Do wizards suck? / multiple attacks

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, having probably about as much experience shield fighting as anyone gets in this day and age I can say that a medium sized shield is a HUGE advantage, and that advantage is multiplied considerably against shorter weapons.

I'll take on your super well trained double dagger guy with a longsword and a kite shield ANY day of the week IRL. He CANNOT reach around my shield, his weapons are simply too short, and if he extends himself to try to get the necessary reach then the sword will simply take him. You have the option to stab, chop low, high, overhand, etc. All the while the shield is like a little fortress that will block every dagger attack. A fortress which can also push back or even make an almost weapon like counter. The shield arm is impervious to harm and it is very difficult, nearly impossible, to bind up the shield. If you climb right in close to it, the shield will simply knock you back, at which point the sword is aiming a killing blow. It is simply a matter of odds. The sword & shield guy has many more viable options of attack than the dagger guy and sooner or later one blow will get past a parry. If dagger guy parries the sword, so what? He STILL has to get past the shield, meanwhile the sword is recovered. Swords are also quite fast in the hands of a skilled user. It is highly possible to parry a dagger attack and leave the wielder open to a quick chop or thrust. The shorter weapon's wielder is also constantly putting their weapon arm(s) in danger. My tactics would be simple, keep the shield between me and you and keep working on crippling your arm. Pretty soon I'm going to land blows on it and then the fight is all over. With one dagger you have NO chance at all. The best the dagger can hope to do is come in fast hope the blow he WILL take doesn't hurt too much and then hope he can get his one attack around the shield, because he will never get a second one. That's reality, and that is why this form really is overall the most effective way to win in armed combat overall.

 

[DracoSuave]

In this thread: People who have forgotten that D&D does not in this edition, the last edition, nor in any edition, work as an accurate simulation of realistic combat. Not only that, it does not -try- to work as an accurate simulation of realistic combat.

D&D has always been about high fantasy, about sword and sorcery. More J. R. R. Tolkien and less G. R. R. Martin. Do a lot of these maneuvers make sense in a realistic battleground? No.

But in the fiction, anime, movies, novels, comics, and other sorts of high fantasy fiction that have inspired D&D? Absolutely.

Seriously. Simulationism and D&D are about as compatible as chlorine gas and my nose. It just doesn't feel right.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup, there is no doubt that D&D is not a realistic simulation, nor was it ever intended to be. I would say however that it is always better if an RPG can deliver something akin to realistic results to the degree that is compatible with an interesting and fun game. There are a few reasons for that, but one of the key ones is just narrative. Every element of the game which is abstracted away from reality imposes a cost on the DM's ability to impose a believable narrative on the game.

Take the abstraction of hit points itself. Since this abstraction largely removes the chance of a single killing blow it does things like make it hard to explain how the assassin managed to kill the duke by sticking him in the back with a dagger. The DM now has to either simply fudge things or invoke ultra powerful powers or is limited to making the duke a very weak NPC or some other such patch. All of which raise questions in the minds of players and can conflict with other narrative requirements, etc.

I'm not saying that a more realistic damage system would be the proper answer, or that there even IS an answer to that specific case, but it does point out the way problems arise whenever the rules depart too much from some baseline level of realism. Often the highly unrealistic rules work well in specific contexts like a standard melee encounter, but they usually work equally poorly in most other situations.

This all departed rather far from the original debate about getting 2 attacks in one action when wielding 2 weapons. It really doesn't require much of a consideration of realism to see that it is a bad concept from a game balance perspective. It also happens to be pretty questionable from a realism perspective, so I just don't see the upside. Twin Strike (and its newer ilk) all present significant game balance challenges and personally I'd have not introduced the mechanism into the game as even a possibility if it had been up to me, but obviously the game designers felt it was too strong a trope to get rid of entirely.

 

[Goumindong]

The problem with this is by holding off you offset the potential gain by the possibility that you would fail to get to use the power at all. I exactly calculated the odds of using the power. There is no way to argue it's use gets exponentially better as you gain con, it only gets marginally better and it's margin is decreasing.

1. Yes its marginally better and its margin is increasing. That is the definition of exponential gain.

2. You do not offset the potential gain by the possibility that you would fail to be able to use it.

Remember: As you "exactly calculated", the chance that you are unable to use the power is reducing at a negative marginal rate. And the payoff from using it on a more important hit is increasing at an increasing marginal rate

Your actions and hit points do not change in relative value over time. The game scales in a linear fashion, it's just as important to not get stunned at 4th level as it is at 14th as it is at 24th[

"Over time" as in "over time in the battle" not as in "over levels". Your last hit point is increasingly marginally more valuable than your second to last, just as your 1001th hit point is decreasingly marginally more valuable than your 1000th hit point.

This means that hits that take away more life, or restrict actions(preventing you from taking away enemies life, prolonging the encounter thereby costing you and your friends more life) are increasingly marginally more costly than those that don't. As you shift your payout from "anything i can take because i might not be able to use it" to "anything i want because the bonus is so high i can nearly turn a critical into a normal hit" its marginally utility is increasing.

Since frequently monsters are unleashing their encounter powers early, this is a lot less benefit than you're trying to imply.

Only if your +4 ensures that you can use the power on that encounter power that goes off early, which it can't. The argument that i stated was that there is a bit of "stopping an attack early has an increasing marginal value" but that it was offset by the chance you might stop something better later.

Now if the better comes immediately, then your return is strictly linear in raw hit points and actions. But as you remember from our discussion above, the attacks that do more damage and restrict actions have increasing marginal cost, so your expected return on the block has an increasing marginal return when the chance of a block is increased in a linear fashion such every point of con you put into it has an increasing marginal return


O.K. So lets cover some things

1. If high damage powers come sooner there is an increasing marginal return on con

2. if high damage powers come later there is an increasing marginal return on con so long as you are able to judge what is and what isn't a high damage attack. Well, since the power lets you judge after damage has been rolled, i think we have a pretty easy way to determine what is and isn't a high damage attack.

This argument is repeated all over DnD forums, that still doesn't make it right and it's certainly not mathematically correct. You're totally ignoring that in most uses of wand it fails to change the outcome of the attack. By about a 7-1 ratio on average.

This is only true if

1. You don't have any clue of what the enemies defenses are
2. You don't have any clue of what you rolled(which only happens if your DM isn't playing by the rules)

and falls to the big irony of

3. As you increase your dexterity, the uncertainty inherent in the system is reduced further.

Even with an 18 dex, the wand is only useful 1 time in 5. The fallacious logic that it's on "the big attack" is dreadful reasoning since few if any monsters are slain by one big attack

Higher damage has an increasing marginal utility, especially early in the round. With a +4 the wand is useful 1 in 5 times, and with a +5 its 1/4 times... But wizards make a lot of attack rolls especially with their AoE dailies

In the same 5 encounters the +1 of staff will likely block 3-4 hits by itself and the staff interrupt will block another 3-4. Blocking 8-9 attacks is massively more valuable than landing an additional attack (even if it's your big daily).

In the same 5 encounters a +4 Con staff will likely block 3-4 hits and the +1 will block maybe 1 or 2(unless the wizards is the focus of every attack in an encounter for 4 rounds per encounter) You have your wizard absorbing roughly half the hits of an entire 5 encounter day to make your 3-4 hits work from the plus 1.

You're quite mistaken here as well. We do care about holding monsters as long as possible but these are not exponential gains, they are slightly increasing marginal gains but this still ignores the fact that +1 more orb only impacts about 1 encounter in 7. That's the reality. The math you're quoting pretends there is an increase in utility for holding something 10+ rounds.

No, the math assumes there is an increase in utility for holding something roughly 7-10 rounds and then after that, as i've noted it doesn't matter because you're way beyond the ability to pump anything else.

Once again, marginally positive is still not exponential gains. +9 for wisdom will not benefit your pc as much as +3 con, +6 wisdom (probably even 3/7 or 4/6 if you consider the opportunity costs associated with having a wisdom + 9 wizard)

Once again, using made up numbers doesn't get you anywhere. How do you pump 6 wisdom and 3 con? You have a total of 6 points to allocate over your entire career in leveling up. You have literally no way of making a 20 wisdom 16 con wizard without having 13 or less intelligence.

Just because the marginal utility is increasing does not mean it has to increase forever and it does not mean that the utility you get out of adding a new one at a lower value is greater than the marginal utility of the one that is already increased.

Remember, you don't care if the marginal utilities are increasing when you're choosing between each one, you only care which margin is better at that point in time.

You're endlessly talking about opportunity costs but don;t take any of the inverse opportunity costs into account

An opportunity cost is "the value of the next best thing". So the inverse opportunity cost would be "the value of the next best thing which is the value of the thing that you were doing originally"

Which is the value that we were discussing the entire time.

Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?

If you play an orb wizard and try for lock down by raising wisdom above INT you're ignoring all the times you've missed by a roll of 1 and would have started an additional status effect.

Your strawman is appreciated, but i never, nor did anyone else, mention raising wisdom over int.

Um... NO, unless it's been errata'd it's a free action and it is applied before the roll. It is not an interrupt. This might explain your belief that it compares because that is not RAW and it most definitely is crippled by not being an interrupt.

Read the power again, and then read the RAW again. It is a free action, but you can use it after the roll.

this is pseudo math. Blatantly false and barely makes sense.

It might not make sense to you, but uncertainty, especially known uncertainty has real value.

pretty situational and definitely cheating if you don't have some means of targeting the creatures.

Its a blast, of course you have an ability of targeting the creatures, i just showed it to you!

P.S. There is a level 18 ring that lets you move your vision 1 over and many many abilities that let you or others move their line of sight originating.

Also, you can create the wall.

Or you can see them and then move behind a wall already made because that is what smart people do to avoid attacks.

If you couple ray of frost with wintertouched and lasting frost, you grant combat advantage to everyone in your party who takes wintertouched with every cold power. If they also have cold powers or a frost weapon you're talking about +5 damage on EVERY hit and +2(CA) on EVERY ATT (and sneak damage) for everyone. This is a massive combo.

If everyone takes wintertouched and has cold powers. Otherwise one guy takes vexing flanker(or distance advantage), or they use your encounter powers that grant CA(or theirs) and its almost useless.

are there hoards of players arguing t-wave is broken?

Well then, this would be a good reason to give it to the other builds then...

This is another very circumspect argument. There is no requirement for all secondary or tertiary ability scores to get equal treatment. The wizard description says secondarily on wis, dex and sometimes con. This implies that wis is the secondary stat. Is this bad?

1. I never said they should get equal treatment(though wizards did when they wrote all those design articles saying "we wanted to make all builds about as good as other builds")

2. What i did say was "you're wrong, they do indeed get a benefit"

who cares? this is totally anecdotal/quote]

You want me to compare the situations where its useful to those its not?

I shouldn't get both, that's what makes building pc's fun. You need to decide on your vision and tactics and build to suit.

Strawman again, no one said you should get both 3 at wills and an enounter teleport.

I am pressed for time, i might get some more in depth replies later

is there a point here?

You claimed i was increasing the value of wizards. I was explaining that no, the value of wizards remained unchanged since the optimal build remained unchanged. What increased was the opportunity cost of that optimal build as the sub-optimal builds were made better.

Note, that doesn't make wizards better.

E.G. lets say you're playing a game with three options

Option A
Option B
Option C

Option A has a payout of 40, 50% of the time, 20 25% of the time, and 0 25% of the time
Option B has a payout of 10 100% of the time
Option C has a payout of 20 50% of the time and 0 50% of the time.

Option A is explicitly better than A and B.

If you make B into 20 100% of the time and option C into 25 75% of the time 10 25% of the time then Option A is still explicitly better than A and B.

Equilibrium in this game is A with a payout of 25 all the time. Nothing changed in your payout, the game defined by these options does not make you any more better off when options B and C got buffed.

So long as options B and C don't get buffed above A the class does not get any stronger.

 

[Regicide]

In this thread: People who have forgotten that D&D does not in this edition, the last edition, nor in any edition, work as an accurate simulation of realistic combat. Not only that, it does not -try- to work as an accurate simulation of realistic combat.

You're confusing accurate and detailed. Comparing two fighters abilities, saying one will win a bit more often then tossing a d6 to figure out who wins IS an accurate simulation of combat, just a very none detailed one. 3E did in fact try to be a reasonably accurate simulation of combat, but a fairly high level on that could be done quickly.

D&D has always been about high fantasy, about sword and sorcery. More J. R. R. Tolkien and less G. R. R. Martin. Do a lot of these maneuvers make sense in a realistic battleground? No.

Again, most of 3E's maneuvers made sense on a realistic battleground. 4E on the other hand, no, they don't. They are completey divorced from reality and don't, in fact, even vaguely represent Tolkien or Martin or most "classic" swords and sorcery books or movies. 3E does that.

4E represents the "other" fantasy movies. The non-classic, often child-centric fantasy. The ones where characters can leap 20 or 50 feet straight up on to a building or perch on the top of a tree like naruto or chinese movies where you can see the strings. Also Uwe Boll movies and video games. Fantasy where normal characters ignore gravity regularly are the ones with 4E's crazy maneuvers and is what 4E represents. That is not anything like Tolkien or Martin.

To be fair 4E didn't even TRY to represent something like Martin or Tolkien. 4E starts with heroic characters, those books don't, they start with beginners and it's only by the end of the books where they've picked up some fighting skills and a magic item that they'd even qualify as being level 1 in 4E. By the 2nd season Naruto could have kicked Gandalf's butt, taken the ring beaten it in a mental battle and declared himself lord of the Middle Earth. I mean, the guy walks on water, he could even beat Jesus.

 

[BlockyPS]

Hi APC,

ridiculously anecdotal. More people killed by swords in combat than knives by a factor of likely 10-1

Define combat – do you mean warfare? If so then it’s more likely to be 100-1. However, on the street it’s probably more like 1000-1 the other way.

And I’m not making an anecdotal argument here. Stop and consider the body. A cut can kill! It’s as simple as that. Slide a razor sharp blade across a person’s neck open the carotid and they’re dead. Cut the Brachial under the arm or femoral in the leg and its game over. Similar story with tendons cut a hamstring, the person can’t stand, they can’t fight.

Do you think you would fair well against a sword and board knight in chainmail? I don't. A trained fencer with an epee/foil? I don't. A samurai with a katana? I don't. A germanic barbarian with a maul or great axe? I don't. All of the present various problems for your system. You're not always going to be the best trained or the fastest and if you're not both of those you're likely going to die when wielding two knives vs a more imposing weapon.

Well, APC you have no idea what I do as you’ve never seen it. You’re simply guessing from your own experience and references. Fair enough, what else can you go on? I’d say you’d be surprised what can be done with two knives, in this case you simply don’t know what you don’t know.

How would I go against them? It depends. Assume equal level of training and equal quality of weapons. Each poses their own problems and challenges but each is also manageable if you think about the dynamics of the fight.

You seem to constantly assume that the person with the longer/bigger weapon automatically hits. No matter what weapon they use, be it a sword, spear, pole, it has to enter my defensive zone in which case I have a chance of stopping the attack. You also seem to think that a larger weapon CAN’T be stopped, but you are simply wrong. It can be up to a certain point and beyond that the weapon is usually so heavy and unwieldy that it creates its own problems for the user.

I guarantee you can't block my one handed swing with a long sword with a dagger.

Maybe, maybe not, but I wouldn’t risk it. For a guy your size I wouldn’t use one knife.

If you're inside the arc you're going to take damage and then it becomes a matter of recovery vs counter.

Assuming I have no idea what I’m doing, that I have no idea of how to use proper body structure and force to block. Sure.

I can feint you into exhaustion because you need to work overtime at avoiding being hit.

Actually no I wouldn’t. You’re assuming I would fight how you would fight. I treat a feint as an attack. That probably sounds like a silly notion but it’s not, as I have found in practice. There are many good reasons for this approach but I’d have to write something akin to an article to explain it. Which I don’t have time for here.

I also guarantee that you can't strike a vital blow with a 1' knife if I shield bash you and extend my arm. Meanwhile I'm taking your balance and opening you up to a host of attacks from front leg attacks to a reach around thrust or an overhand crushing blow.

Hang on a second. You’re now bringing shields and armour into this equation when the original argument was over two daggers vs a single weapon. As I said before, I have no experience with this combo so can’t comment unless you want me to consider it further.

Who ever you're sparring with is not using high force attacks because your wrist and forearm will not take the amount of energy a 6'5" 250lb man can generate even when spread out via the flat edge. Against a novice attacker you might be able to step inside a blow and fend off a heavy attack close to the hilt but a trained attacker will feint a chop and run you through when you step inside the blow. I know a little bit about two weapon fighting, two of my friends are "dog brothers". They train quite a bit and have regular gatherings for full contact stick fighting. They totally agree that switching which weapon is defending and which weapon is attacking is a fundamental part of two weapon combat, it still maintains my position that the second weapon doesn't actually grant a second attack (except rarely)

True. You can’t replicate reality when training or else people die. However, you can replicate a) power – to test defensive structure, b) speed – to test reaction times and c) strategy – to test counters.

And yes, those Kali guys are good. They follow many of the principles I use but not all of them

And need I say it again – I agree that a second weapon shouldn’t necessarily grant a second attack in D&D

I question this. I understand the techniques used to block heavy blows with knives (or tonfa) but there is a point where you can't maintain the block or the force with either overwhelm the defense or render the blocking arm less useful to some degree.

Yes, you are right but you’d be surprised where this point is. Some weapons are just too heavy to block. I wouldn’t even try to block a Chinese Maul which weights 80 pounds. Your strategy has to change under those circumstances but not for swords, spears, poles etc.

I understand all of this but there are still two problems. First this still implies a defense and an offense which means 1 attack and second it ignores the very real possibility that you'll be killed before you ever close the range gap.

As I said before, you are assuming that that one attack hits. It might miss or be blocked. If possible, you want to initiate the first attack but if they have a longer weapon you have to go after it first. If it’s in my defensive zone (about 3 feet from my body) I can do this. If it’s not, I wait for the weapon to come closer.

bad analogy because even if i never hit you with my left hand it still can block your right or be used for control, leverage, grappling etc.

Not at all. If you want to try and use an empty hand to control a live blade be my guest. I see where you’re trying to come from here but the reality is 2 blades against one has the advantage and if you try to commit your empty hand to the fray it’s just lights up as a huge target and is more than likely to get cut up very badly.

the other involved a pair of drunk men beating on a woman in a gas station and me verbally saying "hey, take it easy" precipitated an encounter.

I commend your gallantry! Good job!

HP's are a necessary abstraction to make dnd fun. No one enjoys automatically losing a pc every 50 or 100 attacks.

Fully agree!

while a simple cut "can" kill a person, the truth is it most likely won't. I've seen someone with a punctured heart survive. I totally agree it's possible to generate enough force to puncture most armors with a knife. The tricky part here is if your opponent is trained he's likely going to be impeding your ability to generate a perfect attack either through his posture, his active defenses, or his offense. His passive defenses are therefore vastly improved because most of your attacks will wind up being sub optimal.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record; cut the artery and the person’s dead. You can have a team of crack surgeons standing by on the spot and they wouldn’t be able to save them.

You’re right that generating the right piercing power is difficult but a cut is always my preferred attack type. You’re right about armour giving a person a distinct advantage but our originally argument wasn’t about daggers vs armour. It was daggers vs weapons.

Reach is pretty much always an advantage. Obviously if someone has a 15' pike and you pass his guard it's game over but a 30" sword has a MASSIVE advantage over a 12" knife.

Reach has its advantages but weapons that grant reach also have their drawbacks. My position is that I think there are more drawbacks with a reach weapon then there are with 2 knives and 2 knives have the advantage over one sword even though it has greater reach than the knives.

The major reason for this is that I can reach and control the weapon when it enters my zone and that’s all that I need. It’s irrelevant that I can’t reach the person as I don’t need to at that point.

Give me a broadsword and a spiked buckler and I'll dominate your two knife system even though my training is extremely minimal with that pairing. I'll certainly teach you a massive lesson about lead leg vulnerability.

Maybe, maybe not. Again you have no idea what I do so you are making statements from a position of assumption, not knowledge. And lead leg vulnerability is something I am acutely aware of and know how to manage.

The suggestion that it's easy to close the range or that it's really hard to use a spear to good effect on an attacker who is trying to close seems poorly chosen.

I haven’t argued this at all APC. You seem to think that closing the range means advancing on the attacker by dodging and weaving. I don’t close the range until I have the weapon under control. At a guess I’d say you have little exposure to this concept. Once my weapon touches the opponents, one of my two weapons stays in contact with it the WHOLE time.

Men have hunted lions with spears for ages. Hunting lions with knives would be tantamount to suicide. An elephant? Rhino? Dragon? DnD has to abstract weapons into a balanced game. 1' knives would be pitiful against a scaled dragon with a 10-15' reach. Any weapon would be seemingly pitiful but it's a lot easier to imagine a sword or spear having effect than a dagger.

You’re getting off track again APC. We’re not talking about fighting animals. We’re talking about fighting MEN who have weapons. And we’re certainly not talking about fighting dragons lol.

A trained attacker will shift his angle slightly and seriously damage your forearm. Your wrists must be extremely flexible or the knives shaped oddly to get enough surface on your forearm.

I’m not 100% sure what you mean here. I assume you mean reversing a knife so it acts like a Tonfa. Well, I would never reverse a knife. It’s a very silly thing to do in a fight for a variety of reasons. You’re Kali friends would no doubt disagree with me on that tho

If you're suggesting that you're deflecting rather than blocking I'm suggesting your attackers are not good. I also think you're mistaken that you're blocking a full swing. There's a lot of energy being created by the head speed of the bat/sword and the knife is not spreading it over the entire forearm like a tonfa might.

Deflection or block entirely depends on the angle and type of attack. A thrust from a spear I’d deflect, a swing from a sword I’d block. And yes, they are full swings from a pretty big and strong guy. I can see how confused you can get when you’re imagining one thing (using a Tonfa) and I’m doing something entirely different. Limitations of a forum I’m afraid.

One of the problems with sparring that might lead you to a mistaken conclusion is the belief that you can repeatedly block a full speed sword swing under an adrenal state. If they were sparring against you with a bat or sword and took a full swing you would have a serious chance of being injured. This leads me to believ you're not facing full force attacks from a suitable weapon. This isn't something easily replicated for training and the mechanical 1/4 speed training you might have done most likely DOES NOT REPLICATE actual combat.

Yep, as I said before you can’t simulate reality as people will die. However, you can simulate aspects of reality which can give you the feedback you need to know whether what you’re doing is working or not.

Also, the way we fight, if we block or deflect an attack, the opponent rarely gets a chance to make a second attack as we flow immediately into offence. Again hard to picture unless you see what we do.

DnD has lions and bears and dragons... I think you would rapidly change your mind when presented with these situations. I'm also of the opinion if this was the case, there would be statues of double knife wielding warriors in in Rome.

Argument is Human v Human remember

you're mistaken. I'm well aware of the liabilities of weapons as well as their strengths. People attacking with a weapon often lose focus and pay attention entirely to their weapon thus if you control the weapon you control them.

You’re talking about a psychological situation here. I’m talking about the physical dynamics of a fight. Your psychological point is valid but not relevant to the concept of physical weapon control.

You overlook the most important part of my post. More often than not, offense trumps defense in combat. More often than not you'll be killed before you reach knife range. If your argument held water we would have seen a lot more of that system in historical combats.

Yes, yes, you keep coming back to this; they attack you, you die it’s all over. And you seem to think that defence is near useless. Well, my experience, training and knowledge says otherwise.

Historical combat? Do you mean warfare? We have already discussed the different dynamics there. See more below.

When I said looking for an opening I meant an opening to advanced my position without letting you advance yours. I've actually had firearms and knives pointed at me in the heat of the moment and I'm still here, so I think you might assume that I'm well aware of the concept of attacking the weapon/weapon hand.

Well, I’m not sure what you mean by advance your position. Can you give me an example? I’m glad you’re aware of the concept of attacking the weapon/weapon hand.

Many armies had tons of training. You're not really making a point here.

Define ton’s of training? What percentage of historical armies were professional soldiers? What percentage were conscripts or levied workers? What sort of training did they get? The answer is the vast bulk of armies were made up of poorly trained conscripted troops.

And my point is that armies weren’t made up of thousands of martial artists who trained everyday. In fact historically it was only the rich who could afford the cost of training in martial arts and martial artists were very family orientated. You’d have to be invited to learn. Even in the European societies it was only the rich lords who could afford armour and the tutors to learn to use weapons. It’s not like today where you can walk down the street and join a martial arts club.

So my point which you obviously missed was most battles occurred with relatively untrained troops, hence the need for weapons they could learn to use quickly and then use in simple formations to the greatest effect. So to use historical warfare as an argument for your point of view is fundamentally flawed.

I gave you hard numbers I can prove and you're commenting on woeful medical practices in medieval times. I just pointed out your assertion that most combats end in a few seconds is simply not true or else a battle that lasted hours would see casualty rates beyond anything ever experienced. An average centurion would carve you up without missing a step because he has more training, more experience, and better reach.

And my point was casualty rates were much higher than you suggest because people who were rendered ineffective on the battlefield from injuries usually died. The true extent of casualties in past is probably more like 50-70%.

My reference to a few seconds was between 2 highly skilled people who after initial contact, one would have got the advantage and killed their opponent. As I point out above, armies were not made up of people who trained for 10-20 years. Usually they got only several months to train and you can only get so good in that time.

you're really kidding yourself. How many hours a day do you train?

If you say so. 3-5 days a week for 2-5 hours per training session. Entirely depends on how busy things get in my life. Like now, I haven’t trained for 3 months at all as I’m performing on stage or rehearsing every day.

But my instructor, who’s continuously trained for the last 40 years spent a whole 10 year period where he trained 8 hours a day, everyday. Pretty incredible but then life styles were very different back in the 60/70’s.

History must be wrong. You keep assuming the miss incidentally. What happens when they don't miss? what happens when you face an even marginally well trained attacker who knows that 1' knives can't protect your leading leg? how will you close then? There are also a lot of weapons that you can't ever gain a real advantage on. A 20" gladius sharp on both sides, can be used to attack your weapon hands or leading leg and it's speed is comparable to that of a knife. You can almost never get insides it's reach but it still has an advantage when striking you first.

No, I do not assume a miss! I always assume a serious attack that is trying to kill me! I don’t try and dodge, I try to use superior speed, structure and angles to get the advantage.

Again you have no idea what I do, so you are making assumptions. A Gladius is a sword, it follows the same rules as all other swords. I’m not sure why you picked this weapon over any other sword to make a point with. I’m starting to sense a bit of a preoccupation with all things Roman?

OK, I'm not there when you train but I suspect that you can't mirror real world combat and safely train your style and as such some things fall through the cracks. Stopping one heavy sword blow (i.e. a perfectly placed baseball bat attack) and stopping several during the fluidity of combat are not the same. I'm unsure how your system would respond to punches from a spiked buckler, or shield with sharpened edges. Your system has to rely on agility and a shield rush can take away a lot of options.

Again, I haven’t been arguing about knives vs shields. Only about TWO knives vs ONE weapon.

Some things you can test, some things are simply common sense and when you’ve trained 10+ years you get a certain insight into how things work.

And if I find myself in the position that I have to stop several blows in a row, then I must have done something very very wrong to get into that position.

Point taken. I apologize. I'm not trying to be little you but I think there is a lot of empirical data that says sword and shield was the combo of choice. I don't think your training mimics actual combat close enough to be sure that a heavy sword attacker won;t cave in your defenses under a flurry of blows. Heavy swords sometimes caved in the defenses of heavy shields and you can't really believe blocking with a dagger is easier or less risky than blocking with a shield.

I appreciate the apology – whole heartedly accepted.

A heavy sword, yes I can block. A maul, not much of a chance. It depends on the attacker.

But maybe a sword and shield is better than two knives. I don’t know. It would make an interesting experiment but I don’t know anyone who’s highly trained with them. Any answer I could give would be based on my current experience and knowledge, not real life application.

However, sword and Shield vs 2 knives was never the argument I was trying to make. 2 knives vs a single weapon, I find superior.

I agree on fluidity and speed. Harmoniously is a judgment call. My problem is that I perceive the reach advantage to be significant enough to overcome the fluidity/speed.

And I think you have that perception because you have never seen anyone use 2 knives properly against someone attacking with a reach weapon

 

[Mad Hamish]

Guys, could we please drop the real world combat discussions now?

I don't think they're going anywhere and it's making the actual game discussion a bit hard to find in this thread.

 

[BlockyPS]

Fine with me MH,

If people do want to discuss it start a new thread - athough it's probably not appropriate on this forum.

Or feel free to PM me.

Cheers
BlockyPS

 

[Plane Sailing]

In fact, most people would be surprised to learn that in the whole of the armed services bare-handed and knife combat has little place in training, besides bayonet drilling. Most of the guys in the SAS here actually get their martial arts training outside of the forces and even fewer get proper training with weapons.

Might be true in Oz, but definitely not true in the UK (knife training has been important for the commandos since the day of their inception, and is still considered to be an important aspect of training). This isn't melee/duelling, of course. The point is more akin to assassination, killing the target before he has had a chance to react!

Now this is more interesting but it’s impossible for me to critique it without seeing it. The main thing I’d want to know is whether the master attempted to control the incoming weapon. If he was relying on his speed only (and Kempo experts are damn fast) then he is being quite foolish.

I believe the Kenjutsu and Kempo arts developed from the Samurai who were imo the most advanced practitioners when it came to training of the martial mind. It is amazing stuff but dying out as the sportification of martial starts taking over the world.

But for this ‘master’ that you watched, I’d have to see for myself. I’ve met many ‘masters’ over the years that I have just not been impressed with. These days anyone can call themselves ‘master’ it seems.

He was Ritsuke Otake Sensei teaching Tenshi Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu in Narita City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Apparently a pretty well known guy.

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

BTW, I could split out the 'real world' discussion posts into a separate thread with my mighty moderator powers (tm) if there is any desire to keep the discussion going.

Of course, the thread diverged quite radically from the original post by the end of about page 1!

Cheers