Ancient or medieval people didn't build weapons based on physical calculations. They built weapons to kill other people with weapons.
But they did so obeying laws of physics even if they didn't have them laid out and formalized.
Given that we need to lay out a very formal system to implement any sort of mechanics in a cRPG... you know the rest.
There is no such thing as a "slow" or a "fast" weapon. Weapons are fast because people have developed the right techniques to use them fast.
No. Weapons are fast because they were made to be used with reasonable speed.
Obviously, there will still be marginal "speed" discrepancies based on different weapons of same types or physical characteristics of wielders
Not so marginall, but most importantly there would be tradeoffs. If a weapon is slower, but still a pratical weapon it might be because of reach or some other characteristic like ability to bypass shield.
What you wouldn't get is weapons that are cumbersome and slow as fuck but deal a lot of "damage".
Damage and DPS are derpy notions anyway.
You either drag the edge across target or hit it with it.
In first case momentum and energy transfer is going to be small and tangential to point of contact. You generally can't hope to inflict any actual damage via blunt force trauma, what you want is your sharp edge to gradually (well, relatively, compared to total speed of your weapon) burry in the flesh, cutting it. Weapons designed for this attack will have curved blades, to facilitate cutting with realistic movement on part of the wielder, and sharp edges. There will be no remote tissue disruption, and the cut itself is likely to be narrow, hopefully passing through important or numerous enough stuff to kill or incapacitate. The attack will generally fail to damage anything it can't cut.
In second case you hit the target with edge, hoping to concentrate force in single line and cut or break stuff along it. You will have considerable energy and momentum transfer, so there will be remote wounding, like fractures, bruising and internal bleeding, and damage may occur even on failed penetration. Blades designed for that will be robust and either straight (like in typical western swords), or shaped according to other purposes, rather than swing geometry (like various pole weapon cutting edges, flanges or axe blades).
tl;dr:
Cutting would still damage you if it was done slowly.
Also, shouldn't there be a distinction between "slashing" and "cutting/chopping"? You can "slash" with spear and sword alike. It's the tip of the blade that matters. Minimal kinetic transfer due to the small surface on contact but still lethal and perhaps harder to perform due to the precise distance you need to manage. You attempt to cut/chop with the expectation that the blade will go through or will penetrate deep and if it doesn't, kinetic transfer can be substantial.
Actually that's a fair point. Mechanically slashing is a bit similar to cutting analogue for piercing weapons, though of course attack geometry is different, and so are techniques.
It's similar to cutting, except even more, because there is no hope at all for deep wounds so attacker must concentrate on targetting important, but shallowly located stuff, like some blood vessels and tendons, or simply causing pain and bleeding while keeping target at bay.
These niggers talking about bigger is not slower are just fucking retards. In a "no metal armor situation" the deadliest sword made by man is the fucking rapier, with the katana as a close second.
Just to nitpick, lethality of slender piercing weapons actually varies a lot depending on many situational factors.
There were even cases of people getting ran through the heart, surprising the opponent by lethally counterattacking, and then surprising everyone else by getting better instead of croaking.
It's similar to the matter with small calibre FMJ rounds. They may penetrate and even hit vital organs, but even though vital organs are generally not very resistant to tissue disruption, the resulting wounding may still be too limited to incapacitate the target in reasonable time or kill it when proper medical aid is applied afterwards.
Katana sounds more reliable, because it spreads its limited tissue disruption volume across large plane that's guaranteed to cut through lots of important stuff.
Does not compute.
In DT based system notion of DPS iss effectively meaningless.
If your DT is a massive 3 and I hit you with 1000 1 point attacks you won't feel it, if I hit you with one 100 point attack you get 97 points worth of ouch in single neat package.
DraQ, with a physical system you'll get seriously derpy results unless you can create a very precise emulation of martial artist movements.
Or wild swings.
In any case, the derp should be pretty evenly distributed across possible situations as long as they don't involve something seriously exotic, and thus visible in basic testing.
Whereas in an abstract system you will get derp concentrate in every situation you don't account for and therefore cannot test for.
It's a valid point, but I would rather go for the type of derp that plays nicely with emergent gameplay and devs not being experts on every subject covered in their game, than one that doesn't manifest if and only if player is clueless and does everything according to the script.
It's better to have something reliably half broken, than something that's reliable most of the time, but when it fails, it goes in completely unpredictable direction and with catastrophic magnitude.
) without the setting to unify them and give them sense in context of each other all those elements are just a disjoint mess. Not to mention the fact that there is usually more to an RPG than combat.
