Why does an RQ spear do more damage the longer it is?

[Akhôrahil]

I can see why one- or two-handed grip would matter, and potentially you might differentiate between different spearheads, and obviously a longer reach is an advantage in fights, but why does a spear in RQ do more damage just from being longer? Short spear 2H, 1d8+1. Long spear, 1d10+2. Pike, 2d6+1. Similar with 1H Short Spear and Lance.

[soltakss]

Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads. You could argue that they have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage.

[Runeblogger]

Any 1H weapon should do more damage if you use it two-handed.

[Akhôrahil]

23 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads. You could argue that they have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage.

I'm not sure that's true - if anything, you can't have as heavy a head on longer spears, because of issues with leverage (and nothing stops you from having a big head on a short spear anyway). I don't believe pike head were historically unusually large?

Picture this: someone shows you a big block of ballistic gel, and tells you you need to puncture it as deeply as you can. What length of spear do you go for? I imagine a shorter one would be more effective, as it's easier to handle. I sure wouldn't poke it with a 4 meter pike.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

2 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

Any 1H weapon should do more damage if you use it two-handed.

This I agree with, and it's already in the rules for spears (but not axes). But I was talking about a short 2H spear vs a long 2H spear.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[revshafer]

Think of a spear as a lever. Short handled lever isn’t going to do as much. Long handled lever does more, until it gets so long it’s unwieldy.

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, revshafer said:

Think of a spear as a lever. Short handled lever isn’t going to do as much. Long handled lever does more, until it gets so long it’s unwieldy.

But it’s not a lever - you poke people with it, not bash or slash them. It’s a good argument for halberds, though.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[revshafer]

It is a lever. Swords are levers. A dagger is basically a short lever. A two handed sword is a long lever. They all magnify force in one way or another. Long spears will have more momentum than short spears.

[soltakss]

9 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I can see why one- or two-handed grip would matter, and potentially you might differentiate between different spearheads, and obviously a longer reach is an advantage in fights, but why does a spear in RQ do more damage just from being longer?

It's a game mechanic.

• Bigger is better.
• By using two hands you can get more power behind the blow.
• Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads.
• They have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage.
• Whatever the game Designers thought at the time.
• Because they are.

Take your pick ...

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

• Bigger is better.

I think this is probably it. It can even be argued that it's questionable whether larger swords should do more damage - in modern cutting competitions, something like a large knife or a short sword (kopis in particular) tends to cut better than larger swords. Longswords and katanas do not perform well in something like Knife or Death.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[Eff]

36 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think this is probably it. It can even be argued that it's questionable whether larger swords should do more damage - in modern cutting competitions, something like a large knife or a short sword (kopis in particular) tends to cut better than larger swords. Longswords and katanas do not perform well in something like Knife or Death.

Well. The shortsword and rapier do identical damage despite the rapier being twice the length. And the rapier does less damage than the broadsword or kopis as well. So it's not quite so simple. I think that the real outlier is the greatsword, in that it's purely a slashing weapon, where the medieval version of the type was (in Runequest terms) a cut-and-thrust weapon that was frequently used as a short spear. So perhaps the Runequest version is intended to be something like a zhanmadao/anti-cavalry saber but then it's described as two-edged. It's a puzzle.

In general, though, I'd say that the basic guiding principle behind damage ratings seems to be leverage- the more torque or power you can generate, the more physical damage you do to the body. So a second hand on a spear gives you additional leverage for thrusting, and so on with a longer spear, and then a dedicated cavalry lance is balanced specifically for gruesome injury. And a dagger-axe has a small blade but lots of torque, and so on. Obviously, there are exceptions, but overall I think it makes general sense.

I also do want to point out that cutting meat cleanly is not necessarily the point of a sword or other edged military weapon.

[Akhôrahil]

 

1 hour ago, Eff said:

I also do want to point out that cutting meat cleanly is not necessarily the point of a sword or other edged military weapon.

True, but the shorter blades seem better for everything in those competitions, including chopping up wooden beams and boxes, plastic hoses, and so on. Meanwhile, longswords and katanas have not been nearly as impressive when people brought them, and worse, have a tendency to bend or break. Oversized Bowie to smallish Kopis seems to be the sweet spot for maximum destruction and cutting.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[Shiningbrow]

Something not yet considered here... Even if we buy the "longer = more momentum" (I don't), do we really think it's worth 50% more damage?

[SDLeary]

15 hours ago, revshafer said:

It is a lever. Swords are levers. A dagger is basically a short lever. A two handed sword is a long lever. They all magnify force in one way or another. Long spears will have more momentum than short spears.

This could be true, if you are fencing with a spear; say a Yari, Naginata, or European fencing spear, which have longer heads about the size of daggers or short swords. Regular spears though are used for poking. While momentum could apply, there would not be enough additional momentum (due to shaft and head) to increase damage in the way envisioned by the rules.

The reason is probably just for fun... to give someone impetus to try something more than a simple spear or other weapon (same could be true for shortswords and swords as well, even though they are levers).

SDLeary

Edited August 30, 2021 by SDLeary

[SDLeary]

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

It's a game mechanic.

• Bigger is better.

Yes

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

• By using two hands you can get more power behind the blow.

Perhaps, but again not necessarily more to push the damage as much as seen.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

• Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads.

 

No. Head size and weapon length have nothing to do with one another. As mentioned above, a longer spear with a larger head would be much more difficult to maneuver, and thus hit with.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

• They have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage.

 

Again, see a previous post.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

• Whatever the game Designers thought at the time.

 

This.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

• Because they are.

Which is the same as your previous bullet point! 😉

SDLeary

 

[SDLeary]

4 hours ago, Eff said:

I think that the real outlier is the greatsword, in that it's purely a slashing weapon

Half-swording and poking with the point is a thing 🙂

SDLeary

[simonh]

Maybe with a longer weapon you can devote more energy and focus on offence. The extra range means you’re not under as much threat, so can throw a lot more time and energy into the blow.

In RQ in practice high damage rolls is largely about getting through armour, so we give high damage rolls to ‘military’ weapons were likely to be using against armoured opponents. Lighter weapons are seen as being less effective against armour, or even just less commonly used against it. A short spear is a hunting weapon, hunters don’t often go up against mail, but long spears are used in phalanxes against armoured opponent. Let’s give them more damage so they are effective. We want weapons used in a context to be effective in that context, right?

Honestly I’ve been uneasy about the correlation between weapon size and damage for a while. I can see the momentum argument, but take medieval daggers like the Rondel. These things were vicious weapons specifically used to kill armoured knights. If you could get in close to an armoured opponent the dagger was how you got through a gap, put some weight behind it and ended them. This is shown graphically several times in The King, notably Timothée Chalamet as Henry uses this tactic in a duel early on. It also seems to be how Richard III met his end.

Edited August 30, 2021 by simonh

[Akhôrahil]

7 hours ago, simonh said:

Honestly I’ve been uneasy about the correlation between weapon size and damage for a while. I can see the momentum argument, but take medieval daggers like the Rondel. These things were vicious weapons specifically used to kill armoured knights. If you could get in close to an armoured opponent the dagger was how you got through a gap, put some weight behind it and ended them. This is shown graphically several times in The King, notably Timothée Chalamet as Henry uses this tactic in a duel early on.

Giving some weapons less outright damage but an armour-piercing ability would be an interesting rules hack. Swords were essentially abandoned on the late-medieval battlefield because they couldn't harm a fully armoured soldier. Glorantha doesn't have anywhere close to that armour quality, of course, but instead it has magical protection and natural armour.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[simonh]

27 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Giving some weapons less outright damage but an armour-piercining ability would be an interesting rules hack. Swords were essentially abandoned on the late-medieval battlefield because they couldn't harm a fully armoured soldier. Glorantha doesn't have anywhere close to that armour quality, of course, but instead it has magical protection and natural armour.

Right, magical armour is a problem. We could give a dagger armour penetration if you can get in close, and closing was a tactic I favoured back in RQ3, but do Protection spells have gaps the way armour does?

Edit: I don't know if its worth the bother. Ancient world armour was much less complete than the medieval stuff so you didn't need as specialised equipment and tactics to defeat it, so special rules are probably unnecessary. I stand by the practical point I made though, the important thing is that weapons and tactics that were used historically remain effective, and whatever the finer points of whys and wherefores, the current rules achieve that. If that means long spears get a few extra points of damage so they remain the weapon of choice in armoured combat then that's fine by me.

Edited August 30, 2021 by simonh

[Kloster]

16 minutes ago, simonh said:

and closing was a tactic I favoured back in RQ3

Same for me. I miss it.

16 minutes ago, simonh said:

Protection spells have gaps the way armour does?

Logically, a spell has no gaps, but in that case, a protection spell should apply in case of a critical, and it seems it does not.

[simonh]

6 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Logically, a spell has no gaps, but in that case, a protection spell should apply in case of a critical, and it seems it does not.

Good point on criticals, yes protection spells clearly have gaps, and I don't se why they shouldn't. There's no particular reason to expect them to be uniform force fields, maybe they are literal magical suits of armour. We know the long term armour enchantment cast on one famous Greek hero had a very famous gap in it.

Edited August 30, 2021 by simonh

[David Scott]

8 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Logically, a spell has no gaps

This did make me laugh.

[Kloster]

Just now, David Scott said:

This did make me laugh.

My pleasure.

[French Desperate WindChild]

 it is an issue, for sure (how difficult it is to murder someone with good armor in glorantha with a dagger when you don't have a lot of magic or the strength of a giant)

but...

without very complex rules I don't see any solution to mitigate it. I don't want one hundred tables to simulate it well so I m satisfied with it (I m pretty sure we would need a lot of tables to simulate all the possibilities)

I don't read short 2H spear and long 2H spear, but 2h spears with more or less damage, some tactical advantages for one (ex in a tunnel for the shorter) some advantage for the other (ex, in front of a charging bison for the longer)

[Eff]

6 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Half-swording and poking with the point is a thing 🙂

SDLeary

Yes. But in the RQG rules, a greatsword is a pure slashing weapon, unlike the other straight swords, which are all cut-and-thrust, so by default you're not using the thing for halfswording or poking people. I'm not sure if this is an oversight or a particular vision I'm just not getting.