[MA] [House Rules] A New Approach to Dual Weapons and Sword and Shield.

[Polydamas]

One option would be to say that guards with the sword and buckler hand or sword and dagger hand together are Cross Parries (from Martial Arts) in GURPS even if the weapons do not touch.

I think that the number and difficulty of melee weapon skills in GURPS needs to be drastically reduced not increased (its already impractically expensive to be a typical elite warrior who can make himself useful with any common weapon in his society, because there are few and hard defaults between weapon skills).

[malloyd]

Dual wielding styles seem like a great candidate for the Weapon Adaptation perk. For that matter, letting Weapon Adaptation (parrying dagger in off hand, to Fencing) entirely replace the separate Main Gauche skill seems like it would solve a lot of the issues that come up around that skill, and provide a model for a lot of other cases of this.

[RyanW]

I've considered allowing a sort of Counterstrike at -3 following an off-hand parry of a thrusting attack with a Reach C weapon, an empty hand, or a small buckler. Gives -2 to parry with the weapon parried. I came up with that after watching a sparring match with rapiers that included quite a bit of left hand work.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Someone with two broadswords or two shortswords is a better fighter, point-for-point, than someone with two different weapons.

Yes, this annoys me too. It's demonstrably not true in real life--at least not if both weapons are long, they're like to interfere with each other.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

As for committed attacks, I will note that Dual Wielding already makes that more effective. The rules for Committed Attacks is that you can't parry with the weapon you used to make the committed attack, and you're at -2 to any other defenses and you cannot retreat. So if you make a committed attack with your rapier, you can still parry with your main gauche.

That's true, but -2 to parry is still pretty crippling.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

One option would be to say that guards with the sword and buckler hand or sword and dagger hand together are Cross Parries (from Martial Arts) in GURPS even if the weapons do not touch.

Good idea. That definitely supports the i.33 Sword and Buckler approach, which tends to use the buckler as a mobile basket hilt half the time.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I think that the number and difficulty of melee weapon skills in GURPS needs to be drastically reduced not increased (its already impractically expensive to be a typical elite warrior who can make himself useful with any common weapon in his society, because there are few and hard defaults between weapon skills).

I actually agree with this too--at least with the idea that it should be easier for skilled warriors to learn multiple weapons. I've answered this in my own campaigns with house rules making defaults more generous and allowing a Melee Weapons Talent.

But I can see how I'm not helping matters by making dual weapons an additional skill.

However, the reality is, when I started learning Giganti's rapier and dagger after learning his single rapier, I had to unlearn a lot of my rapier habits--people who fight rapier and dagger using single rapier techniques get skewered. Furthermore, now I'm pretty good with rapier and dagger and able to pull off some pretty nice tricks in free-sparring, but I don't know the first thing about fighting with a main-gauche alone! I could probably hold it in my left hand and parry with it, but I wouldn't stand a chance in a knife fight with someone who knew what they were doing.

Those are the experiences that make me feel like dual weapons are a separate skill.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Dual wielding styles seem like a great candidate for the Weapon Adaptation perk. For that matter, letting Weapon Adaptation (parrying dagger in off hand, to Fencing) entirely replace the separate Main Gauche skill seems like it would solve a lot of the issues that come up around that skill, and provide a model for a lot of other cases of this.

Originally Posted by RyanW

I've considered allowing a sort of Counterstrike at -3 following an off-hand parry of a thrusting attack with a Reach C weapon, an empty hand, or a small buckler. Gives -2 to parry with the weapon parried. I came up with that after watching a sparring match with rapiers that included quite a bit of left hand work.

Both of the above are great suggestions!

RyanW, why wouldn't you receive the same bonus after parrying with a medium shield or cloak?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by aesir23

RyanW, why wouldn't you receive the same bonus after parrying with a medium shield or cloak?

To be honest, I haven't put a lot of thought into it. I was mainly thinking about bare hand or parrying dagger defense and added buckler in because rapier and buckler is so iconic. I might actually drop buckler, and limit it to weapons with a crossguard (and bare hands).

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by RyanW

To be honest, I haven't put a lot of thought into it. I was mainly thinking about bare hand or parrying dagger defense and added buckler in because rapier and buckler is so iconic. I might actually drop buckler, and limit it to weapons with a crossguard (and bare hands).

A crossguard helps for this sort of thing, but unless you're talking blade grabs* (which would be better handled as an actual grapple), there's no reasons bare hands would be better than bucklers.

And if you're allowing it for bare hands at all, you should allow it for cloak as well. Most cloak techniques are just bare-handed parries with a cloak wrapped around as extra protection.

Personally, I'd allow it for any off-hand weapon or shield. Take a look at the technique in this video at around 3:05 for an example of why.

*Blade grabs are another topic entirely, they're really effective and much safer than people think--many longsword manuals teach them. But no rapier manuals I know of do (I think it's Agrippa who said, "it's a miserable way to defend yourself") and I don't know why. Maybe it's easier to cut yourself grabbing a narrower blade, or maybe it's just unfashionable.