Should I put spiky maces under piercing or blunt damage?

Should I put spiky maces under piercing or blunt damage?

It doesn't really matter.
Go with blunt.

Both.

It crushes and punctures at the same time.

>whynotboth.jpg

Piercing against squishy targets
Blunt against crunchy ones

Well that's a pointy bashy mace. There are plenty of purely bashy ones out there. So it would depend on the specific type.

This may clarify things, why I need it:
It's for a RPG system I make, where every weapon type has its own table for critical wounds.

If they all have their own table, why do you care what type of damage it does?

Just write up your table and be done,

A question for the ages.

I had a bitch of a time trying to get together damage type and armor type interactions together in a coherent, sensible and intuitive fashion in my homebrew.

Was especially problematic to stuff split damage type against split armor type into the table.

After I got it all nice and balanced I realized I was missing slashing damage. Totally broke my spirits for the whole project because for the life of me I can't manage to get it balanced with one additional type.

In that case put it in for blunt damage crit table.

The spikes on a mace like that do cause injuries but it is minor compared to the injuries that come from getting your bones and flesh smashed with the heavy head. The crits would be more "bones in your arm are snapped in half" than "the weapon pierced a vital bit."

It deals primarily damage by concussion. You don't pierce, i.e. impale somebody on the spikes, they're mainly there to get through armour and focus the concussive force.

So blunt.

Now it it were a macey spike, it'd be different.

The spikes on maces were never for stabbing, they were always for transferring force in a more lethal manner and gripping on to surfaces on contact. It's blunt.

I imagine the point at which the victim is suffering far-more-grievous-then-normal damage from a pointy mace is the point at which the entire head itself is involved in the collision, rather than the tip itself puncturing the victim and traveling only as far enough as to prevent the head from coming into contact.

Therefore, blunt, as the tip itself is largely inconsequential here.

Because I already have enough table to create: damage type x body part.
I won't make another one solely for one weapon.

Had a similar problem a while ago. i solved it by sticking to the core ideas of
>Does it Slash?
>Does it Crush?
>Does it Impale?
>Do you have to shoot it?

After I separated all the weapons into these core concepts, if there was any sort of specialty to it, like the "spiky mace", I would just give it a special trait like "Armour Piercing" to do it a bit more justice and move on to the next.

Worked like a charm.

You could also give it both Piercing and Blunt, calculate the damage twice (once per type) and take the average/highest/combined/something. Like how Pokémon does it, basically.

bludgeoning/piercing

Average the modifiers for the two and round towards bludgeoning. If a creature has resistance towards one of the types, halve it and round in the direction of bludgeoning.

Your system is going to have problems because it's trying for realism, when many implements of war don't fit neatly into one category.
Spikes concentrate the force of a blow into small points, thus increasing the psi of impact at those points. It's why most warhammers are sorta pointed and claw like. Spreading impact across a wide area serves very few purposes and is generally inefficient. Or rather, is not utile for killing humans.

For this weapon, put it's complications on the piercing table. The spikes are poorly designed and likely to get stuck or hung.

Bludgeoning? Slashing? Piercing?

The spikes on maces are mostly there for better traction when you smash someones helmet into a perfect caricature of the wearers face, not to penetrate the armour, although it does have that quirk.

I would say go with blunt

>the point at which the entire head itself is involved in the collision

This just made me imagine an absolutely savage critical where the entire head of this spiked mace is buried into a dude's skull, with blood and gibblets flying in all directions.

It's a pretty shit way of abstracting damage anyway, so just pick one, they're both wrong.

Left to right:
-Slashing, Slashing
-Piercing, Piercing
-Piercing, Bludgeoning, Bludgeoning

I forget the system I think it was one of the pathfinder editions but it was under both in that system and I think it should fall under both

Depends on the kind of spikey it is

If you want to get technical all warhammers are ideally spikey on the head

My reasoning is: if it's a blunt spike that's just a point at which the force of impact is centred for maximum bite, it's bludgeoning damage

if it is a sharp point that can cut, puncture, and tear, it deals piercing damage

So a baseball bat full of nails deals P, a studded morning star like in your pic deals B

Morningstar, and both. If you want to be really crunchy go with

Isn't that a morning star

B/P*

*this weapon has two damage types.when applying critical effects roll once, then consult both tables. the attacker chooses which to apply

A spiky mace is actually a type of morningstar, user and it would be both.

While pointy, the spikes don't embed themselves deep enough to warrant the same treatment as, say, a knife, spear, or warhammer. Instead, they act as concentration points for the force behind the head of the weapon. So I'd say blunt but improved damage over other blunt weapons like the round/smooth-faced club. Flanged maces operate on the same logic.

yes