Weapon/Implement Speeds

[Markn]

Not much love for this idea I see.

 

[Obryn]

Maybe in your world, but in my world the guy with the greatsword gets one swing that is easy to predict and therefore easy to dodge before the guy with the dagger is slitting his throat.

I think my world is closer to reality than yours.

Um, okay? No, but okay.

Unarmored peasants preferred spears and polearms over kitchen knives for a reason. Tall guys with long arms have advantages over short guys with small arms, too. In every combat, up until the point you're basically wrestling with one another, you have the advantage if you can reach them and they can't reach you. If your weapon is shorter, you need the other guy to be unaware of you in order to make it work - or within their effective reach already.

Speed factors in 2e get it exactly wrong. Look, for instance, at spears vs. daggers. Spears are in no way, shape, or form slower than daggers. They are long, giving you a lever-type effect at the end, allowing you to move the point very quickly. Stabbing is a similar action in both cases. And yet, spears get the shaft (ha!) on speed factors.

Finally, look, I'm not one to claim that anything like SCA or Belegarth-style boffer-combat gives you any kind of real combat training or experience. It doesn't, and people who think it does are ridiculous. However, certain principles are rather universal to all fighting, real or fake. Reach is one of these.

This whole "dodging a clumsy blow" thing is a fantasy - which, I might note, is just dandy for D&D, hence my reluctance to include reaches and speed factors in D&D combat.

Reach is a very big consideration on any melee combat. Whether that's boxing or greatswords.

Also, optimal greatsword use is not necessarily in dramatic huge swings that are easy to predict, mm?

Yep, exactly. Heck, in medieval sword manuals, you'd sometimes do crazy stuff like grabbing your sword's blade and hitting someone with the pommel.

-O

 

[chronoplasm]

An enchanted weapon that grants a bonus to initiative equal to the weapon's enhancement bonus might be cool, but I don't see it as a common thing for all weapons.

 

[Garthanos]

An enchanted weapon that grants a bonus to initiative equal to the weapon's enhancement bonus might be cool, but I don't see it as a common thing for all weapons.

Such a weapon might make you more aggressive ... and see openings sooner.

 

[chronoplasm]

Such a weapon might make you more aggressive ... and see openings sooner.

Maybe give it a daily power where you can take a penalty to initiative to gain some sort of damage bonus until the end of the encounter.

 

[aco175]

The biggest problem I see with 4e weapon speed vs. 2e is the point of rolling initiative every round. You would need to go to this in 4e if you wanted speed to be a factor past the 1st round in combat. You simply fall into the same order the next round and it is moot.

You can go back to rolling init every round, which would slow combat a bit more than it is now. Another idea is to subtract the speed from your init every round making you slower progressivly the longer the fight goes on. I'm not a big fan of this either, as it would slow play down as well.

 

[Kzach]

My expertise comes from watching Ultimate Fighter

Reach is an over-estimated advantage. It only gives you an advantage until someone can close the distance and take the advantage away. If you want to talk fantasy, it's a fantasy that reach is the be all and end all. It's also a fantasy that the really long swords like claymores and zweihanders were fast. You swing something that large, it doesn't matter what weight it is, the momentum alone will pull you off balance.

Someone with a dagger can move faster than someone with a greatsword. That's my stance and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Garthanos]

My expertise comes from watching Ultimate Fighter

Reach is an over-estimated advantage. It only gives you an advantage until someone can close the distance and take the advantage away.

And its simple to drop back (or usually push your enemy and self back - a common trained technique so you aren't losing ground) so effectively if they aren't killed before closing, then after closing if they didn't kill their enemy they will end up having to do it again "every time"

Actual usage techniques of the big weapons neither throw the user off balance nor make closing easy... because they use the weapons presence itself as a very offensive defense - closing is very risky.. . the markedly shorter weapon takes far more effort to get an attack in at far greater risk.

Your physics is questionable too... Momentum = mass x velocity (the weapons momentum cant be an issue unless its either got an unwieldy amount of mass read the article about real sword weights ... and pretend when they say weight they mean an easy measure of mass) ... velocity is the speed you are claiming these weapons don't have and they are realistically frequently faster than many other 1 handed blades.

Axes are end balanced sounds like they ought to throw there users out of balance right? but frequently the longest strokes that are used with the weapon are downwards and never spin or otherwise mess with their users balance "in a unplanned for way".

A knife can be hidden inside jacket or used at a dinner table... those are there main historical appeal and why they are still in use today. (the other advantage throwability is kind of questionable -- throwing your weapon is not as common in real life as in the movies because it does suck to be disarmed.. and if the range changes suddenly on you ...the attack will fall flat ;-))

I recommend you take up Kendo ;-) or study it... nope its not real fighting its fun. (the bamboo sticks are only marginally lighter than the real blades I have decorating my living room and library walls).

Sticking to ignorance is usually considered a less than admirable thing but whatever floats your boat.

 

[LostSoul]

I think my world is closer to reality than yours.

Not all of us have 100' arms.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, it is all coming back to me now. The 2e weapon speed system was preposterous.

Kzach, you can poopoo SCA style rattan fighting techniques if you want, but observe. The weapons are historically accurate in weight, size, and balance. Experience with this style of fighting may not be exactly the same as the real thing, but consider that very similar training techniques were used historically to train warriors, so I have to question exactly how unrealistic they are. Boffers are a whole other story and have very little to do with any kind of realism, but then again nobody who's handled period weapons or fought with rattan ones would claim otherwise.

Reach is a huge advantage in real world fighting. There is a VERY high probability, verging on 100% that any attack by someone wielding a dagger or shortsword is going to take a blow while attempting to close. The real issue is you can't STOP it. What are you going to do, parry my swordthrust with your knife which is 1/5th its length? Even if you manage to do that without being forced back a 2-hander is easily fast enough to cut you again before you get close enough and in the process of making that riposte I've also stepped back and/or driven you back. Remember too, I have 2 hands on my weapon, which means I have twice the muscle power to move it around with and several times the leverage. The tip speed of my weapon is 6-8 times higher than yours.

The fact is a longer reach weapon, particularly a sword which is an especially wieldy weapon, will win out 9 out of 10 times in such a matchup. It will probably win 8 out of 10 times against a longsword. Usually the fight will last 3 seconds. Now, throw in a shield for your guy with his short weapon and things are MUCH more even, but you still have the problem of trying to actually get the longer weapon user to stay close. Barring some terrain which stops them from simply backing, circling, or using an en-passant attack you basically have to just force them to keep beating on your shield while you hold out for that chance to get inside. A skilled fighter can do it and I've seen some very good sword and buckler fighters, but still all other things being equal the longer weapon wins hands down.

Smaller weapons were cheaper, easier to make, easy to conceal, worked well in situations where there was limited space, etc. In open melee skirmish type combat similar to what D&D depicts they would be mostly inferior weapons. One of the main reasons they were ubiquitous wasn't their quality as a weapon, it was the fact that a knife was simply a common implement carried by almost anyone at all times. Thus you simply HAD one handy and its a heck of a lot better than nothing if you get attacked and a perfectly deadly weapon if you can attack with surprise or in a restricted space like indoors.

Anyway. To get back to the original topic, I think things like weapon speed factors or maybe more usefully weapon reaches in theory are something you really need to factor into any realistic combat system, but the detail level of the 4e combat system isn't really high enough to make it worthwhile. Beyond that so many huge inaccuracies already exist in the 4e combat system that tacking on one realistic factor atop that really won't make sense. First you'd have to ditch most of the weapons in 4e and introduce accurate versions. Then you'd have to do a lot of other stuff. It probably wouldn't be as fun a game either. 4e ignores a lot of the distinctions between weapons and amplifies others simply so they can all interestingly be used together in one context. Realistically most of the weapons portrayed would simply be inappropriate in many cases and there would be just a few really good choices for any situation. A "realistic" fighter probably would have a variety of weapons at his disposal to use as appropriate vs the "I always use my big sword" kind of thing that the game promotes.