Swords and plate

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by safisher

Low-Tech says "Realistically, it’s extremely difficult for a blade edge
to cut through any sort of armor." That's the contention to which I objected, based on the sources I had read. (The insistence that it's impossible to cut plate is a side issue.) But nevertheless, that's the assumption upon which that rule was written.

Very difficult does not mean impossible and allows for specialty weapons (like pole weapons) or particularly powerful blows from other weapons to still cut through most armors. Even contemporary sources site properly made textile armors as extremely effective against most harm (for instance, The Ordinances of Louis XI of France (1461-1483) quoted on pg. 41 of Loadouts: LT--though I admit this mentions only stabs and arrows specifically, but it also says that the man armed this way may "be at ease").

Originally Posted by safisher

A ST 12 dueling halberd or pollaxe user, which is a quite strong person in the first place, facing DR5+ armor needs to roll 11+ damage to actually cut it using the edge protection rule. To actually get through you'll need to do All Out Attacks. The heavier armors listed in Low-Tech Loadouts are all well above the DR5 line, some at DR7 and above. Never mind if you add quality modifiers it.

You need to check your math on this one. A ST12 person wielding a dueling halberd does 1d+6 cutting damage, which means on a regular attack 1/3 (a roll of 5 or 6 on 1d6) of the time the dueling halberd will completely slice through heavy mail or upper limb armor on 15th century Gothic plate (elbows and vambraces are only DR4, so the slicing threshold is 9). Does this really seem unreasonable to you? No, he cannot cut through Gothic breastplate with the axe portion of the dueling halberd, but evidence from the battle of Wisby (1361) graves show virtually no wounds to the torso, and those were probably the graves of the peasants using outdated armor. Almost all of the wounds are to the skull or extremities.

Also, remember, a dueling halberd was not usually a battlefield weapon, a full halberd in GURPS does sw+5 damage, which means the average damage from a ST12 soldier is 10.5 damage and caps at 13 (or 9.5 damage if converting adds to dice and then it caps at 17 damage). This means that it only needs to do a little over average damage to cut through heavy mail or Gothic limb plate. Hardly an ineffective weapon against armor. Also, with average damage it is still doing 4.5-5.5 crushing, crippling to a joint (so a major wound) even without slicing through the armor. And this all discounts the fact that a halberd had a pick on the other end, something that you seem to ignore in most of your responses. This would have made it far more effective against armor.

Originally Posted by safisher

Now, the problem here is not just that a known armor cutting weapon like the halberd can't cut armor, it's that any lesser weapon is also nerfed. If you use EP and the mods to increase armor DR as presented in LT, you have a very a-historical situation where actual battles simply could not have taken place. That's up the GM and his group to decide, but for me, EP is the wrong way to go about it.

In what way could historical battles not have taken place? Again, the Battle of Wisby graves indicate that it is really hard to injure someone through the thick parts of armor and that attacking the weaker parts of the armor or around it completely was preferred. It does not mean the person inside was invulnerable. And what percentage of an medieval army was armored at all, much less completely armored, including the extremities? Likewise, I have read and heard it increasingly observed in both the study of medieval warfare and feudal Japanese warfare that polearms (broadly speaking, including pikes, lances, and spears) were, in fact, the primary battlefield weapons and not these "lesser" weapons like swords--most likely because they were able to defeat armor more often (but this does not say that the average swing/stab would, in fact, defeat armor). Swords were most often used as sidearms, for specific situations or when the primary weapon was lost (though there were exceptions, certainly). This does not mean, however, that all parts of the polearm were equally effective against armor (there were unarmored troops and horses to kill as well).

Originally Posted by safisher

It makes cutting weapons KNOWN to cut through armor quite frequently lose 50% of their damage or more. Fine, you might say, if I can't get cutting damage then I'll just use a cheaper non-cutting weapon. And that's not what happened historically.

Known to cut through armor how often? All the time? Half the time? And how effective were these other less effective weapons at cutting through armor? Why do the manuals almost exclusively show half-swording, murder strokes, grappling, and the targeting of gaps when armored opponents are fighting with longswords? The masters definitely did not seem to think that swinging a sword blade against these armors, even in the extremities, was very worthwhile. It is true that polearms were used differently, but my understanding is that the dueling variety of these polearms were still not considered particularly deadly against full armor (though they certainly could and did defeat armor and kill, but was that on an most hits?). Current (EDIT: with the optional LT rules for cr damage through armor) dueling halberds will average serious damage to a limb, crippling to a joint, and 1/3 of the time do at least 9 cutting damage through heavy mail/upper limb hardened 15th century plate armor--always a major/crippling wound for someone with realistic HP.

The current problem with GURPS is that an average attack from a dueling halberd will do 4.5 cutting damage, so over 6 wounding through armor that was considered sufficiently strong to forego the use of a shield. Should an average attack be virtually crippling? Compare this to the hammer portion of a pollaxe which does sw+4 cr, averaging the same 9.5 dmg, but crushing, so it is only doing 4.5 wounding. From a game logic perspective, why have the armor defeating hammer head if it does less damage through armor?

Likewise, even a longsword from a similarly strong person (ST12) average cutting damage against the same armor (1.5 cut) when, for all the manual evidence, that was considered very unlikely.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Remember that halberds, in their usual form, have an axe blade, a spear point and a pick. The fact that they have a pick indicates that the designers and users of the halberd themselves did not consider the axe blade effective enough against armor to be used alone, so they added weight to the weapon (making it at least a little less easy to wield) in order to put a pick on the other side. Most (though not all) other medieval pole arms also feature a pick (sometimes integrated into the axe blade as a protruding spike). Why bother with a pick at all if the axe blade is such an effective weapon against armor? It makes the weapon cost more and, as I mentioned before, makes it at least a little harder to wield.

To be fair, even if an axe blade can get through armor, having the pick is worthwhile. First off, it's a much better part of the weapon to use to hook and trip up or dismount your foe. Secondly, even if the axe blade can punch through the armor, the pick is going to do it better.

Originally Posted by phayman53

Please note that I am not saying that the axe portion of a halberd never cleaved through armor, and I do not think anyone has argued in this thread that a halberd blade should never do cutting damage through armor.

Again, to be fair, while I don't think I outright stated this, it was the assumption I was working under (with a "barring extraordinary circumstances" qualifier), and I think my posts reflect this.

Originally Posted by phayman53

However, I think it is far more likely that a blow from the axe portion of a halberd or other polearm would cause blunt trauma by denting the armor (or even cracking but not fully penetrating it), and this is precisely why the basic GURPS rules for how blades interact with DR are problematic: bladed weapons do no damage until they defeat the DR and then they immediately get the 1.5x cutting modifier. This makes them inherently superior to blunt weapons against armor except that blunt weapons of the same size often do a simple +1 damage. This does not seem to track with the historical development of anti-plate armor weapons in the Middle Ages--which tended to start including hammers (often designed with small spikes or split heads to help the head not glance) and picks in addition to or instead of axe blades.

This meshes well with my own thoughts - even if the LT rules oversell the effect of armor to reduce injury from cutting weapons, I feel they work better than the rules we had previously. They also make thrusting with a sword occasionally worthwhile outside of targeting the Eyes or Vitals, which typically wasn't the case with the old rules (swing damage is roughly twice thrusting, so swinging your sword both has a better chance to penetrate and is mostly guaranteed to do more injury than thrusting with it; with edge protection, there's at least a window where you're likely to do more injury with a thrust).

Originally Posted by safisher

Low-Tech says "Realistically, it’s extremely difficult for a blade edge
to cut through any sort of armor." That's the contention to which I objected, based on the sources I had read. (The insistence that it's impossible to cut plate is a side issue.) But nevertheless, that's the assumption upon which that rule was written.

I don't read into the fluff text quite that far, personally. Take a look at the rule - does it make it extremely difficult for a blade edge to cut through any sort of armor? Hardly. DR 1 padded cloth needs 3+ cutting damage, which is an average roll for an ST 10 man with a hatchet. An ST 10 man with a Broadsword only fails to cut through on a roll of 1. DR 2 medium leather needs 5+ cutting damage, which is a bit more difficult - ST 10 with a Fine Broadsword or any number of dueling polearms will do it on average. DR 3 scale (or plate for that matter) needs 7+ cutting damage, which calls for ST 11 and a sw+3 cut weapon (a Fine Large Falchion, a Fine dueling polearm, or a non-dueling polearm like a Glaive) to do it on average. Once you hit DR 4 Fine Mail, the stat normalizers start to cringe (ST 12 and Fine Glaive, or ST 13 and Glaive for 9+ cutting damage on average), and at DR 5 I'd argue you're probably in the regime of "extremely difficult," but only just.

Originally Posted by safisher

A ST 12 dueling halberd or pollaxe user, which is a quite strong person in the first place, facing DR5+ armor needs to roll 11+ damage to actually cut it using the edge protection rule. To actually get through you'll need to do All Out Attacks. The heavier armors listed in Low-Tech Loadouts are all well above the DR5 line, some at DR7 and above. Never mind if you add quality modifiers it.

ST 12 is strong, but I doubt is atypical of a polearm-wielder. You don't need to go All Out to get a 37.5%-41.7% (depending on if you do it as 3d-1 or 2d+3) chance of getting all the way through DR 5. DR 7 makes things pretty rough, of course, but still doable.

Originally Posted by safisher

Now, the problem here is not just that a known armor cutting weapon like the halberd can't cut armor, it's that any lesser weapon is also nerfed. If you use EP and the mods to increase armor DR as presented in LT, you have a very a-historical situation where actual battles simply could not have taken place. That's up the GM and his group to decide, but for me, EP is the wrong way to go about it.

I'm curious about the mods you're referring to here. LT only has two, mutually exclusive, modifiers that increase DR - Leather of Quality and Hardened Steel - and both of these only grant a +1 to DR. Everything else modifies armor weight.

I'm also curious as to which battles you refer to. Let's consider Morgarten, for example. We've got a bunch of Austrian knights probably mostly wearing DR 5 (Heavy Segmented Plate) armor. The Swiss are wielding at least dueling halberds, so they likely have ST 12, but let's say they instead have ST 11 and the Huge Weapons (ST) Perk. That's a base of 2d+1 cutting damage. On a normal attack, they have a 1-in-6 chance of outright penetrating the armor, cutting through it. If they opt to All Out Attack (which is probably rather common in large melees), damage jumps to 3d cut, which has a 50% chance of doing this. Now, if the knights have loadouts similar to French chevaliers of the same era, they'll also be wearing a DR 3* mail haubergon beneath their coat of plates. If we add these DR's together, it does indeed become outright impossible (outside of critical hits) to cut through the knights' torso armor, but personally I think it makes more sense to assess each layer on its own - a backing of mail shouldn't make a coat of plates any harder to cut through, so as long as damage exceeds twice the higher DR, treating it all as cutting seems appropriate.

Originally Posted by safisher

It makes cutting weapons KNOWN to cut through armor quite frequently lose 50% of their damage or more. Fine, you might say, if I can't get cutting damage then I'll just use a cheaper non-cutting weapon. And that's not what happened historically.

It frequently reduces injury by 33%, not 50%. Even if you lack the ability to ever get through torso DR, you'll still often want to use cutting weapons for when targeting less-armored foes and locations. This doesn't make much difference when fighting the chevalier (as the 7+ damage you need to start cutting against the arms or legs would most likely cripple them without the cutting modifier), but might against lesser foes (in the case of Morgarten, all the foes who weren't heavily armored cavalry, as well as the horses themselves).

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by safisher

Welcome to history! These are all good points which illustrate the issues with historical sources, but in actuality, the chronicler here is living within the time in which the Swiss are still using halberds. That's a huge point in his favor. Further, it's within living memory, which is also a point in his favor. Many of our historical sources are far later. This one is useful for our purposes. And keep in mind, we would indeed be in error to rely exclusively on one source!

...

Our sources almost never give us the full information. But clear words such as razor and slash should tells us that is was the axe head.

I agree he is closer to the battle than other sources often are, but you still have the problem of a (possibly) patriotic chronicler using non-technical (and frankly, flowery) language. He is not writing a treatise on how the halberds were used in the battle, after all. His point was to praise the effectiveness of the weapon. Do we really believe that the weapons actually cut like razors?

Originally Posted by safisher

There won't be any better evidence than what we have. That is how history works, unfortunately. What you ought to ask is why do you think they couldn't cut through any armor?

Up thread you berate another poster for misrepresenting your argument, and here you have just done so with mine. I was explicitly clear that I was not arguing that it was impossible (or even near impossible) for the axe portion of a halberd (or a sword for that matter) to cut through any armor. I even used bold in my original post to make sure it was not missed!

My point was to show other ways of interpreting the evidence (in light of its problems or possible problems) to indicate that, in combat against a standing, defending opponent, it is not clear that the axe portion of a halberd was super effective at cutting all the way through armor and into the person. This is why it can be instructive to learn from modern tests (and some are far better than others), even though they are far from perfect. Usually, in fact, the tests are rigged in favor of the weapon, not the armor (with bow tests often being a major exception to this). They tend to uses a braced target with insufficient padding, improperly manufactured mail, and/or poor reproductions of plate armor. That said, in recent decades HEMA practitioners and reenactors who seek to be faithful to surviving equipment have come a long way in dispelling some of the myths that circulated even in high level scholarship (such as heavy, unwieldy swords, difficulty of movement in armor, etc.).

Originally Posted by safisher

This is the injury portion that I have mentioned before. Armor defeating DR is one side of the issue, the other is the injury itself. There is a granularity here that makes this unsatisfactory. Further, I'm inclined to think a deep broken bone (a rib puncturing a lung, say) might be worse to heal than a clean cut (based on historical surgeon's views). But we have the rules as such and there is no need to re-write all the rules to get things "just so." It has to remain playable.

...

One way to think of damage, though is less about the narrative description and more about just the numbers. That is, "cutting" represents a certain portion of crushing damage, tissue shock, deep broken bones, nerve damage, and significant bleeding. Saying "cutting" and thinking of slicing a carrot is not quite right, just like saying crushing doesn't cause bleeding. I've hit myself in the finger a few times with a hammer, back when I was in construction work, and let me tell you, I bled profusely!

Again, this is the problem with basic RAW cutting damage, even if you assume some of it is from blunt trauma, it usually is more effective through armor than similar sized crushing weapons because of the damage multiplier. That is why so many of us like rules like Dan's cutting weapons do crushing damage in LT (though many want to tweak it further). There is virtually no point in having a dedicated crushing weapon in the basic rules (EDIT: except for some edge cases where the +1 damage you sometimes get from a blunt weapon makes the difference), but at least Dan's rule evens the field a little.

Originally Posted by safisher

That's a perfectly subjective opinion to have. I somewhat agree, once you get into higher ST. But the idea here is to play an adventuring game that is "good enough" for adventuring purposes. For me, and YMMV, the first rule I want see is how it matches up to historical battles. GURPS gets it done.

As is your view that GURPS matches up to historical battles in its basic version. For many of us, it does not seem to match up to historical battles because armor is just not good enough against things like swords and axes. They simply do too much damage against an armored opponent, especially when compared to blunt weapons. Should armor be able to be defeated? Certainly! Should it be defeated on average by a slightly strong guy with a 1-handed axe (ST11, Axe vs. DR5 limb plate armor, or even Medium plate)? And should that axe in that situation have no disadvantage against a mace? Again, for many of us, not so much.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Very difficult does not mean impossible

Looks like I had a hang fire on this post. See below.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Now, if the knights have loadouts similar to French chevaliers of the same era, they'll also be wearing a DR 3* mail haubergon beneath their coat of plates. If we add these DR's together, it does indeed become outright impossible (outside of critical hits) to cut through the knights' torso armor

Then we agree, I presume?

but personally I think it makes more sense to assess each layer on its own - a backing of mail shouldn't make a coat of plates any harder to cut through, so as long as damage exceeds twice the higher DR, treating it all as cutting seems appropriate.

That's not how layered armor works, RAW.

As to the rest, I appreciate the conversation. I hope I have presented enough here to at least somewhat defend my abhorrence of the EP rule. Good day.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Very difficult does not mean impossible

For anything short of these pole weapons, indeed it does.

A ST12 person wielding a dueling halberd does 1d+6 cutting damage, which means on a regular attack 1/3 (a roll of 5 or 6 on 1d6) of the time the dueling halberd will completely slice through heavy mail or upper limb armor on 15th century Gothic plate (elbows and vambraces are only DR4, so the slicing threshold is 9).

It's equally true that 2/3 of the time they will not get through. At all. When this is supposed to be the medieval version of a can opener? And it cannot cut through anything heavier?

No, he cannot cut through Gothic breastplate with the axe portion of the dueling halberd

This was my point.

but evidence from the battle of Wisby (1361) graves show virtually no wounds to the torso, and those were probably the graves of the peasants using outdated armor. Almost all of the wounds are to the skull or extremities.

We don't know why that is -- it could head and neck wounds are from overhead strikes on the shield line, battlefield executions, etc. Wound studies like this are just not very informative.

And this all discounts the fact that a halberd had a pick on the other end, something that you seem to ignore in most of your responses. This would have made it far more effective against armor.

Please do not imply that have ignored this issue of the point -- the conversation was about the edge versus armor. The sources I quoted discussed the edge. I enjoy a lively debate. Don't be disingenuous about my intentions here.

In what way could historical battles not have taken place?

Halberd using peasants attacking armored knights.

Known to cut through armor how often? All the time? Half the time? And how effective were these other less effective weapons at cutting through armor?

You keep asking these questions. They are not going to produce an epiphany for us. The noted historians cited early upthread were very clear. The historical record is very clear. Halberdiers slaughtered knights in armor. I did not make this up. It's the consensus view. If you want to debate all the minutiae and reject the accepted chroniclers of these battles, I really can't help you. But you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with them. In fact, you are bordering on dismissing them.

Why do the manuals almost exclusively show half-swording, murder strokes, grappling, and the targeting of gaps when armored opponents are fighting with longswords? The masters definitely did not seem to think that swinging a sword blade against these armors, even in the extremities, was very worthwhile.

I have no idea why you think this is relevant to the discussion.

It is true that polearms were used differently, but my understanding is that the dueling variety of these polearms were still not considered particularly deadly against full armor (though they certainly could and did defeat armor and kill, but was that on an most hits?).

I assume that the soldiers in the War of the Roses were armed with the weapons necessary for the job at hand. The fought in plate, and/or against, with weapons like the pollaxe.

Current (EDIT: with the optional LT rules for cr damage through armor) dueling halberds will average serious damage to a limb, crippling to a joint, and 1/3 of the time do at least 9 cutting damage through heavy mail/upper limb hardened 15th century plate armor--always a major/crippling wound for someone with realistic HP.

That's probably excessive, too. Normal blunt trauma at 1 per 5, instead of all excess, would be sufficient.

The current problem with GURPS is that an average attack from a dueling halberd will do 4.5 cutting damage, so over 6 wounding through armor that was considered sufficiently strong to forego the use of a shield. Should an average attack be virtually crippling?

I expect%2

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by safisher

It's equally true that 2/3 of the time they will not get through. At all. When this is supposed to be the medieval version of a can opener? And it cannot cut through anything heavier?

Huh? It does not cut through the armor but it still does crushing damage by the LT optional rule. I don't see how that qualifies as not "getting through". No, it does not "get through" enough to cut the person, but it does do enough damage to seriously (even critically) injure him. I am not talking about giving edged weapons a straight armor divisor of (.5), I am talking about usually reducing it do doing crushing damage.

Originally Posted by safisher

This was my point.

And what evidence do you have of halberd blades cutting through 15th Century Gothic breastplates at all? Certainly they killed men in such armor, but how often was it by the axe blade through the breastplate? What chronicler talks about that?

Originally Posted by safisher

We don't know why that is -- it could head and neck wounds are from overhead strikes on the shield line, battlefield executions, etc. Wound studies like this are just not very informative.

So we actually have evidence for wounds that disagree with your point along with surviving armor and you simply dismiss them as not very informative? Wisby seems to be a mass grave from people who died in the battle, not executions. Many still had valuables on them.

Likewise, I have dismissed a narrow interpretation of the one contemporary chronicler you site (unless there is another you site that I have missed, it is a long thread) as problematic in assuming he is being precise in describing how the Swiss Halberds were used to kill so many knights (which side of the weapon was primarily used to penetrate armor, not that they were very effective in killing them, or even that they hacked to pieces downed knights). I have already explained why, and yes, I do rely some on modern tests and evidence like Wisby. We disagree, that is fine.

Originally Posted by safisher

Halberd using peasants attacking armored knights.

...and I do not dispute that halberds were used by peasants to kill armored knights. I am not even disputing that the axe blade could cut through the armor at times. I am disputing that this should happen on the majority of the blows.

Originally Posted by safisher

You keep asking these questions. They are not going to produce an epiphany for us. The noted historians cited early upthread were very clear. The historical record is very clear. Halberdiers slaughtered knights in armor. I did not make this up. It's the consensus view. If you want to debate all the minutiae and reject the accepted chroniclers of these battles, I really can't help you. But you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with them. In fact, you are bordering on dismissing them.

I have asked repeatedly because, I think, this is the first time you have clearly engaged with it. I was trying to make the point through questions that it is different to say a halberd blade could penetrate armor and cut the person underneath and how likely such an event would be. Yes, halberds killed knights. They were a very effective weapon against armor, maybe the best. Not disputing that. Does that mean armor was virtually useless against halberds with an average hit like it is in GURPS basic rules?

Originally Posted by safisher

I have no idea why you think this is relevant to the discussion.

...because in the section I quoted you mentioned on of the problems with the LT optional rule is that "lesser" weapons than polearms should be able to cut through armor. I was pointing out that the manuals we have for one of those "lesser" weapons, the longsword, shows that the masters did not usually teach knights to even try to cut through plate with those swords.

Originally Posted by safisher

I assume that the soldiers in the War of the Roses were armed with the weapons necessary for the job at hand. The fought in plate, and/or against, with weapons like the pollaxe.

Which were multi-purpose weapons, often having a hammer head, a pick, etc. Like the halberd. And again, I believe the axe could, sometimes cut through armor, but not at the rate GURPS basic RAW has it doing.

Originally Posted by safisher

That's probably excessive, too. Normal blunt trauma at 1 per 5, instead of all excess, would be sufficient.

Wait, now I am confused--you seem to be saying that Dan's rules in LT do too much damage with this point. Or are you saying that blunt trauma should be very small until the cutting threshold is reached, but that the cutting threshold should be less than Dan's 2x DR?

[phayman53]

@safisher:

I just wanted to say that I think we probably are closer to agreeing than my posts have made it sound (I get a bit carried away in debates sometimes, especially over forums). I think that doubling DR, like Dan's patch rule in LT (that even he doesn't really like if I recall correctly) is probably too harsh for axes and halberds, etc. However, I still think the RAW effect of such weapons on DR is too generous. I would eye-ball it at about 1.5x DR (EDIT: maybe a little more), but fractions and rounding annoy me too much in a game like GURPS, I would prefer a smooth progression. I also would want the ability to do blunt trauma injury through the armor, like you suggest, before beating this threshold (and not cr damage). I just have not thought of a good way to do it without radically changing things. You seem to be happy to err on the side of GURPS basic RAW, and I would rather err on the side of the LT patch.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Huh? It does not cut through the armor but it still does crushing damage by the LT optional rule.

The cutting issue has been the discussion.

And what evidence do you have of halberd blades cutting through 15th Century Gothic breastplates at all? Certainly they killed men in such armor, but how often was it by the axe blade through the breastplate? What chronicler talks about that?

We don't need a breastplate, just a helm or some comparable target, which LT gives comparable DR. Most of the manuals recommend head blows, not torso blows. That makes sense, given how devastating they can be. But certainly those are plate helmets.

As the author says in one pollaxe manual:
"And from there, following up one foot after the other, you can give him a jab with the said queue, running it through the left hand, at the face: either there or wherever seems good to you. Or swing at his head."

"you can draw back your queue, hitting against the side of his with your mail, or stepping behind him and hitting at his head."

"Whichever guard you are on, you can try to hit him on the head. Not so that, if you should miss, your axe passes beyond him: because that would be dangerous. And immediately this blow has been accomplished, you must make a feint of having another go at his head"

And so on.

Hmm.

Well, we have this one, of Richard III:
"More likely, death came from either the axe-blade of a staff weapon, such as a bill or halberd (then favored by English soldiers), which sliced through the base of his skull, creating a 6 × 5 cm wound; and/or a sword tip or the point of a staff weapon that penetrated 10 cms into the skull, also from the under-side. Interestingly, the large slicing wound fits with the one account that names the weapon used to kill Richard, a halberd. The massive trauma to Richard’s skull indicates that he was probably both helmetless and lying prone, face down. Sword blades appear to have caused the remaining four wounds to the skull and atlas vertebra."
But that's not a wound through a helmet. Possibly.

Ewart Oakeshott says:
"In this battle Charles himself, fighting heroically to cover the retreat of his broken army, was cut down by a halberd, cleft through helmet and skull by a tremendous blow which split his head from temple to chin."
He also says: "Duke Leopold and twenty-six of his noble companions were buried in the Abbey of Konigsfeld; in 1898 their tombs were opened and it was found that most of the skulls were dreadfully split by halberd-strokes."

CW Oman says:
"[halberd] the most ponderous... the most murderous of weapons. Swung by strong arms it could cleave helmets and plate-armour as no sword could do."

Well, let's just examine what we know about medieval mass graves. Remember what I said about the archaelogy being not all the helpful. But anyway, let's see what we have:

Here's the total for Towton (that's a late 15th century battle)
"Many of the skeletons had perimortmen injuries, trauma that occurred around the time of death, and some had healed wounds from previous fights. Most of the trauma was to the skulls: 113 wounds on the 28 recovered skulls, and a total of 43 postcranial (the bones below the skull) injuries on all 38 bodies. An osteological exam of the skull wounds suggest that 73 were caused by sharp force trauma, 28 were produced by blunt force trauma, and 12 were the result of puncture wounds. Archaeologists believe that a weapon consistent with the pollaxe could have easily made these injuries."
Further:
"forty-three men killed at the battle fought outside what was then a village in 1461...Wounds could not be found on thirteen of the bodies, although this does not necessarily mean that these men did not suffer wounds, only that their wounds failed to impact the bones. Of the remaining thirty bodies, only three had single wounds (one sharp-force, one blunt-force, and one pen-etrative-force), while all others had multiple wounds. One man received eight sharp-force trauma; one man had nine sharp-force and two pene-trative-force wounds; and another suffered ten sharp-force and three blunt-force trauma. Twenty-seven out of twenty-eight crania found (two skeletons did not include crania, while another had a cranium too damaged for study) displayed wounds: Seventy-three were sharp-force (fifty-one of which penetrated the skull); twenty-eight were blunt-force (eighteen of which penetrated); and twelve were penetrative-force (all of which penetrated). Any of these had the potential to cause death. Ten bodies showed wounds to the neck, three to the shoulders, twelve to the arms, twenty to the hands and wrists, and seven to the legs and feet. Weapons potentially causing these wounds included swords, daggers, maces, war hammers, staff weapons, longbow arrows, and possibly cross-bow bolts. What is almost unique among excavated bodies exhibiting violent trauma is how many of these wounds were made to the rear and back of the skull by men wielding their weapons from above. Initially, this led to the conclusion that the men were prisoners who were executed while kneeling by standing soldiers; however, absent written evidence that this happened at Towton, it is more likely that they were Lancastrian soldiers fleeing on foot from the battlefield who were ridden down and killed by Yorkist horsemen. In 2005, four more bodies were excavated from beneath the dining room of Towton Hall, all exhibiting similar wounds to those studied previously, but a detailed report of these bodies has not yet been published."

From Wisby (mid 14th century):
"The largest number of wounds was from sharp-edged weapons (swords or axes), with 126 bodies suffering penetrations (from bolts or the points of staff weapons), and sixty with both sharp-force and penetrative trauma. Cranial wounds were frequent (most of which would have probably caused instant death) although the majority of wounds were to the arms and legs and would not have been immediately fatal. Those not slain instantly most likely died more slowly by exsanguination, for all those found in the grave-mounds at Solberga had died during the battle."

From Aljubarrota in Portugal, August 1385
"Sharp-force trauma, the result of wounds made by swords and axes, was numerous, as was penetrative trauma; wounds made by lances and arrows. Several sharp-force cuts were to the head, some quite deep and likely fatal, and there were many arrow and bolt wounds to the frontal and parietal bones of the cranium, suggesting that bows and crossbows shot these projectiles from in front, with a relatively steep arc. Many wounds were also to the limbs, only three of which showed complete amputation, confirming that limb-loss during battle was comparatively rare and that, when it did happen, even such a significant trauma could perhaps be survived. One Aljubarrota soldier was fighting on the healed stump of a leg that, because of the roughness of the cut, was likely the result of an earlier battlefield wound. Several other bodies also showed previous wounds that had healed or begun to heal."

What we have in these cases, for whatever reason, is a lot of sharp force trauma wounds. Were these wounds received through armor? We don't know. Possibly. Were they caused by axes and polearms? Probably some. Were they caused by cutting weapons? Yes, by definition. What we do know is that there were a lot of them. More than other wounds. The main thing to point out is that this was during periods of history in which most everyone was wearing some type of armor. I'll leave you to conclude what you will from that.

So we actually have evidence for wounds that disagree with your point along with surviving armor and you simply dismiss them as not very informative? Wisby seems to be a mass grave from people who died in the battle, not executions. Many still had valuables on them.

Well, I don't know how to interpret Wisby as supporting any argument, other than the general stuff above.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by phayman53

...and I do not dispute that halberds were used by peasants to kill armored knights. I am not even disputing that the axe blade could cut through the armor at times. I am disputing that this should happen on the majority of the blows.

One of the issues is granularity of stats. It really matters whether you are comparing ST10 or ST13, light, medium, or heavy plate, whether we assume AoA, etc.

Does that mean armor was virtually useless against halberds with an average hit like it is in GURPS basic rules?

I certainly think armor had its purpose -- this was, afterall, why people wore it. To what degree it could protect was highly variable. Douglas Cole has suggested Armor Dice to replace the fixed DR, for instance. And that's really the two issues come together at once. You have variable damage and fixed DR, plus wound effects. Or you have fixed damage and variable DR plus wound effects.

...because in the section I quoted you mentioned on of the problems with the LT optional rule is that "lesser" weapons than polearms should be able to cut through armor. I was pointing out that the manuals we have for one of those "lesser" weapons, the longsword, shows that the masters did not usually teach knights to even try to cut through plate with those swords.

Oh, it's not PLATE, you see, it's ANY ARMOR that I object to.

Which were multi-purpose weapons, often having a hammer head, a pick, etc. Like the halberd. And again, I believe the axe could, sometimes cut through armor, but not at the rate GURPS basic RAW has it doing.

No doubt those other heads were used. In fact the pollaxe fighting often leans heavily on stabbing attacks. But, the killing blow is usually head shots with axe or hammer head.

Wait, now I am confused--you seem to be saying that Dan's rules in LT do too much damage with this point. Or are you saying that blunt trauma should be very small until the cutting threshold is reached, but that the cutting threshold should be less than Dan's 2x DR?

Eh, I'm not sure what I was on about there. Pardon me. I've been in the hospital today. Hard drugs. ;)