The Barrow III: Brawls, Blasphemy and Bumps in the Night

The party's day starts with a thud, as a snoring Garret rolls out of his bed. "God," he groans. "Feels like I slept for a year and a half."

Lottie: HT, vs 10: 14, failure by 4.

Miguel: HT, vs 12, +5 (Rapid healing) = 17: 15, success by 2.

Everyone's in reasonably good condition after the previous day's healing, although the two that were injured still bear some bruises and scratches. While Lottie makes up a stew of hardtack and salt pork, Elias does his best to scratch a map of the barrow as they know it onto the table with a lump of charcoal.

Elias: Cartography, vs 12, +4 (extra time) = 16: 14, success by 2. 

"Here's the route we took yesterday," he begins, tracing a line with his finger. "There's the surgery rooms, and there's the large hall we found the undead in." He pointed to the large oval that dominated the table. "There was nothing back the other way, but I think if we take a right down this corridor we can get to the sunken hall much quicker."

    The thief grumbles. "Do we really want to?" 

    "That's the only way forward I can see," the monk shrugs. "We could leave, of course."

    Garret taps his fingers impatiently. "No chance. We're finding Rutger - and besides, we've found nothing worth the trip so far. I'm not heading back to town with my tail between my legs because the little girl's too scared of a few dusty old bones." Nodding his assent, Miguel straps on his sword belt and places his hand on Lottie's shoulder. "They won't get the jump on us again," he reassures her. She twists free of his grasp. 

    "But what if the rest of the place is underwater? I'm not going swimming down there." She looks at Elias for support, but he smiles apologetically. 

    "I understand your concerns, but I don't think it could have sunk much deeper than that without bringing down the whole structure. The rooms on this side," he pointed at his makeshift map, "might be waterlogged, but I doubt they'll be submerged completely." The thief sighs, and laces her boots extra tight. 

Intermission: Archery Styles

Styles were added to GURPS Fourth Edition in Martial Arts, and represent a great tool for characterisation and for widening the combat space. Player characters don't just know Broadsword, they know Iaijutsu, which distinguishes them from the random bandits that jump them. Having Style Familiarity also vastly increases the number of perks you have available, as shown in the table below, which can make or break a character. I defy you to build a samurai without at least Grip Mastery and Form Mastery! 

For the GM, the use of combat styles can help with world-building by distinguishing some factions from others, or some players from others. It can also act as a justification for granting enemies abilities and options the players don't have access to, with the added bonus that it might be available at some point (after a long quest to prove their worth, of course). It subtly shifts the responsibility for remembering combat rules from the GM onto players, too: if everyone can Riposte, it's part of the GM's job to remind them of the rules. But if only one player character knows how to Riposte, that's his job - which makes it all the more exciting when he pulls it out to save the day.

So, styles make a great reward for players and the GM alike. Melee fighters are well-served by the styles in Martial Arts, which can be easily adapted to different settings by filing the serial numbers off, and Thaumatology: Magical Styles extends the concept to mages to great effect. But what about ranged combatants? Martial Arts describes four archery styles: Foot Archery, Kyujutsu, Kyudo, and Yabusame. They're nice - especially Foot Archery allowing up to Arm ST +3! - but we can do more by taking some pointers from Gun Fu, which did the same for action-movie gunslingers, and Tactical Shooting, which built styles for realistic shooters, and making some action hero archery styles, after the jump.

Intermission: A Recipe for Trouble

Magical potions and salves are a staple of classic fantasy. In addition to providing a convenient way to keep adventurers in play after taking one too many swords to the gut, they make great plot devices and quest hooks (the wizard's guild is in need of two score rabbits' feet and the heart of a dragon), as well as making for more interesting tactical decisions. Do we use the invulnerability potion now, or later? Do I poison my arrows with demonbane or spider's venom? Though these considerations usually won't make up the core of a party's tactical repertoire, they can provide a little extra boost to a party in a pinch, and can provide a way for weaker party members (or enemies!) to stay helpful even without fireballs and greatswords. 

Faced with such utility, the alchemically inclined player might want to have a go at brewing their own elixirs. There's plenty of precedent for it in video games such as Skyrim or The Witcher; GURPS Dungeon Fantasy alludes to it obliquely in rules about collecting monster bits, and template skills like Alchemy and Herb Lore, and there's abstract rules for making "bush potions" in DF16 - make a Herb Lore roll and Bob's your uncle, here's a 2d healing potion in a pinch. But being so abstract loses a lot of the charm of alchemy, at least in my mind. I don't want to have a big bag of Alchemy Ingredients, $300, 2lb: I want to mix a pinch of ginger root, a bugbear's spleen, and milk of redgrass! So, should we expand the alchemy system? Why wouldn't we do that? And will I go insane writing it? Let's find out. 

Handle with Care: a Treatise on Character Progression

"One player character is much more powerful than the others, and it's making it hard to balance fights."

"My players have bought everything they need and now money is worthless."

Have you caught yourself saying anything like this? Your problem might be to do with character progression, the leading cause of death among games in the 18-34 age bracket.  Here, I'm going to discuss why it exists, what problems it causes, and why you don't actually need it. 

Why it exists

Narratively speaking, character progression is satisfying. We like to see characters grow and change to meet their challenges. Players enjoy the feeling of character advancement, watching enemies that were previously a challenge become non-issues, and this can help build a sense of scale, particularly in video games that have a fixed beginning, middle and end. By starting the game fighting goblins, and ending it fighting gods, it's easier to appreciate the stakes of the story. From a power-gamer perspective, the enjoyment of the role-playing game is gaining strength to take on new opponents. 

What's the problem?

First, the mechanical issues. To avoid trivialising combat (a large part of most RPGs), when the players grow, the enemies must grow with them. This is an inversion of the narrative about character growth, above; instead of finding a new challenge, the players get arbitrarily stronger from punching goblins and now a new threat must find them. There's two schools of thought on how to deal with this. 

Different enemies

Most JRPGs and TTRPGs have enemies at fixed levels, or enemies in a small range of levels depending on location. In D&D 5e (2024), an ettin has a challenge rating of 4, suggesting it would be a reasonable challenge for a party of 4 adventurers at level 4. (The uselessness of challenge rating is beyond the scope of this essay.) In Final Fantasy (1987), there are goblins right outside Cornelia that are supposed to challenge a level 1 party; their strength and rewards remain the same regardless of the player's level, so it's not rewarding to just sit in the starting area and step on goblins. The player must search for new locations to progress, and if they advance too quickly, they'll be squished themselves. This can feel punishing in an open world, especially to casual players, leading to:

Level scaling

Made infamous by games like Oblivion (2006) and Fallout 3 (2008), this involves making a set pool of enemies tougher to match the players. This lets players explore an open world in any direction, but can feel disconnected from the logic of the game world as penniless bandits appear in armour that would, if sold, set them up for life. 

An Oblivion bandit in advanced armour.

Level scaling can feel punishing in its own way, as players are forced to optimise their character to match where the developers felt they should be at a given point in the game. It's not uncommon for Oblivion playthroughs to avoid levelling up at all to side-step the issue of enemies becoming more combat effective than the player without in-depth planning. 

This gets even worse in multiplayer games like tabletop RPGs, where the GM must aim his foes at the whole party. Differences in player skill, character direction and class can all result in wildly divergent results when the dice hit the table, leading to poorly optimised characters being one-shot while the veteran player's fighter simply can't be hurt at all. Beyond problems with scaling enemies, player growth can unbalance the game world in other ways. Characters that get stronger than the guards can handle can theoretically break the law with impunity, if they're willing to do so (although the super-ultra guards might be on their way). 

On a narrative level, this kind of advancement is empty without a goal to work towards. Your character got stronger? Great - why? How? When will they stop? Why hasn't everyone kept growing like you have? This can be even worse when they do have a goal! You want money and fame? You have that now. You killed the six-fingered man and avenged your father, so why are you still adventuring? One way to deal with this is enforcing player retirement, or at least patron play. Your 10th level fighter is busy managing a demesne now, he doesn't have time to go cave-diving for pennies. 

But what if you could deal with player advancement on your own terms?

The Circular Narrative

Don't progress if you're not going anywhere.

If you are the kind of GM who only runs published adventures, you can stop reading. Not because the following won't be helpful, but because you're insane and I want nothing to do with you. Equally, if every one of your games is masterfully orchestrated down to the session to ensure that every player character wraps up their own story arc and reaches level 20 by the time they fight the final boss, probably in a battle where no-one can hear the GM over the epic battle music, or see their character sheet or their custom 3D-printed miniature for the dramatic lighting and the dry ice, you can stop reading as well, because you don't have players, you have actors. 

But for the GM whose last game ended with player characters growing out of control, or a half-assed final boss fight because the players were already out of control, I have good news - your game doesn't have to go anywhere. You don't have to have a final boss. You can, if you want - but if you want a dungeon- or monster-of-the-week experience, you don't have to give your characters levels, or experience, or character points, or even a significant equipment boost that won't be taken away. 

As an analogy, consider TV shows. There's a spectrum of plot advancement: some shows have something important happen every episode, or near to it; some have precisely nothing important happen over their whole run. Most are somewhere in-between, where you get plateaus of character and plot development until an episode where something changes significantly for one or all of the characters. The rate of power level growth in most tabletop RPGs would be called insane by any traditional writer, so of course it causes problems!

For your next game, strongly consider - with player discussion - finding the power level you want to be at, and staying there. Perhaps not permanently, but long enough that you get to enjoy it. You could even try it in your current game: "I like the place we are now as a party and in the world, so we're going to pause levelling for a while." In a game like GURPS you can even tweak individual characters to match the power level you want, irrespective of point level. Maybe the monk can have a couple of abilities to pull him up to the fighter's level, and the wizard can have a slightly nerfed power item. If you like low-powered fantasy, why age out of it for no reason other than the book says 1-5 character points per session? 

The Moderate Position

"My players won't agree to that!" 

Very possible. There's a weaker form of this principle: only advance if you're going somewhere, and only in a way it makes sense. Say that you know the plot will end with the characters fighting that ettin from before, or some other powerful creature or villain. If and only if the players are making strides towards the main plot, they get more powerful so that they match the villain by the time they reach it. While they're mucking about fighting goblins and doing side-quests, any rewards will be ephemeral, or social; favours they can call in, or consumables, or armour that will inevitably be eaten by a rust monster, not permanent character bonuses. 

A similar concept can apply to characters' individual aims. Sam the Swashbuckler wants to be the greatest swordsman in the world. So, he advances significantly only when he does things in furtherance of that aim - fighting other sword masters, for example - and when he achieves it, he retires. Frank Fighter progresses towards his dream of owning a castle by hiring mercenaries and impressing local lords; going dungeoneering is a side hustle for him, so he gets nothing from it. Their players can still have fun going on adventures with their friends, without the GM worrying if their numbers will grow out of control and let them walk over the 2N goblins he's prepared. 

Dungeon 001: Goblin Cave

 Finding myself without the time or inclination to play through these dungeons, I'm just going to post them - maybe someone will get to use them! You're on your own for monster stats, though, as I wouldn't want to repost published content. 

Dungeon map courtesy of Donjon RPG Tools

1: Entranceway

Shape: SM 0 arched ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -7; only light is from entrance to east. Cold, from water evaporation. Slight breeze directed SW. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: Stepped 40° slope up to E (0). 

Smooth 30° slope down 3' to SW (2), through horizontal SM 0 gap where the wall meets the floor. 
Traps: None. 

Monsters: None. 
Treasure: None. 

2: Foyer

Shape: SM +1 ceiling. Slope to SE, up to 4'. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 
Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Small metal spikes in walls, from which are hung mouldy, red rags around 2' long. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. Well-worn by footsteps. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -9; only light is from entrance. Cold, from water evaporation. Slight breeze directed SW. Smells of mould. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: Smooth 30° slope up to NE (1), through horizontal SM 0 gap in wall.
6' ledge up to SE (3). 

4' ledge with rope ladder down to NW (4), through lines of bone noisemakers. 

Traps: Bone noisemakers hanging over entrance to staging area (4). Takes a minute and a Traps-1 roll to remove one noisemaker quietly, which allows a Skinny (or smaller than SM 0) person access on a DX roll. More are needed for larger people, or to waive the DX roll. 

Monsters: None, although see (3). 

Treasure: No roll: a dozen iron spikes ($1, 0.5 lb each). 

3: Guard post

Shape: SM -1 bowed ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Marked with pigments in various shades of earthy browns, reds and ochres, depicting heroic goblin acts. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. Very shallow slope to SE, forming a small, stagnant pool. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -10. Cold, from water evaporation. Stagnant air. Smells of burnt meat and excrement. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: 6' ledge down to NW (2). 

Traps: None. 

Monsters: 2 camouflaged goblin archers, watching the foyer (2). Won't attack until targets attempt to mess with the noisemakers or climb up to the guard post. 

Treasure: Scrounging: Large hip quiver ($30, 2 lb) filled with 20 war arrows and 10 bodkin arrows ($2, 0.1 lb each). 
Scrounging-1: 1d/2 bottles of goblin moonshine ($10, 2.5 lb each), in a small crate also containing a bottle of goblin nerve tonic ($50, 1 lb). 

4: Staging area

Shape: SM +1 ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites, stalagmites and cave curtains. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Draped with skins in various states of decay. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -10. Cold, from water evaporation. Slight breeze directed SW. Smells of burnt meat, mould and excrement. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: 4' ledge with rope ladder up to SE (2), through lines of bone noisemakers. 

Smooth 20° slope down 3' to NW (5), slick with blood and mould. 

6' ledge with rope ladder down to SW (6). 

Traps: None. 

Monsters: 2 goblin archers, watching the foyer (2). Won't attack until targets attempt to mess with the noisemakers. When alerted, will use their first turn to ring a loud bell, warning the rest of the camp. 

Treasure: None. 

5: Larder

Shape: SM 0 ceiling. Rough pillar in NW corner. Dotted with small stalactites, stalagmites and cave curtains. Rotting corpses of game animals, men and vermin swing from hooks attached to chains that run horizontally across the roof of the cave. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp, slick with fluids. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water, blood, and guano. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -10. Cold, from water evaporation. Smell of rotting meat is atrocious - roll vs HT or be nauseated for minutes equal to margin of failure. Disturbing any corpses causes a wave of foul odour, risking retching. Occasional dripping noises and the rattling of chains, with echoes. 

Entrances: Smooth 20° slope up 3' to NE (4), slick with blood and mould. 

Smooth 20° slope down 3' to SW, slick with blood and mould; turns into a 3' ledge halfway along. 

Narrow cracks in NW corner of ceiling, behind pillar, lead up to surface (0). 

Traps: 1d ST 8 leg-hold traps ($80, 2.5 lb each), chained to iron spikes in the floor. One is already triggered on a giant rat. 

Monsters: None. 

Treasure: None, unless you are hungry and have Cast-Iron Stomach. 

6: Main camp

Shape: SM +1 arched ceiling. Dotted with medium stalactites, stalagmites and cave curtains. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Draped with skins in various states of decay, painted in browns, reds and ochres with crude humanoid figures in scenes of violence, and a recurring motif of a distinctive skull with three spikes. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water, and small piles of smouldering coals. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -9, from candles in shrine. Warm, from coals and body heat. Slight breeze directed SE. Smells of burnt meat, excrement, and goblin body odour. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes, and slight sound of whistling wind in the SE corner. 

Entrances: 6' ledge with rope ladder up to NE (4).

Smooth 20° slope up 3' to N (5), slick with blood and mould; turns into a 3' ledge halfway along. 

3' ledge with crate steps up to SW (7).

6' ledge with rope ladder up to SE (8).

Traps: None. 

Monsters: 12 goblin spear-carriers, not on alert. Half are asleep. If alerted, will attempt an ambush!

Treasure: No roll: 600 meals of goblin rations ($1, 0.5 lb each). Four sets of group basics ($50, 20 lb each). 3 hip quivers ($15, 1 lb each) containing a total of 45 war arrows and 15 bodkin arrows ($2, 0.1 lb each). 5 four-man tents (NRV, 30 lb each). 20 bedrolls (NRV, 4 lb each). 5 spears ($40, 4 lb each) and 1 fine spear ($120, 4 lb).

Scrounging: An armourer's tool kit ($600, 20 lb). $100, 0.05 lb in assorted low-value jewellery per margin of success, minimum 0.

Scrounging-2: A large teak box ($45, 2 lb) containing 0.5 oz of sumac ($19, neg), 1.5 oz of nigella ($38, neg.) and 0.5 oz of faerie glimmerseed ($135, neg.). 

7: Shrine

Shape: SM 0 ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Draped with skins in various states of decay, painted in browns, reds and ochres with crude humanoid figures and a recurring motif of a distinctive skull with three spikes. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water.

Atmosphere: Darkness -3, from candles. Warm, from candles, coals and body heat. Stagnant air. Smells of burning tallow, blood, and pungent incense. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes.

Entrances: 3' ledge with crate steps down to N (6). 

Traps: None. 

Monsters: Goblin shaman, not on alert. 

Treasure: No roll: A crude horn idol ($70, 2 lb) of a pagan god. A fine large knife ($160, 1 lb), inlaid with a 3/4ct ruby ($125, neg.) and enchanted with Vital Seeker +1 ($100). Taking either item from the cursed altar (Will 18) without proper precaution results in the thief being cursed for -1 to success rolls until exorcised.

Scrounging: Healer's kit ($200, 10 lb) for Esoteric Medicine (Holy). Designed for goblin-kin rituals; applies a -2 penalty to normal use. 

8: Leader's camp

Shape: SM +1 ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Draped with skins in various states of decay, painted in browns, reds and ochres with crude humanoid figures in scenes of violence, and a recurring motif of a distinctive skull with three spikes. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water.

Atmosphere: Darkness -10. Warm, from coals and body heat. Slight breeze directed SE. Smells of burnt meat, excrement, and goblin body odour. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes, and slight sound of whistling wind in the SW corner. 

Entrances: 6' ledge with rope ladder down to NW (6).

Vision-3: crack in wall, hidden by skins, leading to a narrow stepped slope up to SW (0).

Traps: None. 

Monsters: Hobgoblin leader; 2 goblin henchmen, not on alert. 

Treasure: No roll: 1 four-man tent (NRV, 30 lb). 1 set of group basics ($50, 20 lb). 3 sleeping furs (NRV, 8 lb each). 2 braziers ($65, 3 lb each). A folding table ($90, 15 lb). 2 folding chairs ($75, 8 lb each). 1 average map to the goblin forward operating base ($50, 0.1 lb). 

Scrounging: Trapped (-4), locked (+0) iron strongbox ($250, 15 lb) containing 2 1ct garnets ($175, neg. each), 2 gold coins ($400, 0.02 lb each), 1d silvers ($20, 0.02 lb each) and 80 ± 1d coppers ($1, 0.02 lb each). 10 loose silvers ($20, 0.02 lb each) per margin of success, minimum 0. 

Scrounging-4: A fine lute, inlaid with a stylised depiction of a craftsman at work ($1,000, 5 lb).

Wandering monsters

Odds are 9 or less on 3d. Note that combat with the goblins is pretty much all or nothing, so these represent local fauna popping into the cave after the battle to see what all the fuss is about, or otherwise vermin that could plausibly be living on the periphery of the goblins' encampment. The one exception is a goblin patrol - they've just come back!

Intermission: Making Swords Pokier

The Basics

The Thrust vs Swing argument - debate, comparison - is a long and storied one. Much of it stems from the confusion around what damage actually means in GURPS, which is a difficult question to answer. In fact, it's already half-answered. The damage of high-tech guns and bullets is well-documented. By defining 1" of RHA steel as having DR 70, we can use the penetration energy of the projectile and its other properties (expressed as a long and complicated formula), below, to calculate its penetration and its damage. 

Penetration Damage (points) = sqrt(KE1.04/Xsect0.314)/13.3926 and 

Wound Channel Damage (points) = MV × Xsect* x 26,220 where

Xsect* = (1-V/600) ×π(Bore/2)2 + (V2)/216,000 ×Bore2 ×(Aspect Ratio)

(From http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=2794)

Ugly. Regardless, it's a system, and it works. What we have for low-tech damage - fists and melee weapons - is more arbitrary. Whether or not it works is another question. Muscle-powered damage is split into thrust and swing, where swing damage is generally (though not always - it breaks down a little at high levels) approximately equal to thrust damage x 1.5. This multiplier represents the lever effect of accelerating something through an arc to gain more momentum. The values given for swing and thrust damage at a given ST are then affected by the damage modifier of individual weapons, which tends to be more pronounced for swinging weapons. A small knife swings for sw-3; a greataxe swings for sw+4. That's without going into weapon quality modifiers, like fine and very fine, which only really affect edged weapons to represent better metallurgy - a fine sword is harder and holds an edge better than a regular one without being more brittle. 

After this comes wounding modifiers. A living target's torso takes 2x damage from impaling attacks, 1.5x damage from cutting attacks and 1x damage from crushing attacks. Other hit locations have other multipliers, but perhaps the only relevant ones to this discussion are the vitals and eyes, neither of which can be hit by cutting and crushing attacks and offer 3x and 4x multipliers to the skilled. Impaling damage tends to come from thrusting attacks, and cutting and crushing from swinging attacks; there are exceptions, although swing/impaling attacks have their own intricacies, including an annoying propensity to get stuck. Attacks to the torso start out fairly balanced but swinging damage outstrips thrusting as ST increases. This is not helped by the tendency in fantasy to bring in creatures which have no important organs (or even recognisable bodily structures) to speak of, such as skeletons, slimes and golems, which give impaling damage a x1 or even a x0.5 multiplier. When fighting a tree, the wise man doesn't bring a spear. This makes swords and axes the de facto kings of Dungeon Fantasy, which is perhaps a little boring.

So what's the problem?

The desire for rescaled damage came from a number of places, but we'll note two. 

Firstly, I like spears, and their near-complete obsolescence in Dungeon Fantasy makes me sad. This has mellowed a little since I've reconsidered the problem; as suggested below, spears (and thrusting weapons in general) were never for defeating armour in the first place. Much of my love for them comes from their versatility, value for money and ease of use, and the fact that they can't one-shot a stone golem doesn't detract from that. I firmly believe they still have a role in DF - for skirmishers and rear-line troops, to harass, limit options at the longer melee ranges and potentially throw when the situation arises. Their use behind a shield and in the reverse grip is nice, but not optimal, and the 'master of none' is poorly represented in GURPS anyway.

Secondly, in my DF campaign of some years ago, the incredibly rich swashbuckler dominated the combat. We'll leave the Wealth aside for a moment, as that would improve any character. Weapon Master made her able to out-damage anyone else in the party, largely because it offers the double whammy of easier Rapid Strikes and increased damage for swings. For example:

• A skill-24, ST 13 swashbuckler without Weapon Master (if such a thing were to exist) and with a standard edged rapier can put out 3 attacks at skill 12, dealing 2d-1 per attack. That's an average of 6 per strike, tripled for number of attacks, then multiplied by a 75% chance to hit for an expected 13.5 cut per round. Highly respectable, and on par with a single 3d-1 swing with a big axe. The swashbuckler has the edge (heh) with multiple, poorly armoured enemies, and can sell skill for better hit locations, while the barbarian is more suited to hacking through a single big target, so there's a number of combat niches available.
• The same swashbuckler with Weapon Master can put out five attacks at skill 12, dealing 2d+3 per attack with the +2/die damage bonus. That averages 10 per strike, quintupled for number of attacks, multiplied by 75%: 37.5 cut per round. A barbarian simply can't keep up with that; opponents with high defences are rapidly overwhelmed, opponents with high DR get chipped down within seconds, and opponents with neither get blended into a fine paste. And that's without considering crits!

So WM nearly triples - or more, given crits - damage output, even before considering increases to defence. 20 points for mastering a single weapon is expensive, sure, but given that the edged rapier is arguably the best weapon available, why take anything else? I like swashbucklers, and I think they have a niche, but I also like knights and barbarians, and I don't want swashbucklers to become a silver NutriBullet. What to do about this? 

What have we tried?

Many words have been written on rescaling swing and thrust damage to bring them more in line with what the author thinks is reality, or at least realistic. In Pyramid 3/83's "Knowing Your Own Strength", Sean Punch asserts that "levers help, but thrusting is the traditional way to pierce armour," thus justifying bringing swing back down into line with thrust. That was part of a more wide-ranging attempt to rationalise ST in GURPS by hacking it all out and replacing it with a logarithmic system, which might work, but not without rejiggering the whole system. More pertinently, is it actually true? Yes, the estoc and stiletto were invented to pierce, as simply hacking at people with a one-handed sword was losing its effectiveness against more and better armour, but swinging big sticks - mauls, warhammers, and maces - stayed in fashion as long as plate did. It's a brave fighter who would go up against someone in full plate, or even mail, with a stiletto or an estoc. Arguably a suicidal one. For sure, get that side mount and draw your misericord, but the main tactic was battering through armour rather than relying on slipping through it. 

One way I've considered reducing this disparity is with the Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons rule on LT102, here referred to as Edge Protection. This models the difficulty in slicing through armour by using twice the armour's DR as a guide; if the attack would break through the higher value, it has actually chopped through the armour and can get its higher wounding multiplier. If it's higher than the DR of the armour but not higher than twice its DR, this damage is reduced by the DR and then doesn't get its wounding multiplier; it's blunt trauma. If it fails to pierce the actual DR, of course, no damage goes through. I did a little modelling on using this option. While it did produce a change at the high end of DR, this typically came into effect one or two points before thrust damage was bounced entirely. Swing damage dominated before Edge Protection reduced injury, and it dominated afterwards, just a little less than it would have vanilla. And that's to be expected - Edge Protection was (presumably) written to make metal armour more realistic in behaviour rather than rescale damage, and the emphasis on poison suggests to me that it started out in life as a house rule to prevent beefy assassins from just bashing a man in plate with an axe, getting one point of damage through, and relying on the blackblade venom to do the rest of the work.

Other, more consistent, bloggers have also (many years ago, now) composed new damage tables, such as No School Grognard here. I tried running this in a game; even putting aside the need to recalculate ST for every monster in the bestiary (now at ~200 monsters and growing!), we rapidly ran into the issue of DR outpacing damage. Every orc and skeleton was critfishing to hurt the knight in plate, and that's just frustrating. I spent far too much time trying to find alternatives - including having swarms of rats chew through straps on armour - before eventually giving up and rebooting the campaign with regular swing damage. Besides, we like rolling lots of dice!

So what's your solution, wise guy?

The solution I present is this: make Rapid Strikes use thrust damage. 

Here's my reasoning. The extra damage for swinging a weapon is explicitly because "they take extra time to apply ST through a long arc, increasing momentum. This makes swings slower than thrusts" (MA110, emphasis mine). Now, we can make allowances for high skill - even fantastically high skill, enhanced by magic in the air, or whatever - but I struggle to swing even my unencumbered arm through an arc of a foot or so more than once in a second, and I would still consider that too short to apply any significant impulse over the initial thrust. The specific length of the arc that qualifies for swing damage is beyond the scope of this essay, but swinging fast enough to achieve that five times per second is more than fantastical - it's unimaginable. Even without Weapon Master the main purpose of high skill is to buy more Rapid Strikes (if they're available), and even three attacks per second is difficult, if not impossible to picture. It just doesn't pass my smell test. To attack that fast you must be sacrificing damage (or warping space-time, as pictured below), and restricting Rapid Strikes to Tip Slashes (or thrust attacks in general) is a solid way of representing that.

Sasaki Kojirou demonstrates what 3 swings in a second would look like.
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works, Ufotable (2014)

But wait, GM, I hear you cry - what about the fuzzy definition of a Rapid Strike? The swing isn't necessarily occurring multiple times per second; it might be "a single motion that connects more than once… a sword cut calculated to hit two legs at once" (MA127). Maybe a swashbuckler is just that good that they can angle a stroke to pass through five points on an enemy at once. Putting aside the statement in the same sidebar that a Rapid Strike is, in fact, normally multiple distinct attacks, this still doesn't check. Cutting deep enough to do swing damage means you're inevitably losing some strength in the swing as you go; a shallower cut to maintain velocity would do less damage by default. You could game out the former by adapting Extreme Dismemberment (MA136) and penalising later attacks by the damage of the previous ones, but that's long and finicky and meant for fight-ending, cinematic flourishes - not events that happen, literally, multiple times per second in the average DF fight*. Just start with a lower damage and apply it equally.

I'm fairly agnostic about whether the attacks should be considered as just using the thrust scaling, i.e. turning sw cut into thr cut, or making the attacks specifically Tip Slashes as on MA113, i.e. turning sw cut into thr-1 cut (both using the edged rapier damage line of sw cut/thr+1 imp). The distinction is a reasonably fine one and I lean to the lower damage for two reasons. First, I think an ST 13 swashbuckler should struggle to pierce maille with a rapier by tickling the opponent's armoured belly; that's a WM feat if ever I saw one. If you want to attack an armoured man, poke him in the eyes - that's what all that skill is there for. Second, fencing weapons get a disproportionate boost to defences over the big ol' clunky broadsword. Starting at Parry 15, a fencing WM gets four good parries (15/14/13/12) - defining "good" as ≥12 - against a regular sword WM's two (15/13).

What else could we do?

An alternative could be just ending with one Rapid Strike: capping it at two strikes. I think ditching Multiple Rapid Strike entirely is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Swashbucklers should be able to attack lots of times per turn, both to cut down fodder and to batter down defences. What they shouldn't be able to do is cut down fodder, use their high Move to get to the more heavily armoured opponents, and slice them to ribbons before the knight or barbarian has achieved their first swing. Another alternative would be simply preventing swashbucklers from doing swing damage by removing the edged rapier family from the allowed weapons list. While I like the other fencing weapons, making swashbucklers not only suboptimal but near-useless against Homogenous enemies strikes me as punitive. Swing damage should be an option for a swashbuckler - they pay through the nose for it, after all - but one tool among many, not a 4lb lump hammer for every nail-looking monster in the book.

Conclusion

In short, restricting Rapid Strikes to thrust damage rather than full swings serves four purposes. 

1. It's very much in-genre; Zorro does Tip Slashes, not full-on chops, and little swishy slashes (or rapid jabs) are easier to picture in the theatre of the mind. 
2. It retains the large number of Rapid Strikes that characterise a swashbuckler and leaves swing damage as an option, while also encouraging more considered use of the weapon. The emphasis is once again returned to the swashbuckler's prowess in multiple, well-aimed strikes, rather than buzz-sawing through a heavy plate cuirass five times in the time it takes to say "en garde".
3. It goes some way to reducing the have/have not split of Weapon Master. The Weapon Master swashbuckler in the example above goes down to doing 1d+1, average 5, x5, x0.75 = 18.75 cut per round - still better than the barbarian against unarmoured foes, and much better at deleting fodder, but quickly coming up against a barrier when the big boys in plate show up. 
4. It helps slow down character scaling. An ST 13 swashbuckler swinging for 2d-1 is only 40 points - or 20, with Striking ST - from swinging for 3d-1, and that extra die brings with it an extra +2, which also benefits from the damage multiplier that is attacking so many times a turn. The same WM swashbuckler goes up to averaging 15 per strike, increasing DPS to 56 cut! Making the Rapid Strike damage thrust-based means the same swashbuckler needs to hit ST 19 to increase that per-die bonus.

*Heck, I wouldn't touch Extreme Dismemberment with a ten-foot bargepole, even as written. Who cares that I dealt 3 points of injury to the other arm - your arm's off! It's in the same category of rules as Black Powder Guns from Tactical Shooting, p16 - if this lengthy sequence of unlikely events occurs, you have a miniscule chance of achieving something entirely inconsequential. 

Intermission: Dungeon Rooms

 A common failure mode I run into when designing a dungeon is the need to have rooms with a purpose. I'm very much a fan of verisimilitude in my games, whether those be tabletop or video games, and I like form to follow function. The problem with this is that it's often boring; most historical castles didn't have a huge variety of needs. Think about your own house - you have a kitchen, a living room, enough beds for everyone, a bathroom, a garage, maybe a storage room or two... and then what? This is one reason why I struggle to play much Minecraft these days - I've built a bedroom, a storage room, an enchanting room - what else do I need?

Farleigh Hungerford Castle, in Somerset, England

We can see most of these have rough analogues in medieval castles (and therefore fantasy). We can even throw in some things that are historical but not really in the right place - why does every other dungeon in Skyrim have a well-stocked forge, anyway? - but we're likely to end up with a laundry list of rooms that don't really have much to distinguish between them. I love Appendix I as much as the next man, but for most purposes the difference between an armoury and a workshop is pretty small, and trying to make them make sense can raise further questions that really don't need to be asked. Using realistic rooms also limits the shape, and the things you can put in it. What order should they go in? Should the conjuring room come before the audience chamber? Does each of them need an antechamber? Where does the robing room go? What is a robing room? At this point I usually look for an actual map of a castle and use that, therefore defeating the purpose of the exercise. 

Excerpt from Appendix I, from the Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide

So trying to keep dungeon rooms to some kind of reasoning is pretty fraught with difficulties, and worse, it doesn't really matter! I could walk through Bleak Falls Barrow in my sleep at this point, but I couldn't tell you if the first room was a great hall or an throne room. What was the room with the giant spider? There were burial urns in it. There were burial urns in every room, come to think of it - and my enjoyment was about the aesthetic and gameplay of the room, not the realism. There's high ceilings and low ceilings, walls covered in cracks and walls covered in webs, floors that are level and floors that rise and fall like rolling hills. Bone-chilling winds passing through one room, coiling mists seeping across another. Cave rooms, as well - what's the purpose of this room? Doesn't have one, it's a cave. There's three giant spiders and a silver ring in there, go whack them. 

So, to excuse the unannounced two-week holiday from Sternvale Adventures, I present my personal checklist on how to make a room. Even one of these things, sufficiently emphasised, can make a room stand out, so don't overdo it, but they can make a good starting point, which can be varied as you wish throughout the dungeon.