Question about breaking weapons

[JSinclair]

Greetings All...
I'm pretty new to TROS and this is my first post, so please excuse me if this topic has already been covered or if my understanding of the rules seem incomplete.
I was wondering if anyone had worked out rules for striking at an opponents weapon with the intent of breaking it or a for weapons breaking during a parry.  I'm not very well educated on the realities of medieval combat, but it seems to me that if I were to parry a cut from a dopplehander or a bash from a maul with my1 rapier or poinard dagger that my (relatively) flimsy weapon might break.  Also, it would seem that striking at the shafts of some of the longer pole arms (like pikes) might be a fairly effective tactic.  Any suggestions or ideas?
-Jsinclair

[Jake Norwood]

Hey-

There aren't currently any weapon-breaking or shield-breaking rules in TROS. Historically speaking I'm not aware of any well-attested case of weapons breaking through anything than accidental use (I know they would occasionally break on the battlefield, but I don't believe that it was really because someone tried to break them). Swords, at least, were not flimsy. As for pole and haft weapons, they may have broken more often. Perhaps as the result of a botch?

Any ideas?

Jake

[Brian Leybourne]

Why not just treat it as a bash attack, but instead of knocking the weapon aside (and thus reducing the foes CP) your successes are applied as damage to the weapon itself. The defender can make a "weapon evasion" defense to try to get the weapon out of the way or take the blow on an angle, etc.

In this manner, you would need to work out "hardness" (i.e. TO) and "wounds" (as in, how many wound levels can it take before breaking) stats for each weapon. You could then apply the same rules to wooden shields I guess.

So things like swords would have damn good TO and wounds, but wooden hafts of spears and the like would be weaker. Rapiers might have a fairly good TO (because they would tend to flex with the blow) but low wounds because they're thin and it wouldn't take too much trauma to snap them.

Brian.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

actually, I dont see how that would work brian since when ever someone strikes my sword in practices all it does is knock it aside. The weapon pivots in my hand, even pole arms would absorb the hit and teh kinetic energy would be transferred and result in movement of some sort.

Shields on the other hand are a bit different, these things are designed to take a lot of damage so what we did in one of the campaigns I was playing in was consider any damage that goes past the shields armor value and then hits other armor or does damage to the shield user then the shield is jacked up appropriate to weapon type. Example, viking stories are full of shield smashing action from swings so cutting damage that bypasses the shields AV sliced and diced it.

[Niggle]

Since my last posting about this subject, I have found out that breaking weapons was't as common as I had believed.  In fact, I have found many instances of swords and armour being passed down from generation to generation in Wills.  I'm with Jake on this one.  I'd only consider it on botched rolls, and even then I think it would be more likely to be dropped than to break.  I guess its chance of breaking with a botched roll would depend on the difference of the mass of the weapons that came into contact and the material each was made out of.

Just my two cents worth.

[svenlein]

Was a common use of the dopplehander by the Swiss to cut the tips off of pikes?  Or is this just myth?

http://www.thehaca.com/terms4.htm
Look at the section about Two-handed Swords

Scott

[Jake Norwood]

Was a common use of the dopplehander by the Swiss to cut the tips off of pikes?  Or is this just myth?

http://www.thehaca.com/terms4.htm
Look at the section about Two-handed Swords

Scott

That's a question that I honestly don't have an answer to--I want to say "myth," but I have no more proof than if I said "fact." Anyone else have a *reliable* source for this?

Jake

[JSinclair]

Thanks for the input everyone.  I'll likely just make arbitrary rulings on weapon breakage weapon someone botches and their opponent has a weapon that seriously out-masses theirs ("Whoops, botched that rapier parry against a dopplehander" ::SNAP::) and then only when it seems both reasonable and dramatically appropriate.  The dopplehander breaking pikes was one of the main reasons I asked about weapon breaking maneveurs, but none of the sources I heard it from seemed totally credible either

-Jsinlcair

[Lyrax]

Heh.  You should get your rapier snapped (or at least very bent) just for TRYING to parry a doppelhander (unless it's thrusting at you), but that's just the rapier for you.

Rapiers.  Hahah!

[MrGeneHa]

I know I've read the same thing somewhere, but I'm afraid it may have been in online discussions.  I couldn't find it in a book.

The closest thing I could find to a trustworthy reference was from Osprey Publishing.

"...those designated as Döppelsoldners, whose duty it was to advance in the front line and cut away the opponent's pikes, carried instead the fearsome Zweihänder; an enormous battle-sword around 66 inches in length!"
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/title_detail.php/title=Q2589~per=15

Which goes to show how difficult it was to purposely break an opponent's weapon.  The Zweihänder is a huge sword, and the wooden pole of a pike is long, clumsy, and wood.  I suspect it would be much harder to break a shorter polearm.  You'd need a very good hit with a high damage weapon or the pikeman fumbling a parry against the sword.

In a fantasy game like TRoS, however, I imagine a "Break Weapon" maneuver would be quite plausible.  Imagine  a Varangian guard of ST 10 monsters with 8' estocs...

Was a common use of the dopplehander by the Swiss to cut the tips off of pikes?  Or is this just myth?

http://www.thehaca.com/terms4.htm
Look at the section about Two-handed Swords

Scott

[Valamir]

I've seen a similar reference to the role of the Claymore vs the Schiltron.  I'm almost positive its in my liabray somewhere, but damned if I can remember what book, and without that its nigh impossible to estimate the reliability of the source.

With regards to shields though...The 13th Warrior has a great scene that demonstrates what typically happens to a wooden round shield in combat.  I've never seen anything that points to a similiar issue with roman style shields, so I'm not sure if that's limited to that specific shield design or not.

[Lance D. Allen]

I can't add anything solid to this, but I'm dead certain that if I were using a real axe, I could have broken many of the spears used by my opponents in SCA melee. Spears, from what I've seen and fought against, are usually used on the horizontal line, and a good downward chop from an axe which manages to pin the spear to the ground would blast straight through the haft of the spears. Mind, I don't even presume to say I could break the spear if it had not gone to the ground, but as it did, there'd be several spearmen with 8' staves instead of 9' spears.

Oh, also.. Is hook one of the maneuvers available to axes in the book? If it's not, it certainly should be. Spearmen like to kill me quickly because I manage to get them killed by hooking their spear in melee.

[Mokkurkalfe]

Even if broken weapons where fairly rare historically, Beowulf and other stories are full of weapon-breaking. I'd probably go for a rule where you roll X number of dice, depending on the weapon, against a TN depending on the situation. Less successes=more damage.
Example could be to chop against plate or dragonscales (Low TN, maybe 3-5) or if you block or parry was a tie. Also, if you strike against a weapon or shield, the "Weapon Toughness Pool" could be subtracted with MoS.
Or something.
I don't know if it's realistic, or perhaps too time consuming, but it could be a nice optional rule, cuz' there's something very atmospherical about cleaving shields and breaking spears.

[Mike Holmes]

Excellent point, Joachim. But it still seems to occur from accident or the most part in the literature. I guess what I would want is an optional dramatic rule that would cause the problem more often than Jake's current rule.

Mike