can a Knee Strike be delivered with a Thigh or Shin instead of a Knee?

[Plane]

I realized I neglected to use some useful IRL terms that LT included:
*poleyn is armor on the knee
*greave is armor on the shin
To supplement LT, "cuisse" would be the term for armor protecting the shin

One thing I'm wondering is how much the "hardness of the knee" or "hardness of the shin" compared to the "softness of the thigh" would actually matter for guys wearing DR3+ poleyns/greaves/cuisses since the metal is presumably harder than any of those parts of the body.

Originally Posted by bocephus

Shins are bony and at the end of a fulcrum. Thighs are the opposite. Like comparing an elbow strike to a "shoulder strike", try it see how great the difference is in potential force.

The "upper arm" (as defined in LT100) is probably a closer parallel here, and I'd make a similar inquiry, because I've seen a bent-arm strike with the upper arm called "elbowing" too.

You're right about there being a huge difference, which is why I mentioned the non-bony aspect and lacking-leverage aspect in my last sentence when discussing a possibly damage penalty.

Do you think maybe it should be more extreme, like -1 damage for non-boney, -1 damage for bad leverage, for a total of -2 damage?

Do you think Knee Strike would get "+1 damage for rigid leg armor" like Knee Strike (MA112) ?

My assumption there (using the Low-Tech breakdown of the Leg into 3 locations: shin/knee/thigh) is that to get the +1 on a Shin Kick you would need to have rigid SHIN armor, so delivering a 'Shin Kick' while ONLY wearing thigh armor would not help.

MA76 never mentions armor influencing Knee Strike damage so I guess that wouldn't be official...

Originally Posted by bocephus

*I* wouldnt even allow it to do damage. Push/lift/shove sure... damage no.

This screenshot of a UFC knockout might help explain what I mean here...

When I talk about a thigh strike, I'm still talking about the distal (knee-adjacent) portion of the thigh. So that you still get some decent leverage. Go too high and we risk start getting into the Hip/Pelvis/Groin region of armor protection anyway.

I think of the "knee" location (being described as a merely 5% or 1/20 of the leg) as being pretty much just the patella, the patellar tendon, maybe a bit of the quadriceps tendon?

A lot of things informally called "knee strike" actually make contact with the bottom of the thigh rather than the tip of the knee. There wouldn't be a huge difference in leverage at that point.

Originally Posted by bocephus

You were still talking about a knee strike, just not a properly executed one.

Poorly executed sounds like accidental, but I could see intentionally doing that if all one had was thigh armor and didn't want to touch a target with bare flesh

Originally Posted by bocephus

But you also talking about a very sensitive target so you dont need the full impact of a "proper" knee to make that work. That I would give a - of some kind, but then a lot of potential + as striking a vital.

Do you mean something along the lines like if a sumo used "Shove" (or a kareteka used "Push Kick") while targeting a groin that even though the damage for shoves functions somewhat like Crushing Attack (No Wounding -50%; Double Knockback +10%) that maybe there should be detrimental effects other than knockback to groin-shoving?

The way I figure is... we could still treat shoves and push kicks as having "Blunt Trauma" potential ("No Blunt Trauma" is a separate limitation from "No Injury" for Crushing Attack) so in situations where there's no Penetrating Damage, they could suffer 1 injury per 5 basic damage?

If not as a general rule, it might at least make sense for groin-shoves.

Or if it doesn't actually cause HP loss, at least cause the same shock as if you lost that much HP to Blunt Trauma?