Quote from: Bren;1114030Does that apply to arrows and crossbow bolts?

Depends on where the Rangers and Rogues shop, I suppose.

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Quote from: Antiquation!;1114031Depends on where the Rangers and Rogues shop, I suppose.

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You jest, but I'm currently running a 5E rogue and I did think about having some blunt quarrels made. (For all I know out DM would allow us to skewer people with arrows to subdue them, but the idea doesn't sit well with me. It's not like my character is Robin fucking Hood or the Green Arrow to where he could pin people to the wall by their clothes without hurting them.)

Quote from: Bren;1114033 You jest, but I'm currently running a 5E rogue and I did think about having some blunt quarrels made. (For all I know out DM would allow us to skewer people with arrows to subdue them, but the idea doesn't sit well with me. It's not like my character is Robin fucking Hood or the Green Arrow to where he could pin people to the wall by their clothes without hurting them.)

Not a bad idea! I had a player in one of my GURPS games that used blunted arrows (and had a vow against killing). Now, GURPS doesn't separate lethal and non-lethal attacks or damage per se, but the blunt damage did generally help make targets go to sleep without poking big, leaky, fatal holes in them...

Now you've made me want to build a Green Arrow expy with the Heroic Archer trait and ridiculous bow skill, who really *can* legitimately pin people to the wall by their clothes (and wedge arrows behind their pistol triggers)! :cool:

Quote from: estar;1112940One thread of D&D's DNA run through the popular image of the American Old West. In the late 60's and early 70s if you said frontier that likely the image that pop into one's head.

As for real world inspiration I would look at medieval Russia as an example of what people do where settlements are isolated amid a vast frontier with a implacable enemy (Mongols) not far away.

Medieval Russian Village

Village Structures

Great pictures.

One thing that traditional Russian villages didn't lack was wood.

I have stayed in an Izba and they look like the log cabins I have seen on films about Frontiersmen in the USA and Canada. My mother-in-law's Izba was built over an excavated food store, for potatoes, grain and odds and ends. It was really warm in winter, due to the bread oven she fired up every day. We saw a museum representation of an Izba and it looked just like hers.

Of course, Russian Villages were often protected by being in the middle of vast forests, depending on where they were located. Mongol Horsemen don't do that well in forests.

Quote from: soltakss;1114037Of course, Russian Villages were often protected by being in the middle of vast forests, depending on where they were located. Mongol Horsemen don't do that well in forests.

That is what the Chinese thought about Great Walls as well.

Quote from: Bren;1114030Does that apply to arrows and crossbow bolts?

I'm pretty sure it's just melee weapon attacks (not ranged weapon attacks, or spells of any sort), but only the hit that takes them to 0 has to be a melee weapon attack for the Nerf Effect to work. This means you can reliably take them alive after burning them with fire and acid along with perforating them with arrows just as long as you gently strike them with your greataxe as their hit points run out.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114058I'm pretty sure it's just melee weapon attacks (not ranged weapon attacks, or spells of any sort), but only the hit that takes them to 0 has to be a melee weapon attack for the Nerf Effect to work. This means you can reliably take them alive after burning them with fire and acid along with perforating them with arrows just as long as you gently strike them with your greataxe as their hit points run out.

Yes, only melee attacks; with a melee attack that brings an opponent to 0 points, the attacker can choose to knock out the opponent (unconscious, stable). The damage is the same number of points.

In my AD&D1e games, all blunt attacks just cause their damage, others cause bleeding or similar effects once the character is under 0 hit points. Thus clerics' use of blunt weapons - the good clerics want to spare them to give them a fair trial or chance to convert, the evil clerics want to spare them for enslavement or later sacrifice to their evil good.

Players are of course free to just beat up people and monsters and not kill them.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114058I'm pretty sure it's just melee weapon attacks...

You are correct (PHB p 198).

Quote...but only the hit that takes them to 0 has to be a melee weapon attack for the Nerf Effect to work. This means you can reliably take them alive after burning them with fire and acid along with perforating them with arrows just as long as you gently strike them with your greataxe as their hit points run out.

Well that seems totally reasonable.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1114068In my AD&D1e games, all blunt attacks just cause their damage, others cause bleeding or similar effects once the character is under 0 hit points.

Good thing hitting people with a mace never causes bone breaks or fractures.

Quote from: Bren;1114102Good thing hitting people with a mace never causes bone breaks or fractures.

Not to mention internal bleeding that can be every bit as deadly as the blood loss from an edged weapon.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1113505If the minimum necessary defenses exceed the maximum justified defenses, then shouldn't the settlement simply not exist?

Not necessarily. If the danger does not appear too quickly and unpredictably, you can have a number of settlements where nothing of real worth can't be moved, and a day's march away a fortress or castle, which will also include the granary of the settlements. When the threat appears, the farmers gather their families, the livestock, and any produce they can move, and reach the fortress. The settlements can be burned down, but then again they are nothing more than empty ramshackle huts of very little value, quickly replaced.

The problem is when the enemies are able to time their strike based on harvest time - which is why that's when indeed raiding used to take place first and foremost. If they are truly clever and lucky, they might arrive just as all the hard work is done, but while the harvest has not yet been moved to the fortress.

Quote from: Michele;1114178Not necessarily. If the danger does not appear too quickly and unpredictably, you can have a number of settlements where nothing of real worth can't be moved, and a day's march away a fortress or castle, which will also include the granary of the settlements.

That works if there is a fortified shelter a short distance away. In many cases though, D&D has its indefensible towns isolated in the middle of nowhere with long journeys to get to any fortified shelter (and somehow much closer to where the monsters have their fortified lairs).

Quote from: Michele;1114178Not necessarily. If the danger does not appear too quickly and unpredictably, you can have a number of settlements where nothing of real worth can't be moved, and a day's march away a fortress or castle, which will also include the granary of the settlements. When the threat appears, the farmers gather their families, the livestock, and any produce they can move, and reach the fortress. The settlements can be burned down, but then again they are nothing more than empty ramshackle huts of very little value, quickly replaced.

The problem is when the enemies are able to time their strike based on harvest time - which is why that's when indeed raiding used to take place first and foremost. If they are truly clever and lucky, they might arrive just as all the hard work is done, but while the harvest has not yet been moved to the fortress.

This is more or less the premise of The Seven Samurai. Villages don't really have much in terms of defenses. Their only hope is to squirrel away some of their crop where bandits can't find it and pray the bandits don't take everything and leave them to starve. Or they can try to recruit jobless samurai to defend them...

Another thing to keep in mind is that a good offense makes the best defense. Palisades might keep attackers away for a while, but sometimes fear of retaliation will really scare off attackers. For example, let's say a band of outlaws sacks a village. Much of the loot they might gather is not something they can easily ride off with (sacks of grain, livestock, food and drink -even a hapless farmer's daughter). So either they don't take much or they're so loaded down with bulky goods that a mounted patrol is able to hunt them down fairly easily.

Quote from: Elfdart;1115102let's say a band of outlaws sacks a village. Much of the loot they might gather is not something they can easily ride off with

Or they just name themselves "baron" and take just a little bit, and fight off anyone else who takes stuff. A few generations later they claim divine right to rule. Ahem.

Quote from: Elfdart;1115102This is more or less the premise of The Seven Samurai. Villages don't really have much in terms of defenses. Their only hope is to squirrel away some of their crop where bandits can't find it and pray the bandits don't take everything and leave them to starve. Or they can try to recruit jobless samurai to defend them...

Another thing to keep in mind is that a good offense makes the best defense. Palisades might keep attackers away for a while, but sometimes fear of retaliation will really scare off attackers. For example, let's say a band of outlaws sacks a village. Much of the loot they might gather is not something they can easily ride off with (sacks of grain, livestock, food and drink -even a hapless farmer's daughter). So either they don't take much or they're so loaded down with bulky goods that a mounted patrol is able to hunt them down fairly easily.

Ah,  but in 5e each bandit can carry > 150 lbs. before being encumbered in the least!