Low Tech vs Basic Weapon Stats

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Tinman

My understanding was that newer books override older books in any conflict.
So stats in low-tech take precedence over the basic set.

In any conflict of what?

[safisher]

Originally Posted by sjard

skalagrim is pretty worthless from my point of view. His information is frequently questionable.

Agreed, which is why Neil Burridge's post embracing his expertise over archaeologists is both curious and disappointing. There is so much anti-intellectualism and lack of respect in the practical side of the medieval/ancient arts that the unresolved questions of fact might never be answered. Most academics runaway screaming from these folks, and for good reason.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by kracht

...
For its subject matter, LT is one of 4e books that I looked forward to most enthusiastically, and it is a great book, but I cannot help thinking that in some ways there was room for improvement.

But FAR too many RPGs screw things up with frequent ret-cons and changes from one supplement to another. Even when it's for greater accuracy and logic, changes rather than additions promote rules lawyering, MTG style player wealth equals character power, general confusion, and lack of clarity.
Sadly, all things considered, some times, it's best to just leave a mistake alone.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But FAR too many RPGs screw things up with frequent ret-cons and changes from one supplement to another. Even when it's for greater accuracy and logic, changes rather than additions promote rules lawyering, MTG style player wealth equals character power, general confusion, and lack of clarity.
Sadly, all things considered, some times, it's best to just leave a mistake alone.

I do not see how Low Tech changing weapon stats could have any of those effects, except perhaps confusing those who really cannot follow simple directions.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by kracht

Yeah, it was not universally adopted. But by and large, I am under the impression that GodBeastX is right, and sometimes you have strange "duplicates". The obvious example is the bastard sword, which the authors admit is not historical, side by side with the longsword. Another strange thing is that insistence of having both blunt pointed and thrusting broadswords, when the vast majority of weapons of that kind seems to have had a decent point and have been cut-and-thrust weapons (the exceptions that I am aware of are very early Iron Age examples).

Eh... there are many Indian khaṇḍas with very wide tips and a point no sharper than 45*, and it is up to the GM to assign the proper set of stats to a weapon in their game world. While it would be nice to rebuild the GURPS melee weapon rules based on historical and experimental research, and replace the Broadsword and Greataxe in the Basic Set with something which is more common in the real world, what we have today is not bad, and really improving them would require more time and effort than anyone is willing to put in. Real experts on "all swords, daggers, and fighting knives in world history" from a practical and story-telling point of view are thin on the ground and tend to have other commitments ...

One of the problems with LT is that they had to boil down a lot of earlier Pyramid articles with no footnotes and short bibliographies into something even shorter.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

it would be nice to rebuild the GURPS melee weapon rules based on historical and experimental research

...and...to which no one will agree because there is no real metric to benchmark performance to. Armor is benchmarked to bullet performance, but what are hit points and melee damage points benchmarked to?

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by safisher

...and...to which no one will agree because there is no real metric to benchmark performance to. Armor is benchmarked to bullet performance, but what are hit points and melee damage points benchmarked to?

Midachlorians?

I am working on my double hp, double DR system revisions. The core of it is simple, but once you mess with the damage model, modifiers for weapons have to be fixed: when a normal man has HP 20, you can't keep the same old modifiers.

What I do like about it so far is that for "swords"(counting the long knife and large knife), I have something like 9 different weapon notations. And they all fit different niches. However, there is a "short sword" break point I've hit.

But maybe I'll do some work on it, maybe do some axes, maces and spears.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by sjard

From my personal standpoint, while I trust Matt to know his stuff (haven't actually chatted with him in years since we both left ARMA), skalagrim is pretty worthless from my point of view. His information is frequently questionable.

Mind giving some examples I'm subscribed to skalagrim and would like to know if I'm wasting my time.

[kracht]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Eh... there are many Indian khaṇḍas with very wide tips and a point no sharper than 45*

Interesting, thanks for pointing it out.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

what we have today is not bad, and really improving them would require more time and effort than anyone is willing to put in.

I agree: both GURPS MA and LT are light-years better than the average of RPGs, I think. Complaining about such things is a bit of a "first world problem", given the general picture of the RPG market.

As for LT (but I am OT here), I would have liked it to be longer and include some of the Companion material. But it is a minor complaint, really.

[sjard]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

Mind giving some examples I'm subscribed to skalagrim and would like to know if I'm wasting my time.

Not off the top of my head. But his videos are more based on video game/movie/tabletop gaming realism than on actual real world information.

I watched a few of his videos about a year ago and decided he was passing himself off as an authority for things he really didn't know much about and never really went back. I'll watch parts of videos when he gets linked in places like this but they usually just reconfirm that he's entertainment not education.