Sunday 4 May 2014

Iron Joints: Why giving full rigid DR against joint locks makes absolutely no sense


"When I see that with the sword I could do nothing to you, instantly I use this catch from grappling, so that I believe and see and feel that your armor will be worth nothing as I force you the strong Lower Bind."
 -Fiore de'i Liberi
I'm here to talk about arm locks. Specifically, how they work versus rigid armor, in GURPS.

In GURPS, arm locks are protected against by rigid DR. To quote Martial Arts: "If you win, you inflict crushing damage equal to your margin of victory. The target’s rigid DR protects normally. Flexible armor, including natural DR with the Flexible or Tough Skin limitation, has no effect."

This means someone with DR 6 plate armor on their arm thus has DR 6 effective versus an arm lock. Even a Throw from Lock might not break his arm - the plates on his arm somehow bind together in a manner that prevents his elbow ligaments from shattering.

Yet at the same time, a Choke Hold has no such restriction! It's not stated in the Basic Set, nor in Martial Arts, that rigid armor protects against choke holds. This means that the best option against an armored man when you are unarmed isn't to break his limbs, it's to choke him out, even if he has a rigid gorget!

I ran into this problem facefirst when trying to come up with a way to run a powered-armor wrestling tournament in GURPS. Worse, I had several people tell me flat out that this behavior made perfect sense to them, and that my fighting tournament consisting of people in rigid power armor complete with full-enclosing helmets and neck protection would involve lots and lots of choking. I still can't figure that one out.

The problem is, and this may be somewhat obvious to you if you have considered the basics of fighting a well protected man in armor, is that you can only be invincible if you completely restrict your own mobility. For your armor to have no weak points or gaps in coverage and still allow you to move is impossible. Thus, your joints must be hinged and mobile. This means that that mobility can be abused. Likewise, it means the gaps in your armor can be thrust into. Your best chance against a man in armor is not to punch him, but to grapple him and break his limbs, and then finish him with a knife - and indeed, many medieval duels went exactly this way.

Then we have the continued absurdity that rigid DR of any source applies, so an Ultra-Tech combat hardsuit would provide DR 75 (or more, depending on TL) against arm locks. Apparently, making a protective garment more resistant against gunfire also makes it protect your joints better. Who knew?

Compare and contrast this with the historical record. We have many, many, many examples of arm locks being a thing in armored fighting, sourced from the fight-books of medieval swordfighting and grappling masters. For example, Fiore de'i Liberi, a 15th century Italian knight, discusses armored swordfighting at length. In his system, one-handed arm locks are often used to secure a positional advantage to stab at the enemy's armpit. While it is true that many of his images depict men in what appear to be chainmail, many are in plate as well, and it seems that these techniques are intended to work against men who are in rigid or soft armor alike. There is no mention of the techniques being different for a man in rigid armor.

It is also stated, here and elsewhere, that all combat in the European systems springs entirely from grappling. All the basics are contained in grappling, and grappling is taught first. The grappling holds in Master Fiore's system involve many bone-breaking locks, including quite artful examples of the Throw from Lock technique. These techniques are not specifically part of 'unarmored fighting' - they are intended to be used against a wide variety of targets. The fact that identical moves show up in both the unarmored and armored segments of different manuals is proof of that. The left image is from the fechtbuch of Hans Czynner, and shows a knight snapping his opponent's arm over his shoulder in order to make a dagger fall free. The same elbow-breaking attack shows up in Fiore's Art of Abrazare, on the right, against an unarmored opponent, and in several other fechtbuchs.

Then we have other armored fighting manuals. The image I chose for the start of this page is slightly annotated with a pair of arrows showing the direction of the technique. The image is from the Talhoffer fechtbuch - a very well illustrated depiction of a variety of duel-centric combat. This is nothing less than an Armed Grapple arm lock - done against a man in armor! Why would you take your sword out of action to establish an arm lock if some form of damage was not going to be done to the opponent by it?

Now, does all of this mean that rigid armor offers no protection against joint manipulation whatsoever? No, not at all! I think a rigid plate might very well offer some protection against a violent elbow jerk, especially if the armor is sized and shaped for a specific user's range of motion. After all, the plates will, at the very least, grind against one another when being moved in a direction that they are not designed to go. However, this DR, if it is used, should never, ever be based on the armor's ability to sustain physical punishment. Otherwise complete absurdities occur, like a suit of mithril plate armor giving near-immunity to joint abuse.

Iron Joint Rules


"Iron Joints" is the proposed name I have for the very simple rule replacement that fixes these issues. It goes thusly:

-The maximum DR value for an ordinary piece of rigid armor versus locks of any kind is DR 2, providing some slight resistance. Expert Tailoring (Low-Tech p110) can raise this by +1 to DR 3, and Masterful Tailoring can raise it by a further +1 for a total of DR 4, when being worn by the user they are sized and fitted for. Being shaped and sized for a specific user alone means the armor can better resist unwanted dislocations.

-Magical spells, enchanted armor of specific types, or high-tech systems (such as a power-armor locking device that detects unwanted pressure and seizes the offending limb before the occupant can suffer damage) may be able to grant additional DR on top of this, either all the time or situationally.

-Rigid armor defends against a Choke Hold or Strangle normally. Before you can choke out someone wearing armor, you'll have to crush the armor against their throat. This is as hard as penetrating the armor, and should naturally be given full DR.

Very easy, very simple, and easily slapped on to any game. Another step forward in the strive to make interesting armored swordfights in GURPS. Happy snapping!

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