Pointless battle? Knight vs Rapier.

[Emiricol]

Alright.  Having just received my TRoS book (Yaay!), I ran through some combat simulations.  What stumped me is this; how can a fully armored knight and an unarmored Rapier-wielder avoid a stalemate?

All other things being equal, the rapier fighter has a much larger dice pool due to his foe's armor penalty to his pool.  Meanwhile, the platemail-clad knight is effectively invulnerable to the rapier.  As long as the rapier wielder plays things conservatively enough to keep a dice advantage, he will always keep initiative, and yet fail to get through platemail with his weapon.

Clearly, I am doing it wrong :D  

What are the tactics the knight should use to kill the duelist?  I know the duelist would be well advised to simply run away, but if the rules reflect that, I am missing something.

Thanks for the help!

[Bob McNamee]

Not owning the game...but reading all these forum threads.

Mr. Armor should attack with as many dice as possible as often as possible. Forget defense. Maybe something tricky like Toss to disturb the faster moving Mr. Rapier. Get a hit in to slow him down with pain etc.

Mr. Rapier should go defensive, with the occassional strike for a less armored area (eye slot etc)... go defensive and let Fatigue become an issue for Mr Armor...or else Evade and escape.

Others with more in depth knowledge of the system can give you a cool manuever I'm sure.

[Tash]

I hit upon a quite potent combo in the sim that works along those lines:

Give the knight a shield and a flail.  Do not defend, ever, just attack with all dice.  Even a level hit from a flail will drop enough CP from the rapier user to allow the knight to finish him.

Rapier guy:  full evade till the knight faints from exhaustion, then lift his visor and run him through the eye.  Unless you have a shield, then you can try thing like sim block+strike.

One thing though, the basic rules for a rapier don't give it any knid of penalty against plate, so it does Str+2 on a thrust, the same as an estoc.    The more common interpretation it seems is to give the rapier a simillar damage table to the Sabre, only for thrust attacks: Str+2 for unarmored and leather clad foes, Str+1 for chain and Str for plate.

[Dain]

Check out the Rapier vs. Chain/Plate thread in this forum if you haven't done so already (if you hurry it might still be on the front page or the next page). Might have some stuff there you want to know.

[Emiricol]

Hm.  I did have the knight toss red every time and the rapier foe toss white, but with initial dice pools it was a paltry matter for him to seize initiative from the knight.

Now, I did read the rapier vs chain thread mentioned above, but was running the sim just based on book values rather than that thread's consensus (which I really like by the way).  I wanted to learn the book rules before tweaking anything!  So the stalemate was with the non-reduced damage, even!

It occurs to me that had the knight had any unarmored places such as face, the rapier foe would have slain him easily (which again seems off to me).

It's all very interesting!  I'm curious to see what I'm overlooking.  I know it has to be operator error, so to speak.

[nsruf]

If the knight has no lightly armored locations, initiative becomes irrelevant to him - he can always choose to attack. The rapier wielder will go first (unless the knight also buys initiative, which is usually a waste of dice in this case), but gets skewered afterwards.

Now if the knight has some weak spots, he has to be really careful.

[bergh]

remeber that in the combat simulator there is an error,
you can't buy initiative using the pool you already have used for attack, only those dice you not have apointed to a specific action.

i don't know if it would make a difference, but in the combat simulator it can use dices already set aside to buy initiative, and also you can only buy initiative ONCE and only as the "slowest" also and error.

I have written another thread about combat order and the buy initative, where i have setup a quick and simply point-to-point thing.

Jake norwood said that my version was 100% correct, so the combat simulator is not correct....

[Ben Lehman]

This is my scenario.

Knight throws red... Rapier guy throws white.

Knight attacks most dice.  Rapier defends.  Gets initiative.
Rapier attacks.  Hit, but no damage.

pools refresh.

Rapier attacks.  Knight announces simultaneous attack.  Rapier hits for no damage.  Knight hits.  Rapier guy's skull cracks in.

done.

yrs--
--Ben

[GaGrin]

However, you must take into account that if the Rapier-wielder puts enough dice behind that attack (bearing in mind he goes first) he can punch through even the plate.  You're looking at 60% successes with a rapier, so 10 cp (easy if unarmoured stating char) will get approx 6 success - enough to punch straight through that plate.  Admittedly this will not leave enough surplus for a solid wound, but I assume the Rapier-wielder has more cp (around 14) and is thrusting for a weaker part (av 4/5).

I do agree on the tactics, I'm just pointing out that it could all go horribly wrong :P

Personally, if I was the rapier-guy, I'd drop it and run away, find a bow and shoot the knight.  Getting close now?  Fine, run a bit further :D

[Tash]

Personally, if I was the rapier-guy, I'd drop it and run away, find a bow and shoot the knight.  Getting close now?  Fine, run a bit further :D

Actually if I was the rapier guy and some dude was chasing me in armor I'd get my .45 and shoot him.  Then I'd wonder what the heck was going on...

If I was PLAYING the rapier guy I'd do what you said :)

[nsruf]

Knight attacks most dice.  Rapier defends.  Gets initiative.

And with DTN 8 vs. swords and other massive weapons, getting init is not even guaranteed. A buckler helps, of course. But then we might as well give the knight a shield and let him Sim Block/Strike every time, regardless of init. Ouch...

[Brian Leybourne]

Jake norwood said that my version was 100% correct, so the combat simulator is not correct....

Ah, but the thing to remember is that Jake changes his mind. When I wrote the Combat sim, it was correct at the time.

Don't ya, mate? :-)

Brian.

[Jake Norwood]

What? Me? Change my mind? Never...


It'a all 100% right, if it works. Really. If it isn't in the book, it doesn't come up in my games, so I don't worry about it. Or I make a ruling on the spot (no one ever argues with me for some reason...).

Sad, but true.

Jake

[bergh]

:-)

I still think that my version on how the combat order and buying initiative should be the official rules.

Brian L.: anyway if you are updating it in the future, then please make an option, so people then can decide them self if they want the buy initiative cost to be taken from un-used pool only or not.

--------
Question for ARMA people, or people who know about it:

Was a good push not something people use in armed combat?
I can imagine that if i was on a battlefield and there was this guy in full plate, i would try to flank him and then try to give him a BIG push.
(i know that armour not make people move like robot), but if he then fall on his butt, then i think i would have a better chance of attacking weak spots in his armour.

anyway should this be somekind of general manouver, or does the wrestling manouver cover this?

(damn the wrestling manouvers are hard to understand!!!)

[Emiricol]

So for a quick update, I'm using the combat simulator (of course) and I've tried every strategy I can think of.  Basically every button there is, repeatedly,  in all combinations.  As long as the rapier-wielder keeps a minimum of 5-6 pool for the second exchange, the knight (in platemail with a shield) simply can't touch him.  At least I realized he can *attack back* without having initiative, so that's a big step in the learning process, but I still can't get the fully armored knight to eliminate the duelist.  Even with the duelist throwing red repeatedly.

The duelist continues to fail to get through the armor, but if the knight had an open face the fight would be all over from the unskilled bumbling I've done in the simulator.

By the way, I'm using Max Steel against Cut n Thrust Kid if anyone wants to work out a way one or the other of them could win and let me know how it was done :)

EDIT - and thanks for the ideas so far!  They just aren't panning out in the simulator (so far)