Mataxes wrote:It's actually kind of hard to "cut someone in half". There's a lot of bone and guts and fluid in the way.Slimcreeper wrote:I've often thought (but never really tested) that the larger weapons (i.e., the ones with higher strength requirements) should have substantially higher damage output. Can't a broadsword basically cut someone in half? And it only does a few more damage points on average than a dagger?
As kind of a quick-and-dirty thing, I looked at the numbers, factoring in the weapon's damage step with the (minimum) Strength needed.
Short Sword: Dmg 4 + Str 4 = Step 8
Broadsword: Dmg 5 + Str 5 = Step 10
Troll Sword: Dmg 6 + Str 6 = Step 12
2-hd Sword: Dmg 8 + Str 6 = Step 14
And higher Strength scores add to those baselines.
Considering the 'average' human has a Wound Threshold of 7 or 8 (TOU 10-12/Step 5), any of these weapons are capable of dealing a Wound to a 'typical' unarmored person. And for most untrained folks... a single Wound is probably enough to take them out of a fight. And is also dealing a not-insignificant portion of their available health pool to boot.
Remember, the game isn't a simulation. I'm not ever really shooting for "realism" in the ruleset, more the verisimilitude of "does this seem reasonable and make sense."
In ED3's "character toolkit" download, there was a table of non-adept namegiver "average" attributes. This might not be valid for 4E, but it's a base of comparison.
I'm not going to produce the table in full, but humans had these stats for a "normal person":
Dex 14/6
Str 13/6
Tou 14/6
Per 14/6
Wil 12/5
Cha 14/6
That is an array of +4, +4, +4, +4, +3, +2. That would cost 24 attribute build points in 4E.
It is noted that:
"Adepts and even high profile non-adepts (such as guardsmen, town leaders, gifted artisans, and so on) are not considered ordinary people and in addition will often increase Attributes pertaining to their fields of expertise in the course of their careers. They often use the Versatile or Focused Attribute Arrays (see above)."
Referencing the table above gives these (4E build points noted in parenthesis):
Focused +6 +5 +3 +2 +2 +2 (25 bp)
Versatile +5 +4 +4 +4 +2 +1 (25 bp)
The STR Mins in the book work fine in these ranges. This is a really interesting conversation so far, I've been taking notes for the Airship Crew rules, so thanks everybody. Just wanted to share the scale I was working with (not all air sailors are Adepts... though I need to nail down a ratio with Mataxes on that).