Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. V [Archive] - Page 5

Storm Bringer

2009-01-11, 02:26 PM

oh no, the higher powered crossbow really did take bloody ages to reload. in some armies at certian times (especially in sieges), the crossbowman would fight with a pair of attendants, one of whom did nothing but reload crossbows to keep the crossbowman suppiled with loaded weapons. the whole team would hide behind a pavise (a huge sheild) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balestriere1.jpg), carried by the other helper (it should be noted that the 'crossbowman' being talked about here is a man of moderate wealth, with as much money and pay as a low ranking man at arms (non-noble 'knight'). they commanded higher wages than longbowmen, but they had to pay for their helpers upkeep out of it). This set up could generate higher rate of fire (around 8 shots a minute, compared to 2 or 3 unaided), but was no-where near a mobile, and worked best of the defensive or in protracted seiges.

the basic reason why they took so long to load was that the crossbow subsituted raw muscle power for mechanical leverage. the downside was you needed to spend more time loading the crossbow, but the upside was a crossbow could be worked by any old bloke with a week or so's training.

A longbow, on the other hand, relied entirely on the bowman to draw the string and hold it thier long enough to aim, and this required a lot of upper body strenght, More than most pesants (and indeed most nobles) had. The English could only field so many longbowmen because they effectivly re-built thier social structure to create a whole middle class of people who existed mainly to provide longbowmen for the feudal armies. King Edward 1st famously banned all sports on a sunday expect archery, in an atemmpt to make sure he had a pool of trained bowmen to call on. the amount of practice needed to operate the longbow to it's full potenial was huge. they literally trained form thier youth to build up the arm muscles for substained shooting. When the Hundred Years War ended, the longbowmen that fought it were mostly forced to seek mercenary work in Italy, as they really did not pocess much in the way of other skills save their ability with the bow. the Influx of bored, trained warriors into england probily helped kick of the Wars of the Roses, and certianly helped the barons that fought them to field effective armies.

In short, it took vastly more effort to put a thousand longbowmen in the field than it took to put a thousand crossbowmen in the field. As armour grew heavier, the draw power needed to pirece it grew as well, and the longbow basically topped out when it no longer became feasible to make bows powerful enough that men could still draw (Several Longbows survive form the wreck of the Mary Rose, a tudor warship that sank with all hands. they had a draw strength of around 180 lbs/800N, about three times the draw strenght of a classic 'hunting' bow, which could make short work of most game). the Crossbow, however was able to reach these power levels and carry on going, while still being useable by fairly average strength personages, leading to it's widespread adoption over the longbow.

Llama231

2009-01-11, 02:48 PM

O.O
Thanks, that was helpful!:smallbiggrin:

Zenos

2009-01-11, 02:49 PM

Question, how much protection would brigantine armour offer, in D&D terms, and what kind of PHB armour is closest to brigantine?

Spiryt

2009-01-11, 03:12 PM

As armour grew heavier, the draw power needed to pirece it grew as well, and the longbow basically topped out when it no longer became feasible to make bows powerful enough that men could still draw (Several Longbows survive form the wreck of the Mary Rose, a tudor warship that sank with all hands. they had a draw strength of around 180 lbs/800N, about three times the draw strenght of a classic 'hunting' bow, which could make short work of most game). the Crossbow, however was able to reach these power levels and carry on going, while still being useable by fairly average strength personages, leading to it's widespread adoption over the longbow.

I would just say that crossbow was always more popular than longbow (it was really English phenomen) in most countries in high and late medieval Europe.

And armour really don't grew 'heavier' from let's say Crecy to Agincourt and later period, (it actually could be lighter, beacuse well made plate armor is pretty light while coat of plates + mail is always heavy) and most arrow protective armor was still always pretty rare thing. Longbows were used into the XVI century, again mostly by English.
And so on.

In short, I don't think that this particular part is correct.

Question, how much protection would brigantine armour offer, in D&D terms, and what kind of PHB armour is closest to brigantine?

As brigandine is torso protection, I think that breastplate can do.

But if it comes with protection for the protection for arms and rest (http://wolna.kompania.freshsite.pl/show.php?nr=17), it can as well be banded mail or some other heavy armour.

Philistine

2009-01-11, 05:33 PM

'tis more likey he ment the P-51 Mustang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang), and just mis-remembered the last digit. I admit that only had six 50 cals, but it's closer to what he was talking about.

On the one hand, "52" looks more like "51" than it does "47." On the other hand, the description given (8x .50 in the wings) can only be the P-47. P-51s had 6x .50 at most (early models had only 4x .50; some -Ds also had a pair of .50 removed, leaving them with 4 as well). But perhaps Hawriel will let us know which he was thinking of.

Hawriel

2009-01-12, 10:41 AM

I ment the 51. That was a type O on my part which I didnt notice. I guess I shouldnt be posting at 4:45 AM. Sorry for the mistake. Its been over a year or two sence Ive read about or discussed WW2 planes. My memory is a little fuzy. I looked up the mustang because I like checking up on my own mistakes. They had four or six guns depending on the moddle. Some early ones had 20mm cannon. Looking at photographs of the 51D I can clearly see three ports on each wing for guns.

Avilan the Grey

2009-01-13, 04:58 AM

The Influx of bored, trained warriors into england probily helped kick of the Wars of the Roses, and certianly helped the barons that fought them to field effective armies.

...Sidenote: It was a terrible war since the longbowmen now fired upon other longbowmen, all relatively unprotected. As far as I understand it it was basically one of the first "stand and fire at each other" wars, that culminated in the American civil war...

Avilan the Grey

2009-01-13, 05:01 AM

I would just say that crossbow was always more popular than longbow (it was really English phenomen) in most countries in high and late medieval Europe.

...Also, as a hunting weapon it stayed longer, far into the 17th century, since it was more accurate and much quieter than the musket.

Ruerl

2009-01-14, 05:40 AM

Storm Bringer

2009-01-14, 05:51 AM

Ruerl

2009-01-14, 06:09 AM

this is arma's article on the matter (http://www.thehaca.com/essays/knightvs.htm), which is the most even handed and scholarly work on the subject I've Seen.

that's about all the backing I can give, off hand.

That article is just a long way of stating "we can't know, and here is why" wich frankly was'nt what the question was about -I wanted to know more about the samurai equipment in the context I posted above, not to bother about yet another samurai vs knight debate ;)

Deadmeat.GW

2009-01-14, 07:19 PM

Actually it does refer to the different types of weapons and gear a samurai could have so...

Swordguy

2009-01-14, 07:31 PM

An old monster has reared its head in my vicinity, namedly the monster of the Samurai versus Knight discussion. The arguments posted in the debate made me wonder though.

Are there an "iconic" samurai type of equipment or are they armed very differently through the periods of feudal japan?, and what would be the "normal" outfit for a samurai in a given period, how would he fight and why?

Not looking for statements here, i've seen several of those, I look for arguments backed with sources, preferably online ones. And I hope that there are those on this thread who'll be able to help me, because frankly, the samurai is'nt a field where i'm strong.

Regards

Ruerl

Try This article on Japanese Armor (http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=60685&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=swordguy+armor+rules). I can guarantee it's got good, sourced, information - with a bibliography even! I should know, seeing as how I wrote it. Long story short, you can't reliably cut through armor with a sword under combat conditions. European plate is, by and large, more protective than Japanese armor (being both somewhat thicker on average and with fewer points of failure).

The "iconic" samurai actually exists in two forms. There's a Tokugawa-era samurai that's featured in Kurosawa films (carries and fights with a katana, wears little to no armor: 1700-1850), and the Sengoku Jidai-era samurai from the "Warring States" period of Japan's history (wears armor, fights with the spear and bow before resorting to a sword: 1450-1600). To compare with an early War of the Roses armored knight, look at the second one as your starting point.

As a side note, I'm back to GitP! *waves hi to thread*

Halaster

2009-01-15, 03:54 AM

Hi.

I've got a question that isn't fully real world, but relies on real world weapon knowledge, so I guess it fits here (correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm working on a game world that has Ogres as a playable race. Now these would be roughly 8' tall and can weigh 400 pounds. Extrapolating from your knowledge of actual weapon sizes and weights, how long and heavy would the following weapons be in order to fit such a being? EDIT: Assuming they have roughly the same proportions as humans.
a) a one-handed sword (what D&D calls a longsword)
b) a two-handed sword (a D&D greatsword)
c) a mace or flail
d) a long spear or short polearm
Secondly, how much would a chainmail or plate armor* weigh for people this size?

CU,
Halaster

*I know (not least from this thread) that plate armor can mean many things, I'm thinking of 12th-13th century, not the elaborate later types.

Rasilak

2009-01-15, 07:35 AM

Hm, if you'd just scale it up, you'd get roughly a factor of (8'/6')^3=2,37
This fits quite well to the D&D rules for large creatures' armor/weapons (it says double weight).
But it would probably have to be thicker since the weight increases like x^3 while the durability increases like x^2 - since it depends on the cross section (and the actual protection would increase only linear, since it depends on thickness). So if you scale the armor up far enough, it won't be able to hold its own weight.
Just doubling the weight and scaling the length according to creature size would be an easy way to do it, and not entirely out of proportion. So you don't have to feel bad if you do it. (IMO factor 3 would be more accurate)

Dervag

2009-01-15, 11:52 PM

Since ogres are bigger than humans but not drastically bigger, it's not that bad. If you saw an ogre, you'd think "Wow, that guy is big. And ugly." You wouldn't think "Ohmigod, the titans walk among us!"

For armor, the weight should increase by (4/3)^2 = 16/9 ~= 1.8

The reason is that unless the ogre's armor has a better AC than human armor, it should be about the same thickness. Again, ogres aren't that much bigger than humans; an ogre-sized chain mail hauberk won't fall off under its own weight. So you don't need to use extra-thick, beefed up wire to make the armor hold together. You just have to increase the area of armor to match the increased area of ogre it needs to protect. Surface area scales up with the square of height, hence about a factor of 1.8 to 2.
_____

Weapons will, as Rasilak says, need to be longer and thicker, unlike armor. Because ogres are very strong even for their great size, and also brutish, they need sturdy weapons. And, again, a long weapon is more likely to break than a short one if they're the same thickness. So as rasilak says, the weight of a weapon will increase by roughly

(4/3)^4 = 64/27 ~= 2.4
_____

Weapon length goes up by a factor of 4/3. Of course, ogres are likely to exploit their strength and reach advantage by using weapons that would be big even if scaled down to a human size. So you're not likely to see an ogre wielding an ogre-sized short sword.
_____

So, here are my best guesses:

An ogre long sword would be about 4' long, maybe as much as 5'. Much longer and it's too awkward for even an ogre to swing in one hand.

An ogre two-handeed sword would be as much as 7' or 8' long.

An ogre polearm would be somewhere between 8' and 20' long. 20' would be a really long polearm; you'd probably only see that in a phalanx of ogre polearm users, if such a thing exists. More normal ogre spears, halberds, and such would probably be in the 8' to 12' range.

Avilan the Grey

2009-01-16, 02:43 AM

So, here are my best guesses:

An ogre long sword would be about 4' long, maybe as much as 5'. Much longer and it's too awkward for even an ogre to swing in one hand.

An ogre two-handeed sword would be as much as 7' or 8' long.

An ogre polearm would be somewhere between 8' and 20' long. 20' would be a really long polearm; you'd probably only see that in a phalanx of ogre polearm users, if such a thing exists. More normal ogre spears, halberds, and such would probably be in the 8' to 12' range.

Just butting in to say this all sound very logical and plausible.
We had the same discussion about Minotaurs as playable race (different game system, not D&D). At a height of an ogre, strength of an ogre, but full human intelligence, and as fast as a horse when running...
It is also a matter of prefered cultural weaponry (if you want to get into that): We concluded that the most favoured weapon for Minotaurs were the double-headed pole axe (not to be confused with "double-headed" in the D&D way) which the minotaurs wields as a human wields a two-hand axe.

My character was different, sporting a large morning star and a large shield (wise from adventuring). Anyway, our DM did a fine custom campaign out of it where the adventures was scaled to fit us (instead of orcs, do ogres. Instead of rescuing the fair princess, plunder the monestary's wine cellar. And eat the princess, if you like.:smallbiggrin: )

Tsotha-lanti

2009-01-24, 05:26 PM

I'm wondering about coifs and helmets (very general, any information in the 12th to 15th century or so will do)...

Were mail coifs ever worn under bascinets and other helmets, or was it always just the helmet plus the aventail/camail? I could see the mail providing for a pretty poor fit for a helmet on top of it, but I could also see the advantage of being able to remove a heavy helm and still having your head covered in metal.

Dervag

2009-01-24, 05:37 PM

But the metal coif is going to be pretty heavy in its own right.

My impression, based on limited knowledge, is that chain mail is heavy enough that you don't want to combine it with plate to cover the same area. If you can put a plate of steel over it, then there really isn't much point putting a layer of chain mail under the plate.

Matthew

2009-01-24, 06:26 PM

Ah well, you'd be surprised, Dervag. :smallbiggrin:

Basically, the knightly great helm was such an encumbrance by itself (six pounds or something) that the knights would wait until the last minute to don it. Obviously, this brought it's own problems, so it was not unusual to wear a mail coif in less "desperate" situations and put the great helm on when you were headed into the thick of things.

So, basic answer, it was not unusual, but it wasn't necessary either. With the advent of visored helmets it became more common to wear a helm for sustained period of time.

I should also mention that some historians consider it plausible that a coif, a "small helm" (iron cap) and then a great helm was worn by at least some knights.

Fhaolan

2009-01-25, 01:20 AM

Terminology issue. :)

In the begining, the bascinet is a very simple small open-faced helm, usually with a fairly elaborate aventail attached. In armor terminology circles, the thing that makes it a 'bascinet' is the fact that it has an aventail, rather than being overtop a maille coif. That implies that putting a small open-faced helm over a maille coif was an option, it just isn't called a bascinet then.

Now, supposedly a great helm was fitted over the whole thing, the idea being that you'd have a lot of protection to begin with, and once the charge is over any your putting a lot more exertion into swordwork, you could get rid of the great helm so you could breathe but still have some form of protection on your head.

Over time, the great helm was discarded completely. To compensate the bascinet gained a visors, usually a detatchable one. Even later you'd get 'exchange pieces' for your armor which would include special wrappers that would go over the lower part of the visor to protect from lance impact.

But the trademark aventail stayed with it. Again, technically it's not a bascinet without the aventail, even if it's just a cosmetic little ring of maille that doesn't actually *do* anything.

Just for information's sake, there is a third option along the same lines as a maille coif and an aventail. It's called a pixane, and you almost never hear of them. It's basically a maille collar. I've seen maille mantles sold under that name before, but the actual pixane is just a collar to protect the throat. Most full plate harnesses have maille 'patches' attached to the arming jacket under the plates to protect joints that are difficult to articulate, like underarms and whatnot. The neck is another point that tends to get a bit of extra protection in those suits, with coifs, aventails, or pixanes depending on the region and timeperiod.

Halaster

2009-01-27, 01:56 AM

Fhaolan

2009-01-27, 02:18 AM

Hi there.

I remember that a few (dozen?) pages back, someone asked about using a flail/morning star/stick-chain-ball-thing. Well, as has been stated frequently, the ball can endanger the wielder, unless properly handled. Now I wonder why nobody ever came up with putting the ball and chain at the end of a long stick, like 6' long. Too unwieldy? Too little momentum for the ball? Or did someone actually do that? If so, what were the results?

CU,
Halaster

Footman's flail. Although they tended to have a 4-5' long shaft, not quite as long as you're thinking. Something that most people don't realize is that most RL flails tended to have very short chains, many to the point of being little more than a hinge. I've seen at least one approximately 6' flail in a museum, but it was one of the hinge styles and looked like it was most likely a repurposed agricultural tool given it's construction. The long-chain styles you see in the cheap weapon catalogs are semi-fantasy pieces, really.

As a side note, spiked flails were very, very uncommon apparently. Very few spiked flails have turned up, while smooth ball or bar flails are all over the place.

Halaster

2009-01-27, 05:16 AM

Hi.

Something that most people don't realize is that most RL flails tended to have very short chains, many to the point of being little more than a hinge.
I was aware of that, but I thought that was mostly the result of necessity, meaning that if you make the chain too long in comparison with the handle, you run into problems. Now, by making the handle longer, you could also have a longer chain with no increased risk of self-inflicted injury.

Or does it have to do with the handling of the weapon in general? That is, do flails with somewhat longer chains become ineffective, because the wielder cannot control them anymore?

CU,
Halaster

Dervag

2009-01-27, 05:51 AM

From a physics standpoint, they'd be difficult to control. Having an iron ball or bar swinging around in a circle a foot or more across at the end of a long pole is going to make for a very interesting experience on the user's end of the pole.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-01-27, 08:37 AM

Halaster

2009-01-27, 11:45 AM

Hi.

From what I gather they were quite frequent for most of the medieval period, which is why jousting armor is getting ever more elaborate in the late middle ages, to the point of being absurdly so in the latter 1400s.

CU,
Halaster

Matthew

2009-01-27, 12:08 PM

How dangerous was jousting?

Specifically, how often did the flimsy jousting lances cause serious injuries, and what sort of damage did they usually do? I can't imagine being struck with even a blunted lance designed to be shivered by the contact, even in heavy jousting plate, to be particularly safe (especially if the blow doesn't strike the shield). Bruises must have been common, but were serious injuries - broken or shattered bones and the like - common? I'm not so much interested in the potential injuries from falling, although that sort of information would be a bonus.

It had a similar sort of danger level as American Football by the end (circa 1600), or maybe boxing. The further back you go, the more dangerous it is, but jousting is itself a specialised offshoot of the tourney, which was a much more brutal affair.

Fhaolan

2009-01-27, 12:30 PM

Hi.

I was aware of that, but I thought that was mostly the result of necessity, meaning that if you make the chain too long in comparison with the handle, you run into problems. Now, by making the handle longer, you could also have a longer chain with no increased risk of self-inflicted injury.

Or does it have to do with the handling of the weapon in general? That is, do flails with somewhat longer chains become ineffective, because the wielder cannot control them anymore?

CU,
Halaster

Well, I did do some personal experimentation some time ago that may be relevant, involving chains and weights on human-analog targets.

Basically the results of the experiment was that flails were a very narrow-target weapon. The maximum impact occurs when the mace (the ball, bar, or whatever) hits the target, which is obvious. With a club or the like, if you miss the target slightly and hit with the 'handle', you still get significant impact because the club is a solid piece. With a flail however, the impact of the chain is negligible. It will wrap around, but because of the changing vectors, the impact of the mace when it does finally hit is lessened a great deal. The farther the mace needs to wrap around, the less the impact is.

Of course, wrap to an impact is the *point* of flails. So you have to compensate for the lessened impact by increasing the weight of the mace, or the speed in which the mace is moving. In the end this means that the longer the chain, the heavier the mace needs to be to get the same wrap-impact, or the more room and time you need to get the flail 'up to speed'. The heavier the mace or the faster it needs to move, the harder the flail is to control. Especially after impact or having missed, trying to recover the weapon for another shot.

The alternative is to go scourge, which means abandoning the impact factors, and using chains and spiked maces for the tearing effect. This works for unarmoured targets, but is easily defeated by any form of tearing or cutting protection.

So what it boils down to is that as a weapon designer, you wish to maximize the impact of the mace, while retaining the ability to wrap to a target. This means using as short a chain as is feasable.

This is also why the long-chain weapons popular with martial artists, like the meteor, the rope-dart, kusuri-gama, etc. never became militarily feasable weapons.

---

Jousting: Yes, jousting was dangerous, and the risks were high. Over time, the equipment changed to reduce the risk. Which is why lances changed from simple long spears to the elaborate weapons that most people think of when you say 'lance'. The bell to protect the hand (and eventually the entire arm), the big blunt tip (which was likely crenelated so that it would bite slightly and not skip off of the target), shafts made of hollow balsawood filled with spagetti to produce safe 'shrapnel' for the entertainment of the audience. Then you get special scoring systems that no longer depending on unhorsing your opponent, but simply hitting designated targets on his body. Specialized jousting armor that was functionally useless outside the tiltyard, specialized jousting saddles that had integrated armor. So on and so forth.

Falling off a horse is dangerous in and of itself. I've done it a lot, in and out of armor. Just from normal horse-back riding, falling off can break limbs, necks, spines. Throw in a contact sport on top of that, and you increase the risk of injury. This is why most horse facilities in the United States are covered under special laws stating that horse sports are inherently dangerous and that by being present at the facility you acknowledge this, and cannot by law hold the facility responsible for any injuries you get while on their grounds. All the facilities I've dealt with in Washington State have the courtesy to have this posted on a sign on the entrance to their barns or arenas with the specific legal code numbers. Some don't, but the law applies to all of them posted or not.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-01-27, 04:45 PM

Fhaolan

2009-01-28, 12:47 PM

What did a historical tourney entail, exactly, at different eras? How far back does the idea go (and still include jousting)? What were the common contests, their rules, and the equipment used? Were there periods when they fought duels or melees on foot with real weapons instead of blunted or wooden ones, etc.? Were they limited to nobility, or were common warriors or men-at-arms allowed to compete (with the nobles?) in some times or places? If anybody's got a good comprehensive source to link, I'd love it.

Wow. Uhm. So many variables. I can't give you a comprehensive source, because there's just *so* much information. Two books that should be relatively easy to find are 'Tournaments' by Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, and 'The Medieval Tournament'' by R. Coltman Clephan.

Tourneys are a type of Hastilude that goes at least as far back as the Roman Empire, with public cavalry training and events. Hippica Gymnasia, I think it was called, although my ancient Rome knowledge is a bit weak. The earliest usage of the term 'tournament' was 11th century, I think, but the *concept* is ancient.

Jousting started as part of qualifications for the Melee. In Melee, you divide all the Knights (by which I mean mounted warrior. I'll explain later.) into two groups. The two groups line up on either side of a field, and then at a signal, they charge one another. Which then devolves into a big mess. The last team standing wins.

New Knights or foreigners who had not been in a local Melee before would participant in individual Jousts in order to win their way into the team they wanted to join. The Joust was *not* the actual end event, it was just for qualifying.

Over time tourneys became more and more individual-orientated and the mass-combat events like Melee fell out of favour. Jousting became an event on it's own.

Technically 'Tilting' is the specific act of running at each other on horseback with a stick. 'Jousting' includes any horseback sport with said stick, including spearing rings or other targets. There are various types of scoring systems for Tilting, and some later tourneys would actually run serveral different styles of Jousting with different scoring systems all at the same event. For example, later German tourneys would have both a 'target'-style (3 points if you hit him the head!) and the 'knockoff'-style (No points, just unhorse your opponent and you win!).

The list of other events that could happen at a tourney is very extensive, and varies a lot by region as well as by era. Melee, Quintain, Tupinaire, as well as archery, wrestling, one-on-one combat, etc. Padded weapons, blunted weapons, and even sharps were used depending on the exact nature of the event. A tourney was also a popular place for personal and judicial duels.

Now as for my Knight comment. What exactly defines a Knight changes considerably over time. Originally, anyone who could afford a horse and some form of armor and weapons was considerd a 'Knight' (the word also changed over time, but I'll stick with the familiar one for this). In order to afford the equipment you had to be a successful warrior, had the patronage of a rich person, or were simply a good bandit. Which in effect made you a nobleman. Over time things stratified a bit more so that liniage became more important that actual achievment. Contrary to popular opinion it was possible for a person to break through the different class levels in Europe, but it took a lot of effort and political wrangling, and rarely would people forgive you for what you had to do to become 'noble'. Once this kind of structure was in place, events at tourneys became class-dependant. Basically anything involving horses and armor was noble-only, while anything without horses and amour, like wrestling, archery, etc. was peasant-only. I don't actually know what the very small but existant middle class did. The only references I can find to middle class people in tourneys are those selling goods and services during the games.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-01-30, 05:56 AM

Useful information, thank you!

Masterclick

2009-02-11, 01:41 AM

Avilan the Grey

2009-02-11, 02:47 AM

One of my players is wanting to create a skill rogue with poor combat stats. As a result he is trying to get me to allow him to use the bombs from the renaissance grenadelike weapon (we're using 3.0 due to that is what we have and we teenagers and high so we are broke). I was wondering what early forms of bombs were like, how they were triggered, and what the explosion looked like.
Thank you in advance.

I am no expert, but I can think of two kinds right now:

1) The classic grenade. You know the kind, the "black ball with gunpowder and fuse" of Cartoon Fame. It was actually used (tennis- or baseball size) as hand grenades. Light the fuse, and wait until it's very short before throwing...

2) Fire bombs / Molotov Cocktails. Both as professionally made (Special container, highly flammable liquid or some napalm-ish if the character knows chemistry) and improvised (Bottle of booze with rag) (difference maybe ammount of damage, and price to make?)

Fhaolan

2009-02-11, 03:27 AM

Grenades go back as far as 8th century, with greek fire-based ceramic pots. Gunpowder was used for grenades in China in and around 10th century, and iron-shelled grenades showed up in both China and Europe about 15th century.

Fuses were used to set them off. Two types were common for small bombs, slow matches (hemp or splintered twigs known as punks soaked in a nitrite slurry) and quick matches (sometimes called black matches, hemp or punks soaked in a full gunpowder slurry). Black matches burn *way* too fast, so I don't recommend those.

Timing is everything. Fused shells were fired from cannons and mortars about the 13th century, long before handgrenades are mentioned, likely due to the difficulties of timing the fuse. Too slow and the grenade bounces away from the target. Too fast and it goes off in your face. Mis-throw, and you're still in range of the grenade. Not really optimal.

I've made my own black powder from raw materials before, but it was *ages* ago. If I remember correctly a 6" black powder hand-grenade is about equivalent to a modern hand-grenade (which is much smaller, but has a better explosive). You're dealing with a blast radius of about 30', and if it has a properly-made iron shell, the fragments can spread anywhere from 150-300' depending on terrain. The explosion looks like a sudden black cloud of dust with a serious *whump* noise. The Hollywood explosion with lots of flame doesn't occur without something like gasoline involved.

Stephen_E

2009-02-11, 09:43 AM

Contact-fused Molotov's with chamoange type bottles with the base dimple fill with vitriol (acid) and sealed with wax were used but I don't know when this type was developed. When the bottle broke the acid mixed with the incendiary setting it on fire.

Stephen E

Norsesmithy

2009-02-11, 02:34 PM

Like Fhaolan said, there are several ways to make a primitive grenade. Many times, grenades were simply made of the things people had available, slow match from a musket, a pot or vial, some pistol shot, and some powder make a pretty dangerous toy.

Over and above all the distinctions regarding construction, payload, and fusing, there are two main categories for thrown explosives: Offensive, and Defensive.

An offensive device is a device designed to be small enough that the thrower in a typical engagement (like a boarding action) can throw the device without having to take cover from the blast. They tend to be small and not very powerful, but sometimes they were regular sized devices that lacked a shrapnel generating case or medium. Black Beard and co were reputed to have used wooden grenades containing up to a half pound(!) of powder during boarding actions. They supposedly would kill/stun the opposing crew without casting much in the way of fragments, making them safe for the skirmishers in the rigging.

A defensive grenade is a grenade with a danger radius larger than you would expect to be able to throw it (based on the limitations of an expected engagement, or your throwing ability, if it is truly large). These might be pitched into an enemy trench, thrown in a building, dropped in gun ports, pitched over a defensive wall, or simply used where the grenadier can immediately find hard cover. You do not want to use one where you are going to be in the line of effect of the bomb. The case fragments from iron cased grenade the size of Blackbeard's "Flashbangs" (don't look at me, Modern Marvels said it first) would be lethally dangerous for several hundred feet, meaning you wouldn't want to use them unless you were protected from the blast.

Masterclick

2009-02-11, 09:01 PM

Thanks, this information will be really useful in my game.

Fortinbras

2009-02-12, 11:25 PM

What can people tell me about maces?

Norsesmithy

2009-02-13, 01:10 AM

Um, are you looking for any information in particular? Is this restricted to any time period? Tech level?

Because a mace can be as simple as a rock tied to a stick (or even just a carved stick), as complex as a Teutonic Flanged Mace, have been used from the dawn manufactured tools to the Trenches of WWI, and have lots of variation in between.

Fhaolan

2009-02-13, 01:51 AM

Concur with Norsesmithy. Question too vague.

All a mace is, is a well-made club. That's pretty much it. I've seen things classified as 'maces' that were nothing more than a miniature baseball bat with some studs. And I've seen massive two-handed maces covered in gems and precious metals, as symbols of government. I've seen maces that were bronze hands, one of them the hand was holding a bronze dagger. That was neat. I've seen gothic flanged maces, maces that were simple balls of metal with a handle. What's called the 'Thames Mace' has a wooden handle and a flanged metal head. I've seen maces with full hand guards, maces with spikes (which some call morningstars).

And finally, 'mace' is the technical term for the head of the weapon. It is also the technical term for the business end of a flail, because in many cases they're the same object. Just one's on a solid handle, the other is on a chain. Which is why there is some confusion as to whether a morningstar is a spiked mace or a spiked flail, because technically both have a spiked 'mace'.

That's all I got without a more specific question.

Fortinbras

2009-02-15, 12:59 PM

Sorry about the vauge question I just don't know enough about maces to ask anything specific. I was hoping to remedy that.

Dervag

2009-02-16, 12:04 PM

The first question anyone asks about anything is vague. Without vague questions, there would be no specific questions.

So why worry?

Norsesmithy

2009-02-18, 01:50 PM

Sorry about the vauge question I just don't know enough about maces to ask anything specific. I was hoping to remedy that.

Fair enough, but that question wasn't just vauge, it was like walking into your local funstore and saying,
"I'd like a gun."
And having the guy at the counter say,
"OK, what kind of gun?"
And then replying,
"I don't know, the kind that shoots bullets?"

Sometimes it is better to do a little reading in order to form a baseline, so you know what questions you really want to ask. Even if it is just a Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(club)).

Hmm, that reads snarkier sounding than I intended, sorry.

Fortinbras

2009-02-19, 01:15 AM

Okay how about flanged maces?

I have another question that I'm not sure belongs here but it dosen't belong anywhere else and a lot of the people who regularly post on this thread seem to no a lot more about weapons then the average D&D player. Or at least they are good a pretending.

Anyway I wanted to add the morte strike to my D&D game as special attack action and was curious if anyone knew how I should be done. I play 3.5. Thanks and if someone knows a thread that this question would be better placed on please let me know. Thank you.

Norsesmithy

2009-02-19, 01:37 AM

Making rules is more the purview of the homebrew forum, so I don't know if we can help you with the Morte Strike rules, but flanged maces we can talk about.

I have seen, in books, and museums, mace heads that you could call flanged made out of everything from clay ceramics, to stone, to steel, and ranging from 12000 years old to 90ish. The flanges are there to reduce the surface area of the weapon in a blow, intensifying the effect, especially against an armored target.

Flanged maces were, however, rather rare, compared to other types of mace heads, because of the difficulties associated with making a complex shape like a flanged mace, compared to a simple shape like a spherical mace. Until the age of high quality steel armor. Then the flanges became almost a necessity, because of the high resilience of the armor they would need to defeat.

I suppose that they also could be called aesthetically pleasing, and that would certainly not hurt their popularity.

The English and the Germans, in particular, were famous for their artistically styled renaissance era flanged maces.

Matthew

2009-02-19, 08:10 AM

endoperez

2009-02-19, 09:16 AM

So... Japanese and shields.

For quite a while, I believed that the Japanese didn't know about shields, or if they did, they abandoned them altogether for some mysterious reason. Well, it seems that's not true, and I thought I'd post my meager findings in here.

Ancient (the only date I found was 650 AD) Japanese used hand-held shields. They were used with "Tanko" armor (http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/fukusei/9.htm), before Heian period in which the Samurai "Way of Horse and Bow" was created.

Later-on, handheld shields fell out of favour. I don't know the reasons for this, and would love to read more. Even then, the Japanese used huge (think door-sized) shields set up in the frontlines to protect from enemy archers. The fact that Japanese mostly used their weapons two-handed (katanas, naginatas, spears, bows) could be the cause or the effect.

Discussion in Kendo-world forum, where I learned most of this:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/c5blm5

Also, shields called "tinbe" were used in Okinawa, but Okinawa is much closer to the continental Asia than most of Japan.

Norsesmithy

2009-02-20, 01:52 AM

I recently read that flanged maces were good for dealing with mail armour, the impact being concentrated on a narrower surface and a smaller number of rings, whilst simpler maces might have been better against plate.

I can understand why a Flanged Mace would be good against mail, but why would simple maces be better against plate? Having a more complicated design doesn't make them less bashy. I can see plate being able to absorb a concentrated blow just as well as it could a distributed, but I can't see why not concentrating the blow would be any MORE effective.

Endo:
Any idea why shields that weren't pavaises (the door sized fixed shields) fell out of favor, though? Your link says that it was because the samurai class were primarily horse archers, in the beginning (and that meshes with my understanding), but the majority of combatants in any battle generally wouldn't have been of a semi noble class, nor does the terrain of Japan particularly favor the sort of pure cavalry warfare that makes infantry a non-factor (it is far too broken), and the idea that shields fell out of favor with the rank and file soldiery too seems illogical.

Crow

2009-02-20, 02:27 AM

I would venture to guess that a flange could be "deflected" slightly upon impact which would take a little of the punch out of the blow. If you've ever stabbed a single-edge knife into a kevlar vest and had it deflected, you'll notice you still hit the vest with your fist, but your fist doesn't impact the vest as hard as it would have had the knife not deflected the blow.

endoperez

2009-02-20, 12:30 PM

Endo:
Any idea why shields that weren't pavaises (the door sized fixed shields) fell out of favor, though?

I have no idea. The above post has everything I needed to know about it. I didn't search for the reasons, but abandoning shields when archers became more common sounds dumb.

I just thought to share this, so that others aren't thrown off-course by (an image of) an actual Japanese shield when arguing whether samurai used a katana and a shield together.

P.S.
The discussion started from this offside comment about "katanas owning those heavy european two-handed swords". :smallsigh: I didn't know discussions like that really happened.

Fhaolan

2009-02-20, 04:00 PM

Re: Maces - The only way I can see a plain mace being better against plate than a flanged mace... and I'm not really convinced of this myself... is that against plate what you're actually trying to achieve with a mace is deformation rather than penetration. You're trying to damage the joints of the armour so your opponent can't move. While a flanged mace, if it actually manages to penetrate, will likely get fouled up in the damaged plates.

No, I can't even convince myself of that. Never mind.

Re: Japanese shields. Remember that Europeans also basically abandoned hand-held shields in later periods. As armour got more effective, the benefit of a shield versus the benefit of a two-handed weapon became more weighted to the two-handed weapon side. Japanese warfare followed much the same lines, for much the same reason. They *appear* quite different as Japan is very iron-poor compared to Europe, so they substituted different materials in their armor, the different properites of which led them down different lines of aesthetics. Also note that the typical 'Samurai' envisioned by fans is contemporary with the Three Musketeers, not with The Knights of the Round Table. Europeans weren't using shields then much either. :smallcool:

Matthew

2009-02-21, 06:17 PM

Maces

I can understand why a Flanged Mace would be good against mail, but why would simple maces be better against plate? Having a more complicated design doesn't make them less bashy. I can see plate being able to absorb a concentrated blow just as well as it could a distributed, but I can't see why not concentrating the blow would be any MORE effective.

Me neither, I read it in War and Combat 1150-1270 by Catherine Hanley, and she cites Western Warfare by John France (p. 23), Medieval Military Technology by Kelly DeVries (p. 26) Ancient Armour and Weapons by John Hewitt (p. 153), and Armour and Weapons by Paul Martin (pp. 243-234). She was most concerned with mail armour (obviously), and I was commenting on a blog entry at the time Weapon versus Armour Class proposal (http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/proposal-weapons-vs-ac.html). As part of that discussion, I did type out a few quotes from her book:

'The basic defensive item for all combatants was a padded garment known as a gambeson or aketon. This was made of resilient material such as canvas or leather, stuffed with cloth, rags, tow, horsehair or any other similar material, and covered with an outer layer of cloth, which could be anything from linen to silk. The outer appearance of the gambeson could vary according to its quality, but its basic purpose remained the same: to absorb the shock of blows in order to protect the wearer.' (this is worn under the mail, of course)

'The principle advantage of the protection offered by mail is that the force of the blow should be distributed over a large area, and thus absorbed. The larger the number of rings which met the cutting edge of a sword, the less chance there was of severe damage to the mail and consequent injury to the wearer.' (this is why maces tend to be flanged)

The axe was a powerful weapon, as Gamble explains: 'By combining a relatively smaller curved edge with a heavy head, all of the striking force was combined to hit in a small area, which is opposed to a sword in which the force is distributed evenly along the entire length of the blade.'

And to mace design "During our period the flanged type was more common, the more solid head being developed in the later thirteenth century to counter the advances in plate armour."

"The axe, with its greater weight concentrated behind a smaller cutting edge, had the potential to inflict terrible wounds if used to its maximum effect, as did the mace, whose heavy head was capable of smashing bones even through layers of armour." (p. 40).

Kelly DeVries (whom she cites above) also takes this line of thought in his 1992 book Medieval Military Technology, the relevant section can be previewed through Google Books here: Medieval Military Technology - Maces (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kyhRTSTY_IIC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27#PPA25,M1).

I would venture to guess that a flange could be "deflected" slightly upon impact which would take a little of the punch out of the blow. If you've ever stabbed a single-edge knife into a kevlar vest and had it deflected, you'll notice you still hit the vest with your fist, but your fist doesn't impact the vest as hard as it would have had the knife not deflected the blow.

An interesting hypothesis indeed! Definitely something to think about.

Re: Maces - The only way I can see a plain mace being better against plate than a flanged mace... and I'm not really convinced of this myself... is that against plate what you're actually trying to achieve with a mace is deformation rather than penetration. You're trying to damage the joints of the armour so your opponent can't move. While a flanged mace, if it actually manages to penetrate, will likely get fouled up in the damaged plates.

No, I can't even convince myself of that. Never mind.

Heh, heh. No, I have to admit, I am not all that convinced of these claims, which is partly why I brought them up here, of course. Having read a good deal of DeVries' book via the preview, I found that I had questions about several of his assertions, especially his preamble on ancient warfare. Unfortunately, perhaps the most interesting section on shock combat and White's stirrup theory is not available to read in preview, so I shall have to take a trip to the library to see where DeVries falls on that debate. Of course, it has been more than fifteen years since it was first published, and he seems still active in the field, I wonder if his views are still the same...

Japanese Shields

Any idea why shields that weren't pavaises (the door sized fixed shields) fell out of favor, though? Your link says that it was because the samurai class were primarily horse archers, in the beginning (and that meshes with my understanding), but the majority of combatants in any battle generally wouldn't have been of a semi noble class, nor does the terrain of Japan particularly favor the sort of pure cavalry warfare that makes infantry a non-factor (it is far too broken), and the idea that shields fell out of favor with the rank and file soldiery too seems illogical.

Re: Japanese shields. Remember that Europeans also basically abandoned hand-held shields in later periods. As armour got more effective, the benefit of a shield versus the benefit of a two-handed weapon became more weighted to the two-handed weapon side. Japanese warfare followed much the same lines, for much the same reason. They *appear* quite different as Japan is very iron-poor compared to Europe, so they substituted different materials in their armor, the different properites of which led them down different lines of aesthetics. Also note that the typical 'Samurai' envisioned by fans is contemporary with the Three Musketeers, not with The Knights of the Round Table. Europeans weren't using shields then much either. :smallcool:

I have a link somewhere around here that refers to the Japanese archer's shield... ah yes, here we go: Yumi: the Japanese Long Bow (http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_denig_0301.htm).

I have seen a number of shields and even iron breast plates in Japanese museums over the years from the first millenium AD, the very distinctive shieldless Japanese feudal culture is a complicated animal to understand the wheres and whys of, but it seems to have its roots in Mongol type tribal archers.

cucchulainnn

2009-02-21, 10:22 PM

flanged maces bite the plate making it easier to dent. much like a using a punch to make a small dent before drilling a hole in steel. biting may be the wrong word but that is what it seems to do. the points may concentrate the impact. for a wile i had the german flanged mace that used to be sold by museum replicas and dented a lot of stuff including old SCA armor, car fenders and stop signs. a close friend had and still has a round headed mace. smooth maces would frequently skid off the smooth surface of plate armor. smooth maces still make a dent but the the dents from flanged maces seem to be more severe.

how can i explain this, well smooth maces make dome shaped dents where the flanged ones look more crumpled. this is from personal observation. i can easily see the crumples hindering movement more then the dome shaped dents. especially in places like paldrons or vambraces.

on a side note keep in mind that SCA armor tends to be much thicker then the real thing. which may or may not make a difference.

Norsesmithy

2009-02-22, 02:32 AM

Yes, but many period pieces are tempered and hardened, and all the replica harnesses I have seen for sale were not.

cucchulainnn

2009-02-22, 12:09 PM

Yes, but many period pieces are tempered and hardened, and all the replica harnesses I have seen for sale were not.

yes absolutely,

museums display what is pretty not cross-sections of what was used. nobles had the best available and every one else had what they could afford. keep in mind that what was made for nobles where a small percentage of what was made. so the dukes and knights would have had tempered armor but the man at arms rarely did.

men at arms you kill but nobles you capture and ransom back to their families. so you want weapons that will kill the expendable and disable the nobles.

Dervag

2009-02-23, 12:38 AM

The catch is that if you disable the expendable guy, you can kill him at leisure, or let him go, or throw him in a dungeon, or send him to the mines, or... whatever the heck you want.

So the real key is that the weapon has to at least disable guys wearing top of the line equipment. If it doesn't do that then someone's going to have your guts for garters the first time you take it out on a battlefield.

Yougottawanna

2009-03-02, 01:53 AM

Hey, I've read through most of the thread and didn't see my particular question answered, but it's a big thread so sorry if this has already been covered. It's kind of a general question.

During the period of warfare when mounted knights charging with lances were used (I assume this to be between 1000-1400 or so?), how were the horses armored?

It's hard for me to be more specific because I'm not too familiar with this type of warfare. But I often try to play battles out by picturing them in my head. I always hit a snag when I imagine cavalry vs. infantry, and it always seems that the horses would have been very vulnerable in that type of scenario.

More so than just armor, my question is this: what methods did cavalry have, generally, from preventing infantry from wounding/killing their horses? I imagine that if I was an infantryman fighting cavalry, this is a tactic I would use.

Swordguy

2009-03-02, 02:14 AM

More so than just armor, my question is this: what methods did cavalry have, generally, from preventing infantry from wounding/killing their horses? I imagine that if I was an infantryman fighting cavalry, this is a tactic I would use.

Generally speaking, "barding" is what you're talking about. Materials-wise, it can consist of anything from cloth drapery around the horse (Caparisons) to chainmail draped around the horse, to segmented boiled-leather plates, to actual plate armor fitted to the horse.

For lance passes, the first and most important bits of armor are the chamfron (armor for the face, debuted in ancient Greece) and the peytal (armor for the horse's chest). When a horse is galloping flat-out during a charge, these are the parts of the body that are most likely to be struck by the target (or the other guy's lance, if any) and thus need armor.

Other armor included the manefaire (for the neck - this is lower on the priority list because the horse's head geometrically blocks off most direct attacks to the neck on a head-on pass and thus is in more need of protection), the crupper (for the horse's hind quarters) and flanchards (for the flanks).

You'll note there isn't really armor for the legs - it's next to impossible to effectively armor the legs of a horse. About the best you can do is line the caparisons with chainmail, but that's a LOT of chain to get all the way down to the ground, and it'll weigh the horse down something fierce. What's more, from a ground fighter's perspective, slashing at the horse's legs is actually a pretty bad thing to do, since it leaves you vulnerable from attacks from above (like from the guy actually on the horse). About all the armor a horse's legs generally get are the occasional booties (can't recall the name) that are there to protect the horse from injuring itself on debris when moving around a battlefield.

Yougottawanna

2009-03-02, 11:52 PM

Thanks, that's the sort of info I was looking for.

For a related question: there are cavalry forces that charge with a lance, and cavalry forces that shoot arrows. Is there another way to attack at melee range aside from with lances? Like a saber or scimitar-wielding horseback fighter, what sort of tactics would he use? Would he ride up and be mostly stationary as he fought, or would he strafe the opposing line and slash at it as he rode past?

Hawriel

2009-03-03, 03:07 AM

Lances are a good weapon for a horsmen to have but they do not work very well in a close in melee. Sword, maces, hammers, flails, picks, and the like where all used on horseback. Cavelry sabers where used untill the great war.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-03, 03:54 AM

For a related question: there are cavalry forces that charge with a lance, and cavalry forces that shoot arrows. Is there another way to attack at melee range aside from with lances? Like a saber or scimitar-wielding horseback fighter, what sort of tactics would he use? Would he ride up and be mostly stationary as he fought, or would he strafe the opposing line and slash at it as he rode past?

Sabers and scimitars were specifically cavalry weapons - the draw-cut is preferrable when riding past your opponent and delivering a blow. Of course, weapons like maces, axes, hammers, and plain regular swords will pack quite a punch when swung as gallopping past. Getting stuck in stationary melee is not a good thing - it's way easier for someone to get around your horse than for you to turn your horse, there's plenty of weapons designed to pull men off horses, and it's not impossible to do bare-handed if you've got a friend or two. Fighting two opponents on opposite sides of your horse would also be very tricky (especially since it's questionable whether warhorses actually were or could be taught to rear-and-plunge or to kick back on command).

By "strafe the opposing line", do you mean to ride past a battle-line of men and holding your sword out? That seems like a great way to lose your weapon and get killed - you're exposing yourself to way more risk than you're being to anyone. You'd likely ride at and past one opponent, striking them as you go. Even a lance charge by heavy cavalry would be hard put to break a shield-wall, and if there's spears involved on the other side, the cavalry charge would probably break a few rows in. If there's pikes, fat chance of breaking through at all. As I understand it, cavalry charges were, historically, best employed against the flanks of your enemy - usually, the center battle line of an army would be infantry meant to tie down the enemy line, with solid flanks to meet any cavalry charges circling around to the side (the mobility of a horse is way more use in circling to the flank than in charging unsupported into the middle of a line), and often all the cavalry was massed at one flank to loop around into the enemy flank or rear during the battle. Once the line is broken and the enemy is retreating, cavalry can chase them down and kill them and stop them from regrouping.

Of course, there no doubt were plenty of head-on cavalry charges, and mutual charges, straight down the field. Medieval warfare was not exactly the pinnacle of good tactics...

Dervag

2009-03-03, 07:46 AM

To amplify on what's said above:

If sabre cavalry, or cavalry armed with other hand weapons besides the lance, charged at a large body of men, they would eventually get stopped inside that body of men. And they'd be in a lot of trouble, because they'd have at most a few minutes before someone managed to pull them off their horse and stab them to death.

Cavalry charges work better when the chargers can reasonably expect to break through the enemy. Or when the enemy isn't formed up into a compact body.
______

Heavy cavalry preferred to charge, but tended to die when they charged the wrong kind of opponent. Among other things, an enemy with a solid line of shields and/or spears is nearly unchargeable. Horses, unlike men, aren't stupid enough to go running at full tilt into a wall if they can't directly see a way to get over or through it. Impaling themselves on a pike hedge is right out.

Light cavalry generally didn't charge anyone, except if the enemy was broken up or scattered. That doesn't mean they didn't fight hand to hand, but it does mean that the groups they fought hand to hand were normally smaller. They would concentrate on breaking off small groups of the enemy and fighting a quick skirmish, then riding away to regroup. Their tactics might look a little more like "strafing," because they didn't just barge straight in.

Yougottawanna

2009-03-03, 05:33 PM

You'd likely ride at and past one opponent, striking them as you go. Even a lance charge by heavy cavalry would be hard put to break a shield-wall, and if there's spears involved on the other side, the cavalry charge would probably break a few rows in. If there's pikes, fat chance of breaking through at all. As I understand it, cavalry charges were, historically, best employed against the flanks of your enemy - usually, the center battle line of an army would be infantry meant to tie down the enemy line, with solid flanks to meet any cavalry charges circling around to the side (the mobility of a horse is way more use in circling to the flank than in charging unsupported into the middle of a line), and often all the cavalry was massed at one flank to loop around into the enemy flank or rear during the battle. Once the line is broken and the enemy is retreating, cavalry can chase them down and kill them and stop them from regrouping.

This is the info I was looking for, thanks. If I read this correctly, it sounds like even knight-style cavalry with lances would be best used attacking the flanks or rear of the opposing army, and wouldn't be much good at all against pikes (unless they hit them from the side and avoided the points).

Raum

2009-03-03, 08:45 PM

If I read this correctly, it sounds like even knight-style cavalry with lances would be best used attacking the flanks or rear of the opposing army, and wouldn't be much good at all against pikes (unless they hit them from the side and avoided the points).Your horse is extremely unlikely to charge pikes. They're not suicidal.

For generic cavalry tactics, use light cavalry skirmishers against pikes. Reserve your heavy cavalry to break up an enemy's cavalry formation or to flank infantry (usually not pikes) which is already engaged.

Dervag

2009-03-03, 11:56 PM

Your horse is extremely unlikely to charge pikes. They're not suicidal.

For generic cavalry tactics, use light cavalry skirmishers against pikes. Reserve your heavy cavalry to break up an enemy's cavalry formation or to flank infantry (usually not pikes) which is already engaged.And the light cavalry skirmishers will used ranged weapons (bows or pistols), carefully avoiding getting into stab range of the pikemen.

Also, there's a reason flank infantry are usually not pikes: pikes make lousy flankers. They aren't effective at repelling an attack from more than one direction at a time, and they're relatively immobile. A pike block fights cavalry by hunkering down and being impossible to attack, after all. Flankers need to be able to move forward, back, in or out to respond to an enemy's actions. Also, a good commander tries to anchor his flanks in difficult terrain... but pikes are almost useless in difficult terrain.

skywalker

2009-03-04, 12:03 AM

Your horse is extremely unlikely to charge pikes. They're not suicidal.

This depends on how sharp your spurs are, and how much your horses have been bred for stupidity courage.

Raum

2009-03-04, 09:56 PM

This depends on how sharp your spurs are, and how much your horses have been bred for stupidity courage.Not really. Blinders might work. But, in general, a horse is less likely to run itself onto a pike than you or I are. After all, you and I can conceive of situations where death can achieve something worthwhile...

theguyintherobe

2009-03-04, 10:08 PM

Can you smack somebody in the face, or anywhere else, with a cross-bow? ie, pistol-whipping for the midevil. If so, what level of damage( in die form) would it be?

Hawriel

2009-03-04, 10:36 PM

Can you smack somebody in the face, or anywhere else, with a cross-bow? ie, pistol-whipping for the midevil. If so, what level of damage( in die form) would it be?

A crossbow is a of wood. Similar to a rifle stock for the larger crossbows. So yes you can beat some one with the stock of a crossbow. However you would risk braking the firing and any drawing mechanism, or bow. If you must have a game turn used in this thread use it like a club as an imporvised weapon.

Fhaolan

2009-03-05, 12:18 AM

Can you smack somebody in the face, or anywhere else, with a cross-bow? ie, pistol-whipping for the midevil. If so, what level of damage( in die form) would it be?

Storytime...

I have a crossbow. Well, technically it's my wife's crossbow, but still.

It's a fairly heavy lump of wood, so yes you can hit someone with it, and they are very robust really due to the stresses they must survive to be able to work. It's basically an unbalanced club, and you should treat it like that in game terms.

But the story is this: Once upon a time I was showing my father and a friend the crossbow, we were discovering that the bolts we had for it were awful. The range was pitiful and the accuracy was poor as the bolts we got for it were apparantly decorative, while the crossbow was real. My friend said, "The only way I could hit something with this is if I..." And he pushed it up to my stomach and, I hope, accidentatlly pulled the trigger. There was no bolt loaded at this time, but crossbow had been cocked. So it went off.

The force of the prods (the bow bit) springing forward slammed into me and I doubled over the crossbow in shock and significant amounts of pain. I do not recommend being the recipient of this, although I can see it as a last-ditch self-defense maneuver if it haven't got any bolts left.

lsfreak

2009-03-05, 12:29 AM

Rule Number 1 of Gun (and apparently crossbow) Ownership: The weapon is always loaded. Even if you just triple-checked that it's unloaded, it's loaded.

>.>

Spiryt

2009-03-05, 02:58 AM

Not really. Blinders might work. But, in general, a horse is less likely to run itself onto a pike than you or I are. After all, you and I can conceive of situations where death can achieve something worthwhile...

And more importantly can be armoured sufficiently to run into pikes quite safely.

However, the horse of wealthy man can be armoured so too.

They aren't effective at repelling an attack from more than one direction at a time, and they're relatively immobile.

Swiss pikeman say otherwise. They were famous for charging infantry and other units with full pike blocks.

Norsesmithy

2009-03-05, 03:32 AM

Swiss pikeman say otherwise. They were famous for charging infantry and other units with full pike blocks.
On terrain that protected their flanks.

Dervag

2009-03-05, 11:32 AM

And more importantly can be armoured sufficiently to run into pikes quite safely.

However, the horse of wealthy man can be armoured so too.Doesn't matter. If I am wearing sufficient armor, I could plausibly think "Ha ha! My armor makes me immune to your pikes! I will charge into your formation and kill you!" or something like that.

If you put sufficient armor on a horse, the horse will be thinking "Ohcrap Ohcrap wall of spears I am not impaling myself on a wall of spears! And what the heck is all this heavy stuff strapped to my body?" The horse won't make the connection between armor and resistance to an attack.

Swiss pikeman say otherwise. They were famous for charging infantry and other units with full pike blocks.Perhaps I should have made this clear.

I said pikes are relatively immobile, not absolutely immobile. I used the word "relatively" for a reason. My reason was are immobile relative to other kinds of infantry, and especially cavalry. Most other kinds of troops can outmaneuver pikemen.

This does not mean they are completely unable to move at all. In a straight frontal charge, pikes can certainly move forward if they are well trained and good at moving without accidentally stabbing their fellow pikemen.

But that does not make them good at responding to attacks that hit their front and flank at the same time. Nor does it make them good at quickly changing their direction of facing, the way a cavalry unit can. When fighting with pike blocks, you form them up and march them straight at the enemy like a massive, grinding glacier.

Moreover, the pike unit's charge works well only against infantry, not cavalry. Against cavalry, the pikes really do need to stand in place and bristle like a porcupine, because that's what makes them immune to cavalry charges.

It is true that the example of the Swiss pikes contradicts a simplified form of my argument. The problem is that it only contradicts the simplified form.

Fhaolan

2009-03-05, 11:58 AM

And more importantly can be armoured sufficiently to run into pikes quite safely.

Not really, no. The same thing that makes a lance so impressive as a weapon works quite fine in reverse as well. With a lance, the entire momentum of a charging horse and rider is focused on a very small point, allowing it to punch right through plate. Well, a pike is that exact same very small point, the only difference is that the pike is stationary and the momentum is coming straight at it. The only hope you have is deflection, and since there is no such thing as one pike in a pike formation, *one* of them is going to penetrate.

And if the rider and horse are moving slow, rather than charging, that gives the pikemen time to adjust the pikes so that they're pressing against the armour, and the butt of the pike into the ground, so that the rider is being slowly skewered. If the horse is trained to ignore pikes, and the pain of having long spikes driven into it's legs, eyes, etc. It's not exactly going to pay attention to the screaming pink monkey on it's back writhing as it dies. :smallbiggrin:

However, the horse of wealthy man can be armoured so too.

Due to the structure of a horse, it's extremely difficult to armour one to the extent that a human can be. While technically possible to armour a horse's legs with plates, the reduction in flexibility severly hampers the horse to the point that it might as well be hobbled. The usual solution is a curtain of maille reaching down from the body towards the ground. Which is also extremely heavy, slowing the horse down, and causing it to exhaust itself very fast.

Swiss pikeman say otherwise. They were famous for charging infantry and other units with full pike blocks.

Properly disciplined pike formations are a treasure. Rare, but extremely valuable. :smallsmile:

hamishspence

2009-03-05, 05:11 PM

How to the Scottish Schiltroms compare, as used by, for example, Bruce, at Bannockburn?

Spiryt

2009-03-05, 05:33 PM

Not really, no. The same thing that makes a lance so impressive as a weapon works quite fine in reverse as well. With a lance, the entire momentum of a charging horse and rider is focused on a very small point, allowing it to punch right through plate. Well, a pike is that exact same very small point, the only difference is that the pike is stationary and the momentum is coming straight at it. The only hope you have is deflection, and since there is no such thing as one pike in a pike formation, *one* of them is going to penetrate.

Right trough the plate? I'm sceptic.
I'm not suggesting that plate give absolute protection against pikes, but it's certainly very good protection.

As far as I know La Noue wrote "yea it is a miracle if any be slain with the spear" and he was referring to the lance against decently protected man.

And some guy called Lloyd Clark did some tests and he said :

I have attempted to pierce a 16ga, mild steel breastplate (provided by our own Allen Senefelder of Mercenary Tailor!) a number of times from horseback (this riding a 2000lb Percheron at full gallop) and unless the person is pretty much tied to the trunk of a tree, the best you will be able to do is cave-in the breastplate and, perhaps, put a small hole in it.

I'll try to find something more about his tests.

And I'm also not buying the = between lance coming at the target and the target coming at the pike. According to that logic, almost immobile bullet should penetrate target coming at it if the target has enough momentum... Yes, pike would be usually supported, but still.

As for deflection, not only plate was built for it, but rider could actively deflect pikes with his weapon, and/or armoured hands/shield.

So again, I'm not telling that plate was completely safe against pikes, but getting trough/around it was certainly hard work.

And if the rider and horse are moving slow, rather than charging, that gives the pikemen time to adjust the pikes so that they're pressing against the armour, and the butt of the pike into the ground, so that the rider is being slowly skewered. If the horse is trained to ignore pikes, and the pain of having long spikes driven into it's legs, eyes, etc. It's not exactly going to pay attention to the screaming pink monkey on it's back writhing as it dies. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe I'm bad at metals, but it's very improbable to me. I can see quick, violent impact puncturing the plate, but not pushing, no matter what force is behind. To me pike would just deflect, creaking loudly.

Although I may be wrong, there are things in heaven...

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-05, 06:04 PM

Right trough the plate? I'm sceptic.
I'm not suggesting that plate give absolute protection against pikes, but it's certainly very good protection.

The warhammer was notoriously able to punch holes in plate with the pick end. Why wouldn't a pike, braced on the ground, being driven into armor by the power of a charging horse (well, as much of said power as can be transferred, allowing for the fact the rider will probably be knocked off) be able to do it?

Your bullet analogy makes no sense at all. If you were able to drive a person at a completely stationary bullet at the speed of sound, yeah, you'd achieve penetration. I'd like to see an experiment set-up that allows anything like this, though. (This would cut out the spin given by rifling, which is actually pretty important. There's a reason firearms aren't smoothbores anymore.)

The main difference, really, is bracing - both on the part of the target and the person holding the lance/pike. Relative speed is what counts. The relative speed of a man standing still and a horse charging will be the same either way.

Note, too, that there's no such thing as 100% plate coverage. Even in most gothic plate, the ass and the backs of the thighs were either mailed or entirely empty. Under the arms, and usually on the inside of the bicep, you had mail or less. Driving a point under the visor of a sallet could catch on the bevor, or sink into the face... plate armor from before the 16th century was much less impressive - if we're talking 14th or 15th century, pikes and spears were even more dangerous.

It's pretty clear, historically, that multiple-row pike walls broke heavy cavalry charges from the front like waves on a rock. They were an exceptional kind of unit - requiring intensive drilling - but definitely beat the heaviest cavalry, properly used. In fact, Swiss pikemen were almost literally impossible to charge, either on foot or with cavalry (at least partly because they were trained well enough to turn to actually face attacks from different directions).

Spiryt

2009-03-05, 06:37 PM

The warhammer was notoriously able to punch holes in plate with the pick end. Why wouldn't a pike, braced on the ground, being driven into armor by the power of a charging horse (well, as much of said power as can be transferred, allowing for the fact the rider will probably be knocked off) be able to do it?

Beacuse pike is no warhammer? Beacuse striking is entirely different with both weapons? Beacuse there are sources (mentioned) suggesting that piercing plate armour with lance isn't easy? And finally beacuse noone really knows if warhammers were really "notoriously" puncturing the plate.

Your bullet analogy makes no sense at all. If you were able to drive a person at a completely stationary bullet at the speed of sound, yeah, you'd achieve penetration.

I actually bullet without any support will just be send flying.

The main difference, really, is bracing - both on the part of the target and the person holding the lance/pike. Relative speed is what counts. The relative speed of a man standing still and a horse charging will be the same either way.

Actually, I think that the fact that the pike is immobile and doesn't have any momentum and energy itself makes big difference.

If you want to drive a nail into the door, you will strike the nail with the hammer - not strike the hammer with the nail by moving the door.

About the rest I motsly agree, again, I wasn't suggesting that charging wall of pikes was easy and nice way to spend afternoon.

"Plate doesn't give 100% coverage" - was I suggesting otherwise?

lsfreak

2009-03-05, 06:53 PM

The only reason you don't slam the door into the nail is that you can't get enough force. If you could get enough force, it would have no problem. Same thing with the person hitting the bullet rather than vice versa, assuming you could get a person going fast enough.

A horse hitting plate at full gallop will hit the spear with far, far more force than a pick will punch through plate.

Fhaolan

2009-03-05, 08:16 PM

Actually, having worked in construction I can say that hammering a nail into the door by slamming the door against the nail isn't unheard of.

It's all a matter of penetating power and reference frames. Remove all the variables and there is no effective difference between a lance and a pike. It's the same mass, velocity and penetrating surface area. The only difference is the armour is moving onto the point of the spear backed by the force versus the point of the spear backed by the force moving onto the armour. It's the same armour, same force, same point. Which is the bit actually moving is pretty much irrelevant.

This is why chicken guns are used to test airplanes flying into birds. It's irrelevant that in one case it's the plane moving, and in the other it's the bird. Same effect both ways. Same objects, same force. It's just the reference frame that is different.

Yeah, I know Lloyd. Cool guy. Unlikely that he remembers me, I think we only talked twice, several years ago, and I was a footman rather than a jouster so he had no real interest in me. My wife's the jouster. Nothing really wrong with his tests, I just disagree with his findings occasionally. While technically he's quite accurate in that a lance is unlikely to penetrate a breastplate, it does happen.

My wife has put a lance through a breastplate, while on the back of a Belgian (rather than a Percheron. We do have a Perch, it's just a bit young yet for jousting. They're approximately the same size though.) It was an accident, and wasn't what we were testing for at all. We were actually testing some break-away lances for a show, and the kid we had roped into squiring for us handed her the wrong lance. It was going to be my 'display' lance to show the punters what a war lance actually was, and was never meant for real use. However, I used to put effort into weighting all the lances the same for 'accuracy' and she couldn't really see the lance very well through the visor so she couldn't tell it was the wrong one. Luckly we were riding against a quintain rather than a living target as the first set of tests. At the time the quintain was an old beat-up Churburg breastplate nobody wanted to wear anymore, mounted on a spinning shaft. The lance didn't penetrate far into breastplate, but it did penetrate. She let go of the lance (by the by, *never* couch the lance, that just means you can't let go when you need to.), and the point was still stuck in the breastplate with the butt-end of the lance on the ground beneath it.

Shademan

2009-03-06, 06:11 AM

Beacuse pike is no warhammer? Beacuse striking is entirely different with both weapons? Beacuse there are sources (mentioned) suggesting that piercing plate armour with lance isn't easy? And finally beacuse noone really knows if warhammers were really "notoriously" puncturing the plate.
yes. yes they do. Haven't you seen perfect weapon on national geographic? they tested the warhammer there once and that thing pierced breastplates pretty good. there's a reason that most of the heavy armoured soldiers that died in the war of the roses died from warhammer wounds.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-06, 07:16 AM

I actually bullet without any support will just be send flying.

That's the point. Your analogy was silly. A completely stationary bullet - one with some sort of mid-air support (that, for some bizarre reason, doesn't interfere with anything; maybe superscience gravity-manipulators) - will penetrate you just as well as one shot at you, provided you are moving at it with the same relative speed. (Except, like I said, the effect of rifling won't be there. So I guess we should use a musket ball and move the target as fast as smoothbore muskets shot their balls.)

You're making some weird intuitive (and incorrect; human intuition hardly ever agrees with science) guesses.

If the relative speeds of the objects are the same, it really doesn't matter a whole lot which is moving (except for angles, things like spin from rifling, etc.). With lances and pikes, the real difference is how everyone is braced (and I'm not sure who's going to "give" first, a man on a horse or a man on the ground).

As for nails: Ever step on one? That's the same thing as someone hammering it into your foot. And the same principle.

Stephen_E

2009-03-06, 09:16 AM

I would note that the reason that horses won't/wouldn't charge into things like pike formations isn't that they're smart (smart people can be convinced to do really crazy/stupid things, but because they are generally stupid.

Stupid creatures don't do things that clearly look like they'll injure them normally, unless driven by love/trust or rage/hate. Neither will apply to most horses, even warhorses, and given warhorses weren't cheap I suspect most knights wouldn't be keen on sacrificing their horse, especially if they had one of the rare ones that might do such a stunt.

I'd also point out that you don't have to puncture a breatplate to deliver a serious or even mortal wound. Aside from significant defotmation of armour having a serious risk of causing joint lockups, which isn't good for your health in a fight, a serious deformation will see force transmitted through to the body underneath the armour. In the case of the chest this can translate to broken ribs, punctured lungs, or even at extreeme stopping the heart from the shock.

Stephen E

Spiryt

2009-03-06, 09:46 AM

yes. yes they do. Haven't you seen perfect weapon on national geographic? they tested the warhammer there once and that thing pierced breastplates pretty good. there's a reason that most of the heavy armoured soldiers that died in the war of the roses died from warhammer wounds.

No, I haven't seen, and I - or better someone who is really good at it - should take a look at the conditions of test.

Better to be scepitical about things like that, beacuse weapon/war programs on Discovery/NatGeo/VSHistory tend to be mind numbing nonsense at times. (I recall many idiotic katana fanboyism among other things).

So, what kind of breastplates/warhammers there were using and how deep was the penetration? How breastplate was supported?

And most importantly, what "pretty good" means? I'm not arguing that warhammers weren't able to damage the plate (that's what they were designed for after all), but "notoriously" doesn't seem like a good word for me.

This test (http://www.myarmoury.com/review_dt_hammer.html) shows penetrations of 42mm max, and with hard strikes against flat plate, completely immobile and supported helmet.
Strikes against side didn't penetrate, and in the era of warhammers, helmets didn't have flat tops any more.

And helmet looks crappy, to say at least. (Of course, hammer maybe not be the best too, I don't know)

Shademan

2009-03-06, 10:40 AM

the breastplate were suspended on a wooden ramp thingie, they also tested it on pigs.
... dead pigs, mind.

the results: lethal.

warhammers are good vs armour.

Narmoth

2009-03-06, 11:50 AM

Interesting coninsidence: warhammers getting popular at the same time as plate mail and such got popular in Europe

Stephen_E

2009-03-06, 06:34 PM

While I don't wear a helmet I would think that 42mm penetration of the helm would likely result in some penetration of the skull.

As Shade noted it is quite possible to test penetration of armour on things like dead pigs or chrash test dummies suspended to check impact results.

Stephen E

Dervag

2009-03-07, 06:10 PM

And I'm also not buying the = between lance coming at the target and the target coming at the pike. According to that logic, almost immobile bullet should penetrate target coming at it if the target has enough momentum... Yes, pike would be usually supported, but still.Oh, it would.

For instance, imagine your car runs into a rock dropped off an overpass, while you are driving at a hundred miles an hour. The rock isn't really moving very fast; twenty miles an hour or so if the overpass is no more than fifteen feet off the ground. But relative to you, that rock is moving sixty miles an hour and you or your car is in for a lot of hurt.

In fact, you'll get damaged just about as badly as you would if the rock was a cannonball flying at your (parked) car at a hundred miles an hour. The law of conservation of momentum plays no favorites.
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I'd like to see an experiment set-up that allows anything like this, though. (This would cut out the spin given by rifling, which is actually pretty important. There's a reason firearms aren't smoothbores anymore.)You need something like a rocket sled, the path of which is crossed by a bullet suspended on a thin and fragile string.

The spin isn't a key factor. Handguns are rifled for accuracy, not penetration; a spinning bullet is self-stabilizing, just like a gyroscope. Thus, it's less liekly to fly off at random angles. If anything, rifling reduces penetration because it slows the bullet as it escapes the gun.

For this reason, some modern pieces of heavy artillery (which are machined to much tighter and pickier tolerances) have reverted to smoothbore designs. The 120mm main gun of the Abrams battle tank is a smoothbore. This gives higher velocity and lets the Abrams fire certain kinds of rounds that wouldn't work well with a rifled barrel.
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You're making some weird intuitive (and incorrect; human intuition hardly ever agrees with science) guesses.To get a good intuitive sense for how physical systems work, you have to train and discipline your intuition. It isn't easy, and it helps if you're exposed to a lot of reasonably good science at a moldable early age.
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This test (http://www.myarmoury.com/review_dt_hammer.html) shows penetrations of 42mm max, and with hard strikes against flat plate, completely immobile and supported helmet.I would NOT want a spearpoint or hammer point penetrating 42 millimeters into my chest. Or my head. That might not be fatal, but it totally could be, especially with medieval medical care.

42 millimeters is an inch and a half, plus a little. Having a spike driven an inch and a half into your head is quite likely to kill you. Damn sure it'll incapacitate you.

Subotei

2009-03-08, 06:03 AM

Spiryt

2009-03-08, 06:53 AM

I would NOT want a spearpoint or hammer point penetrating 42 millimeters into my chest. Or my head. That might not be fatal, but it totally could be, especially with medieval medical care.

42 millimeters is an inch and a half, plus a little. Having a spike driven an inch and a half into your head is quite likely to kill you. Damn sure it'll incapacitate you.

Few points:
Penetration of 42 milimeters into the helmet alone doesn't mean 42 milimeters penetration of body.
- skull is pretty resistant as well
- body wouldn't be right behind the plate, especially in helmet like that there would be quite a bit of space between skull and helmet
- there would be padding beneath as well
- 42 milimeters into the nck or skull would be indeed nasty, but into the tight for example could be barely noticable in the heat of battle
- Armor was almost never flat surface you could land perfect blow on, and see the effect of strikes to the sides - no penetration.

And so on.

And for the very last time, I'm not arguing that you can't send somebody six feet under with warhammer or pike, I'm saying that it certainly wasn't "notorius" or easy.

And as for wounds, human are capable of surviving quite unbelievable injuries. There is famous skull from Towton, (man killed by skull cracking IIRC) that had a scar from some old battle - sword blow had to split his jaw almost in half (along with everything in his mouth), yet he survived many years, to fight and die at Towton.

Of course, sometimes people die from things that are insignificantat first glance. Body is just complicated that way.

Joran

2009-03-09, 03:17 PM

For this reason, some modern pieces of heavy artillery (which are machined to much tighter and pickier tolerances) have reverted to smoothbore designs. The 120mm main gun of the Abrams battle tank is a smoothbore. This gives higher velocity and lets the Abrams fire certain kinds of rounds that wouldn't work well with a rifled barrel.

Right, because the ammo is large enough that the military puts fins on the shells instead of relying on rifling; also sabot rounds are a nice additional advantage to using smoothbore. Isn't also one of the major benefits of smoothbore guns is that you don't have to replace the rifling? As far as I know (which could be very little), rifling eventually degrades, so it requires constant maintenance and replacement while smoothbores have less maintenance requirements.

The spin isn't a key factor. Handguns are rifled for accuracy, not penetration; a spinning bullet is self-stabilizing, just like a gyroscope. Thus, it's less liekly to fly off at random angles. If anything, rifling reduces penetration because it slows the bullet as it escapes the gun.

I remember a Mythbusters in which they tried to do the myth about bullets fired straight into the air can kill people. They found that if they fired the gun exactly 90 degrees into the air, the bullet lost velocity and eventually tumbled downwards without enough force to penetrate. If however they fired the gun at less than 90 degrees, the bullet would retain the spin and ballistic trajectory and could kill someone. I don't pretend to know enough physics to figure this one out =P

KnightDisciple

2009-03-09, 04:25 PM

Stephen_E

2009-03-09, 06:36 PM

It should be remembered that the padding/space under the helmet is designed to compress some when struck to absorb weapon impacts.

Unfortunately if you get a impact that breachs the armour then the armour space/padding will still compress from the force required to breach the armour, thus greatly decreasing the distance between the armour and the body, but giving no significant resistance to a pick type blow. Thus that 42mm penetration will enter the body beneath the armour to a greater degree than you'd think looking at the pre-blow armour.

As for armour having sloped surfaces - this is something of a red herring. Sloping means it's more likely that the blow will deflect off, thus sheding it's force and not doing significant damage. If the blow doesn't deflect of then the sloping will have no effect on the damage done by the weapon. It's not a matter of sloped armour reducing impact by "x" amount. It's a all or nothing effect. It deflect or it doesn't. With a point source for the KE delivery, such as a pick type weapon, the chance of deflection is decreased as it's more likely that the armour will start to deform/dimple, thus cacelling the deflection effect, before deflection can start to occur.

To see this effect with human eyes try a curved plastic bottle and a not to sharp pointed knife. If you push the knife lightly into the bottle it will slide off. If you provide more force/velocity the bottle surface will visibly dimple before the point starts to slide, so no energy is lost and the plastic is perforted relatively easily.

Stephen

Spiryt

2009-03-09, 06:43 PM

Because, you know, blunt force trauma wouldn't be a factor here at all.

No, indeed it wouldn't. :smalltongue:

What's your point?

KnightDisciple

2009-03-09, 07:38 PM

No, indeed it wouldn't. :smalltongue:

What's your point?

....You're kidding, right?
Padding might make the difference between a non-penetrating head blow being a major disorientation and death, but blunt trauma's going to happen no matter what. That's why that helmet test is silly; it doesn't take into account the affects on soft tissues in the head underneath the helmet. Maces, hammers, and so on weren't so much designed to destroy armor, as much as negate its usefulness via blunt force.
After all, modern bullet-resistant vests may stop small rounds...but you're typically still sporting bruised or broken ribs.
Now imagine that happening to your head.
If nothing else, you become disoriented, which is deadly on a battlefield.

Spiryt

2009-03-09, 07:57 PM

....You're kidding, right?

You are trying to be sarcastic, why can't I try :smalltongue:

Yes, blunt trauma will occur.

"negating its usefulness via blunt force" doesn't change the fact that blunt trauma would be largely negated by armor - plate armor is probably the best armor invented (maybe short of some modern inventions) to deal with it.

If nothing else, you become disoriented, which is deadly on a battlefield

You may be, you may be not. It all depends on the circumstances, total force, andrenaline, blah blah. And check MMA fights as an example on people fighting despite being at least disoriented by heavy blow to the head.

That's why that helmet test is silly; it doesn't take into account the affects on soft tissues in the head underneath the helmet

Helmet test is not very good beacuse helmet is not the best among other things...
And effect on the soft tissue is not hte point of the test. Penetration is.
(The test is not very good at it either, seeing it's conditions, of course)

Norsesmithy

2009-03-09, 10:45 PM

The biggest reason why the 42mm of penetration is suspect is the fact that the helmet was sitting on a stump. A body will move with a blow, and a stump will not.

Right, because the ammo is large enough that the military puts fins on the shells instead of relying on rifling; also sabot rounds are a nice additional advantage to using smoothbore. Isn't also one of the major benefits of smoothbore guns is that you don't have to replace the rifling? As far as I know (which could be very little), rifling eventually degrades, so it requires constant maintenance and replacement while smoothbores have less maintenance requirements.You can use sabots on rifled bullets too. And the barrels on an Abrams have a discrete shot life. Barrel wear is caused by the hot gases eroding the metal, not the passage of the bullet through any rifling. The move to smoothbore was undertaken entirely because the reduction in friction allowed velocity goals to be met with less propellant, and the barrel life increase that gave, not because a rifled gun with the same charge would wear out faster.

I remember a Mythbusters in which they tried to do the myth about bullets fired straight into the air can kill people. They found that if they fired the gun exactly 90 degrees into the air, the bullet lost velocity and eventually tumbled downwards without enough force to penetrate. If however they fired the gun at less than 90 degrees, the bullet would retain the spin and ballistic trajectory and could kill someone. I don't pretend to know enough physics to figure this one out =PA bullet at any angle other than 90 degrees has more energy for several reasons, the first being that the horizontal vector will remain nearly unchanged, but the larger reason is that when it isn't fired perfectly vertical, it will remain stable as it tips over the top of the trajectory, and the terminal velocity of a stable bullet falling nose first is much higher than the terminal velocity of an unstabilized bullet, or a stabilized bullet falling tail first. And actually, most spitzer style rifle bullets will stay stabilized through their whole trajectory, the US army, for instance, found that the new spitzer bullets for the .30-06 would remain pointed skyward for their whole flight when fired perfectly vertical. They would stick in the ground tail first.

Suedars

2009-03-10, 03:58 AM

Would a generic medieval fantasy crossbow be able to be kept loaded and ready to fire at all times? If not how long could it be loaded for before firing? Five minutes? Thirty seconds?

Dervag

2009-03-10, 07:16 AM

Few points:
Penetration of 42 milimeters into the helmet alone doesn't mean 42 milimeters penetration of body.
- skull is pretty resistant as well
- body wouldn't be right behind the plate, especially in helmet like that there would be quite a bit of space between skull and helmet
- there would be padding beneath as well
- 42 milimeters into the nck or skull would be indeed nasty, but into the tight for example could be barely noticable in the heat of battle
- Armor was almost never flat surface you could land perfect blow on, and see the effect of strikes to the sides - no penetration.

And so on.

And for the very last time, I'm not arguing that you can't send somebody six feet under with warhammer or pike, I'm saying that it certainly wasn't "notorius" or easy.Easy? No. But there are limits on all things, and the penetrability of plate armor is one of them. When you're running around on a horse and fighting with spears, the amount of energy and momentum involved is enough to pierce steel light enough for a man to wear. The plate isn't useless or irrelevant, but if you trust it to stop you from being impaled when you're hurtling headlong into a pike hedge, you're going to die.

And as for wounds, human are capable of surviving quite unbelievable injuries. There is famous skull from Towton, (man killed by skull cracking IIRC) that had a scar from some old battle - sword blow had to split his jaw almost in half (along with everything in his mouth), yet he survived many years, to fight and die at Towton.

Of course, sometimes people die from things that are insignificantat first glance. Body is just complicated that way.The trouble is that a lot of the things that decide whether you survive an injury are random, or were in the Middle Ages. Does the wound get infected? Does someone have enough medical skill to keep you from bleeding to death? How much effect does going into shock have on you, specifically?

So while there may be some person who suffers a terrible injury, survives, and is still physically capable afterwards, for every person who does there are probably a dozen who didn't.
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Would a generic medieval fantasy crossbow be able to be kept loaded and ready to fire at all times? If not how long could it be loaded for before firing? Five minutes? Thirty seconds?No. There are three steps to having a bow ready to fire: stringing, nocking, and drawing.

To be ready to fire, a bow of any kind has to be strung. The string is under an enormous amount of tension, because it has to hold a piece of wood that would normally be straight into a D shape.*

Leave a bow strung when you're not using it and the string will eventually break. The resulting twanging back and forth of the arms of the bow will damage the bow, though it will probably still "work" in the sense that you can propel arrows with it. Accuracy may degrade; I don't know. I am not an expert.

I have heard only a few vague recommendations on this subject, but they all agree that you don't want to leave a bow strung for more than an hour or two at a time.

*The arms of the bow might not be entirely straight- they are often curved naturally. But they're a lot less straight when the bow is strung.
______

Then you have to nock the arrow- to physically load it onto the bow. This is a very easy step, but you can only do it after the bow is strung. Keeping an arrow nocked is not a major problem- though if a crossbow is held upside down or at a funny angle, the arrow might fall out. I don't know.
______

Finally, you have to draw the bow- stretch the arms back and store energy for the shot. In a normal bow, you do this by physically grabbing the string and stretching it backward so that the bow goes from looking like a shallow D to looking like a C> shape (reversed- the arrow would be firing to the left, obviously).

Holding a bow in the strung position is very difficult. The burden on your arms and pectoral muscles is heavy (incidentally, archery is a great workout for those muscles). Realistically, if you draw your bow you will want to loose (shoot, fire, whatever) very soon. No holding someone at arrowpoint for long periods of time.

Crossbows are different, because you use a lever or (theoretically) windlass to draw the bow and store the energy you need to get the arrow moving. This energy is released by pulling a trigger. So you can draw a crossbow and keep it ready to fire without wearing out your arms. But the problem is that the bow is storing a lot of energy, because now it's bent even more than it was in the strung position. Sooner or later, the string will snap and God knows what happens to the arrow.
_________

So the answer is "For thirty seconds, yes. For five minutes, I don't know. For three hours, definitely not."

Joran

2009-03-10, 02:49 PM

You can use sabots on rifled bullets too.

Woah, did not know this. I thought sabot rounds were only for larger caliber anti-tank munitions; I did not know that they'd been used for small arms. And rifled shotguns? :smalleek: Man, my ignorance is vast.

Thiel

2009-03-10, 05:50 PM

APDS (Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot) submunitions are widely used in medium calibre autocannons like the Bushmaster II and the Bofors 40mm.

my_evil_twin

2009-03-17, 12:54 AM

Hawriel

2009-03-17, 01:19 AM

Im sure you could look that up in medical sights.

Swordguy

2009-03-17, 01:38 AM

This talk of penetration and wounds has got me thinking. What do we know about stab wounds?
More (quite) specifically, say you got stabbed by a wide-bladed sword (longsword, say, rather than an epee) and manage not to die. How long does it take to recover from something like that?

That depends entirely on where you were injured and the nature of the way in which the weapon was removed. Assuming it's in muscle (say, the outside of the thigh) and it's carefully pulled out and the wound immediately cauterized, it'll be about an hour before you regain consciousness from the pain of cauterization, and you can be up and moving in another hour-ish, and essentially complete recovery in 7-14 days. If it's in the same place as above, but the weapon is twisted and torn violently out of the wound, and the injury is left to heal naturally, you're looking at a 4-6 weeks, at best.

From my experience: I was playing opposite a neophyte stage combat guy in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and he forgot the choreography. He ended up stabbing me clean through the outside of the calf muscle with a full-size Windlass Rapier (punched through the back of the calf as well), with a "clean" withdrawal of the weapon. I dropped, the scene kept going (it was a prolonged mass battle), and I limped back to the dressing room, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured it over the wound, stuffed both sides of the wound with Kleenex and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape, got back onstage and finished the show. I didn't have health insurance at the time, so no stitches - just a lot of alcohol to clean the wound every day. I was limping heavily for about a week-ish, and had a full recovery (sprinting with no pain) within about 2 and a half weeks.

That help? IIRC, the rule of thumb is a minimum of 1 week of recovery per inch of width or depth of the wound (whichever is bigger).

Grynning

2009-03-18, 10:46 PM

From my experience: I was playing opposite a neophyte stage combat guy in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and he forgot the choreography. He ended up stabbing me clean through the outside of the calf muscle with a full-size Windlass Rapier (punched through the back of the calf as well), with a "clean" withdrawal of the weapon. I dropped, the scene kept going (it was a prolonged mass battle), and I limped back to the dressing room, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured it over the wound, stuffed both sides of the wound with Kleenex and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape, got back onstage and finished the show. I didn't have health insurance at the time, so no stitches - just a lot of alcohol to clean the wound every day. I was limping heavily for about a week-ish, and had a full recovery (sprinting with no pain) within about 2 and a half weeks.

That story is somewhat hilarious, though I imagine that had to hurt quite a bit. I did theater for a long time, and after I read it, I realized I just took it completely in stride that a) you got stabbed on stage and b) there was a bottle of Jack in the dressing room. Both are things that you just accept about theater after a while :smallwink:

Question though, I was under the impression that cauterizing a wound is generally a BAD idea if there are any other alternatives available. Wouldn't it kill the nerves in the area permanently, and possibly cause the surrounding tissue to undergo necrosis?

Swordguy

2009-03-19, 01:26 AM

That story is somewhat hilarious, though I imagine that had to hurt quite a bit. I did theater for a long time, and after I read it, I realized I just took it completely in stride that a) you got stabbed on stage and b) there was a bottle of Jack in the dressing room. Both are things that you just accept about theater after a while :smallwink:

Question though, I was under the impression that cauterizing a wound is generally a BAD idea if there are any other alternatives available. Wouldn't it kill the nerves in the area permanently, and possibly cause the surrounding tissue to undergo necrosis?

We stage combat specialists don't measure our careers in shows performed or money earned. We measure them by the ratio of "full-length production runs to major injuries". Anything more favorable than 2:1 is a good career. :smallamused:

(Mine is... *calculates*...3.25 to 1. Yay.)

As for your question, cauterizing your wound is a bad idea in the modern day, because we have so many alternatives to closing a wound that are a whole LOT less dangerous. That said, when the alternative is almost guaranteed infection (as it was historically) for any wound bigger than about an inch and a half, it's worth the risks of cauterization. And say what you will, as long as no large foreign matter is introduced into the wound channel (like clothing scraps - this is actually a big problem with gunshot wounds), cauterization does a fairly decent job of closing a wound, cleaning it out in the short term, and stopping the bleeding. If you don't have 20th century medical equipment and knowledge, it's better than the longer-term alternatives.

Mike_G

2009-03-19, 08:48 AM

This talk of penetration and wounds has got me thinking. What do we know about stab wounds?
More (quite) specifically, say you got stabbed by a wide-bladed sword (longsword, say, rather than an epee) and manage not to die. How long does it take to recover from something like that?

It's a total crapshoot. It all depends on what gets hit. As a Paramedic, I treated a guy who was stabbed in the side of the neck, and we had to follow his blood trail up two flights of stairs to find him, and then he didn't want to go to the hospital, or report the stabbing at all even though he "was just minding his business when some dud came up and stabbed him for no reason." It was a deep stab, about two inchs wide, right in the side of the neck. It obviously missed his great vessels and his trachea, since he didn't die immediately.

A stab doesn't take out a lot of tissue. and expose a lot of nerves, like a wide cut, so it may not be as painful, but it can reach vital organs easier.

A thrust that pierces the stomach or intestines will result in horrible infection, one that gets the liver or spleen will result in horrible internal bleeding. The heart or great vessels will kill you very quickly. A damaged lung can be recovered from, but takes time, and may never totally reinflate, so you could lose some respiratory function permanently.

Cuts are usually shallower and have a harder time reaching organs, whic are protected by bone, generally, but can sever muscle and tendon and make you unable to move a limb.

So, to quote Mister Vandemar, "It's not how hard you hit, it's where you hit."

Thiel

2009-03-20, 06:44 PM

I've been wondering, does anybody know what happened to Germany's armour after WWII? I know Finland received a number of STuG IIIs during the War and used them up until the 1960ies.
Syria received some from the USSR and used them until 1967 and the Yugoslav Peoples Army used a few until the 1950ies, but what happened to the rest of the thousands of armoured vehicles the Germans build?

Second question:
What happened to the Panzer Is after they where withdrawn from service in 1941-42?

Philistine

2009-03-20, 10:42 PM

On the first: the vast majority of German AFVs were destroyed during the war. By late 1944, some divisional inventories were down into single digits (compared to nominal strengths of anywhere between 100 and 300), and things only got worse for them from there on out. And of course, most of the relative handful that did survive were scrapped post-war.

On the second: the Wiki beast claims some were used as logistics vehicles after they were pulled out of frontline service, towing supply trailers to help fill in the gaps in the road-rail net on the Soviet front. This... could be true - though it'd be an extremely expensive way to move supplies. Not quite "airlift" expensive, but quite a bit worse than using trucks (which is already quite a bit worse than shipping stuff via rail). On the other hand, the transport net on that front never was very good, so maybe.

Norsesmithy

2009-03-21, 12:49 AM

I've seen pictures of treads pulling trailers in German service, so I don't doubt it.

One thing to remember is that German Industry wasn't able to produce enough logistics chassis, so even when Germany had sufficient fuel to spend extra on moving supplies, much of their war material was hauled on horse drawn carts (away from major railheads, anyways).

I don't know about you, but if I were tasked with carrying out a mechanized offensive by a man I knew might shoot me for failure, I would pay the fuel costs, if I could even marginally afford them, involved in using old tanks where a deuce and half or a 3 1/4 would have sufficed if that were my best option for keeping my supply chain moving as fast as my army. Horse carts just can't move fast enough.

Dervag

2009-03-21, 02:19 AM

It's a total crapshoot. It all depends on what gets hit. As a Paramedic, I treated a guy who was stabbed in the side of the neck, and we had to follow his blood trail up two flights of stairs to find him, and then he didn't want to go to the hospital, or report the stabbing at all even though he "was just minding his business when some dud came up and stabbed him for no reason." It was a deep stab, about two inchs wide, right in the side of the neck. It obviously missed his great vessels and his trachea, since he didn't die immediately.I'm imagining trying to persuade someone who has been stabbed in the neck that they should seek medical attention. And I can't imagine saying anything but "Dude, you got stabbed in the neck." That really ought to be a clinching argument right there...

Wow.

Cuts are usually shallower and have a harder time reaching organs, whic are protected by bone, generally, but can sever muscle and tendon and make you unable to move a limb.In the abdomen, organs are not protected by bones, yes? Trying to cut someone at chest height is probably a complete waste of time unless you've got a magical* "cut-anything" weapon. At navel height... not so much, as I understand it. Of course, a stab will work terribly well there too.

*Or technological-indistinguishable-from-magical
______

I've seen pictures of treads pulling trailers in German service, so I don't doubt it.A tank chassis (typically with much of the gun and armor removed) makes a handy prime mover for all-terrain towing work when there aren't good roads, too. And they've got enough raw horsepower to pull very heavy loads.

The main drawbacks are, as others point out, that tracked vehicles have lousy fuel economy. And that they break down much more often

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-21, 06:07 AM

2009-03-21, 07:05 AM

IIRC those AFVs retired during the war (such as the Panzer I) were either used in logistical or training roles. Very few models survived the war in any real numbers - the exceptions probably being the Panzer IV and Panther, of which a few dozen fell into French and Syrian hands respectively. I think the French army fielded an entire formation of Panthers in the immediate post-war years and some also would have cropped up in 1950s German inventories

Most other armoured vehicles would have been either taken as booty (and were either used as target practice or stowed in museums) or were scrapped as part of that immense disarmament campaign following the war

Mike_G

2009-03-21, 11:41 AM

I'm imagining trying to persuade someone who has been stabbed in the neck that they should seek medical attention. And I can't imagine saying anything but "Dude, you got stabbed in the neck." That really ought to be a clinching argument right there...

That's pretty much exactly what I said.

And I pointed out that if I left, I was pretty sure I'd be back in 20 minutes but I'd be doing CPR on him.

He did come along, but it was less of a gimme than you'd think.

We also treated a guy who cut his forearm pushing down trash in a barrel when a broken bottle got him. The guy bled like mad from a lacerated ulnar artery, and would have died without rapid treatment. In this case, a BP cuff used as a tourniquet until he could get to surgery.

In the abdomen, organs are not protected by bones, yes? Trying to cut someone at chest height is probably a complete waste of time unless you've got a magical* "cut-anything" weapon. At navel height... not so much, as I understand it. Of course, a stab will work terribly well there too.

*Or technological-indistinguishable-from-magical
______

Well, the ribs come down pretty far on the sides, close to the wings of the pelvis. The kidneys, and much of the liver and spleen are hard to reach with a cut, unless you're hacking through ribs. If you can get a slash at the front of the abdomen, you can cut the nice, squishy organs, but it's harder than you'd think. Most of the fencing and Renaissance fighting I've done, it's easy to hit the limbs with a cut, but to get a nice organ shot requires a thrust. Sure you can score points in Sabre or Rapier bout with a chest or flank cut, but I think in reality most of those would result in a shallow gash over the ribs.

Even on the limbs, the vessels and nerves generally run on the inside of the arm or leg, near the bone, so a cut has less chance of reaching them. Severing muscle or tendon will disable the limb, but generally reaching the vessels and making him bleed out requires a cut to the inside of the leg, which is harder, or under the arm.

Spiryt

2009-03-21, 12:12 PM

In the abdomen, organs are not protected by bones, yes? Trying to cut someone at chest height is probably a complete waste of time unless you've got a magical* "cut-anything" weapon. At navel height... not so much, as I understand it. Of course, a stab will work terribly well there too.

Magical weapons? :smallconfused:

You don't need any magical weapon to cut human bones. 40 second (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFAKTjOQJwQ)

1: 38 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Ierrz0hQ)

40 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1dD48egSZM)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4j3mvrDyQ&feature=related

And even if rib can't be cut, they can sword can slip between them, and there's plenty on tissue outside the ribcage to cut.
So i can't see I can't see how cutting on the chest height is the waste of time. Is probably less deadly than attack on the lower areas, but deadly anyway.

'course, most "cutting" weapons - swords, axes - were really just "crushing in a really narrow area" weapons, and would smash their way through bones when swung. Knives and other slashing/draw-cutting weapons are a very different deal.

I'm not sure what you mean. From some point of view any cut is "crush at really narrow area", what doesn't change the fact that sword cuts, (" total stress generated by the cutting implement exceeds the ultimate strength of the material of the object being cut").

If you mean that slicing motion isn't used - it is, even many medieval axes are pretty slicy. All guys that cut things with sword agree that certain deal of slicing motion during the cut improves the efficiency of it.

Stephen_E

2009-03-21, 06:42 PM

We also treated a guy who cut his forearm pushing down trash in a barrel when a broken bottle got him. The guy bled like mad from a lacerated ulnar artery, and would have died without rapid treatment. In this case, a BP cuff used as a tourniquet until he could get to surgery.

Just the other week some guy here punched his fist through a window. They found him about 100m from the window. He'd slashed an atery and bled out.

Several years ago a women had locked herself out and tried to climb in a window and broke the window. She made the 400m to the hospital before dying outside it. Artery again.

The interesting thing was that clearly neither person thought they'd suffered a mortal wound.

Stephen E

Archpaladin Zousha

2009-03-22, 03:26 PM

Brief question here.

How long is the average greatsword? And how wide can the blade be? I'm commissioning someone to draw an artifact greatsword, but I don't have exact dimensions for him. Here's the description, in case you're interested.

The Soul Sword is a wide-bladed two-handed sword (greatsword in D&D terms.)

The sword's pommel is a six-pointed golden solar disk, the symbol of the sun god, set with a large, round opal in the center. The opal shines with an inner light that varies in brightness and intensity depending on the sword's mood. If it is displeased with its owner, and believes it would be better served in the hands of another, the opal grows dim. When sword and wielder are in harmony, the opal shines brightly, becoming almost blinding when they enter combat.

The grip of the Sword is wrapped in alternating bands of leather and velvet, giving it a functional, yet regal appearance, leading up to the cross-guard. The crossguard is silver, and is shaped like a crescent moon (the symbol of the moon goddess) and is studded with smaller opals like the one in the pommel. The points of the crescent are pointed towards the blade.

The rain guard, or chappe, appears as a pair of golden raven heads with opal eyes, facing away from each other. These symbolize the goddess of death and fate. Between and above their heads is an eight-pointed star, silver with an opal set in the center. This symbolizes the god of beauty, art and magic.

The blade of the sword extends up and around the star, and it is silvered, with gold writing down the fuller in Supernal, the language of the gods themselves, listing the virtues the sword is sworn to uphold.

The story of The Soul Sword is as follows:

Long ago, before the Vale of Thorns and the World Forest existed, the gods fought the primordials in an ancient war. To aid their angelic champions in battle, Moradin, the god of creation and of artisans, forged seven amazing swords. Each was emblazoned with the symbols of the four gods of the seasons. Pelor, the god of the sun, keeper of time and lord of agriculture. His season is summer. Sehanine, the fey goddess of the moon, patroness of trickery, illusions and the glory of love. Her season is autumn. The Raven Queen, grim goddess of death and fate, scourge of the proud and tireless crusader against the abominations known as undead. Her season is winter. Corellon, the god of beauty and the arts, patron of arcane magic and the fey. His season is spring. These four gods strengthened the seven angels who were awarded these swords, and they won many battles against the elemental hordes of the primordials for their divine masters. In the last battle when the Fall occured that created the Vale of Thorns and the World Forest, six of these swords were shattered by the sound of a primordial war-horn, the six angels who bore them slain. The seventh angel slew the titan who blew the horn, and split the instrument in two. Though the gods had won the war, the angel decided that his time on the front lines of the war against chaos was over. So he bound his spirit to the weapon, shedding his body and making the sword his new vessel. The Soul Sword now waits, somewhere in the world, for a mortal champion to take hold of it and continue the work its original bearer started.

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 03:52 PM

Wikipedia probably goes into more detail. I figure the large claymores as close to the upper limit of a practical greatsword- about 5 ft long, 1.5 ft hilt.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-22, 04:07 PM

Can you specify what you mean?

The D&D greatsword would probably be a large or heavy longsword (the two-handed knightly sword, generally not used with a shield or from a horse even though it could be swung with one hand) or a sword of war (early, bigger longswords). These weapons would top out at 4 to 5'.

The actual "two-handed swords" - zweihanders, doppelhanders, whatever - were taller than their wielders, usually 6' or more, but they weren't really used anything like longswords and swords of war.

Blade widths and lengths vary widely, even within the same Oakeshott type (http://www.algonet.se/~enda/oakeshott_eng.htm) - there's no such thing as a standard sword, because there were no standards.

The precise size doesn't really matter at all. If it's intended to be a knight's sword, it'd be 4-5'. If it's intended to be a soldier's sword for cutting down pikes, or a special sword for judicial duels, it can be '6.

If it's wide, it's likely to be a bit shorter (overall weight; a lower point of balance is usually good, anyway), and to have a broad fuller to reduce mass - but, hey, this is D&D. I'm pretty sure 4E still has "plate mail" and "chain mail", so it's not like accuracy is a concern.

Spiryt

2009-03-22, 04:09 PM

Brief question here.

How long is the average greatsword? And how wide can the blade be? I'm commissioning someone to draw an artifact greatsword, but I don't have exact dimensions for him. Here's the description, in case you're interested.

Define what do you mean by "greatsword". Any two handed sword? Or something more specific?

Shortest two handed swords will be probably some katanas, which could be as short as 80cm and still mainly two handed.

Here (http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html) you have stats of some 16th century beasts. As you can see, the biggest of them are almost 2 meters long.

Historically "Grete Swords" would be 13th - 14th century swords popular in Germany. Those are XIIIa type swords and could be 50 inches long (about 130cm)

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 04:12 PM

the pic of Regdar, with greatsword on his back, shows a hilt rather like a Scottish Claymore.

Do they fit into the "bigger than longsword, smaller than zweihander" range? and would a Scottish Two-handed Claymore be a fairly close approximation to a D&D greatsword?

Archpaladin Zousha

2009-03-22, 04:14 PM

Spiryt

2009-03-22, 04:25 PM

In terms of size, yes it's a standard D&D greatsword. I imagine claymores and zweihanders and such would be fullblades.

When I speak of width, all I know for sure is that I want the blade to be wider than the grip.

Well, standard D&D greatsword isn't really sized :smallwink: Generally, D&D weapons aren't very well connected with reality.

As blade wider than grip is certainly very common especially among more cutting swords.

Here is example (http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-medieval-duke-xiiia.htm).

Here's the other one (http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/viceroy-photos.htm)

Archpaladin Zousha

2009-03-22, 04:54 PM

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 04:59 PM

in 2nd ed, Claymores were basically bastard swords, only two handed-only. Same cost, weight, speed, damage (2d8)

Suggesting that "Two handed swords" are equivalent of 3rd ed Fullblades, but "claymores" are smaller.

Spiryt

2009-03-22, 05:07 PM

I'd say that in terms of length it'd be at least five feet, maybe six. My paladin is six foot four and full of muscle.

As for width, I was thinking something more along the lines of the sword wielded by Nightmare/Siefried in the Soul series, but not THAT wide.

Uh, but you said, that greatsword is medieval longsword for you. And 5 - 6 feet is way too much for that

As for width you mean that (http://wso.williams.edu/orgs/trivia/mutter/supers/video/image003.jpg)?

Archpaladin Zousha

2009-03-22, 05:28 PM

Uh, but you said, that greatsword is medieval longsword for you. And 5 - 6 feet is way too much for that

As for width you mean that (http://wso.williams.edu/orgs/trivia/mutter/supers/video/image003.jpg)?

It is? Now I'm confused. I thought a longsword was five to six feet in length.

And as for width I mean something like this.

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/d/dc/The_Ancient%2C_One_of_Siegfried%27s_weapons.

I think.

Spiryt

2009-03-22, 05:37 PM

It is? Now I'm confused. I thought a longsword was five to six feet in length.

And as for width I mean something like this.

I think.

As for lenght, longsword were generally 105 - 130cm long, and lenghts around 115 -120cm are most common. That's a bit shorter than 4 feet.

Some claymores were 5 feet I guess, yet most modern reproductions and origianals are smaller than that.

5 feet + is generally the lenght of Renaissance bihanders/zweihanders.

As for widht, longsword that's more than 5cm at the base is generally very wide.

Here (http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=88462) you have pics of some exceptionaly broad blade. No stats, unfortunately.

Archpaladin Zousha

2009-03-22, 06:05 PM

http://forums.swordforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=74055&d=1207742089

This. The one on the right is exactly the sort of width ratio I'm looking for!

Spiryt

2009-03-22, 06:23 PM

Glad to help.

In this thread the guy who have seen it says that it's around 4 pounds.

Although for purpose of drawing it's probably not very useful data. :smallwink:

Matthew

2009-03-23, 07:10 AM

Zousha Omenohu: You will not find any historical swords meant for actual use running onto the dimensions you are looking for, I think. Spiryt provides a good example of a very broad bladed sword, but you should note the length of the blade is nowhere near the 4-6' mark. A generous estimate would be about 36", assuming the hilt is around 12" (and I think it is probably more like 9"). Basically, the longer the blade, the narrower it tends to be. Your best bet for a practical two handed sword is something like this:

Cold Steel Two handed Sword (http://www.coldsteel.com/twohandedgreat.html)

http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/csstoreonline_2044_1336775

or this:

Museum Replicas "Wallace Sword" (http://www.museumreplicas.com/p-313-wallace-claymore.aspx)

http://www.museumreplicas.com/images/product/large/313_2_.jpg

I don't know about authenticity, but they seem reasonaly practical two handed swords.

Mike_G

2009-03-23, 06:12 PM

Magical weapons? :smallconfused:

You don't need any magical weapon to cut human bones. 40 second (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFAKTjOQJwQ)

1: 38 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Ierrz0hQ)

40 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1dD48egSZM)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4j3mvrDyQ&feature=related

Sure, a blade can cut bone. Butchers do it every day.

But most of these test cuts are executed with a windup against a stationary and harmless target. In combat, a target won't keep still and let you pick your spot like that, so the chance of hitting at an angle other than optimum is much greater. Plus, if you do wind up like that, your opponent will see it coming a mile away and dodge or parry it, or maybe just jam a blade in you while you draw back like that.

Combat cuts tend to be quick, short strokes, so as not to open the attacker's guard or leave him overextended on a miss. A quick probing slash won't shear through a ribcage.

And even if rib can't be cut, they can sword can slip between them,

Not very easily. Ribs aren't just parallel like slats on a venetian blind. They angle down from the sternum toward the sides of the pelvis, then curve and slope back up toward the spine. To sip between with a cut you'd need to make an upward angled cut from the side.

A point, sure, that can side off a rib and sip between.

and there's plenty on tissue outside the ribcage to cut.

Nothing vital.

Muscle, sure, and fat (especially in the SCA), but no big bloodvessels or organs are located outside the ribs. The ribs exist to protect your vitals.

So i can't see I can't see how cutting on the chest height is the waste of time. Is probably less deadly than attack on the lower areas, but deadly anyway.

"Waste of time" is a bit strong, but a quick cut to the chest will very likely be a shallow cut along the ribs, and is not likely to kill or disable your enemy very quickly. He may die of infection later, but the battle will long be over.

Spiryt

2009-03-25, 06:53 AM

Sure, a blade can cut bone. Butchers do it every day.

But most of these test cuts are executed with a windup against a stationary and harmless target. In combat, a target won't keep still and let you pick your spot like that, so the chance of hitting at an angle other than optimum is much greater. Plus, if you do wind up like that, your opponent will see it coming a mile away and dodge or parry it, or maybe just jam a blade in you while you draw back like that.

Combat cuts tend to be quick, short strokes, so as not to open the attacker's guard or leave him overextended on a miss. A quick probing slash won't shear through a ribcage.

I could argue about those guys not being the best cutters, that targets aren't supported so well as in human body (you can see how they swing), but mostly agree with you.

That's not the point though. The point is that you don't need " a magical cut trough anything weapon " to cut the ribs.

A good strike can cut few ribs, very good one can perhaps sever all ot them. Nothing magical about this.

And good strikes at chest certainly happened. Whenever someone, achieved opportunity to do so, he cut.

Not very easily. Ribs aren't just parallel like slats on a venetian blind. They angle down from the sternum toward the sides of the pelvis, then curve and slope back up toward the spine. To sip between with a cut you'd need to make an upward angled cut from the side.

Not very easily, but at right angle it's certainly possible. Where did I write it would be easy.

Muscle, sure, and fat (especially in the SCA), but no big bloodvessels or organs are located outside the ribs. The ribs exist to protect your vitals.

They exist to protect your vitals from falls, claws, paws, falling rocks, and whatever, not from funkily shaped pieces of metal. Evolution doesn't work as fast as art of war.

"Waste of time" is a bit strong, but a quick cut to the chest will very likely be a shallow cut along the ribs, and is not likely to kill or disable your enemy very quickly. He may die of infection later, but the battle will long be over.

It's definetly way too strong. And it certainly could disable or put out a fight.

With Pectoralis major severed you can live surely live long with a bit of luck but not use your arm effectively.

Stephen_E

2009-03-25, 07:26 AM

In the Rape of Nanking some of the japanese officiers were supposed to have had a competition where they were trying to cut prisoners in half with swords, presumably katanas. I don't recall for certain whether they were decapitations or torso cuts although my recollection was torso cuts.

My understanding is they almost always, if not always, failed but ussually did get considerable penetration. It should be noted that these were effectively naked prisoners with no ability to resist although I don't know the exact method they were presented for cutting.

Stephen E

Mike_G

2009-03-25, 09:51 AM

Sure, you can hack pretty deep into a bound, naked Chinese civilian, so long as you have all the windup you need.

In ideal circumstances, you can cut through a human torso with a sword.

Combat is almost never an ideal circumstance. I can put four out of five rounds in a man sized target at 500 yards, with a standard M16A2, just iron sights, no scope, no fancy tuned up sniper rifle, under the more or less ideal conditions of the Parris Island Rifle Range. This does not mean that Marines in the field score hits 80% of the time at a quarter mile.

As far as cutting a guy who's actively fighting you, in the Crimean War, primary source accounts of British cavalrymen complain that they had a hard time cutting through the coats of the Russian cavalry with their sabres. They describe the strokes as "bouncing off," and recommended using the point to achieve penetration. The Russians weren't even wearing armor, juts heavy, furry coats, and a 19th centry cavalry sabre is a decent slashing weapon.

In practice, I would advise a swordsman to cut at the limbs and thrust at the trunk.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-03-29, 09:57 PM

http://forums.swordforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=74055&d=1207742089

This. The one on the right is exactly the sort of width ratio I'm looking for!

That sword is about of a length with the katzbalger, which was a type of shortsword used by landsknecht mercenary pikemen. That is to say, it looks to be a short sword (2.5 to 3 feet long, probably). A longer sword with those dimensions would be unwieldable, especially with such a (seemingly) light hilt.

Then again, you're talking about video game swords as examples. Certainly you can see that no real sword would have such dimensions, ever?

Spiryt

2009-03-30, 07:05 AM

That sword is about of a length with the katzbalger, which was a type of shortsword used by landsknecht mercenary pikemen. That is to say, it looks to be a short sword (2.5 to 3 feet long, probably). A longer sword with those dimensions would be unwieldable, especially with such a (seemingly) light hilt.

Then again, you're talking about video game swords as examples. Certainly you can see that no real sword would have such dimensions, ever?

Actually, this sword doesn't have to be unwieldy at all. Even if hilt is indeed a bit light, mass distribution in blade (taper, distal taper) and guard can make it all OK.

Sword is told to weight about 4 pounds and hilt is very obviously two handed, so it can't be 3 feet long.

And the sword on the left isn't katzbalger, at least not typical. It has katzbalger's guard, but is not short and stout, but rather very lean.

I would guess that this sword is indeed short for a longsword though, perhaps about 1006 - 108 cm. In fact seems a bit like two handed Oakeshott Type XIV, even though XIV weren't two handed.

Matthew

2009-03-30, 01:21 PM

Actually, this sword doesn't have to be unwieldy at all. Even if hilt is indeed a bit light, mass distribution in blade (taper, distal taper) and guard can make it all OK.

Sword is told to weight about 4 pounds and hilt is very obviously two handed, so it can't be 3 feet long.

I think he means the blade, which does look to be about 24"-36" (depending on how long the hilt actually is, I reckon about 9"-12"). I don't think he is saying this sword would be unwieldy, but a similar one with a 4-6' blade probably would.

I would guess that this sword is indeed short for a longsword though, perhaps about 106 - 108 cm. In fact seems a bit like two handed Oakeshott Type XIV, even though XIV weren't two handed.

Total length? Yeah, could be. Highest I would go is 48", and lowest 36", so 42" is a good average estimate. :smallbiggrin:

afroakuma

2009-03-31, 07:45 PM

Norsesmithy

2009-03-31, 11:38 PM

Blades curved like that do a good job of "biting" into the material you are cutting (flesh, firewood, grass, etc), but period metallurgy was inferior enough that the Falx was probably thick enough in the spine that a slimmer arming or longsword would cut better, because of less resistance in the medium being cut and a faster edge speed granted by being lighter overall.

Plus, you can do a lot of things with a straight two edged sword that you can't with a curved single edged blade, especially a reverse curved one.

Also, terminology issue, a proper real life longsword is used with two hands, a one handed sword is called an arming sword.

Spiryt

2009-04-01, 05:25 AM

From what can be seen from few reconstructions and sources, it's not really built like sword, it has much longer handle, and doesn't have any pommel or other heavy elements in the handle.

So weighted that way it would most probably hit heavier than most swords, and have completely different handling qualities.

Although much, especially the cutting ability, will depend on the blade qualities, aside from overall construction. Cutting will indeed depend more on velocity and blade geometry.

but period metallurgy was inferior enough that the Falx was probably thick enough in the spine that a slimmer arming or longsword

I don't know anything about Dacian metallurgy, or ancient metallurgy in general. Any evidences that it was so inferior that blade with thin, cutting profile couldn't be made?

MickJay

2009-04-01, 05:46 AM

That would depend a lot on what are you trying to achieve with it and how well is your opponent armed. Falx would have more problems cutting through the armour simply because it would be hitting it with larger part of its blade than a straight sword would, distributing the force more evenly. If it broke through or hit flesh directly, it would, similarly, cut more of the flesh, making a bigger wound (assuming it did not actually sever the limb, or head, off).

Mind you, I have no idea how the curve would affect the swinging of the blade; in case of sabres, the curve makes swinging and maneouvering much easier than in case of straight swords; but would falx also be easier, or more difficult, to swing?

In any case, falx was a more specialised weapon, and its users were feared (a lot), so it was probably quite effective at what it was supposed to do :smallwink:

Spiryt

2009-04-01, 06:01 AM

in case of sabres, the curve makes swinging and maneouvering much easier than in case of straight swords;
:
Can you explain what you mean by that. :smallconfused:

Tsotha-lanti

2009-04-01, 06:24 AM

In what ways were common footmen from various regions and periods equipped (armor mostly) in Europe in... let's say 1100-1500? The picture I'm getting from my reading is that both footmen and archers were usually limited to quilted/padded aketons and open helmets, but I've got no definite answers.

What types of heavy infantry existed beyond dismounted knights? How common was harness or even mail on footmen (as opposed to knights and men-at-arms)? I have the impression that professional warriors of earlier eras - Norman or Viking warriors, for instance - were essentially comparable to later knights in status and wealth, and therefore would probably be well-armored, despite "appearing" to be more comparable to footmen in the contemporary gamer view.

Relatedly, I'm getting the impression that squires were (at least in some periods) essentially equipped and employed the same as knights and men-at-arms were; how accurate is this? Could knights actually afford to outfit their squires in harness or hauberk? I imagine barons and counts could afford it, but would they do it? Lisa J. Steele's wonderful Fief indicates that a squire's "military wage" was essentially the same as a knight's in England in 1277 and 1415, for instance, which implies parity of equipment to me (in fact, for 1277, the squire is specified "with armored horse").

MickJay

2009-04-01, 07:29 AM

Can you explain what you mean by that. :smallconfused:

Aerodynamics and balance, it is easier to raise a sabre after a slash or change its direction during a strike than it would have been with a straight sword of similar size and weight.

Brainfart

2009-04-01, 10:56 AM

On the subject of penetration of plate, I'm pretty sure that any decent plate (i.e. not munitions quality) would have stopped war lances without difficulty.

I recall seeing 'Weapons that Made Britain', and there was an episode where Mike Loades charged at a quintain. The force transmitted was recorded and used to test lance heads against brigandine. Only superficial penetrations were recorded. Bear in mind that the lance head was a long triangular spike, which would have been bloody vicious against any armour. A pike head would have fared far worse against the superior plate armour that you would find in later periods.

I think that it is worth noting that greathelms were 'external' helmets. Most users had another helmet underneath, and there'd be a fair amount of space between the two. It is also quite clear that the greathelm used in the demo was of inferior quality, and any knight of even moderate means wouldn't have been caught dead wearing the thing.

Spiryt

2009-04-01, 11:41 AM

Aerodynamics and balance, it is easier to raise a sabre after a slash or change its direction duringer in a strike than it would have been with a straight sword of similar size and weight.

I see. I just can't see why. The only reason why curved sword should be faster than straight one is that it's relatively shorter than straight one (it's tip is closer to the hilt with the same weight). But that's marginal difference, at least, especially that this lenght donesn't dissapear it's just placed differently.
Sure, curve can create different blade geometry, but I can't see how it makes sword "faster"
Aerodynamics I don't get at all. If anything, straight sword would have better aerodynamics at thrust, but this doesn't have any meaning anyway. Swords not an aeroplane.

Some post medieval sabers were generally easier to recover and operate than medieval swords. Beacuse they way just much smaller swords. And

Norsesmithy

2009-04-01, 11:44 AM

I don't know anything about Dacian metallurgy, or ancient metallurgy in general. Any evidences that it was so inferior that blade with thin, cutting profile couldn't be made?Well, period pieces I could find pictures of were quite thick in the spine, similar to old agricultural sickles, and even Roman blades tended to have more spine than the blades of 400-600 years later.
Aerodynamics and balance, it is easier to raise a sabre after a slash or change its direction during a strike than it would have been with a straight sword of similar size and weight.This is not my experience.

Spiryt

2009-04-01, 12:04 PM

Well, period pieces I could find pictures of were quite thick in the spine, similar to old agricultural sickles, and even Roman blades tended to have more spine than the blades of 400-600 years later..
Well, it could be intended effect with Roman blades though, to be stiffer and "thustier" against armor.

And many Celtic swords not only didn't have spines, instead they had fullers.

Matthew

2009-04-01, 01:23 PM

Regarding the falx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falx):

the Wikipedia article implies it to be a powerful offensive weapon. How would it measure up against the damaging qualities of a longsword or two-handed sword?
The falx is basically a short hafted pole arm. Being forward curving the point can be used, or the edge of the blade. There are rumours that the Romans adopted heavier armour because of the falx, but those are unsubstantiated in terms of causality. Being a two handed short hafted pole arm, it was a pretty powerful weapon, but no more than a danish axe or a two handed sword. You could do different things with it, (a pulled cut will, for instance cause the hooked end to hook whatever you are pulling on.

In what ways were common footmen from various regions and periods equipped (armor mostly) in Europe in... let's say 1100-1500? The picture I'm getting from my reading is that both footmen and archers were usually limited to quilted/padded aketons and open helmets, but I've got no definite answers.

What types of heavy infantry existed beyond dismounted knights? How common was harness or even mail on footmen (as opposed to knights and men-at-arms)? I have the impression that professional warriors of earlier eras - Norman or Viking warriors, for instance - were essentially comparable to later knights in status and wealth, and therefore would probably be well-armored, despite "appearing" to be more comparable to footmen in the contemporary gamer view.

Relatedly, I'm getting the impression that squires were (at least in some periods) essentially equipped and employed the same as knights and men-at-arms were; how accurate is this? Could knights actually afford to outfit their squires in harness or hauberk? I imagine barons and counts could afford it, but would they do it? Lisa J. Steele's wonderful Fief indicates that a squire's "military wage" was essentially the same as a knight's in England in 1277 and 1415, for instance, which implies parity of equipment to me (in fact, for 1277, the squire is specified "with armored horse").

The knight transformed over the period 1100 to 1500, so it is kind of hard to talk in generalities. The squire by the end of the period was more frequently a squire by choice, as the social expenses of "knighthood" had hugely increased, but the military function remained largely the same. They were not squires in the sense of "serving a knight" or "knight in training".

A "man at arms" was the more frequently used phrase after 1300 or so to describe knights, squires and sergeants (even Genoese crossbowmen). The reason for this was that they were socially different, but militarily they fulfilled very similar functions.

"Heavy infantry" doesn't really refer to armour or weight, but to organisation. They stand very close together in a formation and attack that way. An unarmoured Swiss pikemen would count for that purpose, as much as a fully harnessed foot knight.

Your question is therefore more likely, what kind of armoured footmen was available in the period 1100-1500, which remains a far ranging question. In the twelfth century assize of arms in England we know that there was a class of men between freeman and knights who were expected to provide themselves with a mail shirt (rather than the mail hauberk expected of knights).

Typically, though, armies were equipped according to the means of those who raised them, which means that they were often armed by people with more money. During Charlemagne's time, bishops were ordered to bring their spare armour and weapons to the mustering so they could be allocated to those who had none, and this went on in the period 1100-1500 as well (though the fact that they had to be ordered should tell you that they did not do so willingly).

You might be interested in this article: La Régle du Temple as a Military Manual or How to Deliver a Cavalry Charge (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/bennett1.htm), by Matthew Bennett.

MickJay

2009-04-01, 01:48 PM

This is not my experience.

I do not have any actual experience with sabres; the study I read was mostly on development of Polish sabres from XVI-XIX centuries; these were typically more curved and lighter than the models used by, for example, US cavalry.

Norsesmithy

2009-04-01, 03:09 PM

Well, it could be intended effect with Roman blades though, to be stiffer and "thustier" against armor.

And many Celtic swords not only didn't have spines, instead they had fullers.

Yes, they had fullers, but they still had a meatier cross section than later swords (up until you start to come across swords meant for fighting plate armored opponents).

Raum

2009-04-01, 06:35 PM

Aerodynamics and balance, it is easier to raise a sabre after a slash or change its direction during a strike than it would have been with a straight sword of similar size and weight.Regarding aerodynamics, this is false. A single edge blade with a roughly triangular cross section will have a higher coefficient of drag than a double edge blade with a diamond cross section. Though I don't believe it will matter given the relatively low speeds attainable when swinging a blade with muscle power.

Balance does matter, specifically the center of balance. But it's just as easy to have a poorly balanced saber as it is to have a poorly balanced straight sword. I must admit, I was surprised by the light and responsive feel of a well balanced sword the first time I picked one up. Previous experience had been with cheap and poorly made reproductions.

MickJay

2009-04-02, 04:55 AM

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Glownie.svg/300px-Glownie.svg.png

examples of cross sections

http://polskaszabla.webpark.pl/bialabron_pliki/k3.jpg

and some late XVIII century examples, 278 was quite widespread. Note that about a 1/3-1/4 of the blade was slightly broader and double-edged, for thrusting.

As I said, I do not have any direct experience with sabres, but at least some experts tend to make a point of easier handling/quicker cuts with sabres.

Spiryt

2009-04-02, 01:22 PM

As I said, I do not have any direct experience with sabres, but at least some experts tend to make a point of easier handling/quicker cuts with sabres.

Of course they do. I believe that all experts agree that *easier to move * is good word when most comparing sabres to most medieval swords.

I only have some knowledge about polish sabers from XVII - XVIII century, but I'm pretty sure that they were similar around the Europe.

They're just simply lighter and smaller weapons than your average medieval sword, with different blade geometry and probably more weight in handle due to guard. So they're naturally "easier to move".

Polish hussar battle sabers weighted around 800 -900g with lenght similar to "average" medieval sword (90 -100 cm). While swords that lenght under 1kg were pretty common, especially in early medieval, still even they're heavier. Probably more blade heavy too.

Sabers were common dueling weapons, made for manuevers like cuts from the wrist and stuff, which were not common before rapier, sabers and smallswords duelling era.

And that's it. Curve has nothing to do with it, as far as I know at least.

http://www.bronbiala.pl/marcin.php?rodzaj=24

Matthew

2009-04-02, 02:22 PM

It is all relative. A curved sword will, much like an axe, concentrate its force on a smaller area than a straight sword, so you should get a slightly better chopping action. The trade off is that you cannot use the back of the blade, thrusting ability is reduced, and the method of fighting is different.

We are talking very minor differences of capability here, though, hardly even observable, and dependent on the wielder. I highly recommend this series of videos to give an idea of the speed and chopping power of a straight medieval single handed sword:

http://www.albion-swords.com/cutting-knight.htm

Spiryt

2009-04-02, 02:42 PM

Heh, I've seen this (and so many others) argument in countless discussion about immortal " Straight vs Curved".

I didn't intend to open the Pandoras thread, I was just pointing out that curve of the blade doesn't make it faster from whatever reason. :smallwink:

PersonMan

2009-04-02, 03:58 PM

Raum

2009-04-02, 05:04 PM

Philistine

2009-04-02, 09:55 PM

Dervag

2009-04-02, 11:36 PM

Modern anti-air weaponry is extremely effective against anything it can see. Hence the heavy emphasis on stealth in modern aircraft.

However single installations are vulnerable - I wouldn't consider a single SAM battery and radar installation 'modern'.The reason this is a problem is that modern aircraft aren't limited to guns and bombs when it comes to attacking ground targets. They also carry long-range missiles designed for standoff attacks, such as the AGM-84 SLAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standoff_Land_Attack_Missile). These missiles have ranges of tens or hundreds of miles, and can quite easily home in on infrared signatures or GPS coordinates. There are also specially designed "anti-radiation missiles" that home in on radar pulses, such as the aptly named AGM-88 HARM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM).

Therefore, having one air defense site sitting in isolation is a recipe for losing an air defense site, because it will get targeted from long range by these kinds of missiles as soon as the enemy figures out where you are.
________

AA guns are not very useful for air battles fought beyond visual range (which seems to be the norm for the foreseeable future); they simply don't have the reach. Heavy flak guns that fire bursting shells are very much obsolete. However, automatic AA guns in the 20 to 30mm range can be very effective against attack helicopters and enemy close air support, so AAA isn't entirely outdated.

The role of automatic medium-caliber AA weapons can also be taken by "MANPADs," man portable air defense missiles like the infamous Stinger. Depending on circumstances, either of these might be preferable, or a mix of both; I'm not sure.

PersonMan

2009-04-03, 03:48 PM

Thanks. Now I can put the PCs into aerial combat without [much] fear of having less than no idea of what I'm doing.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-04-05, 07:47 PM

Swordguy

2009-04-05, 09:27 PM

Were gauntlets, as in the piece of armor, worn over mail mittens or leather gloves, or were they padded of their own accord?

On that note, was harness at any time actually worn over mail? A cuirass over a hauberk, greaves over chausses, and so on?

From all the references I've found, late period harness - like gothic armor - seems to have simply incorporated some pieces of mail - a ventail or collar, a skirt, pieces in the joints (although it seems often the joints were left unmailed, protected only by the big knee-cops, elbow-cops, and besagews). Is the notion of plate-over-mail just a fantasy RPG thing?

Early bits of plate were certainly worn over mail. "Gutter"-pattern greaves and vambraces and knee and elbow cops were just strapped on over the hauberk when first introduced. This goes on until about 1410 or so*.

Armor from c.1400 (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/arms/ho_29.154.3.htm)

It's actually an interesting point that, at late as Agincourt in 1415, common French knights are wearing mail and plate combinations - NOT the shining full plate everyone keeps thinking of (which means that, theoretically, they're far weaker against bowfire than a full-plate equipped force might have been).

"In addition, the French were so weighed down by armour that they could hardly move forward. First, they were armed with long coats of armour, stretching beyond their knees and being very heavy. Below these they had 'harnois de jambes' (leg armour) and above 'blans harnois ' (white i.e. polished armour). In addition they had 'bascinets de carvail'. So heavy were their arms that as the ground was so soft they could scarcely lift their weapons. (Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 2000)

So, the French are wearing mail hauberks, with plate leg armor (greaves and knee cops - which makes sense considering that the most vulnerable part on a horseman is his legs), breastplates at least (possibly a full breast-and-back), and bascinets with mail additions. I'd say that plate-over-mail is very definitely a Real-life thing, not just a D&D trope.

It's not until about 1420 that we see what's commonly termed "full plate" in any real quantity, and the heyday of full plate is the last bits of the Hundred Years War on through the War of the Roses (armor later than about 1600 becomes more for tourneys than for warfare). This is the period where armor is worn "on its own", with only mail gussets and the occasional aventail as a holdover from previous armors. Once you've gotten to the level of metalworking that full plate entails, layering mail under it is counterproductive (too heavy and bulky - especially in the joints where it bunches). The lessons of the French, who were weighted down by overlapping armors at Agincourt, should have helped dispel the notions in Europe that 2 layers were necessary.

*It's worth pointing out that armor is recycled and reused repeatedly - so kings and very wealthy knights might have full plate as early as 1400-1410, but it doesn't see any widespread use until the 1420's. Meanwhile, the style of armor pictured in the link could have been worn by a poor knight well through the 1460's if taken care of - well after "full plate" would have been the norm. Heck, I remember a painting from the English Civil War (mid-1600's) showing a guy wearing a mail hauberk that wouldn't be out of place on a Viking, a late-Crusades-style Barrel Helm, High Gothic greave/sabotons (the really pointy plate shoes) and High Gothic Gauntlets. 800 years of armor development on one guy. Whatever works.

ondonaflash

2009-04-06, 11:17 PM

In what manner does one proficiently wield a two handed sword? I know first hand that in foil fencing there are various feints, and strikes that are generally favored over others, and I know the primary techniques involved with fencing.

I assume there is a similar style involved with Greatswords but I'm not sure how it is executed. My thinking would be that with a sword that size you'd have to limit yourself to simple sweeping attacks and full body thrusts, and the axis on which one would block seems kind of limited. If someone could briefly break down the various stances, footwork and basic blade techniques involved in using a two-handed sword I would be very grateful.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-04-06, 11:30 PM

Can you specify what swords you mean? Most two-handed sword fighting is longsword fighting (see Talhoffer's fechtbuch, for instance). Then there's "war swords," basically bigger versions of longswords, likely used in the same manner. I don't think there are very many fechtbuchs or the like for doppelhanders/zweihanders (the 6' infantry war swords), but they were used more like spears, in the half-swording fashion, and mostly used to cut when breaking through pikes or spears.

ARMA is a great source. (http://www.thearma.org/essays/Talhoffer/HT-Web.htm) That's Talhoffer longsword, the basic knightly sword of later medieval. It was an exceedingly elegant weapon, capable at long and short ranges (half-swording), and used to thrust, slash, hack, and feint. Half-swording was using the sword as a short spear, essentially, to penetrate armor; morte-striking was the almost impossible-looking technique of grabbing the sword by the hilt (you're wearing gauntlets or mail mittens) and striking an opponent's head with the hilt to stun them. As the images indicate, grappling was part of fighting with a longsword; you used it as a lever, or got inside your enemy's reach and discarded the sword entirely, grappling by hand to get your opponent on the ground or in a bind, and possibly took out your dagger (there were daggers, like poniards and rondels, specifically intended for stabbing disadvantaged knights in full harness).

Longsword stances at ARMA. (http://www.thearma.org/essays/StancesIntro.htm) Footwork is, in my experience, very much uniform whether you're doing kendo, kung fu, Olympic fencing, actual rapier, or whatever else.

Norsesmithy

2009-04-07, 01:29 AM

As Tsotha-lanti said, the large two handed swords were exceedingly versatile weapons, in large part because not only can you do most of the things you can do with a smaller sword, but the size allows you to do things that are not practical with a shorter sword.

As far as I can tell, the 60-70 inch greatswords were used in all of the same ways the Tallhoffer manual shows longswords being used.

Period pieces seemed to indicate that you could even throw one effectively (or at least effectively enough that doing so was banned in judicial duels).

Fhaolan

2009-04-07, 02:46 AM

If you're talking the big suckers like slaughterswords and zweihanders, I can help you a little.

First off, most of this won't make sense unless you *see* it. Even the fight-manuals that cover this stuff don't make much sense (although they had different reasons for that), so bear with me.

There are several guards, maneuvers, and techniques to use with the big swords. The biggest difference you're going to run into though, is the footwork. If you were trained in modern foil fencing, you're going to be limited to very linear movements. The greatswords, like most swords, polearms, and other 'real' weapons, are not bound by the piste (the path of fence). Crossover steps, side steps, diagonal steps, all in advancing and retreating will be used constantly. If you study older fencing, it will introduce you to many additional guards that have been dropped from modern fencing as they were specifically to guard against attacks that are no longer 'legal'. Although you do see them occasionally, they are very rare, and are usually thrown in as visual miscues to confuse opponents.

As for guards, greatswords have a lot of flexibility, allowing them to use many smaller sword-guards, as well as polearm guards. Depending on exactly who you read, many of them have silly-sounding names like 'the Closed Iron Gate', 'the Open Iron Gate', and whatnot. If you are opposed by another greatsword, or a poleweapon, you are more likely to adopt half-sword techniques than the straight guards and maneuvers that you are used to. This is where you hold the hilt with one hand, and grasp the blade itself with your other hand. This allows you to move the sword much faster, with increased leverage. Do this with a foil, and you'll just look silly, but with longswords, greatswords, and other two-handed weapons it will make sense. Some zwiehanders and other big blades have secondary crossguards on the blades to improve the level of hand protection while performing half-sword.

I don't have space to witter on about all the different guards and stances, but I will go over one of the more popular guards in the half-sword school. Grasp the pommel in one hand and hold it near to, or above your head. The other hand grasps the blade so that the blade is pointed downwards, still angled towards your opponent. This allows you to move the sword to block or parry either side, while it takes very little to rotate the sword to block anything coming down at your head. In fact, many greatswords have huge primary cross-guards that can be used to block blows coming from above without rotating the sword. Given the size of the hilt, actually blocking with the hilt rather than the blade is fairly normal. There are several maneuvers that flow directly from this stance, and pretty much only from this stance, so it shows up a lot in greatsword fighting demos. :)

Oh, and remember that with fencing your footwork and guards are constantly changing. With greatsword that is also true, but in addition the way you grip the sword also shifts throughout the bout. Not as much as when you are working poleweapons, where freezing your hands on the shaft of a poleweapon is a quick way to lose a bout, but still you will be switching from half-sword to full sword, to one-hand with arm brace, etc. throughout the bout. The entire sword is a weapon, not just the pointy bit at the end. Bludgeoning with the pommel, using the cross-guard as a pick, etc. is all expected and normal techniques with this weapon.

Avilan the Grey

2009-04-07, 03:42 AM

(About Greatswords and Two-handed Swords)

...This brings me back all the way to my post about ancient civilizations in general and the extreme disregard for their knowledge and skill that has been displayed over the years.

How many times have we seen arguments over the years about these weapons from people apparently unaware of these fighter manuals, and other paintings, etc?

I think one statement holds true for a lot of things: If X really was too clumsy / inefficient / lousy / stupid / etc then why was it used for at least Y years by Z amount of people?

(And I know this really not an issue on this thread at all).

Avilan the Grey

2009-04-07, 03:50 AM

Early bits of plate were certainly worn over mail. "Gutter"-pattern greaves and vambraces and knee and elbow cops were just strapped on over the hauberk when first introduced. This goes on until about 1410 or so*.

Armor from c.1400 (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/arms/ho_29.154.3.htm)

It's actually an interesting point that, at late as Agincourt in 1415, common French knights are wearing mail and plate combinations - NOT the shining full plate everyone keeps thinking of (which means that, theoretically, they're far weaker against bowfire than a full-plate equipped force might have been).

"In addition, the French were so weighed down by armour that they could hardly move forward. First, they were armed with long coats of armour, stretching beyond their knees and being very heavy. Below these they had 'harnois de jambes' (leg armour) and above 'blans harnois ' (white i.e. polished armour). In addition they had 'bascinets de carvail'. So heavy were their arms that as the ground was so soft they could scarcely lift their weapons. (Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 2000)

Add to this the blinding hail of arrows. Simple math, conservative numbers, suggests that the English unleashed 50.000 arrows a minute over the advancing French. (Probably more. Math goes as follows: 5000 archers x 10 arrows a minute. Practice with real weapons, by trained bowmen, suggests that they really could fire about twice as fast (100.000 arrows a minute) but let's make sure we don't exaggerate things).
Even if you had an armor that stopped the arrow (proper plate armor did stop longbow arrows. Not crossbow bolts, but longbow arrows. Besides, volleyed arrows travel much slower than a straight shot arrow) with a "rain" like that it was quite probable that an arrow would hit you in a gap somewhere).

Picric Hamster

2009-04-07, 03:15 PM

Add to this the blinding hail of arrows. Simple math, conservative numbers, suggests that the English unleashed 50.000 arrows a minute over the advancing French. (Probably more. Math goes as follows: 5000 archers x 10 arrows a minute. Practice with real weapons, by trained bowmen, suggests that they really could fire about twice as fast (100.000 arrows a minute) but let's make sure we don't exaggerate things).
Even if you had an armor that stopped the arrow (proper plate armor did stop longbow arrows. Not crossbow bolts, but longbow arrows. Besides, volleyed arrows travel much slower than a straight shot arrow) with a "rain" like that it was quite probable that an arrow would hit you in a gap somewhere).
Don't forget that not every single man in the French ranks was a heavily-armored knight, squire, or man-at-arms. The majority of armies was staffed by ill-equipped men.

Swordguy

2009-04-07, 04:24 PM

Don't forget that not every single man in the French ranks was a heavily-armored knight, squire, or man-at-arms. The majority of armies was staffed by ill-equipped men.

Important point, and one that gets lost a lot. Even if plate-and-chain is the best common armor amoung knights, many poorer knights may very well have been wearing Crusader-era chain hauberks and sugarloaf helms - better than nothing, but certainly out of fashion and less protective than the more modern equipment.

To say nothing of the levied soldier...

VelvetThunder

2009-04-08, 05:20 AM

I just recently bought a Nagamaki, and I cannot Find a kata / Demonstation video for it. Any suggestions?

Fhaolan

2009-04-08, 11:08 AM

I just recently bought a Nagamaki, and I cannot Find a kata / Demonstation video for it. Any suggestions?

There's a lot of rampant speculation out there about the Nagamaki, but very little verifiable information. What little I've been able to find out about the methodology of use sounds a little bit fishy, really.

According to a friend of mine who knows more about Oriental martial arts than I do, there appears to be two schools. The more reasonable-sounding one uses maneuvers as if it's a naginata, with consideration given to the fact the shaft is considerably shorter. As far as he can tell, it's pretty much interchangable with the no-dachi katas.

The other school... okay, I correct myself, this one's *really* fishy. It works against everything I've ever learned with the usage of long-handled two-handed weapons. According to that school, you're supposed to pretend it's a katana, and fix your hands on the hilt without moving them, and it has very limited movements, sweeping back and forth and up and down. I'm sorry, but this is lunacy. To my knowledge you don't fix your hands on a katana either, and any style with extreme limitations as to movement is going to get you killed in a real fight. This sounds more like something made up from whole cloth, when an 'expert' is confronted with a weapon they've not seen before and is unable to say 'I don't know' due to ego.

VelvetThunder

2009-04-08, 04:25 PM

Hmm That does help though. I'll look for a Nodachi One then.. and just use it. I Agree with you using it as if it were a Katana makes little sense.

Crow

2009-04-08, 05:16 PM

Anybody here have any experience with swords by Albion Swords? Decent, or crap?

Swordguy

2009-04-08, 08:24 PM

Anybody here have any experience with swords by Albion Swords? Decent, or crap?

Excellent. My favorite is still Del Tin for actually having a real sword, but Albion is my 2nd place in this category*. Angus Trim is third.

*Which is different than having a stage-combat sword, or a reenactment sword. Stage combat stuff, for example, is built heavier-than-normal to compensate for heavy use - good stuff there is Vulcan's Forge (Lewis Shae, Armorer), Legacy Forge, and Baltimore Knife&Sword. If you use an Albion or Del Tin weapon through the course of a show, it's liable to get chewed up, because the "fake" stage fighting styles abuse the blade more than actual combat does.

Fhaolan

2009-04-10, 09:55 AM

Concur with Swordguy (like usual). Albion does good work.

Crow

2009-04-10, 07:48 PM

Thanks. I just ordered the Hersir with an oxblood grip.

Swordguy

2009-04-10, 07:57 PM

Thanks. I just ordered the Hersir with an oxblood grip.

Peterson Typology Type H, right? Nice!

Diamondeye

2009-04-13, 04:57 PM

I was wondering how effective modern anti-air is? I know that it depends a lot on the pilot, aircraft, etc. But how well would, say, a SAM battery and an AA gun do against a generic strike fighter? Maybe an F-15 Strike Eagle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-15E_Strike_Eagle (Sorry for the bulky link, I don't know how to link-ify single words)

It depends a lot on what you're defining as "modern". SAM systems like PATRIOT, AEGIS/Standard, and on the Russian side the various missiles in the S-300 (SA-10, -12a, -12b, and -20)series and the S-400 (SA-21)are exceedingly effective against aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles compared to their predecessors. Their heat-seeking smaller brothers are also very good. Defenses of the past such as chaff and flares are essentially worthless against the most modern systems, hence the arrival of ever-more-advanced ECM and of course, stealth, not to mention standoff weapons to keep the launch aircraft as far as possible.

On the other hand, systems from the Viet Nam era, such as the SA-2, and even systems from the late cold war aren't nearly as effective, even though they could be considered "modern" in the sense of beloning to the guided missile era, and not the first generation of it, either. These systems are still in use by many countries such as North Korea.

Anyhow the exact effectiveness depends on the system, the target, and the environment. An F-15 is a very big radar target for a fighter, while an F-22 is a much smaller target. The same applies to bombers; a B-52 is an enormous radar contact, a B-1B much smaller, and a B-2 much smaller than that. In the case of the F-15, a new "stealthy" version ahs just become available, and while probably not as stealthy as the F-22 it certainly can't hurt.

What the aircraft is doing matters too; at low altitudes terrain can be used to mask from radar, but that opens the aircraft to high risk from gunfire and low-altitude SAM systems, especially shoulder-launched. The SAM used in Behind Enemy Lines is a good example of an older-model low altitude IR SAM, although the missiles' ability to hang on to the F/A-18 are wildly exaggerated for theatrical effect.

Finally, different SAMs are optimized for different targets; for example the SM-2 is the standard U.S. naval antiaircraft SAM while the SM-3 is optimized for ABM targets, as is the U.S. Army THAAD system. On the Russian side, the S-300 comes in mny variants, both land and naval, some optimized against aircraft and cruise missiles, others against ballistic attack - but none to be trifled with.

So the basic answer is that the most modern antiaircraft systems are very effective, but so are the aircraft and weapons designed to beat hem. Systems that were modern during, say, Desert Storm might easily be outclassed by the best that's out there, tohugh, so a system's effectiveness will decrease fairly rapidly with age using today as the point of comparison.

The question gets even more complex if you consider defense against ICBM or orbital threats, which some of these systems can potentially engage and others not mentioned above are designed to defend against, such as the U.S. missile defense system or the Russian GORGON. The use of nuclear warheads in either offense or defense would change things greatly as well.

Norsesmithy

2009-04-13, 10:28 PM

Tsotha-lanti

2009-04-14, 05:02 PM

2009-04-14, 05:18 PM

One thing to remember is that most of the newer systems haven't seen real world use, and its pretty easy for a manufacturer or country to say that system x is a hundred times better than they system y it is replacing (and it may even be true, for some parameters), when most of the countries fielding the best gear can feel pretty confident that their new stuff will never have to face off against the other guy's new stuff.I'd actually extend that logic further. Has there ever been a matchup, in the last few decades, of modern SAM systems vs modern aircraft? Certainly its extremely difficult to imagine one outside of a scenario in which the balance of forces was ridiculously asymmetrical. Like most Cold War debris, we've simply never seen these systems operational in the role that they were designed for

Mike_G

2009-04-14, 06:23 PM

How are puncture- or thrust-wounds treated? Say, a puncture all the way through the muscle of the arm, or a puncture halfway into the belly or chest? Are they stitched shut or left open? How are veins and organs fixed - by opening up the body and stitching them together?

Yes. We go in a stitch up the holes. Generally.

Today we can CT scan and see which organs are bleeding without opening you up. Back in the day, they had to either do exploratory surgery, or a Diagnostic Peritoneal Lavage, where they irrigate the body cavity with saline and see if there's bleeding and from where.

Non-invasively without advanced imaging like toady, they could use palpation (Poking and prodding) or percussion (that old school thing where you see a doctor tap on the chest or back with his hand) to see if a body cavity was full of air, fluid or solid organ. No as accurate, obviously, but cutting somebody always risks infection, and back before sterile techniques and antibiotics, it's reasonable to not want to risk an open procedure to check for damage, especially if the wound channel looks like it's not going near organs.

How were such injuries treated back when surgery was still spelled chirurgery - by medieval and Renaissance "medicine" ? I can't imagine the treatment of the day would have amounted to much more than slapping on a poultice and a bandage, could it?

Germ theory was largely unknown, so you weren't going to get a sterile procedure. Even handwashing between surgeries wasn't standard. That said, the ancient Romans knew that alcohol would clean a wound and had less chance of infection, and there wee several complex instruments for extracting arrows used throughout the ancient and medieval world. Muslim medicine was very advanced compared to Europe in the Middle Ages, actually doing blood transfusions.

Standard procedure would be to clean the wound, bind it, and hope.

And how deadly are, and were, such punctures? It's my understanding that stab-wounds to the abdomen tend to be very lethal, and back in the day the infection potential of a puncture in the muscle would probably have been mortally dangerous - is this correct?

All depends what it hits. Puncture wounds don't cause a lot of pain, and often don't stop someone very quickly. I've treated several stabbing victims whom I had to chase down first, but who rapidly crashed when they bled enough. Solid organs (liver, spleen, kidneys) bleed like crazy. The intestines and stomach are full of nasty stuff that will lead to a horrible infection if punctured. Blood vessels, well, they bleed, a little or a lot, depending on how big and how badly they get cut.

On the other hand, a puncture may miss everything important. Seen that as well.

A clean puncture of a muscle will heal, and isn't likely to be fatal, or even crippling like a slash to a muscle would be, but you do bring up the very good point of infection in a world without penicillin, tetanus shots, or even regular bathing.

Today, infection is a big concern, but we have lots of ways to prevent it and treat it. As recently as a century ago, we didn't. Antibiotics are around 60-70 years old, the idea of clean procedures, such as boiling instruments and scrubbing up, not all that much older.

That said, the body will try to fight infection, and sometimes it wins. People did survive horrible wounds in antiquity, but people died from an abscessed tooth.

Hurlbut

2009-04-14, 07:00 PM

Don't forget that not every single man in the French ranks was a heavily-armored knight, squire, or man-at-arms. The majority of armies was staffed by ill-equipped men.Yet some of you are forgotting that the majority of the casualties among the french knights and such were in the aftermath of the battle after they got captured in the muddy chokepoint in front of the british formation. But that is not to be denying the arrow's contribution, just that it wasn't the main factor in the majority of the casaulties.

Kemper Boyd

2009-04-14, 07:47 PM

Raum

2009-04-14, 11:27 PM

I'd actually extend that logic further. Has there ever been a matchup, in the last few decades, of modern SAM systems vs modern aircraft? Certainly its extremely difficult to imagine one outside of a scenario in which the balance of forces was ridiculously asymmetrical. Like most Cold War debris, we've simply never seen these systems operational in the role that they were designed forThere have been several conflicts over the last couple decades between nations with access to fairly modern equipment. With the exception of the Iran - Iraq war, few have been between closely matched opponents. Remember, warfare is based on logistics. A general who can bring overwhelming material to bear will win as long as they don't screw up spectacularly. (It worked for Montgomery.)

Other conflicts worth analyzing include Desert Storm 1 & 2, Russia - Georgia, Falklands, and Russia - Afganistan. None of them were between equal militaries but each saw both opponents with at least some modern weapons. Interestingly, the only 'underdog' to win was Afganistan and the only modern anti-air weapons they had were hand launched SAMs...very effective against helicopters providing close air support but much less effective against fighters and bombers. Of course they did have other non-technological advantages.

Stephen_E

2009-04-15, 09:34 AM

Actually if we look at the last 30 odd years then the rule of thumb could be taken as the best aircraft around is very hitable by average AA tech if it's low flying. The survival technique for ground support appears to be flying tank style, ala A10s (the lack of A10s is a classic example of military politics trumping good logistics, strategy and tactics IMHO - sometimes militaries keep doing dumb things because of politics, not because there really is a smart non-obvious reason).

I'd suggest that you could claim that AA works against aircraft in that even logistically/technologically outmatched AA has the ability to suppress low-flying aircraft, and high-flying aircraft have a poor practical and theorectical track record against ground troops unless you go to real WMD (nuclear and large FAE bombs).

Stephen E

Dervag

2009-04-15, 06:00 PM

Muslim medicine was very advanced compared to Europe in the Middle Ages, actually doing blood transfusions...Uh, wouldn't that kill a lot more often than it would cure? No blood typing.

I'd suggest that you could claim that AA works against aircraft in that even logistically/technologically outmatched AA has the ability to suppress low-flying aircraft, and high-flying aircraft have a poor practical and theorectical track record against ground troops unless you go to real WMD (nuclear and large FAE bombs).

Stephen EThis is relevant.

For example, during the Second World War, the Germans put about 1/3 of their artillery budget, half their electronics and optics, and enormous amounts of manpower into building AA guns. Most of which did nothing but defend against Allied bombers coming at them from the West. They didn't even kill that many bombers.

But to consider the cost of the AA system, we have to consider the cost the Germans would have paid if they hadn't built one. In that case, they'd have taken far more damage from bomber attacks, because the bombers could have flown lower, slower, and straighter, hitting their targets far more often. Light flak guns in the 20-30mm range made things very dangerous for low flying aircraft operating near a defended target, which had all the advantages Stephen talks about.

Mike_G

2009-04-15, 06:35 PM

Uh, wouldn't that kill a lot more often than it would cure? No blood typing.

Well, blood type tends to be heavily influenced by ethnicity, so maybe much of the Arab world was the same blood type. I do know that they identified "good donors," whether by trial and error or some other method, I'm not sure.

Even without typing, over 40% of the population is Type O, who could donate to someone of any *** , and most people are RH +. If I had a massive hemorrhage in the days before blood typing, I'd be willing to roll the dice and hope.

I'm speculating on the specifics, but I do know they developed the process while we were still bleeding people to correct an imbalance of humors.

Ibn al Nafis was the first man to describe the circulatory system in detail, complete with the physiology of pulmonary, coronary and capillary circulation back in the late 13th century. Europeans didn't understand capillary circulation until the late 17th century.

Stephen_E

2009-04-15, 07:45 PM

Uh, wouldn't that kill a lot more often than it would cure? No blood typing.

As Mike G note you can identify "good dononrs" (O type) which will work. Also IIRC if you tranfuse from near family the odds of compatible blood types increases significantly.

Compare that to survival rates from injuries that have seen large amounts of blood loss and I'm betting the odds really favour intelligent use of blood tranfusions in a big way, even without blood typing.

As a literary side note of unintelligent blood tranfusions. Dracula (the original novel) has Van Helsing arrange for blood transfusions for one of Draculas female victims. They give blood from about 1/2 dozen different people with none of them related to her and no evidence of them been universal donors. When she subsequently dies it's Draculas fault. In reality with that kind of unintelligent untyped blood transfusing russian roulette looks positively safe.

The sad truth is that until relatively recently western medice has had many individual talented and effective practitioners, but mainstream medical society has been crap more interested in resticting trade to maximise profit and status than anything else.

Stephen E

Matthew

2009-04-19, 04:15 PM

Okay, here is a new (I think) question:

Q1.* Swimming in Armour

Anybody have any anecdotes or evidence as to the viability of this? I know of one modern example (http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/fireandsteel/swim.htm) where somebody went swimming in mail, and found it to be not very difficult, but he was only wearing the mail hauberk over linen .

I also know of some Roman examples of German troops swimming "fully armoured" across rivers, and of at least one Roman soldier who had the achievement of doing so inscribed upon his tombstone. Vegetius similarly enthuses that all recruits should be taught how to swim to better enable flight or pursuit across bodies of water.

It seems to me that it would be very difficult to swim in full harness, but probably not impossible for a short space of time (without a helmet, I should hope). From my own swimming experience (and anecdotes from Joinville and others), I suspect the main enemy to be fatigue, the effort of propelling an additional 40-80 lbs of gear being quickly energy sapping.

The main problems I am encountering in researching this is that in the majority of examples I have so far encountered, it is not clear whether swimming was done without horses, nor in what manner the swimmer was armoured, or whether the individual knew how to swim in the first place.

Of course, the legendary hero Beowulf had no problem swimming in armour, nor fighting a bunch of sea monsters at the same time! :smallbiggrin:

* I am numbering this question with the idea of maybe compiling a hyper linked list of frequently asked questions in the [I]Arms and Armour thread (I know this one probably isn't frequently asked, but you know...

Swordguy

2009-04-19, 07:16 PM

No idea. I'll put in on the back burner - our apartment complex has a pool that opens Memorial Day weekend - I'll take the harness out and try to swim (in the shallow end, obviously).

After all, what can POSSIBLY go wrong?

Norsesmithy

2009-04-19, 08:07 PM

I've seen it. It was a fitted set, but he was only wearing street clothes under it, not a gambeson or whatever. No helmet, no gauntlets, no sabotons, but vambraces, couters, rerebraces, pauldrons, breast plate, back plate, plackart, fauld, cuisses, poleynes, and greaves. No mail trim. Guess 40lbs or so.

Guy was lanky, but muscular. He waded into a lake until he was chest deep or so, then did a little paddling.

Then again, I have also seen someone swim in Interceptor, with plates, and that would be heavier and bulkier than a plate harness...

Stephen_E

2009-04-20, 09:58 PM

No personal experiance but I have come across commentary before that it's quite doable except that it is very fatiguing. As Mathew noted, thus the problem is that anything beyond a relatively short swim will see you drowning.

You can swim fully clothed but it is strongly recomended against doing so. I suspect for a lessor variant of why swimming in armour isn't reccommended.

Stephen E

Norsesmithy

2009-04-20, 10:35 PM

You can swim fully clothed but it is strongly recomended against doing so.
Stephen E

LOL, we had to swim 100 yards in jeans, tennis shoes, and a sweatshirt to PASS 9th grade gym class.

If you didn't make it, they let you retry throughout the year but they failed you if you never got it done.

Stephen_E

2009-04-21, 07:46 PM

I was crossing a river after dark with my mother's dogs once when I miscalculated in the dark with it having recently rained in the hills. Slipped and went down into the semi-rapids area which was above my head. I guess I could've swum but since I was carrying my sheepskin jacket above my head I pogoed the rest of the way across. That where you sink till your feet hit the bottem and then leap forward and up, greabbing air and moving forward. Thankfully I was packleader so the dogs assumed I didn't need help unless I indicated otherwise. I had a older sister who was 3x the swimmer I was, but whenever she went into water they considered dangerous they'd crowd around her which made swimming rather hard. :smallamused:

I really appreciated the dry sheepskin jacket on the otherside. :-)

Stephen E

UpholderSSK

2009-04-22, 02:37 AM

I'll forgo the usual long-time-reader intro and just say that I've been really impressed with the quality of discussion that goes on in these threads. A question of my own has finally come up, and while I think I've read through most of these topics, I may have missed the answer to it. If this is the case, I apologize!

Suffice to say I'm working on a new (I hesitate to say "original") RPG system with little to no connection to d20 D&D. I'm trying to put together a system in which melee combat is as varied and interesting to play as it was varied and lethal historically. One of the methods I'm employing to hopefully reach this goal is differentiating between how skilled fighters use different weapons in different ways versus a wide variety of armored and unarmored targets. Can anyone offer any insight into the nuts-and-bolts basic techniques of medieval axe fighting? I'm aware that the staggering variety of axes makes this a hard question to answer, but I'm just looking for basic techniques that might set an axe apart from a two-handed sword or even a very similar polearm like a halberd or bardiche.

Thanks in advance for your time and your expertise -- I'm hoping that by staying as realistic as is feasible the natural thrill and complexity of medieval combat will come through in the gameplay.

Matthew

2009-04-23, 08:11 AM

A couple of possible online resources for you:

Viking Axe at Hurstwic (http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_axe.htm)
Fight Earnestly Facsimile (http://www.thearma.org/Fight-Earnestly.htm)

Hmmn, I cannot seem to find the article on pole axes hosted by ARMA at the moment, but will link it if I find it.

vrellum

2009-05-09, 02:59 AM

Muslim medicine was very advanced compared to Europe in the Middle Ages, actually doing blood transfusions.

Do you have a source for this? It would quite interesting to read. I know Ibn al-Nafis described the circulatory system and made many discoveries (most of which seem to have been lost and later rediscovered). However, I can not find any references made to blood transfusions before the 17th century and they were all in Europe.

afroakuma

2009-05-16, 05:14 PM

I don't know if such a weapon has ever existed, but I am curious: how effective would a circular blade (such as a chakram) mounted as a polearm be?

Crow

2009-05-16, 06:21 PM

Do you have a picture or something? How would you propose mounting something like this? Because it will make a difference in how you would use such a weapon, if it is similar to an existing weapon.

Dervag

2009-05-16, 07:44 PM

I can see two ways to mount it. One would be to put a circular blade on the tip of the pole, with the pole running along the axis of the blade (like the axle of a wheel). The other would be to attach the pole at one point along the edge of the circular blade.

I'm not sure either method would be more effective than using any of the numerous specifically designed polearms, like a halberd.

Raum

2009-05-17, 03:28 PM

I don't know if such a weapon has ever existed, but I am curious: how effective would a circular blade (such as a chakram) mounted as a polearm be?Probably not very. If you mount your circular blade parallel to the polearm shaft you'll end up with a combination two bladed axe and dull (no point) spear. The catch is, you'd save weight and make it easier to handle by cutting your circle down to the point and axe blade of the common halberd.

MickJay

2009-05-17, 05:15 PM

Concerning swimming in armor/clothes, I remember reading about a naval catastrophe (during WW2?), the people who eventually got rescued were those who did not take off their outer garments (military-style coats, IIRC) before jumping into the water, all the others drowned before rescue arrived. I read about it a long time ago, so I'm not sure about the details, but the point was that in case of prolonged stay in cold water, extra layers of cloth actually increase chances of survival (even soaked through, they help to keep the body warm[er], and the extra encumbrance doesn't really matter if you only need to stay afloat).

Edit: the polearm: -----O - I imagine you're thinking about something like this? I can see it being used as a primarily slashing weapon, effective agains unarmored or lightly armored enemies, probably very effective against horses (?), again, without armor (thrusting/slashing). It could be used in a chopping manner like a long axe, but probably wouldn't be balanced well for that; thrusting would be rarely effective, I imagine, unless the blade was very sharp. There was some sort of polearm with a blade shaped more or less like this -----<) - apparently this design was either more functional, or easier to make (the sides had sharp tips which made chopping/puncturing more effective).

Crow

2009-05-17, 05:29 PM

Eorran

2009-05-19, 12:29 PM

Tsotha-lanti

2009-05-19, 01:00 PM

I was wondering how well a modern army would be able to deal with a fully developed trench system like the Western Front of WWI. I was under the impression that the main advantage of mechanized forces has more to do with the ability to move a combat-capable force faster than the opponent can erect barriers that keep it from advancing, rather than the ability to roll over any obstacle.

To give a specific scenario, let's use Ypres, 1917, as our starting point. We'll plunk down the I Marine Expeditionary Force, complete with their logistics and air support, but no Navy equipment (which I assume includes all the large landing ships). Their task is to make a breakthrough against the German lines.
Is this feasible? It seems to me that the only really practical thing to do is to use your air power to deny the enemy ability to resupply, thus turning trench war back into siege war.
Any other options? Remember that the ground in this area was churned to soup by months of rain, constant artillery barrages, and no drainage.

Trench warfare on such a scale was already more or less negated in WWII by the development of real tanks and of automobiles. In WWI, tanks were so slow, clumsy, and few in numbers that they were useless in punching through lines, but with WWII era tanks and cars - not to mention modern AFVs, IFVs, gunships, transport helis, and air support - a trench system would be a joke to break through, unless they had equivalent hardware. When an assault can move hundreds of miles per day, trenches become a joke; you have to keep your troops spread all across them, and if the enemy suddenly launched a concentrated assault on one spot they would break through, and begin to surround and flank the entrenched troops.

So basically, the reason you don't see trench warfare anymore is that it's not efficient against modern hardware. If it could hold up against tanks and APCs and jeeps and helis, it would still exist.

Edit: And yes, tanks could and would roll over a trench. That's why they have treads. The trench would be collapsed underneath, essentially.

Kemper Boyd

2009-05-19, 01:02 PM

tyckspoon

2009-05-19, 01:08 PM

Short answer: Hello, bunker busters. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster) Goodbye, trenches.

Longer answer: ^^what they said. Trenches don't hold up well when they can be attacked at any given point at any time. Especially when said attacks are delivered by precision-guided high explosives.

SilentDragoon

2009-05-19, 01:34 PM

Not sure if this goes here, but I was wondering a bit about historical armies and couldn't really think of a better place to ask. What % of the population would be considered typical or possible to be active military at any given time? How long could say, the Roman empire, sustain that x% of their total population as an active military force? I've been reading through some fantasy books and I've been trying to get a grasp on whether the maybe hundred thousand person army that nation Y is fielding is really reasonable for population Z for a decade long war.
My guess is that what era of technology the war is being fought in will be very important (with industry revolution and later technology implying less of a reliance on especially agricultural workers), as well as things like allied strength and supplies, but the only real information that I've been able to find are basic WWII statistics.

afroakuma

2009-05-19, 01:56 PM

Do you have a picture or something? How would you propose mounting something like this? Because it will make a difference in how you would use such a weapon, if it is similar to an existing weapon.

No picture, no, but I was thinking the pole would transfix the ring across the diameter, resembling a φ (lowercase phi). Would there be any practical value to such a weapon?

Fhaolan

2009-05-19, 02:20 PM

No picture, no, but I was thinking the pole would transfix the ring across the diameter, resembling a φ (lowercase phi). Would there be any practical value to such a weapon?

Yes, but it would be somewhat less effective than a normal poleaxe. In effect you've just created a double-bitted voulge, without any spearhead or other thrusting points. You could get the same effect from a double-bitted woodsman's axe head on a long pole (again, no thrusting points.)

EDIT: Thinking about it, you would be better off using an arc blade than a ring. It would end up like this ------). That would give you the ability to hook and to do pick-like strikes with the points on the sides. It would have to be sharpened to a very high level for thrusting to be effective, however, and due to lack of penetrative ability with that thrust it would be ineffective against any kind of armour. More of a slashing weapon.

Which means it would fall under the same category as various other 'martial arts' weapons. More difficult to use effectively than a normal weapon, but very showy with lots of movement.

Philistine

2009-05-19, 05:46 PM

I was wondering how well a modern army would be able to deal with a fully developed trench system like the Western Front of WWI. I was under the impression that the main advantage of mechanized forces has more to do with the ability to move a combat-capable force faster than the opponent can erect barriers that keep it from advancing, rather than the ability to roll over any obstacle.

To give a specific scenario, let's use Ypres, 1917, as our starting point. We'll plunk down the I Marine Expeditionary Force, complete with their logistics and air support, but no Navy equipment (which I assume includes all the large landing ships). Their task is to make a breakthrough against the German lines.
Is this feasible? It seems to me that the only really practical thing to do is to use your air power to deny the enemy ability to resupply, thus turning trench war back into siege war.
Any other options? Remember that the ground in this area was churned to soup by months of rain, constant artillery barrages, and no drainage.

First up, "a fully developed trench system" didn't feature in the offensive(s) launched from the Ypres area in 1917. The terrain was too wet (the area was originally a marsh, and had been drained and irrigated for farmland), so defenses in this sector centered on concrete bunkers rather than actual trenches. The example selected doesn't demonstrate the principle in question, because the terrain at Ypres would be more of an obstacle to a modern combined-arms force than any defensive works which could be built on that terrain; the assault on the Hindenburg Line at Cambrai would be more illustrative.

In any case, note what Tsotha-lanti and others have said: advances in technology and tactics were making massed-infantry armies and elaborate trenchworks obsolete even before the end of WW1. Now, nearly a century farther along, the only reason for an army to adopt WW1 tactics is if they're limited to WW1 technology - in which case a modern army will roll over them with very little effort, and there'll be nothing at all the trench-builders can do to stop it.

Dhavaer

2009-05-19, 08:13 PM

Is there a significant advantage in using steel weapons and armour instead of iron?

afroakuma

2009-05-19, 08:40 PM

Yes, but it would be somewhat less effective than a normal poleaxe. In effect you've just created a double-bitted voulge, without any spearhead or other thrusting points. You could get the same effect from a double-bitted woodsman's axe head on a long pole (again, no thrusting points.)

I was intending it as a reach slashing weapon; would the round edge allow it to escape from a cut more quickly or would it cause problems?

EDIT: Thinking about it, you would be better off using an arc blade than a ring. It would end up like this ------). That would give you the ability to hook and to do pick-like strikes with the points on the sides. It would have to be sharpened to a very high level for thrusting to be effective, however, and due to lack of penetrative ability with that thrust it would be ineffective against any kind of armour. More of a slashing weapon.

What if it were used for long, wide slashes?

Which means it would fall under the same category as various other 'martial arts' weapons. More difficult to use effectively than a normal weapon, but very showy with lots of movement.

To be fair, that's what I'm going for. I don't know about the melee effectiveness of a chakram, nor its thrown effectiveness for that matter, but I'd wager both are vastly inferior to any axe. What I'd like to know is if there is any notable utility in such a shape, and if there would be a function that it could serve effectively?

Norsesmithy

2009-05-19, 09:04 PM

I was intending it as a reach slashing weapon; would the round edge allow it to escape from a cut more quickly or would it cause problems?

In short, no.

In long, the curved section would not be competing with the flesh releasing properties of the top edge of the axe, it would be competing with empty air space.

I don't see it causing problems, but the kind of precise range control needed to line up a cut where it could provide an advantage is only possible when the combatants are of such disparate ability that the man with your funny weapon could win the fight bare handed. And such cuts would likely have to be superficial anyways.

I was wondering how well a modern army would be able to deal with a fully developed trench system like the Western Front of WWI. I was under the impression that the main advantage of mechanized forces has more to do with the ability to move a combat-capable force faster than the opponent can erect barriers that keep it from advancing, rather than the ability to roll over any obstacle.

To give a specific scenario, let's use Ypres, 1917, as our starting point. We'll plunk down the I Marine Expeditionary Force, complete with their logistics and air support, but no Navy equipment (which I assume includes all the large landing ships). Their task is to make a breakthrough against the German lines.
Is this feasible? It seems to me that the only really practical thing to do is to use your air power to deny the enemy ability to resupply, thus turning trench war back into siege war.
Any other options? Remember that the ground in this area was churned to soup by months of rain, constant artillery barrages, and no drainage.
As others have said, Ypres wasn't really a trench system.

But even against a properly established trench system (maybe the country maintaining it has such a ponderous bureaucracy that defenses a hundred years out of date are maintained simply because no one ordered the maintainers not to, and throw in an officer corps that lacks the imagination or perhaps the courage not to use such outdated defenses), the trenches could be easily eliminated by modern soldiers without their air support, armor, or even trucks, simply because of the increase in personal accuracy that has occurred since WW1.

The Mortars will land in the trenches on the first salvo, the individual riflemen are armed with rifles more accurate than the Sniper Rifles of WWII (the M16A4 used by our Marines shoots smaller groups and has a better scope than the vaunted M1903 sniper rifles), doctrine for advancing on a machinegun nest has been written, tested, and refined, the soldiers have grenade launchers and more reliable handgrenades.

Never mind the tremendous advantage in volume of fire, or explosive yield or body armor.

Throw trucks or APCs into the equation, and it really is a forgone conclusion.

The Aircraft are just gravy.

afroakuma

2009-05-19, 09:07 PM

In short, no.

In long, the curved section would not be competing with the flesh releasing properties of the top edge of the axe, it would be competing with empty air space.

I don't see it causing problems, but the kind of precise range control needed to line up a cut where it could provide an advantage is only possible when the combatants are of such disparate ability that the man with your funny weapon could win the fight bare handed. And such cuts would likely have to be superficial anyways.

Alright, so the ring-blade is out.

Is there any other unusual shape for a polearm blade that might be noticeably more practical?

Norsesmithy

2009-05-19, 10:51 PM

Probably not, after all, our ancestors experimented with hundreds of thousands of different specific polearm head designs, so the ones that became standardized were generally pretty good.

If you want a character to have a unique weapon for a given time period, just transplant something from another culture.

A Dagger Axe would be a different way of doing a halberd, but would be very visually distinct in Europe, just as a Halberd would be visually distinct in China, despite the two weapons being similar in function, characteristics, and use.

afroakuma

2009-05-19, 11:02 PM

Well, I'm trying for new. I have the falx for a new melee weapon, and I'm told that it's pretty effective, but I was looking for something more unusual in form. It's for an Arabian setting, if that's any help.

DrakebloodIV

2009-05-20, 01:38 AM

Alright, so the ring-blade is out.

Is there any other unusual shape for a polearm blade that might be noticeably more practical?

I have a few ideas.

1.) A spearhead with two blades coming off of it that curve back towards the wielder (think scythe blades but less giant). The blades are designed to trip and lacerate an opponents legs.

2.) A blade designed to reach around the opponent and hook them with a lever in the wielders hand that undoes some mechanism for launching a second attached blade towards the victim.

3.) A polearm with an openable rounded head designed to have metal or glass needles inserted into it. Both styles of needles are razor sharp and designed to hook in and damage flesh on insertion, but the glass ones are also designed to shatter on contact and hollowed out to have poison inserted.

4.) A polearm with a slow burning sponge soaked in tar and oil to burn and singe opponents.

5.) A spear with multiple hinged hooks around it that can be opened like an umbrella so that on a miss you can open it and catch an opponent from behind.

Also, couldnt the hollow area of your weapon be bladed on the inside and catch an opponent it it? Or if you couldnt use it to catch an opponents arm/leg couldn't you spin it while cutting, causing flesh to get caught in the center area and increasing the roughness of the cut?

Norsesmithy

2009-05-20, 01:39 AM

If the various Persian Pollaxes are not sufficently novel for you, many exotic polearm variations populated the Dark Continent, and would be quite novel, without being entirely out of place, in an Arabic setting.

India would also be a place I would look (though I suppose you probably already have, what with your mentioning of Chakrams).

Persian (http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=127500784)
African (http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/o/Africa/1954.5.74/)
African (http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/o/Africa/1943.6.126/)
African (http://faganarms.com/sudanesecommandersstaff.aspx)
Indian (http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/o/Daos,-Axes-and-Polearms/1884.21.41/)
Indian (http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/o/Daos,-Axes-and-Polearms/1915.48.69/)

Kemper Boyd

2009-05-20, 04:06 AM

In short, no.
But even against a properly established trench system (maybe the country maintaining it has such a ponderous bureaucracy that defenses a hundred years out of date are maintained simply because no one ordered the maintainers not to, and throw in an officer corps that lacks the imagination or perhaps the courage not to use such outdated defenses), the trenches could be easily eliminated by modern soldiers without their air support, armor, or even trucks, simply because of the increase in personal accuracy that has occurred since WW1.

That said, there has been examples of modern armies engaged in trench warfare, the most recent example being the Eritrean-Ethopian war. Trenches aren't totally obsolete, they can act as a force multiplier but they can be broken with a concentrated effort. Trenches and field fortifications work best in broken terrain or woods where using armor or airpower is significantly harder.

Norsesmithy

2009-05-20, 04:40 AM

I don't know if those nations could be said to field modern armies, though. Except for Toyota Cavalry and AKs, they don't fight modern. Hardly any indirect fire support, and even in the open, their Airforces mostly didn't contribute to the ground fight.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-05-20, 06:05 AM

Is there a significant advantage in using steel weapons and armour instead of iron?

Steel with carbon is harder; Damascus steel was used for swords for centuries, and as a harder substance it would allow for lighter armor than iron (or armor of the same weight but plain harder). It's also brittler, but this didn't seem to be a big enough negative (I'm not sure how the brittleness would manifest in armor and weapons, in practice). To my knowledge, only maille was never really updated to steel - it continued to be made of wrought iron.

If you're asking significant in a game sense, I'd say probably not. A steel weapon, or a steel suit of armor usually made of iron, could be a masterwork piece in D&D, but that's about it.

Dervag

2009-05-20, 11:32 AM

To give a specific scenario, let's use Ypres, 1917, as our starting point. We'll plunk down the I Marine Expeditionary Force, complete with their logistics and air support, but no Navy equipment (which I assume includes all the large landing ships). Their task is to make a breakthrough against the German lines.
Is this feasible? It seems to me that the only really practical thing to do is to use your air power to deny the enemy ability to resupply, thus turning trench war back into siege war.
Any other options? Remember that the ground in this area was churned to soup by months of rain, constant artillery barrages, and no drainage.Tracked vehicles would help with the mud and barbed wire. The Brits at Ypres had little or no significant antitank capabilitity, so even lightly armored vehicles would provide a great advantage.

Aerial cluster munitions would help a lot with the trenches. Troops can dive for deep, hardened shelter in the midst of an organized artillery barrage, but the first few shots will likely catch them in the open, causing far more damage. And cluster munitions are essentially a hailstorm of hand grenades, which is a nastily effective way to kill troops with no overhead cover.

Moreover, the modern Marines have far better infantry-artillery coordination than the WWI European armies did, because they have plenty of portable radios. Therefore, the Marines can hold their artillery in reserve and use it to destroy specific troublesome targets, rather than launching a massive barrage that destroys everything in sight. And they can keep using artillery to support them while they advance, because they can use radio to keep the artillery posted on where not to shoot. That was a major problem for World War One infantry.
_______

That said, there has been examples of modern armies engaged in trench warfare, the most recent example being the Eritrean-Ethopian war. Trenches aren't totally obsolete, they can act as a force multiplier but they can be broken with a concentrated effort. Trenches and field fortifications work best in broken terrain or woods where using armor or airpower is significantly harder.Trenches are better than "no trenches" if you're defending a specific location; soldiers still train to dig foxholes. But if you're relying on foxholes to make up for a serious disadvantage in the "modernity level" of your forces, you're in for a big disappointment. The world's modern armies have spent a long time figuring out how to never have to go through the hell of Verdun and Passchendaele again.

Fhaolan

2009-05-20, 11:39 AM

Is there a significant advantage in using steel weapons and armour instead of iron?

Missed this one the first time around. :)

Depending on the quality of the iron it can be softer than Bronze. Crude iron swords tend to bend and warp fairly easily, and is the source of the 'barbarians needing to stop and straighten their swords' story that thrown around in the ancient world.

KnightDisciple

2009-05-20, 12:44 PM

Steel with carbon is harder; Damascus steel was used for swords for centuries, and as a harder substance it would allow for lighter armor than iron (or armor of the same weight but plain harder). It's also brittler, but this didn't seem to be a big enough negative (I'm not sure how the brittleness would manifest in armor and weapons, in practice). To my knowledge, only maille was never really updated to steel - it continued to be made of wrought iron.

If you're asking significant in a game sense, I'd say probably not. A steel weapon, or a steel suit of armor usually made of iron, could be a masterwork piece in D&D, but that's about it.

Question: Since this steel is more brittle, would some form of "layering" be useful? I know certain sword and modern armor designs make use of such an idea. Was it used at all in ancient armors? By layering, I mean something like sandwiched, connected layers of armor, be they alternating hard and soft, or just laid at different angles. As opposed to how it's sometimes portrayed that one wears plate armor over mail (whether or not that actually was done).

Rasilak

2009-05-20, 03:53 PM

Actually, Damascus Steel is exactly that. But as far as I'm aware, it was not used for any kind of armor (probably because it is waay too expensive to manufacture, and the forging techniques allowed only for the layering of relatively small pieces - like 1kg for a sword - but not for large chunks - like 20kg for armor). And if you just tag together small pieces, you have weak spots where the pieces join. Making scale mail out of it wold be possible, but scale mail is inferior to plate armor anyway. And I can't think of any way to use this method for chain mail. The biggest possible pieces would probably be something like the plates in lorica segmentata, which still is (at least in some aspects) inferior to ordinary chain mail.
Using this layering techniques for big pieces would technically be possible with modern machinery, but isn't necessary (or even useful) anymore because our steel alloys are much better.
Oh, and the compound armor in modern tanks is an entirely different thing. The ceramic is mostly included for its heat resistance, not for its hardness.

Tsotha-lanti

2009-05-20, 04:31 PM

Would/did the relative brittleness of steel affect armor negatively at all? Wouldn't it mostly be a concern on edges that you strike against something? Armor tends to get punctured. (Hacking a curving piece of armor with a long blade, like a sword, rather than a narrow and crushing blade, like an axe, seems pretty futile; and AFAIK you would never hack or hew or shash at a piece of solid steel armor, like a cuirass. Hacking at a helmet might stun the opponent, naturally...)

Fhaolan

2009-05-20, 06:15 PM

*blink*

Okay, I think we've gone a bit far in the direction of concern over the brittleness of steel. Steel is also more brittle than linen, but that doesn't mean armour needs to be made out of tablecloths. :smallsmile:

*pause* Which doesn't mean linen armour didn't exist, but anyway...

The problem is that steel is relatively difficult to make in a consistant fashion that produces steel with specific hardnesses for specific uses. Full plate armour only started showing up when the quality of steel manufacture made it possible to make large consistant plates of steel. Before that you had partial plate, scale, splint, etc. The same applies to weapons. In many areas folded and patter-weld steel sword-blades came into existance because of the inconsistant and unpredicatable quality of the steel. Folding the steel with iron was the only way to create a large blade with controlable properties the entire length of the blade. Once good, predictable steel became available, folded and pattern-welded steel was no longer used except for ceremonial weapons because they were 'pretty'. That's why Japanese swords changed significantly when trade opened up with Spain.

Sword-grade steel is not the same as knife-grade steel, and both are considerably different than armor-grade steel. In the same way that spring steel is different from tool steel. Different purposes, different qualities.

Basically, the problem you have with using RPGs as a model is that RPGs try to allow for many different armours existing simultaneously with distinct, but simplified properties, where in RL they developed in different regions at different times to meet different technological and environmental problems, none of which have models in most RPGs.

For example, Japan is metal-poor, so it's armour and weapons were developed to use a minimal amount of steel. Northern Europe had large amounts of very poor-quality iron easily available in bogs. Southern Europe and the Middle East had access to much better iron and in some limited areas naturally-occuring steel, but it took a lot more effort to dig out of the ground. These things led to different weapon and armours being developed in those regions, and the rate of development of those technologies were different from each other.

In D&D, you've got all of these types of armour sitting next to one another with no real rhyme or reason as to why you'd not just go to the best one in it's weight class that you can afford.

Matthew

2009-05-21, 10:36 AM

Q2 Military Demographics and Manpower

Not sure if this goes here, but I was wondering a bit about historical armies and couldn't really think of a better place to ask. What % of the population would be considered typical or possible to be active military at any given time? How long could say, the Roman empire, sustain that x% of their total population as an active military force? I've been reading through some fantasy books and I've been trying to get a grasp on whether the maybe hundred thousand person army that nation Y is fielding is really reasonable for population Z for a decade long war.
My guess is that what era of technology the war is being fought in will be very important (with industry revolution and later technology implying less of a reliance on especially agricultural workers), as well as things like allied strength and supplies, but the only real information that I've been able to find are basic WWII statistics.

Somewhere between 1% and 10% is a typical estimate, but larger numbers of men may be levied, especially during a crisis. If I recall correctly, Polybius is famously quoted as indicating that the entire male population of Italy could be called upon to fight in terms of reserve manpower. A medieval population estimate for England would be around 1,000,000, so say 500,000 males, and armies typically in the 5,000-30,000 men area.

So in short, regular ancient and medieval armies are typically composed of a very small proportion of the population, mainly because 90%+ are required to feed the combatants, but also because the logistics of warfare necessitate limited army size.

The Mongols are probably another good example to look to, as they were organised in huge units of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000, but initially were part time soldiers and herders.

Dhavaer

2009-05-21, 11:01 PM

What would a real life charge pistol look, sound and perform like?

d20 Future Tech has weapons called 'charge rifles/pistols', described as replacing 'gunpowder and other chemical explosives with electro-chemical propellant, ignited with a short but massive shock to the cartridge (rather than the old fashioned firing pin). The propellant converts to white-hot plasma with a smoother, more powerful expansion than gunpowder, resulting in a slug with a considerably high muzzle velocity.' Mechanically a charge pistol performs identically to an M4 Carbine, except it's smaller and lighter (2lbs and Medium rather than 7lbs and Large).

I assume it wouldn't be exactly like a hand-held carbine; to fit 30 rounds in a pistol they'd need to be smaller than normal, right? And with that and the increased muzzle velocity, wouldn't overpenetration be a big problem? Basically, what would be the result of increasing the muzzle velocity and reducing the bullet size of a pistol, and how would you deal with any problems it would cause?

A separate question: what does gunfire sound like (and would the aforementioned charge pistol sound different)?

KnightDisciple

2009-05-21, 11:08 PM

Electro-chemical? Pretty sure that's what this is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hlj4EbdsE).
M2 machine gun (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPH5k2gBOZ8&feature=related).
Thompson Sub Machine Gun (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g5ct7cXKu4).
Colt .45 1911 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKwA7JWpukg).

Norsesmithy

2009-05-22, 02:18 AM

Metal Storm is electronically ignited, not electro-chemical.

If you could devise an electro chemical substance that was more energy dense than smokeless powder, it would be better served being tapped to energize the armature on a rail gun, because any pressure expansion gun more efficient than a regular gun is going to require a heavier and stronger barrel and chamber, increasing the overall weight of the gun, not decreasing it.

But as it stands, all the real electochemical explosives (another word to find them under may be Peizoelectric explosives) are not very efficient.

Bullet penetration can be reduced by reducing the sectional density of the bullet, either by making it lighter for caliber or causing it to expand after hitting a target.

Bullets that explode also typically don't overpenetrate, provided they are designed to be triggered by the kind of target they hit.

Kemper Boyd

2009-05-22, 02:36 AM

But if you're relying on foxholes to make up for a serious disadvantage in the "modernity level" of your forces, you're in for a big disappointment. The world's modern armies have spent a long time figuring out how to never have to go through the hell of Verdun and Passchendaele again.

I was referring to modern armies against modern armies, which might have not been to apparent, since it's clear that trench warfare and defensive fortifications still have a role to play, but they're not unbreakable in any way.

Dervag

2009-05-22, 03:50 AM

Ah. So the real question is "what is the modern infantry doctrine for dealing with a trench network held by competent opponents who have roughly similar weapons?"

Because in that case, using the BEF at Ypres as the opposition force really isn't a fair test of the concept.

Swordguy

2009-05-22, 04:25 AM

Ah. So the real question is "what is the modern infantry doctrine for dealing with a trench network held by competent opponents who have roughly similar weapons?"

*raises hand* Oooh! I know!

Modern US Army doctrine calls for a solution to the separate issues of an isolated trench network, and connective trench network. The difference between the two is largely a matter of scale.

An isolated trench network is a localized, interconnected series of static defenses primarily characterized by depth (that is, it has a narrow frontage compared to its depth) and that is not connected laterally to other static defense systems. In layman's terms, get about a mile or less (depending on who's definition you're using) of trenches that are 50-150 yards deep, then an equal space to either side of the trench network, then another series of trenches with a similar frontage. The space between the trench networks allows for offensive forces to move through their own trench network to make attacks. Given lack of offensive success, these networks eventually grow into...

Connective trench networks. These are a LOT like what we saw in WWI, and on occasion even today. During the initial penetration into Iraq in Desert Storm, for example, the Allies were greatly concerned that the berm demarcating the Kuwait/Saudi and Iraq/Saudi border would be networked like this. Connective trench systems are characterized by their width more than their depth - while they may approach a mile or more in depth (as in WWI) they can be many, many miles long. Given enough time, they will be constrained only be geography.

The downside to both systems is that they are static. Once you know where they are, you will always know where they are. When you know where something is, you can destroy it. You see the problem.

Modern doctrine against an isolated trench network works one of two ways, depending on the nature of the operation. In a fast-moving offensive, the trench network will be bypassed and completely isolated, if possible. Don't even bother engaging it. Bypass it and then, if necessary, use your advanced position to attack from anywhere BUT the front that they prepared to defend, and preferably from multiple angles, supported by point fire support (mortars especially) and armor if the terrain allows. If the trench network MUST be taken before an offensive can proceed - if it can't be bypassed, we teach the "fix and flank" strategy. Fire support plasters the area, "fixing" the defenders in place (ie, underground), while a maneuver unit moves to the flank most advantageous to attack from, and commences an attack, preferably hitting the trench network less than 30 seconds after the fire support ends. The attack from the flank bypasses the MLR (main line of resistance) and allows for enfilade fire into the OPFOR position, while infantry clear the trench network.

In the case of a Connected trench network, the situation gets more thorny. You can't fix and flank the enemy, because the MLR will extend to impassable geographic obstacles, so you can't get around the flank in the first place. The doctrine states that an armored spearhead, with mechanized infantry supporting, will attempt a breakthrough of the MLR in as many points as feasible within a given battlefield sector, while maintaining concentration of force. This sector will be cut off from reinforcement or resupply by air and artillery support. Then the armor moves in, breaks through, the infantry unload from their Bradleys, and clear the trenches. This creates a breach in the enemy lines. The goal is to try and create a flank, eliminate even a single moderate section of the trench network, and work "down the line" from there. This forces the OPFOR to fall back or face enfilade fire. Naturally, the whole thing is supported heavily with artillery and air support.

The downside of the doctrine for dealing with a Connected trench network is that nobody really knows if it works. The closest thing we've seen is against dug-in tanks in Desert Storm, but they weren't well-supported with infantry, and were picked off 1 by 1 via long-range tank fire (an M1 can fire 1000+ yards further than a T-72) or Close Air Support, so the full "taking the trenches" infantry action was never required, and the tanks themselves were never in danger. Against a legitimate opponent, this doctrine would be a lot tougher to pull off. Keep in mind, during the Cold War, NATO forces would actually be the guys in the trenches holding the line against the Commie Hordes (google Fulda Gap). Modern man-portable anti-tank missiles (Javelin, AT-4) and point air support would make a real mess of attacking forces, to say nothing of defending armor, and all other things being equal, the moving unit is less accurate than the stationary unit. The trench section chosen as a target may not be isolated by air power, since modern air power cancels itself out against a modern opponent, so it comes down to a straight-up face-to-face ground fight where neither side has a range advantage.

Now, a trench network can still be flat wiped-out with super-heavy ordnance (MOAB, low-yield nukes), but it's an impressive force multiplier. The question for the defenders is that a trench network can ALWAYS be penetrated by super-heavy ordnance, if by nothing else. What if the OPFOR resorts to that first? Thus, is it worth it to go through the PITA of building huge trench networks, or should you keep a mobile, counterpunching strategy that has the side benefit of the enemy not necessarily knowing exactly where you are? Pretty much everyone in the modern world has gone with the mobile strategy.

tl;dr, an isolated trench network is asking to be cut off and defeated in detail. An interconnected trench network can, under the right circumstances, still be extremely effective - but nobody's tried it with modern equipment, so nobody knows how effective it'd be, or if it's just uber-bomb bait.

Dervag

2009-05-22, 05:42 AM

Modern doctrine against an isolated trench network works one of two ways, depending on the nature of the operation. In a fast-moving offensive, the trench network will be bypassed and completely isolated, if possible. Don't even bother engaging it. Bypass it and then, if necessary, use your advanced position to attack from anywhere BUT the front that they prepared to defend, and preferably from multiple angles, supported by point fire support (mortars especially) and armor if the terrain allows. If the trench network MUST be taken before an offensive can proceed - if it can't be bypassed, we teach the "fix and flank" strategy. Fire support plasters the area, "fixing" the defenders in place (ie, underground), while a maneuver unit moves to the flank most advantageous to attack from, and commences an attack, preferably hitting the trench network less than 30 seconds after the fire support ends. The attack from the flank bypasses the MLR (main line of resistance) and allows for enfilade fire into the OPFOR position, while infantry clear the trench network.My feeling is that this is a direct and straightforward descendant of the old strategy for assaulting a trench. The key differences are:
-The artillery guys are better shots than they were a hundred years ago (my compliments to Solaris, wherever you are),
-And the guys with rifles now have radios they can use to tell the artillery "OK, we're in position, you can stop dropping explosives on them now."

Back in the day, there were no man-portable radios, so the artillery had to rely on preplanned timetables (blow up this point at 8:40 am, keep shooting at it, then at 8:50 am start blowing up this point...) And for the attacker to pull off the kind of trick that Swordguy is talking about here, his troops have to move exactly in accordance with that timetable. If they're too fast they get hit by their own artillery; if they're too slow the artillery barrage lets up and the enemy has time to return to their positions before the attacking infantry can make it into the trenches, at which point a lot of dying happens in a hurry.

And since the plan never goes exactly right, that happened a lot, which is why the front lines of World War One in France and Belgium never moved very far.
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Now, a trench network can still be flat wiped-out with super-heavy ordnance (MOAB, low-yield nukes), but it's an impressive force multiplier. The question for the defenders is that a trench network can ALWAYS be penetrated by super-heavy ordnance, if by nothing else. What if the OPFOR resorts to that first?Yeah. This is a major issue with trenches. You don't want to be the first guy in sixty or seventy years to convince your enemy that nuking you is the smart option that will minimize bloodshed. And if your fortifications look something like the Maginot Line (or the defenses North Korea has facing the DMZ), they will probably come to that conclusion after they get a look at just how heavily dug in you are.

Of course, a force like a Marine Expeditionary Unit does not (unless I am sorely mistaken) have any super-heavy ordnance. But if it runs into something big enough to need a going-over with the biggest of big stuff, it's almost impossible to imagine the big stuff not being made available.