Re: Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. XIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Altair_the_Vexed
I can't think where else to post this question, but it seems to belong here...
Wrestling / grappling martial arts
The rules systems I'm familiar with use a strength equivalent stat to drive wrestling / grappling rules - but it seems to me that agility could be significant, too.
So - who here knows about wrestling / grappling techniques in real life? Is it really always about strength?
Skill is really important.
For two people of somewhat similar skill, reach and just basic body mass becomes very important. If they can bench press just as much, but one of them weighs 30 kgs more and has longer arms so he can reach further, he's going to have advantage. The stereotype of a high-STR character is bigger and heavier than the stereotype of high-AGI character.
Speed is still really important, but since the Strength stat is more than just the physical strength and also tends to imply other stuff that's useful to a wrestler, I'd say that Strength as main wrestling stat is a perfectly good approximation.
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. XIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Knaight
True, it's a big step up from some of the super low carbon stuff (particularly everything Williams labeled as just iron). Still, whether that's decent or not depends on what standard you're using, and given the actual hardening elsewhere, and the general higher quality of armor in much of the 14th century, I'd put it in the debatable range. It's better than the mass produced crap, but it's still a step down from some of the contemporary armor and much of the stuff a few generations old, including much cheaper, much less decorated works.
But Williams also emphasizes how difficult the best heat treatment was pull off. It took Greenwich, an armory set up by the English crown, decades to master heat treatment. Williams writes that hardly any Italian armor after the early 16th century was hardened, possibly because of how heat treatment could clash with fire-gilding. On page 211 of The Knight and the Blast Furnace, Williams specifically claims that post-1510 Italian parade armors tended to be made of better metal than plain field armors of the period, and that they were fully functional even if not primarily intended for combat.
Based on Williams's description, fully hardened plate armor constituted a genuine technological advantage that required considerable investment. England recognized Germany's armor advantage and decided to develop its own hardened-armor production, which it eventually managed. (Of course, given the expensive of Greenwich suits and their limited number, it's unclear that hardened armor offer any meaningful advantage at the grand strategic level, at least by the late 16th century.)
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. XIV
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. XIV
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