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14th and 15th centuries have the answer to how you would use a sword to deal with an armored man there are two alternate grip styles that are common in these manuals one is called halfswording which involves putting one s off hand on the blade of the sword converting it into a short ranged spear that can target gaps in armor or smash the target with the pommel or be wrapped around the target for grappling this is simulated by the defensive grip rules in martial arts the other is called the battering point and it involves putting both hands on the blade of the sword and swinging the entire thing as a mace or as a pick using the sharpened crossguard or the pommel as an impact surface to wound the target through their armor as far as i know there are no rules for this in martial arts it is referenced obliquely but no rules are given for employing it at this point you may be thinking merely from watching and looking at this something along the lines of how in god s name do they not cut themselves or perhaps surely they must have been wearing gloves or wearing gauntlets indeed martial arts is no different at two points it subscribes to the belief that doing this is somehow ill advised performing a choke hold with an edged weapon by wrapping it around their neck in the half sword grip requires a dx roll the consequences for failure being thrust cutting damage to the wielder s own hands martial arts p69 the description for the hook technique implies that any sane user would be wearing gauntlets to attempt to grasp the blade as described in the fighting manuals the general omission of rules for the blade holding grip also strike me as a result of the incredulity this concept faces from those of us who have never studied knightly martial arts this idea must surely be fanciful ludicrous or insanely dangerous so many people have told me sad to say these people are wrong edged weapons are not lightsabers they do not cut from simply being in contact the principle can be understood if you ve ever cleaned a combat knife or even if you ve ever cut bread or an undercooked steak simply pressing on the meat or bread does not cut it it crushes it it is the lateral motion of slicing or sawing or hewing that causes damage not simply being in contact with the edge the secret to this in real life is as simple as gripping the blade like a guitar grip with the fingers and flat of the palm and grip firmly so the sword does not slide around in your hands and you have a grip that will never cut you there could be some argument that a slip up in this condition could be dangerous and could cut your hand but could any injury sustained from the blade simply moving along your hand really take you out of the fight i doubt any such injury would be worth more than a single point of damage when adrenaline is going a mere cut on your hand is a small price to pay for the tactical flexibility these stances and grips give you i feel that fighting manuals would not continually depict this kind of grip if it was at all dangerous to an experienced user it s certainly no more dangerous than holding an edged weapon by the hilt is which already places the user at risk regardless of where his hands are the slew of accidents minor and not so minor that anyone who works around knives can attest to is certainly proof of that you could drop a sharp weapon and injure yourself or even fall atop it yet gurps doesn t ask you to make a dx roll to avoid impaling yourself if you fall down while holding a weapon such catastrophic self injury is best reserved for critical failures to begin with the fixes here are quite simple and actually make things less complex self injury is impossible if a character trying a blade gripping technique or stance has combat skills and familiarity with the weapon in question do away with all references to it at the gm s option if a character has no combat skills or is unfamiliar with a given weapon and has a hand on the blade of any sort roll a dx check after each combat turn in which the character used the sword to parry or attack failure means 1 point of cutting damage to the hand palm armor protects normally this can add up over time consider crippling the hand if aggregated injury exceeds hp 3 making halfswording for a complete novice a bad idea in the next post on naked steel and ambition we ll cover the two types of grip and how to make them more true to the 15th century armored combat paradigm in gurps rules until then may your hand feel nothing but firm steel posted by jetman123 at 11 28 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels armored combat martial arts rules weapons monday 5 may 2014 help i can t hold my sword a short post on gauntlets one more post on the nature of armor then we ll move on i swear this is another short one let me quote from low tech instant armor enclosed mittens and gloves protect vs cold heat contact poison etc but give bad grip 1 p b123 gauntlets lack this note they re open palmed negating both the benefit and the drawback let s briefly discuss what this means first of all this means that anyone using mittens or low tech gloves effectively has a 2 to their combat skills involving anything but unarmed striking since that s essentially what bad grip does 2 might not sound like a whole lot but remember 3d6 is a bell curve for a user with skill 12 this drops his chance to hit by 24 wow that s abysmal especially in armored combat where tough hit locations will be targeted all the time well you can use gauntlets to get around this as stated however note what that note says all gauntlets are completely open palmed and the benefits of having gloves on are negated that means your gauntleted character has bare skin in contact with his blade he is vulnerable to frostbite burns contact poison smeared on a doorknob take a look at that image at the top there are curiously few images available of modern reproduction gauntlets on the underside i suppose this is because it isn t very photogenic even so if you google gauntlet you can easily note how leather gloves are almost universally a thing worn underneath them often affixed permanently to them would a contact poison get through these gloves are they so whisper thin that they do nothing against cold even if you wear leather gloves under your gauntlet low tech will tell you the same thing low tech gloves give bad grip 1 i guess it s a choice between frostbite and not being able to swing your sword i understand low tech gloves and mittens having hamfisted that makes perfect sense i have a pair of kevlar gauntlets for swordfighting training and i could end up standing there for a few minutes if i really tried to take my keys out of my pocket without taking them off first however bad grip is extremely excessive especially for a leather glove even a mitten will do many things to you but i highly doubt that it will subtract 24 from your chance to hit if this was true in reality the instant someone put any kind of leather gloves or mittens on their combat performance would measurably and noticeably decrease instead when i put those kevlar gloves on my performance improves my hand sweat is no longer interfering with the operation of my waster these gloves have no high tech grippy bits they are completely smooth on the underside aside from a machine stitching line and they re not exceptionally well fitted for me either so how do we fix this very simple gloves and gauntlets of any type do not give bad grip if they provide only dr 0 or dr 0 any palm armor that provides dr 1 or higher provides bad grip 1 gauntlets do not protect the palm by themselves but can be combined with other armor if your gauntlets have a built in leather glove as most do buy the glove as a combination gadget with the gauntlet otherwise simply wear gloves under your gauntlets gloves and gauntlets are separate armor location hand front hand back you could think of it and do not incur a layering penalty ordinary low tech gloves give hamfisted 1 if worn alone unless they are made expensive as per low tech in which case they provide no penalty the total amount of hamfisted for gloves and gauntlets cannot exceed hamfisted 2 i m not myself entirely convinced that dr 1 on the palms automatically drops combat performance so much but really at some point this becomes a gripe against bad grip rather than against low tech armor perhaps in a future post i will cover my never ever disadvantages and how to improve them for now though may your grip on your sword be ever secure posted by jetman123 at 07 22 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels armor armored combat rules sunday 4 may 2014 iron joints why giving full rigid dr against joint locks makes absolutely no sense when i see that with the sword i could do nothing to you instantly i use this catch from grappling so that i believe and see and feel that your armor will be worth nothing as i force you the strong lower bind fiore de i liberi i m here to talk about arm locks specifically how they work versus rigid armor in gurps in gurps arm locks are protected against by rigid dr to quote martial arts if you win you inflict crushing damage equal to your margin of victory the target s rigid dr protects normally flexible armor including natural dr with the flexible or tough skin limitation has no effect this means someone with dr 6 plate armor on their arm thus has dr 6 effective versus an arm lock even a throw from lock might not break his arm the plates on his arm somehow bind together in a manner that prevents his elbow ligaments from shattering yet at the same time a choke hold has no such restriction it s not stated in the basic set nor in martial arts that rigid armor protects against choke holds this means that the best option against an armored man when you are unarmed isn t to break his limbs it s to choke him out even if he has a rigid gorget i ran into this problem facefirst when trying to come up with a way to run a powered armor wrestling tournament in gurps worse i had several people tell me flat out that this behavior made perfect sense to them and that my fighting tournament consisting of people in rigid power armor complete with full enclosing helmets and neck protection would involve lots and lots of choking i still can t figure that one out the problem is and this may be somewhat obvious to you if you have considered the basics of fighting a well protected man in armor is that you can only be invincible if you completely restrict your own mobility for your armor to have no weak points or gaps in coverage and still allow you to move is impossible thus your joints must be hinged and mobile this means that that mobility can be abused likewise it means the gaps in your armor can be thrust into your best chance against a man in armor is not to punch him but to grapple him and break his limbs and then finish him with a knife and indeed many medieval duels went exactly this way then we have the continued absurdity that rigid dr of any source applies so an ultra tech combat hardsuit would provide dr 75 or more depending on tl against arm locks apparently making a protective garment more resistant against gunfire also makes it protect your joints better who knew compare and contrast this with the historical record we have many many many examples of arm locks being a thing in armored fighting sourced from the fight books of medieval swordfighting and grappling masters for example fiore de i liberi a 15th century italian knight discusses armored swordfighting at length in his system one handed arm locks are often used to secure a positional advantage to stab at the enemy s armpit while it is true that many of his images depict men in what appear to be chainmail many are in plate as well and it seems that these techniques are intended to work against men who are in rigid or soft armor alike there is no mention of the techniques being different for a man in rigid armor it is also stated here and elsewhere that all combat in the european systems springs entirely from grappling all the basics are contained in grappling and grappling is taught first the grappling holds in master fiore s system involve many bone breaking locks including quite artful examples of the throw from lock technique these techniques are not specifically part of unarmored fighting they are intended to be used against a wide variety of targets the fact that identical moves show up in both the unarmored and armored segments of different manuals is proof of that the left image is from the fechtbuch of hans czynner and shows a knight snapping his opponent s arm over his shoulder in order to make a dagger fall free the same elbow breaking attack shows up in fiore s art of abrazare on the right against an unarmored opponent and in several other fechtbuchs then we have other armored fighting manuals the image i chose for the start of this page is slightly annotated with a pair of arrows showing the direction of the technique the image is from the talhoffer fechtbuch a very well illustrated depiction of a variety of duel centric combat this is nothing less than an armed grapple arm lock done against a man in armor why would you take your sword out of action to establish an arm lock if some form of damage was not going to be done to the opponent by it now does all of this mean that rigid armor offers no protection against joint manipulation whatsoever no not at all i think a rigid plate might very well offer some protection against a violent elbow jerk especially if the armor is sized and shaped for a specific user s range of motion after all the plates will at the very least grind against one another when being moved in a direction that they are not designed to go however this dr if it is used should never ever be based on the armor s ability to sustain physical punishment otherwise complete absurdities occur like a suit of mithril plate armor giving near immunity to joint abuse iron joint rules iron joints is the proposed name i have for the very simple rule replacement that fixes these issues it goes thusly the maximum dr value for an ordinary piece of rigid armor versus locks of any kind is dr 2 providing some slight resistance expert tailoring low tech p110 can raise this by 1 to dr 3 and masterful tailoring can raise it by a further 1 for a total of dr 4 when being worn by the user they are sized and fitted for being shaped and sized for a specific user alone means the armor can better resist unwanted dislocations magical spells enchanted armor of specific types or high tech systems such as a power armor locking device that detects unwanted pressure and seizes the offending limb before the occupant can suffer damage may be able to grant additional dr on top of this either all the time or situationally rigid armor defends against a choke hold or strangle normally before you can choke out someone wearing armor you ...