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

Especially when they're just playing at a sport, as with HEMA.

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

It's not so much you need great strength to swing a realistic weapon fast, it's more that you need to be reasonably strong and fit to comfortably keep your weapon under control while still swinging it as fast as you want, for asw long as you want. This last is impotent as fatigue is also factor for which I recommend last gasp which also has ST playing a tangential role.

That said as others have already posted strength is not the primary stat in GURPS for melee combat (nor is it in real life either), DX or more precisely skill is.


For 5 point's of ST I can but at the least 12 levels in a melee skill, with that kind of skill advantage it will be a quick sword fight. (of course +5 ST has a wider application than that +12 in a melee skill).


Of course surrounding all this is the question of what is realistic ST (or more precisely what is a realistic portrayal of realistic ST)!

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

IMO it does. With enough skill you can hit more precisely, which means you can bypass armour or hit more damaging targets. The net result is you do more damage. It's not direct like the way ST does but, but its a constant enough effect to count IMO

I do know some have suggested house rules for using trained ST and melee skills though

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

To Tomsdad
Sure, but consider one of my earlier examples. Consider two people, one ST 13, and one ST 7. Both are using a "bastard sword" with two hands. Both have equal skill in the sword (and both have equal DX). Both are going to have the same hit rate, but one is going to do about twice the damage as the other on a hit. At face value, that seems to contradict what I've read and heard from HEMA experts regarding the usefulness of Strength for swordfighting.

Perhaps in a real swordfight, a hit from the ST 7 or the ST 13 person are both incapacitating, which is one way that I might try to square the rules with reality, but I'm tempted to say that this is not correct.

Does anyone have any reliable sources for the impact force, energy, and momentum of a sword swing with "proper form / technique" as used in a one-on-one swords duel, and the same for a mace, and the same for outside of combat against a fixed target and swinging as hard as one can? Is my earlier source actually accurate? If so, that still seems to suggest that the basic GURPS damage formula for swords is entirely wrong, specifically the damage for the "bastard sword" strikes of the ST 13 and ST 7 persons should be much closer.

Or as I've been saying, maybe I'm completely wrong about everything.

...

To Gollum
Sure. I understand that a character with low ST can buy advantages to increase damage with a bastard sword. However, that doesn't answer my question: Is it realistic that that a ST 13 char does twice the damage as the ST 7 char with a "bastard sword", witn no further chargen to affect bastard sword damage, and all other chargen being equal? Should Strength really make that big of a difference absent specific chargen to increase sword damage?

Hell, should Strength even make that big of a difference in damage for swinging a bat or a mace in combat with proper form and technique, given some of the evidence that I can find for max bat swing speeds for children and professionals?

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

Actually they won't. A bastard sword wielded in two hands has a MinST10, so that ST7 fighter will be at -3 to skill compared to their ST13 opponent.

It's one way ST does act as a limiting factor.

Remember a ST7 adult is going to be pretty weak!

Well nothing is for certain, ST7 will be doing 1d Sw cut or 1d Thr Imp*

"incapacitating" is subject to some variability in GURPS. You could possibly incapacitate someone with the above but you'll likely need to leverage some favourable factors. Hit location, a good damage roll, a failed knock down test etc. Some of which can be made more likely with skill.


As you say ST13 is going to be doing a lot more damage, and will have to rely much less on such favourable factors.
A good example of Skill vs. Raw Strength, remember that for the 60 points that ST difference is worth you can buy another 15 levels of skill. Which even with the -3 penalty for less than MinST** will be net +12.


And as has been mentioned there are issues with ST based Melee damage once ST gets high (and what 'high' means).

So that all said given the issue and the fact that you'd like to make differences in ST less of a factor in damage, I'd recommend one of the several house rules for alternative ST progression that reduce Thr/Sw. This will proportionally increase the importance of the weapon's adjustment to damage.

*sorry I'm assuming a bastard sword with a point

** I wouldn't recommend dropping ST this low for a PC that intends to get into a lot of fights though, even if they intend to use the saved points to buy skill (it comes with other disadvantages on top of the fact that the MinST penalty just negated 12 points spent on skill)

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

Well, they're selling sword training, not gym memberships. This sounds more like "you don't have to be huge to get some HEMA lessons", or that proper form is more important than being able to bench a lot. Not that it doesn't hurt to have bit more heft after you know how to hit well and properly.
(Decreasing someone's damage if they're just using Broadsword by default sounds like a case for applying the skill penalty to Trained ST, but if Auntie May and Arnold both have Broadsword-13...)

Proper technique in stage combat decreasing impact force doesn't really say a lot, either.

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

That's an interesting point: high skill compensates for low ST, but only to a point. Your ST 7 fighter, if he's skill 18, is as effective as the ST 10, skill 15 opponent when it comes to pure skill. Increasing his ST by 3 would give him an effective boost of +3 skill, but further increases in ST would make no further increases to skill.

As for Gerrard's point, skill should impact knowing more than just how to get your sword connected with your opponent, but also how to make that impact do as much as possible. High skill does cover hit locations, which includes armor gaps and chinks, and high skill with unarmed attacks does offer techniques to improve striking damage in limited ways (Hammer fists, exotic hand strikes, etc). I know of no such techniques for melee weapons, but Martial Arts does include all rules necessary to do something like that, if you wanted to allow characters to improve their damage with skill in specific ways.

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

Yep it's limiting in one direction only (in the other direction MinST limits you in a different way)


I've seen some proposed house rules using the Trained ST concept, that work well (subject to the issues of hand held Melee damage). But yep as you say you could build a technique around increasing damage

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

This is modelled in GURPS: Forced entry allows you to hit harder against inanimate objects

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

Those skeletal deformities are not a result of strength training but were caused by actually using the bow.