Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Martin Greywolf]

Since we were on a bit of a bow kick, I have a question about the interaction between strength and archery. As many of you may be aware, 3.5 D&D had mighty composite bows with a specific strength bonus seemingly to model draw weight. You took a penalty if your strength score was less than the specified draw weight and could add your strength modifier to damage up to the draw weight. In trying to come up with a more realistic system, I have a few questions about draw weights for those of you with experience or knowledge of archery:

1. How much would strength beyond the minimum necessary to draw a bow help the arrow's speed/damage? If a person is capable of using an X lb bow, would a stronger person with an X lb bow be able to do more damage with it? Or would the extra strength only impact the speed with which they get fatigued and the length of time they can keep the bow drawn in order to aim?
2. In the medieval era (say, 14th and 15th centuries), were there fairly fine gradations in draw weight (as we see today with exact poundage), or would bows be distributed/sold as "for someone of average strength" or "someone of exceptional strength" or similar?
3. To get a bit more gamey, how much is it that raw strength affects one's ability to use a higher poundage bow vs. proficiency with bows writ large? My understanding is that, while a certain degree of form/proficiency is necessary to effectively use one's strength, beyond that it comes down to the strength of (a very particular set of) muscle, is that correct?

Thank you for any assistance!

Brother Oni pretty much answered everything you asked, but I'm here with something you didn't think about. CON.

See, when it comes to battlefield shooting, especially the rapid-fire into an oncoming charge bit, the limiting thing to your accuracy and performance isn't how strong you are, but for how long you can use the bow you have. Pretty much everyone can draw a 100 lbs bow if you show them the correct technique - once. After that, your arms will begin to shake, and if you are tired enought, you will just be unable to use the bow.

Most tabletops have you shoot in that fast rate of fire, DnD has one round-one attack-6 seconds thing. That means you are flinging 10 arrows a minute out there, which is... pretty hard and demanding on your stamina. No, really, I mean it - people who don't shoot high poundages underestimate this immensely, even the best modern archers can go full speed for about a minute or two at best before they need to rest.

If we assume STR, CON, DEX for physical stats, I'd say that you need STR to be able to use the bow and CON to be able to use it for more than one round effectively, and DEX does very little. So, for bows, you have STR requirements, add STR bonus to damage within some narrow range to account for draw length (like, 15 STR bow can have +1 to +3 from STR added to it) and you add your CON to accuracy.

Compare that to thrown weapons with DEX for accuracy and STR to damage. Or sling with DEX for accuracy and damage but heavy penalties if you aren't proficient. Or crossbows that get DEX to accuracy and nothing to damage and everyone including your grandma is proficient with them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Brother Oni pretty much answered everything you asked, but I'm here with something you didn't think about. CON.

See, when it comes to battlefield shooting, especially the rapid-fire into an oncoming charge bit, the limiting thing to your accuracy and performance isn't how strong you are, but for how long you can use the bow you have. Pretty much everyone can draw a 100 lbs bow if you show them the correct technique - once. After that, your arms will begin to shake, and if you are tired enought, you will just be unable to use the bow.

Most tabletops have you shoot in that fast rate of fire, DnD has one round-one attack-6 seconds thing. That means you are flinging 10 arrows a minute out there, which is... pretty hard and demanding on your stamina. No, really, I mean it - people who don't shoot high poundages underestimate this immensely, even the best modern archers can go full speed for about a minute or two at best before they need to rest.

If we assume STR, CON, DEX for physical stats, I'd say that you need STR to be able to use the bow and CON to be able to use it for more than one round effectively, and DEX does very little. So, for bows, you have STR requirements, add STR bonus to damage within some narrow range to account for draw length (like, 15 STR bow can have +1 to +3 from STR added to it) and you add your CON to accuracy.

Compare that to thrown weapons with DEX for accuracy and STR to damage. Or sling with DEX for accuracy and damage but heavy penalties if you aren't proficient. Or crossbows that get DEX to accuracy and nothing to damage and everyone including your grandma is proficient with them.

One ameliorating factor is that D&D combats (at least 5e) are over very quickly in universe time (not player time). 3-5 6-second rounds is my experience. So call it one minute, max. With tens of minutes if not an hour or more between fights.

[Martin Greywolf]

One ameliorating factor is that D&D combats (at least 5e) are over very quickly in universe time (not player time). 3-5 6-second rounds is my experience. So call it one minute, max. With tens of minutes if not an hour or more between fights.

I don't know, from what my experience is, you usually see a handful of fights of about 5 rounds, separated by a few minutes at best - at least, if you're exploring a dungeon or some such. And there are, of course, more attacks per round than just the one, at least sometimes. And, taking more abstract approach to this, there is no guarantee that 1 attack is 1 arrow, much like 1 attack isn't one sword swing - the rules tell us they don't have to be, only to turn around and imply that they are.

I still think CON is the stat to use for bow accuracy, though, your hands can be shaky even on the first shot if you already had to march up a steep hill, going from tree to tree while dodging arrows. Or had to run through a mine to get to people you need to rescue in time. I have done both, and while it was fun, it wasn't easy - although morale was raised when one of our enemies in the mine adventure managed to faceplant himself into a puddle when ambushing us from a side tunnel.

[DrewID]

Restrictions in general didn't really show up until after The War To End All Wars.

Which one?

DrewID

[fusilier]

Does anyone here know of weapons laws in Europe in the late 19th Century?

I know there were a lot of concealed weapons, pocket pistols, cane swords, cane guns etc. Would it be legal to wear a sword openly on the streets of Paris or London or Vienna in, say 1870? It doesn't seem to come up in literature that I've seen.

And if not, when did it become not the done thing for a man of a certain class to wear a sword in civilian life?

The sense I get is that openly carrying weapons was regulated, even if ownership was not. Officers in uniform wore their swords in public at that date, but, like you, I don't see depictions of civilians in the 19th century openly wearing swords on the streets. A little digging around on the internet, finds claims that openly wearing swords fell out of favor with the nobles in England in the middle of the 18th century, and a little later in France. So perhaps when they fell out of favor among the nobles, laws were passed prohibiting them in general? I don't have any sources though.

Perhaps looking for the history of some specific laws may help, from wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firear...United_Kingdom

The first British firearm controls were introduced as part of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which was set up in a reaction against the large number of people roaming the country with weapons brought back from the Napoleonic wars. It allowed the police to arrest "any person with any gun, pistol, hanger [a light sword], cutlass, bludgeon or other offensive weapon ... with intent to commit a felonious act". It was followed by the Night Poaching Acts 1828 and 1844, the Game Act 1831, and the Poaching Prevention Act 1862, which made it an offence to shoot game illegally by using a firearm.

Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."

[Telok]

The sense I get is that openly carrying weapons was regulated, even if ownership was not. Officers in uniform wore their swords in public at that date, but, like you, I don't see depictions of civilians in the 19th century openly wearing swords on the streets. A little digging around on the internet, finds claims that openly wearing swords fell out of favor with the nobles in England in the middle of the 18th century, and a little later in France. So perhaps when they fell out of favor among the nobles, laws were passed prohibiting them in general? I don't have any sources though.

Perhaps looking for the history of some specific laws may help, from wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firear...United_Kingdom

Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."

Weirdly enough I have a couple of old bookmarks about this. Try a 2011 thread from myarmoury.com and a 2006 thread from a HEMA and history forum. I think I have a text file somewhere too. Ah, this is something I have in an old epub file in a directory marked 'law' that I was once using in world building.

[Martin Greywolf]

Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."

This particular bit is still in effect somewhat in Slovakia where I happen to live, when it comes to melee weapons and weapons that don't require registration (weak bows and crossbows, mostly), you can carry them openly or concealed as long as "it isn't apparent from your behaviour" you are about to commit a crime, unless you have that weapon for sporting purpose or for acting. Thinking about it a bit in depth, it's pretty clear why it is phrashed the way it is - having a sword is fine, waving it around and shouting threats is not. That sporting and acting exception is there so that no one will be able to call the cops on the re-enactors.

For eastern Europe in general, you see some restrictions before ww1 - 1853 Waffenpatent permits ownership to anyone unless they are on a blacklist, but requires you to have a permit (issued to "respectable citizens", so whoever isn't currently discriminated against) to carry them. Nazis expressly forbade Jews from owning weapons, which was overturned in 1945, and only real overhaul of the laws happened in 1967 - well, in Austria.

In Hungary, which promptly fell apart into Czechoslovakia (then to Czech protectorate and Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia again and then to Czech republic and Slovakia), Yugoslavia (not even attempting to describe that mess) and so on, and was part of Warsaw pact, the situation is complicated. In general, Warsaw pact countries allowed smoothbore hunting shotguns and restricted everything else to state officials (which could be quite a lot of people, not just police and standing military), with the idea that only hunting firearms should be allowed. This was enforced... unevenly, and we keep finding grandparent's machineguns from their partisan days in the attic to this day.

These laws were liberalized quite a bit after 1989, usually taking USA, Great Britain or France as a template, but it varies on a per nation basis. We even had a bit of an idea to ban ninja weapons a la UK before people came to their senses and realized it was incredibly dumb.

[Brother Oni]

Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."

That sort of nebulous qualification is still present in modern firearms licensing laws in the UK, where you need 'a good reason' to be allowed to get a license.

Similarly, actually owning a firearm involves a police inspection of how it will be stored and secured in your home or the registered location.

[Saint-Just]

In Hungary, which promptly fell apart into Czechoslovakia (then to Czech protectorate and Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia again and then to Czech republic and Slovakia), Yugoslavia (not even attempting to describe that mess) and so on, and was part of Warsaw pact, the situation is complicated. In general, Warsaw pact countries allowed smoothbore hunting shotguns and restricted everything else to state officials (which could be quite a lot of people, not just police and standing military), with the idea that only hunting firearms should be allowed. This was enforced... unevenly, and we keep finding grandparent's machineguns from their partisan days in the attic to this day.

These laws were liberalized quite a bit after 1989, usually taking USA, Great Britain or France as a template, but it varies on a per nation basis. We even had a bit of an idea to ban ninja weapons a la UK before people came to their senses and realized it was incredibly dumb.

I thought that single shot or bolt-action rifles were also legal in the Warsaw pact, maybe not of military design or military calibers, but hunting rifles were allowed AFAIK.

And Soviets specifically produced quite a few different models of semi-auto hunting rifles. Nether security guards nor foresters would need to have so many different options. Now if you needed to be a state/party official to get one to hunt with that's a maybe but that still a lots of people.

[Vinyadan]

I have a question: I remember a description of resistance towards the expansion of monarchies in the Baltic sea by tribesmen who lived in societies where rights and powers were more widely distributed among the population. I think Gotland and the territories of the modern Baltic states were examples. Are there works describing these societies? Can they be compared to the non-monarchical institutions of more-or-less independent cities?

[Martin Greywolf]

If we're talking early/high medieval period, then... kind of?

Thing is, for most of northern half of Europe, big, centralized states weren't a thing up until this point, at least not stable ones. You see some loose alliances like the Cuman Khaganate and areas that had multiple city states, ancient Greek-style, that often allied against foreign threats but were effectively independent (Rus, Kiev, Novgorod, Muscovy etc). Then Carolingian era hits and some of these areas are rolled into large states - I read a pretty poetic description by an academic historian that said something like "A kingdom's borders stretched as far as the king's whip". Which, fair - rebellions and instability were pretty common.

Edit: You had some larger kingdoms for a short time, like Great Moravia or Samo's Realm, but they usually didn't last long past their founder's deaths.

Then once we get to high medieval period, some areas, usually those close tot he Vatican (we can't discuss why this is on this forum), became increasingly centralized and stable - while borders did move, it was a movement in frontier regions. Sure, Austria, Hungary and Bohemia kept tossing Bratislava/Pressburg between the three of them like a hot potato, but towns deeper in either of those (e.g. Viena, Brno, Budapest) kept belonging to one state.

You needed three things, roughly, for this stabilization to occur: 1) ruling party (usually a house) that managed to be the boss for at least a few generations, 2) administrative background, what with record keeping and tax collection (this is where both the Catholic and Orthodox churches were helping out immensely) and 3) borders defensible enough to make it difficult for an army to straight up march to your core territories and take over.

All of that effectively means that large towns and cities were, no matter where in northern Europe, part of the same lineage of semi-independent entities. Sure, a king is your nominal ruler, but it's well within his interests to keep you happy. Problem is, until you get to rise of royal chancelleries that keep detailed records (~1200 in Hungary, I don't know enough about the details of it to speak for other places), we have no way of knowing what those agreements, that were entirely verbal, actually entailed.

Come the Baltic crusades, you have what are essentially the burgher class in kingdoms and then independent city states where their inhabitants are much the same. There is no real "tribesmen" out here, all of these people are using roughly the same equipment and often have roughly the same beliefs (there are pagans openly living in Hungary, after all). The reason why we see them called infidels, savages and tribesmen is that, well, we only have the accounts of their enemies to go by, outside of archaeology.

The whole idea with more widely distributed power structures and freedoms have some merit, but you see it taken way too far, to a point where people claim they had a sort of neo-liberalizm in there, which... unless you find some hard proof, no. There usually was greater religious freedom, and women had a slightly more equal standing perhaps (but then and again, high medieval women were much better off than their renaissance counterparts), and sometimes you had a sort of a democracy - only, there was a very stringent set of rules as to who could actually vote. You see the same voting systems in Free Royal Cities in Hungary and Imperial Cities in HRE - sure you can vote who is the boss, if you own a house in city worth at least X, and no, you can't force anyone to sell one to you if they don't like you.

Spoiler: On the supposedly democratic tribes, from Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300) by Florin Curta

Show

One of the most resistant misconceptions about the societies of East Central
and Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages is that in the course of their mi-
gration (see chapter 4), the Slavs have brought to the region specific forms of
social organization. “Neighborhood” communities, such as the opole of Poland
or the župa of the northwestern Balkans (present-day Croatia and Slovenia),
long pre-dated, but also contributed to the rise of medieval states.1 Several
neighboring villages or hamlets within a micro-region (e.g., a river valley)
formed a political entity, which governed itself and had unrestricted rights to
the surrounding lands—both cultivated and grazing fields. That such forms of
social organization existed since the early Middle Ages is a 19th-century idea,
largely derived from evolutionary theories about state formation. That idea
was only recently challenged primarily on grounds of lack of any evidence that
the opole, for example, existed before ca. 1100, or that it was more than an in-
formal association with none of the “legal” traits attributed to it by an earlier
generation of scholars. Similarly, 19th-century theories about the supposedly
rapid Slavicization of Eastern, Southeastern, and East Central Europe being
the result of a specifically Slavic mode of life and society have been revived
in Slovenian scholarship. Andrej Pleterski claims that the župa was the build-
ing block of Slavdom: the župa was nothing less than the Slavic equivalent of
the polis in ancient Greece, the Gau in the Germanic world, and the oppidum
among the Celts—all being “small units of spatial organization” of society.3
However, the evidence of župa as a territorial, or even an administrative entity
is of a much later date. The mir of imperial Russia was still on the minds of
Soviet-era Russian historians, who believed that the transition to feudalism in
Byzantium was made possible only by the Slavs

They did resist being rolled up into other kingdoms, for the same reason why anyone resists that, really - people in charge didn't want to share their power.

For works on them, well. There is obviously Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, there are a few works on that one. You could also go for works on Teutonic order, since that one was rolling these Baltic city-states over. Other than that, however, there are no really good comprehensive works on the area, you'll have to look for specific studies on individual power blocks, e.g. Cuman Khaganate, Kiev and so on. Unfortunately for us, most of the work on it done by the local academics was done during the USSR era, which means funding was... erratic, and you could go to the gulag if you dared to not shoehorn class struggle into every other sentence. And it's written in half a dozen languages as well, to make it more interesting.

The seminal work, albeit a little dated at this point (e.g. familiares in Hungary predate the banderial system by about a century or two), is the already mentioned Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300) by Florin Curta - be warned, ye who read it, it is a monstrous 1378 pages of dense text. It's not strictly about what you want, but you can get information from it if you read enough of the relevant parts.

There is also the Chronicle of Novgorod, which has been translated to english, and is a primary source on the area - I don't knwo if it is online legally, but, y'know, torrents.

[Saint-Just]

There is also the Chronicle of Novgorod, which has been translated to english, and is a primary source on the area - I don't knwo if it is online legally, but, y'know, torrents.

It's out of copyright in the UK (where it has been printed) and the US (just in case), and should be out of copyright literally everywhere on Earth. It was printed in 1914. http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh...xts/MF1914.pdf

[Yora]

I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.

Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?

I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.

[Vinyadan]

Martin Greywolf, thanks for the long answer! I don't know much about the history of Eastern Europe. I am pretty much locked out of libraries because of the crisis, so I think I'll take a look at the Chronicles of Novgorod. The introduction of the version linked by Saint-Just is pretty fashinating.

[Pauly]

I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.

Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?

I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.

Flechettes are essentially advanced shotgun shells. Fin stabilized for greater accuracy than the round shot Used in shotguns. There was development of them for use in combat rifles in the 60s and 70s. The increased projectile speed (thank APDS type mechanics) was supposed to give better penetration. They ended up being a dead end, I think mainly because the effect wasn’t worth the time and hassle to manufacture.

Their modern use is in artillery/tank rounds as a modern version of grapeshot.

[AdAstra]

I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.

Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?

I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.

So, flechettes as projectiles in small arms mostly came about due to project SALVO and its many derivatives. Long thin metal darts with fins, usually with a sabot, yadda yadda, practical effect is that you can get very high velocities with minimal recoil, barrel wear, and cartridge weight (I can explain that part more thoroughly if required), very good for achieving high rates of fire and armor penetration. You saw them as both single projectiles akin to rifle rounds, packed into shotgun shells/artillery shells, and as tank projectiles. The latter two were not really related to SALVO, though, just developments that utilized the advantages of the flechette.

For rifles, they failed because their terminal ballistics were pretty terrible, and they had a tendency to be deflected very easily by things like foliage and rain drops. It was also hard to reliably make the sabots in such massive quantities with the tech of the time, further messing with accuracy. Expense was also high, due to both the sabot and the need to machine each flechette. Muzzle blast was atrocious as well.

For shotgun shells, they did alright, but were again expensive and didn't have great wounding characteristics. Also the semi-auto shotguns that the US Army wanted to fire them were way too heavy and bulky. Note that the velocities from theses were not particularly high. High for shotguns, but nothing special compared to say, a rifle.

For artillery, they were very well liked. In this case, the shells were basically a more modern iteration of Shrapnel shells. The shell had tons of flechettes packed together, with a very small bursting charge, which mostly just served to release the flechettes from the shell body. Most of the velocity came from artillery piece itself, thus velocity was nothing special in this case. These were much more deadly, both due to the quantity of flechettes and the fact that they tended to bend and "J-hook". These were mostly replaced with airbursting conventional shells as the fuses became more precise, as they could achieve similar effects plus some additional ones.

Tank guns are the only military applications where you still see substantial use of flechette projectiles. Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot rounds are basically just giant (single) flechette rounds, taking advantage of the very high velocity and sectional density of the projectile to maximize penetration. No other tool has proven as reliable for killing things like tanks.

[Gnoman]

To expand on this, normal ammunition manufacture is little more than casting or swaging (basically stamping, but for more complicated parts) and cleaning up for proper balance and such. For fletchette or sabot ammunition, each round has to be machined to fairly tight tolerances. This is a much more expensive process (and in a more expensive material to boot - lead core bullets have been the standard for so long because lead is cheap) and drives the cost of ammunition into the stratosphere.

Add in the fairly marginal performance benefits in smaller guns, and the project was rightfully a stillbirth.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Which one?

DrewID

WW1, at least in this context.

[Martin Greywolf]

If you want more info on specific flechette guns, Gun Jesus provideth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFANjlr4I9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1W8iz8DyRw

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Bit of an odd question, but I'm trying to figure out a weapon that would work efficiently in melee for a character I'm building based on her physical aptitudes.

In terms of her height and build (using fantasy ancestries for comparisons), she'd be built like a dwarf, but about a halfling's height, and sort of balances sturdiness with mobility, as her stats include a bonus to damage on her first melee hit after moving 10 ft, so she's supposed to be tanky, but moving from opponent to opponent rather than staying in one spot and letting enemies come to her.

Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage? My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike. Am I making sense?

[Mike_G]

Bit of an odd question, but I'm trying to figure out a weapon that would work efficiently in melee for a character I'm building based on her physical aptitudes.

In terms of her height and build (using fantasy ancestries for comparisons), she'd be built like a dwarf, but about a halfling's height, and sort of balances sturdiness with mobility, as her stats include a bonus to damage on her first melee hit after moving 10 ft, so she's supposed to be tanky, but moving from opponent to opponent rather than staying in one spot and letting enemies come to her.

Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage? My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike. Am I making sense?

For a style where you keep moving and use your momentum, I'd look at light cavalry weapons, like a saber. Good for slashing on the move and keeping moving. A lance or other pointy weapon will use momentum, but then get stuck. A light mace or hammer could work if you fight people with more armor, or a longsword or katana if you wanta two handed slash-on-the-move weapon.

In fact, just flavor wise, a katana is a nice fit. Plenty of samurai movies show the hero slashing his way through many enemies, always on the move.

[Brother Oni]

Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage? My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike. Am I making sense?

Some other suggestions to Mike_G's: some sort of long slashing weapon, like a glaive, guandao or naginata, although with the haft cut down a tad to compensate.

A long two handed swords using particular sword styles also works (there's an Italian sword style for long swords which involved large sweeping motions, as it was intended to fend off multiple attackers while protecting someone, but the name escapes me at the moment), although the weapon length might need to be cut down a bit.

[KineticDiplomat]

An issue with the short and squat trying to use longswords/bastard swords/katanas is that inherently they’re already at a reach disadvantage against any similar armed opponent (as well as those with classic arming swords and shields) if they stay on the outside because of their height, but the reach difference isn’t so big that if they work their way inside they have an advantage - you still need room to swing those things before it turns into headbutts and pommel bashing.

Rather than try to make up for a weakness that two extra feet of height would actually need, why not play to the strength? Go full infighter, either with a classic Roman set up (short stabbing weapon and shield) or a more Hollywood duck and weave style approach. Once you’re inside the guys caught with the long weapons are going to be sucking and that low center of mass is going to really come into advantage in landing short stabbing and hooking blows they can’t hope to defend against, setting up the grapple, or even just if you end up in a raw shoving match.

[Max_Killjoy]

An issue with the short and squat trying to use longswords/bastard swords/katanas is that inherently they’re already at a reach disadvantage against any similar armed opponent (as well as those with classic arming swords and shields) if they stay on the outside because of their height, but the reach difference isn’t so big that if they work their way inside they have an advantage - you still need room to swing those things before it turns into headbutts and pommel bashing.

Rather than try to make up for a weakness that two extra feet of height would actually need, why not play to the strength? Go full infighter, either with a classic Roman set up (short stabbing weapon and shield) or a more Hollywood duck and weave style approach. Once you’re inside the guys caught with the long weapons are going to be sucking and that low center of mass is going to really come into advantage in landing short stabbing and hooking blows they can’t hope to defend against, setting up the grapple, or even just if you end up in a raw shoving match.

Yeah, if I were going to include dwarves in a setting, I'd be tempted to make them more "Roman" in arms.

Doesn't make sense to me to fight in tunnels with weapons that need big arcing swings to be effective, it seems like stabbing swords and spears used from behind shields would be best for holding tunnels. And on the surface, those strong low bodies would, as you note, be good for holding and pushing a line.

[Tobtor]

Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage? My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike. Am I making sense?

I think the answers above is generally good. Though, I do not think sabers and similar is ideal. The thing is when you get Halfling size reach is a different thing altogether. Halflings are like 120-125 cm in height or so, right? So that means not only normal reach disadvantage, but also height is in completely different scale.

I have trained with very young kids and my head is a almost unreachable target with most swords, and also so is shoulders and upper torso (as the taller person also have much longer steps etc). This also means that the tall fighter can keep any shield down to protect against swings and cuts etc. Thus I would highly recommend a weapon with some longer reach than sabres or arming swords! A longsword at the least. Normally if you have a normal height disadvantage (30 cm/1 foot or less), the small fighter can compensate by getting very close with a sword etc. This is much less true if you get very big differences like halfling/human.

BUT there are also advantages. If your opponent isn't trained to fight very small adversaries, then a small figher can go "under" the normal defensive stances. Also it opens up new areas of attack, like some of the typically least armoured parts like behind the knees, or thrust from below to the groin etc. Here I would consider something like a short spear the best. It would also allow trusts into armpits from below, a dangerous spot for armoured opponents. Also many aroursm are weak form upwards thrusts (most gaps points downwards) I would go with something that thrust well, but also can cut, like a spear. But you could go for more cutting focused weapons as well, like Brother Oni suggested glaives or naginatas. You could also have something like a light glaive with a spike at the but end for thrust at gaps. And have a large sharp knife/dagger/short-sword at hand, in case you get close and need to stab your opponent in the knee or slice their angles.


Try not to get rushed, but move around!

[AdAstra]

I would definitely be in favor of a medium-sized shield (think stereotypical viking shield) and one-handed stabbing weapon suitable for getting real close. Big enough protective implement to effectively hold the line in tunnels/formations and keep you alive on the charge, small enough that it's not too cumbersome in said tunnels and charges.

For stabbers, you've got lots of swords available, potentially some kind of compact estoc-like weapon. Take full advantage of most weaknesses of armor being very accessible from a lower height (armpits, groin, the back of knees). Short spears or punching daggers like katars could also be neat if you're going for something a touch less conventional.

[Martin Greywolf]

I'm going to go against the mold a lot here.

First of all, you need to consider fighting not in tunnels as well - even in Middle Earth that has an ancient underground city in every mountain range, many if not most battles will be fought outside - Azanubizlar and Five armies both were. That means you *need* to have assets that can do so effectively, and can defeat cavalry and massed archery.

Problem is, you're at a disadvantage no matter what you do in melee, so... avoid melee as much as you can. Macedonian style phalanxes can keep melee opponents at bay and have shields for arrow resistance, and you can transform them into tunnel fighters by ditching pike an using their stabby sword - something they will need to train for anyway. If you want to be really fancy, give some of them langxian to defend attacks from above.

Spoiler: Langxian

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The bulk of your army, however, isn't this line infantry, it's heavy skirmishers. Crossbows work well - physical stature makes little difference to them - and so do thrown weapons. Hell, maybe you even have some room to put some dart slings in there, somewhere. Anything that is capable of ranged combat as well as armored enough to act as a flanking force, with bonus points awarded if you can carry a shield (yes you can, even as an archer).

For cavalry, there's probably not much of it and there is little point in heavy shock cav, so you ged medium cavalry that can still charge from the rear but is agile enough to avoid shock cav, and horse archers or horse crossbowmen.

This army moves and fights much like pike-and-shot formations did in real life, with one caveat being that once the infantry does the pinning, it's the skirmishers that flank, not cavalry. You also need to organize it so that there are small units of about a dozen people in units, and those units have both phalanxes and skirmishers - that way, you can disassemble your entire main body into smaller chunks and still keep their combined arms approach.

[KineticDiplomat]

I think OP was asking for a specific character, a sort of halting dwarf who would be fighting in the typical action movie loose band of federated heroes. When I say infighting/outfighting I mean in the personal violence sense, akin to how you would use the phrases in boxing.

But, if we’re goin army size I think tactically Martin’s Pike & Shot Dwarf Redux theory holds some merit, though I would wonder about the survivability of the commanded shot, so to speak, operating away from their Tercios when the dwarf types are notoriously short of cavalry and are by fantasy convention a bit slower than the average human.

I think strategically the pike and shot concept might run into the issue of the dwarves often being a slow breeding population in decline, making it hard to generate the raw numbers needed to form the large formations, and making any victory that involved trading volleys a pyrrhic one at best. Humans can match you and in discipline and eat the losses better, elves are famously machine gun archers (honestly, I never quite understood how despite them being 20-30 RPM archers with deadly accuracy most LoTR battles don’t turn into Crecy or the Somme...I digress), and green skins...well...I guess it depends who’s greenskins we’re using.

I do wonder if a variant of salvo foot or even just plain Swiss pike charge might be better - break the enemy fast or get into bad war where being 250 pounds of low slung muscle is an advantage.

[VonKaiserstein]

I think another major factor to consider is whether the character is specialized in fighting armored, or unarmored opponents, or both. For unarmored, some sort of short slashing spear and a maneuverable shield would be best for mobile combat- think iklwa, ixlwa. If everything's a target, dancing around and slashing at any exposed body is great.

If they're armored, then a sword's not a great choice- the penetration power just isn't there, and your number of targets is limited. Something heavier and crushing would be better- a military pick should take out anyone's knee, even swung by a smaller being. Fighting this style, your goal isn't to kill anyone, just trip them, cripple them, or severely injure them. Driving 3 or 4 inches of metal beak into a joint or limb should drop somebody- carry a stiletto for finishing anyone off. This weapon would surrender reach, so you'd need to use the shield to block their blow as you closed. That seems to fit the theme of a mobile, rushing fighter that strikes in passing. Done right, you should be unpredictable, and able to weave through combat without alerting your targets that you're coming.

A spiked mace would work as well, but as that relies a bit more on strength, it may not be the best choice for a smaller person. I'd avoid axes for the same reason, it's a weapon that works better in the hands of a strong fighter.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Well, you're kinda right? It's set in Starfinder, and the character is specifically an alien called a Ferran.

Spoiler: Picture

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So, I'm trying to figure out the kinds of weaponry these people might favor or develop given what their bonuses encourage, should one go adventuring with a ragtag crew of spacefarers...less in terms of numbers and more in narrative/physics terms of just how people of this size and shape would likely prefer to fight.