Lots of questions about the details in Heroes on the Mass Scale

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I have. Weapon Master (Shield) halves the penalties and it's quite useful. Heck, having a DB of 3+ gives you a free block every turn. If it bothers you, then change it for your games. Like it's progenitor system (the Combat Effectiveness Rating from "It's a Threat!"), this is not using math for raw numbers. That way lies madness with a system as versatile as GURPS. Instead, this is my experiences as a GURPS GM over a decade distilled with what I know about the system and how it works to come up with a way to eyeball hero elements in GURPS Mass Combat..

My experience is that the off-hand weapon is usually from 0-3 skill levels lower than the primary weapon. This applies whether the off-hand weapon is a shield or another weapon.

The higher penalty to multiple Blocks makes Shield unsuitable for the only defence for powerful combat characters (anyone who expects to face more than one successful attack per turn), but the DB bonus counteracts this nicely when the character uses a Shield and Parry.

In terms of threat or power level, characters wielding a rapier and main-gauche, scimitar and dueling buckler, falchion and hatchet, two shortswords or broadsword and shield are essentially equivalent, assuming that they have similar combat traits, mutatis mutandis.