Sword question - swing vs thrust

[nudj]

Simple question. What percentage of the time do you swing your sword (or similar weapon) and what percentage do you thrust?

[newton]

you just... pick one or the other depending on situation

[Ulzgoroth]

Under any of the usual rules, thrusting with a sword is mostly something you'll only want to do under special circumstances due to the power of swing-based damage.

There are a number of special circumstances that can make you want to resort to the point, though.

[jason taylor]

The slash you use from horseback when there is little time to stop and concentrate. It will get more casualties. The thrust is used from foot as you do not have time to reap a harvest with your lack of mobility and you might as well make each stroke tell.

[RyanW]

As already said, generically speaking swinging is best because of higher base damage, but...

* Optional Low-Tech armor rules reduce the cutting damage modifier to x1 unless you comepletely overwhelm the armor, but doesn't change impaling damage.
* You can't target vitals or armor chinks with cutting damage.
* Using a defensive grip for close combat prevents swinging attacks entirely.

[khorboth]

In practice, I would say I see about 80% swing. For all of the reasons stated above. By far the most common thrusting attack is to the vitals.

I do recall a low-ST character with a shortsword where the damage difference was low enough that the thrust was the better option almost always.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by khorboth

I do recall a low-ST character with a shortsword where the damage difference was low enough that the thrust was the better option almost always.

If your ST is less than 10 (and you are using the weapon table in Low-Tech), a shortsword is better at the thrust than the swing. Same basic damage, but with the better impaling wound modifier. Swings should only be used in that case for targeting limbs, unliving/homogenous opponents, and other targets that are less vulnerable to impaling.

[Anthony]

With a broadsword, a thrust will cause more injury if your ST is 10 and the target has no DR, or your ST is 11 and the target has up to DR 1. Otherwise a swing will cause more injury. In GURPS, thrusting is mostly for weapons that can't be used any other way (this is not particularly realistic).

[Plane]

MA 110 also has "If length doesn’t break the tie, thrusts come before swings" in "A Matter of Inches", so it can matter with Cascading Waits and Stop Hits.

Originally Posted by RyanW

Optional Low-Tech armor rules reduce the cutting damage modifier to x1 unless you comepletely overwhelm the armor, but doesn't change impaling damage.

Is this "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons" on LT102? "Completely overwhelm" being the ability to put 1 damage past TWICE the DR, meaning you would have to inflict DRx2+1 to treat the wounding modifier as crushing instead of cutting...

Which is actually a bit different than merely reducing the modifier, since someone wearing armor might have personal DR which functions against crushing but not cutting, and using this rule would mean that in most cases they would get to use this!

Since it says "applies only to armor, not to other forms of DR (e.g., Tough Skin)" I think when looking at gear-as-advantages the key would probable be whether or not it is defined as Flexible, since it appears to supplement the B379 rules.

Originally Posted by RyanW

Using a defensive grip for close combat prevents swinging attacks entirely.

MA 111 mentions this for 2-handed weapons:

less power with swinging attacks: -2 damage or -1 damage per die, whichever is worse.

No penalty is mentioned for 1-handed weapons, I think you actually get a bonus for adding the 2nd hand.

I think you're referring to the "A warrior with a sword of any kind can instead opt to place a hand just behind the tip" bit afterward, which should probably have some kind of special name to distinguish it from the normal kind of defensive grip. It does say "Swung attacks are impossible." I'd think to call it "Point Control Defensive Grip" or "Chinking Defensive Grip" or something to distinguish the unique advantage it gives (ignoring -2 worth of penalties to hit chinks)

It's too bad it doesn't it doesn't allow you to reduce penalties for other areas like stabbing the eye or the spine, "point control" seems like more of a universal idea than simply chink-penalty-diminishment.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Plane

I think you're referring to the "A warrior with a sword of any kind can instead opt to place a hand just behind the tip" bit afterward, which should probably have some kind of special name to distinguish it from the normal kind of defensive grip. It does say "Swung attacks are impossible."

Yes. When I said "for close combat" I was referring to that section's rule about reducing reach to C.