Slash

I have somewhere I'm heading with the material introduced in the post on attack types, but I need to cover two other basic attacks, one of which I've never seen covered in an RPG before. As explained before, A hacking weapon is basically a bashing weapon with an edge; it's the same basic motion (swing or smash) that does damage in the same way. Staves and swords are basically levers, multiplying muscular force and directing it into the opponent's body. Adding an edge to a bar turns it into a wedge, good for hacking through limbs.

A slash attack, however, uses an edged weapon a different way. The edge is drawn across exposed flesh, tearing it open, rather than used to chop into flesh and bone. It's normally associated with knives; knives can stab, but mostly they are used on unarmored opponents to open bleeding wounds. A whip with barbs embedded in the lash would also do slashing damage.

A slash attack uses the same bleeding rule as hack or stab, but any armor, even leather or padded armor, eliminates the bleeding risk. However, slashing can damage soft armor; on a 5+, an area is exposed, which makes a second successful attack able to cause major bleeding.