Alternative Skills

[weby]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Have you ever actually fought with those weapons?

Batons can 'stab', in particular thrusts to the throat and face are taught at the dojo I attended. Solar plexus and kidneys (if from behind) were also highlighted in the teaching.

Fought with them, no, handled such and trained in defending against them both armed an unarmed: yes.

My armed training is with heavier weapons. I have mostly used what Gurps calls thrusting bastard swords and we just called "one and half handers", though some playing around with various other weapons.

It is the martial artists that train in stabbing with the baton others do predominantly swings unless they have originally trained with some other weapon.

Most people I have seen with batons and the like would likely not:
-Hit with the edge always with the swing the of the short sword instead if a baton.
-Be equally good at stabbing than someone who has actually trained with a "stab primary" weapon.

But they would likely be as good at stabbing with the baton and the large knife.

I did not see any difference in wielders skill between a knife and a baton that switched between them. Maybe they have all bought off the penalty though...

You really don't want to stab with your sword whilst running someone down, you'll lose your sword at best, get unseated at worst. And there is a very big difference between running someone down with a a couched Lance and swinging on someone with a sword.

And yet that is a cavalry tactic that has been in actual use at some places and times... and there was apparently a lot of "this is better" "no that is better" back then.. so flame wars are nothing new.. :)

And an overall comment: I do find -3/-4 to be too high penalty between a lot of the weapons. Specially at lower skill levels.

A light rapier to an early small sword should not be a -3 transition as it is about the same as rapier to light rapier, the later dress small swords are then again smaller..

A roman Gladius is counted as a shortsword despite some examples being 85cm long and and some arming swords are shorter, but are pointed broadswords..

In general I would lower the penalties a lot after some familiarization.

As example the historical transition of 1 Rapier->2 shorter rapier(light rapier)->3 small sword->4 smaller smallsword(dress longsword). Gurps draws a big line between transition steps 2 and 3, but treats the two other transitions as only requiring few hours of familiarization compared to the 4*3*200=2400 hours of training for step 2 to 3.

A more proper way would be to either threat all of it as familiarization or make all steps be say -1 similarity and a lot more steps in the transition charts.

Note that there are other cases than the ones I listed:
Like someone who is somewhat trained in say a broadsword and has a skill at DX+2 grabs a smallsword would not be at DX-5 for thrusts after couple of hours of learning the balance.