Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?

[OddGamer]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Apart from the comments already made, where is the knight's block skill? He has a shield. That DB also adds to other defences. If he shield rushes and knocks the spear guy down, it could turn the tables, even against the unrealistic spear skill.

So as for skills, he was listed as Broadsword-12. Was right in there. Adding other skills would add more points, giving Spear Dude even more ability to Do Nasty Things to the knight (either upping his ludicrous skill even more, I'd stop around skill 30, or else starting to work on ST and HT).
As for the DB, it's correctly accounted. A full set of scale armor (DR 4 everywhere) weighs 85 lbs, which with a 12 ST puts him at the 'Heavy Encumbrance', giving a -3 to dodge, +3 with the shield, comes out to 8 (exactly as before). Parry 12 is already accounted with the broadsword skill of 12.
I'm not sure a shield rush is a good tactic. They both have DX 10, the HP difference isn't huge, the knight's only moving at 2 (5 - 3 encumbrance), so they're both doing 1d-3 even if he hits (odds are 37%, 50% for the original DX attack, 74.1% chance for spear guy to fail a dodge). Plus, once on the ground, spear guy is now at a mere -4 (laying down) which... well, we'll get there.

Originally Posted by Farmer

Also, on average 4.5 damage isn't going to hurt the knight (due to DR4) whereas the sword is doing an average of 6.5 points of damage * 1.5 = 9.75 points of damage, which means if it hits first, he basically wins because it's likely a knock down or a cripple etc. The knight also goes first due to higher basic speed.

... I think you're really missing the point here. With a 27 skill, Spear Dude can target the knights eyes through the armor slits (-10 to skill) and still have a 17 skill to hit with, and with the knight's Parry of 12 that gives a 25.4% chance to hit (compared in reverse with a 1.4% chance for the knight to hit). No DR, x4 multiplier, the average damage he's doing is 14. Plus, two or three hits in and our knight is blind (-10 to skill), and that isn't even counting that the knight is likely to be knocked down or suffer Major Wounds because of this. Even with a -4 if spear guy got knocked prone, that'd be 13, giving a 21.7% chance of still stabbing the guy through the eye slits with that spear if he didn't feel like getting up. He has a -3 to defenses, sure, but with a Parry at 16, spear guy is still well protected from that sword (the chances for the knight going up to 12%, a huge increase but still pretty bad).

Originally Posted by Farmer

I think if you actually played this out rather than a straight number comparison, you'd find the knight, even against such an optimised opponent, does a lot better. With Comfortable Wealth the knight could possibly also have a balanced broadsword offering +1 to skill.

+1 skill is... not about to offset things all that much. As for playing it out, perhaps. As I said, I wrote a simulator. It doesn't take into account everything, every possible tactic, but it does take a lot into account. I didn't just compare numbers, I simulated about 10,000 battles. Spear Guy won 80% of them (roughly, I ran this a few times, it was usually around 80% or so). That +1 skill from the balanced weapon changes this to Spear Guy winning only about 75% of the time.

There are many great responses to why Spear Guy is problematic (mainly lack of realism and problems with other sorts of attackers, particularly ranged ones or sneaky ones), but this response stuck out to me for... well... how much it got wrong.