Sino-Atlantic martial arts

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So is it your view that GURPS Martial Arts is wrong in listing the hilt punch as a Brawling attack with the backsword?

I can see three possible levels here, at least:

* No one would ever do it
* Some people would do it in an emergency, especially if they happened to have learned Brawling
* It would be normal for a backsword user to learn Brawling and to have the hilt punch as an option, even if they didn't use it very often

Could you specify which of this best describes the way things worked?

Thanks!

Bill Stoddard

That you would do hilt punching with brawling makes perfect sense, it's just that it's not very common in manuals or accounts of backsword use. There's a blow with the pommel in Lonnergan (which Hutton copies) but that's all as far as I know. I'd list brawling as an optional skill on the grounds that few backsword practitioners would have learned to do it. The primary purpose of a basket hilt is to protect the hand, time when it would be feasible to punch someone with the basket are rare, times when it's your only option rarer still.