D&D General [History] How heavy armors and long swords were used in the 15th century

[DND_Reborn]

I would avoid advantage/disadvantage because those play into other features. For example, if you ruled finesse weapons have advantage against no- or light-armor, rogues would always be able to use sneak attack. I think a flat 1 (maybe 2) point to attacks would be better.

Maybe today I will look it over and see if I can devise a simple system.

 

[Helldritch]

I can relate to that. Advantage/disadvantage is a bit too much, especially with rogues. Also, I would've like to see the Dexterity score not being so prevalent in 5ed. Maybe something along applying the damage modifiers fully only on ranged weapons and half (rounded down) to melee weapons might have been a good idea.

 

[J-H]

Good video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At least we know you can't possibly swim in armor.

Historically people absolutely did intentionally swim in armour from time to time - but they used flotation aids in all the accounts I'm aware of, which RPGs typically completely overlook. In 5E you'd probably just give them advantage on the swimming check - which would probably compete with disadvantage so allow a flat roll (or just not make a check) because of the flotation aid.

What this video really reminds me of though is how in D&D, it's truly ridiculous that you gain little or no advantage from using appropriate weapons against appropriate foes. Really, big heavy spears, heavy axes, heavy picks and the like should be the weapon of choice against most larger monsters. If you were actually fighting, say, Giants, bringing a longsword to the party would be like being a child bringing a letter-opener to a swordfight with adults. Whereas a child with spear might actually be a threat. And trying to get through the hides of various creatures with swords and scimitars and so on? C'mon. At best you're going to break a wrist. You're going to use an axe or a pick (or perhaps a hammer), or again, a big spear, just one with a narrow, point-y head.

I'm not saying D&D needs to change, but I think the realities of full plate + longswords/bastard swords are a minor issue compared to "big spear" not being the main weapon adventurers use.

 

[R_J_K75]

I would avoid advantage/disadvantage because those play into other features. For example, if you ruled finesse weapons have advantage against no- or light-armor, rogues would always be able to use sneak attack. I think a flat 1 (maybe 2) point to attacks would be better.

I can relate to that. Advantage/disadvantage is a bit too much, especially with rogues. Also, I would've like to see the Dexterity score not being so prevalent in 5ed. Maybe something along applying the damage modifiers fully only on ranged weapons and half (rounded down) to melee weapons might have been a good idea.

I think that if I did incorporate a rule for this I don't think I would use it all the time. I'd probably save it for more important/challenging encounters to avoid slowing the game down.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I love this video. Just because modern engineering and science as we know them didn't really exist yet, we often underestimate the sophistication of both technology and technique used to pit young men in pitched battles to the death to decide which inbred aristocrat gets to wear the silly hat next.

 

[atanakar]

I think that if I did incorporate a rule for this I don't think I would use it all the time. I'd probably save it for more important/challenging encounters to avoid slowing the game down.

That is a good point. We ended up not using them because they slowed down the pace of combat.

 

[Oofta]

We had weapon speeds, weapons more effective against different types of armor, weapons more effective against larger opponents and so on long ago.

It was a cool idea that we ignored after trying it. I mean, it's great occasionally but what armor do monsters have? Does a heavily armored monster like a bullette count? Weapon speed didn't really change all that much after a round or so and damage vs size was just kind of finicky.

Which of course was just my experience. Easy enough to add some of that stuff back in. There's always going to be a balance between simplification and realistic.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think it's because the concerns of a fantasy RPG rapidly diverge from those of a war game. If what we're doing is building armies to throw at each other in pitched battles, deciding how much of my budget to spend on the best armor, what sort of arrows to equip my archers with, what length the pikes should be, etc, are interesting decisions because the bulk of gameplay revolves around them.

But by the time we've moved away from that and into an RPG where we're often fighting faeries and slaads, or not even fighting at all, complex rules for resolving combat involving different types of sword feels unnecessary and cumbersome.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would avoid advantage/disadvantage because those play into other features. For example, if you ruled finesse weapons have advantage against no- or light-armor, rogues would always be able to use sneak attack. I think a flat 1 (maybe 2) point to attacks would be better.

You'd also want to avoid making rulings based on categories like "finesse", because some of those weapons are going to be great against unarmoured targets (Scimitars, for example), and others would gain no particular edge (Daggers). It's more like slashing is best vs. light/no armour, piercing is designed, generally, to work around armour, as is crushing, and "military" weapons are more designed to deal with armour than non-military (which is somewhat close to the simple/martial categories in D&D).

And really it begs for more nuance. Hitting unarmoured peasants? A slashing sword will gain more from that scenario that a Battleaxe, which also does slash. Dealing with a dude in full plate? A warhammer is likely going to have a significantly better time than a mace. Chainmail got you down? A normal spear with a relatively broad head isn't going to compete with, say, a war-pick (which will probably go through it like it isn't even there). But Battleaxes are martial, as is a Longsword.

And we haven't even got to monsters yet, which probably the majority of attack rolls will be against!

I think you'd really have to start over, and characterize all armour types, and all monsters as having a specific kind of armour, then give weapons additional characteristics so they can match up against the armour types.

Then if you were me you'd do another pass and weapons under a certain length would give you disadvantage when fighting monsters over a certain size - except if you were climbing on them...

And basically by the end I'd be writing Dragon's Dogma, the pen and paper RPG.