Quote from: Stuart;355151I think a "short" slashy, stabby sword like the Greek Spatha would still be superior in close combat.

If by incredibly close range you mean grappling... maybe.

I meant something like grappling or in-fighting, and was really think in terms of comparing a dagger with a long sword. I am no sword fighter, just making an educated guess on the matter. I am sure there are many weapons in between that do a good job. And I don't deny the sword's overall advantage. Getting that close to someone with a sword is going to be a challenge if you only have a dagger.

I personally don't count a lot of the impacts you all are talking about as effective strike rolls in a role playing game.

For example, I was in a sparring match the other day. The guy I was fighting was stronger than me and a better wrestler. Despite that, I had him against the cage wall. For a few seconds, I was punching him in the side and doing really short knees into the side of the leg. Those moves didn't hurt him that bad and there was no risk at all to me for doing them.

When we stepped off each other, he was tired and his hands were down. I kicked him in the top of the chest and pushed him against the wall again. If I wanted to, it could have been his head, which would have done more to stop him than a knife to his belly.

Before that, I sparred hands only with the boxing teacher. He started throwing a bunch of little punches that hurt but didn't amount to much. Those moves wouldn't be rolled in an rpg. When he had me where he wanted me, he hit me with some real shot that could have knocked me out if he wanted. For my involvement in that fight, it wouldn't have mattered if he had a rock or not. I still would have been incapacitated.

That is the difference: it doesn't take a weapon to knock someone out or even kill them. In actuality, you don't have to totally knock someone out to get them to the point where they can't fight back.

If you you get someone to that point with a knife, they will carry the injury for a long time where they might be able to heal quickly from what happens with you hands. It however, in the short term of the fight, doesn't matter if you are punched in the face three times or stabbed with a knife three times. Both will stop you from continuing just the same.

When it comes to swords, especially when both people have them, it if very difficult to get a clean shot that prevents the other person from striking you at the same time. This is why untrained people can be so dangerous to martial artists - martial artists will attempt feints that untrained people can't recognize, making them vulnerable shortly to the wild strike.

However, I know personally that I can completely crush any non-kick boxer with a single kick to the legs, even if they power lift or are bigger than me. If a huge guy attacked me with a knife, it is completely possible that I could take him out by kicking him in the leg once. -- not knock him out, not kill him, but make him incapable of continuing to be a serious threat.

The advantage of his knife isn't that he can defeat me with fewer moves: it is that he has longer reach, that he can make me ineffective by scaring me with it, he can move it faster, and if he does hit me before I stop him, my injury will stay with me a lot longer than what I can do to his leg.

I can still win with a single hit.

Try to follow me here: I'm not saying that being hit with a fist is as bad for you as a knife. I'm saying that a fist, a single hit injury or knock out, is just as useful as a knife when it comes to making you incapable of presenting a threat during that fight.

This can be magnified in an rpg by the fact that fantasy characters can be much much better than real people at fighting with bare hands and feet.

I don't believe that it is NECESSARY to give different damage values to different weapons and unarmed strikes.

I think that real fighting could best be created by all strikes having the possibility of a single strike incapacitation. After a hit, a saving throw would determine if it was simply an exhausting near miss or a knock out. A modifier would be applied to this roll depending on the defenders ability to defend himself by having proper equipment and skill, like training in boxing for a punch or armor for a sword.

The advantage of weapons over skilled empty hands should be reach, safety in attacking, additional attacks, penalty to the defender if they don't have a solid means of defense, and the long term effects of injury.

Both a clean shot from empty hands and a good shot from a weapon can end a person with a single blow.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;355148Having done plenty of boxing and martial arts, I think there is a serious difference between being hit by a bony hand, and being hit by a blunt object or bladed weapon. And the difference between a gun and a hand is even more pronounced.

That is why I say there should be penalties for not having the right means of defense for the situation. Lots of people still die from a single punch. A man with heavy hands that has done impact conditioning on his knuckles and strengthened his wrist can knock a person out with one hit. Untrained people kill one another in bar fights often enough.

Yes, a gun can kill you with one shot, but between two trained people fighting with those weapons to the best of their abilities, a successful strike isn't likely. How many rounds do you think were fired for every injured man in Vietnam? I've heard 1000:1 myself, but I think it was higher.

If we are talking about making a person unfit to fight by assigning damage, and you use a man standing still, waiting to be hit as the test, then yes, a sword or gun can do it in one shot, but a good empty hand strike can as well.

The gun isn't dangerous just because it gets people to the point of not being able to fight faster than a neck kick or a punch to the chin, but because it can do it from far away and it is difficult to defend against. However, if your target also has a gun, range, cover, and intimidation on his side and is using his own fire to prevent you from taking a great shot, to two of you could fight for weeks.

Combat happens in similar ways depending on the situation. Equal men with nothing, or equal men with rifles can both win with a single hit. The part that trips people up with game design is when someone is caught off guard by someone that brought a better weapon or tactic. For example, a guy with a rifle, behind cover, with training, pointing it at a man in the middle of a field 20' away. In real life you are dead. In the rules I'm suggesting, a successful strike (with bonuses for the defender not having an effective means of defense) and a saving throw vs/ death (with penalties for not having correct armor) would demonstrate this.

Should somehow the guy in the field make it all the way up to the gunner after his 4 or 5 attack rolls and manage to punch him in the face, despite his penalties for the guy being able to defend himself with his bayonet, and hit, there should be a sizable chance that a single blow will make the gunner unable to defend himself, resulting in a pounding.

All of these nuances I'm talking about can be really difficult to put into an RPG. I like dungeons and dragons cinematic hit point system. In my game, the world hopping players got some modern assault rifles. They deal 1d10+3 with a ranged touch attack, unless the target has magical armor, crit on an 18+ an do x3 damage. They are much better than a long sword, but both a longsword and a rifle can kill a commoner in one hit. A monk can kill a commoner in one hit.

High level characters with a lot of hit points are simply NOT SHOT on a successful strike roll if the damage isn't enough to kill them. It was simply close but no cigar. The thing I'm not a big fan of is that it is basically impossible for a high level character to die from one shot in D&D, but other than that, the system basically reflects my idea that anything can kill a regular person with a single hit and that skill, luck, and divine providence keep people alive and unharmed when being attacked by potentially lethal weapons.

Back to my original post --- the variety of ways we as gamers understand combat, the fact that the skill of the individual has a huge barring on who wins a fight, the TRUTH that one punch can end a fight, and the desire to play characters with differing styles should compel game designers to make each style fair with possible modifiers for situations.

Hmm interesting.
Cranewings you have obviously done a lot of training but I think you are missing a trick. Take a typical muay thai, mma, or boxing match. The cases where the fight lasts 15 seconds and ends with a single punch/kick/elbow/knee are few and far between. In a typical boxing match each fighter might expect to take 2 -3 clean hits each round and numerous glancing blows. In a typical Muay Thai fight the number if anout the same although real full on hits that you walk away from is lower because the weapons are not padded. However if the fight was between 2 guys with swords or axes any full on hit ends the fight ...ends.

In a japanese sword fight the fight will be over in 10 seconds the first one to hit wins cos the other guy just lost a hand/foot/head/bicep etc .

Like Spike says if the guys that beat up on him the other day had been weilding axes he would have been dead.

I agree a strike to a nerve centre or the throat or the groin or whatever the fight can be over but most blows hit shoulders side of the head thighs etc. Those rare blows shoudl be the special Monk moves and they shoudl effectively stun or have a special effect rather than do equivalent damage.

Now I agree reach is key and something that could be added to games but rarely is. I think initiaive based on reach would be easy to implement and would change the way player think about weapons.

Oh and the reason why a knife is better than a gladius at close quarters is that you can make about 6 solid stabbing blows with a knife in a single second get a 4 inch kitchen knife and a ripe melon and try it for yourself.

Quote from: Cranewings;355176The advantage of weapons over skilled empty hands should be reach, safety in attacking, additional attacks, penalty to the defender if they don't have a solid means of defense, and the long term effects of injury.

Both a clean shot from empty hands and a good shot from a weapon can end a person with a single blow.

Yes, you CAN kill (or... the more ambigous 'end') a person in a single blow with a hand or a foot.

However you are far more LIKELY to do so with a knife, sword, gun... what have you.  

Or do I need to point out that I can link literally dozens of stories of kids accidentally killing one another by accident with any manner of household objects (up to an including firearms), where as it is exceedingly difficult to do the same with accidental, or even deliberate, punches?  So much so that any story you care to find would probably make most of the story about how fucking 'unusual' it is?

Seriously: This is one of those arguments where I have to shake my head and go 'this isn't really happening, is it?'.  

And, just for the record: It doesn't really matter how you chose to count 'hits' in the system. Blow for blow, regardless of abstraction, any given hit with any given weapon is arbitrarily more dangerous than any given hit without.

 You want to kill a man you bring a weapon.  Preferrably one that causes lots of bleeding (cuts or stabs or otherwise pokes holes), and you pick one that minimizes your chances of being killed back.

Jibba Jibba, I agree with you to some point. I personally would classify boxing and kick boxing fighters as armored when it came to unarmed strikes. That's why I made the distinction about kicking a non-kick boxer. Someone that has done a lot of impact conditioning will only fall to a really great strike, thought one hit can still do it. Look at Chuck when he was knocked out by Rampage in the first 15 seconds of the champion fight. Chuck Liddell is a bad dude. If anyone has DR 5 / empty hand, it is him. But he took a bad hit and still lost.

You are right about sword fighting taking 10 seconds. In this hypothetical gaming system I'm thinking of, two unarmored sword fighters would probably die quickly because after a hit, they would have a passive penalty to their death save for being unarmored. Think of how long two guys in full armor with round shields would fight. It could take a long time.

Realistically, the death save is easy if you have the right tools: impact conditioning against a punch, armor against a sword, range and cover against a firearm. If the target of those attacks isn't prepared, his penalty will make it easy for him to fall after a single hit. No matter what those, there would always be a chance of a single hit, however unlikely, of winning the fight if the person attacking has a move capable of really hurting you.

Quote from: jibbajibba;355186Now I agree reach is key and something that could be added to games but rarely is. I think initiaive based on reach would be easy to implement and would change the way player think about weapons.

In the game system I wrote, reach is determined by height + weapon length. If you are far apart, the person with the longer reach gets a large bonus to their initiative. If they are close, the person with the shorter reach gets it. It is pretty simple but it gets combat moving the way I like to see it.

Quote from: Spike;355189Yes, you CAN kill (or... the more ambigous 'end') a person in a single blow with a hand or a foot.

However you are far more LIKELY to do so with a knife, sword, gun... what have you.  

Or do I need to point out that I can link literally dozens of stories of kids accidentally killing one another by accident with any manner of household objects (up to an including firearms), where as it is exceedingly difficult to do the same with accidental, or even deliberate, punches?  So much so that any story you care to find would probably make most of the story about how fucking 'unusual' it is?

Seriously: This is one of those arguments where I have to shake my head and go 'this isn't really happening, is it?'.  

And, just for the record: It doesn't really matter how you chose to count 'hits' in the system. Blow for blow, regardless of abstraction, any given hit with any given weapon is arbitrarily more dangerous than any given hit without.

 You want to kill a man you bring a weapon.  Preferrably one that causes lots of bleeding (cuts or stabs or otherwise pokes holes), and you pick one that minimizes your chances of being killed back.

Spike, I have never been stabbed by a knife, but I know a bunch of guys that have. I have it on their authority that for the most part, being stabbed by a knife feels a lot like being punched, if you feel it at all. Usually, they say you don't have any idea how bad you are hurt until after the other guy is dead. That same thing isn't true for being punched in the face, where you know right away.

Being cut in real life isn't like the movies where you just fall over dead. It takes a long time to die and you won't know how bad you are. You can unzip someones arms and back like a fucking jacket and unless you get lucky and hit an artery, it isn't going to drop them until the slowish venous leak drops them after a few minutes.

Say you stab someone in the belly with a sword? How do you imagine that they die? What is in there that you need, right now, to keep fighting? In order to make someone stop fighting, you have to do something to them that their body can't handle.

If you traumatize the diaphram, you can get them to quit breathing. Arrows and bullets are good for that for sure. The lungs and the heart are good to, but the center torso is the easiest thing on the body to protect because it is naturally behind the ribs and arms. Cuts to the belly and legs can be endured because the muscles will clamp down on the injury, preventing blood loss. Cuts to the outer arm don't mean shit, other than affecting your grip. At school, I went on some EMS calls where I saw people get forearms and shins completely shredded and they were not anywhere near death. One of them walked 3 miles home trailing blood spatters before passing out.

My point is, there is a big difference between creating an injury that will haunt someone and making them stop doing what they are doing. Shaking the head with a punch is definitly one of the fastest ways of dong that.

Quote from: Cranewings;355192Jibba Jibba, I agree with you to some point. I personally would classify boxing and kick boxing fighters as armored when it came to unarmed strikes. That's why I made the distinction about kicking a non-kick boxer. Someone that has done a lot of impact conditioning will only fall to a really great strike, thought one hit can still do it. Look at Chuck when he was knocked out by Rampage in the first 15 seconds of the champion fight. Chuck Liddell is a bad dude. If anyone has DR 5 / empty hand, it is him. But he took a bad hit and still lost.

You are right about sword fighting taking 10 seconds. In this hypothetical gaming system I'm thinking of, two unarmored sword fighters would probably die quickly because after a hit, they would have a passive penalty to their death save for being unarmored. Think of how long two guys in full armor with round shields would fight. It could take a long time.

Realistically, the death save is easy if you have the right tools: impact conditioning against a punch, armor against a sword, range and cover against a firearm. If the target of those attacks isn't prepared, his penalty will make it easy for him to fall after a single hit. No matter what those, there would always be a chance of a single hit, however unlikely, of winning the fight if the person attacking has a move capable of really hurting you.

I would have some combat special for conditioning resistance which I might extend to crushing weapons. In this regard the old AD&D Oriental adventures martial arts sytem was pretty good with various additional powers coming in as additional proficiencies.

Guys in armour do fight for a good while but if someone manages to stick a sword thrust through a visor its all over.

It sounds like the system you are talking, about where a 'vitals' hit instigates a death check modified by armour might be doable though it's a counter intuitive model. Players don't like a system where you save or die they don't mind a system where you get hit by an expanding critical that ends up chopping off your head. Its the difference between a passive and active system no on likes passive ones.

Quote from: jibbajibba;355199I would have some combat special for conditioning resistance which I might extend to crushing weapons. In this regard the old AD&D Oriental adventures martial arts sytem was pretty good with various additional powers coming in as additional proficiencies.

Guys in armour do fight for a good while but if someone manages to stick a sword thrust through a visor its all over.

It sounds like the system you are talking, about where a 'vitals' hit instigates a death check modified by armour might be doable though it's a counter intuitive model. Players don't like a system where you save or die they don't mind a system where you get hit by an expanding critical that ends up chopping off your head. Its the difference between a passive and active system no on likes passive ones.

That's true. haha, also cheating ass GMs could role the death save behind a GM screen, "nope he is still going... amazing!"

We are, however, talking about DAMAGE.  The fact that you can, and most often DO, shake off a punch in moments is exactly the point.  It doesn't matter if a stabbing isn't FELT any more than a punch at the time, its the fact that stabbity doll is going to be laid up in the hospital with stitches just about every time, while punch-drunk ain't.

Now, how many punches you can take, or how long you stay standing after someone's turned you into a pincushin? That's a function of a game's hit points or whatever...not how 'hurty' the weapon is.

ANd frankly, you seemed to miss the point where someone can very well take multiple shots to the face and not feel them.  So how 'hurty' any given weapon is doesn't necessarily matter if you want to consider more complex variables anyway.

But talking about the knife is somewhat deceptive anyway. Not to many motherfuckers went to war weilding knives.  They brought bigger, nastier shit.  You mention that you 'can't block a sword with your arm'... no shit, you'll actually LOSE the arm.  The absolute lethality of swords, over say a knife, was demonstrated pretty recently even here in a thread in 'other media' when some college kid killed a burglar with a arm removing sword strike from some cheap as shit decorative katana.  If he'd tried punching the dude the story would have been a lot different, now wouldn't it?

I appreciate your point of view cranwings, and having trained in muay thai for many years, I do understand your points. However, being stabbed, does much more significant damage to the human body than a punch, on average. And if you are hit in a vital area, it will have an immediate effect. I haven't been stabbed either, but like you I know people who have. And my understanding from them, is getting stabbed feels a lot worse than getting punched. Most didn't realize how bad it was the moment it occured, but it still felt (in their words) much worse than being punched (which when your used to it, doesn't really hurt all that much at all). Also, a knife, like a fist, isn't meant for delivering a single blow. Your usually talking blow after blow and cut after cut. If you put two guys in the ring, one with a knife, and another guy with nothing but his muay thai skills, my money is on the guy with the knife.

I think there are two different theories being discussed here, to some degree.

If you are talking about raw damage to the person, then obviously a weapon has an advantage. Even a sloppy strike with a sword or axe still has a higher probability of doing damage to the person.

Now, what I think is being discussed more is the probability of ending a fight with a blow. One problem with this is the complexity of this issue. Everyone has anecdotal evidence of how this works, and their own experiences. I have studied both martial arts and firearms fairly extensively, so I figured I would put my 2 cents in...

The first thing I would like to bring up is the psychological effect in combat. This is discussed with law enforcement personnel quite frequently. There are stories of one gunshot to the arm or shoulder making someone stop attacking... and also there are stories of people with 30+ rounds in them, heart completely destroyed, and they still get a few more shots off before they drop. The stories are going to be all over the spectrum. This is because you have two variables. The first is the actual damage of the wound. The fact is the ONLY wound that is guaranteed to be combat ending is a CNS (central nervous system) wound. This would be severe damage to the brain, brain stem, or spinal cord. The next most likely wound to end combat is vital organ damage (heart, lungs, diaphram, liver). These will put down more people, statistically. Now about the second variable, which is the will of the person. There are tens of thousands of cases of people carrying on with very severe wounds. How far the person goes depends on two things... first if they even are aware they are injured (which many people are not) and second if they care at all at the time.

What do I draw from this? I draw that it is very hard to quantify what wound will end a fight. The best you can do is say "CNS wounds end combat immediately, and any other wound is subject to a save, with a penalty to the save for a particular serious injury. Obviously the other part of this is if you sever a limb that person can no longer fight as effectively, but that does not stop the person from still fighting.

How does this compare to hand to hand combat now? Well the same concept applies. Only damage to the central nervous system is guaranteed to end combat. Any other wound, no matter how serious, is subject to the person realizing they are damaged and to their willpower. While, yes, in most cases if you break someone's arm or leg, or rupture their kidney they will stop, that certainly does not guarantee it. It all depends on someone's state of mind, which is hard to quantify.

Addressing the comment about a solid kick to the head being more likely to end a fight than a knife wound to the stomach, that is ONLY likely if the strike has enough force to snap the spine or do severe, immediate damage to the brain. The fact is the difference between a knife wound and a ear-ringing head kick is not going to be noticed by someone with enough willpower (sometimes called "crazy") to keep fighting. It is not uncommon for people who are hit by anything to not be effected by it.

I doubt this cleared much up, because the concept is nearly impossible to accurately quantify in an RPG... just trying to give some insight into the conversation.