Armoury of Antiquity: Questions regarding archaic arms and armor

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Of course cataphracts were faster than infantry units. Even after infantry had dropped their shields and weapons and ran away the cataphracts could still catch up and dispatch them.

Q: Why is infantry the only arm that can hold ground?

A: Because it's too slow to run away.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

But cataphracts do seem to be scarcely faster than infantry in most cases. I don't think 2/5 or 3/6 are bad representations of the cataphracts' movement. Notably, Cataphracts would also be supported by lighter cavalrymen(lighter in the sense of lacking barding, and possibly weaing ligher armor), who operate as Cursores("runners") and serve to chase down fleeing infantrymen as the cataphracts would be harder pressed to chase'em down.

I doubt you could weigh down a horse with enough gear that it was that slow and still have it be able to move far enough to do anything useful. Heavily loading horses doesn't slow their walk, trot, or even an easy canter significantly, it just ruins their endurance, and a cantering horse outruns a man quite handily. In the short term horses are fast.

[LoneBadger]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Dan has written several Pyramid articles for 3e on realistic armour weights and DRs. Search the archives for "chainmail" and "scale and lamellar" or check here http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/login...e.html?id=2565 for the lamellar article if you don't have a subscription.

You do need a subscription to use that link.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by LoneBadger

You do need a subscription to use that link.

Oops. I still think that article can be accessed by non-subscribers if they poke around in the archives.

[Kuroshima]

http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=2565

To ckeck if an article is accesible to non-subscribers, change the "login/article" segment of the URL with "sample"

[DanHoward]

The scale/lamellar article available to anyone but the "Chainmail" one is only available to subscribers. I've changed my opinion on lamellar. The article says that it was worn by vikings and was first worn by Assyrians. More recent research suggests that the vikings did not wear it and that the Assyrians wore scale armour. The earliest instance of true lamellar I've been able to confirm dates to the Warring States period in China.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Just to add in another point, after reducing armor weights to more realistic levels, you may also want to consider that Cataphracts might've likely picked their horses for high ST and not use a typical creature.

Per p.457, ST varies by up to 20% for large creatures, which would mean you could conceivably have a Cavalry Horse with 22-26 ST and a Heavy Warhorse with 24-29 ST. (I also consider many of those animal ST numbers too low and would expect many animals to have a few levels of Lifting ST too.)

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The scale/lamellar article available to anyone but the "Chainmail" one is only available to subscribers. I've changed my opinion on lamellar. The article says that it was worn by vikings and was first worn by Assyrians. More recent research suggests that the vikings did not wear it and that the Assyrians wore scale armour. The earliest instance of true lamellar I've been able to confirm dates to the Warring States period in China.

My information is to some degree from material I checked hurriedly to find information for this comment, so forgive any inaccuracy:
As I understand lameller is a type of scale armor. It is lighter and meant primarily to deflect arrows and was therefore popular among Eastern and Central Asian Warriors who lived in country where the bow was more used. It has been a while since I looked that up and I forget what lameller entailed though I think it had less metal and more leather and heavy cloth.
Metal scale armor was more used in the Meditteranean. Apparently it was not as hot as regular mail. There would have been no reason that could not have been used by Vikings though, as a number of Vikings travelled into the Med. For that matter "Rus" vikings probably used Central Asian style lameller at times.
One sensible way to figure out whether "Vikings wore lameller" is to remember that vikings were not standardized as they would be if they were a modern army. They were a collection of individuals armed according to their weath and taste. Therefore any viking can be armed any way as long as such a fashion was compatable with:

A) the mission-you can't take horses on a longship for instance and if you tried the captain would throw you overboard. William the conqueror took horses but only for a short trip and it was a wierd thing to do even so. Byzantines took horses but they had specialized ships

B) the vikings sphere of influence-this was very wide and contacted many cultures. Thus it would not be difficult to explain that a given character had developed a taste for lameller armor travelling in the East. What would be odd would be to have an army of vikings in lameller

By the way chain-mail is a recent word. The word mail simply means net-armor, because the rings fitting into each other looked like a net. The adjective chain would hav been felt redundent.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Per p.457, ST varies by up to 20% for large creatures, which would mean you could conceivably have a Cavalry Horse with 22-26 ST and a Heavy Warhorse with 24-29 ST. (I also consider many of those animal ST numbers too low and would expect many animals to have a few levels of Lifting ST too.)

I'm okay with those ST levels, but many equines should have a bit of Lifting ST on top, IMO - they seem unusally well-suited to carrying loads. By the same token oxen might be considered to have Lifting ST with a limitation "only for dragging loads", as they are good for pulling loads (slowly), but not very good at carrying weights.

[Luther]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

A helmet is not clothing. Mail can explictly be layered under plate armor as per the layering armor rules.

No, these rules give a penalty, that is silly for a mail coiff under an helmet. Kromm confirmed it's an errata: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=612