Geas

vurdijak wrote: Are there any real fighters out there, that know of positives or negatives in absorbing blows with arms as opposed to...dodging, using a shield or weapon to block...etc?

I know that when knife fighting you're always supposed to protect your vitals with your forearms. Afterall, I'd rather have a cut on my arm than my jugular sliced open.

Also, with my limited SCA fighting I've done, heavy and light, Sometimes you just sacrifice an arm to take a kill. Only if you're desperate though.

One funny thing about the SCA fighting, your brain knows it's not quite real. The adrenaline flows, you feel it [I love being in the shield wall], but it's not the same and your mind knows it. Making such a trade, or sacrificing a an arm for a kill, just seems even less likely than it already is in the SCA, when it's real.

That said, yes. In knife fighting, thai boxing and the like, fore arms and even shins are effective guards, but only against weak weapons. Keeping to the purpose of the thread, I could see it going the opposite of how Luminier imagined the abuse. I would accept a person in leg / arm plate and less on the body using those to guard. However, any weapon or shield you have is highly preferable.

On possible way to see this, I could imagine a person with very high deflect taking limb damage instead of torso damage, but on the other hand, what is the generic defense skill for? I am uncertain much needs to be done on this. Deflect as efficiency in combat, parry already exists for weapons, as well as the various armor skills. I just don't see this as needed.

I guess the armour skill, such as heavy armour, could be imagined to be used as I described, by blocking with it. The combat system is already so well developed that its hard to come up with basic motions that arent accounted for in some way. For example, I always thought of the dodge skill as including jumps and in some cases even rolls to the side, if a person is dodging right and left like crazy.

No! No more colors! *grin*

I disagree with Tessa that the idea of choosing to block with armoured arms is similar to the deflect skill. I've always imagined the deflect skill to be more of rolling with damage...For example, a sword hits you in the shoulder and instead of hacking through your leather, you slide your shoulder back at the same speed as the blade until you can move your shoulder, at which point the sword continues through its swing past your body. The deflect skill never explicitly even used arms and hands to succeed...I had a character who always double-wielded and had more than 3/4 of optimal deflect. It's Matrix-style movement, and nothing more.

I could see this being a neat addition, although I don't know how it would work balance-wise.

Well, for what it's worth, you can wear shields on the hands or forearms, and use those to block attacks.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it would add anything significant that isn't already well enough covered. I want the wizzies to work on cool stuff that we don't have a good solution to yet.