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Old 02-01-2022, 03:57 PM   #1
VIVIT
 
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Default Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

It doesn't make much sense to me that, for example, a baton as long as a shortsword uses the same skill as a shortsword. With edged weapons you have to worry about edge alignment, while blunt weapons require nothing of the sort. The fact axe and mace are the same skill feels really weird; they're both impact weapons, but they're very different.

Suggesting that skill with a sword transfers to skill with a club feels a little bit less ridiculous than the other way around. It makes some sense that Miyamoto Musashi could adapt his swordsmanship skills to brain someone with an oar, but could someone skilled with clubs pick up a katana and use it? Maybe they could use a sword like a cutlass designed for hacking and chopping, but a katana is designed for draw-cutting.

I suppose this could be addressed with familiarity penalties, but in many cases, especially going from blunt weapons to edged ones, that doesn't feel like enough. Am I missing something here? Is there a HEMA expert in the house? And yes, I know GURPS isn't a reality simulator, but if it didn't care about distinctions between weapon types and the ways in which those weapons are used, it wouldn't have weapon skills at all.

Last edited by VIVIT; 02-01-2022 at 06:06 PM.
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Old 02-01-2022, 04:19 PM   #2
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

Edged weapons are a bit more difficult to use than blunt ones, due to concerns of edge alignment, but this is generally assumed to be below the resolution of the system. With that in mind, there's no real difference (beyond Familiarity) between a broadsword and a comparable-size balanced club - or between an axe and mace.

If you want edge alignment to be more difficult, I'd say you could use the skills as-is, but cutting weapons are at -1 to hit. You can negate this with an Average Technique - perhaps call it Edged Weapon Training or similar (and add it to all Martial Arts styles that use edged weapons). Optionally, if the -1 makes the difference between a hit and a miss, you hit with poor edge alignment - double the target's DR and reduce the wounding modifier for Cutting to x1 (x1.5 against the Neck).
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Old 02-01-2022, 04:55 PM   #3
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

Speaking from experience as an old-school sabreuer who lived through the transition to electronic judging*, it turns out not to make that much difference. If the weapon grip is constructed to present the edge, then that is what you will hit with almost all the time anyway. The few cases where you might hit with the flat by accident can be easily consigned to crap damage rolls.



*Human judging included assessment of whether you hit with the edge or the flat; electronic judging abandomed that concern.
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Old 02-01-2022, 05:33 PM   #4
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

Quote:
Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
Suggesting that skill with a sword transfers to skill with a club feels a little bit less ridiculous than the other way around. It makes some sense that Miyamoto Musashi could adapt his swordsmanship skills to brain someone skilled with clubs could pick up a katana and use it? Maybe they could use a sword like a cutlass designed for hacking and chopping, but a katana is designed for draw-cutting.
Pretty much every historical sword fighting style has used practice blades made of wood (equivalent for the katana: the bokken). While this is largely a practical issue, there aren't a lot of other practical low tech materials for practice blades, it's clear that they were considered close enough for practice purposes.
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Old 02-01-2022, 05:38 PM   #5
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

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Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
It doesn't make much sense to me that, for example, a baton as long as a shortsword uses the same skill as a shortsword. With edged weapons you have to worry about edge alignment, while blunt weapons require nothing of the sort.
I think this depends on the blunt weapon. Something like a Baseball Bat would not, whereas a Cricket Bat (Z44) has similar considerations as a double-edged blade since it has two "swing" attack modes:
"Using the flat of the bat doubles DR vs. the damage and doubles the damage used to determine knockback (only)."
When using one of the cricket bat's two edges, it does swing+1 crushing just like a baseball bat. The flat also does swing+1 but lacks penetrative power yet gets double KB, so it's an interesting tradeoff.

If you were fighting zombies, for example, you'd want to use the edge to attack a skull's 2 DR, but the flat to hit a zombie anywhere else which lacks DR to double, to create distance.

Swords have a similar option to this where you can opt to strike with the flat of a blade (instead of the edge) to convert cutting damage into crushing damage.

The problem I see both with swords and cricket bats is there's no restrictions reflecting how your grip would influence your attack options.

If you are doing a 12 o'clock swing with these weapons, your grip is going to control whether that's hitting with the edge or the flat: to alter that without rotating the handle in your grip would require rotating your forearm out of neutral alignment, which reduces your power generation and increases chance of injury.

IMO to avoid this you should need to make some kind of investment to alter your grip. If that's not a 'ready' it should at least be one of those 'free action' things that you can only do at certain points of your turn.

If we look at the handle of a cricket bat, it is round like a baseball bat, so you should be able to freely rotate it without problems: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/14...g?v=1607070272

Certain swords are different though, while some have round handles like baseball/cricket bats, have non-round handles which are slightly ovular: the tang the handle goes overtop of has a wider and narrower measurement, just like the blade but to a lesser degree.

how you wrap it can smooth that out, but not always completely. I also think this is intentional because it makes for a better grip in some cases, since it's meant to be used just for cutting and not "smacking with the flat".

In the case of those grips, you're due a damage penalty either way, if being realizied:
1) either you grip it normally and do a weird lateral motion (can't use maximal force since instead of relying your your triceps to create the extension to slash, your using either supination+externalShoulder or pronation+internal shoulder.

2) you grip it abnormally to use tricep extension but it doesn't sit well in your thumb web: more stressful on the hand, prone to spin in your hand, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
The fact axe and mace are the same skill feels really weird; they're both impact weapons, but they're very different.
Comparing an axe or pick to a blunt weapon with a clear "striking side" would make sense, like B274's Warhammer. If it looks soemthing like https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pa...ntory_icon.png then like an axe there's only one direction it can swing toward, whereas stuff like https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pa...ntory_icon.png could go in all directions with equal effect

Where this would matter more is if we paid more attention to stuff like "upward swing" vs "downsword swing". This would also be a major issue when comparing single-edge swords to double-edge swords.

Quote:
Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
Suggesting that skill with a sword transfers to skill with a club feels a little bit less ridiculous than the other way around. It makes some sense that Miyamoto Musashi could adapt his swordsmanship skills to brain someone skilled with clubs could pick up a katana and use it? Maybe they could use a sword like a cutlass designed for hacking and chopping, but a katana is designed for draw-cutting.
There would be holes in both directions. Single-edge sword users have a lot of attack angles and grips they simply just won't use, which a skilled user of blunt objects may normally take advantage of.

Just like a club-user who relies on those angles would need to abandon them when adapting to swordplay, focusing on the angles sword-swings allow.
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Old 02-01-2022, 06:08 PM   #6
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

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Maybe they could use a sword like a cutlass designed for hacking and chopping, but a katana is designed for draw-cutting.
Forgot about this part when I made my initial response. The whole thing about straight swords hacking and curved ones slicing isn't really realistic - see this thread for a discussion (and some options for how to handle the difference in a cinematic campaign). Of particular note in that thread was the link to this article.
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Old 02-01-2022, 10:59 PM   #7
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Forgot about this part when I made my initial response. The whole thing about straight swords hacking and curved ones slicing isn't really realistic - see this thread for a discussion (and some options for how to handle the difference in a cinematic campaign). Of particular note in that thread was the link to this article.
I wasn't thinking about curved vs. straight; I was thinking about the mass and strength of the blade. IIRC, historical Japanese katana were typically softer than blades made elsewhere because Japan didn't have access to high-quality steel. I could be totally wrong about the mass part, though.
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Old 02-02-2022, 03:08 AM   #8
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

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Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
IIRC, historical Japanese katana were typically softer than blades made elsewhere because Japan didn't have access to high-quality steel.
Katana designs compensate for that in part by making the spine thicker, along with other design and manufacturing process considerations.
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Old 02-02-2022, 07:19 AM   #9
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

Quote:
Originally Posted by VIVIT View Post
I wasn't thinking about curved vs. straight; I was thinking about the mass and strength of the blade. IIRC, historical Japanese katana were typically softer than blades made elsewhere because Japan didn't have access to high-quality steel. I could be totally wrong about the mass part, though.
I don't think katanas tend to be any lighter than European swords of comparable size - if anything, they may be heavier, given they have a length comparable to a one-handed European sword, but are designed for two-handed use. And while the raw materials they had access to were indeed inferior to what much of Europe (and indeed mainland Asia) had, they compensated for this by extensive use of crucible steel, folding techniques, etc to refine their steel into something sword-grade (I believe sword-grade steel has a specific name in Japanese, hagane, typically translated as "full metal" or similar).

I have heard that some skilled swordsmen specifically used their sword in a manner that was less likely to cause damage. If this is true, it's unlikely to be unique to the katana, and indeed wouldn't be an attribute of a different skill, but more appropriately built as a special Technique. GURPS generally doesn't bother tracking weapons being damaged from use (you can try to hack away at someone in full plate with a straight razor without issue... although you probably won't get through their DR, given such a weapon has low base damage and low MinST). "The Broken Blade" (Pyramid #3/87) does have some optional rules for this, however, so if using those you could come up with a Technique to allow you to avoid damaging your weapon with strong blows. If you want certain weapons to be treated as lower-quality or otherwise more susceptible to this effect, you could certainly do so, but you're adding a lot of complication for probably minimal return.
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Old 02-02-2022, 08:16 AM   #10
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Default Re: Blunt weapons and edged weapons using the same skills?

(shrugs) 13 years experience swordfighting, for what it's worth, and my take is that GURPS just isn't granular enough a system to make the difference worth much.

Similar odds pertain to most physical contests, I expect. A baseball outfielder who consistently hits .250 is teetering on the edge of replacement level. An outfielder who consistently hits .300 is a star. An outfielder who consistently hits .350 is going to the Hall of Fame. (Hell, Ted Williams is the only player active in the last century who's approached .350 for his career.) And we're talking a spread in dice odds slightly less than between Skill-13 and Skill-15.

In perfect conditions, on the piste, with both parties evenly matched and with similar equipment, the difference might mean one bout in ten.
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