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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1237388" data-attributes="member: 12744">Well, not to get to long about it here, but the physics behind it and the probabilities involved do make a good case for it.  If you take a true 'average' modern day person and hand them a pistol or a greatsword, *IMO* chances are they are more likely to hurt themself with the sword than anyone else, while even without training they have a good chance of hurting someone with the gun.  Sure, I'm a great rifle shot but horrible with pistols, but I still have a pretty good chance of hitting someone within 10 or 15 feet, and it has nothing to do with how well I shoot or how strong, nervous, tired, etc I am whether the bullet does damage or not;  but my point is not whether you hit or not but how well you can hit with a sword or a bullet.  With a sword (and many melee weapons) there are just many more variables concerned with how much damage you can do even if you hit someone with it... the angle of your cut, speed/strength behind the swing, you current mental/physical condition etc.  I've seen experienced students who have extremely powerful swings exhibit bad form performing tameshigiri (test cutting in japanese swordsmanship) and barely cut anything.   A bullet is fairly consistent, though;  there are less controllable variables on your part that determine how much energy you are going to transfer to the target *if you hit*.  Sure, you have flesh wounds, etc but that bullet does move a lot faster than the end of a sword; IMO there is more chance of greater energy being transferred to the target (not always of course, but on average).  The fact is man, there is a *lot* more to using a sword than simply swinging it.  I can assure you of this, though I'm pretty sure without going into a long diatribe I wont convince you because pop culture and movies tell us all different.  Saying you can swing a greatsword as good as an old german Landschneckt because you can swing a baseball bat is like saying you think you would probably make a great spec ops sniper because you can hit a guy with a spitball out of a straw in gym class without him seeing you.  You talk about how jerky and hesitant with a gun you are?  Most people swinging a sword, even a practice one, are the same way before they get experience (I certainly was).  In contact training working with junior students they have almost invariably hesitate, get nervous, etc and deliver insufficient blows with the wrong part of the edge even though in training drills they exhibited good form.  And their life wasnt even in danger, it was training with wooden weapons.  They get over it soon enough, but that comes with experience and training.  Take a guy with a greatsword and add in a few feats (training) and some strength (conditioning) and he can do a lot more damage in the game on average than a guy with a .38, even if you bump the die up.  But the same guy is going to make a big hole in you if he hits you with the .44, training or not, tired or not, strong or not;  the training just makes it much more likely.  What I'm talking about is not how easy you get hit, but how likely the hit is to cause serious damage on *average* in an *average* modern world. All that being said, I think they did a great job balancing weapons in modern, and we've thought about adding a die to melee weapons to make them more dangerous, but guns, IMO, on average are just simply more dangerous because of how easy they can cause serious wounds, not because they *do* cause more serious wounds.   Anyone who thinks a sword cut is not as lethal needs to take a look at studies on the battle of Wisby.  But there is a *lot* more skill to *effectively* using a sword, particularly one that size, than you think.  Sure, you can swing it like a bat, but it aint round, and the flat just doesnt hurt as much.  If you want it to be like a B-movie, where everyone just automatically is an expert with a weapon that takes years to master, than that's ok;  dont use the system and use what comes with it, or just add a die to everything.  But in reality, with all due respect, it's just not as easy as you think to hurt someone seriously with a stick, sword, axe, whatever as it is a gun.I dont know where you got the idea that I thought that a crit with a greatsword is an automatic kill;  my point was that it would more than likely be a pretty bad wound (even having your arm lopped off isnt necessarily fatal... ask that 13 year old surfer who got hers bitten off by a shark about it) but even so historically speaking you can survive it.  My 'flavor text' was merely an example, not an indication of how it always is, but an extreme example meant to quickly illustrate the too-long points I've tried to make here  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> .  If you would like a lot more detailed idea of examples of sword effectivess and ineffectiveness, I have a lot of historical and modern documentation on swords (and other melee weapons) and their use I'd be happy to send you off list (just email me).</blockquote>

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