qoute from Neonivek
It is kinda odd that the Europeans suffer from HUGE overwhelming underestimation (The Lance was a devestating weapon) while the Asians suffer from HUGE overwhelming overestimation. It is probably because of the way both of their mythology is structured and started melting into their history.
Its not so surprising if you see that European martial arts were abandoned for more then 150 Years but at the same time the Asiatic Martial arts got very popular and lively. Some of the newer styles are not older then 80 ,60 or even 40 years.
The Genre of the Noble Samurai / Karate Master (etc.) was much was much better for the TV and cinema too cause it did hold the potential for more "awesome" fights and it was exotic thus made the "knight" very uninterresting.
Anyway the initial swing comes from your hips over our back through your shoulder to your "weapon arm". My weapon hand is the right (and i go with right handed for explanation) so my grasp with it at an Q.staff or sword would be the higher. My left hand, that's the lower on the hilt, works now as lever using my right hand as pivot point. So far its easy to model.
Sliding the my left up and down gives me more control and more power for snaps and stuff.
Sliding the right hand down is used for increasing the range at an quarterstaff for very powerful blows or long-range stings. The downside of this that you have much less control over your weapon and that it can shoved aside very easily.
Even after sliding the staff/sword pivots normally around my right, my upper, hand.
Hilt blocking is to possible with an sword, i at least prefer an long hilt were is an space of one and an half hand between my hands, that would allow me to block with the hilt. Its not recommended by the way to block an sword with the hilt cause of your hands. There are situations were you can and will attack the hands.
quote from Footkerchief
I'm trying to figure out a rigorous way of handling this. Dear lord, it is SO much easier for one-handed weapons than for two-handed. Basically, you can handle the range of motion of a single limb as a simple sphere, which makes hand positions easy to determine, but with two hands it turns into a gigantic mess in ways we hadn't even talked about yet. Going insane, brb
I made an little picture to show on which spheres an arm moves.
(The sword and hand use the same pivot point but the sword is 90° tilted cause of your grasp)
The movement of an two-handed weapon is almost the same as for an one handed. Fights with two weapons are another thing.
Your abstraction that the weapon moves in one sphere is to abstract.
If you want to abstract that (and we need to) assume that the Weapon just moves in 2 spheres. The first sphere is your shoulder the second is the wrist. The radius of the shoulder-sphere is determined by arm length. The radius of the wrist-sphere is determined by weapon length. The counterpoint of the the wrist-sphere can move up and down on the Radius of the shoulder-sphere (bending elbow and shoulder) to 5/6.
That should be fairly realistic.
The weapon can get an tilted in the second sphere too - this would be needed at weapons with cross guard.
edit: Oh and how about extending the 3*3 target grid by an row for creature that are much bigger the you? So you have an "head row" an an "abdominal row" and an "feet row" for enemy's that are a little bit bigger to much smaller then you. If you have an giant, an flying creature or whatever against you you get an additional Overhead row for attack. This row would have some penalty's if you don't have trained an certain style that works against fliers and big creatures.
For stings i would say an basic target system. Depending on your knowledge of the creature maybe. If you dont know where an Borgle has its heart you cant impale that on will.
Binding/Winding should get Binding moves, wrestling moves and stings/snaps.
Regarding ranged weapons. I would give an bow an Reload-time and an targeting-time. The longer you do your targeting the more accurate gets your shot. The chance to hit decreases by range. Dodging on will works only at high and middle ranges, arrows/bolts are damn fast so you need some forwarn time to doge them. An Bow could get an tagetsystem like stings. Smaller bodyparts/organs etc are harder to hit.
Tageting an Human on 15 tiles would bring an accuracy decrease of 20% for the range and 2 Rounds targeting. Targeting this humans head on the same range would mean an accuracy decrease of 35% at 2 Rounds targetting - 2.5 % per round you give in additional targeting.
The dodge chance of the human if he sees the "shot" is 35% at 15 tiles. and decrerases by 3.5 per tile hes gets nearer to the Bowman. At 5 its impossible for the human to dodge and near impossible to miss for an skilled bowman. The outcome depends on the skill of the bowman, the ranged weapon, the speed of the human and how he is armed/armored.