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Old 10-29-2013, 09:13 AM   #41
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Certainly anything the modern experimenter does would be possible at any point in history, provided equivalent equipment was available, but the modern experimenter is not actually trying to kill people with a lance on a TL2 battlefield. So there is room to question the equivalence between the experimental model and the historical problem.
Quite so. The author is likely using Lance Sport rather than Lance, and doesn't need to worry about his foe trying to kill him (as he'll be purposefully aiming for the author's shield, or that attached shield thing). For historical battles, the advanced saddle would have been indispensable for keeping the soldier from being pulled from the horse, and stirrups would be needed to effectively fight in a melee from horseback. Both also make riding far more comfortable. It's just that, if worse came to worse and the soldier was forced to ride into battle without saddle or stirrups (say, they broke during a previous charge, and he doesn't have the time to put on some new ones), he'd still be able to manage a lance charge if it were necessary. He'd be more likely to end up unhorsed and killed or captured, but it wouldn't be an automatic thing.

EDIT: On the topic of appropriate damage for a lance, jousting mail is noted in Low Tech as being used against battefield-type lances (with sharpened points). It has DR 6. My estimates have an ST 12 lance capping out a little above 3d, for an average around 11. If we give lances no armor divisor/multiplier, that's an average of 5 penetrating impaling damage, for 10 injury (assuming we miss the vitals). Our unfortunate jouster could therefore expect - if he failed to block with his shield - to have at least 14 minutes before expiring. As we'd expect our hardy knight to have HT 12 or so, he's got a 50% shot at not bleeding each minute, and may well stabilize on his own. More likely, the field doctors on hand will use Bandaging to stop the bleeding, and possibly restore a little more HP with Treating Shock. Either way, this tourney is probably over for our knight, but at least he's not dead.
If we instead gave the lance AD (2), we're looking at 8 penetrating damage, for 16 injury. That halves the time to the first death check, and he's only rolling against 9 to avoid bleeding damage. There's also a lot less leeway - if AD (1) rolls high, our knight is more likely to fall unconscious - if AD (2) rolls high, our knight is more likely to die outright!
The best jousting plate has DR 14 or so, meaning AD (1) has to get rather lucky to actually hurt our knight, while AD (2) will typically cause a major wound but is unlikely to kill.
All told, AD (1) seems the more likely. The best armor likely to be encountered on the battlefield is probably DR 9, maybe DR 10 (Heavy Hardened/Duplex Plate). The lance will still wound such a well-equipped soldier with AD (1), which seems appropriate. With AD (2), an average hit would cause some rather serious damage, likely knocking the soldier out outright, which doesn't seem quite right.

Last edited by Varyon; 10-29-2013 at 09:46 AM.
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Old 10-29-2013, 10:03 AM   #42
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

If you have a warhorse charging at twenty miles per hour, then that's only about nine meters per second. Depending on how heavy your lance is, that's within the range of human stabbing speed. A six pound lance moving at nine meters a second is only 109J. I don't think that's going to penetrate heavy mail. It's scary, and the horse adds mobility and height, but I don't think it's more likely to penetrate armor than an angry hoplite with a spear.

But maybe the horse is moving at thirty mph, in which case you're looking at 244J. That's significantly more dangerous, and if you gave the lance an AD (2), then it would necessitate DR 13 or 14 for complete protection.
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Old 10-29-2013, 10:09 AM   #43
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I would note that lances clearly dd pose a significant penetrating damage risk, because if they didn't surely nobody would have needed specialized jousting armor.
Well, there's also the factor of "this is a sport, and we're not willing to run the same risks in a sport as on a battlefield".
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Old 10-29-2013, 11:01 AM   #44
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Well, there's also the factor of "this is a sport, and we're not willing to run the same risks in a sport as on a battlefield".
Sure, but if field armor isn't enough to feel safe against tournament lances... And we're not talking about 'maybe you take a lance to the neck' safety, because they specifically augmented breastplates.
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Old 10-29-2013, 11:27 AM   #45
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

I suspect there are a number of reasons why someone might wear thicker armor in a joust than on the battlefield.

1) On the battlefield, you're not likely to be struck square in the chest while you and your foe are both moving at top speed. This is something that almost never happens. Armoring for this would be like armoring your tanks against rogue asteroid impacts. But that still doesn't make such impacts lethal, or even incapacitating. It might merely make them annoying, which leads to:

2) On the battlefield, you might be willing to risk the blunt trauma of such an impact, thankful to live, with the chance of such an occurrence being very low. In a joust, on the other hand, you might want to hop off your horse and go have a drink or negotiate a marriage or something. You don't want to walk around the party with a broken rib.

"How did the battle go, honey!"

"Splendidly! I got struck square in the chest, and escaped with nothing more than a broken rib!"

In a battle, you expect to be wounded, or at least you're prepared for the possibility, and there's no shame in limping around for a while after. In a joust... not so much. Unfortunately, GURPS has quite a lot of trouble dealing with blunt trauma through armor.
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Last edited by ErhnamDJ; 10-29-2013 at 11:30 AM.
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Old 10-29-2013, 11:28 AM   #46
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

[QUOTE=Tomsdad;1669130]
do you have a cite for heavy mail not being pieced by charging lances?[quote]

Anna Komenos describes exactly this in the Alexiad.
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Old 10-29-2013, 12:50 PM   #47
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

After some experimentation, I may have a satisfactory solution. Instead of using the Basic Set's formula, calculate a fighter's effective ST according to Mr. Cole's variant rules and then add +1 ST for every yard of movement.

Thus, a knight with ST 12, riding at Move 8 and carrying a lance, will have an effective ST of 12*(6/3)+8=32. Dividing this damage by 20 produces a result of 1.6D, for 5.6 average damage. Jousting mail or a gambeson underneath armour would seem to provide adequate protection from this, especially if the lance is not given an armour divisor (which seems appropriate for most piercing weapons; surely a spear is not as effective at piercing armour as a bodkin arrow).

If this is still too high, we can reduce the ST given for movement to +1/2 ST per yard, resulting in 1.4D or 4.9 average damage. Does this seem appropriate?
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Old 10-29-2013, 01:04 PM   #48
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Cato the Elder View Post
After some experimentation, I may have a satisfactory solution. Instead of using the Basic Set's formula, calculate a fighter's effective ST according to Mr. Cole's variant rules and then add +1 ST for every yard of movement.

Thus, a knight with ST 12, riding at Move 8 and carrying a lance, will have an effective ST of 12*(6/3)+8=32.
I'm slightly confused. Could you link to the effective ST calculation? (I'm leery of a flat ST bonus per yard, but I'm not sure I understand things correctly, so I'd rather check first.)
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Old 10-29-2013, 01:08 PM   #49
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

It is found here. There is no justification in physics for adding +1 ST per yard, I am just tinkering to produce a satisfactory result.
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Old 10-29-2013, 02:44 PM   #50
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Default Re: Rescaled Melee Damage and Couched Lances.

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Originally Posted by Verjigorm View Post
Anna Komenos describes exactly this in the Alexiad.
No, she writes about Frankish mail being resistant to Byzantine arrows but here are a few examples of mail being resistant to lances:

"Some of our men saw him (they were Scyths from the Taurus district, and not more than four at that) and attacked him with lances, driving in on both flanks, but the iron shafts proved ineffective… Meanwhile he budged in neither direction, for as they pushed him with equal force this way and that, he remained poised and balanced in the middle. To Isaac this seemed a favourable omen, when attacks from right and left both failed to dislodge him..."
-- Michael Psellos, Chronographia

"Afterwards the king, when having put the Goths to flight he had killed king Alaric, two from the enemy army suddenly coming upon him, with their lances they strike him on both sides; but with the help of his armour and of the speed of his horse, he did not perish but was preserved."
Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks

Usamah ibn Munquidh (1095-1188) recounts an anecdote in which he jumped his horse over a hedge and solidly struck a Frankish knight with his lance such that:
"He bent sideways so much that his head reached his stirrup, his shield and lance fell off his hand, and his helmet off his head... he then resumed his position, erect in the saddle. Having had linked mail under his tunic, my lance did not wound him."
-- Memoirs of Usamah Ibn-Munquidh

"As those who witnessed the following have since recounted, at this point he [the Count of Saint-Pol] came into great mortal danger as he was hit by twelve lances at the same time, and yet, with the help of his outstanding virtue, no one could bring either him or his horse down."
-- William the Breton, the Battle of Bouvines.
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Last edited by DanHoward; 10-29-2013 at 03:24 PM.
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