Trouble with swords.

[Zoomer]

I have a character who wields a great sword similar to He-Man. I have a difficult time explaining how he incapacitates minions with a sword. I let him do it but it feels a little off to say "Kronos comes down with his mighty blade and umm knocks the henchman out" This is true for other powers like blast as well. How does Cyclops not cut minions in half with his beam. I guess on the blast I could say he had the setting real low but for most heroes that is not an option. I am not wanting a dark gritty campaign. How do you deal with powers and weapons that should be lethal but are just incapacitating people?

[Arthur Eld]

Its just one of those conventions of the genre. Superman has moved planets and fought god-king aliens to a standstill. Yet, he can still hit a normal human like Bloodsport and knock him unconscious instead of, you know, splattering his tissues to a jelly. Likewise, Cyclops cuts Sentinels in two with his optic blasts, but you just know if he hits a non super tough bad guy or fellow hero, they'll just take a knee and be shaken up.

But it also depends on the character. Wolverine, after all, cuts through ninjas like he's a sushi chef and they're just fresh tuna. However, the Black Knight has a powerful, cursed magic sword, and yet he would often just hit people with the flat of the blade

But for some characters, this might be harder to make it fit. But even the Punisher can use non-lethal bullets.

It comes down to the style of campaign you want, and making sure the characters fit with that. Just like you wouldn't put a character like Spawn into a Super Friends game, you shouldn't have some mighty thewed Conan barbarian knocking down rent a mooks like he's Daredevil. Give him some robots or monsters to chop up.

[Zoomer]

Thanks for your help man and for the other post too.

[King Snarf]

Swords? Pfft. Easy. You hit them with the pommel and not the blade.

[Foreshadow]

The game is set up to be 4-color. If you want swords to be lethal, then look a the rules that essentially say make the damage lethal, which is much like a descriptor difference. Thus if you achieve Unconscious result it is lethal and thus Dying result and if its failed by 5 more on the DC its instant death. Its simply a matter of how you want to interpret the result but the DC would be the same.

Effectively its a result option you are looking for.

[Mr Mole]

As has been mentioned, with swords, the general rationale is that the attack was made using the flat of the blade or the pommel... Realistic...? Not particularly... But then we're talking about people from other planets who defy gravity while wearing their underwear on the outside and disguising themselves from their closest acquaintance by putting on a pair of glasses...

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Some possibilities:
* The sword is magically enchanted not to harm living things (except for cutting plants).
* The character generates a "pressure wave" when they swing the sword that knocks out the opponent before the sword even touches them.
* All or part of the sword's blade is actually blunt (just looks sharp from a distance) so it's maybe only slightly worse then getting hit with the flat. (Note: I've heard it doesn't matter how blunt to you make it: getting hit with a heavy piece of metal will still mess you up.)
* The character only uses the sword against appropriate opponents such as robots and monsters. (Honestly how often were characters like He-Man actually allowed to use weapons?)

Here's my favorite:
* Ordinary people in the superhero universe are a lot tougher than in ours.
Seriously people are always expecting the bystanders will be as fragile as in our universe. But our universe doesn't have super-powers (they do survive amazing stuff, though). So why not cheat a little and raise the base assumption of survivability for most people?

[Scholz2]

When I envisage an expert swordsman engaging people in a non-lethal super genre I think of the psychological power of the sword more than its physical force. If you you saw a guy chop a car in half and then menace you with the sword, you'd probably focus your attention on not getting hit by the business end of the sword. That free's up the swordsman to punch, kick, hit with the pommel or flat of the blade (head butt etc..) You can still deliver those attacks through the mechanism of the sword because without that sword as the real threat, people wouldn't open themselves up to the other kinds of attacks. Does that make sense?
Alternatively, there is a good opportunity for some dramatic role playing (and complications) if you do occasionally slice someone up (a defense shifted opponent who is weak on the toughness scale).

[HeroicSacrifice]

I like the Rurouni Kenshin-style blunt-sword smacking. Way back when 2e was young, Wordmaker had a nice long series of stories in which guys like Batman, Wolverine, and a few of his OCs stabbed people in non-fatal ways all the time without stretching suspension of disbelief too much. Sure normal people might not be good enough to hew a man's leg out from under him, but your character isn't just a normal man, is he?

[Brianide]

I like the Rurouni Kenshin-style blunt-sword smacking. Way back when 2e was young, Wordmaker had a nice long series of stories in which guys like Batman, Wolverine, and a few of his OCs stabbed people in non-fatal ways all the time without stretching suspension of disbelief too much. Sure normal people might not be good enough to hew a man's leg out from under him, but your character isn't just a normal man, is he?

To add to this, he could make expertly minor cuts that target nerves or muscles to incapacitate enemies instead of chopping off their heads.

EDIT: You can also employ lots of maneuvers against living mooks like Improved Smash to cut barrels off guns.

[hs5ias]

Most sword cuts do not kill people, they just bleed and hurt a lot and render them unable to fight on. My interpretation is that a sword-wielding character just wounds mooks that he does not wish to kill. A nasty slash to the arm or leg will effectively incapacitate most people. Even if they could possibly fight on, most will prefer to limp away or collapse to the floor and give up.

It takes a particular kind of determined character to fight on through grievous injuries. In real life there are accounts of soldiers and other people who have suffered repeated and horrendous injuries but have fought on and even won. Most of the time though, even tough soldiers will pull back when they are wounded.

[Zaran]

I've seen both Xena and Hercules hold a sword in their hand and never once use the edge.

You can be like Leonardo in TMNT 2 and just use the sword as an acrobatics prop. Personally, I think He-Man should cut people in half with his sword but then there wouldn't be re-occuring villians.

If it's a magical sword, you can say it can be made to emit a subdual field for when you don't want to commit bloodshed but can turn it off when fighting robots and undead.

[Rev. Pee Kitty]

Musashi Miyamoto (the first Kensai, or "sword saint") was arguably the greatest katana master that ever lived. He was known for frequently using a practice sword (bokken) or leaving his sword in the scabbard for duels -- against foes using real, unsheathed swords -- and winning. So it's definitely possible to fight and win without cutting your foes up, if you're good enough.

[FuzzyBoots]

Of course, Musashi was also known for killing more of his opponents when wielding the wooden sword than with the live blades... one of the reasons behind the mystique of the katana is that Japanese armor, for the most part, was never terribly good, as the island does not not host large amounts of good iron, forcing use of alternate materials and techniques to make the best of what they had. Lacquer armor had a tendency to break under heavy blows from blunt objects.

Personally, I say that you just run with the lethality of the sword. Nothing wrong with describing it all as slicing up the minions rather than peacefully knocking them over the head (not to mention, of course, that any blow to the head sufficient to cause unconsciousness will also cause brain damage and frequently death in real life). It has certain advantages to it, but disadvantages as well, particularly in the court of public opinion.

[Rev. Pee Kitty]

@FuzzyBoots: True, and he was actually a damned bloodthirsty killer, but that wasn't my point -- I was trying to show that you can use a sword in a "blunt" fashion without losing effectiveness. In a supers game, blunt attacks are generally assumed to be nonlethal while sharp ones are lethal. Is that realistic? No, not really! But it fits the genre.