Delta has a post up about weapon vs. Armor Type in OD&D - specifically, Chainmail (technically pre-OD&D) and Greyhawk.
It's interesting to think that the numbers in Greyhawk are essentially in error, and weren't ever checked.
The ones in AD&D certainly pass the eyeball test.
I discussed them in more detail here.
Want to defeat heavy armor, such as plate mail & shield, plate mail / banded mail & shield, or chain & shield?
Weapons such as maces are pretty good. Picks and bec de corbin (poleaxes, basically) and flails are better. Lances and Two-handed swords are best.*
Those weapons - except for the sword - aren't great choices against lightly armored folks.
Conversely, if you're fighting unarmored or lightly armored types - none, shield only, leather / padded, leather / padded & shield, then your options are wider. Axes are a good choice, broad-bladed polearms, swords in general, staves, jo sticks - are good choices.
Sticks in general are terrible choices against heavy armor. Mostly one-handed swords are, too, including oddly the longsword, which was developed in the era of no shields and heavier plate and taught in a fashion that seems to assume you'd need to drive the point into joints and seams. Not that anyone in AD&D ever took a longsword without a shield.
Ranged weapons are about what you'd expect if you read a lot of old sources on medieval battles - longbows and heavy crossbows are excellent against heavy armor but still suffer penalties, and everything else kind of sucks. Long bows are great against everything except plate, which reduces them to a 0 or a -1.
Without looking at Chainmail or Greyhawk (they're not handy at the moment), and looking at AD&D . . . I'd say that for whatever the flaws, the penalties do make sense based on the weapon and the armor.
Still interesting if the original D&D set and its antecedant rules didn't do such a good job.
* Which might not be terribly realistic, either, but two-handed swords did come about in an era of heavier armor, so it's reasonable to think, okay, it must be because they're better at defeating armor.
Good point that Delta raises. For my part in my Majestic Fantasy rules, I just include any modifiers in the description of the weapons and try to keep it straight forward.
ReplyDeleteI like your approach.
DeleteI think Delta has some good points, but I think some of tge Chainmail decisions are suspect. Maces effectively ignoring armor isn't very convincing to me . . .
I think a good rule of thumb is that armor that is introduced after a weapon came into existence is probably more effective against that weapon then the armor that preceded it; and weapons that are introduced after a type of armor came into existence are probably more effective against that armor.
ReplyDeleteI think that can work, with the caveat that the weapons and armor are in the same culture and for the same purpose. A rapier, say, isn't useful against plate despite a later introduction because its purpose is unarmored civilian conflict and not battlefield use. Otherwise I think it's a useful way to start looking at arms and armor. Especially in a fantasy game world.
DeleteAnother thing that one watches out for is causality direction, which you allude to. Did the 2H sword come about to defeat plate armor? Or did the emergence of plate armor render a shield pointless enough that big sweeping blows with a flamberge or zweihander were not death sentences?
Delete(That leaves off the presumption that "big sweeping blows" were a big part of fighting. In fighting-fighting, as you know, that sort of telegraphic thing gets you stabbed in the hurty bits pretty fast, so one must be cautious in applying conventional modern wisdom without consulting, if one can, the wisdom of the day through manuals and writings and such)
Or, like the rapier, did it develop for some other purpose unrelated to said armor? After all, we see a lot of two-handed sword guys with puffy slashed sleeves fighting against pikemen, and a lot of plate-clad knights with estocs and lances, but do we see plate-clad knights with two-handed swords? It's really worth examining what weapons actually developed for and how they were used, especially since we've got a lot more access to contemporary depictions of usage than we did before. This sets aside reconstructions of combat arts, which have merit but also come with their own set of flaws (such as, you can be correct about a good use but incorrect about an actual use.)
DeleteOr we can chuck it all out and just play what-if fantasy games, in which case you probably don't want to get too specific in weapon vs. armor, anyway, as you're likely as not to be wrong if it's just based on previous gaming and old research!