Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)
 

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!

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

Sticking a sharp pointy piece of metal into someone will kill any human, whether tiny or Lou Ferigno huge. It doesn't take "that" much force to push a sharpened blade through naked flesh.
But wielding any object fast takes strength. And if anything is in the way of that flesh, it will take more force to poke through it.
I'm sure swords experts will chime in soon enough, but this is what fellow layman I've gathered from reading their posts and other sources.

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

GURPS uses DX as the primary stat for wielding swords, not ST. ST is simply for dealing damage and we have said for at least a decade that the damage of all muscle-powered weapons in GURPS is too high. The main problem with comparing HEMA with GURPS is that HEMA practitioners don't have to deal with things like fantasy creatures and magical armour. It is for these abnormal situations that swords and high ST become useful.

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

Gamers want, and even expect, the ability to one-shot hack off limbs ala Monty Python's Black Knight, regardless of plausibility.

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

Is that even true in a real and meaningful sense? For a heavy object, I can more easily buy that, but swords only weigh 2 to 4 lb. Historical one-handed maces weighed 2.5 lb or less. Etc. Real historical lowtech melee weapons are exceptionally light compared to modern expectations.

Consider an out-of-shape person, and take an Olympic athlete strength trainer of some sort, and compare how fast that they can swing a bat. Would the difference really be that large?

According to some random sources found via google, children in little league can swing a bat up to 60 mph (tip speed?), and adults who play baseball professionally only swing a bat up to 80 mph (tip speed?). That's not a big variation. The kinetic energy difference would be larger because kinetic energy is the square of speed, but IIRC GURPS damage is generally treated as the sqrt of kinetic energy, so we're back to about 60 vs 80. (And there's the whole problem of using kinetic energy or momentum as a baseline for determining damage.)

Here, my naive understanding has some sympathy, especially for lighter armors, like clothes, or leather, or something, but even then I don't really know, because I am grossly ignorant on the matter.

What really complicates the issue for me is part of the above link, where it claims that proper form with a sword delivers like 100x less impact force than simply swinging it as hard as you can. My question also gets into the whole problem of chopping vs slashing aka draw cuts, and it might even be the same question.

This also gets to my understanding of the realism but not RAW of Balanced vs Unbalanced weapons. From my understanding, one can swing a sword very hard like one might swing a battleaxe, and then the sword would be out of position and unable to be used in parrying, but most sword strikes are not full out like that, which allows the sword to be quickly repositioned, which is why swords can be used for "simultaneous" attack and parry, but battleaxes cannot.

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

I can definitely agree in part to this. I immediately think of many anime characters who use comically oversized swords, such as Guts from Berserk, and they use their supernaturally high strength in order to cleave a man in half who is in full plate. That's what supernaturally high strength can do.

I'm just rambling now, but let me get this out there.

However, when two equally skilled supernatural swordsmen fight each other, they don't cleave each other in half. Maybe because they're not swinging as hard as they might against a mook? I don't know the GURPS term for it, but in D&D 3.5 terms, maybe Guts is power attacking against the mook, aka swinging harder, sacrificing accuracy, in order for additional power and damage on the swing.

(But mostly Guts just cleaves through mooks and not through named villains, because that's what the plot calls for, aka plot armor.)

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

That's what cinematic rules are for. The basic mechanics should model verisimilitude as much as possible.

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

People generally have a much lower threshold for acceptable wounds than PCs do. Bleeding to death or dying of gangrene can happen from pretty small wounds, and in real life you don't know about your HPs or whether you properly made a HT check. (Which is also why armor in the real world was a bit more "binary" than what fantasy adventurers wear)

So "sufficient" strength is probably quite low, especially if no armor is involved, although I'm quite wary of any differences that come in straight orders of magnitude.

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

In Japan, in Tokyo if I remember well what explained my Senseï who visited it, there is a room, a very long hallway, in which the best kyudoka (bowmen) did bow competitions. Shooting the target in this hallway is very hard because it is far away and there is the ceiling. Modern bow competitors are not able to reach the target. But kyudoka did, with their old wooden bows. How did they do that?

Actually their training required a lot of arm muscle training. They arms were very strong, so strong that very few people can bent their bows. Despite of the fact that they could have been quite thin.

What say the guy in this video is true: the bulk doesn't really matter. Except if you strike like an oaf, putting all your weight in your attack ... But strength does still matter. The problem is that strength is very specific. The strength of a karateka isn't at all the same than the strength of a weightlifter which isn't at all the same as the strength of a rock climber ...

So, how to handle these different strengths in GURPS? With the right advantages. And with the skill level.

In reality, the skill is as important as the strength. Someone who isn't trained to use a sword don't know the right angle of attack to do maximum damage. He doesn't either know how to best put his feet and the perfect hip move to improve even more his strike ...

Try to cut wood with an axe and compare your effectiveness with the one of a professional woodcutter. Even if you are generally stronger than him, his blows will be stronger than yours because he is very used to do that. He did that thousands of time!

GURPS doesn't take the skill into account for damage. But it still allows to take it into account through advantages. A good swordsman may for instance have Striking strength and many other advantages that improves damage rather than a flat high basic strength.

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

PS: As a historical fact, I find this particular fact to be absolutely fascinating. For example, when we dig up bones from European battlefields, we can tell who the English longbow archers were, because their back and arm bones were deformed in a very particular way, which was the result of very specific and extensive strength training for longbow use.

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.

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

conciser this you are likely impacting the target a lot more than the dice would indicate, it's just your blows are glancing off or striking protection at an angle that is absorbed by the protection.

in my miss spent youth I was a mediocre archer, as part of an experiment using a (then) modern low end sports bow, I got to shoot arrows at recreation Cloth & Leather Armors. I was hitting a man sized target at 20m in excess of 80% of the time, less than half those hits struck home because slight variations in angle of impact glancing off the armor or with non penetrating embeds. at 30m (60% hits 40% penetration) & 40m (40-45% hits around 35% penetration) my hit rate was down but my penetrations per 100 arrows (my arms where very sore by weeks end) stayed roughly constant. at around 50m penetration drooped of a quite a bit bit due to range attenuation of impact force (and the fact my hit rate was down too).

so Skill is your chance of landing a telling blow, Damage is how much you mess them up when you do land that blow.

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

Right. And that is even more true (at least, more sensible) with bowmen. More you are skilled, more you are able to hit a far target. Hitting a far target requires precision, of course (DX, in GURPS). But it also requires strength, in order to stretch the bow to give the arrow enough speed.

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

I'm not sure that, as GM, I would allow to use Forced entry to cut wood with an axe but, no matter, I do agree with you: there are a lot of ways to model specific strength in GURPS instead of just buying a high ST level.

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

Be careful. In GURPS basic attributes, the difference between 7 and 13 is huge.

7 is almost "crippled" (6 is). And 13 is almost "amazing" (14 is). So, the difference between ST 7 and ST 13 is the difference between an old lady and a very strong warrior.

The fact that a strong warrior is able to inflict twice the damage that an old lady is able to inflict sounds perfectly realistic.

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

Quoted for truth.

I study HEMA, and yes, when I'm cutting milk jugs with a sharp longsword, my size and strength sometimes allows me to make better cuts than some smaller people in my school.

Also, I've had to train my hand and wrist strength to keep from getting injuries and limit fatigue when practicing with swords.

That said, I agree with most HEMA people that strength is FAR less important with swords than it is with unarmed fighting. Good edge-alignment and proper technique has a great impact on the quality of a cut, it doesn't take much force at all to pierce someone's organs with a thrust.

I'd propose the following changes for realism:

1. Subtract 2 from all weapon damage.
2. Add Trained Strength to Weapon Damage (e.g. Technical Grappling), so that a skilled individual gets those two points back.
3. Change Swing damage to a flat thrust +2.

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

Yep I think it's more true of bowmen than melee because if you lack the ability to draw a bow that is powerful enough to reach your target, all the accuracy in the world won't matter you still won't hit.

What I really think is true is that while we tend to look at these things as completely separate in these discussions, the reality is they end up being liked just by the practicality of real life.

So yeah in GURPS it's possible to build a DX15, ST5 adult with Skill +10, in reality that combination of things won't happen with a human swordsman*.

(however because it's GURPS it has to be able to accommodate the non human and non realistic, i.e. no human swordmaster is likely to have the above build, but a hobbit one might).


When it comes to modelling humans, especially one's who excel at something I try and go for a holistic approach that brings in several factors. Because the reality is when your training very hard at something there tends to be a lot of synergy with several factors.

So while my preference is for stat normalisation, which means I won't have C14th English archers walking around with ST20 in order to pull heavy bows, but neither will I have them be ST8 and have +12 in a technique that allows them to.

Instead I tend to give them a combination of things that working together given them a combined ability to do a thing. Archery is great example of this as there is a pretty coherent set of advantages that build on each other and narrow in specificity.

TBH I've found a nice side effect of this approach is that I tend to avoid the knock on issues that can come with very high scores in advantages that have a wider scopes. e.g my English HYW archers know to avoid arm wrestling a 1,000lb polar bears!



*yes OK may soem outlandish culmination of events could give you this, but I suggest it wouldn't be a static ongoing situation

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

The claim that strength is unimportant to melee combat skills is generally a claim made by people who want to sell lessons in melee combat skills to people who don't want to do strength work. Strength, at least in specific muscle groups, is not really necessary for accuracy, but it absolutely affects power and speed.

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

I, for one, am not really convinced all this fussing over how much damage a strong character can do really matters all that much. A broadsword deals sw+1 cut or thr+2 imp. An ST 9 character daels 1d imp and 1d cut. A character with ST 12 deals 1d+1 imp and 1d+3 cut. In the first case, the average damage from a stab is 7 damage (10 for the vitals), and deals ~5 damage. The stronger character deals an average of 9 damage on a thrust (14 on a shot to the vitals), ~10 damage on a cut.

Any thrust is sufficient to deal a major wound to the vitals. A shot to the vitals whether strong or weak, will result in someone passing out in seconds and then likely bleeding out and dying. A cutting attack is almost enough to inflict a major wound on the average character for the weaker character, and is enough to knock someone unconscious and cause them to bleed out.

In short, a single blow from a strong or weak character is sufficient to effectively defeat most characters. Weak characters will need to stab again, or use an All-Out Attack or use Extra Effort, to really take a character out, and will have trouble defeating high DR, while a stronger character can afford to use more Defensive attacks and still deal decent damage, or can afford to deal decent damage without spending as much fatigue, and has a better chance of defeating DR (though I think one would make the case that, realistically, a sword edge is just not going to defeat hard armor whatever your ST).

I noticed this in Cherry Blossom Rain. I was curious if I could stat "realistic" female characters in regards to ST and still keep them effective, so we had a female samurai with ST 9 and one male samurai with ST 15. The ST 9 samurai was perfectly able to keep up, via extra effort and very precise strikes (and, to be fair, chi powers/skills). If someone said "Skill matters more than strength for swordplay," I'd say that's an accurate description of how GURPS handles swordplay. But it's not true that ST doesn't matter in GURPS when it comes to swordplay, but I think I'd be surprised if physical strength didn't matter at all to real swordplay, though I think "what strength is" is a complicated question.

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

The real reason for strength typically isn't damage; it's control, endurance, and speed. The simplest way of handling that in GURPS would probably be to just cap weapon skill based on ST vs weapon ST.

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

This smells of the usual argument about martial artists not needing strength, because of mad skillz yo.

Use of a muscle-powered tool reduces, but does not eliminate, the need for strength on a given task. Heck, even guns, which aren't muscle powered, still need some strength to carry and operate (particularly longarms).

Strength is less important for a swordsman than for a martial artist, because the sword gives you leverage (bonus damage) and concentrates the striking edge (giving you cutting or impaling damage).

But to say that it's somehow not important is just as goofy as saying it's not important in boxing or judo.

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

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

A lot of it is just vagueness about what "important" means. Strength isn't necessary - relatively weak people can kill you, but it also isn't useless - strong people can kill you more easily. Is something that is useful but not required "important". Depends on context doesn't it?

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

Yes, this. And endurance, which is what you will need if you want to throw more than a few blows without sucking wind hard.

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

I want that too, but TPTB have regularly said Gurps is for "heroic average" not "simulationist" gaming. Thankfully we have Pyramid to hold so many optional but more realistic rules for those of us that really want them.

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

Nah, GURPS combat rules don't work like that. A miss really is an outright miss (although there can be room for interpreting it as a "hesitation"). Otherwise you'd get an attack bonus against foes with insufficient armor for such a glance to occur (or a penalty against foes with such armor).

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

And I think it's fair to say that "practice with a longbow (of a large draw weight)" counts as strength training. A very particular form of strength training, but definitely strength training.

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

And thanks for everyone's input thus far.

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

Skill is very important for unarmed fighting too. Surely more than strength. Both are important, of course (otherwise there wouldn't be so much muscle training in every martial arts).

But true kime (the most important effectiveness of a punch or a kick), is more a matter of knowing exactly when to relax your muscles and when to contract them than a matter of being generally strong. And kime can only be improved with experience ... A lot of experience.

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

Yes. And this is precisely where GURPS is in accordance with reality.

To build a good bowman, swordsman, karateka (or any other kind of warrior) character, basic attributes are not sufficient; neither is skill; nor are advantages. The best is a holistic synergy between the three.

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

Of course. If it was not true, there weren't so many hours of muscle training in every martial art training! But the problem is precisely these very "specific muscle groups" vs the generic GURPS basic attribute named "Strength".

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

This argument is mystification. If it was true, no martial artist would spend so many hours with muscle training. In traditional karate, kigu hojoundo is a very important part of the training.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs2NnBumiWI

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

Ok, I'm definitely becoming convinced that comparing ST 7 vs ST 13 is not the best comparison.

I'm also becoming more sold on the proposition that if there is any truth that general strength is not important in a swordsman, it's because the HEMA people are talking in the context of no armor, against real opponents, where any significant cut is going to incapacitate, which probably is not applicable to a dungeon fantasy of monsters with extraordinarily thick hides, full plate, and super strength (whether supernatural or merely from being ridiculously big i.e. dragons).

Again, thanks all.

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

Nothing was saying skill wasn't important for unarmed fighting, only that the proportional relevance of strength compared to skill favors strength more in unarmed combat than it does with swordplay just as it favors skill even more than strength in gunplay than it does in swordplay.

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

I wouldn't go that far for unarmed. I'm stronger than most, but would get my rear kicked from sheer lack of skill and clumsiness. Yeah, I can physically throw people and did when a kid, but people tend not to just let enemies pick them up without resistance.

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

And don't forget that if a good but not very strong swordsman can easily cripple a limb, a good and very strong one can easily severe it. Which makes a huge difference ... Likewise, if a trained but not very strong karateka (like me) can hurt someone and even knock him out (with some luck), a trained and very strong one can break his ribs. Here again, the result will be very different.

This is true in reality, and this is true in GURPS.

Have you seen the Game of Thrones TV series (the combat between The Mountain and The Viper)? Even if it is fiction, and somehow cinematic, it perfectly illustrate that: the Viper needs a lot of attacks where the Mountain only needs a few ones (if not just one).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM9wWtHozCM
(Warning: violence - for informed audience only).

At any rate, thank you for this very interesting thread.

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

Yes, I'm just not sure that the proportional relevance of strength compared to skill favors strength more in unarmed combat than it does with swordplay, especially in a true combat, where one blow can decide wether you will be alive.

Having said that, I'm not at all experienced with swords. The only weapon I know (a bit) are bo (quartterstaff), saï and tonkwa (okinawaian wooden tonfa). And (fortunately!) I never take part in a life or death combat ...

So, it is just a feeling.

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

I don't think you're reading what I wrote correctly and I know Gollum isn't.

Saying unarmed combat favors strength proportionally to skill more than armed combat does does not mean that skill isn't more important than strength there.

It could be the difference between a 6:4 favoring of skill over strength against a 7:3 split or an 8.5:1.5 vs 9:1.

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

As I recall my instructors used to say something along the lines of "All other factors being equal the stronger guy wins. We'll work on making the other factors unequal after you can't do any more pushups..." It wasn't an all or nothing equation. Do you need to be strong to wield a longsword? No. Do you want to be strong if you have to do so against someone who wants to hurt you? Yes.

I will also point out that in our school transitioning from sword (or other weapons) to grappling (armed or otherwise) and back was the norm. So any comments about wanting strength for unarmed combat certainly applied to how we interpreted the manuals.

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

Strength certainly matters, but I don't see it as mattering anywhere near as much between skilled oponents as between two people smacking like uneducate apes.
My lady once slammed her forehead against my nose, and she said, "ouch", while I just laughed. When she tried a minor thumb lock, she couldn't exert enough force with her whole hand to overcome my single digit strength. But I don't doubt for a minute that if she had even a tiny bit of combat skill, she could mop the floor with me. People are tough only if you don't know where all our vulnerable spots are and/or know how to accurately impact them.
Sharp pieces of metal kill people and having muscles 20-40% thicker than weak Willy's are well below the margin of error for any reasonable metric, in my opinion.

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

It is, however, an all or nothing headline. Realistically, strength is important but it's certainly not the only thing that matters; the aged master who beats the strong but unskilled youth is a real thing, but it involves an enormous skill disparity.

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

Well, now you have gone and made me less certain. Are you saying that GURPS is not accurate by giving a damage bonus, even a minimal one, for a ST 10 person vs a ST 12 person for wielding a "bastard sword" against an unarmored human target?

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

There was a scene in Belisarius Series where Rao was rescuing the princess Shakuntala from a prison. Both were martial arts experts. When he got to her cell the guards left her an opportunity to get up and attack the guards. It is noted in one part that she was skillful enough to do dreadful and sometimes lethal damage with barehanded blows. But Rao could actually break bones.

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

Agreed. However, there's a reason why weight classes are essential to all forms of full-contact unarmed martial arts (striking or grappling) but not to fencing.

I study unarmed martial artsts (including unarmed HEMA) as well as sword-fighting and I can tell you, without hestation, that I can win a swordfight against a much stronger opponent if I'm just a little more skilled. But I'd need to be a lot more skilled to win a boxing match against a stronger opponent and even more skilled to win a wrestling match against a stronger opponent.

You do need strength to use a weapon correctly, and there are ways to use superior strength to you advantage, but in many ways, weapons are a great equalizer.

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

Fencing, which uses very very light weapons, is at the extreme end of the situation.

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

I don’t have experience with melee weapons either but I’m inclined to think that the general point the force impact numbers are making is probably true, even if their figures are wildly off (and no opinion about that).

While it may not directly correlate to melee weapons, one summer, many, many years ago, I had to help shingle the roof and went from about as bad as can be at it to fairly decent at it before the job was done. (I doubt I could do it now.) The point here is that when I just swung the hammer with all my might, I got everything and anything but a properly driven nail, anything from a bent nail to a bruised thumbnail. Once I was shown the proper technique and got it down, I didn’t need to swing the hammer particularly hard or fast. What I did have to do was line up my arc so the bell of the hammer face landed squarely on the head of the nail. The result was a nail driven in straight, nail head flush with the shingle, in one blow, every time. I think that’s the point they’re making.

For a swung mace, it may be a better analogy to think of its strike as trying to drive a nail with a carpenter’s hammer rather than trying to hit a line drive with a baseball bat.

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

Is that any different than it would be in GURPS? In GURPS, you'd just need to make contact to "score a point". You don't need to batter through someone's armor, or make sure you actually cleaved a guy's arm off. You mention weight classes in striking arts, but in the case of boxing, a more forceful blow is more useful than a less forceful blow, so ST matters there. And in wrestling, in GURPS, ST is necessary to make a pin or to prevent your opponent from breaking free.

The question here is whether ST should matter in GURPS when it comes to swordplay. The primary places it matters are in minimum ST, beats and damage. The experts seem to acknowledge the need for minimum ST, and if I'm honest, I doubt modern sword-experts are really that concerned about damage. They don't need to slice arms off for a living. I expect in reality, when it comes to actual damage, physical strength makes a difference. I'm not saying GURPS is perfect, but the idea that ST "doesn't matter" strikes me as nonsense. It does matter! But clearly skill matters more, and GURPS doesn't disagree with that.

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

I don't think anyone is seriously advancing the first position. The question all along simply has been "ok, it matters, but how much?'. And I've gotten a lot of answers here (thanks again).

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

I sometimes don't understand things correctly. English is not my mother tongue, so, even if I can read it quite well (for a French guy) I often lack little nuances that makes sentences more subtle.

But here, I think I perfectly understand what you wanted to mean. I just don't agree. I think the ratio skill/ST may be about the same in karate than in swordplay. Swordsman may have less muscle training exercise (I don't know), they always fight with their sword, which is a weight. So, every time they train, they do muscle building exercises. After 30 minutes of sai or tonkwa handling, my wrists hurt.

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

And we often forgot that the aged master is not an ordinary old man. He is a man who did a lot of muscle training exercises and who probably go on doing some, to maintain his fitness as much as possible. My sensei is 67 years old. He remains far much stronger than I am, and probably much stronger than every young and strong karateka in my dojo. I've seen him show how to lift heavy weight more quickly by using abdominal contraction.

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

I fully do agree with all that.

If she was skilled, she would know how to use footing, hip rotation and abdominal contraction to lock your thumb or even your arm much more effectively. That is what make member locks far much faster and stronger (and so painful for the victim: properly done, it breaks joints) ... But if she was skilled, she would also be stronger.

It's the snake that bites its own tail.

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

That's right. You make me have doubts about what I answered to Simply Nathan. He finally may be right.

As I wrote it, I'm not at all an weapon expert. Just a budo novice. And, to be honest, I'm not even a karate expert. Just much more trained than with budo. So, as I said it, what I wrote above was just a feeling, not a firm conviction ... And it is now vanishing.

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

True, but I think that once you get to such precise training it becomes Bow training that might have some knock on benefits to wider applications of strength, instead of strength training that have positive effects on bow use.

True but that's because fencing doesn't require you to hit hard, where as hitting harder directly increases your chances of winning in boxing et al.

i.e fencing matches is decided by skill speed and accuracy, I just have to make contact for long enough to get the light to go on. But if I get in the ring and knock the other chap out with one punch it doesn't matter how many times he's hit me I still win by KO.

and as they say a good big guy will beat good little guy, it's just they say it in the boxing ring not the fencing piste.

Yep I think this is basically true, weapons might well be called a force multiplier, but a lot of that comes with the addition of the weapon.

So if nothing else when its unarmed combat there less places for a physical deficient between combatant to be compensated for by equipment.

I.e A much wider range of people will be physically capable of thrusting a sword into someone chest thus ending a fight. It takes rather a lot more raw strength (and thus narrow range of people) to hit someone hard enough to get the same expectation of result. But yes of course skill overlays the likelihood of all this as well in actual fights.

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

Just quickly that's what the 3x MinSt rule is about.

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

Or it could reflect guys who don't do a lot of "generic" building exercises but still train a lot with their weapon (or their makiwara, for karate, or their punching bag) and, so, can hit very hard.

This is a very elegant solution.

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

One thing to think about when it comes to deciding how to add skill based bonuses to weapon damage.

Weapons can already add to damage in up to three ways:

1). just the basic damage mod like the +1 or +2 etc you see in the listings (remember that most unarmed attacks are at negative damage mod)

2). the ability to access Sw damage which is normally very limited in unarmed attacks

3). Injury mod e.g. x1.5 for Cut

I.e there are already a lot of in built damage advantages to weapons already (as it should be)


So a ST10 chap who punches at 1d-3 Thr cr, (average 0 injury!) is already doing 1d+1 Sw Cut with broad sword (average 6 injury)

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

For a single weapon skill, I'd make it a leveled Perk costing one point per +1 to damage. Probably limit it to +2 or +3. Striking ST is overpriced.

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

+1 per point sounds cheap. Now, Striking ST (-10%) sounds a bit expensive ...

Looking at the Accessibility limitation examples (Basic Set, Characters, page 110), we can see that -20% corresponds to 50% of cases. So for only one type of weapon, something like -50% would fit better, in my humble opinion.

It would give: Striking ST (one type of weapon only, -50%): 3 points per level.

And I perfectly do agree with the idea of a limit (+2 or +3 sound sensible; maybe something like 25% of Basic ST).

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

Actually, a punch is thrust-1 crushing and ST10 does 1d-2 thrust. Which is still 0 injury on average making grapples (With teeth, preferably) and weapons a better option

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

Good catch, cheers

TD

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

I am also a martial artist, and ive trained with weapons.
Never in HEMA match up but under similar conditions.

I disagree with most of the martial arts opinion here.
I agree that skill is the main factor in winning and losing.
I also believe that this is accurately represented by DX being the more important stat.

But in spars or in HEMA we wear padding and were fighting for points. Most of the time we get points for maneuvering past our opponents guard and striking a spot that Could have been lethal.

We are not fighting enemies but competitors, and many times friends. Our goal is not to penetrate armor but too penetrate defenses.

None of us, anywhere have fought in a life or death situation against an armored opponent with a bladed or blunted weapon.

Where the goal is not to dance around a ring and score points but to survive. Physical strength becomes much more important because not only must you swing skillfully, but you must ensure that each swing has enough power to penetrate your enemy's armor. Each time you fail to kill him, he gets another chance to kill you.

I would imagine the best warriors on ancient battlefields had both exceptional strength and skill.

The strength stat in gurps makes perfect sense for increasing damage. The stronger you are, the deeper your blows cut, the more lethal your damage.

High skill as a damage bonus does exist in some forms
Either directly or indirectly.

Weapon masters damage bonus can be attributed to high skill.

Or having high enough skill too consistently pull off rapid strikes directly transfers to increased damage.

Extra attack can be attributed to weapon skill

You can even buy striking ST with a one weapon only limitation maybe -40% I'd probably let my players do that, but I'd cap it at 3 or 4 levels.

Indeed excellent form can increase the effectiveness of attacks, but it's limited. Like a sword swing getting the full benefit of its cutting power due to angle and grip, that's something I would describe as the bonus from weapon master.

I have been in real, physical fights, I used to live in a tough neighborhood. Now (unfortunately) you can't travel around with a katana on your back, so I was unarmed.

But this has happened several times to me over the course of a few years, once literally on the way home from the dojo where I had just sparred.

The difference in mental state in a real fight makes a huge amount of difference.

In a spar (this is wrestling, ju jitsu) my strikes are pulled, my locks are not applied with full force. Because my partner is my friend.

In these fights? I was aiming to cripple and maim because I did not know if he could pull a knife or gun if I let him go. My physical strength became more important, my technique was no less important, but the strength becomes more important.

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

This is where I think you're operating under a misapprehension. It is physically impossible to penetrate historical armor with a sword. It was never a question of hitting an armored foe hard enough to cut or thrust through his armor--can't be done.

All of the HEMA texts that teach how to fight with a sword against armor focus on grappling and throws (which, like all grappling do favor the stronger fighter) and striking through the openings that armor provides (usually half-swording (what GURPS calls defensive grip) in order to maximize tip control.

Strength probably does matter more when using a war-hammer or other weapon designed to actually harm your opponent directly through their armor. But swords aren't that.

I think almost all of use agree on these points. But sufficient lethality can be achieved at pretty modest strengths (at least relative to unarmed combat).

If you're not wearing armor, I only need to be strong enough to push the point of my sword through your flesh and into your organs.

If you are wearing armor, I need to be strong enough to push the point of my sword through the padded cloth covering your armpit, or perhaps only through your cornea (in both cases with a second hand on my sword).

In either case, the average healthy adult is already strong enough to kill with good technique. I would be a better sword-fighter if I was stronger, but mostly because I experience muscular fatigue in a fight and because I'd like to be more dominant when the situation calls for grappling techniques.

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

Sorry, I didn't notice this post earlier.

Let me be clear, I'm not arguing that ST "doesn't matter" in swordplay. I'm specifically saying the relative strength of two opponents matters much less in sword fighting than other martial arts.

I'm also not alone in this assessment--the historical masters whose manuals I study have actually weighed in on this question. While noted sword-masters Liechtenauer, Meyer, Giganti, and Capo Ferro all say that skill is far more important than strength, bare-knuckle boxing champion Daniel Mendoza, despite being known for beating stronger opponents, writes that strength is more important than skill in a fist-fight.

As for GURPS, I think it does actually reflect this pretty well. My only complaints are:

A: There is no relationship between skill and damage with weapons, except with the cinematic trait weapons master (which comes with a slew of unrealistic benefits.)

B: Swings are somehow better at hurting people through armor then thrusts when the opposite is the case IRL (mostly corrected by the Edge Protection rules in Low-Tech).

C: It is too easy to keep fighting after being hit with a sword (especially thrusts to the torso--which should realistically mostly almost always hit an organ, even when the swordsman is on the weak side.)

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

I'm of the opinion (And yes, this whole post is opinion) you can't really have DX without ST.

WHAAAAAT?!

Yes, I think that's one of the most unrealistic parts of GURPS, that someone could have trained their body to be nimble and fast, without having gained ST during the whole thing.

I could cite all kinds of Wikipedia Historian facts and Personal Examples, but in general, repeated motions, even without weight in the body, does build ST. And part of me wonders if there is actually a realistic reason to give people DX. It's a bit nebulous to me.

Now I'm not saying people would have high levels of ST, but if you look at generally any skill from GURPS that uses DX and you were to apply yourself to that skill over and over again, I bet generally all of them would be building up strength.

DX is cited as:

This actually touches quite a bit on "Intelligence". To explain:

So is DX mostly your Cerebellum? Intelligence? Maybe DX really is just "Cerebellum". And the ability to control how your muscles are controlled to interact with ST, some of it is still ST. Muscles aren't very simple. Just look at the degrees of motion and the control enforced on a finger to type!

Perhaps maybe Attributes play a little too strong a role in GURPS to make it realistic... maybe some attributes aren't really a thing...

But I guess at the end of the day, even if I'm wrong, right or just an opinionated internet goer, it's certainly more enjoyable to have DX than not. And part of the importance of GURPS isn't how well it emulates reality, but how much fun people have doing it.

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

Thing is not all organs are equal (certainly not in terms of incapacitation on a second by second scale)


That said one ST10 chap with a broadsword stabbing another ST/HP10 chap in the torso will be doing on average* 7 imp injury. That's a major wound, and drops the target to half dodge/Mv etc, etc

That realistically is the end of most fights even if the stabbed chap is still moving about a bit.


*strictly speaking average is 50% a 6 point injury and 50% a 8 point injury

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

High ST does give some pretty serious advantages, but of course it should given its high cost (ST 9 vs ST 15 is 60pts)

ST is not as important for killing squishy unarmored humans with a sword

It is very useful for killing armored humans, dragons, ogres, stone golems and so forth

ST is also one of the vital ingredients to transforming from a squishy unarmored human to a less squishy armored one

One of the biggest problems I've found with 'weak plus skilled' is that they often lack the basic lift to back up their parry, burly foes can Slam or swing hefty weapons that they can't parry

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

Being unable to parry an attack is most often a problem of timing than a true problem of strength.

If you parry your foe's attack when his muscles are contracted, it is too late. Now, if the foe contracts his muscles during all the attack, his attack will be slow; it will be very easy to dodge it.

A very good strike is a strike where muscles are contracted only at the end. It gives a very quick and very strong attack. But it also allows the defender to parry it quite easily ... if he does it with the good timing!

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

In GURPS you can't parry things outweighing your basic lift

With ST 9 your basic lift is 16.2

Slams by something of ST 17 or above, or some of the heftier SM +1 weapons or most SM +2 for instance

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

Beats are another good way to leverage ST against speed/skill, especially for those fantasy builds where high ST is more common.

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

Yes and that sounds realistic.

But, fortunately, there is still a difference between a slam attack made by someone with ST 17 and his sword swing attack ... A very skilled averagely strong man can parry the second, even if he cannot parry the first. Even a ST 17 warrior (which is quite cinematic) won't wield 17 lbs swords. Minimum ST for the shortsword (2 lbs) is 8. For the broadsword (3 lbs), it is 10. For the greatsword (7 lbs), it is 12. I don't know what it could be for a 17 lbs weapon, but surely much more than 17.