First Game, and Thoughts Thereof

[prophet118]

well, ran my first real game of TROS last night, i wont bore you with details of the game itself, but fr the most part i avoided combat last night... not that i didnt do it, it was done enough to be fun, but i was holding back from the the D&D thing of "ok 20 guys are running at you"... there was like 2 real melee combats last night, the rest of the night it was a combination of sorcery, and missile combat..

my only real problem with the combat system as is, is that its kinda hard for me to grasp, still... i understand sorcery, that oine was fairly easy..

missile... well i need to read that section, and the melee section... i know the concepts, and i know how things are done, its just getting there with the dice, that tends to be the problem..

oh and for the guy who mentioned about rapiers a while back.... last night we all got to see how useless they were, as the knight of the group in platemail, got attacked by a guy with a rapier... it wasnt funny at all.. the npc did 12 on damage... unfortunately the knight was as i said wearing platemail, and had a high toughness... so he took a level 0 wound out of it... where as the npc took a level 4 wound to the face when the knight brought down his arming sword...

i will grant jake one thing, combat is pretty damn quick... and im glad, because right now i dont feel as confidant in my abilities to run combat...

like i said, im cool with all the manuevars, and how you determine initiative, and im even fine with damage and how to score damage... my problem comes from knowing how many dice to use, how much i get from bonuses...yada yada.. a cheat sheet would be nice for that..... its probably on the master screen. so i'll take a look at it today

[Irmo]

oh and for the guy who mentioned about rapiers a while back.... last night we all got to see how useless they were, as the knight of the group in platemail, got attacked by a guy with a rapier... it wasnt funny at all.. the npc did 12 on damage... unfortunately the knight was as i said wearing platemail, and had a high toughness... so he took a level 0 wound out of it... where as the npc took a level 4 wound to the face when the knight brought down his arming sword...

Which goes to show that there might have been a reason why rapiers came more and more into use as all-covering plate more and more went OUT of use.... and aside from that, were mainly used by civilians, for whom it was less likely to face armor. Unless, of course, you get into trouble with the guard or the army. Against a guy with plate, take a hammer, a mattock, or if you are a big, mean killing machine, take a maul. As soon as the space inside the plate suit is smaller than the volume of his body, he will consider ceasing hostile actions. If it's a lot smaller, he won't have to do any considering anymore :)

[prophet118]

uhhh... yeh, unfortunately i cant exactly justify changing weapons of the enemy during midgame, granted half of the guys they were marching against had arming swords, but they got taken out by the pcs sides archers..


basically i was running a seige...  the pcs found a way in from underneath the castle, but the king of the keep knew about that back entrance, so he had his own men there... mainly archers, and their back up weapons were rapiers..oh well though, no real biggie..lol

[Bob Richter]

uhhh... yeh, unfortunately i cant exactly justify changing weapons of the enemy during midgame, granted half of the guys they were marching against had arming swords, but they got taken out by the pcs sides archers..


basically i was running a seige...  the pcs found a way in from underneath the castle, but the king of the keep knew about that back entrance, so he had his own men there... mainly archers, and their back up weapons were rapiers..oh well though, no real biggie..lol

Rapiers are an unlikely backup weapon for an archer. The Rapier is strictly a duelist's sword. An Archer is more likely to be carrying a Short Sword or an Arming Sword.

He'll also run when he meets a man in plate armor because he knows his weapons can't reasonably hope to penetrate it.

[Jabberwocky]

I found that declaring some locations to be 'unarmoured' on the thrusting tables worked - joints and the like wouldn't be as protected.

[prophet118]

yeh i was going for the location thing... but as for the weapon they used as a side arm being a rapier...ummm so.. thats just what i happened to chose..

[Brian Leybourne]

I found that declaring some locations to be 'unarmoured' on the thrusting tables worked - joints and the like wouldn't be as protected.

On full plate, those areas are just as well covered, by adding extra pieces of armor over the joints. Rondel's, for example, were circular mini-shields if you like, that went on either side of the chest and protected the shoulder where the breast and arm plates met.

Plus, at the very least there would be heavy cloth (AR1 or 2) or chain under the plate.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

Something else about declaring areas to be unarmored... Part of the AV of the armor, in my opinion, is the difficulty of hitting unarmored areas like joints. If you score a hit through the armor with a rapier, the in-game effect isn't likely to be that of the rapier punching through a plate.. This is fairly unrealistic, I think. On the other hand, the rapier piercing straight through the gap at the joint is pretty realistic.

[Lyrax]

Wolfen's got it right.  The AV of armor isn't to say how hard it is to penetrate, but how hard it is to get past and do damage to the person inside.  Most weapons don't really have a prayer at actually piercing plate armor, and have to go for the weak points.  Some, like the pick, can do exactly that (and gain +1 vs. armors, because it's easier to get through), while others,  like the hammer side of a warhammer, can hurt the person inside with a mere dent to the armor.

[prophet118]

oh and for the guy who mentioned about rapiers a while back.... last night we all got to see how useless they were, as the knight of the group in platemail, got attacked by a guy with a rapier... it wasnt funny at all.. the npc did 12 on damage... unfortunately the knight was as i said wearing platemail, and had a high toughness... so he took a level 0 wound out of it... where as the npc took a level 4 wound to the face when the knight brought down his arming sword...

Which goes to show that there might have been a reason why rapiers came more and more into use as all-covering plate more and more went OUT of use.... and aside from that, were mainly used by civilians, for whom it was less likely to face armor. Unless, of course, you get into trouble with the guard or the army. Against a guy with plate, take a hammer, a mattock, or if you are a big, mean killing machine, take a maul. As soon as the space inside the plate suit is smaller than the volume of his body, he will consider ceasing hostile actions. If it's a lot smaller, he won't have to do any considering anymore :)

ya know, ya have to wonder just why as rapiers were coming into use, heavy armors went out.... ok so yeh some of it was due to firearms, and other parts due to a desire to be quicker, instead of harder to hurt...

though everything i have seen, and read, indicates that yes, a rapier, can and has peirced platemail...granted, it does take a solid blow..


but the problem here... and i think jake can slightly back me up... is that when people see the word rapier, they think of the little fruity french guys with the epee, or foils... thats not a rapier...

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~zool0328/rapier.jpg
http://miguel.gomes.com/rapier.jpg
http://www.cashenblades.com/rapier.jpg
http://www.sca.org.au/politarchopolis/gallery/Rapier.jpg

ok just a few pics that i found over at google.. showing what i view a normal rapier as.....granted the weapon they show in the D&D 3rd ed book........well thats actually a small cutlass....lol..

but its all cool

[Mokkurkalfe]

Those pictures...That's how I figured a cut&thrust sword looks like.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Perhaps the threads TROS weapon statistics and More prep help requested will be helpful.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

A C&T looks a lot like a rapier, but has a wider blade. In many museums and catologs, however, the difference isn't acknowledged, because curators tend to group swords by hilt, whereas fighters and historians group them by blade type (hilts being a secondary feature of the blade, which is what betrays the weapon's true function).

What's more is that while yes, the rapier is much more substantial than most folks realize, I've never heard even one example of a guy with a rapier piercing plate armor. This may partially be due to the fact that rapiers and "full plate" didn't really co-exist, either chronologically or--more importantly--geographically (meaning that the rapier was on the street and plate armor was on the battlefield, so that they never would have really even met each other, even if they did happen to overlap chronologically for a bit). I personally think also that a rapier doesn't have enough mass to punch through plate, perhaps even with half-sword techniques (although it could find the chinks, of course). I believe this is reasonable based on the fact that the Itallians used to wear light chainmail shirts under their doublets when dueling (to cheat, of course), because the rapier generally couldn't puncture the chain.

Contrary to film, literature, RPGs, and many internet web-groups, swords did not cut plate armor, and punturing it with a sword was *very* difficult. That's why all anti-armor sword techniques focus on grappling and half-swording into the "chinks" of the armor. Picks, axes, and polearms are another story.

Jake

[contracycle]

I have a rapier-type blade, I think, which I suspect is the 1895 british infantry officerts blade.  It looks a lot like this, which is the 1897 version.

http://www.antiquegunroom.com/agr/auction_house/photo.php?photo=154_154.jpg&site_name=AntiqueArmsandMilitariaAuction

This is a fullered, inch-wide-at-the-base steel wedge, basically.  It's still not going to be much good against plate, but highly dangerous against people.

I think the problem is that the angles are all wrong.  All that force on a tiny point... a very small deflection would send the whole thing skittering away.  Plus, your grip is at the far end, with the maximum amount of shiver being amplified through the lever.

Edit: I could photograph it if anyone wanted.

[Jake Norwood]

I think the problem is that the angles are all wrong.  All that force on a tiny point... a very small deflection would send the whole thing skittering away.  Plus, your grip is at the far end, with the maximum amount of shiver being amplified through the lever.

Gareth-

That's not a rapier blade at all, but a military "on-the-field" sword. C&T stats would be good for that in TROS, though I'd hesitate calling it one IRL. Your anaylsis on it's likely response to hitting armor is dead-on, though, as far as I can tell. But, enter the half sword...

Jake