Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane
While we're on this, have we figured out crunch-wise why the swing-cutting of an Axe should make it easier to "here's Johnny" your way through a wooden door than the swing-cutting of a sword?
|
The "crunch" is the 0U Parry of an Axe or Two-Handed Axe and its relative damage bonus compared to a sword of similar weight and length. Because the weapon is unbalanced (with most of the weapon's mass "behind" the cutting edge at the weapon's "percussion point" rather than parallel to it), it allows most of a blow's force to be concentrated into a smaller area.
You can chop through wood using a sword, but because most of the sword's mass is above or below the "percussion point" where the blade does maximum damage from a swing, you're not maximizing the impact from each blow. It's the difference between bashing something with your forearm vs. bashing it with the side of your fist.
If you wanted to be "extra crunchy," you could define damage from weapons like axes as being "chopping" in that they mostly do cutting damage, but get a trivially better damage divisor vs. rigid materials and might do slightly more blunt trauma through rigid DR.
Unbalanced crushing weapons, like hammers and mauls get a similar benefit vs. more linear weapons like batons or staffs. The same idea applies - you're putting most of the weapon's mass directly behind the weapon's percussion point to maximize impact, but at the cost of making it clumsier to use.
Note that tools designed to cut relatively thin materials, like paper cutters and metal brakes are sword-shaped, sometimes even with a slightly curved blade that maximizes shearing efficiency. That maximizes the length of material you can shear with one stroke. Handy if you want to open up ghastly wounds in unarmored flesh or cleanly cut a 6-foot wide piece of cloth with one stroke.