Medieval Equipment VS D&D Equipment

[Kaodi]

I think things that existed at earlier times would still be in line with what I was thinking. Mostly my purpose was to establish a list of equipment within the technology capabilities of humanity at a given time, preferably a time that is pre-gunpowder. Obviously gunpowder was available in the Far East before it made its debut in the West in ~1240-1280, so maybe my chosen time period was not quite optimal, but I doubt technology changed much overall between ~1000 AD when gunpowder came into serious use in the East and the Norman conquest of England. So if I say " What was available in 950 AD? " I think we are pretty safely looking at the same things as have already been said.

I still kind of wonder when the heavy crossbow would not really exist in this timeframe. Supposedly the arbalest did not come into use until the 12th century.

 

[Meatboy]

If that's the case I'd say most anything that's not obviously a fantasy weapons would be available. Full plate, rapier and maybe heavy crossbow might be the only other ones. Though there are examples of armor made of metal plates back to before Christ. Like I said before with crossbows also being over 1000 years old by the middle ages its not impossible to think that some enterprising man used mechanical assistance to crank a really big crossbow. The Romans had ballista so it's probably safe to assume such a thing might be available several hundred years later.

 

[Kaodi]

So, what would we be looking at in the armour department?

From Pathfinder:

Padded
Leather
Parade Armour
Chain Shirt
Hide
Scale Mail
Chainmail
Splint Mail
Buckler
Light Wooden Shield
Heavy Wooden Shield
Tower Shield
Silken Ceremonial Armour
Lamellar Cuirass
Leather Lamellar
Do-Maru
Horn Lamellar
Four Mirror Armour
Iron Lamellar
O-yoroi

??

 

[kigmatzomat]

If you go back to the 6th century, when the Roman Empire started fragmenting, you'll find a wide variety of armors. The Goths often used plate armor that was the preferred infantry armor from the 4th-5th century. European mountains and/or forests were better suited to infantry than cavalry.

However the rest of the Empire tended towards plains and the Romans had become a cavalry-centric army to counter Persian heavy cavalry on the eastern border and the Hunnish light cavalry that plagued the Danube to the north. The Romans adopted heavy cavalry, similar to the Persians, with heavy scale armor, shields, lances, and composite bows with very heavy draws.

{tangent}
According to apocryphal stories, elite heavy cavalry across the middle east used a now-extinct horse, the Nissean, that may have been a draft horse-sized precursor to the Arabian horse, with great strength, significant stamina, and capable of being trained to attack. The Nisseans had such a reputation that Xerxes, the Persian Emperor portrayed in "300", was said to have used several Nisseans to pull his chariot. (A sign of his wealth and excess, like using Ferrari's to pull a go-kart) An ancient Greek general was said to have a Nissean warhorse and his enemies were reported to have spent more time & effort defeating his horse than his retinue of body guards. During the 1300s, when Byzantium finally fell, the Turks made a point of killing off every Nissean they could find.
{/tangent}

Chain mail tunics with greaves on the arms and legs was the armor of the rank and file, along with shields, a heavy sword known as a spatha, and spears. Lots of spears.

Auxiliary units were often mercenaries hired for the task and may even be from "enemy" groups. The huns, goths, and arabs were not monolithic groups and it wouldn't be unheard of for a roman army to have a mix of hun and arab light cavalry to scout or harass enemy troops or a few units of gothic infantry to act as shock troops in terrain ill-suited to cavalry.

The romans had various forms of siege engines, including small portable catapults (scorpions or onagers) that were used in field maneuvers to break up formations. Plus, the romans were big on improved positions and had a supply train that carried a multitude of shovels, saws, axes, and other tools. A motivated legion could dig a ditch and berm around a camp before bed time and given a few days could assemble a small fort, with ramparts and a proper gate.

While certain weapons may not have been adopted in Europe, the "known world" of the 6th century "Roman" european stretched from Gothland in Sweden, around the entirety of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea to the Red Sea and then gets vague somewhere past Persia when you start heading towards India. The totality of weaponry that a well traveled Roman could know about is truly awesome.

 

[Celebrim]

Like I said before with crossbows also being over 1000 years old by the middle ages its not impossible to think that some enterprising man used mechanical assistance to crank a really big crossbow.

There is recent archaelogical evidence of an ancient greek crossbow that had an attached windlass.

I agree with you that if the standard was 'what would have been possible with the available crafting technology', then pretty much anything short of sometime in the 19th century counts. There might be a few exceptions like casting cannons, but for the most part what was missing wasn't the material technology but the idea or the social structure to make it viable. The same is true if you leave Europe and consider the orient as well. China had considerably more advanced crafting technology than Europe until the Reinnasance, but they lacked the social structure that permitted technological development past a certain point. The Greeks had developed pretty much everything that would be used in the next 1500 years, but the slave based social structure and domination by the intellectually incurious Romans (at least, about matters without immediate practical use) would lead to scientific stagnation from the late Hellenistic until the fall of Rome, and real decay for the 400 or so years after that until Northern Europe advancedin 'the dark' far enough to solve its subsistance farming issues (helped by a nice break in the climate right around 1000 AD that allowed for a surplus of food and rapid population growth).

Which is why I don't feel like I'm in the slightest anchronistic to have on my campaign world everything from stone age peoples to nations with a technology on many levels equivalent to the 18th century (sans guns). I'm not trying to recreate the unique cicumstances that led to the European middle ages. I have a world with its own history, it's own physicial laws, and it's own unique cosmology. I don't expect it to perfectly resemble anything on our world. Sure, I have nations loosely based of Merovingian France, and others loosely based of Reinassance Italy, but they are happily living along side nations based off Arthurian legend, gothic horror, the Arabian Nights, and my own 'What if's?'.

 

[El Mahdi]

I've been working on this for my own campaign. The setting is the English Anarchy of 1135.

Swords: Typically only One-handed swords of about 30 to 36 inches, corresponding with Oakeshott Typologies X, XI, and some XII. Some type XII's were two-handed, but really didn't start appearing until the late 1100's. Terms like longsword, and bastard sword were not in use yet...they were just called swords.

Also under swords, were Falchions. These were used by both common soldiers and noble knights. It was a utilitarian weapon that may have actually seen more use in war than typical knightly swords - though it's debated. There are very few surviving examples which likely means they were either very common but used to destruction, or not very common.

In the Middle East and Northern Africa, Scimitars were the weapon of choice (slim, curved, single-bladed weapons, not the uselessly impractical things D&D calls "Great Scimitars" - which were almost exclusively ceremonial only).

In Japan, the precursor of the Katana was the sword of the day, called a tachi. It was slightly longer than the eventual Katana (or Uchigatana - from the late 1100's), and had more of a curve. It was worn edge down (unlike the Katana, which was edge up to facilitate a faster draw), and was mostly a cavalry weapon. The metal folding techniques of forging had already come into practice by this time, but the Tachi was still a more fragile weapon than the latter Katana, and was not as well suited to one-on-one sword fights/duels as the Katana was. The Daisho (Wakizashi and Katana combination) was not in use yet. There were however, tachi that deviated from the standard length. Some could even be as short as the later Wakizashi and were called Kodachi.

In China, most swords were straight and single or double edged (like the sword from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

Throughout the rest of Asia (like India) swords could be a mix of straight and curved type swords. They all had unique names, and slightly unique characteristics, but D&D stat-wise would be similar or exactly the same as scimitars, tachi, chinese swords, etc.

Knives: Typically single edged of the Saex variety. They could be of the common small size (anywhere from 6 to 10 inches), up to larger almost sword or cleaver like weapons. The double-edged daggers and dirks hadn't really come into common existence yet. They were more from the Late Medieval and Renaissance (13th Century on).

Bows: In the 1100's, Longbows had not really come into use by the English or any other Europeans except the Welsh. The Welsh Longbow could be as tall as a man, but was a very rough made bow (not like the well worked yew bows of the English in the 13th Century on).

Longbows were also quite different from the "Warbows" of Agincourt. Warbows could have a draw weight of 120-200 lbs., and required very specialized archers that had trained with them all of their lives (extremely developed upper-body musculature and even altered rib-cages). The Longbow of the 1100's would have had a more normal draw weight range, likely anywhere from 50-100 lbs.

Along with Longbows were standard bows of varying lengths, used mostly for hunting, but also used for war. Though massed archery had not really become a prominent part of European warfare yet.

Composite Bows were an Asian and Middle Eastern weapon only. The weather conditions (humidity, rain, etc.) in Europe (especially in England), would have caused the glues used for the composite parts of the bows to come undone, and resulting in the bow being ruined. Composite bows could have ranges equaling or even exceeding the later European Warbows, and could have comparable damage (less draw weight though relatively equal arrow velocity, but composite bow arrows were likely lighter and shorter than Warbow arrows).

Armor: Mail (not chainmail) was the most coveted form of armor througout the world. Mail was used by almost every culture on the known world - wether European, Middle Eastern, or Asian.

Studded Leather did not ever exist. it was likely a misinterpratation of 12th centure artwork depicting Brigandine-like armor.

I'm including the armor section of my houserules. Ignore the rules that are in the section, and the defense ratings on the table. It's not all fully worked out yet and is still much a work in progress. However, the armor descriptions and pictures should be of use to you. The Armor in this document is also almost exclusively European. I haven't gotten to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or Asia yet.

 

[Loonook]

{tangent}
According to apocryphal stories, elite heavy cavalry across the middle east used a now-extinct horse, the Nissean, that may have been a draft horse-sized precursor to the Arabian horse, with great strength, significant stamina, and capable of being trained to attack. The Nisseans had such a reputation that Xerxes, the Persian Emperor portrayed in "300", was said to have used several Nisseans to pull his chariot. (A sign of his wealth and excess, like using Ferrari's to pull a go-kart) An ancient Greek general was said to have a Nissean warhorse and his enemies were reported to have spent more time & effort defeating his horse than his retinue of body guards. During the 1300s, when Byzantium finally fell, the Turks made a point of killing off every Nissean they could find.
{/tangent}.

The Nisean was not an Arabian precursor; indeed, its knobbed head lends more to the Iberian breeds and possible breeding with Arabian crosses that died out pre-Modern era but its confirmation was non-Arabian.

Also, any horse can be trained to fight... Temperament, will, and trainer are most important. Haute Ecole and other derivatives of the Spanish School derive from Medieval and Renaissance mounted combat exercises and tactics, for example.

Carry on: Equestrian bone has been picked.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Celebrim]

Also under swords, were Falchions.

I feel the need to note to the readers what you surely already know, that 3e continued the D&D tradition of assigning the wrong name to a weapon. A Falchion is not a two-handed scimitar. Just because Falchion weapons existed doesn't mean that the 3e D&D 'Falchion' existed in 12th century Europe. Personnally, absent a 'to hit versus AC' table or something similar to finely differentiate weapons, I'd lump falchions with the now missing concept of a 'broadsword' (though perhaps 'backsword' would be a more appropriate term).

I still use a variant of the 3.0 system, so 'broadsword' exists as an entry in my weapons table that trades the versitility of a longsword by having only 1 damage descriptor (slashing rather than slashing/peircing) for slightly better damage (2d4 rather than 1d8).

The 'Falchion' entry gets renamed 'Nodachi' and includes all long two-handed back swords, through really, the mechanical distinction between them and the european great sword (less damage, better critical) probably doesn't match the real differences in the characteristics of the two weapons. Good enough for an RPG though.

Studded Leather did not ever exist. it was likely a misinterpratation of 12th centure artwork depicting Brigandine-like armor.

The Studded Leather entry on my equipment table has been renamed 'Ring Armor', which did in fact exist as the cheap and somewhat effective means of reinforcing leather.

 

[Celebrim]

Seriously, someone give El Mahdi some more XP for me. I wouldn't necessarily go in the direction he's going, and really D&D is poorly suited for the level of detail he seems to want, and he shows a typical DM's attendence to plagarism and intellectual property rights... but WOW is that a beautiful and well researched house rules document.

 

[Loonook]

Another related topic that could perhaps be discussed, or spun off into another thread: what spells would you need to eliminate in order to make slow technological process more believable? With some divinations, you would think that it could advance amazingly quickly, for instance.

Healing, create water, elemental and summoning spells.

People surviving dozens of combats with various weapons, judging how they worked in combat, using the weapons against summoned monsters to test characteristics of the blade. Elemental control spells could make for some troubles regarding the ability to make a more perfect heat, creating low-fuel high-heat forging techniques that will aid in the creation of new weapons. Cure Disease or potions/items that help to boost saves against disease and the creation of potable water lets a lot of the armorers and smithies survive longer than their normal counterparts who suffered from burns, cuts, and generally shortened lifespans due to the handling of hazardous materials.

Slainte,

-Loonook.