cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Saw this epic move by Cheryl in the latest Archer and it got me wondering if you had to battle in a kitchen and this was available how GURPS would handle it.

A warning about the vid clip - there is some blood because there's a large man trying to bare-knuckle KO a woman with headshots to her face so she holds up a grater in the path to her face and he punches it and rips up his knuckles on it.

https://youtu.be/aUc8pbLTkY0

I got wondering if, even if it seemed more like an improvised shield, if maybe it'd be easier to treat it like a parry because armed parries against unarmed attacks get a free attack to inflict damage on the limb.

I'm not really sure what this would be considered an improvised version of though. Some kind of knife?

A lot of it has to do with angles though. You wouldn't rip up your hands throwing a straight, I think the only reason this worked is because this guy's haymaker was angled downward because Cheryl was shorter than him, which meant it was diagonal relative to the grater instead of horizontal.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Unless the cheesegrater is made of orichalcum or similar, it probably should have just given the opponent some fairly-minor cuts (not much worse than what you'd get from a person's teeth when punching them in the mouth), and wound up severely dented. If it were made of orichalcum, I might be inclined to use the Hurting Yourself rules for punching metal, and just have any resulting Injury also involve bleeding.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

We're clearly in a land of fun over realism.

It looks to me like an agressive parry with an improvised weapon and some good narration. I believe you can use improvised weapons with brawl. Calling a cheesegrater a cutting weapon is silly. But this seems to be a silly setting, so that's fine. It's cutting damage to the hand.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Along this (tangential) line, I'd've given a bonus, for making this GM laugh out loud. ;-)

Without knowing all of the weapons and weapon options in GURPS, and just using generic knowledge, I would be inclined to treat that improvised weapon (and/or armor) as a spiked buckler. FWIW. YMMV.

Franklin

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Yeah, skill-wise I'd say wielding a cheesegrater would fall under Brawling. If you wanted to go all-out on the ridiculous, treat it as a weapon with Destructive Parry, dealing something like thr-2 cut to the attacking character's hand (optionally, using the attacking character's ST).

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

I agree with Agressive Parry and/or Hurting Yourself rules. I'd use cutting damage for it though.

Archer is a comedy setting for sure, but possibly not a silly setting. It is unlikely that somebody could parry a punch with a grater, but damn if they could that would hurt.

Cheryl or Pam could absolutely do it, though. Others might have the skill, but those two are messed up enough that they'd do it on reflex.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

The defense depicted in the movie clip is obviously AoD (Block).

As a blocking weapon, the closest weapon to a decent-sized, box-style cheese grater would be a small Buckler. At just 1 lb. or so (weight per Amazon and a quick trip to my kitchen), it would be as handy as a buckler, but its odd shape would perhaps give -1 to Block or -2 to use as a weapon. As a special effect, it might give a -4 penalty to skill to avoid Hurting Yourself using an unarmed attack with an unprotected body part.

Wielded offensively, it might be closest to a small Katar or similar push-dagger, but is only capable of doing crushing damage at -2 damage per die, -1 to Parry, and -2 to use as a weapon. I'd allow it to be used with Knife or Main-Gauche skills.

Anything other than a professional grade tool is likely to crumple under an attack, have HT 9-10, and must make a HT roll after each attack or defense to avoid destruction. Large, high-quality items are merely Cheap-quality weapons.

Not having watched the series, the character's ability to inflict extra damage using a cheese grater or similar improvised weapon might be a perk or technique. Skill Adaptation (Brawling for Buckler) would be a reasonable perk for a brawler who can wail on people using trash can lids, pot lids, and similar items.

There might also be a place for a cinematic perk or technique which makes it more likely that a foe will tear up their hands when they strike you, either as a variant of Aggressive Parry or an even weaker version of Spines.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

yeah we should have some situations where that does damage

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

-1 to parry, as improvised knife.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Yeah, this is more like it. You'd have to rivet a dozen cheese graters together to make something the size of one buckler, and I'd have a hard time imagining the grate being able to inflict as much as 1 HP damage -- they're what, 3mm out?

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

Actually, no. GURPS allows a bare shield boss to be used as a Buckler with DB0. A smaller shield boss isn't much larger than a large-size cheese grater, perhaps 6" in diameter and 3" deep - the size of a large soup bowl.

That's about the size of the grater shown in the clip, which is clearly used two-handed and interposed between the defender's face and the attacker's fist, rather than used to deflect the blow. It's an obvious AoD (Block) defense.

That said, if you wanted to use a cheese grater or something like it using Knife skill, -1 to Parry is certainly warranted.

Re: cheesegrater as improvised shield
 

the usual hurting-yourself rules for punching metal are 1 hp per 5 dmg you inflict, it's basically a factor of how hard you hit it - a light tap on the cheesegrater wouldn't cut you up so bad