Quote from: TristramEvans;641625By that I mean incorporates the vast variety of sword types throughout history and accounts for their various advantages, disadvantages, and tactics without turning the game into a mind-numbing Phoenix-command numbercrunchapolooza?

RQ6/Legend may be what you are looking for. It's really the innovations Pete Nash added to the base RuneQuest system for Mongoose RQII that makes it stand out even more now. If you download the RQ6 Games Master's pack from TDM:
http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/downloads.php
and look at the last two pages you should get an idea of how it works. Legend is just $1 from Drivethru and the combat system is more or less the same between Legend and RQ6.

Specific weapons will give you more options in combat - so only certain weapons allow the option to stun, or entangle, or impale and so on.

Quote from: TristramEvans;641631Whereas the broadswords such as the Scottish Claymore or German Zweihander were designed to use the momentum of a spinning attacker and could slice up to three heads off with a single blow, but parrying was out of the question.

I have a few years experience with German longsword and Scottish claymore, and I assure you that parrying is far from out of the question. These swords are surprisingly fast, due to their balance and use of two hands, and parrying is an essential part of the style. The downside is that they can't match an axe or mace for sheer impact (as the weight is not at the end). In D&D terms, they get a bonus to hit, and to AC, but not to damage.

Quote from: spaceLem;642107I have a few years experience with German longsword and Scottish claymore, and I assure you that parrying is far from out of the question. These swords are surprisingly fast, due to their balance and use of two hands, and parrying is an essential part of the style. The downside is that they can't match an axe or mace for sheer impact (as the weight is not at the end). In D&D terms, they get a bonus to hit, and to AC, but not to damage.

Funny enough, D&D 4e kind of emulates this, as much as 4e emulates anything.
Bear with me.
Heavy blade proficiency grants +3 to hit.
Axe proficiency only grants +2, but axes generally do more damage.
Heavy blade expertise grants +2 AC v. attacks of opportunity.
Axe expertise allows you to reroll damage results of 1, so average damage goes even higher, IIRC.
Of course, maces got shafted as I recall.

Quote from: Bilharzia;641785RQ6/Legend may be what you are looking for. It's really the innovations Pete Nash added to the base RuneQuest system for Mongoose RQII that makes it stand out even more now. If you download the RQ6 Games Master's pack from TDM:
http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/downloads.php
and look at the last two pages you should get an idea of how it works. Legend is just $1 from Drivethru and the combat system is more or less the same between Legend and RQ6.

Specific weapons will give you more options in combat - so only certain weapons allow the option to stun, or entangle, or impale and so on.

I've played in a RQ6 game, but dont actually own the rules myself yet, but I hadnt heard of Legend yet, I'll give that a looksee.

Quote from: estar;641753It is a percentile based system and character wise it similar to Runequest with some more stats.

Combat wise there is nothing quite like it.

First off it has no hit points.
y
Hits are resolved by comparing levels of success. Criticals are any rolls ending in a 0 or 5, roll equal or lower than your chance of success it is a hit otherwise a miss The combinations yield four possible levels of success which is looked up a easy to use chart.

If the result is damage then you roll the indicated dice plus your weapons impact rating which differs if you are attacking with a point, edge, or blunt. The impact is reduced by the armor you wear on a rolled hit location.

Any damage that gets through is the amount of injury which reduces your skills and any characteristic saves.

The bad stuff are the result of a single blow and based on the amount of injury done by that blow. They are handled by rolling a number d6s under a characteristic. Your injury level adds to these rolls making it mor likely to fail. Possible bad things include stumble, fumbles, amputation, and finally instant death.

Everything is front loaded and make this one of the fasted detailed combat system I ever run.

Is there an edition of Harnmaster you recommend starting with? I'm seeing references to HM 3, classic, and gold online.

Quote from: spaceLem;642107I have a few years experience with German longsword and Scottish claymore, and I assure you that parrying is far from out of the question. These swords are surprisingly fast, due to their balance and use of two hands, and parrying is an essential part of the style. The downside is that they can't match an axe or mace for sheer impact (as the weight is not at the end). In D&D terms, they get a bonus to hit, and to AC, but not to damage.

I am no avowed expert myself, was just trying to point out how the different designs are suited for different combat moves, but fair enough. Although from what I have read, I'm under the impression the standard tactic for a Claymore (the "great sword variety as opposed to the later one-handed basket-hit variety), was to enter the battle doing spins and use the momentum to whip the sword about like a propeller blade.

Quote from: TristramEvans;642133I am no avowed expert myself, was just trying to point out how the different designs are suited for different combat moves, but fair enough. Although from what I have read, I'm under the impression the standard tactic for a Claymore (the "great sword variety as opposed to the later one-handed basket-hit variety), was to enter the battle doing spins and use the momentum to whip the sword about like a propeller blade.

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, there isn't much textual evidence of just how the highland greatsword was used. Continental sources, e.g. the "Goliath manuscript" (Link directs to ARMA's facsimile. Be advised of edge-flat debate.), look quite similar to Liechtenauer's plays with the longsword, albeit at a longer distance.
Now the zwerchau does vaguely resemble a helicopter, but that was just one meisterhau ("master strike") out of five.

Quote from: TristramEvans;642132Is there an edition of Harnmaster you recommend starting with? I'm seeing references to HM 3, classic, and gold online.

Okay, HM editions fall into two categories when it comes to combat:

HM 1e/Gold

HM 2e/3e. When you write "classic", you may be thinking of HMC, which is "Harnmaster Core", i.e., 2e.

The 2e/3e system is simplified and I'm not sure it was playtested very well.

The 1e system has its own problems in terms of balance, but it's where I'd look first, then tweak from there, possibly trying to meld it with some version of RQ or BRP.

I haven't seen Gold but my understanding is that it's Robin Crossby's end-all-be-all, based on 1e.

The basic issue with 2e/3e vs. 1e (IIRC):

In 1e, when you get a hit, you roll a die and add it to the weapon modifier to determine the impact points. The armor then absorbs (and note that the weapon modifier, and the armor absorption, both depend on whether the weapon is used as a blunt, edge, or point weapon). Then you look at the leftover impact points, the area struck, and (again) the type of impact to see the result, which can be anything from a light wound which just imposes impairment (a penalty on subsequent skill rolls), to special effects such as a trip, a crippled limb, decapitation, etc. Most of the latter have a sort of "saving throw" based on a characteristic.

In 2e/3e, the process is short-circuited and the impact points translate directly into impairment. Based on one play, it seemed like a sloppy attempt to simplify without really understanding the impact (NPI) of the change. I could quite easily be wrong, but the fact that Crossby went on to make HMG says something.

You can find a more extensive rundown at http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/harn/rules_versions.html but John doesn't directly address the concern I've laid out.

All that said, while I think that HM probably does a good job of representing differences between weapon types such as maces vs. swords. vs. spears, I don't think it will give you a great deal of variety for swords. Some swords are edge weapons, some are thrusting weapons, some are both; some are bigger, some are smaller. But the nuance of technique, and details such as the way that the long sword and estoc would be employed not to penetrate armor but to bypass it--I don't think these things are captured.

Quote from: TristramEvans;642131I've played in a RQ6 game, but dont actually own the rules myself yet, but I hadnt heard of Legend yet, I'll give that a looksee.

Legend is just the prototype of RQ6--a genericized version of Mongoose Runequest 2. It's easily worth $1 if you don't have RQ6, but don't expect to find anything new.

Quote from: Dan Vincze;642140To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, there isn't much textual evidence of just how the highland greatsword was used. Continental sources, e.g. the "Goliath manuscript" (Link directs to ARMA's facsimile. Be advised of edge-flat debate.), look quite similar to Liechtenauer's plays with the longsword, albeit at a longer distance.
Now the zwerchau does vaguely resemble a helicopter, but that was just one meisterhau ("master strike") out of five.

Ah yes, zwerchau, the spinning helicopter of death! I can perform maybe 2-3 of them in a second, in response to the other guy doing something similar. Your hands remain in front of your face the whole time. Our fencing school did Liechtenauer, the style is very much defensive, and about keeping your sword in between you and the other guy. Sometimes you'll enter into krieg, where the swords are crossed, and you have to quickly decide what to do. None of this pushing and grunting that seems prevalent in films!

Quote from: TristramEvans;642133I am no avowed expert myself, was just trying to point out how the different designs are suited for different combat moves, but fair enough. Although from what I have read, I'm under the impression the standard tactic for a Claymore (the "great sword variety as opposed to the later one-handed basket-hit variety), was to enter the battle doing spins and use the momentum to whip the sword about like a propeller blade.

I'll admit that the claymore is longer and slower than the longsword, but I think the techniques are mostly similar (I generally favoured the lighter swords as I got tired less quickly, but a heavier sword was good for the start of the session). Spinning your sword round you may be useful against people with no weapons or to break up schiltrons, but it's ridiculously easy to block, and a sure way to end up dead if you're up against anyone who knows what they're doing.

Quote from: The Butcher;641728I love me some "sword porn" as a topic of geeky conversation. But from a mechanical standpoint, I'm really fine with the classic D&D set-up:

Sword, more like a big knife actually - 1d6 damage
Sword, Hollywood standard issue - 1d8 damage
Sword, not overcompensating for anything, honest - 1d10 damage, two-handed

Completely agree.  It's interesting to read about various types of weapons, how and why they developed the way they did, and under what circumstances they were successful or not.

Sitting at the table, though, and I don't honestly give two shits about an extra 30fps of muzzle velocity or whether a particular blade design can cut through eight bamboo sheafs or nine bamboo sheafs.

Quote from: TristramEvans;642132Is there an edition of Harnmaster you recommend starting with? I'm seeing references to HM 3, classic, and gold online.

Yes Harnmaster 3e Light for $10 it has the full core rules. Note all editions of Harnmaster sell Majic, Religion, and Bestairy separate although 3e comes with a short chapter with raw stat to get you going. The Treasure section is excellent and usable with other RPGs.

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4001L

Not exactly, Rob. HM 1e (OOP) has everything all in one book, although there are separate books with more detailed rules on ships (Pilot's Almanac) and magic (Shek-Pvar + "tomes" on each "college" of magic).

EDIT: for more on the differences between 1e and 3e, see Rob's own account. It could be that the real problem I had with 3e was the same thing Rob mentions--they changed the way "saving throws" to avoid injury effects are handled, which makes people too vulnerable.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;642260N
EDIT: for more on the differences between 1e and 3e, see Rob's own account. It could be that the real problem I had with 3e was the same thing Rob mentions--they changed the way "saving throws" to avoid injury effects are handled, which makes people too vulnerable.

Which fortunately is very easily fixed.

Quote from: TristramEvans;641630I own that one, and while its touted as having the mostest realistic combat rules, it actually does very little in the way of distinguishing melee weapons from what I've found. And unfortunately the system's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, in that realistic combat is usually very whiffy, arbitrary, and as much about luck as anything.

Pretty much this.

Riddle of Steel always struck me as a game written by someone who knew an impressive amount about swords but wasn't so hot on designing games that are actually fun or interesting in play.

Decided to splurge and went ahead and picked up RQ6...I'd been meaning to anyways, so making my way through that. checking out Harnmaster, but after reading a few extensive reviews, combat seems like it would be really slow. Do I have this right?

attacker and defender roll
find out a level of success for each roll
compare levels of success to a chart
if a hit, damage and hit location are bothed randomly rolled
hit location is compared to location and is reduced by any armour on that location
then consult another chart to detrmine the injury for that location.

I mean, just typing that is giving me unpleasant Rolemaster flashbacks.

so, does it just seem extra crunchy? How fast does it work in play?