Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. XIV

[Rhynn]

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr. Mask]

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

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

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

[Magnera]

Two Handed Flails.

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

[Galloglaich]

Two Handed Flails.

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

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



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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9801567...57634584454532

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

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

G

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

[Galloglaich]

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

(snip)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

G

[Mr. Mask]

Oh heck, I feel embarrassed for not mentioning your system, G, when I went so far as to mention Savage Worlds which I haven't read.

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

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


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

[GraaEminense]

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

Winds of Chaos.
Josef's critical hits chart is really neat but a bit overkill for a game, really: it feels very realistic but bogs things down a bit.

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

[Mr. Mask]

That's the one.

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

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

[Galloglaich]

Oh heck, I feel embarrassed for not mentioning your system, G, when I went so far as to mention Savage Worlds which I haven't read.

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

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


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

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

G

[GraaEminense]

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

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

Not quite: The system has rolls to hit and defend (d%), and if it's a hit you roll damage = d10+strength+weapon modifiers-toughness-armour. If your health drops to 0, any excess damage goes to the crit table. If you're still alive on 0 health, any subsequent damage will cause crit table rolls (and likely more painful ones, since you're out of buffer).

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr. Mask]

G: Will PM you now (I may already have brought it, but just to be sure).


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

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

[Rhynn]

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

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

[GraaEminense]

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

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

Back-alley skirmishes work well but war is boring.

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

[Mr. Mask]

Reminds me of God of War, beating the enemies' health to 0 so you can execute them gorily (this case having more variety).

[Mr. Mask]

Found a cool five-part slide show on the evolution of Chinese armours. Thought I should share. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvmFAoNJS68

[Yora]

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

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

[fusilier]

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

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

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

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

[Brother Oni]

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

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

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

[Grinner]

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

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

Any ideas? Observations, perhaps?

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

[Mr. Mask]

Basics of a weapon in an RPG? Damage, ease of use, reach, armour penetration.

[Grinner]

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

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

Armor penetration's a good one.

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

[Beleriphon]

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

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

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

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

[Mr. Mask]

Grin: If you mean all weapons are very lethal, that is very true. But, they do inflict different amounts of damage.

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

[Grinner]

Grin: If you mean all weapons are very lethal, that is very true. But, they do inflict different amounts of damage.

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

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

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

Well, I'll figure out something.

[AMFV]

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



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

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

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

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

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

[Mr. Mask]

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

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

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


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



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

[warty goblin]

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

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

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


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

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

The Dark Eye solves this problem nicely by having each weapon class be a separate skill, and then varying the advancement cost appropriately. Axes & Maces don't cost nearly as much to improve as something like Bastard Swords. Based on what I know about some supplements that were never translated into English, the more expensive weapons often have access to a wider variety of special abilities than the cheap ones, making the trade-off worthwhile.

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

Armor penetration's a good one.

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

[Grinner]

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

Quite true.

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

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

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

[Mr. Mask]

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


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

[Grinner]

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

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

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

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

Cool.

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

Maiming. Yes, there must be rules for maiming.

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

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

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

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