Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

(Cross-posted from rpg.net)

Could you please give me some pointers on how to build effective melee fighters for a GURPS Basic campaign set in an analog to the British Dark Ages?

The idea is to have a small band of mercenary warriors, with some variety of arms, armour and fighting-styles. There will be scouting, ambushes and raiding as well as the occasional battle against groups of similarly equipped men.

Characters will be built on 100 points, with up to 50 points in disads; no cinematic advantages or super-powers, no anachronistic gear. At least one third of all points will have to be reserved for non-combat skills.

I have some experience with GURPS, but would be grateful for suggestions for arms/weapons skills and armour as well as insights on how to best utilize unarmed combat maneuvers, slams and shoving etc.

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

Most of your warriors will have spears. Some will have axes or clubs. Swords are restricted to the nobility, although your mercenaries should be able to get horses. Armor will be mostly leather and mail. Archery will be common enough, although the days of the fabled British Yeoman archer are far off.

As a rule, think of peasant conscripts as having skill 10, veterans as skill 12, and exceptional warriors as skill 14.

If your soldiers are professional mercenaries, they will have Soldier/TL3 as their main non-combat professional skill.

If you have Martial Arts, you can draw lots of inspiration from styles like Sword And Shield Fighting, Foot Archery, Combat Wrestling, Viking Spear Fighting, and either or both of Armatura Eqestris or Knightly Mounted Combat (Early Medieval)

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

Weapon skills would likely be Bow, Broadsword or Shortsword, and Shield. Depending on how prevalent you want plate armor or combat-worthy axes, Axe/Mace may substitute for Broadsword or Shortsword. Unarmed skills would likely be Boxing or Brawling, and Wrestling. These skills should be in the 12 to 14 range. As they're supposed to be mercs, I'd give them Soldier at 10 to 12; their leader should have Tactics at 12 as well.

Non-combat skills would best be served as Survival (either Woodlands or Plains, although Swampland is also viable in some areas of England, I believe), Area Knowledge (England or county/shire), and possibly Boating (Sail or Unpowered) if they live near the coast.

ST is probably best around 12, same with DX and HT. As you're saying 100/-50, there's not much room there for stats higher than 12 to be viable; if you can afford it, and if the GM allows, Striking ST is useful for more damage.

Fit and Outdoorsman are probably your best advantages. Languages would likely be Saxon English, Scottish, Welsh, Norman French, or Danish, depending on where you were located.

Disads... Duty or Sense of Duty to the merc company is probably viable. Code of Honor (Soldier's) is also likely; CoH (Chivalry) would be an ideal for the knights of the era, not the mercs, although quite a number of "mere fighters" were as noble as, if not more noble than, any knight.

Gear would likely be a mail shirt or hauberk, a regular bow or longbow, possibly made of yew, a medium shield made of wood with an iron boss in the center, and a sword of some kind, either a shortsword, a thrusting broadsword or a thrusting bastard sword (longswords could be used as well, but were likely rare for the average mercenary, being the weapon of the knight). That's not counting the sundries in his pack or his boots.

Note that the weapons, especially the sword, are likely to start out as Cheap versions, rather than good- or even fine-quality gear.

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

In Britain and Western Europe in general, armour was mainly mail and layered cloth. Leather was more common further east.

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

It's going to hard (if not impossible) to make dedicated professional warriors with those conditions, IME.

Couple of points --
 

1.) You could easily add a variety of superstitions -- any dark wood is full of mankilling demons; the ocean is a living thing and needs the occasional sacrifice. Note that the "fair lady" of "London Bridge" was a reference to the early custom of embedding a human sacrifice into at least one pier of any newly-constructed bridge.

2.) Depending on when in the Dark Ages you set your campaign religious views could be an issue. Lots of Saxons and Scandinavians would be pagan and even lots of the officially-Christian types in Western Europe have more trust in their forefathers' now-hidden beliefs than in the White God. [IIRC Charlemagne, the first Western Holy Roman Emperor, crowned by the Pope, had four wives. At once. No one apparently wanted to call his attention to the official rules . . . ]

Even within Christianity there's lots of deviation. You had the Celtic and North Saxon (IIRC -- I forget the official name) churches and Rome was busy sending papal legates out to combat error and heresy. This doesn't even mention the East-West split that existed hundreds of years before the official division in 1054.

3.) Fighting men were one of the few groups that could get around. The Byzantine Varangian Guard apparently started in the 900s but I'm sure that there were predecessors and you certainly could make some up -- the records from that time aren't exactly complete. Normans in the Mediterranean Basin began as mercenaries for Byzantium but wound up seeing more profit as independent entrepreneurs, fighting their own former employers. (That's corporate division with a vengeance.)

4.) Comments on weapons & armor -- I expect Dan Howard is quite right that there was little if no use of leather in the records in Western Europe at that time. I would argue, however, that given the diversity of makers & users perhaps some oddball area or even individual in Western Europe might have been more prone to making armor out of cowhide -- not like the latter is wholly scarce & was certainly used for other things (harness, thongs to tie wagons together, et. al.)

The Saxon/Scandinavian scrimasax was pretty well known -- a very cheap knife or sword & various GURPS sources have covered it. I'd guess that other areas in Western Europe might have created similar weapons that were not well recorded. You might well have a gaming session around getting a fancy pattern-welded sword -- that in fact turns out to be a forgery (a cheap blade sold as a limousine model. Historians have found references to such). Perhaps a wealthy warrior has discovered his hot-rod sword was bogus and wants a group of guys to track down the seller and get back the purchase price -- if not in gold than in odd bodily parts.

In Western Europe, it would be pretty standard for warriors to have not only hand-to-hand weapons skills but weapon throwing -- Spear & Axe. As armor improved & got more common after c. 1050 these skills faded, as the chance of a serious injury to the opponent would get pretty small. Characters from a herdsman background might well have Sling skill -- young boys would often tend flocks and you have to discourage wolves or feral dogs. Slings & stones are a lot cheaper than bows and arrows.

If you want to get the feel for the Code of Honor of a West-Europe Dark Age warrior band I'd suggest reading the "Battle of Maldon." While impressed levies wouldn't have it not just the high-tone nobility adhered to such; any professional warrior should have such a Code, and if not, then either a Stigma or a Secret. Turning coward on the battlefield could well get you killed by your own side, if any survived.

5.) Non-combat skills -- various livelihood skills would be common in those who were not born to a warrior family -- agronomy (thinking 3rd edition), animal handling, perhaps craft skills at low-level for farmers & higher levels for those with an artisan background. Singing, gambling, boat handling (lots of West Europe has lakes/rivers, even for those far from the coast), running & jumping & wrestling were, IIRC, common sports of the young. Fewer would have Riding. I'm not sure how the Boxing would be common -- unless you count it as some relic of Greco-Roman wrestling.

I think that while professional singing/recitation would be the province of skalds or bards there might be room for some low level of amateur performance. I have an image of some rain-soaked unfortunates slogging down a soggy road from Nowhere to Who Cares and the leader says, "Jorich, you've got a decent voice. Give us a tune."

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

Depends on the meaning of "one third." Presumably characters are not expected to spend 50 points on non-combat skills. So I'd assume that means 1/3 of points spent on skills go to non-combat abilities.

So go with:

ST 12, DX 12, HT 12 - 80 points

Say, 25 points in Characteristics and Advantages - maybe Per 11, Fit and Combat Reflexes.

That leaves 45 points for skills - 30 combat, 15 non combat. 12 points will get you a primary weapon and shield at 14 leaving 18 points to round out combat abilities. Another 15 points allows a lot for Scrounging, Survival, Climbing, Swimming, Fast Talk, etc.

That leaves a fairly elite veteran - a bit one dimensional in expertise but that's to be expected. Rules suggest 50-75 for ordinary professional fighter types. This isn't that far above it. Figure an ordinary pro fighter will be around 11 in Attributes and 12 in combat skills while bandits and levies will be lower. Remember in a fairly realistic Dark Ages campaign a lot of people will have a little combat skill but few will be dedicated professional warriors.

Re: Building Dark Ages Warriors
 

That's exactly how the OP reads, "one third of all points". If I were him I'd 1) lobby for 150 point characters and 2) lobby to lift that restriction.

Re: Couple of points --
 

Domesticated cattle was smaller and had thinner hides than today. The only domesticated leather suitable for armour would have to come from from oxen and some parts of the horse. Neither was cheap in that part of Europe. The further east you go the more common and less expensive leather is. There is a passage in Tacitus saying that some German tribes couldn't pay their tribute in the normal manner and had to give the hides of "wild beasts for military use". This seems to suggest that skins from their domesticated animals were unsuitable for military use. They did have leather armour, but it was rare and only worn by the wealthy. Mail, scale, and layered cloth seem more common but even these were reserved for the wealthy.

Cuchulain is said to be wearing 27 cneslenti. Old works translate this as "hide tunics" but it is more likely describing a garment made of 27 layers of linen. The word "leinte" is a likely derivative of "linen". IIRC his chariot driver had leather armour.

Re: Couple of points --
 

Is there any chance that those are multiple layers of softer, thinner leather from local cattle or even sheep?