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Thiel
2014-01-28, 03:35 AM
This thread is a resource for getting information about real life weapons and armor. Normally this thread would be in Friendly Banter, but the concept has always been that the information is for RPG players and DMs so they can use it to make their games better.

A few rules for this thread:

This thread is for asking questions about how weapons and armor really work. As such, it's not going to include game rule statistics. If you have such a question, especially if it stems from an answer or question in this thread, feel free to start a new thread and include a link back to here. If you do ask a rule question here, you'll be asked to move it elsewhere, and then we'll be happy to help out with it.
Any weapon or time period is open for questions. Medieval and ancient warfare questions seem to predominate, but since there are many games set in other periods as well, feel free to ask about any weapon. This includes futuristic ones - but be aware that these will be likely assessed according to their real life feasibility. Thus, phasers, for example, will be talked about in real-world science and physics terms rather than the Star Trek canon. If you want to discuss a fictional weapon from a particular source according to the canonical explanation, please start a new thread for it.
Please try to cite your claims if possible. If you know of a citation for a particular piece of information, please include it. However, everyone should be aware that sometimes even the experts don't agree, so it's quite possible to have two conflicting answers to the same question. This isn't a problem; the asker of the question can examine the information and decide which side to go with. The purpose of the thread is to provide as much information as possible. Debates are fine, but be sure to keep it a friendly debate (even if the experts can't!).
No modern real-world political discussion. As the great Carl von Clausevitz once said, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," so poltics and war are heavily intertwined. However, politics are a big hot-button issue and one banned on these boards, so avoid political analysis if at all possible (this thread is primarily about military hardware). There's more leeway on this for anything prior to about 1800, but be very careful with all of it, and anything past 1900 is surely not open for analysis. (I know these are arbitrary dates, but any dates would be, and I feel these ones are reasonable.)
No graphic descriptions. War is violent, dirty, and horrific, and anyone discussing it should be keenly aware of that. However, on this board graphic descriptions of violence (or sexuality) are not allowed, so please avoid them.


With that done, have at, and enjoy yourselves!

Thread V (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80863)
Thread VI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124683)
Thread VII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=168432)
Thread VIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192911)
Thread IX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217159)
Thread X (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238042)
Thread XI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255453)
Thread XII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15188540)
Thread XIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308462)

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 04:27 AM
Anyone want to postulate at what a dragon's scales/armour is made of? It supposedly should be biological, should be as tough for its weight as manageable, and hopefully will be resistant to fire.

I think I've heard suggestions for crystalline structures.

AMFV
2014-01-28, 04:48 AM
Anyone want to postulate at what a dragon's scales/armour is made of? It supposedly should be biological, should be as tough for its weight as manageable, and hopefully will be resistant to fire.

I think I've heard suggestions for crystalline structures.

Well you could have asbestos fibers as a part of it, that would help with the fire type stuff (although those aren't particularly tough), but that could be one part of it, and if the dragons have a developed lung then this could work for that sort of thing. Mostly we'd need to figure out how strong you want the dragon's armor to be relative to it's maneuverability.

GraaEminense
2014-01-28, 05:39 AM
If we are still pretending to have a somewhat realistic flying lizard monster, the scales will be some kind of keratin: the same stuff nails, hair, horn and reptile scale is made from and one of the toughest biological tissues.

Unless it's fantasy keratin, it won't be enough for proper dragon scale alone. Some kind of metalized or mineralized keratin, dependent on the dragon's diet perhaps? I think there are animals that use somewhat similar tricks, like frogs getting venomous because they eat venomous food -though I may be mistaken.

Rhynn
2014-01-28, 05:54 AM
That makes me think of crysomallon squamiferum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod)...

Brother Oni
2014-01-28, 07:58 AM
As far as I can tell, the previous threads don't exist any more, except Version V and Version VI. This is Version IX.


At least we can tell where Thiel copypasted this intro from. :smalltongue:


Going back to burning a ballista bolt out of the air, I remember crunching the numbers for the energy requirement of a firebolt on an armoured human, so let's see how applicable it can be:

Using a ballista bolt of 200g weight (link (http://ballista.wikia.com/wiki/Personal_torsion_weapons)), assumption that 75% of it, is the shaft. Making it out of oak, which has a SHC of 2 kJ/kg/K (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-solids-d_154.html) and burns at 200C (http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html), and starting from a nice ambient 25C, you'd need 52.5kJ of energy to reduce it to ash.

This page (http://www.legionxxiv.org/catapulta/) indicates that a ballista bolt is 16 inches long by 1 inch thick (gah stupid imperial measurements), which gives a surface area of 659cm2.

Since we're dealing with burning gas (let's use propane again as I can't find the values for any other burning gas), the forced heat transfer coefficient of natural gas is about 10 W/m2K, so a one second contact of propane that would encompass the whole shaft would transfer (1955K*0.0659m2*10 W/m2K) = 1288J, nowhere near enough to ash our bolt.

In order to burn the wood to ash in a second, you'd need a temperature differential of 75,000 K, which is even more than making a medium rare human chest from last time (57,714K).

For reference, the sun is estimated to be 1.57x107K which is much higher than our required 7.5x104K.

Note that I'm not including the bolt head for the sake of my sanity, nor am I including any energy reduction for the wood itself burning (I'm not sure there would be time).

In the case of the lava burning things in seconds, note that is conduction, which is far more efficient, not convection.


Don't you idiot!

Burn temp of propane is 1980C, so subtract remperature of target, which where you got the 1943K from last time


Edit: on the plus side, at least now we can see where the myth of dragonfire being intensely hot comes from, plus you have the numbers to prove it. :smallbiggrin:

GraaEminense
2014-01-28, 08:52 AM
That makes me think of crysomallon squamiferum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod)...
That is even more awesome than I thought. Ladies and gentlemen: we have iron dragon scales. At least as long as the critters have a healthy diet of armoured knights :smallbiggrin:

Found the frogs as well. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobatidae#Toxicity_and_medicine)

Thiel
2014-01-28, 09:12 AM
That is even more awesome than I thought. Ladies and gentlemen: we have iron dragon scales. At least as long as the critters have a healthy diet of armoured knights :smallbiggrin:

Found the frogs as well. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobatidae#Toxicity_and_medicine)

A more reasonable in universe explanation might be that they eat metal rich soil from time to time similar to how some carnivores eat grass every now and again to keep their digestive system ticking over.

This would also explain why dragons like to hoard metallic riches.

Brother Oni
2014-01-28, 09:38 AM
A more reasonable in universe explanation might be that they eat metal rich soil from time to time similar to how some carnivores eat grass every now and again to keep their digestive system ticking over.

This would also explain why dragons like to hoard metallic riches.

So dragons are the original masters of bling, being literally made out of money, or at least precious metals? :smallbiggrin:

This reminds me of the time I tried to theorised a 'realistic' dragon built around naturally occuring hydrogen bioreactors and resulted in a photosynthesising semi-translucent thing where a flaming gas breath was the least hazardous emission.

Rhynn
2014-01-28, 09:47 AM
Iron makes for lousy treasures, while gold and silver would make for pretty lousy scales. For one thing, gold and silver have comparatively low melting points: a candle flame is hot enough to melt silver, whereas extremely hot white flames are needed to melt iron.

(I could not get over how ridiculous it was in The Desolation of Smaug that Smaug's breath didn't melt the gold - of which there was, incidentally, between dozens and hundreds of times more in coins than has been mined in the history of Earth.)

Thiel
2014-01-28, 10:07 AM
Iron makes for lousy treasures, while gold and silver would make for pretty lousy scales. For one thing, gold and silver have comparatively low melting points: a candle flame is hot enough to melt silver, whereas extremely hot white flames are needed to melt iron.

That would depend on the world. Iron was a rather precious commodity before industrialization kicked in.
And since it'll chemically bonded to the organic parts of the scales we can even consider some of the many compounds such as aluminum oxide.

Rhynn
2014-01-28, 10:14 AM
Iron was a rather precious commodity before industrialization kicked in.

Sure, but gold and silver were more precious, generally. The only RPG setting I can think of where iron (steel, specifically) is the standard currency (in parts of the world, not all over) is Krynn, and that one is just hilarious stupid. "Gold and silver are worthless, but iron can be made into things, so people refine it into steel and stamp coins out of it." *head asplode*

GraaEminense
2014-01-28, 10:16 AM
Peat bogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron) would be the obvious source. Dragons could just eat the peat (mostly organic after all) to get at the iron content, but a more interesting solution is relying on their intelligence: Dragons could easily harvest and dry the peat, then torch it to extract the iron pellets from the ashes (they´d likely lack the manual dexterity to do it by hand, ehm, claw).

This would make iron-scaled dragons a result of increasing dragon intelligence and perhaps even studying early human technology, and make iron a resource they would depend on and that could be denied them by crafty humans.

It would also make for significant differences in dragons, as old ones with good access to iron would be near-invincible while young or poor ones would be far less so.

Deffers
2014-01-28, 12:18 PM
Old ones with a lot of iron might also be a lot less acrobatic or flight-capable.

EDIT: Would there be a way for them to, say, shed their scales, I wonder? If so, a very smart dragon could induce shedding if he's anticipating that he'll have to be agile. Then he'd keep his scales in a safe place and eat them later for when he needs the iron again.

I think that's a good idea.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 01:14 PM
So, the scales would become the same as iron in properties? What quality of iron?

Incanur
2014-01-28, 01:54 PM
Note that the surface of the sun is only around 5,800 K (http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qhowhot.html) by most estimates.

For higher-end dragons still guided by known materials science, you'd want some sort of diamondoid (http://diamondoid.org/) structure. And for dragon fire capable of near instantly reducing things to ash you'd likely need a nuclear power source.

Brother Oni
2014-01-28, 02:01 PM
So, the scales would become the same as iron in properties? What quality of iron?

Using that snail as a guideline, the hardness of the iron would be about 4-4.5 on the Moh's scale.

How that compares to lamellar armour is really difficult to say since it would depend on how the scales are composed (they're not going to be pure greigite but keratin laced with the stuff as GraaEminense suggested), how well they're attached to the dragon, what the underlying structure supporting the skin is, etc.

About the only thing we can say for definite is that a separated individual scale is going to be hard to cut with a steel sword.


And for dragon fire capable of near instantly reducing things to ash you'd likely need a nuclear power source.

Or some other mechanism than forced convection. Spitting out a jet of burning fuel would be a vastly more efficient heat transfer system and letting the dragon breathe on things for a couple of seconds dramatically increases the amount of energy transfer as well.

Galloglaich
2014-01-28, 02:33 PM
Sure, but gold and silver were more precious, generally. The only RPG setting I can think of where iron (steel, specifically) is the standard currency (in parts of the world, not all over) is Krynn, and that one is just hilarious stupid. "Gold and silver are worthless, but iron can be made into things, so people refine it into steel and stamp coins out of it." *head asplode*

In the real world though this was not entirely so implausible, since iron coins were the major daily currency in Japan and much of East and some of Central Asia for centuries.

Iron is pretty valuable. Bronze even more so because it's a little easier to reprocess. When the city-state of Rhodes was besieged and defeated their enemy, they took the bronze scales of a gigantic siege tower and made them into the Collossus.

Considering how much iron is in red blood, I think your dragon might be able to get enough iron for his scales per the Crysomallon squamiferum (excellent, excellent find by the way) simply by eating sheep or deer or what-have you. And older dragon (especially if they live for centuries... which isn't entirely impossible since some reptiles like tortisses and crocodiles live very long lives) would presumably have more iron in their scales.

I love this discovery since it does indeed provide a plausible mechanism for some pretty tough armor that could exist in the real world without too much deus ex machina.

I think the other features of your dragon would have to be more clearly defined before you could determine what would be necessary to fight it. How big is it? Godzilla sized? Smaug sized? That would be pretty tough to handle, though probably not impossible depending on the tech level. Elephant to Pleasiassaur sized would be a bit easier to handle. Anything less than that probably well within even early Medieval tech to destroy. How fast? Supersonic? Speed of a large bird? How smart? Super genius? Human level? Ape level? If you are in the realm of plausibility it should also be within the realm of people being able to kill it readily enough.

Animals could cause a lot of trouble for humans though. In his Crusades era memoires Usamah Ibn Munqidh describes several incidents where Lions were posing real threats to the pretty well armed people in that part of the world. I suspect a lot of animals, both predatory and otherwise, were more aggressive toward humans than they are today. In one instance, he was describing a particularly dangerous 'Frankish' knight who was slaying muslim warriors right and left. At the same time, there was an equally tough Arab knight who defeated all comers from the Frankish side. The Arabs were somewhat nervously waiting for these two to meet and see which one would end the reign of terror of the other... but apparently a Lion ambushed the Frankish knight when he was travelling through a forest in Syria, and they were all able to breathe a sigh of relief. He also mentions another incident when a group of lions on top of a hill kept charging a caravan trying to pass below it on a trail, and the armed cavalry escorting the caravan couldn't cope with them.

In the Icelandic sagas they describe incidents with dangerous animals. The bear slain by Grettir is one prosaic case; An entire army of Ivar the Boneless being stopped by a 'cow' (probably an Aurochs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs)) is a bit more dramatic. In Poland they were still having trouble with wolves, bears, and aurochs, among other creatures, well into the Early Modern era. The last incident I know of in fact took place on the Russian Front during WW I in the winter of 1917, in which German and Russian soldiers had to temporarily unite to fend off starving wolves.

All that said, though the animals could cause problems, they were far from invulnerable obviously, and it's hard for me to imagine even a dragon armored with iron-crystal scales could be completely invulnerable. After all, European warriors had been wearing iron armor for a long time and they had gotten pretty good at killing them. I think many of the more common weapons would be readily adapted to an "anti-aircraft" role.

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/6301/ribauldechinxf6.jpg

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=107

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Bali_Museum_breech_loading_swivel_gun.jpg

http://www.wythe-retinue.org.uk/images/Gnat%20%26%20Guns.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_gun#15th-century_volley_guns

I think heavy crossbows, recurve and longbows, harpoons, and firearms, especially multi-barrel 'Volley guns', fast firing pintle-mounted cannon (especially the fairly ubiquitous breach-loaders), and ribaldaquins would probably be the most effective. The blunderbuss family as well, for fending off close attacks. Personal multi-barrel gun / morgensterns like this

http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j384/pocolocopocoloco/pllnma_zpsbe11aa5e.jpg

All of these would be very common in any world of sufficient tech level for plate armor, which would include most RPG fantasy settings.

If you have a "no gun" world, the heavy crossbows and roman style scorpion torsion shooters would probably be common. Plus nets, hooks, ropes and cables and various types of traps and poison bait.

Conversely, I think the most damage that a fire-breathing dragon could cause would be burning crops, first and foremost, since crops are exposed and hard to protect, and burning villages and so on second - though stone buildings with (somewhat) fire proof roof tiles were pretty common by the late Medieval period due to the chronic problems they had with normal fires.

I would think a dragon would have to be pretty smart and pick it's battles, and probably operate on the fringes of organized human society. Humans are pretty dangerous creatures especially when well organized.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 02:58 PM
Note that the surface of the sun is only around 5,800 K (http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qhowhot.html) by most estimates.

For higher-end dragons still guided by known materials science, you'd want some sort of diamondoid (http://diamondoid.org/) structure. And for dragon fire capable of near instantly reducing things to ash you'd likely need a nuclear power source. Didn't I tell you not to make me giddy this early in the morning/evening? I didn't? Oh... my bad.

This stuff sounds really neat in and of itself, providing the advertising has some/any truth behind it (forgive me for being sceptical). Having dragons made out of something like this seems great too--they could reach a level of abilities that previously would be seen as magical and impossible (well, it'll still seem that way to many readers/players).


Oni: That sounds like a good system. If dragons are big creatures with thick armour, the thickness would be enough to make them truly formidable to harm. The main concern would be weight, since flying dragons are best dragons.

I'm interested in what Incanur brought up, all the same. Perhaps this is what was meant when people spoke about crystalline structures.

Deffers
2014-01-28, 03:12 PM
Diamondoids are very real-- anything that vaguely resembles diamonds in molecular structure is one. One molecule I'm particularly fond of is adamantane. Yes, it's real. But you might notice that it's "-tane" and not "-tine." "-tane" like pentane or butane. That's 'cos you can find it in oil wells and it's a hydrocarbon. It's not particularly tough. The question becomes what molecules a dragon could conceivably have in its scales, and why-- why would it have diamondoids inside of it? And which ones?

Brother Oni
2014-01-28, 03:23 PM
Oni: That sounds like a good system. If dragons are big creatures with thick armour, the thickness would be enough to make them truly formidable to harm. The main concern would be weight, since flying dragons are best dragons.

I'm interested in what Incanur brought up, all the same. Perhaps this is what was meant when people spoke about crystalline structures.

They could be like a crocodile instead with bony or keratin plates infused with iron under the skin rather than every individual scale being iron plated.

The book 'Flight of Dragons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_Dragons_%28book%29)' goes into some speculation about how a dragon could exist. I have some issues with the book (he handwaves reacting elemental calcium with stomach acid to get hydrogen), but other things seem fairly plausible.

One thing he mentions is that just the dragon's head is heavily armoured and by simple panic reflex causing its prey to freeze up (deer in the headlights moment), memories of attacking it and all attacks bouncing off have distorted from one invulnerable spot to being completely invulnerable.

snowblizz
2014-01-28, 03:50 PM
They could be like a crocodile instead with bony or keratin plates infused with iron under the skin rather than every individual scale being iron plated.
Well I don't think it would need to be completely iron plated right? Already having a lacing of iron in the scales would make them very very tough.
Of course, why stop with iron, isn't there something stronger and lighter, Titanium perhaps? I don't think the idea here is total invulnerability either? The older a dragon the more exotic materials it might be able to accumulate becoming more formidable.

I must admit if I was the type to write stuff this is totally how I'd crib dragons.
Although I think the flying would be the hardest part beyond adding lots of iron.
I was actually struck by an interesting "plot hook" in the idea of a dragon who decides to go "invulnerable" only to end up losing flight as a result. Pride begets fall and so on.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 04:17 PM
G: Replies to your posts tend to deserve a post to themselves (assuming there's something to reply to beyond, "good post!").

I can add a pretty recent cases to what you mentioned. The friend of a friend, during his Marine training, went to Africa to prepare for the Iraq war. During their training, they were surrounded by a million billion ninjas hyenas! Not that many... but thousands upon thousands of them, so that it might as well have been.

They surrounded their camp with vehicles, like pioneers encircling their caravans against attacks. Then, they had guys with guns keep watch. Rarely, they would pick off a hyena or two to make them keep their distance.

After that... time passed, they finished their training, and luckily the hyenas didn't decide to overrun and devour them. Not to say their situation improved--they went into some of the more bloody fights or Iraq.


As to dragons, I agree with your thoughts on the matter. They're not a threat because they don't flinch when you hit them with your heavy guns, they're a threat because they can hit you everywhere your heavy guns aren't. Animals naturally go for weak targets rather than strong ones, so even stupid dragons can be expected to try this.

If they were godzilla sized, then I'm not sure how you would harm such a creature without modern tech. I'm sure there is some insanely genius way, or some salt-the-earth method that ancient people would have been capable of.



Deffers: Well, looking at the article, they talk about technology that seems pretty optimistic.

I am very interested in what kind of diamondoid materials dragons would be made of.

I'm also interested in if real adamantane has any properties that would have made it useful as a weapon, as it was in myth (in the form of adamantine).


Snow: Depends on the size of the dragon and how much effect the metal lacing has. Dragons don't need to be like German King Tigers, but there is the idea that you can't just shoot arrows at them, usually.

Mr Beer
2014-01-28, 04:42 PM
If they were godzilla sized, then I'm not sure how you would harm such a creature without modern tech. I'm sure there is some insanely genius way, or some salt-the-earth method that ancient people would have been capable of.

They would think about poisoning an otherwise unstoppable killing machine in about 2 minutes. If it's smart enough to accept "tribute", so much the better. Pay it in sheep and cattle for 18 months to lull it into a sense of false security and then the vizier's revenge is put into play.

I suspect "not living anywhere near it" would be the first response though.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 05:07 PM
You'd need a lot of poison to effect something that big, and it's have to work well against its system. Best I can think of is Anthrax--but they didn't know how to use that till just before WWI.

Galloglaich
2014-01-28, 05:20 PM
You'd need a lot of poison to effect something that big, and it's have to work well against its system. Best I can think of is Anthrax--but they didn't know how to use that till just before WWI.

They were using the Black Death as biological warfare in the initial outbreak in the Crimea, and both Chemical and Biological warfare were fairly well developed going back to Classical times. The Mongols in particular were experts at it and used it on a large scale to depopulate whole regions, but the Romans, Persians and Greeks were proficient as well.

http://www.newser.com/story/173755/syrias-history-of-chemical-warfare-is-17k-years-old.html


G

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 05:27 PM
I was wondering how advanced germ warfare was. As usual, it performs far ahead of popular expectations, and further ahead than I expected.

My go-to disease for killing all things living is anthrax, including godzilla. I'm unsure what the next best godzilla-killing disease is.


((Alatriste had a good example of gassing tunnels.))

Deffers
2014-01-28, 05:41 PM
I'm also interested in if real adamantane has any properties that would have made it useful as a weapon, as it was in myth (in the form of adamantine).

Nope! That's the best part. It's some white crystalline stuff. According to the wiki, it lacks the covalent lattice that diamond has. The values for how much stress it can resist compared to diamond are... bad. "Plastic" is not something you want to hear next to "crystal" if your sword is made of said crystal. If you fed it to someone, they might get sick, though.. :smalltongue:

EDIT: As to which diamondoids WOULD work, I'll write up something else later if I find some info. I think there's one involving boron that's pretty good.

Galloglaich
2014-01-28, 05:42 PM
A Godzilla sized dragon is admittedly, a major challenge.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 06:02 PM
A Godzilla sized dragon is admittedly, a major challenge.

G Yeah. It's hard to imagine how you begin to fight that.


Deffers: If it's nothing like the metal of myth, why name it that? I guess for the same reason they named some gene after Sonic the Hedgehog.

Looking forward to your write up on diamondoid dragons. I know some people who might be interested to see it.

Deffers
2014-01-28, 06:48 PM
They actually called it adamantane because its molecular structure is very reminiscent of diamond, which is hard-- so they named it after adamant, a term given to hard things which became the term for the magic metal we know and love. Not a DnD reference, as this was discovered in the 30's, though. The first diamondoid discovered, I think. It's why I like it so much-- it defies all expectations of what it should be.

Brother Oni
2014-01-28, 06:56 PM
I guess for the same reason they named some gene after Sonic the Hedgehog.

Actually SHH was named because modifying it caused the flies to turn out 'spiky' (little projections on the embryos).

Plus the drosphophilia guys are kinda weird like that.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 07:01 PM
Oni: Ah, so there is a reason. Though it sounded like I was complaining... I think it's pretty awesome to name genes after video game characters.


Deffers: Yeah, that is quite a good story, I can see why you'd like it.

Glad it wasn't a DnD reference, at least.

Mr Beer
2014-01-28, 07:46 PM
You'd need a lot of poison to effect something that big, and it's have to work well against its system. Best I can think of is Anthrax--but they didn't know how to use that till just before WWI.

Assume the zilla-dragon weigh 60,000 tons. At 15 humans per ton, that’s 900,000 human-weights. Lethal dose of cyanide is 200mg to 300mg. So that’s 270kg for a Godzilla.

That’s a lot of poison. Let’s try something really toxic: Botulinum.

Oral toxicity is 70 μg for a human so that’s only 63 grams for a Godzilla. Much more feasible.

Of course, primitives can't probably manufacture and extract botulinum so it may require some fantasy poison equivalent. Botulinum is about as poisonous as you can get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_cyanide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin

Mike_G
2014-01-28, 07:47 PM
A tactic for fighting airborne dragons would be to target the wings. It's tough to fly with armored wings, they're nice big targets, and if you poke enough holes in the membranes, they will stop providing lift.

If humans were plagued with dragons, they would have adapted the common weapons for dragon fighting. Ballistae didn't need to track fast targets in antiquity, but a swivel mount on a castle tower wouldn't be all that tough if you were more worried about a pissed off flying lizard than a horde of Visigoths.

Incanur
2014-01-28, 07:51 PM
This stuff sounds really neat in and of itself, providing the advertising has some/any truth behind it (forgive me for being sceptical).

Super-strong diamondoid materials aren't real yet - though you do have carbon nanotubes and whatnot - but they're fairly plausible according to known chemistry, etc.


Having dragons made out of something like this seems great too--they could reach a level of abilities that previously would be seen as magical and impossible (well, it'll still seem that way to many readers/players).

You bet. But then, nanotech as imagined by transhumanists, Singularitarians, and company can approximate - and often surpass - most of the magic seen in popular fiction. And then there's femtotech (http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/femtotech-armor.151166/) if nanotech isn't good enough. It all might as well be magic at this point. :smallsmile:


The main concern would be weight, since flying dragons are best dragons.

That's a huge technical problem right there. Dragons would basically require some sort of high-strength carbon material to do anything impressive. No flying creatures bigger than beetles have armor. This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus) is best that's been done with biological materials so far. I'm sure it'd look like a dragon if overhead, but it wouldn't be much of a threat.


The question becomes what molecules a dragon could conceivably have in its scales, and why-- why would it have diamondoids inside of it? And which ones?

Which ones? Super-strong ones, of course. Why? Probably because some posthuman superintelligence got bored decided to make a planet that reminded em of eir days as a fleshbag playing D&D. :smallamused:

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 08:24 PM
Alcohol: Yeah, that's precisely it. Getting the lizard to devour that much poison, or somehow getting that much into their system (well, you only need to make it sick enough for some other method to work, but still)...


Mike: Mass ranged troops could try to wing it.

The altitude the dragon can keep to would effect how threatening ranged troops are. Dragons might have tricks where they dive with their wings furled, then open them near the end of the dive to soar over the archers' heads while spraying fire and slashing (you could shoot them at close range then, but I think most archers would blink). Still, you can keep ballistas nearby to try and counter this move (make it so that anything the dragon does, they have to risk getting hurt).

Your archers are still useful tools in defeating the dragon.

And what you point out is very true. If dragons are a threat, humans will develop anti-dragon weaponry because humans are intelligent (hahahah).

Of course... dragons will develop anti-human techniques, if dragons are intelligent.


Incanur: Honestly, this is getting to the level where purple unicorns arguing that their magic is science would make more sense.

A single adult quetzalcoatlus wouldn't occupy the thoughts of a medieval nation, of course. Still, it could be highly threatening.

Either way, it's a matter of working out a physically possible biological dragon, not about finding one in this world (not till our next meeting).

Deffers
2014-01-28, 08:26 PM
Alright. So. Diamondoids and Dragons. Heh, that is a fantastic name for some sort of Diamond Age dungeoncrawling RPG.

The first question to ask is, what's a diamondoid? We're not just talking things that have a lattice structure like a diamond's-- graphenes and nanotubes actually go under this category too. Graphene is interesting, in the sense that it's a sheet of molecular carbon. Fun fact, though, you can fold it (creating a material named Grafold) to allow it to withstand compressional impacts-- something it's not otherwise good at. Now, the question as to whether or not a living being can produce pure atomic carbon biologically is something I'm not equipped to answer-- neither is whether or not it would be capable of turning that atomic carbon into graphene or if it would be able to fold it into grafold. All I'm saying is, grafold is more or less tough as hell, providing a serious resistance to compressional stresses and being stronger than steel for a much lighter weight. I'd rather take an old Ironscale dragon of the type we described earlier to a grafold dragon, since an old Ironscale dragon would be a tank, and it probably couldn't fly, while a grafold dragon would be just as tanky but also capable of attacking me from above. I'm guessing, though, that if a snail can get iron from its food, then maybe carbon can be similarly manipulated. Maybe?

Of course, that's only one kind of diamondoid. Boron nitride is also weird--while it's much more like a ceramic, it's used in bulletproof plating, and for a reason. It's very, very strong. It can also be rolled into nanotubes, which is a great way to tell your players to go die, because now it's even more resistant to temperatures and pressures. Somewhat heavier, though, and I don't know where a dragon's gonna go get enough boron to grow scales of the stuff. The chemical process to make boron is going to be... complex. To put it mildly, anything with boron nitride ANYTHING is going to spend a lot of time eating rocks, and then eating other food to maintain its digestion, and then a lot more time eating rocks. I don't think it's going to be a dragon by this point.

Hyperdiamond is even crazier, in that it's something harder than diamond made by compressing graphene. Frankly, I doubt there's any way to biologically produce this stuff. That would be something that the god of hating PCs would put on a dragon to make it wreck things.

Of course, it appears that certain lattices of adamantane's cousins might have the capacity to be latticed together to make super tough stuff. It'd be like graphene-- light, strong, resistant to damage, and you'd need to break the chemical bonds of the cage to break the scale itself. This might be possible to do biologically, as moving hydrogen and carbons around are what living things are good at, and lots of bacteria make hydrocarbons as byproducts. I see a lattice structure of cage-like diamondoids as the most likely possibility-- as I mentioned before, it would need to have the covalent lattice, which is something adamantane does not have. At this point my knowledge gets a little thin, but it looks like diamantane might do the trick.

That's pretty much all I know about the subject. Hopefully it proves at least interesting.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 08:55 PM
That was definitely interesting. End result is that, if biological creatures are capable of this process, then dragons could be thoroughly dragon-like.

Going to put some thought into this.

Incanur
2014-01-28, 08:59 PM
Incanur: Honestly, this is getting to the level where purple unicorns arguing that their magic is science would make more sense.

It's all plausibly hard by science-fiction standard. Well, maybe not the femtotech. :smallamused: Carbon nanotubes and such already exist (http://news.rice.edu/2013/01/10/new-nanotech-fiber-robust-handling-shocking-performance-2/), and they're pretty darn strong.


A single adult quetzalcoatlus wouldn't occupy the thoughts of a medieval nation, of course. Still, it could be highly threatening.

In the sense of scary, sure. But it'd have a hell of time dealing with arrows/bolts, spears, etc.


Either way, it's a matter of working out a physically possible biological dragon, not about finding one in this world (not till our next meeting).

I don't see a way to produce flying dragon capable of resisting medieval weapons without resorting to superior materials. For a terrestrial dragon, modifying a t-rex or whatnot might get the job done.

As far as fantasy goes, I'd only recommend consistency. The dragons should be as dangerous as the plot requires. Physics demands that flying dragons be made of better stuff than any known creatures, so if you want flying dragons you might as well make them tough - as they are in most mythology.

warty goblin
2014-01-28, 09:15 PM
Against a genuinely non-magic using human force, I think we've been missing the true advantage of a dragon: speed.

It's probably the fastest thing in the world. Including communication, so nobody gets advance warning of when it's going to attack, or what angle it'll come in from. If it uses terrain or low-hanging clouds for cover you could be looking at literally seconds of warning before things start burning. There's no time to muster the archers, there may not even be time to wind the ballistae.

And it's also old, and has survived for a long time by being very good at what it does. Anything a human tries to pull, it's probably already incinerated somebody for trying.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 09:28 PM
Incanur: Carbon nanotubes are normal enough for me. You can make them from processes chicken feathers

Most animals don't seem that scary when you have two dozen archers to their one. Problem is, they don't attack you when you have two dozen archers. One guy out hunting, with a bow and a dagger... wouldn't really stand a chance if that thing zoomed out of the sky then went off with him (not much different from a mountain lion, admittedly--though good hunters can get 1-1 casualties with mountain lions over time).

Depends how you mean by resist medieval weapons. Many dinosaurs could resist swords, spears and bows I'd say. Nothing can resist a ballista other than by sheer size, largely.


Goblin: Either way, it has free range of your land. You can't defend everywhere at once.

You could set up communication systems which were faster than dragons with medieval tech.

Mike_G
2014-01-28, 09:29 PM
Against a genuinely non-magic using human force, I think we've been missing the true advantage of a dragon: speed.

It's probably the fastest thing in the world. Including communication, so nobody gets advance warning of when it's going to attack, or what angle it'll come in from. If it uses terrain or low-hanging clouds for cover you could be looking at literally seconds of warning before things start burning. There's no time to muster the archers, there may not even be time to wind the ballistae.


If you are worried about your city getting burned by dragons, you develop beacons, bells, and so on for early warning. We don't need a guy on horseback to deliver the message. It can be done at the speed of light with semaphore.

You develop quick firing missile weapons, because that becomes a priority. Ballistae that can stay wound for a day. Have several and keep one spanned in each battery, change them daily.

Use shotgun style bundles of ammo in launchers, if hitting a flaying target is tough. Use ball and chain ammo to tangle wings.

Sure, nothing that Richard the Lionheart had in his army was good for fighting dragons, but he was more worried about Frenchmen and Saracens.



And it's also old, and has survived for a long time by being very good at what it does. Anything a human tries to pull, it's probably already incinerated somebody for trying.

As a counter to that, species with a short lifespan adapt quicker than species with a long one.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 09:36 PM
Well, we're talking about people here, not some generic species. Whether humans adapt better than dragons depends on the dragons, their personalities, culture, intelligence, etc..

There probably isn't a need to pre-draw your ballistas. The dragons shouldn't be that fast. If they were, you probably would have bigger problems.

Incanur
2014-01-28, 10:18 PM
Against a genuinely non-magic using human force, I think we've been missing the true advantage of a dragon: speed.

It's probably the fastest thing in the world. Including communication, so nobody gets advance warning of when it's going to attack, or what angle it'll come in from. If it uses terrain or low-hanging clouds for cover you could be looking at literally seconds of warning before things start burning. There's no time to muster the archers, there may not even be time to wind the ballistae.

Ok, but this all assumes exotic materials. Researchers continue to debate how well - if at all - the quetzalcoatlus (http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/flying-dinosaur-pterodactyl-121108.htm) could fly. It's extremely unlikely it any large flying creature could do the things you describe with known biological structure. Of course, that goes for the firebreathing too. :smallamused:


One guy out hunting, with a bow and a dagger... wouldn't really stand a chance if that thing zoomed out of the sky then went off with him (not much different from a mountain lion, admittedly--though good hunters can get 1-1 casualties with mountain lions over time).

As the above link indicates, the quetzalcoatlus most likely had enough trouble keeping its own weight aloft. It wouldn't carrying anyone anyway and you'd sure be able to see it coming. Historical archers could be quite fast and accurate shots - there's one supposed case of a bodyguard of archers all shooting a dog in pitch darkness based on sound alone, though that makes them seem a bit jumpy - and humans with knives often do better than you'd think against against nonhuman animals. Sasha Siemel's (http://books.google.com/books?id=QwLqP0cjh3QC&pg=PA118&dq=sasha+siemel&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_W_oUpDVIOeTyQHQoYEw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=sasha%20siemel&f=false) career suggests that a skilled human with a spear has to roll awfully low to lose against a big cat.


Depends how you mean by resist medieval weapons. Many dinosaurs could resist swords, spears and bows I'd say.

A single well-placed arrow will still kill an elephant, though not immediately. In practice military elephants often wore metal armor because their hide alone wasn't sufficient defense against arrows, spears, and swords. The largest dinosaurs could have been tougher than elephants, sure. But definitely not the flying ones.

If you want a strictly realistic dragon that could yet inspire awe, taking a big dinosaur and putting flammable gas in its belly seems reasonable. Dinosaurs were impressively huge!

Mike_G
2014-01-28, 10:31 PM
Well, we're talking about people here, not some generic species. Whether humans adapt better than dragons depends on the dragons, their personalities, culture, intelligence, etc..

There probably isn't a need to pre-draw your ballistas. The dragons shouldn't be that fast. If they were, you probably would have bigger problems.

The problem is we are dealing with a completely hypothetical species.

How big is our dragon? How tough is its armor? How fast can it fly? How hot is its breath?

Once we know what we have, we know what might work.

Is it an alligator with halitosis, or is it the size of a B-52 with scales that can laugh at musketballs and breath that can melt steel?

Thought exercises would have people fight it with anti aircraft tactics, or anti tank tactics, depending on what stats you want to give the thing. But trying to figure how fight a mythical beast without nailing down specifics is pretty much impossible.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-28, 11:09 PM
Incanur: There isn't much point discussing the bird's terror effect, if it isn't even decided if it flies.

Impressive and story-worthy individuals are just that: Impressive and story-worthy. Many hunters continue to die to big cats across the world, and it isn't for lack of trying that this happens.

Resistance and immunity are separate things.

There are indeed some truly amazing dinosaurs.


Mike: Something between a bull and an elephant in size, extremely resistant to arrows, not that fastest flier but has a mighty dive, it's breath could be propane based.


Actually, that brings to mind an important idea: How far could a dragon breathe flame? The spitting cobra can throw a small dose of liquid venom about 15 feet... but how far could propane-based gas fire travel when powered by an bull-sized dragon or from an elephant-sized dragon? Being a flying creature, it ought to have extra powerful lungs already.

Incanur
2014-01-28, 11:41 PM
Many hunters continue to die to big cats across the world, and it isn't for lack of trying that this happens.

Could you give some examples of this? How common is it? Other times humans kill big cats - well, leopards - with their bare (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/akeley.html) hands (http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/grandfather-kills-leopard-with-his-bare-hands-1.244486). Certainly tigers - and to a less extent lions and leopards - have killed lots of people, though mainly unarmed folks by ambush. Supposedly certain individual tigers and leopards have killed scores and even hundreds of humans. I guess human against cat depends on both the human and the cat.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-29, 12:20 AM
Yeah, with hunters it depends on the human and the cat. But... don't take cases like the one you listed to heart. Both the survivor and the authorities commented on how strange it was (the victim gave credit to divine instruction). And the other is a guy who survived an encounter with three rhinos, and getting stomped by an elephant...

AMFV
2014-01-29, 01:55 AM
Yeah, with hunters it depends on the human and the cat. But... don't take cases like the one you listed to heart. Both the survivor and the authorities commented on how strange it was (the victim gave credit to divine instruction). And the other is a guy who survived an encounter with three rhinos, and getting stomped by an elephant...

Well we tend to forget that even before we had guns and advanced weapons we were still an apex predator. Primitive humans hunt Lions in Africa, as a test of manhood. That's pretty amazing and it suggests that humans are not to be trifled with, that's with spears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_hunting

That's got most of the particulars, I would say that a human with preparation and training will almost always win, since we're stalker predators, but a cat that gets the drop on a human will always (generally) win, since they're ambush predators. Humans are large apex predators though and are not often prey for smaller creatures.

GraaEminense
2014-01-29, 04:13 AM
Since we're talking dragonslaying, I'd love some more input on the two defining features that separates dragons from lizards: flight and flaming breath.

Let's go with a conservative size of "roughly elephant". What would it take for something like this to get airborne? Even with the discussion about biologically available super-materials it's not going to be a light-weight creature: The average African bush elephant bull weighs in at 5.5 tonnes, and it's unarmoured.

Anyone got any idea on how light we could make our dragon while keeping it suitably draconic, and how?

How much wingspan would be needed to make it fly?

As for the flaming breath, biological creatures make methane already, so fuel is reasonably plausible. Can't think of any natural precedent for the actual fire though, any ideas?
Edit: the obvious solution is of course a gas that ignites in contact with air, but how plausible is it that it wouldn't turn the dragon into a firebomb?

AMFV
2014-01-29, 04:16 AM
Since we're talking dragonslaying, I'd love some more input on the two defining features that separates dragons from lizards: flight and flaming breath.

Let's go with a conservative size of "roughly elephant". What would it take for something like this to get airborne? Even with the discussion about biologically available super-materials it's not going to be a light-weight creature: The average African bush elephant bull weighs in at 5.5 tonnes, and it's unarmoured.

Anyone got any idea on how light we could make our dragon while keeping it suitably draconic, and how?

How much wingspan would be needed to make it fly?

As for the flaming breath, biological creatures make methane already, so fuel is reasonably plausible. Can't think of any natural precedent for the actual fire though, any ideas?

No real biological precedent for fire. To be honest once we're creating traditional dragons we're pretty much outside of the realms of biological possibility in any case. We could give it some kind of nuclear furnace inside it giving it power, and then some kind of bone structure or ballast system that would give it buoyancy. After all, in nature there are creatures that power themselves via jet propulsion (mostly aquatic) but that's a much more reasonable system of propulsion, that and wings could definitely let the dragon fly.

GraaEminense
2014-01-29, 04:22 AM
Obviously it is fantasy, but as I see it the point of the exercise is to reduce fantasy as much as possible.

Fish have a bladder that regulates buoyancy, so that is almost somewhat feasible. Would require a huge dragon that goes 'pop' easily though.

snowblizz
2014-01-29, 05:18 AM
Anyone got any idea on how light we could make our dragon while keeping it suitably draconic, and how?


Not a biologist so basically winging it, but the first that comes to mind is to do what birds did. Make bones less solid. Of course that means less durability. But maybe we can co-opt the snail idea, so the dragon during its life improves the bone structure with something like carbon nanotubes to create a strong and lighter frame.

I guess the question is, where does the weight in an elephant reside? Anyone knows?

A predator dragon would need less of massive digestive system so we could probably save something in intestinal tracts and so on. This is complicated by the question how does it extract materials (if one goes that route) but the snails organs can't be that complicated.

Wings could double as a heat regulation system but would represent a pretty fair weight gain.

Can we build a better vascular system reducing the amount of blood or something needed to run through the creature.

I guess it comes down to musculature, an elephant is massive because the elephant is massive. It would seem the dragon would be kinda large but much lighter then the size would suggest.

Mike_G
2014-01-29, 08:30 AM
Elephants and bulls both have very heavy muscles. Bones are light in general, but obviously those of an elephant are much heavier than anything that flies.

Bear in mind that even large birds tend to be flightless, so the basic design for flight tends not to work very well with an animal over 100 pounds.

A thousand pound dragon would need a huge wingspan, and the more muscle or scales you pile on, the bigger it would need to be.

A theory on pteranadons is that they climbed to high places and glided. New theories are divided on if they were able to run and vault into the sky or not. For their size, they were very lightly built and had huge wingspans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur

So, if we invoke some kind of magic and suspension of disbelief to get our dragon airborne, we aren't going to get good real world data on how to kill it.

But this would be kind of an awesome AA weapon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2NcPwsngU

snowblizz
2014-01-29, 10:21 AM
But this would be kind of an awesome AA weapon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2NcPwsngU
Ha! I saw that episode as a rerun today and was thinking about mentioning the very same thing.

AMFV
2014-01-29, 11:45 AM
Obviously it is fantasy, but as I see it the point of the exercise is to reduce fantasy as much as possible.

Fish have a bladder that regulates buoyancy, so that is almost somewhat feasible. Would require a huge dragon that goes 'pop' easily though.

Which is why I was suggesting something more along the lines of jet propulsion to aid the wings. Something like squids have, I mean if we're already producing a means to generate fire, we have some of pretty intense energy production inside the dragon as is. So just to harness some of that for jet flight, I assume that should not be impossible, since several aquatic animals use jet propulsion, the question would just be one of how much energy is needed for a given size dragon and how we would manage that. I'm not an engineer so I can't really speak to that too well.

Deffers
2014-01-29, 01:12 PM
Guys, I think you're missing the easiest way for a dragon to breathe fire, which is for it to generate an electrical arc in its mouth to ignite a flammable liquid. More stable than a gas, and it could be this liquid has a really high ignition temperature so that the dragon itself isn't flammable.

warty goblin
2014-01-29, 01:37 PM
Which is why I was suggesting something more along the lines of jet propulsion to aid the wings. Something like squids have, I mean if we're already producing a means to generate fire, we have some of pretty intense energy production inside the dragon as is. So just to harness some of that for jet flight, I assume that should not be impossible, since several aquatic animals use jet propulsion, the question would just be one of how much energy is needed for a given size dragon and how we would manage that. I'm not an engineer so I can't really speak to that too well.

Divinity: Dragon Commander proposed the innovative solution of jetpack-powered dragons.

Stephen_E
2014-01-29, 10:09 PM
I'm reminded of Discworld where one dragon shoots fire out it's arse to get more speed.
As funny as it is it would be one way to get the assist for take off (this has been used for some transport aircraft to give them STO capability from recollection, rocket assist that is). Take off is the hardest part for any big flyer. Staying in the air is much easier.

Mr Beer
2014-01-29, 10:18 PM
What about a bombadier beetle kind of deal with fire-breathing, you know, spraying out two substances that combine to ignite?

If it had various glands in the head/neck with nozzle-like exits in the mouth and powerful muscles to compress the gland and rapidly squeeze out the liquid, it could squirt quite some distance I imagine.

AgentPaper
2014-01-29, 10:55 PM
What about a bombadier beetle kind of deal with fire-breathing, you know, spraying out two substances that combine to ignite?

If it had various glands in the head/neck with nozzle-like exits in the mouth and powerful muscles to compress the gland and rapidly squeeze out the liquid, it could squirt quite some distance I imagine.

It could also be a combination of the two, using the reactive substances to set the fire off, and then fueling it into an inferno with propane or methane or whatever other substance.

Another idea would be to keep an eternal pilot light going somewhere in it's mouth or belly. Dragons would have an instinctive desire to eat fire whenever it's not lit, allowing them to light (or re-light) their pilot light to allow them to breath fire again. This could even be a plot point, where an injured dragon seeks out a fire to eat so it can fend off it's attackers.

Mr Beer
2014-01-30, 04:42 PM
It could also be a combination of the two, using the reactive substances to set the fire off, and then fueling it into an inferno with propane or methane or whatever other substance.

Another idea would be to keep an eternal pilot light going somewhere in it's mouth or belly. Dragons would have an instinctive desire to eat fire whenever it's not lit, allowing them to light (or re-light) their pilot light to allow them to breath fire again. This could even be a plot point, where an injured dragon seeks out a fire to eat so it can fend off it's attackers.

This sounds like our dragon is less of a fire breather and more of a napalm spitter. Which is way more awesome IMO.

Stephen_E
2014-01-30, 07:09 PM
This sounds like our dragon is less of a fire breather and more of a napalm spitter. Which is way more awesome IMO.

Way more scary at least. :smalleek:

spineyrequiem
2014-01-30, 07:23 PM
Given a technology level of around First-World-War era or slightly later (so 1910-1930), what would you arm a sentient species which had been designed to fly like bats with? And what sort of doctrine would you go for (i.e. would you be trying to shoot while gliding, through a weapon attached to the chest, or would you land and brace it?)

For more information about the race: Harpies stand around 3-4 feet tall (or they would, if they ever stood up straight rather than walking on their wings) and have all of their hand but the first finger and thumb adapted into wings, the membranes of which connect to their short legs. As you might expect from a flying race, their torsos are extremely broad, with strong chest muscles, while their legs are comparatively diminutive, with clawed feet adapted for gripping strongly. They live primarily in mountainous areas and survive off a mixture of subsistence farming, hunting and working for other races, with the occasional bit of trade-caravan looting on the side. They are capable of flying under their own power, but tend to be rather clumsy when trying to gain height, especially if they're carrying a lot of weight. So whatever they're armed with has to be light.

Also, if anyone could try to guesstimate a sensible wingspan for them, that would be wonderful. I thought about ten feet, but that might be a bit small...

Thiel
2014-01-30, 08:00 PM
I have to say I can't really see how a creature like that could have the manual dexterity to handle tools, but if we ignore that I'd say go for a short ranged automatic weapon. Given how weight critical you're going to be something like the select fire Steyr Hahn M1912 (http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg/at/steyr-hahn-m1912-e.html) is probably your best bet. If weight isn't that critical you could go for a submachinegun of some description, like the German MP-18 (http://world.guns.ru/smg/de/mp1-i-schmeisser-e.html)
I doubt you'll be able to carry anything as heavy as a full powered bolt action rifle, and even if you can, your size is going to make handling one rather difficult.
Human beings with both hands to control the weapon are already all but incapable of hitting a target at anything but point blank range while moving, doing so while flying with a gun strapped to your chest is going to be a lot harder.
I can't really say anything about wingspan other than it's going to be huge.

warty goblin
2014-01-30, 08:02 PM
Given a technology level of around First-World-War era or slightly later (so 1910-1930), what would you arm a sentient species which had been designed to fly like bats with? And what sort of doctrine would you go for (i.e. would you be trying to shoot while gliding, through a weapon attached to the chest, or would you land and brace it?)

For more information about the race: Harpies stand around 3-4 feet tall (or they would, if they ever stood up straight rather than walking on their wings) and have all of their hand but the first finger and thumb adapted into wings, the membranes of which connect to their short legs. As you might expect from a flying race, their torsos are extremely broad, with strong chest muscles, while their legs are comparatively diminutive, with clawed feet adapted for gripping strongly. They live primarily in mountainous areas and survive off a mixture of subsistence farming, hunting and working for other races, with the occasional bit of trade-caravan looting on the side. They are capable of flying under their own power, but tend to be rather clumsy when trying to gain height, especially if they're carrying a lot of weight. So whatever they're armed with has to be light.

Also, if anyone could try to guesstimate a sensible wingspan for them, that would be wonderful. I thought about ten feet, but that might be a bit small...


I'd think you'd not want to fight from the air in most cases, and instead use flight to make some extremely fast moving light infantry. Thinking being that against somebody with machine guns, flapping around like a bird probably isn't that great a survival strategy, but evading contact and attacking from wherever is least convenient is often a very effective tactic.

I'd go with a scoped rifle, personally. If you can't carry much weight, you want to make your ordinance count, and since it's wise to not fly in too close to the guys with the MG34s (or whatever), you also want to be able to effectively engage at range. The idea being to hit unexpectedly at key enemy positions from a safe distance, then get the hell outa dodge before the ground-pounders can mount an effective retaliation. Particularly useful if the harpies can fly in at night, strike in the half-light, and get away while the enemy will have a hard time getting a shot at a fast moving distant target. The effect on morale of this sort of constant sniping could be pretty bad.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-30, 08:03 PM
Well, they might be able to act as early scout planes. Fly around look around, then fly back. Bombing during WWI didn't have much result, so I don't think it's going to be any better with the harpies on attack. If they do act as scouts, they'll probably want to arm themselves with stuff to shoot enemy harpies, so whatever they can effectively fly reasonable scouting distances with.

Now, the problem with flying with WWI tech, is that if they take off anywhere near the enemy, they will be easy to shoot down. They also would need to fly very high and fast to avoid getting shot down after take off. Their flight could give them utility in mountain warfare and urban warfare, as they'd be able to scale high places which would normally be infeasible to reach (if they can claw the heck out of enemies, then they can attack snipers through the windows too).

They might be a good choice for pilots, if they have a natural understanding of the mechanics of flying and can bail out without parachutes.

I didn't fully understand the design of their hands, but it sounded like their ability with guns might be questionable. It also sounds like they wouldn't be able to hold or use a gun while flying. They could try aiming with their bodies and triggering the guns with their feet... I'm not sure that'd work out.

AgentPaper
2014-01-30, 08:08 PM
Assuming that they're a legitimately intelligent species and not the "dumb savage" that harpies are usually associated with, I'd expect them to use a number of tactics, with a major focus on air superiority.

First off, since they don't have any hands and arms separate from their wings, they'll probably need to do most of their fighting from the ground, using mostly conventional tactics and weapons, in this case sub-machine guns and/or rifles. They should be able to hold and use the same weapons as any other race without much trouble, though if their hand structure is much different they might have their own specialized versions that are a bit more comfortable for them to use.

However, while at first glance the tactics might look similar, their ability to fly would give them a huge edge in maneuverability and air superiority. Think something along the lines of how a modern military uses helicopters to move troops around, only for the entire army (short of heavy weapons), and far more cheaply. They can also pretty easily drop bombs on their enemies, and would probably be doing that, especially to take out key positions and/or enemy artillery.

I would also expect such a race to have a much better understanding of flight and aerodynamics, and if planes exist in such a world, they almost certainly invented them. Since their tactics have already included air forces from the dawn of time, they should have an easy time of integrating planes into their doctrine. They wouldn't need planes to fly people around, but they would be useful for carrying large loads, such as supplies, equipment, and heavy weapons, further enhancing their aerial mobility.

They probably wouldn't put much stock into fighters for dogfighting, both because they already have such strong air superiority as to make them unecessary, and since they can already do mostly the same job themselves, though once planes start to improve and get faster, they'll likely be forced to start using them as well, probably around the time of WW2-era planes. Depending on how stubborn their leaders are, they might even fall behind and lose their long-held air superiority for a while before they realize they need to use planes too, which would be quite a shock for them.

Edit: A more specialized tactic that they might use, would be to have some elite troops work as "dive-bombers", only with rifles instead of bombs. Basically, what they'd do is fly up high over an enemy, then pull in their wings so they can use their gun, and fire as many aimed shots as they can at the targets below before pulling out of the dive at the last second. This would be incredibly dangerous, since there's the risk both of not pulling out of the dive in time, and of course getting hit by the enemy you're plummeting towards, who will certainly start firing back at you when they realize what's going on.

Thiel
2014-01-30, 08:48 PM
I'd go with a scoped rifle, personally. If you can't carry much weight, you want to make your ordinance count, and since it's wise to not fly in too close to the guys with the MG34s (or whatever), you also want to be able to effectively engage at range. The idea being to hit unexpectedly at key enemy positions from a safe distance, then get the hell outa dodge before the ground-pounders can mount an effective retaliation. Particularly useful if the harpies can fly in at night, strike in the half-light, and get away while the enemy will have a hard time getting a shot at a fast moving distant target. The effect on morale of this sort of constant sniping could be pretty bad.
I really don't see how that's going to work. Specifically I can't see how they'd operate a rifle, let alone fly with one. Even if we assume they use carbines instead of full sized rifles (With the associated effect on accuracy) we're still talking about a really awkward 43ish inch long stick that they have to carry from a sling of some sort. Just running around with a rifle carried by its sling without any hands to stabilize it is an invitation to either drop it or get a lot of bruises. Imagine what it's like to fly with.


Assuming that they're a legitimately intelligent species and not the "dumb savage" that harpies are usually associated with, I'd expect them to use a number of tactics, with a major focus on air superiority.

First off, since they don't have any hands and arms separate from their wings, they'll probably need to do most of their fighting from the ground, using mostly conventional tactics and weapons, in this case sub-machine guns and/or rifles. They should be able to hold and use the same weapons as any other race without much trouble, though if their hand structure is much different they might have their own specialized versions that are a bit more comfortable for them to use.
I highly doubt they'll be able to use human weapons as is. They're four feet tall when they stretch and they're going to have arms just as long and they only have two fingers to work with.


However, while at first glance the tactics might look similar, their ability to fly would give them a huge edge in maneuverability
Yes and no. Sure, they're going to be able to move about relatively freely, but they're not going to be able to carry much with them in terms of weapons and ammunition.So while they may be able to initially deploy a lot faster, in the grand scheme of things they're going to be even slower than regular infantry because they're going to be even more tied to the supply train.

and air superiority.[/qoute]
I don't see how they're going to get an edge in air superiority. Sure they can fly, but the only weapons they can realistically use up there is their claws. I imagine a two seater aircraft with either a machine gun or perhaps more useful a semi auto shotgun is going to make short work of any Harpies trying to interfere.

[QUOTE=AgentPaper;16900227]Think something along the lines of how a modern military uses helicopters to move troops around, only for the entire army (short of heavy weapons), and far more cheaply.
That comparison fails once you realise they can't bring any meaningful amount of supplies with them.


They can also pretty easily drop bombs on their enemies, and would probably be doing that, especially to take out key positions and/or enemy artillery.



I would also expect such a race to have a much better understanding of flight and aerodynamics, and if planes exist in such a world, they almost certainly invented them. Since their tactics have already included air forces from the dawn of time, they should have an easy time of integrating planes into their doctrine. They wouldn't need planes to fly people around, but they would be useful for carrying large loads, such as supplies, equipment, and heavy weapons, further enhancing their aerial mobility.
The aircraft of WWI really didn't have that capability. The few aircraft capable of carrying "heavy" loads were huge lumbering beast with several engines. And even then they couldn't carry enough to even compete with mule trains, let alone railroads and trucks.

They probably wouldn't put much stock into fighters for dogfighting, both because they already have such strong air superiority as to make them unecessary, and since they can already do mostly the same job themselves, though once planes start to improve and get faster, they'll likely be forced to start using them as well, probably around the time of WW2-era planes. Depending on how stubborn their leaders are, they might even fall behind and lose their long-held air superiority for a while before they realize they need to use planes too, which would be quite a shock for them.
Since they can't bring any meaningful weapons to an aerial fight without resorting to airplanes themselves I really don't buy it.

[QUOTE=AgentPaper;16900227]Edit: A more specialized tactic that they might use, would be to have some elite troops work as "dive-bombers", only with rifles instead of bombs. Basically, what they'd do is fly up high over an enemy, then pull in their wings so they can use their gun, and fire as many aimed shots as they can at the targets below before pulling out of the dive at the last second. This would be incredibly dangerous, since there's the risk both of not pulling out of the dive in time, and of course getting hit by the enemy you're plummeting towards, who will certainly start firing back at you when they realize what's going on.[QUOTE=AgentPaper;16900227]
Sounds like a good way to waste ammunition for little to no gain. The chances of them actually hitting anything with a bolt action rifle while free falling is going to be microscopical.

oudeis
2014-01-30, 09:03 PM
An idea I've been kicking around is that dragons don't actually breath fire. Instead, they can expel a blast of metal sparks similar to what you see when steel is worked with high-speed tools or cut with acetylene torches. They can only do it a few times before they are empty and need to refuel. Some other options that occurred to me recently were superheated jets of air that can ignite common man-made materials, or a stream of elemental fluorine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtWp45Eewtw). The belief that they breathe great gouts of fire are based on tales of terrified refugees and survivors who escaped by not staying around long enough to get a good look.

As for the discussion about flight mechanics, anatomy, etc, I'd like to submit this excerpt from A Wizard of Earthsea. I read this several decades ago and I've yet to come across anything nearly as good or that I feel addresses these matters as well as this:

At the entrance of the harbor, a shallow crescent bay, he let the windspell drop and stilled his little boat so it lay rocking on the waves. Then he summoned the dragon: “Usurper of Pendor, come defend your hoard!”

His voice fell short in the sound of breakers beating on the ashen shores; but dragons have keen ears. Presently one flitted up from some roofless ruin of the town like a vast black bat, thin-winged and spinybacked, and circling into the north wind came flying towards Ged. His heart swelled at the sight of the creature that was a myth to his people, and he laughed and shouted, “Go tell the Old One to come, you wind-worm!”

For this was one of the young dragons, spawned there years ago by a she-dragon from the West Reach, who had set her clutch of great leathern eggs, as they say she-dragons will, in some sunny broken room of the tower and had flown away again, leaving the Old Dragon of Pendor to watch the young when they crawled like baneful lizards from the shell.

The young dragon made no answer. He was not large of his kind, maybe the length of a forty-oared ship, and was worm-thin for all the reach of his black membranous wings. He had not got his growth yet, nor his voice, nor any dragon-cunning. Straight at Ged in the small rocking boat he came, opening his long, toothed jaws as he slid down arrowy from the air: so that all Ged had to do was bind his wings and limbs stiff with one sharp spell and send him thus hurtling aside into the sea like a stone falling. And the grey sea closed over him.

Two dragons like the first rose up from the base of the highest tower. Even as the first one they came driving straight at Ged, and even so he caught both, hurled both down, and drowned them; and he had not yet lifted up his wizard's staff.

Now after a little time there came three against him from the island. One of these was much greater, and fire spewed curling from its jaws. Two came flying at him rattling their wings, but the big one came circling from behind, very swift, to burn him and his boat with its breath of fire. No binding spell would catch all three, because two came from north and one from south. In the instant that he saw this, Ged worked a spell of Changing, and between one breath and the next flew up from his boat in dragonform.

Spreading broad wings and reaching talons out, he met the two head on, withering them with fire, and then turned to the third, who was larger than he and armed also with fire. On the wind over the grey waves they doubled, snapped, swooped, lunged, till smoke roiled about them red-lit by the glare of their fiery mouths. Ged flew suddenly upward and the other pursued, below him. In midflight the dragon Ged raised wings, stopped, and stooped as the hawk stoops, talons outstretched downward, striking and bearing the other down by neck and flank. The black wings flurried and black dragon-blood dropped in thick drops into the sea. The Pendor dragon tore free and flew low and lamely to the island, where it hid, crawling into some well or cavern in the ruined town.

At once Ged took his form and place again on the boat, for it was most perilous to keep that dragon-shape longer than need demanded. His hands were black with the scalding wormblood, and he was scorched about the head with fire, but this was no matter now. He waited only till he had his breath back and then called, “Six I have seen, five slain, nine are told of: come out, worms!”

No creature moved nor voice spoke for a long while on the island, but only the waves beat loudly on the shore. Then Ged was aware that the highest tower slowly changed its shape, bulging out on one side as if it grew an arm. He feared dragon-magic, for old dragons are very powerful and guileful in a sorcery like and unlike the sorcery of men: but a moment more and he saw this was no trick of the dragon, but of his own eyes. What he had taken for a part of the tower was the shoulder of the Dragon of Pendor as he uncurled his bulk and lifted himself slowly up.

When he was all afoot his scaled head, spikecrowned and triple-tongued, rose higher than the broken tower's height, and his taloned forefeet rested on the rubble of the town below. His scales were grey-black, catching the daylight like broken stone. Lean as a hound he was and huge as a hill. Ged stared in awe. There was no song or tale could prepare the mind for this sight. Almost he stared into the dragon's eyes and was caught, for one cannot look into a dragon's eyes. He glanced away from the oily green gaze that watched him, and held up before him his staff, that looked now like a splinter, like a twig.

“Eight sons I had, little wizard,” said the great dry voice of the dragon. “Five died, one dies: enough. You will not win my hoard by killing them.”

“I do not want your hoard.”

The yellow smoke hissed from the dragon's nostrils: that was his laughter.

“Would you not like to come ashore and look at it, little wizard? It is worth looking at.”

“No, dragon.” The kinship of dragons is with wind and fire, and they do not fight willingly over the sea. That had been Ged's advantage so far and he kept it; but the strip of seawater between him and the great grey talons did not seem much of an advantage, any more.

It was hard not to look into the green, watching eyes.

“You are a very young wizard,” the dragon said, “I did not know men came so young into their power.” He spoke, as did Ged, in the Old Speech, for that is the tongue of dragons still. Although the use of the Old Speech binds a man to truth, this is not so with dragons. It is their own language, and they can lie in it, twisting the true words to false ends, catching the unwary hearer in a maze of mirrorwords each of which reflects the truth and none of which leads anywhere. So Ged had been warned often, and when the dragon spoke he listened with an untrustful ear, all his doubts ready. But the words seemed plain and clear: “Is it to ask my help that you have come here, little wizard?”

“No, dragon.”

“Yet I could help you. You will need help soon, against that which hunts you in the dark.”

Ged stood dumb.

“What is it that hunts you? Name it to me.”

“If I could name it-” Ged stopped himself.

Yellow smoke curled above the dragon's long head, from the nostrils that were two round pits of fire.

“If you could name it you could master it, maybe, little wizard. Maybe I could tell you its name, when I see it close by. And it will come close, if you wait about my isle. It will come wherever you come. If you do not want it to come close you must run, and run, and keep running from it. And yet it will follow you. Would you like to know its name?”

Ged stood silent again. How the dragon knew of the shadow he bad loosed, he could not guess, nor how it might know the shadow's name. The Archmage bad said that the shadow had no name. Yet dragons have their own wisdom; and they are an older race than man. Few men can guess what a dragon knows and how he knows it, and those few are the Dragonlords. To Ged, only one thing was sure: that, though the dragon might well be speaking truth, though he might indeed be able to tell Ged the nature and name of the shadow-thing and so give him power over it – even so, even if he spoke truth, he did so wholly for his own ends.

“It is very seldom,” the young man said at last, “that dragons ask to do men favors.”

"But it is very common," said the dragon, "for cats to play with mice before they kill them.

“But I did not come here to play, or to be played with. I came to strike a bargain with you.”

Like a sword in sharpness but five times the length of any sword, the point of the dragon's tail arched up scorpionwise over his mailed back, above the tower. Dryly he spoke: “I strike no bargains. I take. What have you to offer that I cannot take from you when I like?”

“Safety. Your safety. Swear that you will never fly eastward of Pendor, and I will swear to leave you unharmed.”

A grating sound came from the dragon's throat like the noise of an avalanche far off, stones falling among mountains. Fire danced along his three-forked tongue. He raised himself up higher, looming over the ruins. “You offer me safety! You threaten me! With what?”

“With your name, Yevaud.”

Ged's voice shook as he spoke the name, yet he spoke it clear and loud. At the sound of it, the old dragon held still, utterly still. A minute went by, and another; and then Ged, standing there in his rocking chip of a boat, smiled. He had staked this venture and his life on a guess drawn from old histories of dragon-lore learned on Roke, a guess that this Dragon of Pendor was the same that had spoiled the west of Osskil in the days of Elfarran and Morred, and had been driven from Osskill by a wizard, Elt, wise in names. The guess had held.

“We are matched, Yevaud. You have the strength: I have your name. Will you bargain?”

Still the dragon made no reply.

Many years bad the dragon sprawled on the island where golden breastplates and emeralds lay scattered among dust and bricks and bones; he had watched his black lizard-brood play among crumbling houses and try their wings from the cliffs; he had slept long in the sun, unwaked by voice or sail. He had grown old. It was hard now to stir, to face this mage-lad, this frail enemy, at the sight of whose staff Yevaud, the old dragon, winced.

“You may choose nine stones from my hoard,” he said at last, his voice hissing and whining in his long jaws. “The best: take your choice. Then go!”

“I do not want your stones, Yevaud.”

“Where is men's greed gone? Men loved bright stones in the old days in the North… I know what it is you want, wizard. I, too, can offer you safety, for I know what can save you. I know what alone can save you. There is a horror follows you. I will tell you its name.”

Ged's heart leaped in him, and he clutched his staff, standing as still as the dragon stood. He fought a moment with sudden, startling hope.

It was not his own life that he bargained for. One mastery, and only one, could he hold over the dragon. He set hope aside and did what he must do.

“That is not what I ask for, Yevaud.”

When he spoke the dragon's name it was as if he held the huge being on a fine, thin leash, tightening it on his throat. He could feel the ancient malice and experience of men in the dragon's gaze that rested on him, he could see the steel talons each as long as a man's forearm, and the stone-hard hide, and the withering fire that lurked in the dragon's throat: and yet always the leash tightened, tightened.

He spoke again: “Yevaud! Swear by your name that you and your sons will never come to the Archipelago.”

Flames broke suddenly bright and loud from the dragon's jaws, and he said, “I swear it by my name!”

Silence lay over the isle then, and Yevaud lowered his great head.

When he raised it again and looked, the wizard was gone, and the sail of the boat was a white fleck on the waves eastward, heading towards the fat bejewelled islands of the inner seas. Then in rage the old Dragon of Pendor rose up breaking the tower with the writhing of his body, and beating his wings that spanned the whole width of the ruined town. But his oath held him, and he did not fly, then or ever, to the Archipelago.

Put that in your 20th level pipe and smoke it.

fusilier
2014-01-30, 09:37 PM
Well, they might be able to act as early scout planes. Fly around look around, then fly back. Bombing during WWI didn't have much result, so I don't think it's going to be any better with the harpies on attack. . . .

I wouldn't be so quick to discount their bombing abilities, or for that matter bombing in WW1 -- strategic level bombing was still pretty nascent, but tactical level bombing was common, and it was successful enough that it grew throughout the war, by 1918 both sides were producing armored ground attack aircraft.

If they can carry grenades while flying, then they could probably engage in light bombing fairly well, especially if they support land engagements, where the enemy soldiers have enough targets on the ground to keep them from concentrating all their fire on flying targets.


They might be a good choice for pilots, if they have a natural understanding of the mechanics of flying and can bail out without parachutes.

I was just thinking of this myself. :-)

Mr. Mask
2014-01-30, 09:47 PM
Fair enough, on a tactical level it would still be useful, providing their numerous enough or can compete well enough with bombers.


Yeah, I think we're right to think of them as pilots. While they mightn't have the dexterity to be excellent shots, they can probably still make use of a pilot's controls (I'm not certain on that--never played with planes).

Considering parachutes took a while to become popular and reach full effectiveness, they would be preferable as pilots for that reason. Even with good parachutes, being able to choose where you land or potentially wing it back to base would be handy (you would need to be careful with that latter option, in case the enemies who shot you down decide to shoot you down--again).

Mr Beer
2014-01-30, 10:01 PM
I think harpies would use rapid fire weapons to fight each other or other ariel fliers and then bombs vs. ground troops.

So an automatic carbine/bandolier of grenades combo would see them able to fight air-to-air, air-to-ground and ground-to-ground if they land for whatever reason.

They would have numerous battlefield uses, especially recon and strategic missions. In a WWI level wartech setting they would be the prototypical special forces as well as the air force if heavier than air flight didn't exist. So RAF/SAS/Paras all rolled up into one.

AgentPaper
2014-01-30, 10:19 PM
Yes and no. Sure, they're going to be able to move about relatively freely, but they're not going to be able to carry much with them in terms of weapons and ammunition.So while they may be able to initially deploy a lot faster, in the grand scheme of things they're going to be even slower than regular infantry because they're going to be even more tied to the supply train.

All flying creatures have enough power to carry away their prey. You only need to be able to carry about 50 lbs or equipment to make a capable fighting force. They don't need to stay away from the supply train for weeks on end, just a few days while the fighting is going on. If things drag out, they'd be in more trouble, but flying makes for a great way to run away, too, and the supply train doesn't have to be close to the front, since you can fly a lot further in a day by air than by foot, even ignoring the difference in speed.


I don't see how they're going to get an edge in air superiority. Sure they can fly, but the only weapons they can realistically use up there is their claws. I imagine a two seater aircraft with either a machine gun or perhaps more useful a semi auto shotgun is going to make short work of any Harpies trying to interfere.

Planes back then already had enough trouble shooting each other down, they're not going to stand a chance against natural fliers who can bob, duck, weave, dive, and change direction at a moments notice. And as noted above, the harpy should be able to carry at least a 20lb weapon in addition to it's other supplies, and there's going to be a helluva lot more harpies than fighters, so even if the fighter pilot has the advantage 1v1, he's going to lose when he runs into the platoon of 1000 harpies all carrying SMGs, even without any special anti-air tactics or weapons.


YSounds like a good way to waste ammunition for little to no gain. The chances of them actually hitting anything with a bolt action rifle while free falling is going to be microscopical.

Why? What makes it any harder than hitting someone from 100ft away horizontally, rather than vertically? Certainly it's not a good tactic to use normally, but elite troops trained to be able to make accurate shots from that distance and in those circumstances could be useful at the very least as a weapon of intimidation, to make your enemies fear the skies as well as what's on the ground. And of course it could be used to hit targets of opportunity without taking the time to land and engage normally, or to get high-value targets like officers.


I think I may have been mistaken on the planes thing though. Harpies might make good pilots, but they probably aren't going to be the ones to invent planes, or at least not the first ones to use them, simply because they have less need of them compared to other races. It's the same thing as the Romans who invented the steam engine centuries ago, but never did anything with it beyond making a neat toy because slave labor was so cheap, so why bother?

warty goblin
2014-01-30, 10:27 PM
An idea I've been kicking around is that dragons don't actually breath fire. Instead, they can expel a blast of metal sparks similar to what you see when steel is worked with high-speed tools or cut with acetylene torches.

Metal sparks such as you get from a power grinder etc rise to the level of somewhat uncomfortable when sprayed on naked skin. If you're habituated to it, are wearing clothes that cover your flesh, or just plain have tough hide, it's at best an extremely mild irritant.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-30, 10:38 PM
Paper: If the harpies are ever airborne as low as 100 feet above enemy infantry, they'll die. The range they would need to be at to be safe from ground fire and anti-air fire would be too high to effectively use rifles (the technical distance would be OK for sniping, but they don't have enough of a stable platform for that).

WWI planes were most effective in their role of scouting. So the main advantage of harpies would be if their numbers allow them to more thoroughly scout the enemy. They can't carry radios on their person, so that's going to mean some extra information lag (plus the amount of extra time it takes them to fly there and back).

AgentPaper
2014-01-30, 10:57 PM
Paper: If the harpies are ever airborne as low as 100 feet above enemy infantry, they'll die. The range they would need to be at to be safe from ground fire and anti-air fire would be too high to effectively use rifles (the technical distance would be OK for sniping, but they don't have enough of a stable platform for that).

They'll get shot back at by whoever they're going after as soon as they realize what's going on, but that's exactly why it's a specialist tactic rather than a general one. You do it when you don't think your opponent will be able to respond in time to deal significant damage back to you before you fly off, or when the target is so valuable that the losses are acceptable.


WWI planes were most effective in their role of scouting. So the main advantage of harpies would be if their numbers allow them to more thoroughly scout the enemy. They can't carry radios on their person, so that's going to mean some extra information lag (plus the amount of extra time it takes them to fly there and back).

I don't know why you're assuming that the harpies would be such weaklings. If you try to be perfectly realistic, sure, they would probably have trouble keeping their own weight off the ground, but if you keep things perfectly realistic, then you can't have harpies at all, because they have to use all of their energy for flight and can't spare enough for higher brain functions.

You have to make assumptions to allow harpies to exist, and one of the assumptions I'm making is that they can carry at least 1/4-1/2 of their body weight with them into the air without significant strain. If they can't then they may as well not be able to fly at all, and never would have developed any kind of tool-using capability either, since a spear isn't much use if you have to drop it every time you want to fly up to your perch.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-30, 11:41 PM
Unless they remain in cloud cover, they'll be spotted. To remain alive, they'll need to move pretty fast and high. If they descended, they'd be sure to be killed, unless they could reach the WW2 Mosquito bomber's level of speed.

If they were going to dive on targets, they'd be best to use their claws and do it to overtake enemy positions. This couldn't really be done from the sky, but from some high place with a short enough distance that they can blindside their enemies then blast them with claws and SMGs.

From the sky, their best bet is grenades and bombs. They can remain a safe ways up, can kill more people per attack, and don't require special training.


I don't you think they could operate and carry a WWI scouting plane radio over the distances needed. So far, their size and lack of fingers has been a bigger problem than their relative strength.

GraaEminense
2014-01-31, 03:31 AM
With the possible exception of specialist dive-bomber-snipers, harpies would do their air-to-air fighting with their claws as their wings are kind of busy. With WW1 tech, that seems like short range SMGs or shotguns would be the best bet: They don´t have a stable firing platform, they dont´t have the use of properly dextrous limbs, and they will have trouble lining up a properly aimed shot.

Claw-held seems most likely, but a belly-mounted claw-operated gun pointing past their head would improve accuracy and look hilarious.

If we assume that their wings have decently dextrous hands I´d think they´d need to differentiate between air force and ground force: The ground force would carry weapons in their claws but use them with their hands for improved accuracy while the air force´s weapons would not be ideal for ground combat.

Thiel
2014-01-31, 06:25 AM
All flying creatures have enough power to carry away their prey. You only need to be able to carry about 50 lbs or equipment to make a capable fighting force.
British Army troops were lugging around as much as 70lb of equipment even before you gave them their rifle, helmet and gas mask and they barely had enough supplies to last them two days away from the supply chain.


They don't need to stay away from the supply train for weeks on end, just a few days while the fighting is going on. If things drag out, they'd be in more trouble, but flying makes for a great way to run away, too, and the supply train doesn't have to be close to the front, since you can fly a lot further in a day by air than by foot, even ignoring the difference in speed.
I'm not talking weeks, I'm talking hours, maybe a day or two at most. That's how long a human soldier could last with significantly more equipment and still remain an effective fighting force.



Planes back then already had enough trouble shooting each other down, they're not going to stand a chance against natural fliers who can bob, duck, weave, dive, and change direction at a moments notice.
Birds that big can't bob about like that, so I don't see why a harpy should be able to. On top of that you're not going to be able to retain energy if you do do it, so an aircraft will simply outrun you.


And as noted above, the harpy should be able to carry at least a 20lb weapon in addition to it's other supplies, and there's going to be a helluva lot more harpies than fighters, so even if the fighter pilot has the advantage 1v1, he's going to lose when he runs into the platoon of 1000 harpies all carrying SMGs, even without any special anti-air tactics or weapons.
Quite simply really. He has two fairly steadily mounted machineguns and if harpies are a general problem quite possibly a semi automatic shotgun. You are armed with handheld SMGs and you're bobbing and weaving from the motion of your wings. On top of that the smallest rent in your wing membrane is going to be a major issue, whereas the pilot is "relatively" safely hidden away behind his engine. He may not be able to out turn you, but he is going to outrun you in any kind of manoeuvring fight.




Why? What makes it any harder than hitting someone from 100ft away horizontally, rather than vertically? Certainly it's not a good tactic to use normally, but elite troops trained to be able to make accurate shots from that distance and in those circumstances could be useful at the very least as a weapon of intimidation, to make your enemies fear the skies as well as what's on the ground. And of course it could be used to hit targets of opportunity without taking the time to land and engage normally, or to get high-value targets like officers.

Because you're freefalling. Strafing runs were done at a comparatively shallow angle and with belt fed machineguns which allowed him to walk his fire onto his target. An SMG does not have enough ammunition to do that and unlike the machinegun it's not mounted in a fixed mount so recoil is going to be a major issue. Especially since you're a light airborne creature with nothing to brace against.

hamishspence
2014-01-31, 07:18 AM
All flying creatures have enough power to carry away their prey.

Some of the larger eagles kill things too big to carry off - so they fill their crops at the site of the kill.

The prehistoric Haast's eagle killed and ate moas - vastly too big to carry off.

Stephen_E
2014-01-31, 07:50 AM
Your Harpies as evolved flyers are probably going to have the instinctive mental computers required to do the math required for accurate bombing, so that is there best tactic. Humans didn't evolve with the requirement for instinctively doing the math for that and thus they had a hell of a time at it. TTBOMK the tactical bombing of WW1 flyers were crap.

As others have pointed out the described build is unlikely to use firearms effectively.
Automatic firearms require far to much ammo for a flyer of the given description and they don't have the steady platform for sniping.

If they had superior low light vision or some form of dark vision their best tatic would be no moon/heavy cloud cover nights where they could come in low enough for high accuracy tactical bombing. With the degree of accuracy they would have it should be able to easily surpass historical strategic WW1 bombing. And if the humans retreated to bunkers then they can drop down take out the sentries and plant satchel charges.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-31, 04:11 PM
If you had to name RPGs which impressed you with their authenticity, what would you pick?

Stephen_E
2014-01-31, 05:10 PM
If you had to name RPGs which impressed you with their authenticity, what would you pick?

Chivalry and Sourcery.
Medieval setting. Rank mattered. As a Yeoman, paying proper respect to a knight was important if you wanted to live.
Magic was based on the various beliefs in magic of the time.

Rhynn
2014-01-31, 06:12 PM
As a Yeoman, paying proper respect to a knight was important if you wanted to live.

Was there actually a time and place in Europe where serfs could be killed by a knight with impunity, much less freemen like yeomen? I don't think even the lord of the land could dispose of a serf as he would (indeed, kicking a serf off his land would have been hard!), much less any other knight of a yeoman (who's giving military service to some lord). There were codes of law that did protect people to perhaps surprising degrees, and at the very least, almost any man or woman would be beholden to some noble, who'd be cross if you killed their people.


If you had to name RPGs which impressed you with their authenticity, what would you pick?

HârnMaster, The Riddle of Steel, Twilight 2013, maybe Aces & Eights.

All strike a great balance of playability and authenticity; or feel thereof - verisimilitude, I suppose. HârnMaster shines in setting (HârnWorld), even though it has some idiosyncracies, and the rest shine in mechanics. TROS has the best ancient hand-to-hand combat rules, TW2013 has the best modern small-arms squad-level tactical combat rules. Aces & Eights just has great and simple Wild West gunfighting rules (simpler than TW2013 and plenty sufficient for the game).

Stephen_E
2014-01-31, 11:28 PM
Fair call Rhynn. I was speaking colloquially. Not that you would be executed on the spot but it could be very unpleasant. My understandng is that even a fairly common Knight could probably get away with having his men beat you if you were uppity. In game terms it meant you made sure you did your "sire's" and you needed to tell a higher ranked person to do something you did it in such a way that he could take it as a "suggestion". :smallwink:

Of course the other side of the coin was that the Yeoman or Serjeant would get to do the buying for the knights in the party. It was quite fun so long as the higher ranked players didn't abuse it.

Lois Bujold's "A Curse for Chalion" had a opening scene which emphasied some of the effects that could create. :smallbiggrin:

The system did a decent job of covering why certain weapons were a better choice against heavily armoured fighters than others. The arming sword was indeed an excellent all round weapon but certainly NOT your weapon of choice when taking on full plate armour.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 12:17 AM
Acutally, on the topic of the arming sword and plate, which RPGs would you say capture melee combat best?

I believe the main RPGs which get mentioned are TRoS, Harn, and now Sword and Sorcery. TRoS also had a sequel being made, I think.

EDIT: Oh, and I sometimes hear about Savage World.

Rhynn
2014-02-01, 03:31 AM
My understandng is that even a fairly common Knight could probably get away with having his men beat you if you were uppity.

That's probably true enough, yeah. And yeah, just the existence of social class is a big departure from D&D. HârnMaster/HârnWorld is similar - if your PC is a serf (masochist!), you have to figure out how it is that he got away from his lands (ran away and joined a temple/joined a mining crew/managed to hide out and live in a town for 5 years)...


Acutally, on the topic of the arming sword and plate, which RPGs would you say capture melee combat best?

The Riddle of Steel, hands down. It's not perfect, but it's very plausible and incredibly playable - my players learned and were smoothly using even the most complicated subsystems (grappling!) in the first session. If I were to run any game focusing on realistic combat and set before 1800 (or in a fantasy setting strongly remiscent of history), I'd use TROS - it'd be perfect for Ancient Greek and Roman history, the Medieval period, feudal Japan, Three Kingdoms China, Renaissance Europe, Golden Age of Piracy...

Burning Wheel is also good, apparently, although I thought scripting seemed like a hassle.

HârnMaster is simple but solid: a knight in mail & quilt with a heaume is a human tank, but still vulnerable (for instance if outnumbered), and combat is dangerous and deadly.

And that's Chivalry & Sorcery. Fun fact, you can see the lineage from D&D to C&S to Hârn when you compare the systems.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 03:36 AM
Tried out Blade of the Iron Throne? TRoS successor, by the same company. I was considering getting it.

I'll have to get Harn Master first, I figure.

Rhynn
2014-02-01, 04:22 AM
Tried out Blade of the Iron Throne? TRoS successor, by the same company. I was considering getting it.

Nope, I could never find any useful information on their (really weirdly designed) website (that won't even fit in my regular browser without losing things apparently). I missed the beta, and honestly, nothing I did read caught my interest: it looked like they were focusing on narrativism, and the first word they use to describe the combat system if "cinematic." Besides, I've already got TROS. Not going to support the KS.

Seriously, though, their website is horrible. The Twitter feed isn't working, I can't tell if the front page updates are from this year or one year ago, there's a giant lack of links (none in the Forum and Publishing Schedule at the bottom, etc.)...

Actually, having dug out the 35-page sample PDF... the graphic design is awful and cluttered (colored backgrounds should be a crime; I'll bet the example character sheet won't be B&W either), the base attributes names are gimmicky, character creation is already narrativist in ways I don't like (e.g. no two PCs can have 9, the top score, in the same attribute or skill), and you don't get even a whiff of the combat system, which seriously was the main draw of TROS. (And enough of a one, even given that the rest of a system was just fine but nothing special.)

Er, actually, I'm confused - is the game out? Their website gave me the impression they're starting a Kickstarter for it soon, but that was a year old, and it's been funded since last April... and the game seems to appear on DriveThruRPG so I guess it's done? Man, they should probably update their website, the first thing that shows up when you Google "Blade of the Iron Throne," to reflect the situation.

edit: Apparently, BotIT uses d12 dice pools, and your pool can be 10+ dice. I'm not sure I even have enough d12s for that game! /edit


I'll have to get Harn Master first, I figure.

Be aware that there are many editions, and everyone's got their favorite. 3rd and Gold are parallel, rather than one following the other; they've got some differences but are pretty compatible. On balance, 3rd edition is simpler and more straightforward, Gold is more detailed with more optional rules and fiddliness.


Uh, this should all probably go in a different thread somewhere, though, because this is at best tangentially related to a thread that is specifically not about games but about real-world matters... sorry!

Stephen_E
2014-02-01, 06:52 AM
Rolemaster should probably get a honourable mention for realistic combat system as well.

Never quite worked right but still pretty good. And I'll never forget the critical failure when wielding a 2H Sword - You lose control and overbalance resulting in doing the splits with a high chance of ripping most of your groin muscles. :smalleek: Opponent has a 50% chance of been incapacitated for 1-4 rounds with laughter. :smallbiggrin:

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 07:12 AM
Thanks for the advice. I'm working out which RPGs I should give another study before I start recruiting playtesters.

It is a pity about BotIT. It seems like it has some good points. I'll make sure to get the gold edition of Harn, since optional rules and the like are of interest to me.



To make this relevant to the thread, I would like to ask if there is anything you can think of which is unfortunately lacking in TTRPGs, in relation to real combat, weapons, armour, etc.?

Incanur
2014-02-01, 10:55 AM
I can see why folks like TRoS. I've never run it, but I looked through the main book a while back. I didn't like how much of a plenty armor gave, some of the specific relative advantages between weapons, the emphasis on initiative, and the whole pain/shock part of the wound system. As George Silver wrote, "the thrust being made through the hand, arm, or leg, or in many places of the body and face, are not deadly, neither are they maims, or loss of limbs or life, neither is he much hindered for the time in his fight, as long as the blood is hot." But of course TRoS comes out of the Liechtenauer school, not Silver's system, which doesn't place the same importance on initiative.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 04:12 PM
Having read and tested TRoS, I will point out it has its flaws.

It is very hard to hurt people with weapons without a very solid strike even when they do not wear armour. It is largely due to the fact there is a toughness stat, that can give you an armour rating rivalling or possibly exceeding plate armour (a fix would be to limit the players to practically no toughness).

The bleeding rates didn't seem correct, but I can't comment with certainty as it has been too long since I tried them.

Armour had a penalty, but it was much too severe. They did move to fix this in an expansion, I will mention.

If I examined the book again, I could name other issues, largely minor ones. It does do an good job in many ways, I must say.

Deffers
2014-02-01, 05:22 PM
OK, I've got a question.

Rapiers are thrusting swords, right? You're supposed to essentially stab with them, correct? So how damaging would one be if you tried to slash with one instead? Would it pretty much do nothing or just be seriously subpar for the job?

What about side swords? These intrigue me, since what little I've read about them paint them as a predecessor to the rapier but with more capability for cutting and slashing. I was wondering if anybody had enough experience, either personal or from knowing more about swords than me, to clarify as to how effective side swords were at slashing and thrusting?

Mike_G
2014-02-01, 05:48 PM
OK, I've got a question.

Rapiers are thrusting swords, right? You're supposed to essentially stab with them, correct? So how damaging would one be if you tried to slash with one instead? Would it pretty much do nothing or just be seriously subpar for the job?

What about side swords? These intrigue me, since what little I've read about them paint them as a predecessor to the rapier but with more capability for cutting and slashing. I was wondering if anybody had enough experience, either personal or from knowing more about swords than me, to clarify as to how effective side swords were at slashing and thrusting?

The answer is "it depends."

Lot of things fall under the category of rapier, and many of these had some kind of edge. The blade is better at thrusting, but would still cut. True point only swords aren't really rapiers.

Side swords tend to include shorter broader blades that would be better at cutting than rapiers, but still balanced for thrusting.

The thing is, within categories, there is just a ton of variation. We pretty much are force to speak in generalities.

Rhynn
2014-02-01, 06:14 PM
Having read and tested TRoS, I will point out it has its flaws.

It is very hard to hurt people with weapons without a very solid strike even when they do not wear armour. It is largely due to the fact there is a toughness stat, that can give you an armour rating rivalling or possibly exceeding plate armour (a fix would be to limit the players to practically no toughness).

You need the Companion; the designers acknowledge the Naked Dwarf problem (they even used the WFRP term!), and suggest a few different fixes. (Most are honestly too complicated for me, for too small of a problem.)

Generally, though, I don't concur with you there at all. Unarmored combatants are going to get destroyed, fast. The thing is that a margin of success of 1-2 isn't a very good hit. The game is about tactics: you can't just go in with Cuts and Thrusts, you need to use maneuvers that deplete your opponent's dice pool and then land a good attack. A 6-dice attack that they can't defend against will probably hurt them badly, and then they'll be easier to hurt next round (possibly entirely defenseless, meaning they'll die).

Feints, counters, and so on are essential. This is why I find the game so awesome, largely: it's actually fun to play combat in it. D&D 3E/4E combat is a terrible, boring, grueling slog of repetition. TROS combat is tactical and interesting - you have to try to out-think, out-guess, and out-maneuver your opponent.

This is why my personal favorite weapon/style in TROS is longsword: it's awesomely versatile, and Counter is a great defense. Opponent attacks -> stabbed in the face! (And winding & binding from TFOB is fun.)

This is even more true for heavily armored fighters, who need to strike some kind of staggering blow or knock their opponent down in order to get a good hit in and deal real damage.


The bleeding rates didn't seem correct, but I can't comment with certainty as it has been too long since I tried them.

Couldn't say. It just amounts to "you might bleed to death during a fight if you get hurt badly enough." Sounds accurate enough for me.


Armour had a penalty, but it was much too severe. They did move to fix this in an expansion, I will mention.

Yep, The Flower of Battle is a must, the armor rules are much better.


OK, I've got a question.

AFAIK, most (edged) rapiers would slice/slash all right (it takes perhaps surprisingly little force to cut unprotected flesh wide open), but they wouldn't really hew through bones the way broaded swords would, lacking the mass in the blade. Some rapiers definitely were use for cuts - it doesn't matter that it's not the best attack overall, sometimes it's the best (or the only) attack you can make.

Side-swords have somewhat wider, heavier blades, generally, so they'd probably do a better job at cutting deeper. I'm not sure how well they'd hew through limbs, though - that's definitely something I have zero experience in. I was a little surprised that the gladius, for instance, was reckoned a terrible limb-lopping sword (arms and legs both), but I guess it really does come down to blade width and weight.

Incanur
2014-02-01, 06:15 PM
It depends what you mean by a rapier or a side sword. The latter is a particularly troublesome term. The rapier as taught by Salvator Fabris (http://www.salvatorfabris.org/WhatIsTheRapier.shtml) and various other Italian masters could cut rather well. The late Elizabethan rapier described by Joseph Swetnam, on the other hand, had less cutting ability. If by side sword you mean the sword used by Bolognese (http://www.salvatorfabris.org/SectionBolognese.shtml) masters, then it was a little shorter and more substantial than the kind of sword used by Fabris.

As far as The Riddle of Steel goes, if you care about realism - another dubious term but I think you know what I mean here - then I recommend rewriting the wounding table. Eliminating the pain penalty completely - at least for characters with decent willpower - would be a good start. Reducing shock, especially for thrusts, would be the next step. Thrusts to the belly or lungs should impose only a minimal penalty or none at all. And even a pierced heart could often allow ten or more seconds of activity before collapse. Even thrusts to head doesn't necessarily cause immediate incapacitation. Also, bleeding out from lung and belly thrusts generally takes a while. Even thrusts to the heart, major vessels, etc. can take minutes to incapacitate. See The Dubious Quick Kill parts one (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php) and two (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/kill2.php).

The Flower of Battle updated armor penalties are much better but still a bit heavy for my taste. :smallsmile: For example, I don't think mail sleeves merit -0.5 CP and -0.5 move.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 08:06 PM
Deffers: Well, knives tend to do a lousy job for slashing at reach because they aren't weighted for it. So, it depends on how well the rapier is weighted for slashes. You could till stab into someone and then cut out. Or you could slice them.

That being said for use, not for damage potential. A good slash with a rapier will inflict a disturbing wound (even though George Silver puts them on the level of sticking fowl, they are still swords).



TRoS: Naked dwarf? That is either the most interesting or most horrifying problem I've come across.

Hmm... I was going to dispute the results. However, I feel the RPG I've been working on would be a better argument. Even if I can show TRoS doesn't do the best job, what right have I to complain if I can't do a better one?

Rhynn
2014-02-01, 10:02 PM
TRoS: Naked dwarf? That is either the most interesting or most horrifying problem I've come across.

It's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay term, originally from 1st edition, not as present in second. Basically, Strength and Toughness worked the same way as in TROS: Strength directly increases damage, Toughness directly reduces. Armor works like more Toughness, and weapons can modify damage. Humans had Toughness 2-4 to start, 3 being the average. Dwarves averaged 4 IIRC, and could get 5, maybe 6 at the start (I forget the specifics by now), and then increase it by 1 as their first career advancement... I think 1E capped S/T advancements at +4, so they'd top out at T 10 or so. Armor, though, only reduced damage by 1 by default (I think the heaviest mail + plate may have gotten to 3, without magic). So, a fairly hardy and naked dwarf could be more impervious to hurt than a normal man in full plate armor.


Even if I can show TRoS doesn't do the best job, what right have I to complain if I can't do a better one?

If that logic held, none of us could express negative opinions on pretty much anything. I've always found it a petulant and empty defense of something you don't want to hear criticized, myself.

Just pointing out a RPG that works better is more than sufficient, IMO. My top two, out of dozens (honestly, probably more than 100 by now) are HârnMaster and The Riddle of Steel, as far as realistic and playable combat goes. Both are quick, simple, and easy, and require manageable amounts of tables. I've run Tablemaster Rolemaster for years and years, and it doesn't compare. Neither does any edition of RuneQuest, really. But both systems have other advantages that make them worth playing.

Certainly, it's possible to construct a more realistic system, but constructing a more elegant one with that level of verisimilitude? Highly unlikely.

Deffers
2014-02-01, 10:22 PM
Woah, so rapiers had a blade that was, like, 40 inches long? Holy hell. That's some reach. I guess since it's not meant to, say, pierce armor, they could make a sword thin enough to both weigh two/three pounds and be forty inches long. Damn.

How much shorter would a side sword be?

EDIT: Speaking generally, of course.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 10:38 PM
Rhynn: Hard enough to get it real without the elegance, but I'm gunning for both. You should look at the testing thread when it's up, it might be worthy of your RPG collection.


Deffers: I'm not sure where the idea of rapiers being anti-armour weapons came from. Possibly from stiletto blades or something.

Deffers
2014-02-01, 10:43 PM
Mr. Mask: I'm actually saying it's NOT something a rapier would be used for, hence it'd be so thin and also forty inches long. Like, an estoc is a super-pointy thrusting blade, but you use it on armor, and it's quite thick at the base, at least in comparison to a rapier.

Generally, thrusting swords get a reputation as anti-armor weapons in general. Though that's probably not accurate at all.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 10:46 PM
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that you were saying that. Just commenting on that myth since you brought it up.

And yeah, thrusting blades aren't really anti-armour. Daggers sort of are, but that's more about opening your opponent's visor and removing eyes and brain matter then penetrating armour.

Incanur
2014-02-01, 10:47 PM
Speaking of how armor works in TRoS, that's another problem. You can wound through a breastplate (or whatever) with a sword (or whatever) just by rolling enough successes. Realistically, a 2+mm breastplate of the best hardened steel basically says no to muscle powered attacks up to and including the couched lance. Maybe somebody extremely strong could pierce a good breastplate with a couched lance or - less likely - with a two-handed staff weapon point, but that's about as far as it goes.

Looking at it in terms of kinetic energy sheds light on the problem. In TRoS, toughness (TO) is often around 4-5 while plate gives armor value (AV) 6. By contrast, in our reality inflicting a fatal wound with a sharp point takes something like 1-3 J against flesh - more against bone - versus at least 300 J against 2mm hardened steel and light padding. Your average human underarm knife stab according to modern tests delivers about 20-40 J. So defeating 2mm hardened steel with a dagger thrust would require being about ten times stronger than the average person.

It's funny that TRoS goes to all the trouble of called shots and detailed hit locations yet still allows you to penetrate a breastplate with a dagger. :smallamused:

Mr. Mask
2014-02-01, 10:56 PM
All I'll criticise about TRoS for now is to agree that Incanur has touched on one of the major points. They needed to look at more accounts of muggings, knife victims, etc..

AgentPaper
2014-02-01, 10:58 PM
Speaking of how armor works in TRoS, that's another problem. You can wound through a breastplate (or whatever) with a sword (or whatever) just by rolling enough successes. Realistically, a 2+mm breastplate of the best hardened steel basically says no to muscle powered attacks up to and including the couched lance. Maybe somebody extremely strong could pierce a good breastplate with a couched lance or - less likely - with a two-handed staff weapon point, but that's about as far as it goes.

If you score a direct hit with a couched lance, strength doesn't come into it, it's the weight of the horse, the speed you're moving at, and where you hit them that matters. A warhorse charging at full speed that hits you square is going to do some serious damage, even if the armor can technically survive it. You don't need to pierce armor to deal damage through it, after all.

A sufficiently strong man with a decent sword isn't going to do as well as the couched lance, but it could still cause some injury if you hit them just right and your weapon is fairly strong. The system may also be representing you defeating the armor through other means, such as hitting into joints or other vulnerable areas.

Incanur
2014-02-01, 11:11 PM
Woah, so rapiers had a blade that was, like, 40 inches long?

Jospeh Swetnam recommended a rapier of at least four feet. This most likely refers to the blade, as that's how folks tended to measure swords at the time and we've got extant of rapiers with even longer blades, but even if conservatively we read it as the entire length of the raper you still get a blade of 42-43 inches. George Silver wrote that many rapiers had 42+-inch blades. He suggested 37 inches of blade for his short sword for a man of average height, which only qualifies as a short sword because of how popular long rapiers were during the period.


Holy hell. That's some reach.

Yep. What I want to know is how you quickly draw a sword with a 42+in blade. I'm not sure it's possible. Various 16th-century military writers wrote that sword blades much longer than 36in became difficult and slow to draw.


How much shorter would a side sword be?

I don't really know what this means. "Rapier" is at least a period term.


If you score a direct hit with a couched lance, strength doesn't come into it, it's the weight of the horse, the speed you're moving at, and where you hit them that matters.

This is a common misconception. To arthe contry, strength is crucial (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/shock.php) for delivering energy with a couched lance.


A warhorse charging at full speed that hits you square is going to do some serious damage, even if the armor can technically survive it. You don't need to pierce armor to deal damage through it, after all.

Probably true, but both Fourquvaux (1548) and Francois de la Noue (1587) considered the lance ineffective against armor. Fourquevaux specifically instructed the men-at-arms of his ideal army to avoid targeting their opposing counterparts with the lance but instead aim for their unarmored horses. (Fourquevaux wanted considerable barding for the horses of his own men-at-arms.) On the other hand, an Iberian jousting manual from the same period instructs readers to aim for the belly should they find themselves in battle but also notes the possibility of going for the horse. And Sir Roger Williams in the 1590s wrote glowingly about the lance, though he didn't specifically address with it could pierce armor.

Of course, do note that by the time de la Noue and Williams wrote armor had gotten rather thicker and heavier to resist guns. The couched lance may have done better against breastplates in the 15th century.


The system may also be representing you defeating the armor through other means, such as hitting into joints or other vulnerable areas.

As I mentioned, TRoS has elaborate hit locations. And a breastplate doesn't have joints. It's just a shaped piece of metal. :smallsmile:

Deffers
2014-02-02, 12:41 AM
Jospeh Swetnam recommended a rapier of at least four feet.


WHAT? Jeez, just get a spear. Like you said-- how're you supposed to unsheath that? At that point you may as well just carry it around all the time.

Also, fun fact: Side sword is a period term. Spada de lato!

Twixman
2014-02-02, 01:04 AM
Hello all. I just need some help on armour effectiveness in the real world. I have looked all over the web and it contradicts each other at times. If anyone knows any good sites to look at how medieval armour is effective against certain types of damage would be real swell. And if you know just telling me here would be awesome as well.
The three types of damages being slashing, piercing and bludgeoning. The armours I want to know are;
Leather
Studded Leather
Scalemail
Chainmail
Plate and Mail
Full Plate (The fully armoured, gothic knight sorta stuff)
And Lamellor
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

Incanur
2014-02-02, 01:20 AM
Also, fun fact: Side sword is a period term. Spada de lato!

I've read otherwise (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19588&view=next), that spada da lato (http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?16350-Period-Terminology-spada-da-lato) just referred to a sword at the side rather than any specific kind of sword.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-02, 01:31 AM
Twix: I'll give you a list of armours.


Textile (padded cloth, etc.)
Cuir bouilli (Boiled leather, usually used with mail--there might have been some case it was used on its own)
Leather hide coats (these were worn much later to slow bullets, and there is one account of such a garment being worn by an early Laird)
Scale (metal or leather plates sewn to a cloth or leather garment)
Mail
Lamellar (either metal, or lacquered leather)
Coat of plates (metal plates inside a coat)
Laminar (It's what the Romans wear in Asterix and Obelix)
Plate harness, articulated plate, fluted plate, etc.


That's a very basic overview of armours. I can tell you a bit more about a given armour, but explaining it all generally would take a long time.

Making a game?

Twixman
2014-02-02, 01:36 AM
At Mr Mask
I just want to know what some armours effectiveness against different types of damage. I dont know much is all. Chainmail good against slash, alright against piercing and not so good against bludgeon (my guesses) is all I really need.
I am just doing up some stuff on weapons and armour in my Unisystem games that are set in a fantasy/medieval setting and just want to add some depth to combat.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-02, 01:42 AM
Mail is nearly always worn with padding, so it actually does fine against bludgeoning. Bludgeoning weapons tend to be better against armour in general, though.

Same for other armours, the differences from damage type tend to be minute or not there, with a few exceptions.

Twixman
2014-02-02, 01:47 AM
Hehe. Thanks for the info. I want some accuracy but atm I want flavour to be there. I want choice of armour to be more tactical than "this armour protects me more so I will take that". Anyway, thanks for the help Mr Mask. And thanks for telling me about more armours, I love variety :smallbiggrin:

Mr. Mask
2014-02-02, 02:26 AM
I've heard that theory, but I've never seen it used successfully. Unless your enemies use almost solely one type of weapon for an extended period of time, you can't justify buying the armour good against that type.

Brother Oni
2014-02-02, 08:15 AM
I've heard that theory, but I've never seen it used successfully. Unless your enemies use almost solely one type of weapon for an extended period of time, you can't justify buying the armour good against that type.

Actually there are reports of armour adapting to account for the enemy's weapons. The imported tameshi gusoku breastplate of samurai armour against matchlocks is a good example, as is the thicker spalders/pauldrons of late medieval Mongolian armour (samurai were very fond of the downwards strike with the katana).

Often though, it boiled down to cost - the soldier wore whatever they could afford/find/scavenge or what their lord could provide.

Edit: I think Twixman may be labouring under the misconception that all armours were available during all periods. In reality different armours were available at different times as technological and industrial advancements made them either viable or obsolete, so often it was 'this armour was worn as it gave the best protection against everything'.

Rhynn
2014-02-02, 08:18 AM
As I mentioned, TRoS has elaborate hit locations. And a breastplate doesn't have joints. It's just a shaped piece of metal. :smallsmile:

Yeah, that's like the one complaint I have: sometimes, the tables tell you you've e.g. cut a location that is covered by metal armor. IMO this just means you have to do some interpretation of the table results (same as Rolemaster, or really any game with such a table). TROS still stands head and shoulders above basically all other RPGs, though; most of the contenders, like Rolemaster and RuneQuest, have the exact same problem.

HârnMaster does better (HM Gold, anyway), in that there's rules for armor turning cutting and puncturing strikes into bruises. HM combat is just less tactically interesting. (But it's fast and simple, which is the other good thing to be: either so fast it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the game, or so interesting you don't mind spending time on it.)

Actually, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World does the same thing as HMG: mail armor turns cuts into bruises, and plate armor turns cuts and punctures into bruises; unless you get a critical hit. (A sword being thrust through plate armor is still unrealistic on a crit, but this is a setting where magic allows people to legit be strong enough to shear an armored person in two with a sword, etc., so whatever.)

Mike_G
2014-02-02, 03:17 PM
Actually, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World does the same thing as HMG: mail armor turns cuts into bruises, and plate armor turns cuts and punctures into bruises; unless you get a critical hit. (A sword being thrust through plate armor is still unrealistic on a crit, but this is a setting where magic allows people to legit be strong enough to shear an armored person in two with a sword, etc., so whatever.)

But if it's only on a crit, could that be interpreted as finding a gap/joint, etc?

If they do locations, that may be harder to justify, but "plate armor" as a whole has gaps that could be exploited on a good or lucky hit, which is what a crit is all about.

Rhynn
2014-02-02, 03:30 PM
But if it's only on a crit, could that be interpreted as finding a gap/joint, etc?

If they do locations, that may be harder to justify, but "plate armor" as a whole has gaps that could be exploited on a good or lucky hit, which is what a crit is all about.

A:AKW does have hit locations. It's not bad, but some results can still be a bit odd: you could be e.g. cutting the abdomen of a dude wearing a hauberk, which does imply you've actually sliced through or otherwise broken some links. Still, it's very minor, and miles ahead of most RPGs.

Artesia: AKW is actually pretty dang solid and realistic in the combat rules, especially for them being so simple and straightforward. The one failing is that it's way too easy to delay your attacks to make aimed strikes at opponents' faces, almost always hitting and killing them (only the very best suits of armor tend to include full face protection). And the magic system has too many potentially stackable modifiers (you need to never give your players' PCs any unshaped spells, basically).

As a bonus, Mark Smylie draws the coolest and most realistic armor and weapons I've seen in RPGs or comics.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-02, 03:55 PM
Oni: Those breastplates don't perform well just against gunpowder weapons. The equivalent to that in adventuring would be, "Guys, the monsters are getting tougher. Maybe we should fight them wearing something more than our shorts?"

The equivalent to changing your armour against different types of damage rather than levels of threat would be periodically swapping between a mail shirt and a kevlar shirt, rather than just wearing a combination ballistic and knife vest.

If you knew enemies were only going to attack you with guns on Monday, and only with knives Tuesday, then you could do that to reduce the weight.

Magnera
2014-02-02, 11:57 PM
Two Handed Flails.

Yep, I guess these things were around some time ago for threshing. However, I want to know how they were used in combat and perhaps get some training in their use. What are the boards thought regarding them, where can I go to get trained in their use?

Galloglaich
2014-02-03, 12:28 AM
Two Handed Flails.

Yep, I guess these things were around some time ago for threshing. However, I want to know how they were used in combat and perhaps get some training in their use. What are the boards thought regarding them, where can I go to get trained in their use?

The militarized versions of those threshing flails, two-handed war flails or flegels, were very important in combat, since they were one of the primary weapons of the Czech mercenaries who were about as important numerically and in terms of battles won as the Swiss were. They were also used by Germans and basically everyone else throughout Central Europe, usually after exposure to Czech mercs.

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=108

They do show up in a few of the "fight-books" of the 15th and 16th Century, I know Paulus Hector Mair has a section of them which you see here (above). There is also a version of this weapon in the Iberian (Spanish / Portuguse) manuals called a mangual which shows up a bit and seems to have an important role.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/98015679@N04/9261024278/in/set-72157634584454532

I'm not too familiar with these manuals yet but I know some of the top people researching them right now and they told me the techniques for these were similar to those for the montante, the Spanish* version of the 'true' two-hander. I.e. they were used for situations in which 'few have to fight many'. If you are curious about something specific I can ask them.

I think at this point, while we know there is some material available for these weapons, it is limited there is not enough understanding yet of what we do have to really begin serious training. I know that the Czechs were recruiting people who already knew how to handle the flail (as a threshing tool) with a high degree of expertise, and then adjusting that to the heavier military version.

G

*using "Spanish" as a shorthand here because there wasn't such a thing as Spain per - se during the time of some of these manuals...

Galloglaich
2014-02-03, 12:47 AM
You need the Companion; the designers acknowledge the Naked Dwarf problem (they even used the WFRP term!), and suggest a few different fixes. (Most are honestly too complicated for me, for too small of a problem.)

(snip)

Yep, The Flower of Battle is a must, the armor rules are much better.



I wrote a major part of the Flower of Battle including the whole weapon section. I got a buddy of mine to do the art for all the weapons based on photo's of antiques we collected from all over the HEMAverse.

I think the followup to TROS wasn't done by Jake Norwood, the original inventer of it, but I believe he is cool with it.

I would put some support in the idea of TROS, with the caveat that it has it's certain limitations. It can be a lot of fun and not just due to the combat system.

I liked Warhammer Fantasy RPG though I've never been able to play it. I bought several of their modules. The very fact that they limit (the equivalent of) your hit points gives it a much more realistic feel.

Burning Wheel has a lot of really intriguing elements, I think they do the Tolkein-esque stuff better than any other RPG and I particularly like their lifepath character generation system.

It's a bit crass for me to say so but I (not surprisingly) like my system Codex Martialis as well, it's got positive reviews in 11 languages! But it's also limited in that it's only a combat system (bolt on for 3.X OGL) and not a complete game. I also have a weapons and an armor supplement for it which includes info on real world weapons and armor.

There was a game, as far as I know a single supplement, called "Cthulhu Dark Ages (http://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Dark-Horror-Roleplaying-Chaosium/dp/1568821719)" which was really neat and also had some simple but effective means to make the combat a bit more realistic. They made some really cool little scenarios for that. I recommend getting the book it's just one of those great books to have, like the original Call of Cthulhu was.

Conan RPG had some promise but it didn't quite live up to it's potential I thought. The combat system looked a little wonky, something about throwing axes I can't quite remember.

I was a little disappointed in HARN. At first I thought it was really cool since they seem to have captured an 11th Century (ish) rural West-European feudal society pretty well. The problem is the whole world seems to consist of minor variations of this same 11th Century rural West-European feudal society... which is kind of boring to me.

Rolemaster (Rollmaster?) to me is one of the games that originally gave realism a bad name in RPGs, because it was so complicated and had so many charts and so on.

A lot of people like GURPS and I think a pretty knowledgable expert (I guy I've argued with on some other forums) contributed to their latest GURPS Low-Tech book.

many years ago back in the heydays of D20 there was a company called albion games or something who put out some well researched period supplements for different time periods such as Celtic, Wallachia during the time of Vlad Tepich, Crusades in Outramer and so on.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-03, 01:12 AM
Oh heck, I feel embarrassed for not mentioning your system, G, when I went so far as to mention Savage Worlds which I haven't read.

I actually have the book for your system. I read it some years back, and never got a chance to actually play it--but it was one of the main influences that got me making an RPG (the larger one was when I met someone who could help me with it, on the realism aspect).

I think I'll get the Flower of Battle, since I liked Codex Martialis, and its equipment lists were particularly good.


I keep hearing about Warhammer... there was one fellow, who made quite an extensive Wound table for it, a surgeon. He had a blog called Black Wind or something.

GraaEminense
2014-02-03, 04:05 AM
I keep hearing about Warhammer... there was one fellow, who made quite an extensive Wound table for it, a surgeon. He had a blog called Black Wind or something.
Winds of Chaos (http://www.windsofchaos.com/?page_id=19).
Josef's critical hits chart is really neat but a bit overkill for a game, really: it feels very realistic but bogs things down a bit.

Warhammer FRP's combat system is hardly realistic, but it's better than many and easy to tweak (and many fans have done so extensively). The fact that any mook with a knife can end the life of any magic-armoured badass with a lucky enough roll (unlikely though it is) makes combat nicely scary.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-03, 06:26 AM
That's the one.

With that comment, about a mook with a knife being able to kill someone in magic armour... would you be able to tell me how it works, vaguely? I've been wondering about how to get that with my RPG.

Just a matter that if they roll a crit, they autohit plus inflicting a wound form level 1 to 15 which can kill?

Galloglaich
2014-02-03, 09:51 AM
Oh heck, I feel embarrassed for not mentioning your system, G, when I went so far as to mention Savage Worlds which I haven't read.

I actually have the book for your system. I read it some years back, and never got a chance to actually play it--but it was one of the main influences that got me making an RPG (the larger one was when I met someone who could help me with it, on the realism aspect).

I think I'll get the Flower of Battle, since I liked Codex Martialis, and its equipment lists were particularly good.


I keep hearing about Warhammer... there was one fellow, who made quite an extensive Wound table for it, a surgeon. He had a blog called Black Wind or something.

I have a weapons supplement for it, better than what is in the Flower of Battle (more current, and with photos instead of drawings) if you like I'll send you a comp copy, just PM me.

G

GraaEminense
2014-02-03, 03:21 PM
With that comment, about a mook with a knife being able to kill someone in magic armour... would you be able to tell me how it works, vaguely? I've been wondering about how to get that with my RPG.

Just a matter that if they roll a crit, they autohit plus inflicting a wound form level 1 to 15 which can kill?
Not quite: The system has rolls to hit and defend (d%), and if it's a hit you roll damage = d10+strength+weapon modifiers-toughness-armour. If your health drops to 0, any excess damage goes to the crit table. If you're still alive on 0 health, any subsequent damage will cause crit table rolls (and likely more painful ones, since you're out of buffer).

Normally, strength and toughness cancel each other out and there are no weapon modifiers, so damage is d10 minus armour. Most characters have 14-15 health (total span of 8 to 23). Top-notch armour cancels 5-6 damage.

The result is that in most cases, an unarmoured man will take critical hits on the second or third hit and an armoured veteran will take forever to kill (and the system is sorely lacking in proper ways to get around armour).

However, there is an added threat: If your d10 for damage is a 10, you roll another attack. If you hit, you get another d10. If that's a 10, you get another... and so on.

So sometimes, just sometimes, your random thug rolls three 10s in a row and cleaves the glomril-armoured Dwarf Daemon-Slayer Knight of the Inner Circle in twain with his trusty billy-club. And that is awesome :smallbiggrin:

The RAW has glaring weaknesses, as mentioned: there are few ways to deal with armour and no ways to make riskier but more decisive blows.

Note: this is WFRP 2nd ed. 1st ed is largely similar, 3rd ed got weird and I have no experience with it.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-03, 04:33 PM
G: Will PM you now (I may already have brought it, but just to be sure).


Cute pig: On the bright side, you almost always get a critical hit. On the non-bright side, the buffer makes it fairly predictable when you might die.

It has reassured me that an exploding dice system is a good idea, though. If you roll X or more, you get to roll again and add that roll to your previous result. I'll have to crunch the numbers to work out what chance I want for exploding.

Rhynn
2014-02-03, 05:15 PM
Cute pig: On the bright side, you almost always get a critical hit. On the non-bright side, the buffer makes it fairly predictable when you might die.

Mostly it tells you "now you're definitely in danger." You might get a critical hit when you still have 8 Wounds left, but once you're at 0, you definitely will. How bad of a one it is will vary hugely based on that 1d10 roll (a critical hit of 1 - that is, taking you 1 past zero - isn't very severe, but a critical hit of 10 kills you for sure). Moreover, Strength and Toughness are commonly close to each other (at least between humanoid combatants), so usually any armor will give the defender a slight advantage (i.e. the lowest-damage hits won't penetrate Armor + Toughness at all).

GraaEminense
2014-02-03, 06:01 PM
Yeah, the good thing about WFRP is that no "normal" humanoids have enough health to shrug off blows and the exploding dice make it quite common for a single blow to take anyone out of their comfort zone and one-shot-kills are possible (if unlikely). The mechanics make any opponent at least somewhat threatening.

The bad thing, as stated above, is that there is really no way to deal with heavy armour except hit some more and hope for a better roll.

Back-alley skirmishes work well but war is boring.

Edit: By RAW. The combat system is easily improved by adding more actions that deals with this. Modability is one of the reasons why WFRP is a favourite.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-03, 08:31 PM
Reminds me of God of War, beating the enemies' health to 0 so you can execute them gorily (this case having more variety).

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 05:20 AM
Found a cool five-part slide show on the evolution of Chinese armours. Thought I should share. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvmFAoNJS68

Yora
2014-02-04, 04:23 PM
I was just wondering: Are there any ways to trick radar into detecting things that are not actually there?
One solution would be drones as a kind of mechanical meat shield, to draw fire to reveal the position of missile sites, which then can be taken out by stealth fighters. Since that would be pretty expensive, one could build specialy made drones that are basically just missiles that look like a much larger aircraft on a radar, but that would still be quite costly.
So are there any ways to have a single drone emit signals that make it look like several targets? It would have to be pretty stealthy so it doesn't show up on radar itself, but it could be equiped with senors to detect and analyze active radar pulses, and then possibly calculate and emit a signal that makes the radar site see exactly what the drone opperator wants it to see?

Probably not feasable by now, or we would have heard of DARPA working on it, but would it be theoretically possible?

fusilier
2014-02-04, 04:38 PM
I was just wondering: Are there any ways to trick radar into detecting things that are not actually there?
One solution would be drones as a kind of mechanical meat shield, to draw fire to reveal the position of missile sites, which then can be taken out by stealth fighters. Since that would be pretty expensive, one could build specialy made drones that are basically just missiles that look like a much larger aircraft on a radar, but that would still be quite costly.
So are there any ways to have a single drone emit signals that make it look like several targets? It would have to be pretty stealthy so it doesn't show up on radar itself, but it could be equiped with senors to detect and analyze active radar pulses, and then possibly calculate and emit a signal that makes the radar site see exactly what the drone opperator wants it to see?

Probably not feasable by now, or we would have heard of DARPA working on it, but would it be theoretically possible?

Chaff (dating from WW2), which in it's simplest form is just strips of aluminum foil, will either swamp a radar system with too many targets, or look like a cluster of targets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

Brother Oni
2014-02-04, 04:58 PM
Since that would be pretty expensive, one could build specialy made drones that are basically just missiles that look like a much larger aircraft on a radar, but that would still be quite costly.
So are there any ways to have a single drone emit signals that make it look like several targets? It would have to be pretty stealthy so it doesn't show up on radar itself, but it could be equiped with senors to detect and analyze active radar pulses, and then possibly calculate and emit a signal that makes the radar site see exactly what the drone opperator wants it to see?


Two problems - the drone would have to be moving quite fast otherwise the radar operator would notice that he has a large or multiple target that's moving far too slowly to be a fighter craft.

The other is that the drone would have trouble fooling passive radar, if I understand the technology correctly - I'm not sure if giving off large active bursts would distort the passive image.

Grinner
2014-02-04, 05:17 PM
At the moment, I'm working on what I hope will be the d20 equivalent of The Riddle of Steel, but I've run across a small stumbling block. You see, I'm not actually sure what criteria to judge weapons by, and I don't know where to start my research. Moreover, I don't actually have a copy of The Riddle of Steel to go by, leaving me pretty much flying blind.

The best two I can think of are the weapons' reach and construction (pointed, edged, blunt). It also occurs to me that the advantages of reach would vary by the weapon's construction (though the disadvantages would remain fairly universal).

Any ideas? Observations, perhaps?

Edit: Balance would be good one, yes? I imagine it's much easier to recover from a sword stroke than an axe stroke.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 05:35 PM
Basics of a weapon in an RPG? Damage, ease of use, reach, armour penetration.

Grinner
2014-02-04, 05:47 PM
Damage is...a difficult subject. It seems that most weapons would, barring the option of dismemberment, displace practically the same amount of flesh. What I'm concerned about is gauging the effects of the placement and depth of the resulting wound whilst retaining some degree of elegance.*

I think ease of use would factor into balance. Rather, all weapons are easy to use. Using them without getting yourself injured, maimed, or killed is another matter altogether and more the focus of this assessment...

Armor penetration's a good one.

*Edit: Of course, that fails to take into account the possibility of blunt weapons...

Beleriphon
2014-02-04, 05:58 PM
Two problems - the drone would have to be moving quite fast otherwise the radar operator would notice that he has a large or multiple target that's moving far too slowly to be a fighter craft.

There are a few very large types of model aircraft that could simulate an actual aircraft. They wont break the sound barrier but a few hundred miles per hour isn't out of the realm of possibility. In reality that's all a Predator drone is, but it is possible to make something similar on a much lower budget if the intent is to never have the drone be recovered.


The other is that the drone would have trouble fooling passive radar, if I understand the technology correctly - I'm not sure if giving off large active bursts would distort the passive image.

Not as such if what I see is correct. Passive RADAR uses third-party transmitters (like cell or radio towers) that the passive system uses to detect targets. It works the same way as active detection but doesn't generate its own signal. Unless you're thinking ESM systems which track the projected RF signals of a target, which is how most anti-SAM systems work.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 06:09 PM
Grin: If you mean all weapons are very lethal, that is very true. But, they do inflict different amounts of damage.

Balance would factor into ease-of-use (but you can call the stat whatever you prefer. One of those huge temple swords of Japan for instance: Perfectly balanced, unusable. By ease-of-use, I just mean the combination of weight, balance, design etc., which effects how easily you can wield a weapon. Either way, the point is as you said not whether they're easy to use, but which one is going to most effectively prevent horrible demise.

Grinner
2014-02-04, 06:17 PM
Grin: If you mean all weapons are very lethal, that is very true. But, they do inflict different amounts of damage.

So how does one go about fairly and accurately estimating the differences without resorting to empiricism? That is the crux of my issue with damage.


Balance would factor into ease-of-use (but you can call the stat whatever you prefer. One of those huge temple swords of Japan for instance: Perfectly balanced, unusable. By ease-of-use, I just mean the combination of weight, balance, design etc., which effects how easily you can wield a weapon. Either way, the point is as you said not whether they're easy to use, but which one is going to most effectively prevent horrible demise.

Good point. Weight would be a significant factor, wouldn't it...?

Well, I'll figure out something.

AMFV
2014-02-04, 06:24 PM
There are a few very large types of model aircraft that could simulate an actual aircraft. They wont break the sound barrier but a few hundred miles per hour isn't out of the realm of possibility. In reality that's all a Predator drone is, but it is possible to make something similar on a much lower budget if the intent is to never have the drone be recovered.



Not as such if what I see is correct. Passive RADAR uses third-party transmitters (like cell or radio towers) that the passive system uses to detect targets. It works the same way as active detection but doesn't generate its own signal. Unless you're thinking ESM systems which track the projected RF signals of a target, which is how most anti-SAM systems work.

You can't use a cell tower to receive out RADAR that'd be completely the wrong frequency, you can use a passive RADAR emission but you need a sensor that can pick it up, and a cell tower is certainly not capable of that. Now you can have a sensor that picks things up that are in that frequency range but a cell tower or a radio is not going to work for that.


I was just wondering: Are there any ways to trick radar into detecting things that are not actually there?
One solution would be drones as a kind of mechanical meat shield, to draw fire to reveal the position of missile sites, which then can be taken out by stealth fighters. Since that would be pretty expensive, one could build specialy made drones that are basically just missiles that look like a much larger aircraft on a radar, but that would still be quite costly.
So are there any ways to have a single drone emit signals that make it look like several targets? It would have to be pretty stealthy so it doesn't show up on radar itself, but it could be equiped with senors to detect and analyze active radar pulses, and then possibly calculate and emit a signal that makes the radar site see exactly what the drone opperator wants it to see?

Probably not feasable by now, or we would have heard of DARPA working on it, but would it be theoretically possible?

Well there would be other problems with that sort of thing, mainly that it's difficult to create a larger RADAR cross-section, you'd just wind up creating a lot of confusing noise, since the geometry would be wrong, if you have no physical way to transmit from that area then it's just going to be a loud noise, which would jam the system but it would be very very obvious that you were attempting to jam the system, also you'd need to know exactly where the dish was to target it (and at that point you might as well hit it with conventional weapons).

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 06:44 PM
Grin: For damage... even people who have experienced it usually can't make accurate models. This is because it is a confusing subject that requires some pretty hard experience, because translating it into game mechanics is no easy feat, and because thinking about the subject for extended periods will cause flashbacks for many combat survivors.

The model I'm working on is based off experience, accounts of combat survivors (particularly those of knife/boxcutter/etc. attacks), medical records of car crashes and the like, off tests by historians and enthusiasts related to armour and weapons, and relevant historical data.

Even with all that (which I can't take credit for I must point out), there is still the fear that I won't be able to translate the data into game form correctly.


That's the honest assessment of the possibility of getting an accurate damage model. With that in mind, you have to decide how accurate you want the model to be and how much you're willing to invest into it to achieve that. The more abstract you make the combat and wounds, the easier it will be.



Weight is pretty significant. Your statement about balance was accurate too, and balance is probably even more significant. An axe is usually harder to wield than a heavier sword due to balance.

warty goblin
2014-02-04, 07:09 PM
Damage is...a difficult subject. It seems that most weapons would, barring the option of dismemberment, displace practically the same amount of flesh. What I'm concerned about is gauging the effects of the placement and depth of the resulting wound whilst retaining some degree of elegance.*

I'm not sure flesh displacement is the way to go, really. A cut displaces hardly any, but can be enormously damaging. Thwacking somebody upside the head with a 2x4 won't necessarily displace any at all, but can be easily lethal or incapacitating.

One interesting, albeit rather bookkeeping heavy, approach I read was in an ancient, obscure, and fascinatingly weird* RPG called GateWar. There you had per-body part hitpoints, and would suffer an appropriately unfortunate fate should those run out. Head and torso IIRC caused immediate death, arms and legs had less dire consequences. Characters also had a Blood Total, which is exactly what it sounds like, and was depleted by every attack. Run out of blood, and you'd go down. I kinda thought it did a nice job of making hit (and hence armor) location matter, without turning the body into a set of completely independent systems.


*For example, one of the monsters simply follows the characters around, watching everything they do...


I think ease of use would factor into balance. Rather, all weapons are easy to use. Using them without getting yourself injured, maimed, or killed is another matter altogether and more the focus of this assessment..
The Dark Eye solves this problem nicely by having each weapon class be a separate skill, and then varying the advancement cost appropriately. Axes & Maces don't cost nearly as much to improve as something like Bastard Swords. Based on what I know about some supplements that were never translated into English, the more expensive weapons often have access to a wider variety of special abilities than the cheap ones, making the trade-off worthwhile.

D20 of course doesn't have that sort of flexibility in core rules. I guess you could make each weapon class a skill, give each class some number of weapon skill points per level, and make some weapon types out of class for non-martial classes. Tie ability to use weapon related feats to the weapon skills (e.g. must have weapon skill 3 with your weapon to use Power Attack). You could also add damage bonuses based on weapon skills; which I personally like the feel of. Say +1 damage for every 3 skill points or something. This is one place where such a boost actually makes sense, since somebody who's very skilled with their weapon will control it better on impact, and literally do more damage.


Armor penetration's a good one.
Personally I'd make it a per-weapon attribute, rather than tying it to damage type. Maybe let some weapons bypass armor in a grapple. That avoids weirdness like rapiers being good choices for fighting dudes in full harness, but daggers being worthless.

Grinner
2014-02-04, 07:16 PM
That's the honest assessment of the possibility of getting an accurate damage model. With that in mind, you have to decide how accurate you want the model to be and how much you're willing to invest into it to achieve that. The more abstract you make the combat and wounds, the easier it will be.

Quite true.

There's also the issue of non-human combatants. A morningstar forcibly applied to a human's head is likely to kill or at least concuss him. The same done to, say, a grizzly bear is likely to just irritate it.

Ultimately, I'm aiming to make a game, not a simulation, so I will need some degree of abstraction. I'd also like it to flow smoothly into the mechanics, perhaps necessitating another degree of abstraction...Well, thanks for the help. I've got few ideas on how to proceed with combat.

By the way, what's this model of yours you spoke of? I'm not exactly a regular in this thread.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 07:32 PM
A solid hit with one heavier military flails on a grizzly bear's head? I think you'd have a dead grizzly (a grizzly death). Those things are stupidly tough, but many medieval weapons were stupidly deadly.


The model is one I've been working on a few years which is approaching the first testing stage. I only brought it up a few days ago since I'm starting to think about recruiting threads and the like.

Grinner
2014-02-04, 07:43 PM
A solid hit with one heavier military flails on a grizzly bear's head? I think you'd have a dead grizzly (a grizzly death). Those things are stupidly tough, but many medieval weapons were stupidly deadly.

While I can't personally attest to the lethality of medieval weaponry, I can tell you that there was a news reel a few months ago which brought this to mind. A girl and her father were driving home when they were attacked by a stag or something. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but it ended with the father being pinned by the animal. The girl grabbed a hammer from the truck and wailed on the animal. Repeatedly. Only after she turned the clawed end of the hammer on it did the animal finally flee.

The difference between a carpenter's hammer and a morningstar is immense, yes, but even so, it would seem that larger animals are slightly hardier than the average human.


The model is one I've been working on a few years which is approaching the first testing stage. I only brought it up a few days ago since I'm starting to think about recruiting threads and the like.

Cool. :smallsmile:


One interesting, albeit rather bookkeeping heavy, approach I read was in an ancient, obscure, and fascinatingly weird* RPG called GateWar. There you had per-body part hitpoints, and would suffer an appropriately unfortunate fate should those run out. Head and torso IIRC caused immediate death, arms and legs had less dire consequences.

Maiming. Yes, there must be rules for maiming.

I'd prefer to avoid anything too fiddly though...


Personally I'd make it a per-weapon attribute, rather than tying it to damage type. Maybe let some weapons bypass armor in a grapple. That avoids weirdness like rapiers being good choices for fighting dudes in full harness, but daggers being worthless.

I'd think that armor penetration would be more a function of heft than damage type. Perhaps that can tie into weight...But yes, I don't think a rapier simply has enough weight behind it to pierce armor reliably.

Well, it can't pierce plate armor...What about ringmail?

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 08:31 PM
Larger animals certainly are hardier than people. Someone tried executing a caged, rogue grizzly bear with a .45 round at point-blank range to the head. Bear didn't blink much less croak...

Admittedly you are correct in that there are flails which wouldn't kill the bear with anything but the best of strikes to the head. I just didn't want an overestimation of animals' abilities as compared to medieval weapons (that being said, the user of the weapon is a crucial point).


Rapiers aren't designed to counter armour. If you managed to do anything against mail, it would be pure luck rather than any skill on yours or the weapon manufacturer's part.

Weight actually is helpful to armour penetration, but it isn't the key factor. A heavier sword will do better against armour, but it still will be lousy against armour compared to lighter hammers.

TuggyNE
2014-02-04, 08:36 PM
While I can't personally attest to the lethality of medieval weaponry, I can tell you that there was a news reel a few months ago which brought this to mind. A girl and her father were driving home when they were attacked by a stag or something. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but it ended with the father being pinned by the animal. The girl grabbed a hammer from the truck and wailed on the animal. Repeatedly. Only after she turned the clawed end of the hammer on it did the animal finally flee.

The difference between a carpenter's hammer and a morningstar is immense, yes, but even so, it would seem that larger animals are slightly hardier than the average human.

Possibly, but from that it's hard to tell. I do know of a counterexample of a taekwondo black belt who killed a deer with a whack to the head, barehanded, while deployed in I believe Okinawa. So I suspect proper technique and strength are more significant than skull hardness.

Galloglaich
2014-02-04, 10:02 PM
While I can't personally attest to the lethality of medieval weaponry, I can tell you that there was a news reel a few months ago which brought this to mind. A girl and her father were driving home when they were attacked by a stag or something. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but it ended with the father being pinned by the animal. The girl grabbed a hammer from the truck and wailed on the animal. Repeatedly. Only after she turned the clawed end of the hammer on it did the animal finally flee.

The difference between a carpenter's hammer and a morningstar is immense, yes, but even so, it would seem that larger animals are slightly hardier than the average human.

Yes ... that is a pretty good point as far as how blunt weapons work, there is definitely a ratio to the size of the target and how they cause injuries.





I'd think that armor penetration would be more a function of heft than damage type. Perhaps that can tie into weight...But yes, I don't think a rapier simply has enough weight behind it to pierce armor reliably.

Well, it can't pierce plate armor...What about ringmail?

The point (forgive the pun) is that rapiers weren't armor piercing weapons, whereas daggers often were (especially certain types of daggers).

I think where "realistic" combat systems often fall down is in two places. Problem one, they focus too heavily on wound effects and wound tracking. The fact is for a human, most purpose-made medieval to bronze age weapons were effective enough to kill in fairly short order. The gory details can be fun, but people aren't like mech warriors in some computer game; you can't just shoot pieces off until they finally ablate away. A good hit is going to kill or maim. A not so good hit causes a pretty trivial wound.

http://www.historicalfencingmalta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/durer2.gif

But this is all they know about (from horror movies and so on) so that they typically spend an enormous amount of time on the damage model, the guts and squishy stuff. But the fun part of a fight is the fight. The damage is the icing but if you have a cake that's 90% icing it's gross. If you have a story which is just the cutting and the smashing part, it's like a torture porn movie, after a while it's just kind of gross and icky... whereas a good horror movie tells a scary story. You want that excitement in a fight, a fight should be scary... and thrilling.

This is dismaying for a lot of gamers, since most of the game designers of yesteryear didn't typically know much about fighting in hand to hand. But we have HEMA now, and revivals of other martial arts like Filippino Kali / Arnis and various forms of Japanese and Chinese fencing and so on. We know a little bit about what fighting with weapons is like now. Lot's of people have seen it. And it's pretty interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmLaZHStmI

If you've ever been involved in this at a serious level, particularly if you've been involved in the tournament circuit, you know that it's in fact also very exciting and engaging, it's a pretty good game in and of itself. Worth all the hours of training once you get some basic competency, because it's fun, it's interesting, there is strategy to it. This is what drew so many of us gamers, especially those of us into fantasy or historical genres, to rpg's in the first place. The idea of holding a sword and going off to do battle with it.

Problem two is that game designers in the past didn't have this. Few of them, if you'll forgive me for saying so, had probably ever been in a fight let alone a sword fight (not counting larp here). So they modeled ridiculous combat based on a poor understanding of weapons and armor of the genre and really no idea how people actually went about killing with swords and axes and so on. These systems tended to be ridiculously complex and require reams of charts and endless die rolls (ala rolemaster) and were ultimately pretty boring if you were honest about it.

A fight can't be slow and plodding and still be fun. And there is only so much fairy dust and comic hero powers that you can use to embellish it - those are the candles on top of the two inches of icing.

If you want combat to be interesting it has to be based in something real, that has rhythm of a real fight, and it has to be fast paced, it has to allow you to tell a story (not the story of rockem sockem robots either) and it has to be scary and at least a little thrilling if you win.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-04, 10:20 PM
Well, I'm happy to praise any criteria which puts my combat model in a positive light. Though I would have included plenty of gory details if it weren't for the problems you mention (they're cumbersome). Gory details aren't a bad thing for a representation of combat--but they certainly don't make for a substantial experience on their own, as you expressed.

AgentPaper
2014-02-04, 10:41 PM
Personally, I like the idea of using "energy" as round-to-round life resource. When you score a "hit", rather than actually representing a physical blow, it would represent something that would have been a hit if your opponent hadn't dodged away, and said dodging away would cost you energy. Energy comes back slowly at the end of each round, and would also be used for attacking, so a big attack would be harder to defend but leave you open as well. Once your energy is depleted, or if your opponent rolls particularly high, then you start taking real damage, which can then be represented in all the gory details, since it should be expected for most fights to only have a few wounds occurring before one side either surrenders or gets killed.

Galloglaich
2014-02-04, 10:52 PM
It makes sense but that's not really what a fight is like. Under the influence of adrenaline you don't notice fatigue that much, and they are usually over long before a reasonably fit person would be exhausted.

You might be breathing hard after, mind you, but I think this attritive model isn't really what the experience is like.

Of course it's different if you and your opponent(s) are in full armor harness, and are unable for some reason to immediately grapple your opponent or attack them with armor piercing weapons, in which case I think endurance does become more of a 'thing' without a doubt.

G

AgentPaper
2014-02-04, 10:55 PM
It makes sense but that's not really what a fight is like. Under the influence of adrenaline you don't notice fatigue that much, and they are usually over long before a reasonably fit person would be exhausted.

You might be breathing hard after, mind you, but I think this attritive model isn't really what the experience is like.

Of course it's different if you and your opponent(s) are in full armor harness, and are unable for some reason to immediately grapple your opponent or attack them with armor piercing weapons, in which case I think endurance does become more of a 'thing' without a doubt.

G

Fair enough, though I mostly liked it from a design standpoint, rather than having it mirror reality more closely. Another way of going about mostly the same thing would be to have "form" or "positioning" points, and as you attack you slowly build up points that you can use for bigger attacks, while eroding away your opponent's points by forcing them to use them on defensive actions.

More than anything though, I like it since it allows you to have a system where wounds can be scary and detailed, since you only have to keep track of a few of them, without turning it into "who rolls high first".

AMFV
2014-02-04, 10:57 PM
It makes sense but that's not really what a fight is like. Under the influence of adrenaline you don't notice fatigue that much, and they are usually over long before a reasonably fit person would be exhausted.

You might be breathing hard after, mind you, but I think this attritive model isn't really what the experience is like.

Of course it's different if you and your opponent(s) are in full armor harness, and are unable for some reason to immediately grapple your opponent or attack them with armor piercing weapons, in which case I think endurance does become more of a 'thing' without a doubt.

G

Now I don't have a lot of actual knowledge on medieval fighting, but in a real battle you're not likely to be fighting only a single opponent, but many. So fatigue is definitely more likely to become a factor, especially if you factor in the need to move about the battlefield in full gear. Of course, I might be mistaken, but I think that in an environment with multiple opponents then fatigue is going to be a much bigger factor.

Galloglaich
2014-02-04, 11:12 PM
Now I don't have a lot of actual knowledge on medieval fighting, but in a real battle you're not likely to be fighting only a single opponent, but many. So fatigue is definitely more likely to become a factor, especially if you factor in the need to move about the battlefield in full gear. Of course, I might be mistaken, but I think that in an environment with multiple opponents then fatigue is going to be a much bigger factor.

When you are stringing together multiple fights, on a small unit level or a series of running fights, yes certainly. Both for a fighter and for their horse, if any (for example)

But not so much within a typical fight. I think that is where it is both unrealistic and requires unnecessary bookkeeping.

So maybe you have a certain amount of bennies or (in my system) a small dice pool (for use in a roll -many keep-one system). So say you have 4 dice that you can use in your first fight. You might have lost one or two of after that fight and when a second opponent comes up, you only have 3. Subsequent fights will be harder and more dangerous.

Your ability to regenerate this energy between fights would be related to fitness and also to how efficiently you fought (i.e. did you have 3 exchanges or 13).

But I should also add, I think you may be thinking of a full scale battlefield when in RPG games, that's pretty rare. And in a more realistic system you are not going to be fighting dozens of 'mooks', because that is not safe with hand to hand weapons. It's more likely to be 5 on 5 or 5 on 10 maybe... but still, each individual doesn't necessarily fight more than once or twice. Those kinds of situations are more common in my games anyway.


G

AMFV
2014-02-04, 11:36 PM
When you are stringing together multiple fights, on a small unit level or a series of running fights, yes certainly. Both for a fighter and for their horse, if any (for example)

But not so much within a typical fight. I think that is where it is both unrealistic and requires unnecessary bookkeeping.

Certainly possible, I was more referring to actual real world battlefield stuff, I'm not sure how that could be simulated in a roleplaying context.



So maybe you have a certain amount of bennies or (in my system) a small dice pool (for use in a roll -many keep-one system). So say you have 4 dice that you can use in your first fight. You might have lost one or two of after that fight and when a second opponent comes up, you only have 3. Subsequent fights will be harder and more dangerous.

Your ability to regenerate this energy between fights would be related to fitness and also to how efficiently you fought (i.e. did you have 3 exchanges or 13).

But I should also add, I think you may be thinking of a full scale battlefield when in RPG games, that's pretty rare. And in a more realistic system you are not going to be fighting dozens of 'mooks', because that is not safe with hand to hand weapons. It's more likely to be 5 on 5 or 5 on 10 maybe... but still, each individual doesn't necessarily fight more than once or twice. Those kinds of situations are more common in my games anyway.


G

Fair enough, I agree that those situations are more common in most games. Although I would imagine that 5 on 5 could be made exhausting depending on the scenario, anything involving lots of movement would be different, anything that involves large amounts of movement prior, which is most combats, however it definitely might introduce an unnecessary complication.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 04:34 AM
You do get some of that energy/HP stuff in contact sports like boxing. It takes energy to hit people, it saps energy when you're hit, the more energy you have the easier it is to absorb hits without getting hurt, and low energy means hits will start inflicting more damage. You'll also get that if you decide to slap each other with ineffective weapons while in harness.

Brother Oni
2014-02-05, 07:36 AM
You do get some of that energy/HP stuff in contact sports like boxing. It takes energy to hit people, it saps energy when you're hit, the more energy you have the easier it is to absorb hits without getting hurt, and low energy means hits will start inflicting more damage. You'll also get that if you decide to slap each other with ineffective weapons while in harness.

Isn't this sort of abstraction usually called 'endurance'?

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 07:51 AM
Some games have a stat called endurance but it normally behaves differently from anything in reality (sports games being the exception).

Galloglaich
2014-02-05, 11:11 AM
I only put it in an RPG context because that is what everyone else was discussing; in the real world historically duels, impromptu one-on-one fights and small group fights were much more common than any form of warfare, and warfare itself was much more often made up of small scale raids and sieges than pitched battles.

People always tend to visualize a sort of Bravehart scenario but that wasn't the common situation of armed violence, major pitched battles were relatively rare.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 05:17 PM
That's true of basically all conflict in media. Bandits as common as flies all through the year, murders every Tuesday. Muggings on an hourly basis. All out wars within cities involving AK-47s regularly.

Circumstances can get so bad that such is happening regularly, and sometimes they do. Some places manage to keep those circumstances lasting for a long, long time...

Galloglaich
2014-02-05, 05:38 PM
One of the interesting things is that, part of how the towns in Europe managed to get a grip on mayhem and banditry was to arm their citizens. It was actually against the law not to own a sword in some towns. But this, in turn, led to a certain amount of trouble since all the citizens (about 20% of the population in most of the larger towns) were armed and they often got into fights with each other. In Italy this got really out of hand with factional disputes and vendettas between families, though they learned to moderate formal duels.

In the German and Slavic parts of Europe they managed to create a kind of etiquette for informal fights so that they didn't escalate that often to the point of people being killed ... though this didn't work perfectly. So they had all kinds of laws regarding escalation or picking fights, with a series of fines for provocative or aggressive behavior. The result was that serious fights still happened but not nearly as often as you might think with everyone walking around armed.

G

Knaight
2014-02-05, 06:30 PM
On thrusts: The Dubious Quick Kill was linked a few pages ago, and there's been lots of commentary regarding thrusts doing limited damage. It's worth nothing that these are within the specific context of swords, and often fairly narrow swords at that. Something like a spear is an entirely different beast - the shaft has a far greater cross sectional area than just about any sword, and while spear heads vary highly they're often going to be leaving much bigger holes than you'd see from the tip of a sword.

Galloglaich
2014-02-05, 07:00 PM
http://www.thearma.org/images/dcvt.jpg

The debate about which was more effective: a thrust or a cut, was a huge flamewar that went on from most of 1750-1850, when swords finally began to seriously recede from the battlefield and the dueling square.

As usual, the classic argument is overly simplistic. Trying to say a thrust is better than a cut or vice versa, is missing the point. Both types of attacks have a kind of profile or fingerprint, which varies widely depending on the specific weapon -and- the skill of the person delivering the injury.

We actually have some data on what really killed and what didn't in the Middle Ages. For example one published a study last year of several hundred letters of remissions in France and Burgundy in the 15th Century. These were pardon letters which were necessary in those regions to get out of trouble in the event of causing a homicide or a serious injury from a fight.

Analysis of this data, though it's a small sample, is interesting especially when correlated with data from other areas.

Daggers, contrary to most rpg systems, are among the most dangerous weapons. The very most dangerous was the halberd, partly because it was highly and equally effective at causing cuts as well as puncture wounds, and interestingly, people apparently used to choke up on the halberd to use it at close range. Spears were also high on the list.

In the records I reviewed from Augsburg from this book (http://www.amazon.com/Martial-Ethic-Early-Modern-Germany/dp/0230576567) and This book (http://www.amazon.com/Augsburg-During-Reformation-Era-Anthology/dp/160384841X/ref=la_B001HPRYDS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391644285&sr=1-1), thrust attacks from swords and daggers were more likely to cause death in the long run, though cuts seemed to cause just as many serious wounds, and wounds from swords caused death about 50% of the time in almost all cases. In the letters from remission from France we can see that goes as high as around 60% for head and upper torso injuries and as low as 25% for lower limbs. But all much higher than what you usually see in RPGs.

What you may have been referring to regarding rapiers and the like, is that there is data from the London Coroners rolls and various archives in Italy both in the period roughly 1550-1650 in which many people dueling with dueling rapiers or smallswords received multiple mortal wounds each, none of which stopped the fight (so they kept stabbing each other until they were both mortally wounded). This is why thrusting was illegal in duels in many German and Slavic towns until the 17th Century since it was believed to increase the risk of fatal wounds. This is partly because of medicine in the day which was fairly good at dealing with cuts, even bad cuts, (amputations and so on) but not very good at dealing with punctures especially in the abdomen or torso.

http://wiktenauer.com/images/6/6c/Heu%C3%9Fler_1-M.jpg

But some archives from Poland where people often fought duels with sabers described 'loose fingers' being an almost immediate result as well as severed hands, both of which are likely to be disabling pretty quickly.

The letters of remission from France, which are often quite detailed, give us the data that immediate death was pretty rare from any type of weapon and was more the result of where the injury was (basically head or neck) than the type of attack used.

Unscientific conclusions from what I've seen of the data: Very thin blades can cause mortal wounds that don't kill quickly, spears seem to often disable pretty fast from Augsburg records I've read. Halberds seem to be pretty devastating. Short knife blades often seem to cause superficial wounds. Swords may be the most effective for self defense and hardest to grab out of an assailants hand (hardest, though not impossible).


G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 07:22 PM
G: Yeah. Not arming your populace means they can't defend themselves from bandits, muggers, thieves, or government alike.

The story of how they finished the James gang was pretty good. Required everyone to bring their guns to church in Dodge city. Since the James gang liked robbing banks on Sundays while people were at church... robbing Dodge city's bank ended with them getting blasted to little bits.


Daggers are indeed incredibly dangerous weapons. I can't think of an RPG that has captured the lethality of a boxcutter. How you use them makes a huge difference though... If you wave them around like a feather duster, wounds are going to be superficial--though several of them will still endanger you from bleeding.


On Knaight's point(/thrust/stab/jab/etc.), spears are pretty darned disabling, more than the rapiers for sure. It just be noted that with knives and swords, you can cut the blade out instead of just pulling it straight out, which increases the damage of a stab by a lot.

Galloglaich
2014-02-05, 07:43 PM
Also depends on the sword or the dagger. Notice for example how the Roman pugio is made something like a garden shovel. I'd hate to be stabbed ... but I'd especially hate to be stabbed by one these:

http://www.romancoins.info/a-2005-dagger.JPG

http://www.romancoins.info/IMAG0081.JPG

http://www.romancoins.info/112005-pugio-late.jpg

A blade like that goes in pretty easy with the point, but it's going to split organs and muscles like ripe melons once it's pushed in a bit. If you want to finish off somebody real quick, you could do worse than this weapon, as the lethal and ruthless Romans knew very well.

On the other hand, if you want to plant a knife on somebody in a crowd where they might not even notice it, but be pretty sure it will go through their clothing and be able to puncture something really bad so that they die within a few days... a stiletto is a pretty good choice.

http://p2.la-img.com/1191/27125/10235137_1_l.jpg

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 07:44 PM
Bringing the right weapons to the job is indeed important.


PS: Where do you find all these neat pictures and sources?

Galloglaich
2014-02-05, 07:56 PM
Using the right search terms is helpful.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-05, 08:12 PM
Not getting MMO weapons and armour results is something of a trick.

Xuc Xac
2014-02-06, 12:03 AM
I imagine it's much easier to recover from a sword stroke than an axe stroke.


An axe is usually harder to wield than a heavier sword due to balance.

Battle axes are much lighter than the axes you use to chop down trees. A wood ax is very heavy and slow compared to any battlefield weapon because trees don't dodge. The bit on a battle ax is very light: it's only about the size of your palm and it's as thin and sharp as a chef's knife. Swinging one isn't any noticeably slower than swinging the naked handle.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 12:06 AM
If they were as bad as a woodaxes, they'd be be pretty unsuitable for fighting. As it was they weren't as easy to use as swords but they were still very usable.

Knaight
2014-02-06, 12:15 AM
Battle axes are much lighter than the axes you use to chop down trees. A wood ax is very heavy and slow compared to any battlefield weapon because trees don't dodge.

Trees not dodging (and not trying to hit you back with weapons) is part of why wood axes are heavier. It's basically why they can afford that weight - there's still the matter of why they need it, which is where wood being way harder to cut through than flesh comes in.

Spiryt
2014-02-06, 04:54 AM
Battle axes are much lighter than the axes you use to chop down trees. A wood ax is very heavy and slow compared to any battlefield weapon because trees don't dodge. The bit on a battle ax is very light: it's only about the size of your palm and it's as thin and sharp as a chef's knife. Swinging one isn't any noticeably slower than swinging the naked handle.

That just about entirely depends on 'chopping axe' and 'battle axe' in question.

There are different specialisations and preferences...

Not to mention that huge amount of actual medieval axe heads are horribly hard to decisively qualify : tool or weapon?


As far as 'lack of stopping power' or thrust goes, I would believe that this is indeed the issue that had risen from the experiences with late rapiers, smallswords, epees and other specialised dueling weapons.

In all other instances, people have murdered themselves with stabbing weapons trough the ages, and I don't think anyone would seriously try to consider 'average' spear, dagger, arrow, javelin etc. wounds 'not stopping enough'.

Usama ibn Munqidh writes about arms being removed at the elbow by the spear strikes, for example.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 05:12 AM
Spiryt is back, cool.


Considering I've heard of arrows just about taking arms off, I can easily picture spears doing a full job of it.

Thiel
2014-02-06, 05:44 AM
It's also worth noting that with a spear you've got a couple of meters of stick after the blade and possibly a two handed grip to work with. That should give you plenty of options for extra damage when you pull it out.
Not to mention the sheer bewildering varieties of spearheads available

Brother Oni
2014-02-06, 07:27 AM
Some games have a stat called endurance but it normally behaves differently from anything in reality (sports games being the exception).

Sport video games use endurance as a synonym as for stamina, but is purely a measure of cardiovascular fitness.

Some systems use endurance/stamina as a measure of vitality where wounds, starvation, fatigue and a couple of other measures all deplete it - off the top of my head, the Fighting Fantasy and the non-D20 version of Lone Wolf systems do this.
These systems are very abstracted though with only 3 or 2 attributes to represent your character compared to the 6+ in D&D.


Also depends on the sword or the dagger. Notice for example how the Roman pugio is made something like a garden shovel. I'd hate to be stabbed ... but I'd especially hate to be stabbed by one these:

I'm probably mistaken, but aren't they also taught to twist the blade before withdrawing to improve the chance of the wound not closing?

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 09:02 AM
I'm afraid I don't understand how that is different from HP.


I have trouble understanding why you would twist the blade instead of cutting it out.

Brother Oni
2014-02-06, 10:07 AM
I'm afraid I don't understand how that is different from HP.

In most systems, HP is just a measure of what it takes to kill you. I believe that in D&D, if you fell into a river in full armour, it would be a Swim roll, which is based off STR, to successfully make it to the surface before drowning, with hypoxia reflected in HP damage?

In the systems mentioned, endurance/stamina would be used as the test attribute instead, so the more injured and tired you are, the less likely you are to make it to the surface.

The difference is, that in D&D under RAW, you would have the same chance of success whether you were near death (1HP) or at full HP, while the other system takes previous injuries/exhaustion into account.
In Fighting Fantasy, the normal test for Stamina is STA+2d6, thus for a difficult task of Target Number 20, a very fit, strong and uninjured person with maximum 24 Stamina would automatically succeed, while the same person at 50% health would find it much more difficult (12+2d6 is a ~42% chance of success to get 20 or above).



I have trouble understanding why you would twist the blade instead of cutting it out.

You're thinking from the wrong angle. I'm stabbing you therefore I want to maximise damage, which twisting the blade would do.
Add that into the large spade like structure of the pugio and you have some extremely nasty wounds.

Galloglaich
2014-02-06, 10:50 AM
Getting swords stuck in people seems to definitely be a 'THING', several of the fencing manuals warn against stabbing people when you are in a group fight situation especially if you are outnumbered, and there are numerous examples of specific incidents where somebody got their sword stuck in a victim and it ended badly for them.

I think this is why by the Middle Ages so many spears and polearms had a notable crossbar or equivalent.

G

Incanur
2014-02-06, 01:21 PM
As far as 'lack of stopping power' or thrust goes, I would believe that this is indeed the issue that had risen from the experiences with late rapiers, smallswords, epees and other specialised dueling weapons.

In all other instances, people have murdered themselves with stabbing weapons trough the ages, and I don't think anyone would seriously try to consider 'average' spear, dagger, arrow, javelin etc. wounds 'not stopping enough'.

While thrusts from wider spears would generally cause more blood loss than thin sword points and have a slightly higher chance of hitting part the central nervous system, unless they hit the central nervous system such thrusts still won't necessarily incapacitate immediately or even quickly. The use of spears, arrows, daggers, and javelins in battle in no ways suggests otherwise. For one thing, on the battlefield armor makes inflicting the kind of cuts that incapacitate instantly difficult if not impossible. Folks certainly often survived many wounds in battle. Florange, for example, supposedly had forty-some serious injuries after his father pulled him from among the dead at Novara 1513.

Galloglaich
2014-02-06, 01:53 PM
Only if the armor covers every key part of the body ... truly full (cap-a-pied) armor coverage always ranged from very rare to pretty rare even in the heyday of armor. Torso and head were the most likely to be protected, and that left neck, arms, legs ... a severed arm or leg is pretty incapacitating.

You read just as many accounts of people being dropped pretty quickly by a single strike or arrow as you do accounts of people fighting on and on with dozens of wounds.

G

Beleriphon
2014-02-06, 02:25 PM
You read just as many accounts of people being dropped pretty quickly by a single strike or arrow as you do accounts of people fighting on and on with dozens of wounds.

G

Well, dozens of wounds are probably serious but not immediately life threatening. Its possible to survive dozens of stab wounds and there are reported cases of it happening. Its even possible to survive and axe to the head only to die later of blood loss because the blow damaged the part of the brain the registers injuries and pain. While these circumstances are rate I don't doubt that prior to modern medicine and surgery that the survivors of these injuries were pretty well documented as extraordinary.

Rhynn
2014-02-06, 02:43 PM
While thrusts from wider spears would generally cause more blood loss than thin sword points and have a slightly higher chance of hitting part the central nervous system, unless they hit the central nervous system such thrusts still won't necessarily incapacitate immediately or even quickly.

This is just the inherent unpredictability of the human body. Some people break down and collapse, incapacitated, when they are shot in a limb non-critically. Some people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout) keep fighting after being fatally shot, until hypovolemic shock or damage to the CNS disable and kill them. Crazy bastards. A lot of it actually seems to be mental, related to the mindset and determination of the combatant. (I decided to model this with COOL tests in my Fuzion cyberpunk game: if you get shot, you have to roll to stay in the fight mentally.)

Important point for any RPG combat system striving for realism: actual immediate death is really, really rare. Most RPGs are completely silly about this, but basically, only massive CNS damage (like decapitation) or other gross trauma (being bisected in some direction across the torso) will kill you immediately. Even damage directly to the brain frequently just leaves you dying. Death from hypovolemia (loss of blood, and the lack of oxygen to the brain that follows) would probably be the most common type of death in combat, but death after combat would be even more common. Even if you don't want to use infection (I feel it adds a lot to HârnMaster combat and play), complications or the sheer severity of the trauma can lead to death hours or days later.

As a corollary, fatal injuries aren't always disabling immediately; George Silver complained that rapier duellists were likely to kill each other, and as far as I'm aware, that is a real risk, because you can deal wounds that caused slow but ultimately fatal internal bleeding (or got infected fatally) but might not even be noticed in the moment. This is why, in "proper" martial arts, you never stop when you score a hit, even a technically "fatal" one - you keep moving, disengage and get back into a guard. A dying man can kill you.

Edit:
The Dubious Quick Kill (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php) (Part 2 (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/kill2.php)) was mentioned, but I'm not sure if it was posted in this iteration of the thread, and anyway, here it is without needing to look for it. Some of the accounts are incredible and terrible.

Galloglaich
2014-02-06, 03:26 PM
The instant-death kills are fairly rare, but dropping people so they stop functioning, or greatly reduce functioning, isn't, even when they receive non-mortal wounds. The 'Berzerker' type is pretty rare though it does exist (especially in certain cultural contexts).

G

Mike_G
2014-02-06, 03:29 PM
Been doing the medic thing for a long time, and I've seen people walking and talking with bad injuries and people totally incapacitated from much less severe injuries.

While it is true that a deep thrust is very likely to hit an organ and kill you eventually, it might not slow you down right away, I think there is a tendency to oversell that idea that thrusts have no stopping power. And there's a world of difference between a smallsword in the gut and a claymore in the gut.

A con/shock/fortitude type roll seems very reasonable for whether a wound stops a fighter or not.

A strong cut that severs muscle or breaks a bone would incapacitate a limb regardless of how tough you are.

Livius
2014-02-06, 03:47 PM
I have a question.

How does urban warfare work pre-gunpowder? Are there any particularly effective weapons/equipment/tactics?
How much does the street arrangement matter (grid vs. maze)?

Note: I don't mean an attack from outside the walls, but rather two armies fighting a battle in the city.

Mr Beer
2014-02-06, 04:52 PM
I have a question.

How does urban warfare work pre-gunpowder? Are there any particularly effective weapons/equipment/tactics?
How much does the street arrangement matter (grid vs. maze)?

Note: I don't mean an attack from outside the walls, but rather two armies fighting a battle in the city.

I would think that arms that allow for lots of men in a short fighting front would be useful, like the Roman.

Knowledge of the city would be crucial.

Occupying high points would allow for "sniping" type attacks with ranged weapons and dropping heavy objects.

Occupying low ground such as sewer systems could also be extremely useful.

You are always fighting in "three dimensions", this adds a lot of extra tactical considerations.

Funnelling your enemies with street barricades into a tight quarter might be a strategy. Setting fire to the area once they are trapped could be extremely effective, albeit potentially dangerous to your own side.

I think anything like unrestricted fighting for any length of time in mediaeval settings = city ends up burning anyway.

AMFV
2014-02-06, 04:54 PM
I have a question.

How does urban warfare work pre-gunpowder? Are there any particularly effective weapons/equipment/tactics?
How much does the street arrangement matter (grid vs. maze)?

Note: I don't mean an attack from outside the walls, but rather two armies fighting a battle in the city.

There were also several battles in Mesopotamia where they flooded cities by breaking the dams and then just waited for a while, that's a pretty effective tactic back then as well. Although I don't know if that was wide spread or only in those small instances.

Livius
2014-02-06, 05:39 PM
I would think that arms that allow for lots of men in a short fighting front would be useful, like the Roman.


The whole large shield, short weapon combination?



Knowledge of the city would be crucial.

Occupying high points would allow for "sniping" type attacks with ranged weapons and dropping heavy objects.

Occupying low ground such as sewer systems could also be extremely useful.

You are always fighting in "three dimensions", this adds a lot of extra tactical considerations.

Funnelling your enemies with street barricades into a tight quarter might be a strategy. Setting fire to the area once they are trapped could be extremely effective, albeit potentially dangerous to your own side.


What sort of formation helps you advance on a barricade across a cross-street?
A phalanx would get flanked, while a wedge probably can't break through the wider front at the barricade.

Is there a big difference in weapon preference for offense vs. defense?
Do spears have any use?

Mike_G
2014-02-06, 05:40 PM
I have a question.

How does urban warfare work pre-gunpowder? Are there any particularly effective weapons/equipment/tactics?
How much does the street arrangement matter (grid vs. maze)?

Note: I don't mean an attack from outside the walls, but rather two armies fighting a battle in the city.

Urban warfare presents a lot of challenges. First of all, you can't fight in battalions or companies, since the streets are too narrow, so you wind up fighting in smaller groups, which throws out a lot of the stuff you trained for, especially in pre-modern armies, where men are used to formation fighting.

Command and control is much harder. Building will block your view of your troops, their troops, and where the lines are. Without air recon or radios, a commander will only have a vague idea of most of the battlefield. It's easier for messengers to get lost in a maze of a city. Easy for one unit to advance far beyond the rest of the army and get cut off. Even in the 1990s in Somalia, in the battle of Mogidishu the US had a tough time getting the troops to the fighting because of barricades and blocked streets. And they had radios and air cover.

The second story of a building is a problem. Even an untrained, unarmored, unarmed civilian can toss stuff out onto your head. And if he has flammable stuff to toss, that can suck to be you.

Ranges will be short. Crossbows and longbows will not have the advantage they would on an open field. Expect the enemy to be able to stay hidden until you get up to him if he wants to.

Move through buildings. Streets are known pathways and funnels to ambush. If you move through the buildings, the enemy can't see you, can't anticipate your movement, and you can use upper floors to look for enemy movement and do your own sniping/dropping heavy stuff.

Cavalry lose their advantage. horses can be ambushed from doors and windows, hit from above and lured into alleys where they can't maneuver. It's easy to hide caltrops or tripwires in dark alleys and lame the mounts.

I think it's easier for an invading force to surround the city and starve them out, or use fire or disease, or even the threat of total destruction to get the city to surrender.

History has plenty of stories of technologically superior forces taking a beating in urban warfare. You can win a fight in a city, but it's ugly, and without good communication and observation capability, it's much worse.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 06:38 PM
Brother: Oh, that's pretty good with the endurance system.


What I mean is, if you stab someone in the corner of their abdomen you shouldn't just pull the blade out or twist it and pull it out. You should drag it across their stomach and disembowel them. There might be cases where you can't cut out because ribs are in the way, and you can't cut out like that if they're wearing armour (that's probably the key reason).


Rhynn: Unfortunately, many survive bisection... Attacking the central nervous system can result in death from shock still. Removal of the head isn't guaranteed instant death, as the victim's head can still be alive for a brief space of time (unless the shock kills them). Destruction of the head is the only true instantaneous death.

As you point out, most deaths occur after the battle. Infection was a huge killer.

That being said, injuries which don't kill immediately are still very incapacitating. Blood loss is also more serious than many sources make it seem, and relatively minor wounds will still make you bleed out if you don't quickly see to them.


Mike: My experience is the same. Pain is very hard to predict.


Livius: You can't cross a barricade while maintaining formation. If you're worried about being attacked from multiple sides, something like a circle-formation is your best bet.

Mike has done a good job of covering many of the aspects.

Brother Oni
2014-02-06, 06:53 PM
There were also several battles in Mesopotamia where they flooded cities by breaking the dams and then just waited for a while, that's a pretty effective tactic back then as well. Although I don't know if that was wide spread or only in those small instances.

Very popular in early Chinese warfare too. Often the cities were on low lying ground, so the attackers had the choice of either digging a channel to redirect a river, or blocking a river up and breaking the dam once there was enough stored water.



What I mean is, if you stab someone in the corner of their abdomen you shouldn't just pull the blade out or twist it and pull it out. You should drag it across their stomach and disembowel them. There might be cases where you can't cut out because ribs are in the way, and you can't cut out like that if they're wearing armour (that's probably the key reason).


Actually it's because it's a fighting situation and you don't have the time or luxury to drag your weapon. In addition trying to drag your weapon to widen often means you're unguarded so they can crack your head open.
As the recent posts in this thread have testified to, a mortally wounded man can still kill you.

You stick them, twist and get your weapon out, ready for their counter attack or the next person to come charging in. Practised enough, it's a pretty much reflexive action which takes only fractions of a second to complete.

Animastryfe
2014-02-06, 06:59 PM
Galloglaich's comments about the stiletto in the previous page reminds me of a situation that came up in the second episode of the third season of the TV show Sherlock. Spoilers follow.

Can someone be stabbed with a thin blade, perhaps needle-like, in the torso and not feel it? In the show, someone murdered a Buckingham palace guard (https://www.google.com/search?q=buckingham+palace+guard&newwindow=1&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=sSH0Uv6qJrOwsATYkIHYDQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1439&bih=779) by surreptitiously stabbing him with such a blade through his tight belt. The belt supposedly kept the wound closed, and the guard did not notice the wound. When the guard took his belt off, the wound opened and he quickly bled to death.

Brother Oni
2014-02-06, 07:08 PM
Galloglaich's comments about the stiletto in the previous page reminds me of a situation that came up in the second episode of the third season of the TV show Sherlock. Spoilers follow.

Can someone be stabbed with a thin blade, perhaps needle-like, in the torso and not feel it? In the show, someone murdered a Buckingham palace guard (https://www.google.com/search?q=buckingham+palace+guard&newwindow=1&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=sSH0Uv6qJrOwsATYkIHYDQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1439&bih=779) by surreptitiously stabbing him with such a blade through his tight belt. The belt supposedly kept the wound closed, and the guard did not notice the wound. When the guard took his belt off, the wound opened and he quickly bled to death.

Actually the guardsman survived.

This was discussed in the Sherlock thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322876) and it's theoretically possible - those belts are very tight, which could act as a tourniquet to hold the wound together.

There's a story about a Russian woman, Julia Popova who was stabbed and she didn't realise it until she got home and looked in a mirror: link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248155/The-mugging-victim-inch-knife--didnt-notice.html) (warning gruesome).

Mr Beer
2014-02-06, 07:11 PM
The whole large shield, short weapon combination?

I'm thinking more about the relatively short stabbing (I know it can also cut) weapon, allowing lots of people side by side. Of course, a shield is good too, not sure if a big shield is ideal in cramped quarters though.


What sort of formation helps you advance on a barricade across a cross-street?
A phalanx would get flanked, while a wedge probably can't break through the wider front at the barricade.

Idunnolol. If you can't go around it and have to attack frontally, I guess a crapload of missiles followed closely by a massed charge is optimal.

Brother Oni
2014-02-06, 07:22 PM
I'm thinking more about the relatively short stabbing (I know it can also cut) weapon, allowing lots of people side by side. Of course, a shield is good too, not sure if a big shield is ideal in cramped quarters though.


Long arms like spears would also be technically useful in this situation as they allow more than one rank to fight at a time, but in reality, buildings tend to get in the way, particularly the European late Middle Ages buildings which were built with the second storey overhanging the street.

Bear in mind that streets were much narrower back then than now, although this would depend on the exact period and city in question.



Idunnolol. If you can't go around it and have to attack frontally, I guess a crapload of missiles followed closely by a massed charge is optimal.

Shield wall probably until you can get close enough to either assault the defenders or the fortification.

Mike_G
2014-02-06, 07:41 PM
I'm thinking more about the relatively short stabbing (I know it can also cut) weapon, allowing lots of people side by side. Of course, a shield is good too, not sure if a big shield is ideal in cramped quarters though.



Idunnolol. If you can't go around it and have to attack frontally, I guess a crapload of missiles followed closely by a massed charge is optimal.

Or go through the buildings on either side and outflank it. Or get a higher floor and rain missiles down on it.

Don't just charge up Main Street. Unless you want to get ambushed.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 07:49 PM
Oni: Oh right, you'll be thinking of stabbing from a distance. I really advise against that. If you're going to use a knife: Get very close, grab them, then turn them into mess you'll probably have nightmares about for the rest of your life. Stabs and cuts from a distance are not conductive to surviving, they'll end up with both you and your attacker being lightly wounded and bleeding out (and you'll have multiple attackers). I'm not experienced with how cutting out goes when stabbing at a distance.

If you drag a knife across a person's abdomen, they're usually too busy holding their organs in to think of attack (but attack is still a possibility). The first thing no matter what you do (assuming you can't run) is to move and grab your opponent so that they can't harm you or have difficulty harming you. If you've botched that step, it doesn't make a lot of difference what technique you use.

Berenger
2014-02-06, 07:54 PM
I have a question.

How does urban warfare work pre-gunpowder? Are there any particularly effective weapons/equipment/tactics?
How much does the street arrangement matter (grid vs. maze)?

Note: I don't mean an attack from outside the walls, but rather two armies fighting a battle in the city.

If I get half an hour to prepare, I'd build a barricade and block the area in front of it with caltrops and chains that are stretched from house to house, over the street. The barricade and the upper floors of the surrounding houses will be manned by crossbowmen. The doors of said houses are boarded up and the stairs are blocked with furniture (the men in the houses can retreat through a series of wall breakthroughs - the last one is so low that they have to crawl, this way enemies following them present their heads and necks to a guard with an axe).

Thiel
2014-02-06, 08:10 PM
Oni: Oh right, you'll be thinking of stabbing from a distance. I really advise against that. If you're going to use a knife: Get very close, grab them, then turn them into mess you'll probably have nightmares about for the rest of your life. Stabs and cuts from a distance are not conductive to surviving, they'll end up with both you and your attacker being lightly wounded and bleeding out (and you'll have multiple attackers). I'm not experienced with how cutting out goes when stabbing at a distance.

If you drag a knife across a person's abdomen, they're usually too busy holding their organs in to think of attack (but attack is still a possibility). The first thing no matter what you do (assuming you can't run) is to move and grab your opponent so that they can't harm you or have difficulty harming you. If you've botched that step, it doesn't make a lot of difference what technique you use.

Problem is if you're that close then so is he and outside of a mugging there's no guarantee that he won't try and do the same to you.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-06, 08:21 PM
The idea is to get close, grab him so he can't hurt you but you can hurt him. That's what hopefully will happen.

As you point out, your enemy won't comply. There's a good chance that if they have a knife, they know how to use it better than you and are more willing. When you try to grab them and put them in a weak position, they also will try to grab you and put you in a weak position. The winner of that will become the survivor of the encounter.

You might then think it's better to stab at them from a distance so as to avoid that... but if you try to do that, and they decide to get close and grab you... money's on them.

Of course, the best option is to break away and escape.

Mike_G
2014-02-06, 09:47 PM
You try to hold onto his knife hand and stab him until he stops struggling. There's not a lot of finesse involved. Control his weapon and mess his crap up.

Unless you are totally ambushing him from behind, in which case you can stab him in the side of the neck and rip the blade out the front.

I am a fan of backing away quickly while shooting him, if it's all the same.

Livius
2014-02-07, 12:16 AM
Thanks for all the responses.

Is this an accurate summary for an effective attacking force, or is my understanding still faulty?

Overall organization:
Lots of autonomy to small unit commanders. Combined arms forces, coordinated overall by mounted messengers. Most reserves kept near the front for reacting to enemy surprises (at discretion of local commanders).

Cavalry:
Attack like mounted infantry to seize strongpoints before enemy defenses can be set up. Fight dismounted.
Afterwards, serve as scouts/messengers to keep army coordinated. Stay on the main streets or secured areas where they can maneuver properly.

Melee infantry:
Advance with shield walls to defend against enemy missiles. Help archers secure buildings to get fire support. Break through barricades with archer support. Short weapons (sword or axe) for maneuverability.

Archers:
Fire support for the infantry from upper floors. Concentrate on enemy barricade defenders (infantry can take buildings from the street once the barricade is broken), don't worry as much about counter-archer fire (unless it is heavy enough to prevent them from doing their primary job).

AgentPaper
2014-02-07, 01:11 AM
Thanks for all the responses.

Is this an accurate summary for an effective attacking force, or is my understanding still faulty?

Horses aren't going to be any use in the city, any cavalry should either stay outside the city to secure the supply train, or they should dismount and serve as heavy infantry if you have more than are needed for those tasks.

Archers wouldn't be much use either. They would mostly be restricted to strong points, mostly the walls, towers, and any tall buildings such as churches. They wouldn't be able to support ground troops, since the narrow buildings and overhangs would prevent them from hitting anyone further than the street below them, if that. Instead, they would serve to deny specific areas and a counter to enemy archers trying to do the same. They might take some potshots when they get the chance, but probably won't be much use overall.

The real fighting will happen in the streets, and it'll be between small groups of infantry fighting building-to-building. Unless one side has far superior forces, expect the fighting to drag on for days, if not weeks or even months. I'd suggest looking at the kind of fighting that happened in Stalingrad if you want to know what it'd be like.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-07, 01:16 AM
Knife: Mike has summed it up well.


Livius: That's a pretty good summary. What the archers focus on depends on the situation (sometimes they will focus on enemy range support).


Paper: Cavalry wouldn't get their full use, but if they can run through certain areas, some cavalry is still good for delivering messages or getting from A to B quickly.

Archers would be useful support. There are situations you can't utilize them, but there are situations where a few arrows coming down is a big plus for your infantry.

Animastryfe
2014-02-07, 02:17 AM
Actually the guardsman survived.

This was discussed in the Sherlock thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322876) and it's theoretically possible - those belts are very tight, which could act as a tourniquet to hold the wound together.

There's a story about a Russian woman, Julia Popova who was stabbed and she didn't realise it until she got home and looked in a mirror: link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248155/The-mugging-victim-inch-knife--didnt-notice.html) (warning gruesome).

Thank you for the reply. You are correct, the guardsman survived.

AMFV
2014-02-07, 02:26 AM
Horses aren't going to be any use in the city, any cavalry should either stay outside the city to secure the supply train, or they should dismount and serve as heavy infantry if you have more than are needed for those tasks.

Archers wouldn't be much use either. They would mostly be restricted to strong points, mostly the walls, towers, and any tall buildings such as churches. They wouldn't be able to support ground troops, since the narrow buildings and overhangs would prevent them from hitting anyone further than the street below them, if that. Instead, they would serve to deny specific areas and a counter to enemy archers trying to do the same. They might take some potshots when they get the chance, but probably won't be much use overall.

The real fighting will happen in the streets, and it'll be between small groups of infantry fighting building-to-building. Unless one side has far superior forces, expect the fighting to drag on for days, if not weeks or even months. I'd suggest looking at the kind of fighting that happened in Stalingrad if you want to know what it'd be like.

Which is generally why both sides try to avoid that sort of fighting as much as possible, either by driving the defenders out (the flood method, or with artillery) or lowering their morale till they surrender. Usually that sort of battle isn't any good for anybody.

Brother Oni
2014-02-07, 03:48 AM
Oni: Oh right, you'll be thinking of stabbing from a distance. I really advise against that. If you're going to use a knife: Get very close, grab them, then turn them into mess you'll probably have nightmares about for the rest of your life. Stabs and cuts from a distance are not conductive to surviving, they'll end up with both you and your attacker being lightly wounded and bleeding out (and you'll have multiple attackers). I'm not experienced with how cutting out goes when stabbing at a distance..

Except I wasn't talking about a knife, I was talking about the pugio that Galloglaich mentioned and by extension, other short swords like the gladius.

Whether you'd twist with a knife depends very much on its construction - kitchen knives are likely to snap if you tried it with them.
Other aspects of knife fighting have already been covered, the primary one being don't get into a knife fight in the first place.

Mr. Mask
2014-02-07, 04:01 AM
The pugio can be considered a knife. The line between knife and short sword is fuzzy, mainly relying on how the blade is balanced (if weighted correctly, a knife or short sword works well enough at range).

With a sword or short sword, the reason to not cut out is inability or armour.

Avoiding muggers is indeed much better than having knife-based exchanges.

AgentPaper
2014-02-07, 04:23 AM
Whether you'd twist with a knife depends very much on its construction - kitchen knives are likely to snap if you tried it with them.

Er, no, that would not cause a kitchen knife to snap. Or cause it any kind of harm whatsoever.

Brother Oni
2014-02-07, 07:53 AM
Er, no, that would not cause a kitchen knife to snap. Or cause it any kind of harm whatsoever.

Hmm, the one I had must have been damaged then, or it possibly got stuck between a pair of ribs.

Galloglaich
2014-02-07, 10:46 AM
http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20230/spanish%20hidalgo.jpg

There is a really good, vivid, detailed and extended account of urban combat in Bernal Diaz fantastic Conquest of New Spain (http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239), especially during their retreat from Tenochtitlan. It seems to follow the pattern of most of these types of fights I've read about in that rocks and in this case, roof tiles, were often some of the most important weapons.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/The_Conquest_of_Tenochtitlan.jpg

This battle was also unusual in that it was partly a naval battle - the crusaders had made some 'schooners' which were sailing around this big lake and providing valuable fire support (they had a few small cannon and arquebus, and some crossbows on them) and in turn being attacked and ambushed by fleets of canoes and traps like with spikes in the water and so on. I don't think Cortez and his crew would have made it out of the city without their support, as they were so outnumbered.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/3a1a36ed372c40bc9b5473e6e1a5eb68/tumblr_mxc5yb6n9j1qa6o5so1_1280.jpg

In the account you'll notice the use of large shields (I think in particular when they tried to assault one of the pyramids) which is also typical- even after shields had largely declined in use in the open battlefield in the 14th and 15th Centuries you still see them quite commonly displayed in depictions of sieges.

There is a big difference from fighting in a city or town vs. attacking a city or town. There are also some pretty vivid descriptions of the latter in Jan Dlugosz as well. I have transcribed a few somewhere and if I can find them I'll post here. I remember in one where the attackers (Silesians fighting for the Hungarian warlord Jan Hunyadi if I remember right) tried to set a city on fire but were driven away by the defenders (town militia) and the fire was put out; in another attack on Wroclaw in the 15th Century the attackers initially overwhelmed the defenders who held up in a citadel, but later used hidden sortie tunnels to harass the invaders and eventually caused panic among them and they left in disarray.

The citadel was also a very common feature of medieval towns and cities, they would have a citadel, what the Greeks called an acropolis or the Russians call a kremlin, and in other places was just called the castle - like Prague castle) in which to retreat during a major invasion.

Later when the city walls were heavily improved the castle was sometimes destroyed to prevent rulers from using it as a fort in internal fights or civil wars within the town.

http://www.esm.ee/public/galleries/Keskaeg/.gallery_pictures/Pilt_4.jpg

Firearms were early-on a major element of siege warfare of all types, especially in both defending and attacking towns since even the earliest most primitive firearms were effective in that role (where you could take your time to reload behind cover, basically). The Mongols used fire-lances in their initial invasion of central Europe in 1241, and they were probably used to defeat them in Krakow in 1280, and they were used to spectacular effect to break the back of a huge attack on Moscow in 1380.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-07, 12:21 PM
Brother: Tests on a carcass?

Kitchen knives these days are usually pretty lousy, sub-par for combat.

Brother Oni
2014-02-07, 01:16 PM
Brother: Tests on a carcass?

Kitchen work, meat preparation.

warty goblin
2014-02-07, 01:20 PM
Knives are designed to cut, not to pry. Twisting seems a generally sub-optimal use of the weapon from a design point of view. Also in terms of leverage, since you've only got the grip to provide torque, while the victim's flesh has the entire width of the blade to do so. It also just seems slower than retracting the blade while cutting and stabbing the guy again, which gives more opportunity to sever something of mortal import.

Spiryt
2014-02-07, 01:27 PM
Maybe I'm missing something, but I honestly can't see how archers would be 'unimportant' in town setting....

With your 'stereotypical' Medieval architecture, every single house could really be little fortress, a lot of spaces to lay crossbow at, and pull the trigger...

Particularly while defending.

Archery as in 'mass of guys firing volleys' would be limited indeed, or perhaps bows in general, but crossbows/samostrzałs/arbalests/what you call it would thrive.

After all, buildings in the middle of the towns often had arrow slits as well. At least if they were fortified places.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pv4F3KO47IE/UptVDthmz3I/AAAAAAAAGN0/AqKZFdfP6GA/s1600/DSCF3686.jpg


Still preserved arrow slits on the inside of the gate (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Gda%C5%84sk_G%C5%82%C3%B3wne_Miasto_-ul._Szeroka_-_%C5%BBuraw.JPG) - I believe. Also in Gdańsk.

Galloglaich
2014-02-07, 02:09 PM
Makes me think of this old 15th Century 'map' of the German / Swiss town of Rottweil (a town with a lot of butchers, home of the Rottweiler dog). If you look closely you can see some guys pointing crossbows out of the window of houses in the town. Tough folks in that place...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Reichsstadt_Rottweil.jpeg/410px-Reichsstadt_Rottweil.jpeg

(larger image here:)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Reichsstadt_Rottweil.jpeg

... which is part of why that town managed to stay independent for 500 years

G

AgentPaper
2014-02-07, 02:33 PM
Makes me think of this old 15th Century 'map' of the German / Swiss town of Rottweil (a town with a lot of butchers, home of the Rottweiler dog). If you look closely you can see some guys pointing crossbows out of the window of houses in the town. Tough folks in that place...

I only see two of them, and both seem to be fairly clearly on the outskirts of the town, pointing outwards.

@Spiryt:

That specific building looks like it's designed to be defended with bows/crossbows, but that kind of building was by no means the norm. From the looks of it, I assume that it's a minor noble's residence. Most buildings would be made of wood, have much larger windows, and would be jam-packed against each other with very narrow streets running between them.

Depending on the city (and the location in the city, for that matter), the streets might be as little as 5-10 feet wide, and would be very curvy and snaky, which would make it impossible to shoot at someone from more than 20-50 feet away. And that's assuming that the soldiers even bother to use the streets at all, and don't just break down a few walls and/or attack out of a side-street where you can't see them until they're on top of you.

Archers would certainly still have their uses, defending specific fortified areas, especially stone buildings where you can tear/burn down the surrounding structures, to keep the roofs clear, to fend off enemy archers with counter-fire, and to create designated "kill-zones" in the few places that do have a clear line-of-sight. However, the real fighting is always going to come down to the infantry.

Galloglaich
2014-02-07, 03:20 PM
I only see two of them, and both seem to be fairly clearly on the outskirts of the town, pointing outwards.

That's because there are no enemies in the city yet...



@Spiryt:

That specific building looks like it's designed to be defended with bows/crossbows, but that kind of building was by no means the norm. From the looks of it, I assume that it's a minor noble's residence. Most buildings would be made of wood, have much larger windows, and would be jam-packed against each other with very narrow streets running between them.

How many medieval cities have you seen? Actually wood buildings in that time period aren't as common as you seem to think. I think there is a common misconception that medieval towns look like this pathetic cliché of Hollywood and video games

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19400000/Van-Helsing-Movie-Village-van-helsing-19407931-800-600.jpg

... when in fact, they actually looked like this (13th century clock tower in Bern, clock dates to the 15th century)

http://images.gadmin.st.s3.amazonaws.com/n30316/images/bern/teaser/zeitglockenturm_abends.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zytglogge


or this (old town square in Prague, mostly 15th Century):

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/047/7/2/prague___old_town_square_i_by_pingallery-d5v5esa.jpg

or this (St. Marks square in venice, from a 15th Century painting - 1496)



There are numerous intact medieval towns (scores of Czech and Swiss towns for example consist of almost fully intact 15th Century architecture) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/1496_Gentile_Bellini,_Procession_in_St._Mark's_Squ are_Tempera_on_canvas,_367x745cm,_Galleria_dell'Ac cademia,_Venice.jpgwhich are still medieval and most of the buildings are stone or the type of timber / masonry construction called fachtwerk

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Dornstetten-p01_crop.JPG/800px-Dornstetten-p01_crop.JPG

Many if not most homes of ordinary artisans were made of stone and the city council typically lived in fortified homes which would count as castles if they were in the countryside.

Guild houses also tended to be heavily fortified and included large armories for use in sieges.

For example this is the blacksmiths guild house in Zurich

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Niederdorf_-_Zunfthaus_zur_Schmiden_2011-07-20_19-33-06_ShiftN2.jpg/449px-Niederdorf_-_Zunfthaus_zur_Schmiden_2011-07-20_19-33-06_ShiftN2.jpg

This is the spice merchants guild hall, also in Zurich

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Z%C3%BCrich_-_Quaibr%C3%BCcke_-_M%C3%BCnsterbr%C3%BCcke-Haue-Rathaus_IMG_4426.jpg/800px-Z%C3%BCrich_-_Quaibr%C3%BCcke_-_M%C3%BCnsterbr%C3%BCcke-Haue-Rathaus_IMG_4426.jpg

Both of those buildings are from the 15th Century

Town halls from the same era also tended to be veritable castles, this is the town hall of Wroclaw, 15th Century

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Ratusz2noc.jpg/620px-Ratusz2noc.jpg

Churches, of which there were typically dozens in a town, were also fortified, like this 13th Century Church also in Wroclaw

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Wroclaw_kosciol_sw.Idziego_od_plKatedralnego.jpg/800px-Wroclaw_kosciol_sw.Idziego_od_plKatedralnego.jpg

and they also had towers all over the place like this one in Danzig / Gdansk (15th Century)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Gda%C5%84sk%2C_historical_prison%2C_with_the_tower .JPG/450px-Gda%C5%84sk%2C_historical_prison%2C_with_the_tower .JPG

And huge municipal buildings like this 14th Century crane, also in Gdansk

http://www.balticsea.travel/uploads/pics/Kultur_Danzig.jpg


Depending on the city (and the location in the city, for that matter), the streets might be as little as 5-10 feet wide, and would be very curvy and snaky, which would make it impossible to shoot at someone from more than 20-50 feet away. And that's assuming that the soldiers even bother to use the streets at all, and don't just break down a few walls and/or attack out of a side-street where you can't see them until they're on top of you.

Breaking through city walls isn't exactly a simple matter, depending of course on the city. There were dozens of cities in Europe whose walls were never breached for many centuries in spite of numerous efforts.

There are also numerous accounts of battles within towns in which both bows and crossbows were extensively used by both sides. I remember one in Bruges between the Duke of Burgundy and his entourage vs. the town population which there is a first hand account that is transcribed somewhere.

I think missiles were of immense importance in medieval combat ... even down on the street when people were fighting with hand weapons the bows and crossbows remained prominent (as you can see here in this painting of civil strife in Bologna in the 14th Century ... not also the stone buildings)

G

Spiryt
2014-02-07, 03:22 PM
That specific building looks like it's designed to be defended with bows/crossbows, but that kind of building was by no means the norm. From the looks of it, I assume that it's a minor noble's residence. Most buildings would be made of wood, have much larger windows, and would be jam-packed against each other with very narrow streets running between them.


Those are not 'residences' of any kind:smalltongue:

Those are river gates of Danzig/Gdańsk. Made to control the traffic, both on the roads and on the water, and of course to provide fortification for numerous cases.

Part of defensive/control system, in short.


Depending on the city (and the location in the city, for that matter), the streets might be as little as 5-10 feet wide, and would be very curvy and snaky, which would make it impossible to shoot at someone from more than 20-50 feet away. And that's assuming that the soldiers even bother to use the streets at all, and don't just break down a few walls and/or attack out of a side-street where you can't see them until they're on top of you.

That's weird way to put it.

As mentioned above - resisdents/defenders, always are going to have advantage as far as 'breaking' and what else go, they know the place and can make preparations.

'Breaking down walls' is not exactly trivial with mines etc. and the question was about 'no gunpowder', so 'just' breaking stuff up is pretty much out of question.


Most buildings would be made of wood, have much larger windows, and would be jam-packed against each other with very narrow streets running between them.

more than 20-50 feet away

And this is kind of my point...

Archers packed in somehow hard to reach places, that are easy to hold closed, that can shoot you from very close distance.

From which crossbow/bows can be really effective - but on the open field, that distance would mean that archers are getting close to getting speared.

Wooden houses could still have 4 of more storeys - a lot of windows to shoot from, a lot of places to defend.

Wooden buildings could be sometimes easy to burn, of course, so if attacker didn't mind potential complete destruction, it was a danger, no doubt.

Spiryt
2014-02-07, 03:36 PM
Actually wood buildings in that time period aren't as common as you seem to think. I think there is a common misconception that medieval towns look like this pathetic cliché of Hollywood and video games

(S)He actually has a point here - most of those pictures are, all in all, cities in their modern state, and the very centre of town.

In actual medieval/later periods huge portion of cities were still wooden, that's why fires were such a problem.


But, I fully agree - those weren't some wooden huts you could kick open.

Just wooden constructions.

http://www.stargard.pl/media/upload/images/images-ue/mkw-str02.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Podcieniowy_dom_we_wsi_Trutnowy_2010.jpg

http://www.lubelskie.pl/img/userfiles/images/turystyka/kazimierz/IMG_1273.jpg

AgentPaper
2014-02-07, 03:37 PM
You guys seem to be talking specifically about defensive structures and the richer parts of town, such as government buildings and residences, town squares, and so n. The kind of medieval street that I'm talking about is something like The Shambles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles), where the streets are very narrow, the buildings overhand the street, and the buildings are made of wood. My impression is that this was by far the more common street in any kind of large medieval town such as London, whereas the large plazas, fortified structures, and so on that you describe would be the exception.

If you look at just the medieval buildings that have survived to the present day, then yeah you're going to see a ton of large stone buildings with not a lot around them, because that's the kind of building that lasts 500 years, whereas the small wood house tends to get torn down eventually because nobody cares as much about "Town Residence #4953" as they do about something significant like a guild house or church.

Edit: And no, you're not going to kick down the walls of most buildings, but give four burly men axes and it's not going to take long to carve yourself a path. Much harder if there's defenders on the other side of the wall trying to poke sticks at you while you do it, but I mostly meant it as a way to get close to the enemy without marching down the street, then once you're close enough you can charge the last 10-20 feet on your own.

Galloglaich
2014-02-07, 04:44 PM
The types of houses you posted an image of Spyrit are what I referred to upthread as "the type of timber / masonry construction called fachtwerk" I think in Poland they call them "Prussian style" or something. But I know that in many Polish towns stone buildings were common (more on that in a second)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachwerk#German_tradition_.28Fachwerkh.C3.A4user.2 9

A timber framed house is not the same thing as a wooden house. It's much sturdier and makes a better fort (at least, it was legally considered so back in those days, which is why their construction was restricted in some areas). In some towns even in the late medieval period (Moscow for example) wooden houses were still pretty common, but in most of the urbanized parts of Europe stone and timber framed brick houses had become the norm in most of the city.

As for the shambles and this notion this notion that all the wood houses were gone so only the big nice stone ones are left, you don't understand something really important about medieval towns. They were pretty well regulated, and shambles and abbatoires, like in your link, were typically forced to be outside of the town walls, because they were the origin of bad smells and townfolk believed bad smells caused disease (they weren't too far off on that actually since diseased or rotten things usually smell bad). This was the typical rule in scores of towns under German town law.

Furthermore, wooden houses in towns did tend to burn down - which is why they were replaced by increasingly sturdy materials such as stone and / or brick when the towns were rebuilt after they had burned or during defensive military upgrades of the town. This is why by the late medieval period most larger towns were mostly stone or brick. We have regulations from many towns which are very specific about how houses must be built and defensive considerations are top among these regulations. They also mandated the use of non-flammable roof tiles.

This becomes pretty clear when you look at contemporary maps of towns from this era like in the Nuremberg chronicles (1493)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Nuremberg_chronicles_-_Nuremberga.png/800px-Nuremberg_chronicles_-_Nuremberga.png

As for this issue of the town square or major buildings, that is part of the story of town defense for one thing, for another, one of the reasons I asked about whether you had been to any medieval towns, is that it's very common in much of Europe that the entire original medieval part of the old city is preserved - this is particularly true in places like Czech and Switzerland as I mentioned upthread because they were never bombed or shelled in WW II (which is BY FAR the largest reason medieval town-houses were destroyed).

This section is typically called the Altstadt or "old town" in German towns (and towns which used to be partly German in what is now Poland and Czech and other Central European countries) and it's the biggest tourist draw in most of them. In addition they frequently also have one or more other very old municipalities which may be called something like the 'main town' or the 'old suburb' which also date back to medieval times. In most cases 90% or more of the buildings in these sections ARE the original 14th or 15th Century buildings. This is what the towns were made of.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Goerlitz-Schoenhof_von_Westen-20110626.jpg/399px-Goerlitz-Schoenhof_von_Westen-20110626.jpg

There are also towns like Bruges in Flanders or the smaller towns of the Lusatian League (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6rlitz) which were essentially preserved in 15th Century form when political / economic conditions caused them to largely stagnate (at least in terms of architecture) in the early 16th Century, essentially preserving them as sort of Medieval museums. You'll see a LOT of very sturdy old stone houses in these towns.

As for Polish towns, some images from the Balthasar Behem Codex (1505)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Behem_Codex%2C_blacksmith.jpg/500px-Behem_Codex%2C_blacksmith.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Kodeks_Behema%2C_kram.JPG

G

Galloglaich
2014-02-07, 05:19 PM
Notice the arrow slits and gun loop in that house on the left in that Balthasar Behem painting - that's from Krakow of course, which was a mixed German / Polish* city at that time.

G

* plus a substantial number of Italians, Hungarians, Scots, Lithanians, Armenians and others

Thiel
2014-02-07, 05:26 PM
It's also worth noting that building timber was expensive whereas fieldstones and bricks weren't. Making wooden boards and beams was a specialized skill and it took a lot of man hours to make them before the Dutch invented the sawmill. Fieldstone was readily available across most of Europe. That's why the quintessential English cottage is made of stone and typically has a stone wall around the garden.

Clay was everywhere in Northern Europe as well and all it took to make bricks was a mould and a bit of summer sun. As far as I'm aware most Fecthwerk or bindingsværk as it's known in Denmark is made with clay bricks.

Mr Beer
2014-02-07, 06:27 PM
Kitchen work, meat preparation.

That's your story and you're sticking to it ;)

Brother Oni
2014-02-07, 06:38 PM
Furthermore, wooden houses in towns did tend to burn down - which is why they were replaced by increasingly sturdy materials such as stone and / or brick when the towns were rebuilt after they had burned or during defensive military upgrades of the town. This is why by the late medieval period most larger towns were mostly stone or brick. We have regulations from many towns which are very specific about how houses must be built and defensive considerations are top among these regulations. They also mandated the use of non-flammable roof tiles.


As an example of dramatic urban rebuilding after a fire, the Great Fire of London (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Fire_Of_London) is hard to beat, and the rebuilding plans specifically mention sturdier buildings and wider streets to prevent another fire.

That said, not every town had the same ordinances and some streets inside towns were very narrow with overhanging buildings:

https://static.panoramio.com.storage.googleapis.com/photos/large/83659323.jpg

Canterbury Cathedral can be seen in the background and the street sign indicates this was taken along the main street of the town, clearly marking it inside of town.


Note that in English towns, London especially, sanitation was nowhere near as good in continental cities and waste was typically dumped in open air sewers in the middle of the street, often by chucking it out of a first floor window: Look out below! (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jvxi9bRw3YYC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=look+out+below+chamber+pot&source=bl&ots=M7VyKyFxX8&sig=WNHTpaRcBNOuDPQtOpBwvqppfP0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-231UpvGDoKBhAeP7oHwDw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=look%20out%20below%20chamber%20pot&f=false).


That's your story and you're sticking to it ;)

I can neither confirm or deny any further details regarding the nature of the work or the source of the meat. :smalltongue:

Mike_G
2014-02-07, 06:48 PM
I think archery would be useful, particularly sniping from high windows. And yes, the ability to shoot through a narrow window at point blank range would be deadly.

But the massed flights of arrows from massed bowmen wouldn't really be as useful, simply because you don't have the space to deploy or the visibility to shoot long range.

But I never said archers wouldn't be quite nice to have.

If I had to fight in a city, I'd think Roman type heavy infantry would be a good idea. Men trained to fight in groups, but more flexible than a phalanx, good armor, trained to use the tortoise formation which would help with stones from above, the gladius is a nice versatile weapon for close quarters battle.

The natives always will have a big advantage in street fighting, but there's plenty of history o look at.

fusilier
2014-02-07, 07:51 PM
(S)He actually has a point here - most of those pictures are, all in all, cities in their modern state, and the very centre of town.

In actual medieval/later periods huge portion of cities were still wooden, that's why fires were such a problem.


But, I fully agree - those weren't some wooden huts you could kick open.

Just wooden constructions.

Spiryt beat me to it. The issue is what has survived to this day is usually the stone or brick construction, and the wooden constructions have been more ephemeral. The general trend seems to have been towards more stone and brickwork as time progressed (and repeated fires cleared out the wooden buildings). A medieval city of the 1100s would have had a lot more wooden construction, than one from the 1400s. Of course there's always local variation, etc. I've seen a picture, from the 1400s or early 1500s, of a walled Italian town that had a wooden wall -- which surprised me. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw that . . .

Galloglaich
2014-02-08, 12:13 AM
By the 14th Century very well built stone and brick houses were common in reasonably prosperous towns. By the 15th Century they were the norm in the older parts of the larger trading cities and the homes of ordinary citizens were as often as not made of stone. As others have mentioned, this was largely a process of the wooden houses being burned down and increasingly stringent regulations put in, as well as the mounting prosperity of the towns which tended to be growing rapidly especially in the period 1100-1300 and again 1350-1520.

Sawmills were around for a LONG time, they go back to Roman times. The saw mill was one of the many water powered machines that had become widespread in Europe thanks to the Cistercians and their dissemination of the overshot water wheel in the 10th-11th Centuries. There were also a lot of sawmills powered by windmills. By the so called 'high' middle ages they were all over the place. The reason houses weren't built of wood so much (with a few exceptions) definitely wasn't cost, they used to make tens of thousands of wooden barrels in fact to ship goods around the way we make shipping containers today. The main purpose of sawmills was probably ship-building actually.

Houses were of course made of wood too quit often, but especially in the countryside and in the smaller and less prosperous (and more provincial) towns.

Regarding sanitation and so on - most of the towns around Europe had pretty good sanitation given the technoloy level and throwing sewerage in the street like you always see in movies was a serious crime- in some towns (Gdansk for example) throwing sewage or garbage in the river they drank out of was punishable by death.

http://dolly.jorgensenweb.net/medievalsanitation.html

Stone gutters were common by the middle of the 13th Century, systems of water pipes that distributed water to fountains around the town were also common and are well documented in detail in several cities (we even have maps of the systems in a few towns). People typically used outhouses or 'privies' as they are usually referred to in Acadmia for bathrooms, much as they did in the 19th Century. Stone gutters (mainly for runoff water) and later underground sewers gradually began to be put into place starting in the 14th Century. Towns also had regular garbage removal and drain cleaning, and even cleaned out the latrines on a regular basis. As I mentioned before, messy or stinky businesses like abbatoires ansd skinning yards were forced to locate outside of town.

In fact in that map of Nuremberg I posted upthread the building in the lower right is the first known paper-mill set up north of the alps. It was forced to be set up downstream from the town and outside city walls due to the accompanying smell (if you have ever been around a paper mill you know what I mean)

The exceptions to the general rule on sanitation were the big Royal cities like London and Paris, and Moscow too I believe. London and Paris were two of the last two cities in Europe to get sewer systems suitable for their size- Paris had a small underground sewer in the 14th Century but the city had far outgrown it by the 15th. Most of the bones in the famous catacombs in Paris were created when they finally put in a modern sewer system in the 19th Century - the tunneling kept running into cemeteries and they had to put the bones somewhere.

Castles often had privies built into the walls so that whatever came out rained down on anyone stupid enough to stand beneath. The huge Teutonic Knights castle in Malbork famously has one like that. Some other castles were more civilized and had sewer systems and even flush toilets, which are first documented unequivocally in a book by an Arab alchemist in the 9th or 10th Century.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-08, 12:36 AM
There are a variety of interesting kinds of sewer systems. One really is to throw the matter onto the streets and it gets trampled down. Eventually, the street level raises, and you can't even open your doors! You have to replace them. I think they might have had street sweepers to clean things up in some of those systems.

Another was a system where they have a hill or slope, so that the matter piles up into a cesspit, usually with trenches at the sides of the street for it to run down. Street sweepers were sometimes hired.

Another one was where they had cesspits inside buildings, with cases of the floor collapsing and people dying in the cesspits.

As G alluded to, some castles allowed the matter to pile up in an area near the wall, and a bung collector would come to remove the mess.

Galloglaich
2014-02-08, 01:53 AM
In most of the Central European towns under German town law, which is something like 200 of the largest cities, the way of dealing with this was pretty systematic. Basically they had privies in the back courtyard, these would be cleaned out periodically. City garbage was carted away, some was burned outside the town walls, some was fed to animals like pigs and goats, also outside the town walls.

The towns also paid to have the gutters repaired and cleaned out on a regular basis, and the gutters drained into a water way which was not used for drinking water - great care was taken not to contaminate the sources used for drinking. As I mentioned already, the law in Gdansk / Danzig was that you would be executed if you were caught polluting their canals that brought in the drinking water. They even sealed up the windows overlooking one of these canals to prevent people from throwing garbage in it.

The link I posted upthread has a bunch of detailed papers on all of this kind of stuff.

In northern Italy most of the towns were if anything more fastidious than the German towns were. Generally speaking, towns in the US in the 19th Century were much filthier than Medieval towns were.

As far as I know the famous cases of floors collapsing and people falling into cess pits was only in castles out in the countryside, and mostly before the 14th Century. I think some English Prince died that way.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-02-08, 01:59 AM
Mm. I just wanted to mention some of the systems I've heard before, since I find the different methods interesting.

Actually, on the subject of outside the walls, how much of the town was outside the walls? That is to say, how many homes and shops would you find outside the walls (most of my knowledge of this subject is pretty ancient)?

Matthew
2014-02-08, 02:09 AM
If you score a direct hit with a couched lance, strength doesn't come into it, it's the weight of the horse, the speed you're moving at, and where you hit them that matters. A warhorse charging at full speed that hits you square is going to do some serious damage, even if the armor can technically survive it. You don't need to pierce armor to deal damage through it, after all.

A sufficiently strong man with a decent sword isn't going to do as well as the couched lance, but it could still cause some injury if you hit them just right and your weapon is fairly strong. The system may also be representing you defeating the armor through other means, such as hitting into joints or other vulnerable areas.

Apparently, strength is hugely important for the couched lance. It is not a simple matter of the energy from the horse being transferred through the man and lance to the target. Here is an interesting article on the subject: Saddle, Lance and Stirrup (http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/shock.php).



Cavalry lose their advantage. horses can be ambushed from doors and windows, hit from above and lured into alleys where they can't maneuver. It's easy to hide caltrops or tripwires in dark alleys and lame the mounts.

Famously, or infamously, the brother of Louis IX led the flower of his cavalry into an urban environment pursuing some enemies on the seventh crusade. The result was predictably bad, with the whole force being annihilated. Generally speaking, the crusades have a fair number of interesting urban combat narratives, but as often as not it is just indiscriminate slaughter once the enemy are inside. Archbishop William of Tyre, a pro crusade fellow himself, gives some pretty harrowing descriptions of what went on once Antioch and Jerusalem were breached. He neither revels in it nor flinches from the brutal details.

Galloglaich
2014-02-08, 02:28 AM
It's actually a good question - the answer is it varied and changed over time.

Typically what happened was that when the original town got a charter and / or permission to make their walls (which was a big deal, since having functional walls meant de-facto independence in many cases) they would have a certain area surveyed, and the town, officially, was within that area. Sometimes this would be expanded but quite often this was the original town and it stayed that way. The really tricky bit is that the authority of the town charter technically only extended to the limit of the walls.

So other people would begin to gather outside the walls and build houses. In practice, the town controlled this area too, sometimes a vast region around the town called the feldmark. But sometimes rival powers controlled the territory outside the town. So you get a second municipality under a different charter. For example, in Krakow, the King of Poland and nobility were annoyed at the town burghers, but they needed the town due to it's economic and military value. So the King founded a second town, named after himself, right outside of Krakow.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Nuremberg_chronicles_-_CRACOVIA.png/800px-Nuremberg_chronicles_-_CRACOVIA.png

So if you look at this 15h Century map of Krakow, also from the Nuremberg Chronicle, what you are actually looking at is three municipalities -plus another entity (the castle). You see on the map it says Cracovia, then on the other side of the river (on an island) it says Casmirus, and then in the lower right it says Clepardia. Casimiers is Kazimierz, the town built by Casimir III as a counterweight to Krakow (this didn't actually work for that purpose but it's another story). Clepardia I think was another municipality. All three were under slightly different town charters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz

Now Krakow was in an area which was quite dangerous. Case in point, they got their walls because they held out in their citadel in a siege by Knights who were trying to overthrow the local Duke (Leszek the Black). Krakow remained loyal and he left his family in the care of it's citizens, and was able to return with an army and drive off his enemies. The duke in gratitude granted them the right to build the walls... and this was very lucky indeed for Krakow because 4 years later the Mongol Horde launched their third major invasion of Poland. The first two times Krakow had been burned, this time due to the walls, Krakow was saved and the rest of Poland suffered.

Some of these walls were preserved they are pretty amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Florian%27s_Gate

Needless to say any buildings outside the walls at that point were wiped out. Regardless, Free cities like Krakow didn't necessarily tolerate just random buildings clustered outside of their gates, since it could be a problem for a variety of reasons, but if someone like the king pushed, they had to tolerate it.

In other zones powerful abbeys or churches might have territories right outside of the town, and these sometimes grew into new municipalities in their own right. And those had different mayors, different city councils and might be under their own (different) town charter, which specified details of the town layout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_town_law#Town_layout

G

Kaww
2014-02-08, 02:53 AM
1) Can a repaired weapon be as good as it was when it was first forged?
2) Can a repaired weapon be better than it was when it was first forged?
3) Does reforging a weapon mean you first have to destroy it?
4) Can a reforged weapon be as good as it was when it was first forged?
5) Can a reforged weapon be better than it was when it was first forged?

Also, does the smith that's doing the reparation/reforging have to be more skilled than the original smith?

Mr. Mask
2014-02-08, 02:54 AM
What you describe is wonderfully interesting. I'm surprised it doesn't come up more. Thanks G!



On sewer systems, and the earlier topic of little people... would the existence of goblins (small, underground, antagonistic civilizations) effect the construction of sewers and towns? Listening tunnels and counter-undermining tunnels might be a good idea. I'm not sure how a sewer system could be designed to not cause immense problems for such tunnels, however.

Brother Oni
2014-02-08, 04:48 AM
1) Can a repaired weapon be as good as it was when it was first forged?
2) Can a repaired weapon be better than it was when it was first forged?
3) Does reforging a weapon mean you first have to destroy it?
4) Can a reforged weapon be as good as it was when it was first forged?
5) Can a reforged weapon be better than it was when it was first forged?

Also, does the smith that's doing the reparation/reforging have to be more skilled than the original smith?

I'm afraid you have to be a little more specific by what you mean by 'repair' and what type of weapon you're referring to.

If the wrapping on the handle of a sword is a little frayed, it's a trivial (and typical) repair to make.
If the haft of a spear is completely snapped in two, then it's better to replace it than try to patch it.

Some weapons were intended to be single use only but were easily repairable (roman pilum with their soft iron heads for example), while others were intended to be discarded after use (eg. tournament lances, but they're more for exhibition than actual fighting and wooded shields, although you generally kept the metal boss for reuse).

With regard to reforging, I assume you mean that the blade of a sword is snapped, rather than something more critical like the tang snapping? Some digging indicates that repairing a clean snapped steel blade typically results in a loss of ~1" per break since you need a decent overlap for an interlocking forge weld.
Whether the blade is still reusable afterwards is highly dependent on the quality and structure of the steel and whether the break introduced any other structural weaknesses that you may have missed.

As for the skill of the smith doing the repairs, depends again on the damage and the material in question. For a simple repair job, I would say they wouldn't need to be as skilled as the original smith. For more complex repairs or materials, it may not be possible for any smith to repair it.

Kaww
2014-02-08, 05:07 AM
I'm afraid you have to be a little more specific by what you mean by 'repair' and what type of weapon you're referring to.

You're right. Let's say a claymore that used to have a smooth edge, but now:
a) has enough notches and can now be used to saw wood with.
b) the blade is somehow bent.
c) the blade is broken

What other types of damage are there?


With regard to reforging, I assume you mean that the blade of a sword is snapped, rather than something more critical like the tang snapping? Some digging indicates that repairing a clean snapped steel blade typically results in a loss of ~1" per break since you need a decent overlap for an interlocking forge weld.
Why is a tang snapping more of a problem than the blade snapping and how does one snap what's inside his hand without loosing the said hand?

As for the skill of the smith doing the repairs, depends again on the damage and the material in question. For a simple repair job, I would say they wouldn't need to be as skilled as the original smith. For more complex repairs or materials, it may not be possible for any smith to repair it.

Let's take the same example as above.

fusilier
2014-02-08, 05:25 AM
What you describe is wonderfully interesting. I'm surprised it doesn't come up more. Thanks G!

In other areas, like Italy where you had city states, expansion wasn't limited by an external ruler, and often you find concentric rings of walls.

Florence is an interesting example:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/acls/images/heb90034.0001.jpg

Here you can see the original Roman walls. The 1st communal walls (1078), 2nd communal walls (1173-1175), and 3rd communal walls (1284-1333). The citadel was added to the 3rd communal circuit in the 16th century.

The interesting thing about Florence's walls is that they planned ahead, they were made with ample space in anticipation of further growth. The last circuit of walls was very ambitious, but was completed just before the Black Death struck. As a result there was "empty space" inside the curtain walls for centuries. As can be seen in this 16th century painting of the Siege of Florence:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Siege_of_Florence1.jpg/640px-Siege_of_Florence1.jpg

Nevertheless, buildings can be seen outside the walls. Sometimes I think this was done because certain industries were frowned upon by the city elders. Also, many cities and towns closed their gates at night, and any traveller arriving late would be stuck outside the city, so taverns and inns could probably find some business outside the walls. Wealthy members of society also built villas outside the city, to get away from the cramped conditions and get some fresh air.

Too many buildings huddled up against the outside of city walls were a threat to defense, as they provided cover for attackers to approach the wall. Often times outlying buildings were destroyed shortly before a siege began to prevent the attacker from taking advantage of them.

Berenger
2014-02-08, 05:31 AM
So other people would begin to gather outside the walls and build houses. In practice, the town controlled this area too, sometimes a vast region around the town called the feldmark. But sometimes rival powers controlled the territory outside the town.

In the Holy Roman Empire, there were also pfahlbürger (literally "pole citizens") which lived outside the city walls but still on the cities premises. They were something like half-citizens and their exact status was often unclear or disputed which most of the time led to helluva trouble between the particular city and the surrounding nobles. There was enough strife that the legal status pfahlbürger was forbidden by law at least five times in the first half of the 14th century, for example by emperor Charles IV.

Rhynn
2014-02-08, 07:09 AM
4) Can a reforged weapon be as good as it was when it was first forged?
5) Can a reforged weapon be better than it was when it was first forged?

I'm pretty sure the answer on both these counts is "no." In fact, I'm doubtful if anyone would have had a broken sword "re-forged" at all.

I'm not familiar with how forge-welding works, but austenization (heating the steel red-hot), tempering, and cooling changes the composition and characteristics of the steel, including its grain and hardness and flexibility. A sword that had snapped in two and was forge-welded would probably take on different qualities around the weld, and might be more prone to break again.

I suppose a very skilled weaponsmith working on one of his own pieces, knowing exactly what kind of steel it is and how it was worked originally, with experience in re-forging, might be able to get a result close enough to the original work... but even then, for all I know, the forge-welding may leave the spot weaker.

I'm no sword-smith, but knowing that the heating and cooling affects the quality of the steel, I am doubtful about the usefulness of re-forging. If the option is having a broken sword, sure, it's better than nothing.

Generally, if a sword was worn down, you'd get a new one. Compared to the cost of armor and horses, swords were kind of trivial...

Mr. Mask
2014-02-08, 07:32 AM
Bit of a problem if the sword is Andúril.

Kaww
2014-02-08, 07:34 AM
I know that in modern welding the seam has to be tougher than the rest of the material. I didn't know that swords were repaired in similar matter. My idea of it was that the broken edges were heated and then pressed (hammered) together without using additional material (While welding today uses the electrode as the additional material as well as protection from unwanted premises from the atmosphere).

TuggyNE
2014-02-08, 07:57 AM
I know that in modern welding the seam has to be tougher than the rest of the material. I didn't know that swords were repaired in similar matter. My idea of it was that the broken edges were heated and then pressed (hammered) together without using additional material (While welding today uses the electrode as the additional material as well as protection from unwanted premises from the atmosphere).

From the blacksmithing books I've read, my understanding is that welding is a lot harder if you're just butting jagged surfaces together like that, since you can't very well hammer them together. Instead, the usual principle is to lap them with highly sloped surfaces and use a hammer to force them together.

Not, of course, that welding broken swords is something that was specifically covered.

Kaww
2014-02-08, 08:04 AM
From the blacksmithing books I've read, my understanding is that welding is a lot harder if you're just butting jagged surfaces together like that, since you can't very well hammer them together. Instead, the usual principle is to lap them with highly sloped surfaces and use a hammer to force them together.

Not, of course, that welding broken swords is something that was specifically covered.

I phrased my post poorly. I meant that they would overlap the two layers. The type of welding with pressing jagged edges is next to impossible, I think.