Angmarth wrote:Any 2 limbs as death is a house rule in Arnor. It is much simpler.
QFT. It's soooo much simpler. When new people who have been playing to us are getting ready to go to national events and we have to explain the national rules to them, the universal reaction to it is some variation on the theme of: "Why? That's so stupid. It makes no sense."
Safety, Playability, Realism.
I don't really think there's a good argument against in terms of safety. "Allowing stabbing tips to do full damage would increase the number of unsafe armour and swords on the field" is, from a logical standpoint, completely invalid. Concerns about armour and stabbing tip safety should be dealt with by not allowing unsafe armour on the field, and by having less stringent stabbing tip softness requirements. Seem a bit counter intuitive? In every case I've ever seen of someone getting hurt by a stabbing tip, not counting head/groin shots and the like, it's been because the tip broke down, not because the tip was too hard. In fact, we allow standard blue swords with NO concessions towards softness to count as green here at Arnor, and I can't think of a single person hurt because a stabbing tip was too hard in almost four years now that I've been in St. Louis. Tips don't need all that extra massive padding in order to be safe, and swords with those huge tips break down and become unsafe much quicker.
In terms of playability, I don't really see anything that this adds positively to the game (by the time you've lost two limbs, you're basically useless as a combatant in 99% of situations anyway, regardless of whether they're pierced or hacked). Does it tone down missile weapon power? Maybe, a little bit, but at most events I go to, most people just take death anyway once they've lost two limbs. I think that the increased complexity is not in any way justified by the benefits, which are marginal if they exist at all.
Realism is a whole different can of worms that should probably not be opened, because the truth of the matter is that our rules don't really reflect realism beyond the barest shadow. Anyway, I guarantee you that a wide-bladed infantry spear, a broadhead arrow, or a thrust from a sword designed for stabbing will wreck one of your limbs just as quickly and effectively as a cutting blow from a sword. And if one of your arms was actually completely hacked off, as our rules represent, you'd be dead or dying already anyway, not dropping whatever was in that hand and running around with your sword still acting as a potentially effective combatant.
Anyway, as I see it, playability is the real argument here in favor of making all weapons count the same towards limb-death. The complication just doesn't justify the complexity.