Favourite Mediaeval Setting?

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

It’s been awhile but I believe the book has rules for Iron against Bronze. It acts as AP iirc.

 

I don't know I'd go that far.  I'd rather just give it an extra DC or a slightly lower STR min.  The main advantage of iron over bronze in the field, back in the day, was that it could hold an edge better. 

[Lord Liaden]

5 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

I don't know I'd go that far.  I'd rather just give it an extra DC or a slightly lower STR min.  The main advantage of iron over bronze in the field, back in the day, was that it could hold an edge better. 

 

On that point I would want to do more in-depth research with authoritative sources. What I'm finding on the Internet is rather contradictory.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One of my favorite portrayals of an alien in movies is Dark Star where the alien acts in completely incomprehensible ways, its motivations and intentions are inscrutable.

[Lord Liaden]

Once you add magic to a setting, some of the limitations of real-world metals can be justified as being negated. For example, the Hero Universe's Lemurians employ "magically-strengthened bronze" which rivals steel in strength, because iron tends to interfere with their magic.

[Old Man]

13 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

On that point I would want to do more in-depth research with authoritative sources. What I'm finding on the Internet is rather contradictory.

 

Details matter when it comes to metallurgy.  There's no testing of bronze vs iron (as opposed to steel) out there simply because you'd have to handmake your own crappy iron weapon for the test, and even then it matters how the iron is tempered, the exact alloy of the bronze, relative thicknesses, etc.

 

That goes for all the super cool youtube vids along these lines--arrows versus plate armor, swords versus mail, and so on.  The exact gauge of the steel matters.  The curvature of the steel matters.  The mass and velocity of the arrow matter, as does the exact shape of the arrowhead.  It matters whether the mail is 4-to-1 or 6-to-1 linked, whether it's butted or riveted or welded, whether the links are flat or wire.  Can arrows kill a mounted knight in full armor?  The answer is... it depends!

[Christopher R Taylor]

The answer is... it depends!

 

Right.  One of my pet peeves of those videos is that there is literally no one alive today to compare to those awesome Welsh longbowmen that Henry had in his army, so you cannot really do a proper test.  I like watching Shad do his demonstrations but he's no warrior, so you have to take his conclusions with a grain of salt.  Its like watching someone 700 years from now explain how its not possible to jump up and shove a ball through a hoop like the legends say because he can't and he's studied basketball for years.

 

I enjoy watching those videos but... these are amateurs trying to study an art developed over centuries and a lifetime of training.

[Lord Liaden]

15 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Details matter when it comes to metallurgy.  There's no testing of bronze vs iron (as opposed to steel) out there simply because you'd have to handmake your own crappy iron weapon for the test, and even then it matters how the iron is tempered, the exact alloy of the bronze, relative thicknesses, etc.

 

That goes for all the super cool youtube vids along these lines--arrows versus plate armor, swords versus mail, and so on.  The exact gauge of the steel matters.  The curvature of the steel matters.  The mass and velocity of the arrow matter, as does the exact shape of the arrowhead.  It matters whether the mail is 4-to-1 or 6-to-1 linked, whether it's butted or riveted or welded, whether the links are flat or wire.  Can arrows kill a mounted knight in full armor?  The answer is... it depends!

 

Yeah, I found YouTube videos which actually do have people make their own crappy iron weapons to test against  their own crappy bronze weapons. But as you say, the details tend to get glossed over, the examples don't exactly compare one-to-one, and so on.

[L. Marcus]

Do you suppose one could make chain mail out of bronze ... ?

[Lord Liaden]

So the premise of assault's OP was building a setting based on medieval Europe. What I'm wondering is, how much farther afield from Europe would you want your campaigns to go? A great deal was happening in the world beyond Europe in that era, and Europeans did interact with significant parts of it. During the short-lived Mongol Empire you had representatives from European states literally traveling all the way to China.

[Lord Liaden]

19 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

Do you suppose one could make chain mail out of bronze ... ?

 

Well, when I looked up that question, pretty much all input was along the lines of "they didn't, because iron and steel were already in use." Metallurgicly, I can't see why not.

[assault]

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

For my part, I've always been fascinated by cultures and worldviews that are the most different from my own, whether historical or alien. The closer an era or location gets to modern Earth, the less it appeals to me.

 

This was the context in which I used "alien". I didn't necessarily mean nonhuman.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm not sure how well bronze chain would work, it bends pretty easily unless its reasonably thick, and that won't work for mail.  Small enough links to be flexible would not protect very well.

[assault]

1 hour ago, L. Marcus said:

Do you suppose one could make chain mail out of bronze ... ?

Yes you can. It was done.

However, chain mail seems to have been an Iron Age innovation.

[Steve]

A medieval setting without steel would certainly be different from the norm.

 

On the other hand, imagine a setting where cheap aluminum was available. It was once so rare that it was more valuable than gold or silver.

[Lord Liaden]

That's because it requires fairly sophisticated technology to extract and refine it. That's another area where magic could substitute for tech.

 

Author Poul Anderson wrote a couple of novels involving the realm of Faerie, The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions. One of his premises was that the traditional Elf aversion to iron caused them to employ magic to work other metals for armor and weapons, e.g. aluminum or titanium.

 

I'll also mention that the Hero Universe's Lemurians employ "magically-strengthened bronze" for many constructions, because iron tends to interfere with their unique magic. With that precedent, a magical civilization could make tools or weapons out of various metals, or other materials, normally too soft or fragile for such purposes.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Old Man, the thing I like about about Todd from Todd’s workshop is that he explains the variances of steel. He uses a mild steel which is roughly comparable to medieval steel. He and Matt Eastman talk about how even In Medieval times there was different grades of metal and they do point out how imperfections in the metal can affect weapons and weapon breakage. Did you know that later Metal Maces actually had a wooden core in the shaft to give strength but reduce weight?

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Old Man, the thing I like about about Todd from Todd’s workshop is that he explains the variances of steel. He uses a mild steel which is roughly comparable to medieval steel. He and Matt Eastman talk about how even In Medieval times there was different grades of metal and they do point out how imperfections in the metal can affect weapons and weapon breakage. Did you know that later Metal Maces actually had a wooden core in the shaft to give strength but reduce weight?

 

Yeah Todd's one of the better ones in that he at least tries to account for these variations and get a decent sample size, but even he rarely has more than a couple of breastplates or samples of mail to test against.

 

I'd heard about the mace thing but I still prefer axes against armored opponents.  Something something old man, new tricks.

[Steve]

I've seen discussions that titanium or titanium steel would be a good armor type and lighter than regular steel.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It depends on what you want your armor to do.  Its just easier and more clear in a game to have armor just give defenses, but it really does matter what you're defending against.  Plate armor doesn't protect as well as cloth armor against some attacks.  Chain is better than leather except against certain sorts of threats.  The kind of metal might work better against some attacks and not against others.  Light and hard might be great, until its hit by something that shatters it.  Flexible is better than rigid in some circumstances, but in others its worse.

 

So there's really no such thing as the best armor against everything.  But modeling that would require a computer to do all the calculations and your warrior would have a golf bag of different things to use and wear, playing the rock/paper/scissors game.

[assault]

After some Googling: bronze chain mail did exist, and was both probably the earliest form and definitely used later.

It was a derivative of scale armour.

Obviously iron/steel is a preferable material, but it isn't always available, especially when you need a lot of armour in a hurry.

Its weaknesses can be compensated for to a considerable degree by mixing it with scale, plates and so on, in places where protection is more important than flexibility.

Any armour is better than no armour.

[GDShore]

A couple of things I would like to respond to. 1 - there is no way to duplicate those Welsh bowmen of Henry's, yes and no, today I doubt that there is any archer that could draw a 140 lb. to 180 lb. longbow, the heaviest bow I have ever shot was a 90 lb. longbow created by an incredible bowyer. The first shot released with no hand shock (hand shock occurs upon release when some of the energy stored just prior to release travels up the hand that holds the bow thru the arm to the shoulder) I managed 7 shots before the pain in both shoulders became so great that I could not crack the bow for the 8Th. (I probably could have developed the ability to shoot the 90 lb.er but the pain and 3 -4 years effort deterred me) When they raised the Mary Rose they discovered a number of longbows and recreated some of them, 130 to 160 lb. They could not find anyone to safely draw and release them, so built a jig to do so.  The 130lb. could penetrate 3" to 3.5" of oak planking at 150 meter, the 142lb. penetrated 6" of same with the arrowhead driven thru, and the 160lb. thru to the fletch using a triangular bodkin point steel, hardened arrow head on an ash shaft. 

2 - metallurgy - the quality of steels varied from locale to locale, from smith to smith and the ability to create a steel that held a perfect edge, was flexible and nigh on to unbreakable in one locale might seem as magic just 60 km. away. Damascus steel "invented a steel"  that was comparable to that being worked by smiths in India and Japan a 1000 years plus prior.

3 - chainmail, any metal that can be drawn into a wire can be made into chainmail. Back mid 90's a group of friends helped a young lady create a costume foe a "sci-fi" convention in Calgary Alberta. One of the chaps was making a chain hauberk and leggings for use in the SCA. and had made a jig to speed up the process, from turning the links to flattening the ends to the knitting to the riveting. We used the heaviest copper wire we could find stiff enough to take and hold the shape. She wore it once (it bit her almost every where) and we required major overhaul, to make it safe to wear. We lined the cups of the "bra" portion with rabbit fur from my leather working supplies and lined the strap's with butter tanned elk hide. Any metal that can be drawn into wire or cut into disks or scales can and will/would have been used for armor. 

4 - Mr. Taylor is right, armor will not stop all types of attacks. For instance a man wearing plate, will bounce swords and most axe's but is vulnerable to mace's which will cause "hydrostatic shock waves" turning their insides to jelly, chainmail is particularly vulnerable to piercing attacks. The quilted cotton armor of the Aztec did not fare well against sword blows but appeared to stop crossbow bolts dead. Modern military battle armor stops most kinetic weapons (Kevlar) but a knife defeats it. 

[Lord Liaden]

None of that is as cool as 300 Spartan armor. Shields and speedos.

[L. Marcus]

And the bulging of the pecs. 

[Lord Liaden]

Hey, bulging pecks appear to have let Stallone and Schwarzenegger walk through a blizzard of bullets.

[L. Marcus]

Also, a veritable cloud of testosterone.