Steve Jackson Games Forums - Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

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Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Just to add in, based on my reading and knowledge of basic physics and mechanics.

Swords, axes, maces, and even big polearms, are actually quite light. A dagger might be 1 lb. A historical one-handed mace is generally at most 2.5 lb and often much less. A one-handed sword is about 2.5 lb. and a big polearm or greatsword are generally not more than 6 lb.

At these masses, it's not just the mass of the weapon that matters. It's also the mass of the arm that matters. Also, with proper form and technique, you're not just swinging your arm. You're putting your shoulder into it, twisting your waist, and even going all the way to the feet with proper footwork. You're often putting your entire body into the motion. (I'm not saying that you put your entire body into it with reckless abandon, but making a strike with a fist, a sword, or a polearm generally involves the whole body.) So, for how fast you can swing or thrust a weapon, the weight of the weapon is generally not important for real historical weapons and their usual weights. Any role playing game that gives drastically more attacks per second to a dagger wielder or shortsword wielder compared to a greatsword wielder is not being realistic, AFAICT, IMHO. (Allowing a dagger wielder to make many more attacks may be cinematic, but 20 lb maces and swords are also cinematic.)

Next, as mentioned by another upthread, based on what I've read, I'm dubious as to the claim that stronger people can swing a weapon faster, and I'm especially dubious that this relationship should be linear. I've cited numbers for baseball ball max swing speeds for children in little league, and for professionals in the MLB, and they're actually quite close (60 mph vs 80 mph). Further, from a biomechanical point of view, real human strength comes from muscles, and adding muscles adds weight which needs to be moved, and this (highly amateur) armchair reasoning suggests that you won't see linear returns in weapon swing speed by increasing strength, and it may even go so far as to be a wash, e.g. increasing strength also increases mass, and the net result is no improvement in weapon swing speed. AFAICT, IMHO.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerrard of Titan Server (Post 2020633)

Next, as mentioned by another upthread, based on what I've read, I'm dubious as to the claim that stronger people can swing a weapon faster, and I'm especially dubious that this relationship should be linear.

It's definitely not linear, but it's definitely faster. There's a reason baseball batters weightlift and use steroids.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerrard of Titan Server (Post 2020633)

Further, from a biomechanical point of view, real human strength comes from muscles, and adding muscles adds weight which needs to be moved, and this (highly amateur) armchair reasoning suggests that you won't see linear returns in weapon swing speed by increasing strength, and it may even go so far as to be a wash, e.g. increasing strength also increases mass, and the net result is no improvement in weapon swing speed. AFAICT, IMHO.

It's only going to be a wash if the amount of non-muscle weight added is equal to the amount of muscle weight added. This may well be the case for whole-body activities, but a sword is still a quite considerable weight compared to an arm. A human arm is typically estimated at around 5% of overall body weight, so a 200 lb man might have a 10 lb arm, but because it's a lever with a rotation point of your shoulder, a sword with a length equal to your arm length only needs 1/7 of the mass of the arm to hold an equal amount of energy.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 2020636)

but because it's a lever with a rotation point of your shoulder, a sword with a length equal to your arm length only needs 1/7 of the mass of the arm to hold an equal amount of energy.

I'm still slightly dubious of this analysis, because everything I read says that proper technique is not holding the rest of the body still, and moving only the arm and sword. Instead, with proper technique, the whole body is part of the swing, especially going to at least the waist, plus proper footwork at a minimum.

Of course, I can readily relent that more strength does mean faster swing, but definitely not linear, for the GURPS definition of "strength".

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerrard of Titan Server (Post 2020637)

This is true but both complicated to compute and actually not all that relevant; the amount of energy in the body at the end is actually quite low because it's all extremely close to the center of rotation and thus moving fairly slowly.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerrard of Titan Server (Post 2019773)

I have no first hand experience in historical weapon-based martial arts, but I have some second-hand appreciation and fascination for those who do, such as HEMA.

Some of the "experts" and actual experts in the community have said in several occasions that strength is not terribly important. Skill is much more important. Matt Easton of Scholagladiatoria has even stated that during his time of teaching historical European martial arts to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, he hasn't yet seen someone that is too physically weak to effectively wield a longsword (aka a hand-and-a-half sword) with two hands. (He says that a little bit more strength is required for effective wielding of a sword in one hand, but still not that much.)

See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3OIjpLSaYQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip-_vEPotYo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cNO6uRqUcE

Is this true?

In terms of GURPS, a very strong person has a ST of 13, for a base Swing damage of 2d-1, which comes out to 2d+1 cut for two-handing a "bastard sword". A weak person has a ST of 7, for a base Swing damage of 1d-2, which comes out to 1d cut for two-handing a "bastard sword". Right? That's over twice the damage, which doesn't gel with my understanding of the above sources.

This is further informed by this one page that I found. It doesn't look terribly professional, but it's the only source that I've found. It claims to be measured impact force of a sword swing and mace swing with proper form and technique, vs "bad technique" aka hitting as hard as you can.

http://weaponsofchoice.com/extras/we...ort-and-force/

The numbers are quite interesting. According to this author, a mace swing with proper form has 10x less impact force than a full-out, "bad" technique swing, and a sword swing with proper form has 100x less impact force than a full-out, "bad" technique swing! Again, are these numbers accurate? It's incredibly difficult to find numbers on this. I lack all firsthand expertise in this, and it's hard for me to even sanity check these claims, and that's a big reason why I'm here.

If those force impact numbers are to be trusted, then it leads me to the conclusion that swords deal damage because they're sharp and because they hit vulnerable areas with proper edge alignment, etc., and generally not because of of the person's strength - except to the extent that is necessary to get the sword moving at speed.

I would guess that a relatively weak real world person can swing a sword about as fast as a very strong person, and thus the above numbers pass my initial, uneducated, "sniff" test.

If all of this is correct, this would mean that the entire framework and system in place for modeling damage with swords based on strength and swing damage is entirely broken.

Alternatively, maybe I'm coming from the wrong perspective. In a real fight, the first person to get get a cut generally wins, so maybe a very strong person would do substantially more damage with a sword cut with good form because of their strength, but it doesn't matter because the actual flesh wounds from a sword cut from a weaker than average person does more than enough to incapacitate a person most of the time.

I guess I'm just looking for comments, pointers, and general education. I'd like to understand reality before I decide if I want to ignore reality for being cinematic, and exactly what the difference would be.

Thanks for your time!

My first though upon reading this post was "maybe weapon master isn't as cinematic as we've been lead to believe?"

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minuteman37 (Post 2020690)

My first though upon reading this post was "maybe weapon master isn't as cinematic as we've been lead to believe?"

If we dropped the access to cinematic skills and techniques, it could become quite realistic ...

Except for the difference between DX+1 and DX+2 level (+1 and +2 to damage). I find that a bit weird, exactly like for Karate skill.

A karateka has to reach DX+0 (or a weapon master has to reach DX+1) to get +1 to damage, which requires quite a lot of training / character points (depending on the difficulty of the skill). But he only needs 4 points more to get +2 to damage. And after that, nothing else. Even if he reaches DX+10. The distribution of theses bonuses sounds weird to me. Something like DX+0 for +1 to damage and DX+4 for +2 to damage would have been more realistic in my humble opinion.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 2020636)

It's definitely not linear, but it's definitely faster. There's a reason baseball batters weightlift and use steroids...

True, baseball's a good example actually (because a lot of work has been down on what in sport science terms is a fairly simple* mechanism), what it seems to come down in getting the sweet spot on both how heavy a bat you can swing, but it also being able to swing it fast and under control**.

Again there are lots of limiting factors in play, not least there's only so fast human arm (and torso) muscles can swing the arm. If you look at the animal world for very fast strikes it tends to come down to specific morphological adaptation to allow for extreme speed, not muscle mass (of course morphological specialisation is a bit out of context here).

So yes baseball hitter strength train but there is an point of diminishing returns even when just swinging a bat very hard.

*a very relative term, its still complex!

**and even then compared to moving weapon around in ongoing combat for attack and defence, swinging baseball bat is a much simpler, narrower use.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gollum (Post 2020743)

I'm sure the decision for the x in DX+x to also be the damage bonus was done for ease of use more then anything else.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minuteman37 (Post 2021065)

I'm sure the decision for the x in DX+x to also be the damage bonus was done for ease of use more then anything else.

Either do I. But something like DX+0 and DX+4 wouldn't really have been more complicated ... And if the Weapon Master advantage did follow exactly the same numbers, it would have been even more simple.

Here, we have DX+0 and DX+1 for karate and DX+1 and DX+2 for Weapon Master which is just a bit weird.

But that is another topic, actually. I am derailing the thread ... Sorry.

Re: Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gollum (Post 2021068)

My own thoughts on this matter can be found here.

Although that thread predates my personal experience with HEMA, so I might rethink some things (fencing weapons, for example.)