Heavy crushing/smashing weapons: Why use them?

[Carlos]

Is there any good reason (except it may looks cool) for a ST 21 Dungeon Fantasy Barbarian to use a maul?

There's no bonus damage to crushing weapons. So what's the point to use a crushing (and I said heavy!) weapon in GURPS instead of a Great Axe?

[Maz]

1) Some armour protect better against cutting than crushing
2) Crushing does more knockback
3) Crushing does more blunt trauma
4) When you hit people in the skull, crushing is just as good as cutting (x4)
5) Crushing does more damage against skeletons and liche's.
6) A heavier weapons means more weapons will have to roll against breaking if they parry it (or might not be able to at all).

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by Maz

5) Crushing does more damage against skeletons and liche's.

As far as I can see, none of the Injury Tolerances affect crushing damage or cutting.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by Diomedes

As far as I can see, none of the Injury Tolerances affect crushing damage or cutting.

True. But the skeleton template in Magic (p.152) has Vulnerability (Crushing Attacks; x2) [-30], making x2 Crushing better than x1.5 cutting attacks (or the x1 Imp due to Injury Tolerance (Unliving)).

Re: 2)
Crushing seems to be the only kind of (normal) attack that has a chance to cause knockback, if you ask me. To do knockback from cutting, you need to _fail_ to penetrate DR, but still do at least target's ST - 2 damage. But who has ST 10 and DR 8 (more than full plate), for example? With crushing attacks, penetrating DR or not is irrelevant, you simply need to do target's ST - 2 damage. (I think ...)

Regards
Ts

[DanHoward]

IIRC Low-Tech tries to correct this. Unbalanced weapons deliver +1 damage when compared to balanced weapons of the same weight. When this is combined with the Edge Protection rule, crushing weapons should be more effective against armour than swords. It doesn't make axes less useful though. Historically, mauls were primarily tools to hammer in stakes (mallet means "little maul"). Their secondary purpose was as a weapon. In real life axes were preferred over mauls. It is no surprise that GURPS makes them more effective.

[Bruno]

Because they're cheap, heavy, and hard to break, and also good at smashing other guys weapons and shields to flinders. But mostly because they're cheap.

Because they're low TL, which is great for primitive barbarians (Especially Ogg The Caveman types).

Because at ST 21, you often don't need any more bonus damage.

Because it doesn't matter WHAT damage type you're doing if you're doing it to the brain. 4x wounding baby.

Because blunt trauma is a fabulous rule.

Because large flails don't come in sharp versions (effective -1 to skill in exchange for a -2 to enemy defenses to Parry and Block, and forbidden parry for Fencers? Yes please).

After Low Tech comes out, there will be more reasons, but these are pretty good ones.

[Victor Maxus]

I have a player whose big tough guy has a striking strength of 17, and uses a heavy wooden club for a weapon. Why? First, character concept. He has a 12 Two hand axe/mace, decent, but that is more trial and error training. His guy is big, but had no formal military training. He learned on his own. Becauses of this, he just uses a heavy crushig weapon. To help make up for lack of skill, he does a lot of telegraphed attacks. This gives a +2 for the defender, but relies on his massive strength to break a parrying weapon or knock over a guy who blocks it. Dodge is an otion as well, but a lot of enemies have armor, and are encumbered, so even with the +2 it is harder to get out of the way. Second, it's cheap. He does not have a lot of money, so he just grabs a large hunk of wood often to use. If it breaks, find one in the woods, or ask a local wood crafter to fashion him another.

Bottom line, just his character concept, so that is why he uses a large crushing weapon.

[ADAXL]

Well, first of all, any self-respecting barbarian would use a Greataxe or a huge club with nasty metal studs (treat as a Tetsubo from GURPS Martial Arts).

I can think of a few reasons apart from all the arguments Bruno and others brought:
- The weapon has great Reach plus massive damage.
- The mass makes it hard to Parry. Dodging is the only viable defense against this monster weapon.
- If your GM permits, you can take a Shtick Perk for Intimidation.

[Anders]

Because nothing attracts chicks like a big hammer... :)

[lexington]

They can take advantage of great strength, they're cheap, they're hard to break, they can break weapons that try to parry them.

Did I mention that they're cheap? Really really cheap.