Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

[Markdoc]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

Actually, I don't have much problem with the STR min. As the rules state

A weapon’s STR Minimum is the minimum

STR required not to lift it or wield it, but to wield it

effectively. A character with -15 STR is fully capable

of picking up a Broad Sword, and can even swing

it around in combat if he wants to. But it takes a 12

STR to wield a Broad Sword effectively — to use it

in combat Phase after Phase; to make it go exactly

where you want it to go; to control its motion,

momentum, and aim with precision.

 

My own experiences with reproduction weapons and using steel weapons in mock combat is that actually, it takes a fair bit of experience to use the weapons effectively - part of which is simply building up forearm STR. Otherwise, your arm gets tired remarkably quickly and your aim is poor. It's not enough to hit someone or even hit someone precisely: you have to hit precisely and you have to hit very hard. It's one of those things that looks easy, but in practice is harder than it looks. Thus a normal (STR 8) person using a longsword would be at -1 OCV/DC. They'd still be way more dangerous with it than with their fists, and it would take relatively little experience (XP) to remove that penalty. Combat re-enactors do tend to have unusually strong hands/arms. It would be more realistic to buy limited STR (only to wield weapons) perhaps, but that's more detail than I could be bothered with.

 

cheers, Mark

[Eosin]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

Actually' date=' I don't have much problem with the STR min. As the rules state [/quote']

 

The OCV penalty is ho-hum but the damage penalty combined with generally low damage output of standard weapons creates a variant of the "House Cat Kills the Farmer" issue. The Broadsword with penalty is now doing a single d6 requiring several stabs to the chest to kill anyone but Aunt May.

 

We all appreciate different flavors to the game and tweak to fit our own idiosyncrasies.

 

On the Hammer/Mace issue - why not make the Hammer or Mace a normal damage weapon with Penetrating? A 5or6d6N Damage Weapon with Penetrating is going to hurt. It is enough that it will do BODY on unarmored foes and quickly knock out the armored ones.

 

One can remain Killing and the Other Standard.

[Markdoc]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

The OCV penalty is ho-hum but the damage penalty combined with generally low damage output of standard weapons creates a variant of the "House Cat Kills the Farmer" issue. The Broadsword with penalty is now doing a single d6 requiring several stabs to the chest to kill anyone but Aunt May.

 

True, but in real life, that's not unrealistic. I know a single stab with a sword could easily kill a person - but then, that's true for a knife as well. In fact, to an unarmoured target, being stabbed with a sword is realistically probably not a great deal more dangerous than a knife - the advantage of a sword in real life is that it gives you much more reach, letting you get yours in first and also lets you make a longer hole in whatever you stab - and the key is sticking it somewhere where it's really going to hurt. We've been conditioned by games to think "Bigger weapon = more damage" but in real life, it's a bit more complicated.

 

In general, game damage doesn't scale with real life damage. In real life, even a punch from a normal STR 10 human is capable of doing a one-hit kill from time to time. Conversely, in real life, even quite large stabbing weapons typically take several hits to reliably result in fatality - though one good shot can certainly do it.

 

In short, where you hit matters as much if not more than what you hit with. So here's a idea I just formulated. If we wanted more "realistic" damage, we could leave the weapons alone and instead modify the hit location table. Use 2d6 to generate location as we do now, and then roll a d6. On a 1-4, use the table as listed, on a 5 double damage and on a 6 quadruple it. That'd give a damage multiplier for BOD of up to 8x on head or vitals locations, so you could kill someone with a single punch (pretty damned unlikely, but it could happen). A single head hit with a sword would result in fatality pretty regularly. A real rough seat of the pants calculation based on what we know about stabbings (about a 3% fatality rate inside the first hour or so, most of which are with knives, so about 1d6)

http://www.springerlink.com/content/yq70634r1t5418x7/

http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/141/8/800.pdf

shows that this give a fairly realistic chance of killing an unarmoured target. Gamewise, it adds an extra roll, but should add the chance of sudden death without making it too likely.

 

Interestingly, it also makes armour more realistic in its effects, as the multiplier is applied after defences. That makes sneaking a few BOD through potentially very important, since you have a decent chance of really messing someone up - whereas if the armour stops the blow, you're going to be alright (maybe a little bruised/winded - that's what STUN is for - but basically alright). It also differentiates smaller and larger weapons. The difference between 1d6 and 1d6+1 is usually not a great deal, but if the BOD multiplier is bumped up, that extra 1 pip can suddenly make a significant difference. This is also more realistic as far as I can work out - larger weapons typically do a bit more damage but their chance of a one shot kill is significantly enhanced (I'd note that I'm extrapolating here based on what I know of gunshot wounds: I don't have any experience of actual sword wounds).

 

Personally, I don't need more lethality in my FH games, but I like this idea enough that I may try it out in some one-off games.

 

cheers, Mark

[Eosin]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

I've already found my "sweet spot" for Fantasy and Dark Champions.

 

ROUGHLY

• Reduced BODY Maxima
  
• Generally, +1DC to weapons
  
• Lower STR Min by 3-4
  
• Top Out Armor around 9 rPD
  

[Markdoc]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

I've already found my "sweet spot" for Fantasy and Dark Champions.

 

ROUGHLY

• Reduced BODY Maxima
  
• Generally, +1DC to weapons
  
• Lower STR Min by 3-4
  
• Top Out Armor around 9 rPD
  

 

What's "Reduced BODY Maxima"?

 

cheers, Mark

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

What's "Reduced BODY Maxima"?

 

cheers, Mark

 

I think he means he reduced the amount of maximum Body that characters can purchase. Probably limiting it to 15. That way characters can't be built to be as tough as tanks.

[Old Man]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

And I thought my FH games were lethal...

[Eosin]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

I think he means he reduced the amount of maximum Body that characters can purchase. Probably limiting it to 15. That way characters can't be built to be as tough as tanks.

 

 

Correct. It is just a reduced scale... 11 for tough guys, 13 for Super-Bad Monkies, and 15 for the Die Hard - John McClain types who just won't die.

 

Conan, Achilles, and their ilk might rise a bit higher.

[Bismark]

Re: Yet another Fantasy Hero Weapons Thread...

 

Right - and also it forced the French knights to ride and maneuver with closed helms, to avoid the risk of an arrow in the unarmored face: that contributed to their difficulty in maneuver and coordination. Try shouting your orders inside a closed helm and see how far other people in closed helms can hear it ...

 

Trials with reproduction weapons have repeatedly shown that the idea of longbow arrows piercing through plate armour are myth - at anything other than point blank range (and there your chances are merely poor). It will go through mail just fine, though and thus was a real threat to the composite mail and plate armours in use during the hundred years war. A longbow arrow might bounce off your breastplate or helm, but it could make a nasty hole if it hit a gap where you had only mail or leather, and if thousands of arrows are raining out of the sky, that's certainly a possibility. At the very least, that possibility's going to play hob with your concentration.

 

It's no coincidence that by the time of the Wars of the Roses, when full plate harness was the rule, that longbowmen had become relegated to the status (and pay) of support troops even though they were fielded in their thousands: they were simply unable at that stage to stop a charge by heavily-armoured men at arms (though massed arrow fire could still mess them up a bit, due to command and communication problems, as above). It was at this point that early guns began to displace longbows: they could make holes in armour on a regular basis.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Mark 'hit the nail on the head' as usual

 

Something similar is the fact that a lot of central and eastern European cavalry (including Hungarian knights in full Milanese plate), still carried shields into combat long after they had been dropped by most western chivalry:

 

the sheer volume of arrows that a Turkish army could put out (even if only the elite troops - and probably Tatars - would be using a bow/arrow combo that was any good at penetrating decent armour at anything above point-blank range) meant that the chance of an arrow going into a joint or eye slit was high enough that a shield made a very sensible 'insurance policy'.

 

[As an aside, Milanese plate was about 50% harder than equivalent German-made plate armour for a large part of the 15th century - as well as looking really cool, of course. Source: A Companion to Medieval Arms and Armour, Crowood Press; be warned, it is stratospherically expensive ]

 

For a laugh, I checked out how long an arrow would have to be for someone of my build (6'1" tall, 'basketball player'-type) to use a Mongol-style bow draw: 41" including the head... (for comparison, Scythian nomad arrows were about 24" on average, Hunnic arrows 32" [approaching longbow "cloth-yard"-size here])

 

Something you may want to take note of is that the bow-and-arrow is a launcher/payload combo, so, just as with firearms, the ammo type is extremely important:

 

1. how heavy is the arrow?;

2. how stiff/flexible is the arrow shaft? (reed arrows absorb the vibration of the loose very well but suck at armour penetration, for example);

3. what type of arrowhead is used and what material is it made of?;

 

and as for the launcher:

 

1. how efficiently does the bow transfer the energy of the bow draw to the arrow? [which also affects the trajectory - the more efficient bows have a flatter trajectory];

2. 'Flat' bows are not very efficient but withstand very cold temperatures better than 'standard' bows and a lot better than the most efficient composite types.

 

As with lots of real-world weaponry stuff, complexity is the norm...

 

The hard part is boiling all this stuff down to playable rules. I have been toying with the idea of a 'Negative Piercing' Modifier to cope with those cases where Reduced Penetration is far too crude.

 

[i love this stuff...]