07-13-2016, 11:38 AM | #41 | |
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: New York
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Re: Swords and plate
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Heres why: An axe doesnt suffer from my edged weapons rules BECAUSE its point of impact, like a mace, is far more concentrated. The Swing is heavier its damage potential is alot more focused. A Sword by comparison has virtually no power behind it compared to an axe, just a design of the weapon. .... So with a Sword you get : A harder time getting that cutting injury modifier going but its easier to target chinks, and you get balanced weapon thats better for defense. With an Axe when it penetrates armor, its concentrated force actually does make cutting contact. But its unbalanced, and less defensive, It also has a harder time targeting chinks. ---- I'd say that is fair no?
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07-13-2016, 06:21 PM | #42 | ||
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavķk, Iceland
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Re: Swords and plate
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Also the quote you supplied mentions mail armor, while the subject of this thread seems to be plate armor. Last edited by Žorkell; 07-13-2016 at 08:29 PM. |
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07-13-2016, 07:36 PM | #43 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2012
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Re: Swords and plate
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A grey area that muddies the waters further is axe-polearms, like pollaxes or halberds. |
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07-13-2016, 08:57 PM | #44 | |||
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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I would suggest you review the fighting books of Camillo Agrippa, Di Grassi, Talhoffer. Most of these manuals will include pole weapon fighting, and many of them will include illustrations of men in armor fighting with these weapons. You tend to see something like this: http://selohaar.org/VeritasSwordplayAcademy/index.htm You will also find them using the hammer version: https://talhoffer.files.wordpress.co...07/falkner.jpg Isn't it weird that even a blunt weapon is being swung against armor to which it is impenetrable? Again, I suspect the idea outside of tournaments was to batter your foe, knock down or knock away his weapons, and give a killing blow. That blow could be with the spike, or it could be with hammer or axe blade. They are all there for a reason. The weapon stats in Martial Arts depict a fearsome SW+4 cut. That beats a lot of low-tech armor, and even the fighting style in Martial Arts suggests that you'd need heavy armor to resist their attacks. Quote:
But the quote certainly makes clear they used the swing cut. You can't seriously be claiming the halberdiers didn't use the edge, can you? I whole unit of guys with massive two-handed axes, and no one strikes with them? Quote:
From the dissertation I cited earlier: John of Winterthur described the appeal of the halberd when he explained what Duke Leopold was up against at Morgarten. He writes: Also the Swiss have in their hands death weapons, which have been called in popular speech Helnbarten, and are very frightful. These slice like a razor and slash into pieces such strongly armed opponents. Razor, slash. Hmm. And just the next paragraph, it says: "So, the iron halberd was the first versatile pole-weapon that put the foot soldier at a distinct advantage over the knight: it could crack through armor. An expressly offensive weapon, its value, then, was that it significantly decreased the protective appeal of plate armor. While it also left the halberdier vulnerableit had to be carried with both hands, so those who wielded it had to give up the shieldits effectiveness was apparently worth it, especially for footsoldiers like the Swiss, who were lightly armed anyway." Now, I've given you primary source material and illustrations, and a doctoral thesis. Please do not tell me that I have not provided evidence that swing cutting weapons were used on the battlefield against plate armor. |
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07-13-2016, 10:13 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Swords and plate
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07-14-2016, 03:40 AM | #46 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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*so what half piecing / half cutting EDIT: hang on I just watched it on full screen, it's a car hood!? He's hitting a car hood / bonnet, your point earlier point about youtube videos seems to stand. Thinking about this video kind of summarises this discussion for me. Yes we can get into a detailed conversation about what is meant by certain words used in historical quotes regarding "hewing" etc etc, and try inform our discussion from that. And yeah if that's all we had and no other evidence than yes that what we'd be forced to do with all the usual issues of subjective interpretation, language use and contemporary context etc, etc. But it's not all we have, we also have what we know about how this would actually work. Now while I suspect that you actually posted that video as a bit of a joke given your previous points about youtube video, and it can hardly be held up as a rigorously planned experiment. But at the end of the day it actually shows some chap swinging his halberd as hard as he can... ...and he just barely cuts through a braced car bonnet. A car bonnet, now I can stab a screw driver through a car bonnet, that doesn't make me the bane of armoured knights. Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 07:22 AM. |
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07-14-2016, 03:44 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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Yeah to be fair I think that purpose built axes for warfare we basically what would get grouped into shorter pole arms (well barring specific stuff like dane axes, and earlier dagger axes etc). Axe blades on sticks appear a lot in different ways down the years. It's just the military versions didn't generally look much like civilian axes. So that said it's a bit unfair of me to say "axes weren't battlefield weapons, pole-arms were", because well in a lot of cases pole arms were battle field axes. Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 05:32 AM. |
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07-14-2016, 03:47 AM | #48 | |
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Behind You
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Re: Swords and plate
I'm no expert which is why I wasn't commenting.
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"DO I LEAVE IT IN OR DO I PULL IT OUT!?" My mother used to stuff my head with this (A registered nurse) quite often. You can survive with a certain percentage of bloodcells, but you can't survive without blood pressure. I remember I sliced a finger with scissors, the wound couldn't have been something you'd register as even a point of damage in gaming(Quarter to half inch), but I suffered so much from bloodloss in that small hole that I started getting sick. Blew my mind that could happen because at first I thought it was nothing. Often when we're gaming we look for "How much flesh is cleaved?" But even looking back at that video with that sword, the guy thrusted a Thr+1 weapon with what's probably average or near average ST into steal armor and went through an inch. No, he didn't run the guy through, but an inch on a point like that is quite a bit! He probably did an all out attack to get that depth, and if you look at something between DR6 and DR9 for plate, that's probably accurate for damage where most would be absorbed and maybe 1 or 2 points of damage CAN get through (Not on average). Things break down more when you are forced to classify things so rigidly into damage types. Take a mace for example. How do you quantify such a thing? Some with nobby spike, some with "Fins"... morningstars... they have +n damage, but they can only be cut, crush or impaling. Real life isn't so rigid. Also, GURPS doesn't track things like bone bruising from strikes or skeletal durability. People sometimes focus on bleeding as an external phenomena too. They don't realize contusions can be as bad as lascerations! Bleeding inside your body is still bleeding! Blood vessels aren't the most sturdy parts of our evolution. Cracked bones and such can be debilitating! Not to mention something rarely said is even if an attack doesn't get through armor, not every attack need be the killing blow. You get hit with a sword at full power and that will SUUUUCK. Not all of that is even more than jarring, but jarring injury is all it takes on a battlefield to leave you messed up. How many football players get concussions? Most the videos I watched on this subject seem to show the blunt trauma and the features I don't think GURPS models well is what will do you in versus literal slicing through flesh. Personally from every weapon I saw, it seems the best thing to use against someone coming at you in steel sheets is a warbow. Arrows seem to regularly piece plate armor quite a bit more effectively than I thought they would. I'd also like to mention, impaling attacks seem to get trapped in the armor quite a bit. I guess at the end of the day, there's a point to make. If armor was useless they wouldn't wear it, and if weapons were useless against it, people with armor would win every time.
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07-14-2016, 04:14 AM | #49 | |||||||||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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Anyway bleeding is very much going to more of a factor if the cutting edge / piecing point physically penetrates the armour and into the flesh far enough to hit blood vessels. Now yes blunt trauma can cause internal bleeding it's true. But hey we have rules for blunt trauma and bleeding, neither of which require cutting blades to cut through DR as they currently do. On the subject of how complicated rules are yes it's going to be subjective, only you have been arguing from position of objective fact. Note I pointed out that most of the tweaks are actually just the revisions of the existing rules so no more complicated that what already exists Quote:
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hewing into exposed flesh. Slashing apart body armour is likely slashing apart the bindings thus exposing the flesh (or also chinks etc which we've discussed), all made easier because most importantly what's being described is not combat (as the quote is at pains to point out). It's very much the aftermath and all that goes with it. But the thing is you are not arguing this in a vacuum, you're arguing this in a context of god alone knows how many threads where this assertion has been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Moreover when ever anyone does any serious experiments it again does not support your assertion. More over, even daft stuff like 'deadliest warrior' gets this stuff right (to the surprise of their presenters I might add) Quote:
EDIT: OK cool had a quick look, OK the writers position in regards to halberds cutting through plate can reasonably be summed up thus: "So, the iron halberd was the first versatile pole-weapon that put the foot soldier at a distinct advantage over the knight: it could crack through armor. An expressly offensive weapon, its value, then, was that it significantly decreased the protective appeal of plate armor" (pg241) Which is pretty unambiguous, however as the writer points out: "According to Schmidtchen’s controversial thesis, the halberd was first created in the Middle Ages as a response to the development of plate armor. But this is simply inaccurate. Some sort of prehistoric halberd existed as early as the Bronze Age in SouthEast Spain,464 and it is not exclusive to the West." (pg240) So one wonders why if such a weapon existed (and had existed for such a long time), and was way cheaper to manufacture and equip than armour, why armour actually out lasted the halberd? Don't get me wrong I don't think the writer is wrong, certainly in regards to the wider point about drilled Swiss halberdiers defeating armoured knights, just overstating the point regarding slashing through armour. And to be fair the dissertation is not focused on the minutea of armour penetration In similar context there are various claims about how the Roman legions feared the Dacian Falx for it's ability to hew through legionary armour. And yeah I don't doubt that of the weapons they faced the heavy blade on a stick was better against armour than most (leaving aside the fact that some legion armour wasn't great). But again its all relative. The Falx did not revolutionise warfare, nor did it render body armour obsolete. What I think we have is halbards of all slashing weapon are most likely to effect armour (but still not very likely) in GURPS terms a factor of their very high damage bonus (+5), and slashing apart or defeating armour doesn't necessarily mean in GURPS terms penetrating its full DR. Quote:
Remember this thread is not concerned with the rules for targeting chinks, it's not talking about blunt trauma (directly), it's not talking about hooking, nor armed grappling, it's specifically talking about cutting through armour. Now you linked to whole lot of manuals, but can you link to one where it recommends using a blade to cut through anything but the weakest bits of a foe's plate? Quote:
Well unless your claiming to be a veteran of live steel medieval battles that really does nothing to support you own claim. Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 06:58 AM. |
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07-14-2016, 04:24 AM | #50 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Swords and plate
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It is not however a picture of a halberd cutting though either one's plate. Do you have a picture of that (in an actual fighting manual)? Quote:
No because blunt impact was more effective at transmitting damage through armour than cutting blades, but it's relative. But the basic point is if you're facing someone in such armour you don't just give up and surrender, you rely on what tactics you have even if they're only reduce the disadvantage. Quote:
So quite likely faced situations where their cutting blades were very useful. That's one of the main features of such weapons, their versatility. So yes they had great big axe blades, but they also had spikes, and hooks / hammer heads as well. Which is a bit weird because the writer also rightly points out in the page before that the halberd was in no way invented by the Swiss, but had existed for a long time. Which means it had coexisted along side armoured warriors let alone knights for a considerable period of time in which the implications of that assertion does not seem to have followed through into reality? Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-14-2016 at 06:05 AM. |
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