Diagoras

Warning, gigantic image dump inbound:

From the latest update: Need I say that Obsidian has its heart in the right place, what with the plumes? Also, on the left-hand side of plume man's chest, is that a bulletproofing mark or something else?

Woldan. that is all awesome. And we have another plume as well!

Amazing how much variation there is across cultures. All images should be within a century of each other - and between one and two centuries behind P:E.

Karranthain, is that a picture of a Hussite wagon fort? Those were amazing. Speaking of which:

The Powdermen of Helmberg The guns of Helmberg are known for being some of the highest quality work in the known world. From the cheapest, mass-produced matchlock arquebus to the finest knight's wheelock pistol, the city's dedication to the craft of gunmaking borders on the obsessive. Many of the legendary guns of history - Godsmight, The Horned Falcon, and Fourdeaths - were crafted by one of the Gunsages of Helmberg. But strong guns need strong powder, most powder being intended for guns that would burst if given more than a full charge. While apprentices might marvel at elegant tracery, intricate firing mechanisms, and expert rifling, a true master knows that a gun is only as good as the powder which gives it breath to speak. Helmbergian powder is as sought after as Helmbergian firearms, and the Powdermen of Helmberg are those responsible for its creation. A Powderman is not the unfortunate debtor or indentured servant who actually performs the grinding, but instead the masked and cloaked figure who oversees the toiling mass production in the fortified factory-monastery. Whoever he was before he joined the order, now he keeps his face hidden in public and his true name secret from even his brothers. A Powderman is a dead man walking - either in production or in experimentation, accidents happen. And when powder ignites due to a stray spark or even excess pressure, men are maimed and killed in seconds. Powdermen come from many walks of life for many reasons. Exiles and criminals with the skill to learn the secrets of the order are the most common source, if they are sufficiently desperate, but the Burgher families of Helmberg occasionally send a child to serve the Order in compliance with ancient custom and law. Once a man's face disappears behind the white mask and black robe, his previous life is over and his time as a Powderman has begun.

Depictions of the Battle of Morat (1477):

Using a handgonne against cavalry? That's a good way to get a sword in the neck.

Polish-Lithuanian Hussaria charging into battle. A little futuristic (about 100 years into the future from P:E), but still awesome.

Karranthain, where do you find those awesome pictures? They're fantastic.

Say what? Want to qualify that a bit, or are we just leaving that as a general statement?

Spanish tercios: And an armored arquebusier - why carry one gun when you can carry two?

While I'm not seeing any civilizations that mimic Sengoku Jidai Japan, I'm going to toss these pretty stylized pieces into the pot, if only to continue to reinforce the "realistic doesn't mean colorless" trend we have going. I think that perception comes from MMS, and has just leaked into people's assumptions about realistic Medieval arms and armor.

The point is, if you need to make 10,000 suits of chain you need to massively scale people capable of forging the links. If you need to make 10,000 breastplates, you mainly need to scale the amount of steel you're using, the facilities you need, and the hammerers - but that is capital and unskilled labor. The actual skilled labor scales much slower. Really? While cavalry did engage each other on the flanks (to establish enough superiority to then engage in flank attacks on infantry units), I didn't know that knights sought each other out on the battlefield. I always assumed that was a Hollywood invention. My understanding of the use of the zweihander was they were explicitly meant to be used in and against pike formations. When a push-of-pike erupted, the zweihanders were sent in on the flanks to cut into the opposing pike formation and destroy its cohesion so that your pikemen could overcome the enemy's.

Could I see a citation? Primary if possible, but secondary would also be fine. We're talking about the Late Medieval period, to be clear. As mass combat was the standard, I'd be surprised to see military weapons and tactics developed for small-unit tactics - excluding thing like dueling, of course. All of that I'd agree with - except the skilled labor part. My understanding is that plate armor is primarily capital intensive (ie. really big ovens, good steel) while mail is labor intensive (ie. getting someone well-trained to hammer all those little links). This is why you see an explosion in the use of plate armor that you never saw with chainmail - it's way easier to scale capital than to scale skilled labor.

That does sound good, PrimeJunta - and I may be reading between the lines here, but I think that's the sort of stuff Obsidian has been talking about in terms of making the tactical combat more tactical.

Could I see citations for any of those claims of individual or small unit tactic use of pikes? Or of an established tradition of small unit tactics in general, including weapons? Because as far as I was aware, the military tradition of Western Europe at the time was the development of tactics and weapons for large-scale warfare - with most weapons being designed to integrate into the larger weapons system of the unit they were used in.

To note what specific gameplay problem this solves: If you expect players to steal everything that isn't bolted down and sell it, then players that don't do that will be penalized by being underpowered for encounters they face. On the other hand, if you don't expect players to do that, players that do will be overpowered for encounters they face. Stash is an attempt to abstract away the particular mechanic (acting like you've been hired by every dungeon's creditor to liquidate their assets) so that they know how to design encounters that PCs will face in the future by knowing at roughly what level of capability they're likely to be at.

Personally, I feel it's a brilliant mechanic. You can still have inventory management in your top-of-the-pack, as things that go into the stash don't come out again until you're back in camp. And it gets rid of the useless, annoying, constant fight over what you bring back and how much you bring back that screws up game balance one way or another. And I don't see how it removes inventory building - your top-of-the-pack can still expand or shrink based on decisions and character development. The stash merely abstracts away the long trek back to camp that some games seem to feel is critical to force the player through.

Can you give examples? Primary sources? Did people commonly keep longswords and warhammers as self-defense weapons? I'm genuinely curious, as my understanding was that outside of cheap daggers and swords, almost all other weapons were military weapons. Similar to how there are relatively few differences between categories of civilian firearms (handgun, shotgun, rifle) compare to military weapons (all of the above plus assault rifles, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, LMG, SMG). If you're going to accuse me of lying, I'd prefer if you'd read what I wrote. I specifically noted that it was munitions plate that became increasingly common, not full plate harness. Munitions plate was the term for cheap, knock-off plate armor that usually consisted of a helmet, cuirass, and some neck/arm/leg protection that was used to protect infantry. But even full plate became cheaper and more accessible, even as it was abandoned for half-plate by most cavalry. Of course, Maximillian or Gothic plate still cost a ridiculous amount, but that wasn't the question. First, I believe you're wrong. Breastplates were incredibly common by the 16th century, as a combination of the dropping price of steel production and the increasing professionalization of armies shrank the size of militaries from large peasant levies to increasingly small numbers of professional and semi-professional troops - the end result of a trend that had been going for a few hundred years. Remember, a breastplate refers to just the front part of a cuirass, excluding the backplate. But even the "standard" armor for a pikemen involved at the very least a full cuirass, if not a set of munitions plate. It appears to have varied based on your place in the formation and the specific unit in combat. But every pikemen would wear, at the very least, a steel breastplate. If we're just talking about plate armor components as opposed to full plate harness, then I believe you're wrong. The 15th and 16th centuries saw an explosion in the use of metal armor and a corresponding drop in the size of armies as they professionalized. On a 16th century battlefield, you'd expect every pikeman, every cavalryman, and even every gunner to be wearing some amount of plate armor - a breastplate at the very least, but often more. That's one of the major reasons that firearms displaced bows on the battlefield at every tier of skill - because bows lacked the armor penetration at range that firearms had against armies that increasingly involved men in some amount of plate armor. IIRC, I was talking about what PCs would wear, not enemies. Yes, but that wouldn't be very clever. Are we assuming stupid adventurers? That's my whole point. Normally, there isn't a "best and most expensive, efficient weapon and armor" because of the variety of military weapons that existed to counter each other and specific enemies. When you get to the general case (ie. adventuring), many of these specific weapons are just inferior to their generic equivalent. What's the point of a pike without a pike formation? What's the point of a warhammer if you're not fighting enemies in plate? Why? You don't think it's worth asking why we'd statistically model real weapons before we do it? My point is, while reality is a helpful reference to achieve verisimilitude, you have to figure out how your gameplay mechanics and setting work and then work backwards from them - though you can still be inspired by certain era. But slavishly modeling the complete weapon and armors of the 16th century is unhelpful, as there's a good chance that 99% of them aren't going into the game as they are in real life. That's what I said, I think. There's a reason why everyone who could use plate, did use plate on the battlefield. And why it became so common.

That's what I ended up concluding in my previous post. But we need to be careful to avoid assuming that the design of weapon and armor systems was just a random choice. Culture does have some effect, but materials, strategy, and tactics are the rgeal deciders of what's developed and what isn't. The nice thing about magic is that it's a brilliant tweaker of these variables, allowing all sorts of combinations to exist that didn't in the past. Hmm...you know that might not be a bad place to start. Look at what people used to hunt lions and tigers as what adventurers might reasonably adapt to hunting manticores and dragons.

In almost all contexts, yes. The closest thing we have to single men using firearms in the era are sharpshooters on both the defensive and offensive sides during a siege. They may also have played some role in skirmishing during actual field battles, but that is less clear. Regardless, they served a very specific purpose in a very specific context - and would be almost completely useless in a standard RPG encounter. Other than that, we don't see any real individual use of firearms. Maybe their use by heavy cavalry, whether mounted or dismounted, might be close - but we're still talking about large groups of cavalry here. I noted that in the RPG context, carrying a pistol on you might be helpful, as you can shoot at point blank range and hopefully kill an enemy. With 5 on 5, that might actually make a difference. But otherwise, firearms suffers from the same problem as all other ranged weapons: that they are specialized military tools meant for a specialized function. Not really. Plate is far easier to mass produce, as it's capital intensive rather than labor intensive. By the era P:E is set in, "munitions plate" is common and standard gear for professional and semi-professional soldiers includes, at the very least, a breastplate. The idea that plate armor was more expensive than chain may have held true during the transitional and early plate periods, but a quick examination of the armor of a pikemen from the 1450s onwards should show that it was far more common. P:E seems to be set in an era roughly equivalent to the 1520s - near or just after the peak of metal armor production and use. But that's besides the point: most weapons that are shown in these games are just not workable in the units you fight in. A good (but obviously flawed) example might be to look at what personal weapons people owned in these days, for use in self-defense rather than war. From what I've read, this basically boils down to dagger, sword, and pistol (crossbows and arquebus were also owned, but usually due to militia requirements). Though that was from the 1590s, I doubt the tools of personal defense for single and group combat situations changed much. If you were going to hunt down a dangerous madman hiding in your house, you would not bring along a warhammer, longbow, crossbow, poleaxe, pike, or even a longsword into those cramped quarters. Adventurers seem to spend most of their time in narrow caves and catacombs - what's with all the giant two handed weapons? On the other hand, the more open field situations bring their own concerns in - like why everyone just doesn't wear the best plate they can buy, as I noted. Even just a steel breastplate is a huge advantage, as you're practically invulnerable to most slashing weapons that hit your chest. And this is just tactical realism! Most games have weapons from all across time and space in the same region, complete disconnects between the armor available and the weapons used, a common tendency to inaccurately depict just how amazing plate armor was, and random exceptions to existing weapons (guns, as I've noted, are always mysteriously erased from history in these games). And that's just military realism! Once you add social attitudes (and not in the way you might think), economics, and the fact that every nation-state seems to be from the 1600s rather than 1400s in terms of bureaucracy and power distribution, it becomes even more clear. You can make a realistic game - but it's hard, and I feel almost inherently incompatible with the genre. I'd much rather strive for a sense of verisimilitude that echoes but doesn't mimic times and places in our world to make it feel more real. You can take 1520s Europe as a starting model, but then tweak it in interesting ways to get results that are plausibly different. But IME, the more something sells itself as a realistic depiction of the past, the more wildly unrealistic much of it turns out to be. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, to bring it back to the OP's question: I'd pick an era and location from history, and try to model my overall military theme on it. But I'd also feel free to twist weapon and armor statistics, technology, and magic to produce outcomes that satisfy the needs of the game in a way that feels realistic but probably isn't. History can inform the game, but it shouldn't command it. I think what Obsidian is doing with firearms is a brilliant example of this: they want to have the firearms from the early half of the 16th century because they're awesome. But that's also the period when the gun began to supplant bows in a big way. So, they came up with a magical justification (flying enemies, fast enemies, monstrous enemies) that they thought made sense and they could weave into the world to sort of mix the period from 1420-1520 together. This is a complete abandonment of realism (in the real world, there were no flying soldiers on the battlefield during the Late Medieval period) but helps the setting feel real despite this, because there are consistent reasons why things are different. So where does that leave us? If rich people tromping around the undergrowth murdering goblins is a thing, then it could make sense that arms and armor development might be dictated towards their needs somewhat. Hell, considering their skills and wealth, they could very well have personal weapons constructed for their own needs to their own specifications. Breech-loading firearms, various combi-weapons, and even plate armor were all discarded due to their lack of military utility - but they all had reasonable individual utility still. I would look over the crazy discarded designs of history with an eye towards individual usefulness, as well as examining cultures and societies that maintained a tradition of individual military combat (ie. samurai). Or, alternatively, they could just make a game using whatever weapons. There's a good chance I'm overthinking this.

Erm...not quite. My reasoning is, "All these games involve combat scenarios completely disconnected from actual warfare in the period they're mimicking. This means that you either sacrifice gameplay by not including staple weapons and how they actually work, or you sacrifice realism by having a guy with a short sword be able to penetrate plate." Thus, I prefer verisimilitude to realism. It's related to reality, but not totally dependent on it. You realize that if you model weapons and armor accurately, the vast majority of options are likely useless to the player? That's the problem - the mechanics of the game don't intersect with the "mechanics" of the real world, due to the totally different scale of conflict. Do we have any historical accounts of people using single bows that way? The only equivalent I can think of are Medieval and Early Modern sharpshooters, but they used firearms at tremendous range in a very specific battlefield context (ie. usually sieges). When you're fighting in the kind of ranges and conditions that exist in most RPG battles, you'd think that everyone would basically be the equivalent of heavy infantry, armed and armored with heavy two-handed weapons and the best plate they can afford. I guess also guns, as the sides are so tiny that taking out an opponent with one shot would confer a huge advantage.

Absolutely - the whole point of the RPG is systematization of skills into necessarily abstract mechanics. But that's disconnected from realism. And it's really tough to argue realism for the use of weapons from different centuries in the same culture/group of cultures, or the use of weapons in ways that make zero sense. I understand if you want to add weapons because they're cool - and that's fine. But if you are really trying to inject realism, it's likely to fail just due to the default assumption of the genre - small unit tactics - not existing for at least another 200 years vs. the setting. The vast majority of Medieval weapons are made to be used in formation and in specific circumstances. There are general use weapons - but not very many of them. Bows weren't really individual weapons in the era we're talking about, that being the other big problem. There are small unit skirmishers/irregulars if you push towards the 17th century - but the vast majority of them use firearms, which doesn't sound like super-exciting RPG combat. I'm not an expert on the era, though, so I'd be happy for anyone to correct me. Your staple weapons (dagger, sword, even pistol) are applicable to general combat. It's just when you get to most dedicated military weapons (warhammer, pike, crossbow, longsword) that their specific use for a group of 4-6 wanderers becomes unclear.

The point is, appeals to realism ring hollow once you begin toying with reality that way. What exactly is realistic about your design when you create bows that have absolutely no relation to any bow used in that period? At that point, you might as well throw any claim to realism out the window and just make what you want. Let me make it more clear, then. I haven't played a single game in which bows are used at a range even remotely close to what would make sense for them, especially the longbows and crossbows which characters are usually shown as using. You'd either have to revamp the whole game so that engagements take place at 100 feet or more, or else sacrifice realism. And even if you're at that distance, a single bow doesn't make much sense - or at least I'm unaware of any units of lone bowmen operating effectively on European battlefields. Note that realism is not verisimilitude. Realism is how close something is to the real world, while verisimilitude is how close it feels like the real world. And the two can even be mutually contradicting most of the time - after all, ask any member of the public and you'll learn that there were no guns in the Medieval ages and plate armor was invented in the Dark Ages. It doesn't make much sense to use a bow at short range, due to the nature of the weapon. If you do, you will be chopped to pieces by your opponents as they'll have time to reach you. One of the theories about the displacement of bows for firearms is that archers needed to loose at shorter and shorter ranges to penetrate increasingly common plate armor. Did they? Sieges are unique tactical situations, though, that don't equate to most adventurer combat scenarios. But yes, if there are enemies stuck at the bottom of a canyon, feel free to shoot at them. Sure, but understanding the use of the weapon makes that more clear. The main advantage of the weapons we're talking about (longbow, crossbow) was their ability to kill at range. Shooting at melee range negates this advantage. This is pretty much inherent in the nature of the weapon - it's a ranged weapon. It's meant to be used at range. Obviously, once you inject magic into the equation you can do whatever you want. But most of these games don't - bows just function in an unrealistic way. And even if you do, you've abandoned realism by adding supernatural elements that have nothing to do with the weapons the era. It seems pointless to exactingly model the strengths and weaknesses of specific weapons from specific era, and then inject a bunch of hand-waving to have them do something entirely unrelated to their real function. At that point, what is the purpose of all the realistic modeling?