Are there any fantasy/medieval RPGs that take into account the effectiveness of different weapons against different armors?

A lot of RPGs don't seem to account for the fact that, in the real world, you would have to use different types of weapons to deal with foes wearing different types of armors (i.e. using a knife blade to stab a knight wearing plate armor at a vunerable joint, rather than hitting him with a mace, say). Are there any game systems that treat this (semi) realistically?

Cliché "it's all escapism in the end" line.

Most systems, even the ones with brutal, graphically descriptive combat use abstraction in various places. In most games, except some that are more for over the top, I'd say that you're finding the gaps once it comes to metal armor. OK, a thin thrusting blade might make it between a link of mail, but you also have to be using a pretty thin blade. Even nasty, insta-death criticals, are usually described in a way where your character bypassed the armor rather than broke it, cut through it, or something else.

That said, one of my favorite systems is HARP. Weapons come in five size categories, which have a critical modifier of -20 to +20, all of which have a critical cap (Tiny 80, Small 90, Medium 100, Large 110, Huge 120). This gives characters of any level a chance, however small, of offing someone much more powerful than they are with a good hit. On the other hand, it also can seem like modifying the same thing twice. I won't even get into weapons vs. armor "types", as then we'd be at thrice.

So, long answer short: yes, some do, and it's up to the group to decide if that increases or decreases their combat enjoyment.

A common question when I was in a theatrical combat troupe (about using dull blades) was "how do you get through their armor?" I eventually adopted the answer "I don't need to get through their armor, I need their armor to get through them." Of course the real reason for dulled blades was safety, and even a dull blade, swung well, can cut cleanly.

1e AD&D?

The one thing I really miss from 1e AD&D is it had at least a nod toward certain weapons were more effective against lightly armored opponents and others were more specialized in attacking heavily armored opponents. A mace was far worse than a sword against an unarmored foe, but was on at least equal footing if not superior versus a foe in heavy armor. It wasn't unusual in my game at lower levels for a player to switch from his magic sword to a footman's pick versus certain foes, and there was just a far larger range of viable weapons to use once you factored weapon vs. AC into the equation.

It wasn't fully realistic (because D&D duh) and I had quibbles with some of the adjustments, but it was cool and I miss it. Unfortunately, the problem you run into when you start wanting this sort of realistic grittiness is that your system gets more and more burdened by calculation costs and overhead. In 1e AD&D it wasn't so bad, as you could create these little tables for each individual PC's weapon, and consult those in play rather than the standard 'fighter' or 'thief' to hit table. It didn't take that much time to set up, and once you did it actually sped play because all the numbers were accounted for. There was an issue of having to redo the AC of every creature in the monster manual, but that wasn't that big of a deal once you set out to do it (and you really only needed monsters as you used them). But still, if you take that complexity and move it into an already complex system like 3e D&D, you end up with a mess.

Most fantasy combat systems in RPG are a mish mash of weapons and armor from a thousand year period all dumped into a single point in time. Swords are prime despite falling out of favor to things like pole axes when plate armor took over. When you look at history when full plate armor took over shields were made obsolete for those decked out in it, but in D&D its all plate + shield + sword. Then again swords are Excalibur, they are sexy! And pole axes are....?

AD&D tried but I wonder what percentage of players actually used those rules?

Flexor the Mighty! said:

AD&D tried but I wonder what percentage of players actually used those rules?

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I think those were probably the most commonly ignored rules in the game.

We have an echo of it in the "monster is vulnerable/resistant/immune to damage type X".

There are quite a few games that make some nod toward simulating the advantages and disadvantages of various weapons versus different sorts of armor. Probably the most ambitious one, at least among mainstream{1} RPGs, is Rolemaster. There, armors are classified into 20 different armor types depending on material (cloth, soft leather, rigid leather, mail, plate) and coverage (so armor type 17 is a breastplate and 20 is full plate). In addition to that each weapon{2} had an attack table where you cross-referenced your attack roll (on a d100+bonuses) against the opponent's armor type, to get a result giving both a general damage result and (hopefully) letting you roll on a critical table where the real damage was dealt (often with effects like bleeding, stun, broken stuff, and so on). In general, wearing lots of armor made you more susceptible to taking small amounts of concussion hits but made crits much less likely - moreso for some weapons than others.

But few games go that far. Many use the classical division into bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing weapons and have armor protect differently from each. A disadvantage of doing it this way is that it often treats a dagger the same as a pick. Another common thing is to give weapons (and sometimes armor) different traits - for example, a halberd might have Pierce 2 which means it ignores 2 points of armor (whatever that means in a given system). Such traits often go beyond just how the weapons deal with armor.

{1} Insofar as any RPG that isn't D&D can be considered mainstream.
{2} Well, at least a lot of weapons did, but the game was expanded with weapons that basically said "As a shortsword but +10 versus cloth/leather and -10 versus metal".

If you take the time to set it up properly, a fantasy campaign in HERO can do it. But it isn’t the default.

It could be done at the campaign level, weapon or armor type level, the player level, or even the individual item level. So it’s best to sort that out beforehand.

Elderbrain said:

A lot of RPGs don't seem to account for the fact that, in the real world, you would have to use different types of weapons to deal with foes wearing different types of armors (i.e. using a knife blade to stab a knight wearing plate armor at a vunerable joint, rather than hitting him with a mace, say). Are there any game systems that treat this (semi) realistically?

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Off the top of my head, I would check out GURPS. I don't remember exactly how they address the issue, but I know they have rules for blunt trauma when a weapon fails to penetrate flexible body armor.

You can't really take an approach that's much less complex than GURPS, because it tends to promote weird behavior. For example, when D&D 3.5 introduced the concept of DR that required different damage types and materials to overcome, it prompted fighters to walk around with golf bags full of weapons so that they would always have the right tool for the job. A fighter using a greatsword to hack away at plate armor is less weird than a fighter carrying a golf bag onto the battlefield, so you would need further rules in order to keep that sort of thing in check.

AD&D did, we tried them a few times along with the optional rules in Combat and Tactics. Its alot of book keeping though.

Saelorn said:

For example, when D&D 3.5 introduced the concept of DR that required different damage types and materials to overcome, it prompted fighters to walk around with golf bags full of weapons so that they would always have the right tool for the job. A fighter using a greatsword to hack away at plate armor is less weird than a fighter carrying a golf bag onto the battlefield, so you would need further rules in order to keep that sort of thing in check.

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1e AD&D's approach was much less harsh. For example, a longsword might have a -5 penalty to hit AC 0 armor. But, since AC was capped and high AC rare, without such penalities a PC was likely to be missing only on a 1 anyway.

Besides which, the two-handed sword had such good all-around modifiers and damage, that if you were bothered by the weapon vs. AC modifiers, using a weapon like the two-handed sword was a very good option, as was other good all-around weapons like Morningstar or Halberd. The only hard part was convincing your DM to place treasure of the weapon type you preferred, as the magic item tables heavily favored swords.