[Basic] Realistic Low Tech Challengers

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

Perhaps a variation on the man at arms -- but IIRC in the late medieval era lots of troops, horse & foot, were mercs.

Also the guards of many a castle (and presumably PCs will be venturing into castles at times) were mercenaries.

A mercenary is a soldier who serves in a foreign army. Most troops at this time served in the country in which they were raised. So they were professional soldiers, not mercenaries.

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by Rasna

Not if you combine this with the "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons" rule (Low Tech, p. 102): against Light Mail, a ST 10 man with a broadsword (1d+1 cut) could only inflict one point of crushing damage if he rolls 6.

True, and that could work for cuts. But other kinds of damage still get through armor too easily (unless you extend the LT rule to cover imp, but that does not make sense for most thrusts). My rule was meant to completely replace that LT rule and be simpler at the same time (no figuring out thresholds and how multiple layers interact). Still, I did have to lower and change the blunt trauma thresholds, but I also like the flavor of blunt trauma more than cr.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by A Ladder

One of my sources for neanderthal theorized that they would hide and jump on their prey, smashing them with axe or club.

Khoi-San do hunt with clubs, but it's a different method: they run the animal down over several km until it's too tired to bolt, and then club it to death. :D

Re: musketeers, the musket in Low-Tech has minimum ST 12, so I'd say make your musketeers beefier or give them caravels.

Oh, and this is a brilliant thread. Chapeau!

[A Ladder]

Originally Posted by Tuk the Weekah

I'd not include Dull if you're looking at a realistic representation. There's zero evidence that Neanderthals were in any way mentally deficient when compared to modern humans
<SNIP>
I do not understand the rationale behind the one-weapon rule; it seems irrational. A hunter would carry a scraping tool, a knife, and some type of bush tool (a hand axe, for instance). Once you've killed the animal, you have to bleed it, then butcher it. Even if you don't use fire, you'll still need to clear brush for a shelter.

I read somewhere that Neanderthals were wiped out by homo sapiens because they didn't have as good as tool making mental facilities as our ancestors. So I'll consider removing it.
As to the one weapon rule, that's a carry over from a caveman template I found somewhere on the internet. I should get rid of it.

Originally Posted by mikeejimbo

Shouldn't the Legionnaire have Thrown Weapon (Spear)-13 listed in skills for the pilum? I see the pilum was written up in the brief table of the weapons/skills/damage and the equipment.

Thanks! there's a couple reasons why I showed this to the forum, and catching stuff like that is one of them. I've gone back and edited it.

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Khoi-San do hunt with clubs, but it's a different method: they run the animal down over several km until it's too tired to bolt, and then club it to death. :D

Re: musketeers, the musket in Low-Tech has minimum ST 12, so I'd say make your musketeers beefier or give them caravels.

Oh, and this is a brilliant thread. Chapeau!

Sweet, definetly giving them more equipment and keeping those skills then. Probably going to add Running as well.

Basic Set has a musket at ST 10, but it also includes the rifle rest.

The intent of these writeups was to be mostly compatible with the Basic Set and not rely too heavily on supplements. (Though how can you have Spartans and Roman Legionnaires without Shield Wall Training?)

[clu2415]

I feel like it should be mentioned that mail and scale were also in common use by the Romans.

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by clu2415

I feel like it should be mentioned that mail and scale were also in common use by the Romans.

Indeed, mail was more common than lorica segmentata. There is some debate, however, about scale armor. As I understand it, there is some evidence for true scale armor worn by standard bearers. However, what most people think of as scale armor is actually lorica hamate (mail) with small metal scales threaded through the mail. This was reserved mostly for high ranking officers and must have been extremely expensive to make. Loadouts: Low-Tech pg. 23 calls this Hamata Squamataque, and it is DR5/3*, but is lighter than heavy mail and more expensive.

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by A Ladder

I read somewhere that Neanderthals were wiped out by homo sapiens because they didn't have as good as tool making mental facilities as our ancestors. So I'll consider removing it.

Very old thinking.

Current tidbits about Neanderthal: their blood clotted more quickly than homo sapiens sapiens--an advantage when fighting close-range with prey, a disadvantage when it comes to heart disease; they were lactose-intolerant; it's possible that male Neanderthal/human hybrids were infertile, while female hybrids were not; it's possible that they had what we would consider hyperactive immune systems, and were actually wiped out by allergies when non-native plants moved north through Europe during climate change following the Ice Age. Then there is the increased risk for Crohn's disease, and the Type-2 diabetes....

Basically, the current thinking all boils down to Neanderthal had too small & too localized a breeding population, and were wiped out by accumulated in-breeding. We just took advantage of their gap in the eco-system.

Or, possibly, it was the wolf that did it. We had wolves (dogs); they did not. Makes running down prey animals so much easier.

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by Tuk the Weekah

Or, possibly, it was the wolf that did it. We had wolves (dogs); they did not. Makes running down prey animals so much easier.

I was wondering if Neanderthals were ever recorded as having dogs. In a TL0 setting you almost can't overstate the advantages of having a loyal canine companion. Their senses of hearing and smell would give you an astounding advantage.

We still have guard dogs and hunting dogs even now.

[Purple Haze]

Dogs were domesticated ~15,000 years ago, Neanderthals went extinct ~30,000 years ago.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

A mercenary is a soldier who serves in a foreign army. Most troops at this time served in the country in which they were raised. So they were professional soldiers, not mercenaries.

There were exceptions. IIRC the condottieri of the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries were almost always Italians themselves, but still known as mercenaries. For Germany, Fritz Redlich in his "The German Military Enterpriser and his Work Force" talks about the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries, but does look at the antecedents of mercenary use in the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries. All the employees of the above were German.

Troops of the late Middle Ages and the early modern era serving for pay, rather than to fulfill a feudal obligation, tended to be known as mercenaries despite their national origins.