Help me out here

[Tikor]

Houseruled MA styles to the rescue?

One assumes, however, that there are means and ways of compensating for such problems. Having superstrength doesn't just mean you can swing very hard, it also means you can compensate very hard.

This comes up fairly often in RPGs, not just Exalted.


See, thing about strength is... You can push up as much as you like, but how much you can pull is capped by your weight.


If you have Strength 1, or have Strength over nine thousand, you -still- can't pull a Zeppelin down. If you pull on that rope, you go up, the balloon doesn't come down. Strength doesn't help, you need to be heavier.


If you swing a one-ton sword, it doesn't matter how you apply your strength, because you're basically going to either let it go, or go along with it.

/Physics nerd on


If you could manage to swing said 1-ton weapon without any upward component to it's velocity and you have your feet on the ground, then you can stop a 1-ton weapon with silly forces and little comparative wieght by pulling your arm, through your feet on the ground, to compensate for the momentum. Jumping stunts would be completely off-limits. Whether your arm tears due to the stress inherent in the process is an entirely valid question, but not directly relevant.


/Physics nerd off


Now, one might have to develop, say, a Martial Arts style that swings weapons in such a way that there is no upward velocity component on any swing. I'm thinking unattuned artifact weapons or anything over 20 lbs would be the form weapons and the first charm would be a permanent charm that reduces whatever accuracy penalties unattuned weapons get. Any of you see the recent animanted TMNT movie? When the stone statue uses the dumpster, that's what I'm thinking here. Terrestrial level, has an unparryable attack post form-charm, Form charms gives a strength bonus. I'm feeling it.

Incidentally, I'm cool with the "absurdly huge weapons" thing being the purview of Thrown. Melee combat implies a lot more mobility, to me, and what "heavy" basically means is that it can't change its trajectory easily. For Melee, that means inaccurate. For Thrown, it means damaging. It works well, both thematically and mechanically...

One could also do something like "Boulder Throwing Style". Thrown MA anyone?

 

[Kyeudo]

Whenever I start thinking about stuff that shouldn't work by the laws of physics, I remember that in Exalted physics works differently.


In the real world, physics works because of the innate properties of matter. In Exalted, physics works because somewhere there is a god doing paperwork. Whenever someone does something that violates the laws of physics, you got that god to look at all the work he'd have to do to prove you wrong, throw up his hands, and say "Forget it, I'm going golfing."


By the time you are strong enough to start swinging a Warstrider sized Daiklave around, the gods governing physics are probably so tired of dealing with you that they just don't bother anymore.

 

[Nemal]

Perhaps.
But it strikes me that if you have a problem with the oversized swords, then there's lots of things in exalted you should have a problem with.

I don't have a problem with magical oversized swords, though.


I also don't have a problem with giant magical mecha wielding giant nonmagical swords, either.


I specifically have a problem with beings of great strength but little mass swinging giant swords when not backed by magic.


It really doesn't come up very often!

And who says that Strength doesn't in part determine your weight?
I mean, if you're trying to put physical meaning to all this shit... Strength is granted by muscle mass, and if you have more muscle mass, you have more muscle too. Or denser muscle, in the case of Superman.

Basically because it doesn't... Exalted happily allows for the bishonen-type super-strong character type, without needing to make them heavier.


'course, if your character actually weighs a ton, with all the consequences this implies, then by all means wield a giant sword, you earned it.

/Physics nerd on
If you could manage to swing said 1-ton weapon without any upward component to it's velocity and you have your feet on the ground, then you can stop a 1-ton weapon with silly forces and little comparative wieght by pulling your arm, through your feet on the ground, to compensate for the momentum. Jumping stunts would be completely off-limits. Whether your arm tears due to the stress inherent in the process is an entirely valid question, but not directly relevant.


/Physics nerd off

I wouldn't argue that it's impossible, but consider that having your feet on the ground is unlikely to allow you to exert your full strength in a perfectly horizontal manner, either. Unless you are standing horizontally against something capable of taking the momentum at the time, there's a vertical component to the force that you exert via your feet on the ground, and the stronger you need to pull, the stronger this vertical component gets. (And the stronger the corresponding push from the ground becomes...)


In other words, even with a perfectly horizontal swing, a heavy enough sword is going to lift you, one way or another.

By the time you are strong enough to start swinging a Warstrider sized Daiklave around, the gods governing physics are probably so tired of dealing with you that they just don't bother anymore.

Again, if you find this cool, by all means go with it.


For me, it isn't. I prefer to cling to the assumption that unless otherwise informed, things on Creation work like they work on Earth, because it makes explaining why things happen easier.


Until something magical comes into the equation (Ludicrous sword swinging prana!), I'm going to assume physics apply. Anything less is basically Deus Ex Machina, and while I don't have anything against it, I believe in using it in moderation.


C'mon, don't be lazy, make a Charm for it.