Quote:
Originally Posted by Aldric
Fighting blind is not really a great idea, plus I guess the spear guy can simply stab some place else w/o the need to do a deceptive attack since you can't defend anyway. An Impaling attack to the vitals is not as bad as one to the eye but it will still eventually kill, it will just be slower and more painful.
|
The idea is that someone who is fully armored could do this to protect his eyes. Now, "fully armored" generally does have armor gaps other than just the eyes; of note here is the armpit (where you are hitting the Vitals, and can cripple the arm to add insult to injury), which you'll be exposing by holding that shield up anyway (and, humorously, these armor gaps are actually
easier to hit than the eye slits). Of course, at TL 4, those may be covered by mail, thanks to the knight's arming garments. On the other hand, there
are face coverings that will prevent a spear from being able to hit the eyes without having to deal with DR - see
this thread.
As for the topic of this thread - yes, pumping all your points into a single combat skill is a very effective, if boring, way to build a fighter. The primary way to avoid this is to just say "No." Failing that, things like needing to maintain your skills, making it clear that many scenarios in the setting
won't call for just stabbing things as an effective means of getting through them, enforcing the use of templates, having foes who have full-coverage DR (such that you need higher ST to wound them), etc, can certainly help.