ST affects on Melee Weapons

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by McAllister

I've read TG, but I wasn't 100% sure about what was and wasn't possible with armed grappling. Are you saying, assuming everything I do works and nothing my opponent tries does, I could AoA (double) to grapple my opponent's longsword with my longsword, and then hit them with it? That's cool as hell.

I'm not Douglas Cole, and I defer to him about what the heck TG says. But under "Don't Shoot Yourself", it specifically says "If you are grappling a foe's weapon, you can attack him with it!"

Sadly, it doesn't say how much damage is done when you make the foe hit himself with his own weapon. For a force sword or firearm, it's easy. For muscle powered melee weapons, I'd say normal damage at -1 or -2 per die.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Sadly, it doesn't say how much damage is done when you make the foe hit himself with his own weapon. For a force sword or firearm, it's easy. For muscle powered melee weapons, I'd say normal damage at -1 or -2 per die.

My assumption was that the intent was to simply use the weapon's damage as though you were wielding it outright, at -1 ST per 2 Grip CP the opponent has on the weapon. As I said, a more realistic treatment is probably to assume you're using it with something like ST equal to the CP you've inflicted, at -1 ST per 2 Grip CP the opponent has, and if you've gripped it by the blade thrust damage would be more appropriate than swing. For one-handed weapons, it's probably more appropriate to assume ST equal to 2xCP, to a maximum of your actual ST.

[DouglasCole]

Control points equal to strength is probably a little bit stingy. A ST 14 individual will do 1d control points, after all.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Control points equal to strength is probably a little bit stingy. A ST 14 individual will do 1d control points, after all.

My thought was that you'd need to get a good hold of the weapon in order to properly use it, so you might need to spend a few seconds struggling to get a better grip before you ram it in. For a character with ST 14, it would take an average of 4 successful hits to max out his CP.

As I stated, however, for one-handed weapons (the ones you'd typically do this with), doubling CP to get ST would likely be appropriate. Thus, to get his full ST the above character would only need 7 CP, averaging 2 successful hits. Of course, the fact you suffer ST penalties based on your foe's Grip CP may be enough to justify being able to use your full (after adjusting for foe's Grip CP) ST with even so much as a 0 CP grip - a better grip is instead good for preventing your target from successfully defending.