the Real benefit of a Weapon.

[artofmagic]

Traditional benefit of a weapon is Damage.

D&D, bigger the weapon, the bigger the damage. Funny how little it actually matters at higher levels.

Exalted lists different speed, accuracy and damage numbers for damage.
complex but... okay, not really what I was looking for.

But when I tested Boffering, you know, bashing people with soft weapons, I noticed a clear rule for melee fighting.

Rule one: High skill can compensate large weapon.
-That said, you have to be clearly better to challenge someone with larger weapon, even then you are propably equal.

Even fudge and FATE fall to this trap of damage. Offensive factor describes damage,
OF WP
0  unarmed
1  knife
2  sword
3  2h-sword
4  huge sword.

But if you play strong man with huge +4 sword with average skill, against unarmed martial artist with great skill, this thug propably newer hits martial arts master, but if he did, he would slice him in to.

This system is heroic and logical within game system.

But what about real life? Martial arts master would have to cover the distance between himself and the thug, the thug does not, his REACH is higher. Even 160 cm fighter against 2m thug is in trouble because larger fighter has better REACH.

Thug can easily block unarmed master, because of his sharp weapon that is between them, and each parry results damage to the old master.

Strength, I remember in one day in Dojo, I was practising free fighting with one neophyte, he had trained for 3 months and I had practised 3 years. I thought that my SKILL was a bit higher, like a lot. But he was very muscular and almost two meters tall.
When I tried to kick him, I had to get closer but then I was blocked by his hand that had better reach than my legs. I kicked his hand but it did not move because his hands were stronger than my legs. When he hit me, I could not block it because he was so much stronger than I. Had the fight been real, my greater skill would not have compensated his superior strength.

Rule 2:
High skill can compensate high strength.
- but not nessessary, it really have to be equally high.

So what I am saying? Its really hard to block attacks from stronger opponents, and really easy to block attacks from weaker opponents.

Its old stereoptype that strong guys are slow and smaller and nimbler characters have higher agility, and thats why they hit better.

In my experience it is not so, not even close. It's useless to block an attack if your blade does not stop the attack, if it just keeps on going. Your higher skill or agility does not help on STOPPING the enemy blade, you need strength also.

My simple fix on fudge regarding rule number one
"High skill can compensate large weapon".

Add weapon bonus, not to offensive factor, but to fighting skill. That leads to higher damage also, as you hit better.

Fix to rule number two is not so important on FATE System as there are no stats on that game. You can have an Aspect of Strong and have skills like melee withing that aspect. If you are strong, you propably have tried learning melee combat also. And you can use aspect points to counter weaker opponent's block.

Other systems might need a re-evaluation.

I am unaware what my fix on fate system affects as I am just re-reading it and if there is no bonus to Offensive factor does it unbalance the system somehow, but masters here can tell that.

What I'd hate to hear is that somebody disagrees without explaining why. So correct me if I am wrong but do not just say it. After all, this is my EXPERIENCE from martial arts and I have it more than average roleplayer. Less than Martial Arts enthuasists.

[hitsumei]

Hi, first post.... :-)

long and massive weapons often makes more dam. for they are generally _heavier_. But heavy weapons, even efficiently wielded by a strong person, imply a style of use in which you have to make swings, often long swings from over one's shoulder, or from (slightly under) one's flank... thus risking to explose the oser side (chest, neck or flank, in my experience). If you opponent hold a light weapon that isn't really short (not a dagger), then I'd not state that you have higher chances to hit because your weapon does more damage when you hit.

So, while im not simply saying here "no, your wrong", I'd just remind you that weapons with high damage bonus/mod aren't always those weapons with the longest reach - hence with a inherent "to hit" bonus.

Even if I've lived through a similiar experience with martial arts that the one you told us, and though i reached more or less the same conclusions about relative reach and strenghts of unarmed opponents, i humbly but firmly believe that soft (latex or whathavyou) weapons, even biggest "soft" battle axes, are not really tools that you can trust to make "clear rule fo mellee fighting" ;-)

[Kryyst]

Though I agree with what you are striving at I don't think your experience is enough to back it up.


First if you are going power for power regardless of skill you are at a dissadvantage to your much stronger bigger opponent.  Especially in martial arts when a good deal is using your opponents momentum against them.  You would have been better off to let him bring the fight to you then use a throw grapple, trapping block whatever to get inside and trip him up.

Also what your example doesn't account for is that he quite possibly is just a good natural fighter.  When I took martial arts there were people I could take a belt or two higher then me just because I've been scrapping with and what not outside and developed some skills, though not technical skills outside of the limited martial arts techniques.  So I couldn't do a propper crescent kick when I started but I certainly had the reflexes and knew how to dodge and throw a punch.

Also when using foam (or any practice) weapons people don't fight the same as when they would use real ones.  There is no serious risk from a practice weapon beyond the accidental bruise or broken nose so people tend to take greater risks then they would if real personal danger was involved.

I would probably not try and take on someone with a sword if I was unarmed.  But if it was a foam sword I'd have no qualms about giving it a try.

[artofmagic]

Though I agree with what you are striving at I don't think your experience is enough to back it up.


Also what your example doesn't account for is that he quite possibly is just a good natural fighter.  

No, he was lousy, really. But I really could not move his MASS, be it throws or kicks.

[artofmagic]

First if you are going power for power regardless of skill you are at a dissadvantage to your much stronger bigger opponent.  

Especially in martial arts when a good deal is using your opponents momentum against them.  You would have been better off to let him bring the fight to you then use a throw grapple, trapping block whatever to get inside and trip him up.

Wait a minute, what are you saying?

Can I choose to go power for power? I thought I was just fighting. what are you referring, of cource I did not use my superior strength against him because I did not have it, all I could do was use my speed to make multiple useless attacks at him that he blocked without any bruises. It's so easy to block weaker opponents, and really hard to block stronger.

"then use a throw grapple.."

What? Didn't I say I was 1) smaller, 2) weaker?
Had I let him to grapple reach, I would have been toasted. throws are not my speciality and I was too weak to sweep him or trip him. Has anyone noticed that its quite easy to throw smaller and lighter opponents, and it's quite hard to throw large and heavy opponents?

Perhaps it's just my weakness.

Then again, I liked to practise with women. They were cuter and throwing them was fun, quite opposite to throwing men.

[artofmagic]

So what we need to fix on my FATE:

weapons have REACH ability
0 for unarmed
4 for huge weapons.

Then they have MASS ability that add to offensive factor/damage.

Reach you add to combat skill.

What about mass, it MIGHT reduce combat skill. by amount it's over handling str minimum. Huge weapon needs superb strength, or you get penalties. Rapier needs terrible strength.

So Rapier would have a good reach to simulate it's great speed. And it's light.

But because its poor Mass, it's really awful on penetrating armor. But you can always find weak spots.

[Loki]

Heya,

I think what you might want to start with is: what kind of combat do you want to model to your satisfaction? A system that does a good job (subjectively speaking) at modelling hand-to-hand medieval weapon fighting might fall down when it comes to fighting with punches and kicks. Heck, a system that does a good job with hand-to-hand medieval weapon fighting might fall down when you want to run cinematic hand-to-hand medieval weapon fighting!

Now having said all that, here's my experience with martial arts, specifically kickboxing and knife fighting. Generally speaking, bigger guys can take more damage. Also generally speaking, bigger guys are stronger, and stronger guys hit harder, delivering more damage. I have not seen a correlation between bigger == slower. In fact, generally speaking, the only correlation I've noticed is stronger == faster.

The problem is, there is so much variation in body types, reflexes, cool-headedness (anyone who remembers sparring the first time remembers how unusual it was to get clocked), that it's a tradeoff between what you want to model and what you can achieve.

So my advice is to start with a situation you'd like to model. For instance: the martial artist goes up against the guy with the sword and wins. What does the martial artist need to get that win? Does it have to do with closing the fighting distance? Being faster? Having more mojo? Now what are the situations where a sword fighter wins against a martial artist? Etc.

Hope that helps.

[artofmagic]

Now having said all that, here's my experience with martial arts, specifically kickboxing and knife fighting. Generally speaking, bigger guys can take more damage. Also generally speaking, bigger guys are stronger, and stronger guys hit harder, delivering more damage. I have not seen a correlation between bigger == slower. In fact, generally speaking, the only correlation I've noticed is stronger == faster.

Don't I just love this guy? just what I was aiming at.

Some games have this BODY stat, higher it gets, the better and faster you are. Mind's eye theatre lets you add flaws or merits for that so that you can have high physical stat with a flaw of slow, so there you get the character you want.

So my advice is to start with a situation you'd like to model. For instance: the martial artist goes up against the guy with the sword and wins. What does the martial artist need to get that win? Does it have to do with closing the fighting distance? Being faster? Having more mojo? Now what are the situations where a sword fighter wins against a martial artist? Etc.

What I did not mention is Closing in maneuver I had in my fate. If you succeed on attack using closing maneuver, you flip weapon size bonuses so now you get the +4 for opponent having a huge weapon. Then you are in a range where that weapon gets to be a hinderance. And you win. (propably)

I want to make a Narrative system, that takes my experience into account. I cannot accept a system where player makes a character with high agility and low strength just because his closecombat does not use strength. (MURPG) It's fine for comic book system but not for fantasy games.

Weapon size is an easy fix for FATE, but I have to name it somehow that it's not the weight that matters but reach.

So there is reach to be modifier for accuracy, and you might lose that. Then there is mass, that needs a lot of Body to use.
mass adds to Offensive factor -> damage.

[timfire]

Here's my opinion based on my experience with karate, aikido, and classical japanese sword-fighting,

1. Take the Boffer experience with a grain of salt. There's a big difference between the trained and the untrained. Your untrained friends probably were not using their reach advantages as well as a trained fighter would.

2. There's a big difference between unarmed and armed fighting, especially in the way damage is generated. Unarmed fighting has alot to do with using one's mass/ strength, either for offense or defense. But armed fighting is mostly about the weapon. My sword teacher would say that you guide a sword, not push it. If your technique was on spot, you would feel little is any resistance when cutting. With unarmed combat, however, I could see adding a mass value to the combat skill.

3. I think adding a weapon's reach/ length value to combat skill is a good idea. IMHO length is a primary issue between different weapons. If it wasn't, why make big weapons period? Smaller weapons are lighter and easier to use! What's a spear anyway besides a knife at the end of a along stick?

4. Mass isn't so much an issue with weapons as much as their balance is. Real world weapons are really light, I mean, the heaviest weapons are still under 10 pounds. But what effects weapons is their balance, which effects their manueverability. You can have a light, badly-balanced weapon that's harder to use than a heavy, perfectly balanced weapon.

That all said, I agree with the last couple of post that say you need to first decide what type of combat you want to emulate, and then design your rules around that.

[artofmagic]

1. Take the Boffer experience with a grain of salt. There's a big difference between the trained and the untrained. Your untrained friends probably were not using their reach advantages as well as a trained fighter would.

What could I say, my untrained had melee skill of poor and I had average. With a sword that had reach of 2, his skill total was average and when I had a sword with reach of 1, I had skill total of fair. I win.

What you mean is that the higher the skill, the bigger bonus for reach?

With unarmed combat, however, I could see adding a mass value to the combat skill.

So aspect of Strong gives bonus to resist bashing damage but not versus lethal damage. Just like WOD system. I agree.

3. I think adding a weapon's reach/ length value to combat skill is a good idea. IMHO length is a primary issue between different weapons. If it wasn't, why make big weapons period? Smaller weapons are lighter and easier to use! What's a spear anyway besides a knife at the end of a along stick?

4. Mass isn't so much an issue with weapons as much as their balance is. Real world weapons are really light, I mean, the heaviest weapons are still under 10 pounds. But what effects weapons is their balance, which effects their manueverability. You can have a light, badly-balanced weapon that's harder to use than a heavy, perfectly balanced weapon.

What I would like to see why europeans designed huge swords like the Bastard sword? (or what ever huge blade.)

It was Huge, nearly impossible to parry as once you got it's mass moving, it would not stop to a block of weak opponent. It ripped through armors in a way that smaller blade would not.

How to define that?

MURPG would add armor piercing and double damage, but in FATE, it's not so simple.

Propably you would not benefit from the reach so much as it's slow, but offensive factor (damage, vs. defense like armor) would be really high, as minimum strength to use it.

...
the modifier I called EDGE, just popped my head.

So you get your EDGE bonus to your combat skill.

EDGE can come from
- reach
- balance
- what ever like magic.

Damage then could be modified by quality/mass/balance. But mostly mass, as quality should add to EDGE.

[Shreyas Sampat]

artofmagic, what do you intend to do with this discussion? Are you designing a game in which various forms of combat take a large part?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

As far as I can tell, this thread isn't about an RPG that's being designed. Nor is it even about role-playing.

So I'm calling this thread closed, which means no one can post to it any more.

That doesn't mean that the discussion has to stop. If anyone wants to start a thread about a game you're designing, use this forum, and you can also start a thread about weapon rules in role-playing games in general in RPG Theory.

If anyone has any questions about why I'm closing this thread, please contact me by private message. Do not post to this thread; it's closed.

Best,
Ron

[Loki]

Edit: sorry Ron, our posts crossed in the air, honest!

I guess I wasn't reading your posts closely enough, AoM, because I just noticed that you are referring to a system(?) called Fate. I am not familiar with that system, so I can't really contribute to discussion of various bonuses, modifiers like 'edge', etc.

Can you provide us with a link and/or information about the system that you are developing/using? It seems that your aim is both a theoretical discussion of system design, plus the application of that design towards an already existing system.

A good place to start framing this discussion would be something like "My system models combat like this: blah blah.  How would you Forge folks achieve X?" or "Here's how I want to modify it: blah blah. What do you think?".

[Ron Edwards]

For future reference, when this happens, edit your post (you're allowed, briefly) to remove its content, re-post it in an appropriate forum (e.g. new thread), and I'll delete the old one.

Closed now.

Best,
Ron

[artofmagic]

is it