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Akula1115 wrote:I was curious as to why a Karate Kick can do more damage than an SD Knife strike. I'm thinking maybe I'm reading the rules wrong. My char has WP: Knives. and has a Standard Combat Knife (SD), and at best can do 1D6 SD Damage. Am I missing some additional points or is this how it's supposed to be? I ask, because here to for, the game has seemed pretty logical, and there exists precious few scenarios where I'd rather be stabbed or slashed then kicked here in the real world.

Thanks.

No real reason I can think of.
Knives are just under-rated weapons.

If you want to make them more effective, you can rule that edged weapon damage goes straight to HP, bypassing SDC.

Akula1115 wrote:I was curious as to why a Karate Kick can do more damage than an SD Knife strike. I'm thinking maybe I'm reading the rules wrong. My char has WP: Knives. and has a Standard Combat Knife (SD), and at best can do 1D6 SD Damage. Am I missing some additional points or is this how it's supposed to be? I ask, because here to for, the game has seemed pretty logical, and there exists precious few scenarios where I'd rather be stabbed or slashed then kicked here in the real world.

Thanks.

Your not missing anything. Your actually reading the rules correctly. Kicks do more damage than knives.

I do believe you are missing that you also add your punch damage+any strength damage to the knives as you would add the knives strike bonus to your Hand to Hand strike bonus due to the fact with a melée weapon like a knife you would be in a hand to hand situation not shooting. So the bonus to other would stack, unlike with a gun. It is one of the main reasons that juicers like to get up close and personnel there superior reflex's make a bigger advantage.

It's the difference of taking a fist to a knife fight, a knife to a gun fight and a gun to a grenade fight.

Plus I figure this makes more sense then an unarmed man being able to do more damage than one weilding a butcher knife, with both of them knowing the same hand to hand.

Ever wonder an commando started with paired weapons?

ingexthefuryhunter1 wrote:I do believe you are missing that you also add your punch damage+any strength damage to the knives as you would add the knives strike bonus to your Hand to Hand strike bonus due to the fact with a melée weapon like a knife you would be in a hand to hand situation not shooting.

Thing is, the rules don't work like that.
It's just straight knife damage.

Unless you've seen a rule that I've missed somewhere.
If so, quote the passage and list the book and page number.

Not a very bad house rule, though.

yes pg 326 under Weapons Proficiencies Ancient Weapons

Each W.P provides combat training with a paticular type of weapon. The result is hand to hand combat bonuses to strike and parry when ever that particular type weapon is used. Bonues that increase for that particular weapon are accumulative and stack.

As for the Damage aspect, it would be an extrapolation of the skill, if the bonuses for the W.P it self add to your already known hand to hand, the damage from your arm i.e. your punch would be added to the weapon, since the player would be trained to use it during hand to hand combat confrontations.

ingexthefuryhunter1 wrote:As for the Damage aspect, it would be an extrapolation of the skill, if the bonuses for the W.P it self add to your already known hand to hand, the damage from your arm i.e. your punch would be added to the weapon, since the player would be trained to use it during hand to hand combat confrontations.

That's the part I was saying isn't in the rules.

Because it's not.

It is in the fact that you add the damage from your attack I. e. The punch Plus the filler I.E. The weapon plus the interia I.E The strength varible to come to the complete damage. It takes what isn't used to much on this issue. A little common sense some times in role playing you have to add two plus two together to get the total.

So if I'm Reading your logic I can be taught to use a knife while fighting but some how my strength is lowered by it to a point a unarmed peasant can still take me, even if I stab him five times.

I'm sorry but no, it is simply a matter of common sense if I punch you ya it's going to hurt, now if I punch you and have a knife, not only am I tranfering the force of my punch into the knife but the point of the weapon or edge is transfering that energy into my target that I was trained to hit with this said weapon even more effeciantly causing even more damage than my fist would have, and then we are not even talking a long over looked rule of blood loss, or trama to the body, I.e. The pain.

So yes you have to read into the WP skill set, because I am sorry yes it is sci-fi but a little real life in this department is needed to understand what is going on.

ingexthefuryhunter1 wrote:It is in the fact that you add the damage from your attack I. e. The punch Plus the filler I.E. The weapon plus the interia I.E The strength varible to come to the complete damage. It takes what isn't used to much on this issue. A little common sense some times in role playing you have to add two plus two together to get the total.

No, that's just something that you're reading into things, that doesn't actually exist.

RUE 326:
"The damage stat indicates the number of damage dice rolled to inflict the appropriate amount of damage for that type of weapon."
Nothing about adding in punch damage.
The number listed is the number of dice you roll for that weapon.

So if I'm Reading your logic I can be taught to use a knife while fighting but some how my strength is lowered by it to a point a unarmed peasant can still take me, even if I stab him five times.

No.
My logic is that the writers of the game came up with a damage for knives without considering how this damage related to other attacks.
This is not an uncommon problem in RPGs.
In Palladium, the problem is pretty apparent.

A punch does 1d4
An elbow does 1d6
A knife does 1d4 for a small knife, or 1d6 for a normal knife.
A blowgun does 1d4 damage (bizarrely high)
A boomerang does 1d6 damage
A thrown rock does 1d6 damage
A javelin does 1d6 damage
A throwing knife does 1d6 damage
A short bow does 1d6 damage
A long bow does 2d6 damage
A crossbow does 2d4 damage for light, 2d8 for heavy.
A basic kick attack does 1d6 damage
A kick attack from a gymnast does 2d4 damage
A karate kick does 2d6 damage
A leap kick does 3d8 damage
Falling damage is 1d6 per 10' fallen
A thrown object does 3d6 damage per 100 lbs.
A collision does 2d4 damage per 10 mph.
A low-caliber (.22 cal through 9mm) handgun inflicts 2d6-3d6 damage
A heavy caliber (.45 ACP) handgun inflicts 4d6 SDC or (Magnum revolver) 6d6 SDC.

Look at that list and compare damages.
A karate kick does as much damage as getting shot by a 9mm handgun, which is the same damage as getting shot by a long bow or falling 20'.
A leap kick does as much damage as getting shot by a .45 automatic, which is the same damage as being in a 30 mph collision.
A gymnast's kick is like being in a 10 mph collision, a bit worse than a ten foot fall, exactly the same as getting shot by a crossbow.
An elbow does as much damage as a basic kick, which is the same as a 10' fall, or getting shot by an arrow, or getting hit by a thrown rock, or a boomerang.
And yes, a punch is the same damage as a small knife or a blowgun.

They didn't spend all that much time coming up with a realistic and comprehensive set of damages; there's no real science behind it.
That should be pretty clear by looking.

I'm sorry but no, it is simply a matter of common sense if I punch you ya it's going to hurt, now if I punch you and have a knife, not only am I tranfering the force of my punch into the knife but the point of the weapon or edge is transfering that energy into my target that I was trained to hit with this said weapon even more effeciantly causing even more damage than my fist would have, and then we are not even talking a long over looked rule of blood loss, or trama to the body, I.e. The pain.

Perhaps, if you're using a punch-knife.
But most knife attacks are not punches. They're overhand or underhand stabs, or they're slashes, but not punches.
Different motions, different muscles, different physics behind the strikes.

So yes you have to read into the WP skill set, because I am sorry yes it is sci-fi but a little real life in this department is needed to understand what is going on.

Not really. What is going on is that the system isn't that great in some areas.

This we can agree to disagree on, Palladium is a great system in most respects but from my time playing it I have came to same conclusion. Many of it's areas need to be reworked.

As for a knives means yes many untrained combatant will do a slash away routine, but a trained combantant will use the knife as an extension of ones own hand, it why I believe that if you look at the styles of punch many will mimick the way you would use a knife.

As a GM I require my players to tell me which strike they are using with the weapon it allows for more realism and at time has led to penalities.

But yes I agree the damage charts on sdc weapons needs an update. But I stand by my interpretation of the WP skill lending to damage as well as strike and parry.

ingexthefuryhunter1 wrote:This we can agree to disagree on, Palladium is a great system in most respects but from my time playing it I have came to same conclusion. Many of it's areas need to be reworked.

Wouldn't that mean that we're agreeing to agree on that point?

As for a knives means yes many untrained combatant will do a slash away routine, but a trained combantant will use the knife as an extension of ones own hand, it why I believe that if you look at the styles of punch many will mimick the way you would use a knife.

There's definitely similarity, but not enough to warrant the damages stacking.
A fist is used differently from a knife.

As a GM I require my players to tell me which strike they are using with the weapon it allows for more realism and at time has led to penalities.

But yes I agree the damage charts on sdc weapons needs an update. But I stand by my interpretation of the WP skill lending to damage as well as strike and parry.

When there's a damage bonus listed for a WP, then you get the damage bonus listed.
When there's not, you don't.
And no (SDC) weapons I know of list or mention punch damage.

Edit:
Of course, as soon as I hit "submit," I realized that the last part simply isn't true.
There are a number of weapons that specify that they add to punch damage: brass knuckles, sap gloves (AKA "slap" gloves), and dog pack spikes all specifically mention that the damage is added to punch damage.
Which I feel supports my view that such weapons are the exception, not the rule.

i think the rationale is that a guy trained in karate can kick through cement tiles, thus, he can put more energy/focus into a kick. a guy with a knife can not slash or stab and cause that much damage. when you read '2d6 damage for a karate kick' think the hardest kick on earth... the balance lies in the fact that with a kick you get pp bonus to strike + h2h bonus to strike. with a knife you get those, plus wp knife bonus to strike, so a knife guy should technically be able to stab a karate guy more often (with the same stats/lvls).

another way to think about it is this...in ufc (for example) people regularly take very hard (professionally trained) kicks to the body and head without dying, bleeding out, or stopping the fight, so assume that even though it did 1d6 more damage than a knife would do, a knife has the potential to kill you by doing just 1 or 2 points of damage to your jugular, and it can also reach between your ribs and 'touch your heart' far more effectively than a kick (or 'a miracle on 34th street'). the game rules dont really take that into effect, because it would require too many rules/charts/whatever, but as gm you can rule it on your own. the way the rules stand on their own, its easy and fast and makes just enough sense without alteration, while being fairly open to modification...personally, i let players make called shots in melee if they want to be able to try to cause a specific damage reaction (i stab at his eyes, try to cut his hamstring etc). they must roll 16+ to hit, with half their bonus to strike (round down), a miss is a full miss with no dmg. im pretty sure thats a house rule but i have been using it for so long it might be in a book somewhere and i just absorbed it into my game...

I would say that you could add a PS damage bonus only if you have the WP. Someone untrained with a knife will just slash away, while someone trained with a knife will know how to use it to inflict max damage.

It would also depend on the type of attack made with the knife. I would say a slash would only do the 1d6, but a stab (weather over or under handed) would do 1d6 plus PS bonus.

You could also come up with different damages depending on the type of knife. A pocket knife (small) would do 1d4, a " normal" knife (steak knife maybe) would do 1d6, and a large knife (butcher or combat knife) would do maybe 1d8, 1d10, or even 2d6. If someone gets stabbed with a butcher knife it would do at least as much damage as a 9mm I would think. If they are slashed by a butcher knife then probably not. Maybe make knives do 1d6 for slash and 2d6 for stab attacks.

This may seem overly complicated, but would also add a certain amount of realism that the rules lack.
I would agree that the SDC damages probably need to be reworked, but considering all the material in these books, I can also see how it would be easily overlooked.

Hope this helps.