A Matter of Inches

A Matter of Inches are rules found on pg 111 of 4e's GURPS Martial Arts. They influence penalties to Who Draws First and Cascading Waits.
They are optional and include 3 factors:
*Swing vs. Thrust
*Weapon Weight
*Weapon Length
The latter uses the following six categories:
*Extremely Long
*Very Long
*Long
*Medium
*Short
*Very Short
Balisong, bite, dagger (any), deer antlers,
elbow, katar (any), knee, knife, knife-wheel, main-gauche,
punch, shield bash, short baton, slashing wheel, stiletto,
straight razor.
Shields / Katars / Short Batons / Main-Gauche are reach so they should obviously be bumped up to the 'Short' category unless they're making C-reach attacks.
Excluding those four non-C attacks there is still a problem with the remainder.
Looking simply to unarmed combat the last equates bite/elbow/knee/punch despite those clearly having very different reaches, some meddling is in order.
Elbows in the very least should be demoted to a new "Extremely Short" category, since unlike punches they don't get +1 to reach on All-Out Attack (Long). While this is not explicitly the case for bites, that would make a lot of sense. Head-Butts aren't mentioned in AMOI but should fall in the same category.
Knees might be considered as having more reach than elbows (even though they clearly don't have the same reach as punches) so applying the All-Out Attack (Long) penalty as a house rule to them as well would be more controversial, as would giving them the benefit of a new "Extremely Short" category.
Not addressed here are other punch variations (elbows use the punch technique when striking to the front) which do not use the knuckles
*Lethal Strike or Lethal Eye-Poke since they use the fingers, should obviously have slightly more reach, so a punch should get an advantage over them
*Hammer Fist (hit with knife-edge palm below pinky) and Heel Strike (hit with the edge of hand adjacent to wrist) and Palm Strike (hit with flat surface between thumb and pinky) should all have a lesser reach than the knuckles
*Forearm Strike (the 4th "hammer fist" variation, which should obviously strike with the arm/forearm not the hand) should fall somewhere between the above three and an Elbow Strike
Category:Rules