Thrust Damage
According to HEMA practitioners and history, thrusting is generally better than swinging when trying to get through armor.
However, this is not represented well in GURPS, which, due to leverage and velocity, favors swing damage. And this makes a certain amount of sense, given physics. However, when trying to get through armor, thrusting was more effective. You could plant the weapon and push, negating the movement of the foe that might make the tip glance off.
So, I'm going to try something. When thrusting with a melee weapon, reduce enemy DR by 1. Hopefully, this will shift things in favor of the thrust just enough. This way, it sort of acts as a weak armor piercing attack.
An alternative way to model this might be as a two-stage attack. The first round, plant the tip on the armor. The second round, push, putting your weight into it. This might actually be better, actually. In this case, reduce the DR by 2, and it will only really work in Close Combat, where one combatant is braced with the other.
I have yet to actually test this in play.
Defending Against Thrusts
Matt Easton just put out a video about
defensive daggers. In it, he explains why it's easier to defend against thrusting attacks (basically, they are a bit more predictable and take a bit longer to execute than slashes, so it's easier to intercept their attack). So, another house rule: If an opponent makes a thrusting attack, the defender gets a +1 to their Parry or Block.
I suspect this will make combats a bit more tactical, as the attacker now has to weigh a thrusting attack which can do impaling damage, vs making a swinging attack, which only does cutting, and can't attack vitals. Since the most common armor is gambeson, cutting attacks are also less effective than thrusting (DR 3/1) damage wise. But sometimes, even a lesser hit is better than having your attack completely thwarted.
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