Why DON'T people like guns in D&D?

[Starbuck_II]

But that's just the same thing holding true. Certain, exceptional people can do improbable things, but they can't do impossible things without some outside agency that allows it. An unarmed man defeating an armed one is improbable, but not impossible. Police, martial artists, and such all train on how to do just that. Punching a hole through full plate armor, or flying requires magic though.

Blunt Weapons don't punch a hole through armor: they just deal blunt trauma.
Like the olympics: hitting a metal pole at 50 mph, almost always kills you no matter your head gear. Blunt trauma alone bypasses armor to a degree.

Heck, you be shot in a bullet proof vest and die from blunt trauma.

 

[Salamandyr]

Blunt Weapons don't punch a hole through armor: they just deal blunt trauma.
Like the olympics: hitting a metal pole at 50 mph, almost always kills you no matter your head gear. Blunt trauma alone bypasses armor to a degree.

Heck, you be shot in a bullet proof vest and die from blunt trauma.

I'm not really sure what your point is here. Punching a hole through armor was somebody else's example.

Second, punching only causes "blunt force trauma" because, thanks force is dispersed over a wider area...more force over a wider area can puncture as well as less force applied to a smaller area. Throw a telephone pole hard enough, and it can go through you; it just requires a lot more force to do than a spear.

But that's a digression and not really germaine to the conversation.

EDIT: so this conversation actually made me curious enough to look up the meaning of "blunt force trauma". Essentially, all it means is "non-penetrating trauma". So it's a question of effect, not purpose. A fist with enough force behind it could do penetrating trauma, and a sword with little force behind it could do blunt force trauma.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And in fact, a strongly swung sword blow that doesn't penetrate the target's armor WILL do BFT. There's also the issue of hydrostatic shock.

Any blow of sufficient force can send shock waves through the body which may deaden nerves or even disrupt organ function (IOW, may cause death). This is because water- a major component of the human body- is non-compressible.

 

[Jhaelen]

Then again, not much domestic violence happens today involving swords, does it?

Errm, but there's lots of domestic violence happening involving all kinds of pointy or blunt implements. At least around here (I'm from Germany), (domestic) violence involves knives a lot more often than guns.

I haven't investigated this more deeply but I had the impression it was easier to survive a dozen knive-stabs than a dozen bullets. I might be mistaken, though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yep.

There was an ER/Trauma surgeon on CNN the other day, saying that once you get shot 3+ times at once, your odds of dying are about 99%.

Now, before anyone starts talking about "I saw this guy who got shot N+ times (>3), and he survived...", realize that, according to the CDC, there were more than 12K gunshot fatalities in the USA alone in 2006...accounting for about 67% of all homicides.

And those 12k gunshot fatalities were accompanied by about 80k non-fatal shootings...of which 52K were "deliberate."

With numbers like that, of course you've heard about people surviving multiple gunshot wounds.

In contrast, less than 10% of all USA homicides result from stabbings, less than 7% from beatings. Simply put, our skeletons are well designed for protecting us from the kind of damage we can do to each other with bare hands and simple weapons...without training, of course...but are not structurally capable of protecting us from firearms in any meaningful way.

 

[Fanaelialae]

There was an ER/Trauma surgeon on CNN the other day, saying that once you get shot 3+ times at once, your odds of dying are about 99%.

That's only applicable to modern firearms though. Try shooting someone 3+ times with a musket, and I think you'd find the reload time prohibitive. I imagine it would be much easier to stab a capable opponent 3+ times, than to shoot them an equal number with a musket.

Also, I have to wonder what the odds of survival are after being stabbed 3+ times. While it might not be 1%, I'd wager to guess that it isn't far off. The human body simply isn't meant to be abused in such a manner.

 

[Desdichado]

Errm, but there's lots of domestic violence happening involving all kinds of pointy or blunt implements. At least around here (I'm from Germany), (domestic) violence involves knives a lot more often than guns.

I haven't investigated this more deeply but I had the impression it was easier to survive a dozen knive-stabs than a dozen bullets. I might be mistaken, though.

Yeah, but I didn't say anything about knives. A knife blade five or six inches long, and a sword blade that's four or five times as thick, and at least a foot and a half long (on the shorter side) are hardly comparable implements.

Besides, I just got done saying, in the same post that you responded to, that this fixation on "realistic" damage of swords vs firearms is a red herring anyway. Plus, all you did was restate the same thing that I was responding to, without addressing any of the rest of the context of my post.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, but I didn't say anything about knives. A knife blade five or six inches long, and a sword blade that's four or five times as thick, and at least a foot and a half long (on the shorter side) are hardly comparable implements.

Nitpick: I have never seen a sword blade that was four or five times as thick as a knife. Two or three, at most.

 

[Desdichado]

Sorry; by thickness I meant width.

My bad. Point is, there's a ton more mass involved with getting hit (or stabbed) with a sword. Even the relatively small gladiuses of Roman fame were notorious for the gaping, sucking wounds they inflicted on their enemies. Getting stabbed with a kitchen knife in a domestic dispute really isn't a comparable situation, in my opinion.

 

[Dausuul]

Sorry; by thickness I meant width.

My bad. Point is, there's a ton more mass involved with getting hit (or stabbed) with a sword. Even the relatively small gladiuses of Roman fame were notorious for the gaping, sucking wounds they inflicted on their enemies. Getting stabbed with a kitchen knife in a domestic dispute really isn't a comparable situation, in my opinion.

With that I will certainly agree. Kitchen knives are made for chopping vegetables. Swords are made for killing people. Stands to reason that the latter is more likely to kill you than the former.

A sword blow can break your skull with the blunt impact alone; not easy to do that with a knife.