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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cap'n Kobold" data-source="post: 9748875" data-attributes="member: 6802951">#Knights generally only wore full harness to actual battles. Even if the knights are on foot, you can't just run away from them until they tire: That's called a rout, and it is something that must be avoided at all costs, since when part of your line collapses like that, so can your battle plan.There is a misapprehension with some people that maces, daggers, etc were good at taking out full plate. They are not: They are simply some of the least worse options.  Getting a dagger into a crevice, or landing enough hits in the same place with a heavy, blunt weapon to start bending the armour significantly is difficult. Picks, clothyard shafts and bolts have the capability of penetrating some plates, but it needs a lucky hit: plate is designed so those sort of attacks will mostly skitter off. Much harder than killing someone with less armour, even with those weapons.  . . . and all this time, the knight is actively killing you. An unarmoured man taking a hit from the knight is dead or disabled generally, and a full harness of plates allows that knight to fight very offensively. You can't think of it as simply a matter of "spending" men unless you have fanatics on tap: Those men are individuals with their own hopes and fears, and none of them want to be the first couple to die so the others can dog-pile the knight, even if that is the mathematically superior method.Shooting for joints isn't really realistic. Even if you can hit something that size in target shooting, shooting at someone in active combat renders it mostly ineffective. The rapid and relatively random nature of movement and the very real travel time of your shot means that your target generally isn't where your attack was aimed by then time it arrives.If you can maneuver to be able to shoot at the backs of the knights, that grants a better chance, but still of the few shots that hit joints: even fewer are going to penetrate: Generally the joints are still armoured, even if less so than those areas that are easier to attack.</blockquote>

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