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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 5879442" data-attributes="member: 2518">I probably should have said spiked. Because thats what war hammers were about. They did did not feature a big flat surface like many D&D pictures want you to believe but a rather small one, if they had a flat surface at all.The point was to concentrate the energy of the swing on a single point to pierce through the armor. This resulted in either the swing not doing any damage at all when it failed to penetrate the armor or piercing through and impaling the one inside the armor. There was hardly any middle ground between those two results.No, hitting without doing serious damage is very easy when the opponent is armored. Plate was practically invincible to sword and axes unless you knew exactly where to hit.Medieval armor was made to deflect attacks so that you do not get harmed at all. They were not made like modern day motorcycle helmet which indeed are build to absorb.And thats why from a realism and a logical point of view armor does not make sense as DR. And from a gameist point of view it also is bad because is completely devalues small weapons (which, coming back to realism were also quite effective against armor when they were designed to be that way).A hit through the armor which has 90% of its force left is a very serious hit considering the force needed to penetrate it. And be hones, with just 10% DR no one would bother with heavy armor.Will there be cases where armor lessens a penetrating blow? Yes, but they would be rare and it makes no sense to base the game around such a rare event.When you puncture armor the thing limiting the damage would primarily be the location and the length of the spike not the force of the blow. Its the same way where the force of you ramming a knife into someones gut doesn't really matter as much.Ok, what is better for the game? The mechanic where you can kill on a miss and can calculate that you will do X damage every round and thus will kill the enemy in Y rounds no matter what happens and where small weapons are made useless because they loose a lot of damage against armored opponents no matter what they do so everyone is practically forced to run around with a 2-handed sword?Or the mechanic where you will have tension because you don't know if you or the enemy will hit and where you can wield small weapons and still be effective?Actually the claymore and other 2-handed swords were more used against pikes and riders than against armor. Against mail they were good but against plate people preferred smaller, pointed weapons as they could concentrate the force on a small area and not long bladed weapons. When faced with someone in plate armor and you only have a long sword it was used more like a spear/polearm than a traditional sword.</blockquote>

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