GURPS melee combat is usually fairly realistic once you get into the scrum. What it doesn't have is, outside the combat itself, if you are tracking time, the minute or two people might use to size each other up first. Apart from two skilled fighters, who know each other, occasionally getting into a parry fest, realistic battles tend to go pretty quick. The other realism aspect it doesn't fully address is that it doesn't really touch on how hot and fatigued you can get in one or two minutes of heavy combat. GURPS kind of softballs this by only addressing fatigue after the battle, and only based on encumbrance, and only assessing penalties for pretty severe fatigue depletion.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on April 23, 2024, 12:30:40 PMAD&D reach is really only used in charging situations, otherwise it isn't much of a factor. Speed factors are rather funny because they completely ignore strength considerations. GURPS does that fairly well. A reach weapon, such as a long spear or polearm loses a lot of effectiveness when not used in formation. Against a single weapon of that type, a swordsman can deflect and slip past, and unless the reach weapon user can retreat quickly, that swordsman will be inside the weapon's effectiveness forcing the pole weapon wielder to drop it and draw a shorter weapon.

Yeah, the effectiveness of a spearwall and how a ling of points can keep the enemy away. I can't remember if it's the case in AD&D, but I know in 3e there were rules for polearms where if the enemy was adjacent, the weapon can't be used since it's too long. Like you said, once you're past the point of the polearm, the weapon is useless. Kinda makes me laugh whenever you see guards in medieval fantasy armed with spears where there are only one or two other guards to support them.

Another rule with polearms, especially spears, that I cant remember where it comes from is they attack first. I know in 3e with 10ft reach, you'd get to "attack first" against a closing enemy as you got an attack of opportunity. But I could've sworn it was in 2e that long polearms get an attack against closing enemies as well, but I might be confusing D&D with Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 23, 2024, 10:02:49 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on April 23, 2024, 12:30:40 PMAD&D reach is really only used in charging situations, otherwise it isn't much of a factor. Speed factors are rather funny because they completely ignore strength considerations. GURPS does that fairly well. A reach weapon, such as a long spear or polearm loses a lot of effectiveness when not used in formation. Against a single weapon of that type, a swordsman can deflect and slip past, and unless the reach weapon user can retreat quickly, that swordsman will be inside the weapon's effectiveness forcing the pole weapon wielder to drop it and draw a shorter weapon.

Yeah, the effectiveness of a spearwall and how a ling of points can keep the enemy away. I can't remember if it's the case in AD&D, but I know in 3e there were rules for polearms where if the enemy was adjacent, the weapon can't be used since it's too long. Like you said, once you're past the point of the polearm, the weapon is useless. Kinda makes me laugh whenever you see guards in medieval fantasy armed with spears where there are only one or two other guards to support them.

Historically, guards were frequently equipped with halberds, bills and partisans (and sometimes very long two-handed swords). I think people underestimate just how difficult it is to get inside the reach of a polearm, especially one with cutting potential. The big advantage of a long weapon in single combat is its ability to change line of attack quickly. A smaller movement of the hands produces a larger movement at the tip of the weapon, so when your swordsman charges, he runs a serious risk of the billman taking a step back and cutting at his legs before his shorter weapon gets into reach. When used in both hands, a shorter polearm can also be choked up on to fight at what is basically sword-distance, and a big heavy weapon like a halberd is not going to be easy to effectively control with a sword blade. Sure, a pike is next to useless without a formation to back it up, but even a short spear (of the 7 to 8 foot length which is typical of one-handed spears across history) is surprisingly nimble in single combat.

Here's an interesting video. Unfortunately it's edited quite choppy, but starting at around 1:50, there's a show of what some close combat partisan techniques might have looked like.


Long cutting weapons (particularly swords it seems) were also popular with bodyguards and other people who might expect to face multiple opponents. By just sweeping a large volume of space with a big intimidating weapon, you can hold several attackers at bay for a while, even if you're unlikely to actually kill any of them. There's an (admittedly not great) attempt to demonstrate that here:


EDIT: You also have to remember that guards are not necessarily gearing up for life or death single combat. A polearm could easily be a very useful tool for crowd control. When performing more "law enforcement" type activities like breaking up fights or making arrests, they'd probably expect to outnumber their opposition and for the felons to be more likely to surrender or run away rather than stand and fight. Real people are a lot less likely to fight the local authorities to the death over a minor infraction than RPG players are. Plus, if you want to put someone down without killing them, a spear haft is going to do the job better than a sword. 

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 23, 2024, 10:02:49 PMLike you said, once you're past the point of the polearm, the weapon is useless. Kinda makes me laugh whenever you see guards in medieval fantasy armed with spears where there are only one or two other guards to support them.

That's not true. First of all, it's still six pounds of solid oak, or as it's sometimes known, heavier than a quarterstaff. Second, you can usually choke up on the grip, depending on the type of weapon, and use it as an axe or spear. Third, many of them were constructed with a butt spike. So if you get inside their reach, they might still stab your foot, or your abdomen. Polearms are so versatile that smaller versions were often used as dueling weapons, or carried by knights or man-at-arms. Very long ones were used in formation, but palace guards aren't going to carry a ten foot long partisan.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 23, 2024, 09:10:50 AMGURPS kinda recognized this by publishing the "lull" supplement I mentioned but unfortunately can't find.

Eric,

IIRC, it's in 3E Compendium 2. Sold it years ago. I don't think that rule made it into 4E.

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 23, 2024, 11:36:13 PMEDIT: You also have to remember that guards are not necessarily gearing up for life or death single combat. A polearm could easily be a very useful tool for crowd control. When performing more "law enforcement" type activities like breaking up fights or making arrests, they'd probably expect to outnumber their opposition and for the felons to be more likely to surrender or run away rather than stand and fight. Real people are a lot less likely to fight the local authorities to the death over a minor infraction than RPG players are. Plus, if you want to put someone down without killing them, a spear haft is going to do the job better than a sword. 

Plus, frequently a guard's job is not to prevent a concerted attack.  It's to intimidate people who have no intention of attacking but might be causing other trouble, stop an attack by untrained people who have underestimated what that polearm can do, or delay an attack by more serious opposition until help can arrive.  Reach is helpful in all three of those cases. 

In game terms, this is another example of what I said earlier.  Does your game have mechanics or encourage situations where any of those things matter?  How frequently?  If not, then such weapons are less useful.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 23, 2024, 09:14:17 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 22, 2024, 08:37:17 PMOooh... We're touching on a subject which is near and dear to my heart.

For my money, if you want a fairly realistic approach to the way ancient/medieval/early modern weapons and armor interact, the optimum way is to address three factors for weapons:
.....

Admittedly, the level of complexity this requires is possibly too much to be practical. I haven't tried to implement it in my own games, but where I can, I do aim for half-measures that move towards the same effect.

This is useful, thanks. Maybe the problem is that I'm putting maces and rondel dagger in the same "defeat armor" category, but they defeat armor for different reasons...

Another thing I don't even want to consider is swords that cut AND thrust - or worse, swords techniques such as half-swording.

Yeah, the variations quickly get so complicated that you can see why D&D chose to just collapse it into AC and say if you beat their AC you must have wounded them somehow.

I'd even be uncomfortable putting a mace in a general "defeats armor" category. From what I've read on the matter, one-handed maces are actually close to useless against late-period full plate harness. You can bash your target around and maybe stun or tire them, but you're unlikely to kill or even seriously wound the target.

Oddly, I think the cut-and-thrust sword is something you don't really need to go out of your way to represent in a "weapon vs. armor" system. Generally (though not universally), there's a give-and-take in cutting and thrusting effectiveness in sword design, so a better cutter is often a worse thruster and vice versa. It think that means you can keep the penetration scores relatively similar for both. A dedicated thrusting sword will probably always be better at bypassing armor, but on the flip-side, a cutting or cut-and-thrust sword is generally easier to use and better for parrying, so it should have a better "wieldiness" score.

Half-swording gets you into the world of grappling, and that's another huge problem here. You can't really replicate the purpose of a lot of late-medieval weapons like longswords, rondels and poleaxes without a grappling system. If you're not prepared to implement a full set of grappling rules, I think you can get away with presuming the grappling capability into the attack and armor bypass rolls, and handling it through DM narration, but it's not a great solution.

The 2d20 system has an interesting, though poorly implemented, mechanic: If you can "break the opponent's guard", you invert the reach differential, so a dagger suddenly has a "reach" advantage over a spear. There's problems with how it works in the system, but on paper it's not a bad way of representing the utility of certain weapons in extremely close fighting.

Personally, I find that I have to improvise grappling rules for all of my games, just to keep the combat plausible. Grappling is a significant part of every medieval or renaissance fighting system we have evidence for, and it's not hard to see why. Not only is it practically the only way to bypass full armor, but whenever you have two people going at each other with high adrenaline and malice aforethought, there's a very good chance of them getting tangled up and having to wrestle it out.

I think there's two reasons RPGs don't much engage with grappling. The first and most obvious reason is that it's such a pain in the balls to write rules for. The second, though, is that a lot of gamers (and by extension designers) think of RPG combat in battlefield terms. I.e., they're thinking of ranks and formations, and the combat dynamics those produce. Realistically, people fighting in a shield wall or a pike block probably almost never got into grapples with their opposition. The more combatants are involved in a fight, the more you want to stay in ranks and not get tied up with a single opponent. Problem is that RPG combats are rarely at the kind of scale where close-order infantry formations would be relevant. They're much more analogous to a skirmish between light troops or even just a street brawl, and that produces a very different dynamic.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 24, 2024, 08:14:25 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 23, 2024, 11:36:13 PMEDIT: You also have to remember that guards are not necessarily gearing up for life or death single combat. A polearm could easily be a very useful tool for crowd control. When performing more "law enforcement" type activities like breaking up fights or making arrests, they'd probably expect to outnumber their opposition and for the felons to be more likely to surrender or run away rather than stand and fight. Real people are a lot less likely to fight the local authorities to the death over a minor infraction than RPG players are. Plus, if you want to put someone down without killing them, a spear haft is going to do the job better than a sword. 

Plus, frequently a guard's job is not to prevent a concerted attack.  It's to intimidate people who have no intention of attacking but might be causing other trouble, stop an attack by untrained people who have underestimated what that polearm can do, or delay an attack by more serious opposition until help can arrive.  Reach is helpful in all three of those cases.

In game terms, this is another example of what I said earlier.  Does your game have mechanics or encourage situations where any of those things matter?  How frequently?  If not, then such weapons are less useful.

And that right there is the crux of the issue. To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 23, 2024, 11:36:13 PMHistorically, guards were frequently equipped with halberds, bills and partisans (and sometimes very long two-handed swords). I think people underestimate just how difficult it is to get inside the reach of a polearm, especially one with cutting potential. The big advantage of a long weapon in single combat is its ability to change line of attack quickly. A smaller movement of the hands produces a larger movement at the tip of the weapon, so when your swordsman charges, he runs a serious risk of the billman taking a step back and cutting at his legs before his shorter weapon gets into reach. When used in both hands, a shorter polearm can also be choked up on to fight at what is basically sword-distance, and a big heavy weapon like a halberd is not going to be easy to effectively control with a sword blade. Sure, a pike is next to useless without a formation to back it up, but even a short spear (of the 7 to 8 foot length which is typical of one-handed spears across history) is surprisingly nimble in single combat.

EDIT: You also have to remember that guards are not necessarily gearing up for life or death single combat. A polearm could easily be a very useful tool for crowd control. When performing more "law enforcement" type activities like breaking up fights or making arrests, they'd probably expect to outnumber their opposition and for the felons to be more likely to surrender or run away rather than stand and fight. Real people are a lot less likely to fight the local authorities to the death over a minor infraction than RPG players are. Plus, if you want to put someone down without killing them, a spear haft is going to do the job better than a sword. 

Thanks for the videos! I'll check those out. Like you and pawsplay said about choking up, I never knew that was something they did. I always just assumed it would make the weapon too unwieldy to use. I know the Swiss used halberds in loose formations to deal with incoming cavalry by breaking into small groups to hack at horse's legs and pull off the rider, which sometimes meant utilizing the haft.

As for the guards, I just figured stuff like clubs and blunt objects, but using a spear for crowd control makes sense when you put it like that. I learn something new everyday.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 23, 2024, 10:57:27 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 23, 2024, 09:10:50 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on April 23, 2024, 01:11:09 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 22, 2024, 12:02:01 PMGURPS was good at this, but too complex to the point of becoming unrealistic: a 10-second fight between two people has 20 or more sword blows, most being parried.

There's nothing unrealistic in this, ten seconds are an eternity in a close combat fight. Same goes for the parries, the absolute majority of fighting styles emphasize defense for a reason; what's totally unrealistic, instead, is being hit (good hit, not a glancing blow) more than once or twice by a sword and not dying.

I disagree.

No 10-second fight has 20 blows. Maybe you can find a 10-second period in a 5-minute fight with such a frantic pace, or a fight that ended in 10 seconds with a single punch, but I never seem such a frantic pace of attacking in fencing, UFC, larping, or medieval fighting simulations. If you have, send me the YouTube link

10-second combats only make sense if weapons are present and armor absent, but then they'll probably be finished before 20 blows.

Other than that, a duel (not to mention a skirmish) of say, people in swords and armor, will definitely last more than 10-seconds - in fact one might take a few seconds just to find an opening before approaching.

Same for people with no weapons and no armor. - even boxing matches do not have two punches per second, and punching is faster than swinging an axe!

GURPS kinda recognized this by publishing the "lull" supplement I mentioned but unfortunately can't find.

Without armor, I agree that taking a couple of sword blows would lead to death.

  This assumption means both parties choose to attack every turn.  Evaluate, all out defense, stepping back to disengage, etc make that stretch out quite a bit IME. Deceptive attacks and feints also cut down greatly on the number of attacks parried.   You can see lots of fights that during a flurry of activity it will approach what you describe, but they are rare as most parties involved in that frenetic pace lack the defense to avoid real damage or the durability to absorb it solely for the sake of throwing a shot. 
 
   I do wish GURPS used a 5 second round/turn as it would make a good deal more sense overall with regard to melee (the 1 second turns make a lot more sense with regard to gunfights) but using the things I mentioned also tends to slow the pace down a good deal and allows characters with a skill disadvantage to take measures to not get overwhelmed.

Yeah, good point, if you use all the maneuvers it could make sense (and definitely makes sense for gunfights), especially with 5-second turns.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 24, 2024, 12:38:31 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 23, 2024, 09:10:50 AMGURPS kinda recognized this by publishing the "lull" supplement I mentioned but unfortunately can't find.

Eric,

IIRC, it's in 3E Compendium 2. Sold it years ago. I don't think that rule made it into 4E.

Thanks!

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 08:43:48 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 23, 2024, 09:14:17 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 22, 2024, 08:37:17 PMOooh... We're touching on a subject which is near and dear to my heart.

For my money, if you want a fairly realistic approach to the way ancient/medieval/early modern weapons and armor interact, the optimum way is to address three factors for weapons:
.....

Admittedly, the level of complexity this requires is possibly too much to be practical. I haven't tried to implement it in my own games, but where I can, I do aim for half-measures that move towards the same effect.

This is useful, thanks. Maybe the problem is that I'm putting maces and rondel dagger in the same "defeat armor" category, but they defeat armor for different reasons...

Another thing I don't even want to consider is swords that cut AND thrust - or worse, swords techniques such as half-swording.

Yeah, the variations quickly get so complicated that you can see why D&D chose to just collapse it into AC and say if you beat their AC you must have wounded them somehow.

I'd even be uncomfortable putting a mace in a general "defeats armor" category. From what I've read on the matter, one-handed maces are actually close to useless against late-period full plate harness. You can bash your target around and maybe stun or tire them, but you're unlikely to kill or even seriously wound the target.

Oddly, I think the cut-and-thrust sword is something you don't really need to go out of your way to represent in a "weapon vs. armor" system. Generally (though not universally), there's a give-and-take in cutting and thrusting effectiveness in sword design, so a better cutter is often a worse thruster and vice versa. It think that means you can keep the penetration scores relatively similar for both. A dedicated thrusting sword will probably always be better at bypassing armor, but on the flip-side, a cutting or cut-and-thrust sword is generally easier to use and better for parrying, so it should have a better "wieldiness" score.

Half-swording gets you into the world of grappling, and that's another huge problem here. You can't really replicate the purpose of a lot of late-medieval weapons like longswords, rondels and poleaxes without a grappling system. If you're not prepared to implement a full set of grappling rules, I think you can get away with presuming the grappling capability into the attack and armor bypass rolls, and handling it through DM narration, but it's not a great solution.

The 2d20 system has an interesting, though poorly implemented, mechanic: If you can "break the opponent's guard", you invert the reach differential, so a dagger suddenly has a "reach" advantage over a spear. There's problems with how it works in the system, but on paper it's not a bad way of representing the utility of certain weapons in extremely close fighting.

Personally, I find that I have to improvise grappling rules for all of my games, just to keep the combat plausible. Grappling is a significant part of every medieval or renaissance fighting system we have evidence for, and it's not hard to see why. Not only is it practically the only way to bypass full armor, but whenever you have two people going at each other with high adrenaline and malice aforethought, there's a very good chance of them getting tangled up and having to wrestle it out.

I think there's two reasons RPGs don't much engage with grappling. The first and most obvious reason is that it's such a pain in the balls to write rules for. The second, though, is that a lot of gamers (and by extension designers) think of RPG combat in battlefield terms. I.e., they're thinking of ranks and formations, and the combat dynamics those produce. Realistically, people fighting in a shield wall or a pike block probably almost never got into grapples with their opposition. The more combatants are involved in a fight, the more you want to stay in ranks and not get tied up with a single opponent. Problem is that RPG combats are rarely at the kind of scale where close-order infantry formations would be relevant. They're much more analogous to a skirmish between light troops or even just a street brawl, and that produces a very different dynamic.

Grappling is another difficult issue indeed, and AD&D's version is very fiddly. I read "Dungeon Grappling" a while ago, found it a worthy replacement.

I wrote my own minimalist version of grappling, which is basically 1d20+AB versus 10+HD to make the enemy disarmed, prone, or to push, etc. I prefer a more abstract take here too.

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 24, 2024, 08:14:25 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 23, 2024, 11:36:13 PMEDIT: You also have to remember that guards are not necessarily gearing up for life or death single combat. A polearm could easily be a very useful tool for crowd control. When performing more "law enforcement" type activities like breaking up fights or making arrests, they'd probably expect to outnumber their opposition and for the felons to be more likely to surrender or run away rather than stand and fight. Real people are a lot less likely to fight the local authorities to the death over a minor infraction than RPG players are. Plus, if you want to put someone down without killing them, a spear haft is going to do the job better than a sword. 

Plus, frequently a guard's job is not to prevent a concerted attack.  It's to intimidate people who have no intention of attacking but might be causing other trouble, stop an attack by untrained people who have underestimated what that polearm can do, or delay an attack by more serious opposition until help can arrive.  Reach is helpful in all three of those cases.

In game terms, this is another example of what I said earlier.  Does your game have mechanics or encourage situations where any of those things matter?  How frequently?  If not, then such weapons are less useful.

And that right there is the crux of the issue. To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2024, 08:20:38 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM... To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

OK, if we accept that as the ideal for a moment, let me ask you both a question.  Would you settle for rules/mechanics that caused the players to emulate the weapon and armor realism, but without really understanding how this pertains to simulating the fiction? That is, what if players end up choosing weapons and armor that would make sense due to real-world concerns, but not necessarily for those reasons?

Yep, I'm taking that thought a little sideways, because I think the ideal is unobtainable, and then the question becomes what becomes an acceptable, pragmatic result short of it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 24, 2024, 09:47:06 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2024, 08:20:38 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM... To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

OK, if we accept that as the ideal for a moment, let me ask you both a question.  Would you settle for rules/mechanics that caused the players to emulate the weapon and armor realism, but without really understanding how this pertains to simulating the fiction? That is, what if players end up choosing weapons and armor that would make sense due to real-world concerns, but not necessarily for those reasons?

Yep, I'm taking that thought a little sideways, because I think the ideal is unobtainable, and then the question becomes what becomes an acceptable, pragmatic result short of it.

Not sure I understand the question, but I'll try to give my 2c... I think that it would be good if weapons were more "realistic", with or without players understanding WHY a pick is good against plate.

I think there are two aspects to consider.

First the "realism" thing. I want the game to function similarly (not identically) to the real world. I've learned a lot from RPGs - not only vocabulary, but until a game last month I had no idea if a bonfire was hot enough to melt gold (it is).

Second, I think this is FUN. Describing a weapon piercing armor or bashing someone's head even under a helmet makes the game more action-packed. I wouldn't be as excited to calculate precisely how many calories a person needs, or the chances of mild ear disease as suggested in AD&D.

So, in the end, I like attempting realism when it can potentially increase the fun, but that is very subjective, of course.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 25, 2024, 12:53:00 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 24, 2024, 09:47:06 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2024, 08:20:38 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM... To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

OK, if we accept that as the ideal for a moment, let me ask you both a question.  Would you settle for rules/mechanics that caused the players to emulate the weapon and armor realism, but without really understanding how this pertains to simulating the fiction? That is, what if players end up choosing weapons and armor that would make sense due to real-world concerns, but not necessarily for those reasons?

Yep, I'm taking that thought a little sideways, because I think the ideal is unobtainable, and then the question becomes what becomes an acceptable, pragmatic result short of it.

Not sure I understand the question, but I'll try to give my 2c... I think that it would be good if weapons were more "realistic", with or without players understanding WHY a pick is good against plate.

I think there are two aspects to consider.

First the "realism" thing. I want the game to function similarly (not identically) to the real world. I've learned a lot from RPGs - not only vocabulary, but until a game last month I had no idea if a bonfire was hot enough to melt gold (it is).

Second, I think this is FUN. Describing a weapon piercing armor or bashing someone's head even under a helmet makes the game more action-packed. I wouldn't be as excited to calculate precisely how many calories a person needs, or the chances of mild ear disease as suggested in AD&D.

So, in the end, I like attempting realism when it can potentially increase the fun, but that is very subjective, of course.

To use the pick example, what if a player often did use a pick when fighting someone wearing plate, but it wasn't because of a specific mechanic/rule that a pick was more likely to bypass armor? 

I know that is very loose, subjective, and theoretical, but I'm trying not to prejudice answers with particular implementations.  Another way to say it is, suppose that roughly half the players in the group have some understanding of why a pick could be a good choice when used against plate.  The other half don't.  However, because of other factors (cost of weapons, social status, setting local laws, trade-offs 1-handed/2-handed, weapon encumbrance, etc.), some of these other players could end up happily using a pick.

It's hard to imagine that working with a single weapon versus a single kind of armor, pick versus plate.  However, my contention is that if you are willing to accept some edge cases, you can get a bias towards using the simulated thing even without direct mechanics to support it in each case.   

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 24, 2024, 12:58:12 PMThanks for the videos! I'll check those out. Like you and pawsplay said about choking up, I never knew that was something they did. I always just assumed it would make the weapon too unwieldy to use. I know the Swiss used halberds in loose formations to deal with incoming cavalry by breaking into small groups to hack at horse's legs and pull off the rider, which sometimes meant utilizing the haft.

As for the guards, I just figured stuff like clubs and blunt objects, but using a spear for crowd control makes sense when you put it like that. I learn something new everyday.

No Worries! I've spent an unhealth amount of time and thought on this stuff, so I'm always happy to export some of the otherwise useless data in my brain to others.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 24, 2024, 09:47:06 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2024, 08:20:38 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM... To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

OK, if we accept that as the ideal for a moment, let me ask you both a question.  Would you settle for rules/mechanics that caused the players to emulate the weapon and armor realism, but without really understanding how this pertains to simulating the fiction? That is, what if players end up choosing weapons and armor that would make sense due to real-world concerns, but not necessarily for those reasons?

Yep, I'm taking that thought a little sideways, because I think the ideal is unobtainable, and then the question becomes what becomes an acceptable, pragmatic result short of it.

Absolutely that is the next best thing.

It's a bit difficult to come up with an example, because often the easiest way to incentivize realistic behavior is to simulate realistic outcomes, but I'll try:

Because I'm weirdly obsessed with early modern settings for roleplaying, one of my biggest bugbears is when RPG rules make bows much more useful than black-powder weapons. This is largely because the way RPG health systems work, single shot effectiveness is secondary to rate of fire. You could try to redress that by cranking the damage for firearms, but you often have to make it 4 or 5 times the damage of a bow for it to average out, and that makes problems of its own. You don't want to make guns a superweapon either, and a gun being the only weapon which can kill in a single hit doesn't make sense. A sword or an arrow can absolutely kill someone just as dead as a bullet can. I prefer the Helvecza approach of giving guns exploding dice, so they won't reliably out-damage a bow over time, but they have that chance of doing catastrophic damage on a single shot. I will also generally give firearms a slightly more lenient reload time than is strictly realistic, to compensate for rate of fire being overstated in its importance.

Many of the reasons why the gun overtook the bow in Europe (such as the morale effect of volley fire and the fact that bullet wounds are more likely to disable than arrow wounds) are less relevant to an adventurer than they are on the battlefield, or are expressly not replicated in D&D rules. You could try and patch them in, but messing with the morale rules or adding in a trauma system is probably more hassle than it's worth. WFRP 4th edition gives black powder weapons a mechanic where being shot at by one forces what is essentially an instant morale check, which if you fail, you must flee until you make the saving throw. That strikes me as overkill, but WFRP is trying to portray a world where guns are much rarer than they should be given the time period implied.

So instead, maybe you think about how adventurers would be likely to use guns. Adventurers are not line infantry. They engage at extremely close range in small-unit actions, often from ambush or in sudden assaults. Effectively, they're raiders. To be fair, people like that did tend to retain the use of more archaic weapons like bows and lances well after guns had started dominating the battlefield. But how did that kind of combatant used firearms historically?

One example would be hussars or other light cavalry, but PCs rarely engage in cavalry raids, so maybe that's not a useful analogy. I think a better study would be pirates and other naval boarding parties. We know in that situation, a volley of gunfire, often from pistols, carbines or blunderbusses, might be used as a precursor to closing to melee. Scottish rebels in the 17th and 18th Centuries did the same thing with the so-called "Highland Charge". That seems like a very plausible way that you'd employ firearms in the close confines of a dungeon. Ok, so write rules to encourage it. Big damage might be a way, but you could also do something like giving firearms a "shoot from the hip" option, or an improved ability to shoot on the move. In reality, a volley of gunfire before charging softens up the enemy formation by damaging morale and killing or maiming participants, but most RPGs don't have morale damage, and killing in a single shot is rare. So instead, maybe you can replicate that "softening up" on a single target by giving the gunshot some kind of stun effect that makes the enemy vulnerable to a follow up charge.

In general, morale is a factor which is hugely important in real-world fighting, but poorly represented in RPGs. Probably morale checks should be triggered more easily than they traditionally are, and should be something that players are in some way subject to as well. That gets tough, though, because morale checks by NPCs could be too easily exploitable, and infinite PC morale is one of those unspoken "hero's edges" that are presumed in a lot of D&D encounter design.