heavy breastplate or helm. To begin with, I will apply this bonus to all imp weapons, but those not designed to punch through armour or large enough to exert much force with might eventually only qualify for an armour divisor of (1.33). Such weapons could include some knives, particularly those not meant for fighting, and many types of hunting arrows.

In spite of the bodkin arrows being touted as having unrealistic penetrating power against armour, I find the mechanism behind them adds to the player’s enjoyment of the game. Their incredibly enhanced performance is easier to accept when one keeps in mind that bows in GURPS are generally not very powerful compared to many other weapons and in order to make it possible to play the concept of “fantasy archer”, it was a deliberate design choice to make bows more powerful than historical evidence suggests.

With that in mind, I rule that the “bodkin point” concept can be used to represent other imp weapons than arrows. For example, stilettos and certain types of pick weapons can be made with a very narrow point that has armour divisor (2), at the cost of downgrading damage from imp to pi. There is generally no change to cost or (effective) weight, since usually only the front part of the weapon is affected.

Weapon quality is a touchy subject, since a +1 or +2 can be an insignificant part of the total damage or it could be more than a doubling of the base, depending on the specific weapon on the ST of the user. That being said, I find it useful enough for the human scale of ST I usually encounter (the same can be said about my optional rules above) and will continue to use it.

In addition, I also rule that an edged weapon must be sharpened before combat in order to receive a damage bonus. I leave it up to the GM to decide how long it takes for a weapon to lose its edge, but as a guideline, any combat which features repeated strikes against an armoured opponent should at least require a HT roll for the weapon in order to remain at perfect sharpness. The relative weight and sturdiness of the weapon versus the hardness of the struck target would influence this roll. It is no doubt possible to give this a fuller treatment, but until I've gamed out some more fights with these rules, I'm going to eyeball this bit for now.

A weapon which has lost its edge and not been re-sharpened is treated as a weapon one quality lower for the purposes of damage (and it is possible for weapons to drop in more quality levels, if left unsharpened after many fights).

An edged weapon can be sharpened to a finer edge than this, enabling it to be treated as one quality better for damage purposes, but such an edge is quickly dulled and may even lead to permanent chipping and other damage. Apply weapon HT checks for each strike against an armoured opponent and after every battle even if the opponents wore no armour and penalise those checks by -4. If failed by less than 4, the damage is only enough to cause loss of the edge, but a failure by more than that causes some sort of chipping that must be repaired by a qualified armourer. Edged weapons other than swords that are already Fine and swords that are already Very Fine can not benefit from this rule.

Normal sharpening requires no skill roll for a character with any of Soldier, Armoury (hand weapons) or Housekeeping skills at 10+, but otherwise requires a roll vs. Armoury+6, Soldier+4 or Housekeeping+2. Putting on an edge greater than the quality of the blade requires an Armoury+2 roll and a couple of minutes if a sharpening wheel is available, about an hour and an unmodified roll if it is not. Repairing a weapon that has chipped or been otherwise damaged in combat requires an unmodified Armoury roll with full tools and an amount of time that depends on the severity of the damage.

Since none of this is play-tested yet, please comment and correct all you can.

[Ciaran]

I like everything except the arrow rules. I'm going to use this.

[benz72]

What corresponding assumptions can we make about the maintainability and reapirability of armor (or even more so for shields)?

Also, instead of a straight armor divisor, have you thought about targeting armor gaps with thrusting attacks (halfswording from one of the fechtbuchs refers IIRC). This might be modeled with a hit location skill and could reasonably bypass all armor if applied correctly against something less than completely enclosing plate.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ciaran

I like everything except the arrow rules. I'm going to use this.

There were arrow rules? ;)

I didn't write any... ;)

Are you referring to the idea of using the bodkin arrow rule for other weapons as well?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by benz72

What corresponding assumptions can we make about the maintainability and reapirability of armor (or even more so for shields)?

There are damage to shield rules in Basic, IIRC. I use them liberally.

For armour, I'm afraid I mostly guesstimate. I inform my players after each fight where their armour is damaged and they duly head to an armourer to repair it.

They spend a lot of money on repairs and maintainance.

Originally Posted by benz72

Also, instead of a straight armor divisor, have you thought about targeting armor gaps with thrusting attacks (halfswording from one of the fechtbuchs refers IIRC). This might be modeled with a hit location skill and could reasonably bypass all armor if applied correctly against something less than completely enclosing plate.

I allow players to target any and all actual gaps in armour with penalties based on the size of the gaps. For these gaps, the DR is either 0, 1 or whatever other material is actually there.

For example, many cheaper versions of plate have leather over the arms. For such armour, it is often possible to target the vitals by targeting under the arm with a thrusting weapon, for about a -6 penalty.

This is both instead of and in addition to the generic 4e rule about targeting chinks.

[ArmoredSaint]

What I do in my campaigns is simply rule that cutting weapons do not get their x1.5 damage bonus unless the basic damage is more than twice the armour's DR. Thus, in order to cut through plate, you'd need to deal 13+ points of damage. Only a strong man with an axe or a halberd is going to be able to do that with any sort of consistency, which IMO, reflects reality better than the Rules as Written.

[Anthony]

There are some playability issues with your rules; armor divisors of 1.5 and 0.75 are hard to use. A simpler version:
Slashing: -1 damage per die, x2 damage after DR
Stabbing: +2 damage per die, x1 damage after DR

Thus, ST 14 with a katana (2d+2 cut or 1d+2 imp) becomes 2d slash, 2d+1 pierce.

As a side point: I hate GURPS using both damage multipliers and armor divisors. In practice, 2d damage (x1.5 after DR) and 3d damage (multiply DR by 1.5) are identical.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ArmoredSaint

What I do in my campaigns is simply rule that cutting weapons do not get their x1.5 damage bonus unless the basic damage is more than twice the armour's DR. Thus, in order to cut through plate, you'd need to deal 13+ points of damage. Only a strong man with an axe or a halberd is going to be able to do that with any sort of consistency, which IMO, reflects reality better than the Rules as Written.

This is a good rule, much simpler than mine, but it still means that it's worse to stab than slash with light swords.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There are some playability issues with your rules; armor divisors of 1.5 and 0.75 are hard to use.

Aye, they might be, but there's a simpler way to state this.

Armour divisor 1.5 means that DR is decreased by 33%. Armour divisor 0.75 means that DR is decreased by 33%.

Add one third or remove one third. Not that hard.

I'll make some other changes to the main text, though. Minor math things.

Originally Posted by Anthony

A simpler version:
Slashing: -1 damage per die, x2 damage after DR
Stabbing: +2 damage per die, x1 damage after DR

Thus, ST 14 with a katana (2d+2 cut or 1d+2 imp) becomes 2d slash, 2d+1 pierce.

This is interesting, but since it makes the damage multipliers of cut and imp attacks different than RAW, it requires one to change a lot of other rules as well (spells, Innate Attacks, some skills, etc.)

I prefer my rules to add an extra step of complexity rather than change things, if I can.

YMMV, of course. ;)

Originally Posted by Anthony

As a side point: I hate GURPS using both damage multipliers and armor divisors. In practice, 2d damage (x1.5 after DR) and 3d damage (multiply DR by 1.5) are identical.

Well, yes.

But I find it simpler and more elegant to have two modifiers to add than to have to refigure basic damage constantly.

I guess it would be possible to do away with one modifier, but that would just mean it would be replaced by a modifier to basic damage, which wouldn't be any easier.

And basic damage governs knock-back, so the two attacks above aren't completely identical. ;)

[Icelander]

Another issue, at least tangentially related to the subject, is the DR value of the protection provided by the human skeleton. We already have a DR of 2 for the skull, but there is no corresponding value for other bones which have a similar function as the skull. The ribs and sternum, for example, protect the vital organs of the human torso from trauma.

For the moment, we'll avoid adding any more complexity by treating every bone in the human body. We'll assume that normal bones are a part of HP and that losing HP also represents bone damage.

The ribs and sternum, however, are a special case. Techniques for circumwenting or piercing them are a large part of some knife-fighting styles and knowing how to angle a blade when stabbing to the chest would seem to be important in real-life knife and sword fighting.

To represent the chance of striking a rib or hitting the sternum which could turn the attack aside, I thought about using the following rule:

Any strike which hits Hit Location 9 (torson, upper) from the front has a chance of hitting a rib or the sternum. This chance is determined by the weapon used. Roll one die.

Any cutting or crushing attack hits a bone in a roll of 1-5.
A weapon with a broad impaling point which cannot easily pass through the ribcage (GM's decision) hits a bone on a roll of 1-4.
Any normal impaling weapon hits a bone on a roll of 1-3.
A slim knife or stiletto blade, or any piercing weapon hits a bone on a roll of 1-2.

Any strike which hits Hit Location 10 (torso, middle) uses the same table but halves the chances, rounding up. The same halving of the chance applies to rear or side attacks.

An attack which is aimed at the torso uses the rules for Hit Location 10. An attacks aimed at the vitals uses the rules for Hit Location 9.

If a character takes an extra penalty of -2 for a swung weapon or a -1 for a thrust weapon, he can target these areas without hitting the ribcage and sternum.

The effect of striking ther ribs or sternum of a human target (modify accordingly for other species or beings) is that the DR of the target is increased by 1. If one point of damage would have penetrated if not for this increase, the character suffers a flesh wound for 1 HP which is not modified for hit location or attack type, but allows any follow-up damage to apply.