Realism, Heroism, and Abstract Hit Points

[mmadsen]

Myths like this abound...

Sigh...

The experts at the time disagreed about which weapons were superior, so it certainly wasn't obvious to them, although many seemed to hold strong opinions for or against rapiers versus broad swords.

What is clear is that broad, slashing blades produced big, visible injuries, and thin, thrusting blades produced small, unimpressive injuries, which didn't seem like they should be so lethal.

The Romans used a sword, the gladius, which was short and fairly broad, but they used it primarily to thrust, because they found that slashing caused superficial injuries that were less likely to kill an opponent than a thrust to the midsection, which might not be as natural a motion and might not feel as powerful, but which is highly lethal.

The "common sense" view that a big gaping wound is much worse than a tiny hole is exactly the kind of naive view that the Romans would have mocked. Similarly, duelists learned the hard way that the tiny wounds from the "French blade" were quite lethal, even though they didn't look like much.

All this is complicated by the fact that most swords were developed for knights, who traditionally fought from horseback, where a heavy slashing sword makes much more sense than a thin thrusting blade.

 

[loseth]

That depends on where you are .50BMG rifles are entirely legal where I'm typing this from. In fact more .50 rifles are owned by civilians than issued by the military (this does not include HMGs different category). Similarly what you point out as military assault rifles are also entirely legal with the single alteration to semi-auto action. I can buy an SKS for less than the cost to attend a single college class.

See my earlier clarification of what constitutes a civilian sidearm. Military weapons owned by civilians are not civilian sidearms, nor are hunting rifles.

Limiting this to small arms so that we aren't including crew-served weapons and artillery or large caliber portables such as RRs or rockets. Most firearms used in crimes are pistols, this is understandable as it's very hard to tote around a shotgun or rifle inconspicuously. But if you examine the effects of rifle caliber firearms you observe similar effects. For example 5.56 using green tip rounds do not transfer a lot of energy. A person can be badly wounded even fatally wounded but the trauma is not sufficient to immediately stop them in many cases. It's just not predictable one might drop at the first shot the next you might need to unload four or five into center mass.

5.56mm ammo is a controversial topic, and it's possible (though heavily debated) that it is less lethal than the kind of ammunition used in the military rifles of the past. However, it's still a much more powerful cartridge than comparable cartridges for civilian sidearms, and much more likely to kill or incapacitate a target*. Really, if that weren't the case, the armies of the world would be smart enough to use pistol ammunition in their rifles instead--it's much lighter (and thus easier to carry) and cheaper to manufacture. They don't use it because it doesn't have the same military potential as rifle cartridges. Certainly, there will be instances of targets hit with military grade weapons and not being hampered, but there will be far fewer than with corresponding civilian weapons, and as I said, the effects are much more exaggerated with pre-modern non-firearms, where the difference is not one of a few centimeters and grams, but one of several inches and pounds of steel.

*This is quite different from 'dropping' a target with a firearm. FBI reports suggest that this is a psychological effect as much as a physiological one--most criminals that are hit drop even when there is no physiological reason for them to do so.

 

[loseth]

The experts at the time disagreed about which weapons were superior, so it certainly wasn't obvious to them, although many seemed to hold strong opinions for or against rapiers versus broad swords.

That's actually not the case. No armies who relied on swords as their primary weapon ever went in to battle with smallswords or rapiers. There was no disagreement.

The "common sense" view that a big gaping wound is much worse than a tiny hole is exactly the kind of naive view that the Romans would have mocked.

As you said yourself, the Romans used a broad blade for thrusting, the kind that would create a 'big gaping wound'. They could have used a smaller blade that would have made a much smaller wound, but they were professional soldiers and knew better.

Similarly, duelists learned the hard way that the tiny wounds from the "French blade" were quite lethal, even though they didn't look like much.

Nobody's claiming that smallswords aren't lethal, just that they are considerably less likely than a broadsword to drop an opponent or impair performance from a single blow. This is why they were never used as military weapons.

 

[mmadsen]

See my earlier clarification of what constitutes a civilian sidearm. Military weapons owned by civilians are not civilian sidearms, nor are hunting rifles.

The confusion arises because there's very little military about military weapons that distinguishes them from civilian weapons, and there's nothing civilian about civilian sidearms that distinguishes them from military sidearms.

Pistols are clearly less lethal than rifles; I don't think anyone has argued otherwise. What does surprise some people is that the assault rifles preferred by the military are often less powerful than the hunting rifles preferred by civilians.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

As you said yourself, the Romans used a broad blade for thrusting, the kind that would create a 'big gaping wound'. They could have used a smaller blade that would have made a much smaller wound, but they were professional soldiers and knew better.
.

Exactly. A gladius was about 2-3 inches wide if I recall, much thicker than a half inch blade, which as stated before increases the chance of hitting something vital.
The short length of the gladius allows it to be used in a more compact formation of men or any time there isn't much room to swing.

 

[mmadsen]

As you said yourself, the Romans used a broad blade for thrusting, the kind that would create a 'big gaping wound'. They could have used a smaller blade that would have made a much smaller wound, but they were professional soldiers and knew better.

You missed my point. A large slashing blade creates a large wound that looks devastating. A thin thrusting blade creates a tiny wound that does not look especially bad. A naive individual would assume that the large wound is deadlier than the small wound, but that would be the wrong conclusion, because, in this case, the smaller wound is deeper, and that's far more important for lethality.

I'm not going to argue against the notion that a big thrusting wound is more lethal than a smaller thrusting wound of the same depth. That's really no different than the notion that a big bullet wound is more lethal than a smaller bullet wound. In either case, yes, the larger wound is more likely to be lethal, but, in either case, placement is far more important than size.

That's not the case in d20, of course, where "tough" opponents are tough because of their high hit points, and damage is largely a function of weapon size. In reality, the nuances of slashing blades versus thrusting blades are of minimal importance compared to getting one's soldiers to stand and fight.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

See my earlier clarification of what constitutes a civilian sidearm. Military weapons owned by civilians are not civilian sidearms, nor are hunting rifles.

The confusion arises because there's very little military about military weapons that distinguishes them from civilian weapons, and there's nothing civilian about civilian sidearms that distinguishes them from military sidearms.

What he said, and to expand upon it your definition is highly arbitrary. Somehow pistols are civilian and all other firearms are military, rubbish. There is nothing to distinguish small arms into civilian and military categories other than law, which varies considerably between places. You've conflated "firearms used commonly in crime or legally permissible to own in my location" with firearms for civilians.

5.56mm ammo is a controversial topic, and it's possible (though heavily debated) that it is less lethal than the kind of ammunition used in the military rifles of the past. However, it's still a much more powerful cartridge than comparable cartridges for civilian sidearms, and much more likely to kill or incapacitate a target*. Really, if that weren't the case, the armies of the world would be smart enough to use pistol ammunition in their rifles instead--it's much lighter (and thus easier to carry) and cheaper to manufacture. They don't use it because it doesn't have the same military potential as rifle cartridges. Certainly, there will be instances of targets hit with military grade weapons and not being hampered, but there will be far fewer than with corresponding civilian weapons, and as I said, the effects are much more exaggerated with pre-modern non-firearms, where the difference is not one of a few centimeters and grams, but one of several inches and pounds of steel...*This is quite different from 'dropping' a target with a firearm. FBI reports suggest that this is a psychological effect as much as a physiological one--most criminals that are hit drop even when there is no physiological reason for them to do so.

Pistols are clearly less lethal than rifles; I don't think anyone has argued otherwise. What does surprise some people is that the assault rifles preferred by the military are often less powerful than the hunting rifles preferred by civilians.

No one has argued that pistols (at least in the sense you mean the term) cause as much damage as rifle rounds. Before I continue I'll note there are quite a few pistol cartridges that do considerably more damage than either 5.56NATO or 7.62x39 within the range constraints of a pistol they just aren't practical from a military perspective.

Regarding rifle rounds and stopping power the point is to render the enemy combat ineffective because over the few seconds during which any one target is engaged there is very little "hampered" either they are capable of continuing combat or they are not. I was specifically pointing out that there is a similar degree of variance in incapacitating a target on the first successful shot with modern service rifle caliber weapons as pistols. It doesn't matter if they're badly or fatally wounded and bleed out later if they can continue to assault you for the next few seconds that actually matter. You can't even necessarily count on a headshot putting a target down, I've personally put three rounds into an unhelmeted head at less than 100 yards only to have them continue to fire for four running steps until the pig put a few more through the boiler. (What is it with irregulars and using automatic fire at a charge? Is it some inner mental compulsion? They have to realize they aren't going to hit crap and slowing down like that just makes them a better target.) Because what takes them out of the fight isn't lethality it's tissue trauma which small-caliber rounds can seriously lack especially in FMJ projectiles that don't expand well.

This is where the 5.56 has its flaws in short barrels and at longer ranges. Fired out of a barrel the length they were originally designed for 5.56NATO actually has similar characteristics to the 5.45. Extreme velocity causes fragmentation and correspondingly large amounts of trauma that stop a target adequately. But barrels keep getting shorter along with carbines due to the close in nature of most current combat which slows the round down below the threshold required for fragmentation. Here you have the cause of the large variability I spoke about, the firearm is operating outside the intended design parameters of the cartridge. Really they should either go to a larger caliber or swap from FMJ to something like an EPP or a bimetallic expander.

Regarding the FBI files those are measuring an entirely different group and activity and the data inside is not very applicable to combat outside of Law Enforcement.

 

[Roman]

I want to point out that it is possible to keep ablative hit points, yet maintain a small chance that a warrior will go down in one hit. In fact, there is an optional rule for just that in 3.X edition, where rolling three 20s (IIRC) in a row on a hit automatically kills the opponent. If this is too absolutist, this rule could be modified, where the dice can keep on exploding indefinitely and each natural 20 adds a multiplier to the damage caused.

Alternatively, we could have damage dice explode when the highest number is rolled.

Either of these two systems would maintain the heroic feel of the game and the probability of being killed by one hit/shot at high levels would be small, but my simulationist instinct would be satisfied in that the small probability would at least exist.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

As such, they don't usually kill on a single hit, and they tend to be all or nothing--either they hit a vital spot and deliver a fatal wound, or they hit a non-vital spot but can't cause enough tissue damage to actually impair the target.

Its true, single wounds seldom incapactiate your opponent in real life. That's why all fighters and paladins should walk straight past the racks of +4 swords, and pick themselves up a UMP 45 for that Dungeon CQB.

It's a fascinating question, and one huge element that generally gets ignored is morale.

High spirits is no substitute for 600 rounds per minute!

 

[Belgarath]

Im sorry if this has been covered already, but I havent read the entire thread.

It seems like what mmadsen is talking about is covered in the damage system of blue rose and true20, both of which are d20 base games.

Each damage roll is made by a d20 plus damage modifiers. Then it is compared to the defenders d20 plus save mods. Even a high level fighter that has a bonus of 10 or so can be taken done by one hit, only it is not likely. If the damage roll is 20 and the save is a 1 then...

Actually I much rather prefer it that way. It can give a high level character pause if someone is aiming a crossbow at him, something that doesnt happen in the regular DND game