JohnSnow
Hero
Okay, so as someone who studies European Martial Arts and swordplay, I'm a bit bothered by the "fantasy take" on armor and weapons in "Savage Worlds Adventure Edition."
So I decided to rework and fill in the list of armors and medieval weaponry, with the goal of changing as little as possible. Where feasible, this is mostly the book list, with some other pieces worked into it. I tried as much as I could to retain the "book standard" stats, although knowing the weights are lower, I did reduce some of the required strength scores for armor.
A few notes: I went back and forth on the bonuses and costs. Cost is intended to be rational, as opposed to a strict balancing factor between armor types. Please note that I eliminated the table entry for bronze armor. In settings where both materials are in use, steel weapons would have AP 1 against bronze or iron armor. I'm open to suggestions about how to handle bronze weapons against steel armor.
Things that might seem weird at first:
Armor
1) Gambesons, hauberks and some other coats include leg protection, because they are long enough to cover the thighs. It's a lot harder to cut through those skirts than people realize, so bypassing the armor would mean making a called shot specifically to the lower leg.
2) The lowest "armor" are those types that model heavy clothing or a light gambeson (~7 layers). It makes a big difference to your resistance to injury to be in heavy clothing (4-7 layers of fabric) as opposed to light. This sort of clothing would probably be worn under mail or plate, but under the "half of second best" rule, it would add nothing to the final Armor Bonus.
3) The next tier of armor covers heavy gambesons, hardened leather, and heavy rawhide (such as a buffcoat). Leather scale would also fit here. As a sub-layer, these would add a moderate benefit to flexible, light plate, or heavy plate armor types. I'm not sure what legs alone look like here...but the book had leggings here, so I left 'em. The cap would be a boiled leather helmet, as the celts or vikings might have worn.
4) I renamed the third category as flexible armor, and concluded it should include mail, scale, and lamellar armor. There are minor variants between these armors, but they are largely similar statistically, and Savage Worlds lacks sufficient granularity to make a distinction. So they can look like whatever the player wants them to. Because it's flexible, mail isn't great for head protection, so it only get a +2 bonus. One might surmise that the "by the book" mail hood includes a heavily padded hood as well.
5) The former top category has been split into light plate (which covers brigandine and the like) and heavy plate (which covers large heavy pieces of armor, like a full plate cuirass and segmented armors). For arms and legs, the lighter category could mean partial coverage, or full coverage with lighter armor (brigandine vambraces and spaulders, for example). If you really get twitchy about Rules as written, you could keep heavy plate where it is and rule that brigandine is another type of flexible armor. The combination of it and chain would equal plate for protection. Typical steel helmets are here.
6) The old top costs are moved into a +5 Heavy Plate armor category. This is a slight boost to heavy plate, and would have to be play-tested for balance. In history, people who wore these armors tended to ditch their shields because they no longer had to worry about being hurt. But it might make them too good in game.
Weapons
1) The cost of axes is reduced, because one of the primary benefits of axes is that they're cheap.
2) I gave axes, maces, and hammers better AP stats to account for the fact that they were designed to smash through armor in a way that swords and light piercing attacks simply are not.
3) Added a new category of "fighting dagger" that is good as an offhand parrying weapon. Heavier daggers were primarily carried and used for defense, not offense. The "Offhand" quality lets it provide its parry bonus by default. The Ambidexterity Edge is now useful because more weapons have parry bonuses. It's a somewhat inelegant kludge, but I don't feel like rewriting the Edges, and it covers the most common case of a secondary weapon used for defense. From my experience, the defensive value of using a parrying dagger versus a buckler is pretty much a push (the latter gives more control, whereas the former fares better against heavier weapons).
4) I gave all swords a bonus to parry to reflect that swords were favored precisely because they were better at parrying than many other weapons.
5) Because all swords gain a +1 Parry, I upped the damage on rapiers to 1d6.
6) The by the book "Sword, Long" is here just a "Sword." These stats reflects a typical single-handed cutting sword. Other than the change to parry for all swords, the stats are unchanged.
7) "Sword, Long" now reflects a versatile weapon that can be used in two hands. It's a rewrite of the "Bastard Sword" from the Fantasy Companion. Used one-handed, it has the function (and required strength) of a single-handed sword. When used two-handed, you need less strength to wield it, and it does more damage (equivalent to a Greatsword). This versatility is useful, but I tried to balance it (see below).
8) The new "Sword, Long" cuts in on the Greatsword's turf a bit, but a real Greatsword is long enough to be a Reach Weapon. It's a sword-shaped pole-arm. So I gave it Reach 1.
9) "Hand Crossbow" is basically pulled straight from the Fantasy Companion.
10) The Composite Bow is a heavy horseman's bow, and a Longbow would be like a Medieval Warbow. Obviously, it's needlessly expensive to make a d6 Composite Bow, but a d6 Longbow might make sense.
Still in process, but what do you guys think?
@coolAlias
So I decided to rework and fill in the list of armors and medieval weaponry, with the goal of changing as little as possible. Where feasible, this is mostly the book list, with some other pieces worked into it. I tried as much as I could to retain the "book standard" stats, although knowing the weights are lower, I did reduce some of the required strength scores for armor.
A few notes: I went back and forth on the bonuses and costs. Cost is intended to be rational, as opposed to a strict balancing factor between armor types. Please note that I eliminated the table entry for bronze armor. In settings where both materials are in use, steel weapons would have AP 1 against bronze or iron armor. I'm open to suggestions about how to handle bronze weapons against steel armor.
Things that might seem weird at first:
Armor
1) Gambesons, hauberks and some other coats include leg protection, because they are long enough to cover the thighs. It's a lot harder to cut through those skirts than people realize, so bypassing the armor would mean making a called shot specifically to the lower leg.
2) The lowest "armor" are those types that model heavy clothing or a light gambeson (~7 layers). It makes a big difference to your resistance to injury to be in heavy clothing (4-7 layers of fabric) as opposed to light. This sort of clothing would probably be worn under mail or plate, but under the "half of second best" rule, it would add nothing to the final Armor Bonus.
3) The next tier of armor covers heavy gambesons, hardened leather, and heavy rawhide (such as a buffcoat). Leather scale would also fit here. As a sub-layer, these would add a moderate benefit to flexible, light plate, or heavy plate armor types. I'm not sure what legs alone look like here...but the book had leggings here, so I left 'em. The cap would be a boiled leather helmet, as the celts or vikings might have worn.
4) I renamed the third category as flexible armor, and concluded it should include mail, scale, and lamellar armor. There are minor variants between these armors, but they are largely similar statistically, and Savage Worlds lacks sufficient granularity to make a distinction. So they can look like whatever the player wants them to. Because it's flexible, mail isn't great for head protection, so it only get a +2 bonus. One might surmise that the "by the book" mail hood includes a heavily padded hood as well.
5) The former top category has been split into light plate (which covers brigandine and the like) and heavy plate (which covers large heavy pieces of armor, like a full plate cuirass and segmented armors). For arms and legs, the lighter category could mean partial coverage, or full coverage with lighter armor (brigandine vambraces and spaulders, for example). If you really get twitchy about Rules as written, you could keep heavy plate where it is and rule that brigandine is another type of flexible armor. The combination of it and chain would equal plate for protection. Typical steel helmets are here.
6) The old top costs are moved into a +5 Heavy Plate armor category. This is a slight boost to heavy plate, and would have to be play-tested for balance. In history, people who wore these armors tended to ditch their shields because they no longer had to worry about being hurt. But it might make them too good in game.
Weapons
1) The cost of axes is reduced, because one of the primary benefits of axes is that they're cheap.
2) I gave axes, maces, and hammers better AP stats to account for the fact that they were designed to smash through armor in a way that swords and light piercing attacks simply are not.
3) Added a new category of "fighting dagger" that is good as an offhand parrying weapon. Heavier daggers were primarily carried and used for defense, not offense. The "Offhand" quality lets it provide its parry bonus by default. The Ambidexterity Edge is now useful because more weapons have parry bonuses. It's a somewhat inelegant kludge, but I don't feel like rewriting the Edges, and it covers the most common case of a secondary weapon used for defense. From my experience, the defensive value of using a parrying dagger versus a buckler is pretty much a push (the latter gives more control, whereas the former fares better against heavier weapons).
4) I gave all swords a bonus to parry to reflect that swords were favored precisely because they were better at parrying than many other weapons.
5) Because all swords gain a +1 Parry, I upped the damage on rapiers to 1d6.
6) The by the book "Sword, Long" is here just a "Sword." These stats reflects a typical single-handed cutting sword. Other than the change to parry for all swords, the stats are unchanged.
7) "Sword, Long" now reflects a versatile weapon that can be used in two hands. It's a rewrite of the "Bastard Sword" from the Fantasy Companion. Used one-handed, it has the function (and required strength) of a single-handed sword. When used two-handed, you need less strength to wield it, and it does more damage (equivalent to a Greatsword). This versatility is useful, but I tried to balance it (see below).
8) The new "Sword, Long" cuts in on the Greatsword's turf a bit, but a real Greatsword is long enough to be a Reach Weapon. It's a sword-shaped pole-arm. So I gave it Reach 1.
9) "Hand Crossbow" is basically pulled straight from the Fantasy Companion.
10) The Composite Bow is a heavy horseman's bow, and a Longbow would be like a Medieval Warbow. Obviously, it's needlessly expensive to make a d6 Composite Bow, but a d6 Longbow might make sense.
Still in process, but what do you guys think?
@coolAlias
Last edited:
