medieval warfare tactics as recorded by cabbages

[evilcabbage]

welcome, young cabbages.

we have here a lesson on bastard swords, what they are, and how they can be used properly.

so those gigantic monster swords you people are crafting really aren't bastard swords.

or maybe i imagine them as bigger than they are for some reason. anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuJQ2QkG04

back in the day, they just called them 'swords' basically.

longer swords were 'long' swords.

and there is a difference between an arming sword and a long sword.

so, when designing your weapons, take some of this into consideration. this is all very good information.

also good information for those who want to learn about medieval combat. and just weapons in general. he has lots of great videos.

[Tuannon]

Not a fan of Skalgrim.

[Patuk]

No, really. Anything more technologically advanced/deadly than bronze is something Zalanthas simply doesn't/shouldn't have; those crossbows are already stretching it imo.

[evilcabbage]

zalanthas has iron and, by extension, steel.

these are more to point towards real-world comparisons for things we have in game. like actual bastard swords that are in game.

or how powerful a crossbow is compared to a normal bow.

it's good stuff to know.

[Jihelu]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

[Lizzie]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

You mean other than that REALLY BIG STEEL DRAGON outside the Allanak gate right?

[Jihelu]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

You mean other than that REALLY BIG STEEL DRAGON outside the Allanak gate right?

That doesn't exist.
Propaganda from the evil highlord of the south.

[Asmoth]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

You mean other than that REALLY BIG STEEL DRAGON outside the Allanak gate right?

I tried to break a piece of the dragon off and steal it once, didn't end well for me.

[RogueGunslinger]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

You mean other than that REALLY BIG STEEL DRAGON outside the Allanak gate right?

I tried to break a piece of the dragon off and steal it once, didn't end well for me.

Hey, so did Lizzie, if I remember correctly.

[Jihelu]

Why didn't it go well.

[Asmoth]

Why didn't it go well.

If I remember right, staff animated the guards and had me drug off to jail, then a Tenplar came and murdered me in the cell.

[evilcabbage]

go derail another thread please.

[Patuk]

zalanthas has iron and, by extension, steel.

these are more to point towards real-world comparisons for things we have in game. like actual bastard swords that are in game.

or how powerful a crossbow is compared to a normal bow.

it's good stuff to know.

That's kind of the point I'm making, though. No culture on earth without sophisticated metallurgy has created such large swords or any crossbows whatsoever. Comparing swords from reality crafted by people with modern science at their backs with Zalanthas' primitive technology will get you nowhere good.

[RogueGunslinger]

Why couldn't a crossbow be made without metal? Or are you just saying everyone who made crossbows had metal first?

[Patuk]

Why couldn't a crossbow be made without metal? Or are you just saying everyone who made crossbows had metal first?

This is indeed what I'm saying. Even if they hadn't, a non-metal crossbow would break even more often than the metal ones already did, i.e. all the goddamn time.

[Miradus]

Why couldn't a crossbow be made without metal? Or are you just saying everyone who made crossbows had metal first?

There are a lot of crossbows with wooden limbs. The Chinese were using crossbows made entirely out of wood as late as 900 A.D.

I don't know if they were particular quality or just junk you arm your cannon fodder with, but there are a lot of examples of it. The Chinese did not have the necessity of punching a bolt through heavy cavalry or plate.

The crossbow evolved into the arbalest when it came to Europe around the 12th or 13th century. They had to use a stirrup or a special crank to wind back the string. They used metal limbs which put out an enormous amount of tension.

[Pale Horse]

Why couldn't a crossbow be made without metal? Or are you just saying everyone who made crossbows had metal first?

This is indeed what I'm saying. Even if they hadn't, a non-metal crossbow would break even more often than the metal ones already did, i.e. all the goddamn time.

Not necessarily..but I don't have any quotes or images to support this.  I only have a vague memory of a weapons textbook I read one time that gave a brief image and description of an ancient repeating-crossbow from China that was made entirely out of wood.

I can't speak as to how often it broke, but my opinion is like yours in that it would do so a lot.

[evilcabbage]

arbalest?

no no.

chu-ke nu.

chu ko nu.

that thing right?




highly inaccurate, the string was placed under a lot of strain, but otherwise it must have worked out well because it still gets used even today.

[Miradus]

Yeah, that thing.

Arbalest was what the European version was called. The Chinese version, I dunno how long they used it. Clausewitz would not have approved.

[boog]

Nevermind. I won't derail.

[evilcabbage]

arbalest was a one shot extremely powerful crossbow you had to crank to draw the string back.

chu-ko nu were rapid-fire crossbows that lacked in power but made up for it with sheer volume.

one guy with an arbalest can fire two bolts a minute.

a chu-ko nu could pump out like six bolts in fifteen seconds.

imagine twenty of that.


anyways, still. medieval warfare tactics, and their weapons, can still be drawn from and applied to zalanthas. this threads idea was to give you guys some pictures and videos of real world weaponry, then say, 'hey, we can draw a comparison to zalanthan weaponry, and make more educated decisions based on that about how our bahamet shell bastard sword is actually probably not quite as big as we think it is.

or how an actual war hammer was just a hammer. a long hafted hammer. often with a spike on it. or spikes on the head.

what i was aiming for, here, was to spark a discussion about comparisons and maybe even get some images of weapons that were used in the real world, to inspire some artistic master crafters on how to design their next weapon of doom.



a wood-shafted, spiked war-hammer is here.

[Erythil]

If you like that guy you will probably also like Lindybeige.

I don't pay too much attention to weapons on ARM being realistic on account of the inherent ridiculousness of the materials involved in the creation of most of our weapons.  It feels more like Monster Hunter than Mount & Blade.

[650Booger]

does the chakram/discus exist in zalanthia?  if so I would like to design a future character around them.

[Beethoven]

The chakram does exist but I have only ever heard of...very specific groups using them. But I might just not be in the chakram loop.

[RogueGunslinger]

Chakrams aren't specific to anybody to such a degree that I know about it. Fairly sure Salarr can make them? There are multiple types, I know for sure.

[wizturbo]

The only steel I know of is possessed by Muk, GOD BLESS THE SUNKING, Utep.

I've seen at least 5 NPC's with steel other than Muk.

[Miradus]

How would steel technology even develop without an abundance of iron available?

[BadSkeelz]

It didn't. Zalanthas is a post-apocalyptic setting. Steel (and other lost technologies, both magickal and mundane) were developed before the world got truly fucked up. This wasn't limited to loss of knowledge; the world itself has been drained of many resources.

[Miradus]

Is it in any way possible to rediscover any of those things?

I mean, you're not going to bring back iron if it no longer exists on the surface of the planet, but the principles of astronomy or the pulley could certainly be rediscovered.

[BadSkeelz]

To some extent, they have. Pulleys are definitely a thing.

Astronomy seems kind of under-developed, probably because the only celestial bodies that are routinely visible are the Sun and moons. And the variability of seasons is (largely) muted. But the common calendar of Zalanthas appears to be lunar so someone somewhere was watching the skies.

The problem or challenge with discovering lost technologies is knowing where to begin. Your PC can't just look at the sky and think "Gee, I should get some glass lenses and align them inside a tube so I can look at planetary bodies." You need to start way farther down the tech tree.

A better example might be metal forging (even if it's not practical because Magick fucked all the ore out of the world). You can't just build a bloomery and tossing rocks you think are iron ores in. Almost no one in Zalanthas knows what a forge is - I'd wager most commoners don't even know what raw iron is. They probably think steel comes out of the ground ready-to-mold, if they they don't believe it's the product of some dark summoning ritual. You have to work your way back through the history of metal forging to what seems viable for the average Zalanthan to pursue - and then find some sort of in-character justification to pursue it. "How could I get metal out of these rocks?" is not sufficient. You first need to answer the question of "How does my PC know there's metal in these rocks?"

Is it in any way possible to rediscover any of those things?

tl;dr: No.

[BadSkeelz]

Addendum: while rediscovery is not really possible in my opinion, development and expansion on existing knowledge and technologies most definitely is.

[Pale Horse]

Is it in any way possible to rediscover any of those things?

I would have to say I disagree with BadSkeelz.  It is entirely possible to rediscover lost knowledge and/or technologies.

...IF it's in line with a plot or if Staff feel that it is reasonable, "realistic" and in line with how the game and game world currently runs or will run at a future date.

Example:  Malik is a merchant that wants in with Salarr.  He gets hired and "gets gud" at weapons crafting.  He sees some Templar or Nobles' fantastic metal sword that they flaunted about at one point or another.  He gets obsessed with making one.  His player notes this in a report to his clan staff who, after discussing it among themselves, decide that having someone "rediscover" metal working would add to a current or future plot and does not distract from the feel of the game world if kept to a single individual.  They give Malik's player the go-ahead to pursue his metal-seeking/making plot.  Over the net howevermany months, Malik gets his clan involved, gets others involved and sends in regular reports and does regular time to push this plot forward IG.  With staff and player driven help, Malik the Salarri merchant eventually finds a vein of metal, his House mines it, he learns through trial and error how to forge the crudest of items out of the stuff and he's achieved his dream.  More than likely, somewhere along the way word leaked out that someone's figured out metal-working and all-Drov breaks loose.  Malik is eventually killed during the resulting plots and sub-plots and all his work is destroyed, thus ending metal-working knowledge in the Known, again.

Then again, it could also go that the player's desire is deemed unfitting for the current game and staff gives him the go ahead to pursue the plot but to not expect staff to actually introduce the skill/ablity/whatever.

I've had a few examples of the above happen to ideas and plots I've wanted to introduce at one time or another.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

[Miradus]

Failure IS a plot. You could go through an enormous amount of effort numerous times, even spend your fortune and your life trying to accomplish something, and still NOT manage to bring back the lost art of metalworking.

I would rather have a failed plot than to just simply hear that it can't be done so don't even try.

[evilcabbage]

this isn't really a thread to discuss crafting or plots. it's to help people incorporate ye olde medieval tactics into combat.

please create your own crafting thread.


on the subject of tactics in combat,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuQPfvSSlo


check that out. if you think you can't grab a sharp blade and pull on it, well, you have another thing coming my friends.

[Miradus]

Sorry, cabbage. I'm a serial thread-jacker.

Are you involved with the SCA in any way? I used to make swords and knives for those guys when I was a blacksmith. They had some extremely rigorous specifications for what they wanted, but they paid very well.

[Synthesis]

The chakram does exist but I have only ever heard of...very specific groups using them. But I might just not be in the chakram loop.

Nobody (players) in Armageddon really likes chakrams for a few reasons:

1.  They're coded as slashing weapons.  Only assassins and burglars start with the throw skill.  Assassins don't have the slashing weapons skill, so if you get attacked while in the process of throwing, you're at a severe disadvantage compared to if you had a throwing knife/sword/spear out.  Burglars get the slashing weapons skill, but honestly...who gets into fights with a burglar, anyway? It's a terrible idea.

2.  You can't sheathe them in sheathes or knife-belts.  The throw skill, even when mastered, isn't going to give you a OHK (that I've ever seen...although a half-giant did nail me for 65 hp with a throw, once).  So you need a bunch of them, typically, and it's annoying to have them hanging out in your inventory or a place where you can't draw them if you need a backup weapon.

3.  You can't backstab or skin with a chakram, if you really need to.

I think that's tactical enough for a tactics thread.