Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

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So when people say "but it's realistic" I ask "why is it that melee weapons are so garbage in comparison?"
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Because they are garbage in comparison.

If you want to make melee weapons more effective at damage than firearms, that's fine. It's your game.

But GURPS tries to ground itself to reality for those things where we have a pretty good grasp of how reality works. That's why things like the weights of melee weapons are what they are. Someone brought in actual melee weapons and weighed them and then used those weights in the statistics for those weapons.

Where some of us have problems with your assertions is when it sounds like you're trying to say this is how reality is. I don't have a big battleaxe sitting around the house, but as an apt comparison, if you were to hand me a fully loaded 5.56mm C7 rifle and you were to pick up a still serviceable WWI 18" bayonet and you were to tell me, "Let's try to kill each other. I'm not allowed to throw the bayonet at you and you're not allowed to strike me with the rifle, only fire it. We'll start 6 feet apart." I know who's chances I'd fancy going into such a fight.

I'd seriously wonder about your judgment if you did think such a proposal would be even close to a fair fight, much less lop-sided in your favour, as you've got a big, honking knife to my piddly little bullets. Granted, the big, honking knife isn't quite a big, honking axe, but the situations aren't that dissimilar in terms of outcome.