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We know hitting something with a small surface area, like a sword's edge, allows you to damage something with higher durability than you could otherwise with something like a fist, which is probably the most common thing we use for directly determining striking strength. I figured it'd be useful to have a general guideline in regards to bladed weapons/bullets/etc. for how they could even the playing field, but also how their capabilities are often exaggerated (goddamn Wonder Woman writers especially).
For cutting, we can compare the thickness of both a blade's edge and the blade itself in comparison to a fist's width. I'm gonna pretend they're hitting with the same length to keep things simple, but on the page itself there should be notes on how thick the thing they're cutting is (fingers, arms, necks, legs, torso, etc.), and how it reduces/increases surface area contact for easier/harder cutting respectively.
This page suggests it's theoretically possible to have an edge with a thickness of 1/10,000 of an inch, but it's not really something that can be maintained, so we should go with the suggested paper-thin thickness of 3/1,000 of an inch, or .0762 millimeters for sharp blades. The average person's fist is about 3.105 inches wide, or 78.867mm, so you could theoretically harm something 1,035x more durable than what you could normally deal with. Now, that sounds pretty amazing, but that's just the edge, so all that really amounts to is scratch damage. However, it could still be useful in some matches, like someone who coats their blade in a fast-acting poison that only needs a nick to get in against someone without poison resistance.
For the thickness of the blade itself, which should better determine cutting power, I'm gonna use the average thickness of a longsword, which is around 3.62mm ((4.14mm + 3.1mm)/2). So the actual average force multiplier is Ôëê 21.786x the average fist. That's about 50x times less than just the edge, but still good enough to let one character harm another that's possibly one or even two tiers higher than them, depending on the tier and how far into each they are.
There's also stuff we could say about sci-fi blades that are around 1 molecule/atom/sub-atomic particle thick, but I"m more ambiguous about these kinds of weapons. For one thing, I'm not too sure about the physics (I'm 99% sure a sub-atomic sword would be doing weird things when moving through stuff, like nuclear fission or something), and for another, I feel like their actual effectiveness correlates as much as general striking strength and speed, which is not very much in practice.
As for piercing attacks, i.e. blade tips/bullets, my google-fu is pretty weak and I haven't found much about their surface areas, hoping someone else knows more about it.
Wonder Woman's writers still ain't know shit though.
For cutting, we can compare the thickness of both a blade's edge and the blade itself in comparison to a fist's width. I'm gonna pretend they're hitting with the same length to keep things simple, but on the page itself there should be notes on how thick the thing they're cutting is (fingers, arms, necks, legs, torso, etc.), and how it reduces/increases surface area contact for easier/harder cutting respectively.
This page suggests it's theoretically possible to have an edge with a thickness of 1/10,000 of an inch, but it's not really something that can be maintained, so we should go with the suggested paper-thin thickness of 3/1,000 of an inch, or .0762 millimeters for sharp blades. The average person's fist is about 3.105 inches wide, or 78.867mm, so you could theoretically harm something 1,035x more durable than what you could normally deal with. Now, that sounds pretty amazing, but that's just the edge, so all that really amounts to is scratch damage. However, it could still be useful in some matches, like someone who coats their blade in a fast-acting poison that only needs a nick to get in against someone without poison resistance.
For the thickness of the blade itself, which should better determine cutting power, I'm gonna use the average thickness of a longsword, which is around 3.62mm ((4.14mm + 3.1mm)/2). So the actual average force multiplier is Ôëê 21.786x the average fist. That's about 50x times less than just the edge, but still good enough to let one character harm another that's possibly one or even two tiers higher than them, depending on the tier and how far into each they are.
There's also stuff we could say about sci-fi blades that are around 1 molecule/atom/sub-atomic particle thick, but I"m more ambiguous about these kinds of weapons. For one thing, I'm not too sure about the physics (I'm 99% sure a sub-atomic sword would be doing weird things when moving through stuff, like nuclear fission or something), and for another, I feel like their actual effectiveness correlates as much as general striking strength and speed, which is not very much in practice.
As for piercing attacks, i.e. blade tips/bullets, my google-fu is pretty weak and I haven't found much about their surface areas, hoping someone else knows more about it.
Wonder Woman's writers still ain't know shit though.
