GURPS Combat Choices: Cutting/Impaling Weapons Chart

Here's a table I've drawn up in preparation of analysis of some thrust/swing mechanics. It shows all the weapons from Basic Set, GURPS Martial Arts, and GURPS Low-Tech that have listings for both thrusting-impaling damage and swinging-cutting damage. It's mostly swords, plus some polearms and a couple of oddities.

	Thrust-2	Thrust-1	Thrust	Thrust+1	Thrust+2	Thrust+3
Swing-3		Small Knife, Balisong	Main-Gauche	Katar
Swing-2			Large Knife, Bladed Hand
Swing-1		Kukri	Long Knife	Saber, Light Edged Rapier, Large Katar, Shotel	Large Katar (LT)
Swing	Small Falchion		Shortsword, Cutlass	Jian, Edged Rapier, Shortsword (LT), Cutlass (LT)		Pata
Swing+1	Falchion			Katana 1-handed, Late Katana 1-handed, Cavalry Saber, Backsword, Qian Ku Ri Yue Dao	Broadsword, Longsword 1-handed, Bastard Sword 1-handed	Longsword 2-handed
Swing+2		Large Falchion	Dao	Katana 2-handed, Late Katana 2-handed		Naginata 1-handed, Bastard Sword 2-handed, Duelling Bill, Duelling Glaive
Swing+3						Glaive, Naginata 2-handed, Greatsword, Bill
Swing+4						Duelling Halberd, Light Horsecutter
Swing+5						Halberd, Heavy Horsecutter

Note that in Low-Tech, some weapon stats changed. Shortswords, cutlasses, and large katars were bumped up one level in thrusting damage, and one-handed use of the naginata was removed.

Two trends really stand out in this table. On a diagonal axis running from upper left to lower right, weapons go from small to large. Not surprisingly, bigger weapons do more damage.

On the other diagonal, from lower left to upper right, weapons go from more choppy to more stabby. (I hope I may be excused for lapsing into technical jargon there.) On one extreme, a falchion has barely any point to it at all, and is nearly an axe. On the other extreme, the katar and the pata are about as far as you can go toward specialization in stabbing while still retaining a cutting edge. I think these two diagonal axes are more important to understanding how the weapons got their stats than the stats themselves are, and if I knew how to do it, I'd rotate this table 45 degrees and make a diamond-shaped chart with size running top to bottom, and choppy vs. stabby running left-right. Sadly, my HTML skills are not up to that.

Another thing that this chart shows is the effect of enchantment and weapon quality. Add Puissance +1 to any weapon, or make it Fine quality, and you move one space diagonally down and to the right. So a Puissance +1 jian becomes, as far as damage is concerned, a broadsword. Very Fine or Puissance +2 moves you two spaces, so a Very Fine small knife hits like a saber -- but it's rather expensive and you still can't parry with it.

In my next post on this subject, I'll crunch a great big pile of numbers and see what I have to say about swinging versus thrusting damage for these weapons.