Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
You need more detail than "armored" You need specifics about Neck and Face protection.
A Barrel helm would be complete protection for both while a Basinet would have the knight blind in no time. Lack of a Gorget or other Neck protection could result in actual death from attacks at Neck(Arteries).
For extra credit you get to figure out if the cat could manage to raise a raiseable Visor. :)
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Reaching the Face or Neck (or indeed Torso, unless we're dealing with Long Cat) against a standing knight would require a Move and Attack (which caps skill at 9, thus not being terribly reliable, and I believe prevents the cat from using its impressive Brawling Parry*) or an All Out Attack (which prevents the cat from defending - if the gambit fails, it's dead). I know Defensive Feints were suggested in the other thread, but I think those are meant to be fake attacks that put the foe in a poor position to attack if he attempts a defense, and against a cat the knight may well not bother defending, preventing that from working. The cat's best bet may well be to use All Out Defense (Improved Parry) and hope for a Critical Success (causing the knight to suffer a Critical Failure), but I'm not sure even that's a great idea - not all Critical Failures are going to render the knight unable to fight (or put him down at the cat's level, allowing for clawing the eyes out or whatever), and the cat's chance of a Critical Success on a Parry is only around 2.5x the chance of the knight getting a Critical Success on an attack (the cat's Parry is 15 - base 16 for skill, -3 against a swung weapon, +2 for All Out Defense).
For the knight, his best bet is to see if he can find something nearby that's usable with Broadsword but heavier than his own weapon - a cat can just barely Parry a 3 lb sword (
Campaigns gives housecats ST 4, for BL 3.2), so anything heavier and its incredible Brawling
doesn't matter, as it has to rely on Dodge.
Note this assumes the knight has fully-armored feet and legs. If not, the cat can bite or claw at the Leg Arteries - not for a lot of damage initially, but the resulting bleeding will be difficult to stop (and bleed quickly). Longer term, the cat could also just give the knight's leg a good bite or two, run off, and let infection do its thing (cat bites can be
nasty, and if our opponent is armored and wielding a sword, we're probably in a time period where medicine isn't so great).
*EDIT: On second thought, I think Move and Attack only prevents defending with the limb used to attack. So, jump up with a Move and Attack, target the Neck (-5), Face (-5), Neck Arteries (-8) or Eye (-9; note with a cutting attack this can only cripple, not get the improved WM) with a claw-swipe, drop skill down to 13 or 14 with Deceptive Attack (-8/-4, -8/-4, -6/-3, -4/-2, respectively), take the -4 to hit for Move and Attack, and cap at skill 9. The cat still has one foreleg left to Parry with (it used the other for the claw swipe), the attack doesn't have a horrible chance of hitting (37.5%), and the knight is going to be hard pressed to successfully defend, at least without a shield (effective Parry 5, 5, 6, or 7, respectively). That may be better than going defensive and hoping for a Critical Success.