Working on a "realistic" Medieval combat system

[Krippler]

Most of my roleplaying have happened in Eon, a swedish game with a very detailed 'realistic' system. Fights are never brutish because administration is so slow. Sure it sometimes helps since I creates cool shit like an arrow takes an eye out and sticks and you'll take additional bleeding if you pull it out + getting an infection (different strengths depending on how well kept the arrow was and who's treating the wound) and having to choose between putting on a bandage that might stop the bleeding or surely stop it by burning the wound (with the risk of the patient dying from loss of blood plasma). Usually though, despite all different rules for realism and shit the characters usually just stand in place waving their pointy sticks hoping luck and their superior skills will prevale making super boring.

Something that's important about realism: you can't slash through plate armor. Nope. Crossbows are hardly worth shit either, when the pope whined about crossbows it was back in the days when knights had chain armor.

If you want players to see combat as something scary it should be fast. Like if you charge someone with a halbeard readied they should probably get sliced up in the first round. I had an idea for a super fast combat system: each weapon gets a value which represents how likely it is to inflict a wound. Seeing all weapons Can kill we're only interested in the likelyness of it doing so. So long weapons get a better chance. If you are unarmed and someone attacks you with a dagger, it's not like you're gonna let them stab you. You're gonna keep your distance and your eyes on them so if they do a bad move you'll move into a clinch and grapple them. So give grapple a chance as well, just much lover than weapons. That was you can't rush someone with a spear and start wrestling but if they're focusing on someone else you can.

Now you have something simple like: Skill + roll + weapon value vs skill + roll + weapon value. The difference dictates how bad the wound is. Use a table or something to determine where and how the wound manifests or just say something that makes sense. Like if someone with a sword hit someone 3 it's a pretty bad wound probably meaning bleeding that takes the person out of combat in X rounds or lowers the persons rolls -1 per round (cumulative) since they get dizzy from bloodloss. Also you don't heal 1 HP per week. A snapped bone will trouble you for the rest of your life more or less. A clean kill (say 5 difference or something) doesn't have to be something like cutting someones stomach open, it might as well be hacking an arm off or anything that would make that person lose conciousness or the ability to fight.Add modifiers for closed spaced ect.

[Marshall Burns]

A few details regarding plate armor:

As Krippler pointed out, swords are very ineffective against it.  They glance right off the armor's angles and curves (which is the reason those angles and curves are there).  What you need against plate is a piercing weapon that you can get into one of the weaker points (anywhere the surface is concave).  Thrusting with your longsword can work if you've got the skill and the presence of mind, and a spear is good, but your best bet is an estoc or a poniard.

However, axes can mess up plate armor somethin' good.  This is because an axe isn't really about the edge; it's about the weight and the leverage.  Its working principle is closer to the hammer than the sword.  Even if the axe's blade doesn't penetrate, there's still a large amount of connecting force.  Remember, a good longsword weighs under three pounds; the head of a battle axe is going to be at least that much, plus mounted on the end of a shaft for extra leverage (then there's the dreaded poleaxe, wielded by the Anglo-Saxon house-karls, with a spear-like shaft).  The problem with axes is that they leave you vulnerable, due to their weight and also due to the fact that they rarely cut all the way through something:  you usually have to dig the blade back out.

And one more thing:  plate armor is heavy!  I mean HEAVY!  A fully suited-up knight is generally wearing his own weight in total equipment (armor, shield, and weapon); that's why they rode big, big horses.  When a knight gets knocked from his horse and has to go at it on foot, he throws down that shield, holds the sword with both hands, and he still moves pretty darn slowly.  If he misses, he's vulnerable for quite some time before he can get back to a good stance.  My money's on the guy with the arming jacket and something pointy.

[JQP]

Fighters went to the trouble of plate because it was useful; while the guy in the arming jacket is trying to grapple and find the vanishingly small weak spots, the guy in the plate has his choice of where to put his sword into Mr. Arming Jacket.

AFAIK guns killed plate armor.  Until then it was getting more and more sophisticated.

One thing I was wondering though, was how much of the evolution of hand weaponry was part of the arms race vs. armor, and how much of it was due to other factors.  For instance, in the Middle Ages the kit of choice seemed to be maille (probably with padded armor beneath), helm, shield, and sword; by the 15th c (or whenever, I'm not that interested in the dates except as they impact the discussion) the kit of choice seemed to be fairly complex plate armor (or maybe plate over maille), with both hands using a weapon or weapons (zweihander, pick & mace, two picks, polearm, whatever).  The question is, if the Middle Ages types could've had penetrating weapons like picks, would they have preferred them over their swords?  The likely answer seems to be no, because picks & maces aren't exactly highly innovative weapons, so they probably had access to them and preferred their swords.  But, I'm still curious what the ARMA types would say.  I guess I should go ask them. 

Back to mechanics, I was just thinking about the bell curve, its width, etc., and it occurred to me that skill has more effects than the obvious; if you have two equally skilled Masters facing off, variables like weapon factors (weight, reach, design, balance, sharpness) become much more salient.  Give one a dagger and the other a longsword, and 9 times out of 10 the former is shishkebab.  This isn't as true of equally skilled Novices, because they don't know what they're doing with their respective weapons, relative to the Masters; the Novice with the dagger has a relatively much better chance against the Novice with the longsword than the Master with the dagger has against the Master with the longsword.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to how to handle this.  The only thing I came up with was to have some kind of wielder trait limit the weapon factor.  For example (numbers from rear for illustrative purposes), if a weapon has a range bonus of 10, the wielder must have a skill of ten to get the full range bonus.  If a guy with a score of 5 in the same skill he only gets a range bonus of 5 with the same weapon.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I think you are over thinking it. The answer is probably in the scaling. If the dagger gives you a bonus of 2 and a novice has a skill lvl of 1 and a master has a skill level of 10 it will be more useful to a novice, no?

[JQP]

Hi!
  I think you are over thinking it.

I might be overthinking it, but I'd much rather do that and scale back than underthink and wind up slapping my forehead after it's too late.

The answer is probably in the scaling. If the dagger gives you a bonus of 2 and a novice has a skill lvl of 1 and a master has a skill level of 10 it will be more useful to a novice, no?

That's the problem, sorta.  I want the dagger to be a bigger boost to an expert, relative to the novice - after all he's the one who knows how to use the thing properly.

Basically, as skill rises, randomness shrinks and other variables take on a relatively bigger role.  Take to novice riflemen firing at one another at extreme range...luck (intangibles like intuition) will play a bigger role than a similar duel between expert rifleman.  In the latter case, something like match-grade vs. plinker ammo could be the deciding factor.

[dindenver]

Jay,
  Sounds like you are on to something. I think it all comes to scaling the various factors so it matches your model. In this case, if you use 3d20 for the randomizer, than that means that skill levels probably need to go to 100 (maybe 200 or more). In this case, high skill will trump good rolls. Thats what you are saying, right?
  So, I would recommend taking the various factors that you want to model, listing them out and then factor them according to their impact on an individual roll. for instance:
Attacker's Natural ability (5%)
Attacker Skill (20%)
Weapon quality (5%)
Defender's Natural ability (5%)
Defender's skill (5%)
Defender's action taken (Attacking, taking cover, etc) (10%)
Armor quality (20%)
Terrain (Trees, cover, etc) (10%)
Conditions (foggy, dark, etc) (10%)
Random Occurrences (10%)

  So, assuming these numbers are correct (and I am sure you will want to tweak them). If 3d20 is your randomizer than, Stats should be scaled 1-30, Skills should be 0-120, Weapon accuracy/DMG should scale 0-30, Armor should scale 0-120, Terrain should provide bonuses or penalties from -30 to 30, as well as conditional modifiers. As you can see, I would recommend decreasing the die size to keep the scaling within a tighter numeric range. Unless having discreet modifiers is your highest priority.

  As to starting out overwrought and then scaling it back, please reconsider. The issue with that is you get unusual artifacts when you use this process (I know it has happened to me). Either way, good luck man!

[Hereward The Wake]

A few ponts in no real order.
Plate armour weighs around 70-90lbs all in, plus its spread over the body and made to measure, so it is not as bad as people make out though of course its not a easy to move in as lighter armours it doesn't make you clumsy. Also the horse they rode are not big, they are solid and have short backs but they are not huge. So basically you are looking at someone wearing about the same wieght of kit as a modern soldier does with ammo, weapon and body armour

Armour of this type is expensive, it made to fit and requires good metal and special skills to make it so it is not common. So most opponents will not be wearing it.
But when fighting a mixture of armour types poll axes and war hammers, axes etc are good because they work against al the armours, the best agasint plate is that you bend the laminations and then you can't move.

So why swords? prestige, its an expensive piece of kit and to have one set you apart and as already said, it can be sued against different types of armour.

Also fighting styles deal armour in some ways more than weapons, so if faced with an armoured opponent, you get in close, use hals sord to help thrust to gaps and/or to get in grapple and chuck them to the gound and kill them there.
Best
JW

[dindenver]

Jay,
  As you can see, this is a controversial topic. I don't think anyone can agree what realistic is... One person has said that armor is the best survival tactic, another has a guy with a dagger taking the armored guy out...
  So, in the end, two things are true:
1) You are actually modeling what you think is realistic
2) No matter how meticulous your research and modeling, someone will call it bunk.
Try and bear that in mind when coming up with your cool mechanic. Good luck man!

[LordKiwi]

I'd like to make a non-armour related point, thinking instead about the other two goals you stated (quote edited for brevity)...

Goals:
Only Fools Rush In
The cat-and-mouse element of "duels."  <snip>

He Who Dares, Wins
That said, it seems pretty well established amongst ARMA types that the attacker has the advantage. <snip>

How about something like...
3 combat status stats...
Speed - determines who strikes first.
Grace - determines how hard you are to hit.
Power - determines how much damage you do.
(all modified as appropriate by armour, weapon, skills etc).
These are represented by a number and a category (i.e. Power categories are slashing, piercing and blunt).

Each fighter has starting values for each of these and then every round they modify them with their actions. Examples of actions could include Feint that increases Grace but decreases Power or High Stance that turns damage to slashing (if your weapon can do that).

After your action you can also choose to exchange blows or you can choose to wait. Both sides then use Speed to determine who acts first, Grace to see who hits and Power to do damage. The type of each stat will modify the result based on opponent's current type for that stat (or armour in the case of Power). Exchanging blows will modify your statistics back to their starting values.

Thus, you get several rounds of circling while players modify their statistics to more favourable numbers, then the attacker gets the advantage by both modifying his numbers/types AND attacking. For mob combat, rather than duels, you'd just take your basic numbers and modify them using a single action before attacking.

Not sure how Wrestling would fit in, which is an important part of reralistic fights, but it could probably be worked in (maybe with similar mechanics but a seperate set of stats and actions).

Balancing the system may be tough, but it should get the job done. At least the economy of actions should be easy to balance since both combatants get an equal number of attacks.

Hope this helps.

[Hereward The Wake]

I don't know if anyone mentioned the combat system in Swashbuckler? Its got some very good ideas which make a good bridge between "reality" and cinematic/descriptive fights. It also requires the use of tactics in maneuvcers and you also design the PCs fighting styles. I know there is a PDF of some house rules which include more Medieval weapons.

Definately worth a look as it had good ideas and has been the inspiration for Lightsabre fighting and space fighter combat.

Best
JW

[JoyWriter]

Perhaps you could work on a system of limiting factors:
Every weapon has a set of negatives and positives, but you must always pick the lowest of the positive value or the persons skill. The negatives still remain, so people will mainly use knives and swords rather than bother with handling the problems of an axe or a spear.

I also like the idea of having weapon qualities that can be bonuses or penalties depending on the use, such as weight effecting the speed of a swing but also allowing more damage. I'm not quite sure how to combine this with the above, but perhaps the "power speed and grace" system could be applied to weapons also, as well as armour. In this way you have a layering of factors that allows someone to blame their tools legitimately!

It also fits my experience of tennis of all things, where using a better bat suddenly allowed me to do much better. There is also an analogy with communication, in that your ability to express your intention will be set by the bottlenecks of expressiveness in the system.

But that doesn't mean that a useless sword makes you hopeless, as you could have a system of adaption, where like in the wild west people would learn the quirks of their guns and so know that they always fire slightly left.

A quirk learning system almost ends up like a magic item identifying system, with people studying the weapon in order to get the most of it. How to mechanically work this? A "quirks" score, that you can adapt to by training, reducing it's modifier for you at least. But the trick is that adaption to one sword puts you at a disadvantage with others, so you could have a set of allowed adaptions, say 3-5, that would act like proficiencies and specialisations, and using a weapon that was not one of them would put you at a disadvantage without training.

So to recap I suggest 3 layers of skill ratings, personal, weapon and armour. This is in contrast with the modifier system that most games run on, except that each piece of relevant equipment has a quirks rating, which is reduced by familiarity. This can be made easier I think by pre-calculating the reduction to weapon quirk when your character attunes themself to it. The adjusted quirk score could be shown with the original in brackets next to it, and the total number of familiar items shown by either a master list or by remembering to remove one when you add another.
I think probably I wouldn't go any further than that, but you could add environmental conditions (like light intensity) to the mix, with the idea that fog is the great leveller, except for those with the ability to adapt.