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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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

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

GaGrin wrote: 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

Ben Lehman wrote:
Knight attacks most dice. Rapier defends. Gets initiative.

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

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

:-)

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!!!)

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)

Emiricol wrote: 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.

If the knight has a CP of 5 or 6 its conceivable that he'd repeatedly roll 0 successes in a fight, especially if he was using something like a Doplehander or a War Flail.

Dunno...I just had Max Steele fight the Cut and Thrust Kid. Though I changed Max into using his Bastard Sword Two-handed and eliminated the shield. Red-Red, both in aggressive stance. Cut and Thrust kid thrust at Max with seven dice and hits, but for damage rate zero....Max hits with an all-dice-on-offense in the first exchange with a cut to the Kid's hands....which end up flopping on the floor, making the second exchange moot....

In a second bout, using the bastard sword one-handed and using the shield, the result is similar, except that Max achieves only a damage rate of 3, so the hands aren't off rightaway. The rest of the fight was bugged due to the simulator saying that the range didn't change since both attacks were successful, but handing the advantage over to the Kid anyway.

GaGrin wrote: 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

Salamander wrote: I would simply shake my head sadly as the poor fool scratched up the paint job on buddy's harness before he died.

nsruf wrote:

Salamander wrote: I would simply shake my head sadly as the poor fool scratched up the paint job on buddy's harness before he died.

That may work for your group, but if my Seneschal told me what in effect amounts to

"his armor value vs. your attack is infinity because I said so"

I'd quietly pack up my stuff and go home. Really;)


So how to solve this problem consistently within the rules?

1. Flavor text: No harness provides all-around protection. So instead of saying "the rapier punched through plate armor" (which is silly), assume that 6 successes (which is a flawless success) allows you to target any weak spot you like - e.g. the armpit.

2. Rules mod: The rapier may indeed be slightly to good vs. metal armor. The common fix suggested on this board is to apply the same damage penalties as for the sabre (-1 vs. leather, -2 vs. metal).

3. Tactics: The knight knows that his opponent is hard pressed to hurt him, while he needs only a tiny margin of success for a serious injury. So he attacks every time, regardless of who has initiative. And if the rapier guy overcommits to a nasty attack, the knight can buy initiative. This may leave him with only a 3 dice swing to the arm, but that can cause enough shock to make his opponents attack completely harmless.

Salamander wrote: Ah, yes. I have never had this problem, nor will I as my group is laced with students of midieval, renaissance & oriental fence. We have all taken a look at the way things really were and accept that that particular battle is not one you want to fight, unless you are the guy in the harness!

1). This is always a viable thing to try, however while you are trying this, I would throw a hefty activation cost the way of the rapier wielder. I mean, you are trying to hit the armpits of a suit of harness. ...

2). I have also employed this one. It's called the skittering rapier rules mod.

3). Nah. I would use the Full Evade rule and force him into it again. Or ignore his blow knowing I am more than likely coming out of it with enough CP to tune the poor fool.

A knight is not an idiot. His job is fighting and killing, so I am guessing he would be better prepared for the tricks than most people...

By the way, a guy in Harness does not always have to be a knight...

Remember this game is about picking your fights. The ones that matter and the ones you can win are the only two you should engage in according to the preamble. So if you are facing off against a guy in Harness and all you have is a rapier your best bet is to RUN AWAY.

First thing max steel ought to do is drop the large shield - use the bastard sword with 2 hands. The 2cp will make a big difference, as well as better TN's for the sword.

nsruf wrote:
It really depends what you want from the game. If you and your group can agree that a rapier wielder never fights a knight, that's fine. But my group (me included) would be inclined to ask "what if?", and demand that the rules (supposedly close to how real melee works) provide a satisfactory answer.

contracycle wrote: You asked, you got an answer: stalemate.

I find that satisfactory, as it is roughly what I would expect.

If I were either fighter, I would try to use Terrain rolls to force my opponent into a corner.

I can't see what it is about the result you find unsatisfactory - is there any evidence for the efficacy of rapiers against full plate?

nsruf wrote:

If I were either fighter, I would try to use Terrain rolls to force my opponent into a corner.

How's that work? It's not in the rules, so everyone here would handle it a little differently. We can't really discuss the merits of the rules for a situation requiring Seneschal's fiat.

I have the revised printing, too, and AFAIK terrain rolls are only explained with regards to bad footing and fighting mutliple opponents. Everything else is left up to the Seneschal. Not that I mind this in play, but discussing the implications of the rules based on such ad hoc maneuvers is pretty pointless.

I keep hearing people talking about thrusting through a chink in the armor, pit shots, etc,..... While that MIGHT be possible, chances are the Rapier would bend into worthless trash or break LONG before that was possible (fragile blade folks, intended to thrust into soft yielding flesh...not substantial enough to take even a single parry from a real sword without being destroyed....DESTROYED! Thrusting it at an unyielding armor likely would have similar results), the reality of the situation is that even if that situation DID miraculously happen, you'd STILL be holding a broken haft or a bent and worthless piece of trash afterwards as his falling body weight would be sufficient to destroy the blade unless you managed to get that sucker out of him as quickly as you got it into him. Taking a Rapier into combat against armored opponents carrying real swords is too ridiculous to even be labeled laughable.

Ben Lehman wrote: BL> Could you post the text from this? I'm really puzzled how an attack on an undefended, unarmored opponent doesn't result in injury, unless he has a Toughness through the roof, which I don't believe C&T Kid has...

Irmo wrote: Dunno...I just had Max Steele fight the Cut and Thrust Kid. Though I changed Max into using his Bastard Sword Two-handed and eliminated the shield. Red-Red, both in aggressive stance. Cut and Thrust kid thrust at Max with seven dice and hits, but for damage rate zero....Max hits with an all-dice-on-offense in the first exchange with a cut to the Kid's hands....which end up flopping on the floor, making the second exchange moot....

In a second bout, using the bastard sword one-handed and using the shield, the result is similar, except that Max achieves only a damage rate of 3, so the hands aren't off rightaway. The rest of the fight was bugged due to the simulator saying that the range didn't change since both attacks were successful, but handing the advantage over to the Kid anyway.

Assuming a relatively equal level of skill, if the rapier fighter was highly defensive, he could probably outlast an armored opponent, and could possibly kill him once he became too fatigued to fight effectively. Which means that time would be against the armored fighter, and he would have to take more risks, but he'd also be better able to survive those risks, due to the protection of his armor... So the chances are that, eventually, one of his risks would pay off, and the fight would be over. If it did not, then rapier fighter might actually win the day.

Hmmm...I don't know why so many people think that the rapier was a tiny little weapon with a small, fragile little blade that was easily broken. While some of the later (i.e. second half of the 17th century) rapiers were beginning to get fairly small and light--the earlier ones were pretty heavy. Properly used, a 16th century and early 17th century rapier can (and was designed) to parry the heavier blades of other types of swords. It is a "real sword." Yes, they could break (as can any sword), but these weapons were designed for rigorous use beyond the light bladework of a modern foil. Of course this doesn't mean I want to face a fully armored opponent with one...

Of course there are exceptions to every "rule," and if you look you'll find lighter rapiers even from the 16th century.

Steve

Dain wrote: I keep hearing people talking about thrusting through a chink in the armor, pit shots, etc,..... While that MIGHT be possible, chances are the Rapier would bend into worthless trash or break LONG before that was possible (fragile blade folks, intended to thrust into soft yielding flesh...not substantial enough to take even a single parry from a real sword without being destroyed....DESTROYED! Thrusting it at an unyielding armor likely would have similar results), the reality of the situation is that even if that situation DID miraculously happen, you'd STILL be holding a broken haft or a bent and worthless piece of trash afterwards as his falling body weight would be sufficient to destroy the blade unless you managed to get that sucker out of him as quickly as you got it into him. Taking a Rapier into combat against armored opponents carrying real swords is too ridiculous to even be labeled laughable.

Tauman said:

Hmmm...I don't know why so many people think that the rapier was a tiny little weapon with a small, fragile little blade that was easily broken. While some of the later (i.e. second half of the 17th century) rapiers were beginning to get fairly small and light--the earlier ones were pretty heavy. Properly used, a 16th century and early 17th century rapier can (and was designed) to parry the heavier blades of other types of swords. It is a "real sword." Yes, they could break (as can any sword), but these weapons were designed for rigorous use beyond the light bladework of a modern foil. Of course this doesn't mean I want to face a fully armored opponent with one...

The term "rapier" means a lot, but the capo-fero style "true" rapier that we're referring to in TROS could get pretty heavy in the hilt, and had a very, very hard, rigid blade. Cutting with it could actually break it.

Parrying a larger sword should be a problem if the parry is executed properly--to deflect, not stop, and with the "forte" of the blade. On the other hand, I believe that occassionaly cut-and-thrust sword users could attack the rapier itself and break it, but I don't have any citable research at the moment.

Jake

Jake Norwood wrote: Parrying a larger sword should be a problem if the parry is executed properly--to deflect, not stop, and with the "forte" of the blade.

Emiricol wrote: I never got that result, actually. The only way for that to happen (that I can see) would be for Cut n Thrust Kid to allocate most or all of his dice to a first exchange attack on one round. If he maintains even 4 or 5 pool he remains unhit, with initiative, indefinitely. Can you reproduce the result you got and post the relevant exchange(s) so I can see what happened?

It shouldn't matter how many dice the Kid has left if both attack simultaneously. In this situation, either the faster of the two skewers his opponent, or the kid's blow glances off the armor and he gets cut down a moment later.

I wonder if the simulator is returning faulty results, then. I'll run through the exercises once more, using hardcopy and my own dice, and post the results.

To update this thread (apologies for the resurrection, but I think starting a new thread just to post what I've found out would be spammy) - I did finally beat the knight. I had to learn to use the maneuvers better.

For example, a feint with only a couple dice allocated got the opponent to just take the attack (ho hum, can't get through my armor!). Allocate rest of dice. I tried it three times, and twice resulted in taking out the knight's CP, but once resulted in immediate death to the Cut n Thrust Kid.

So to sum up: maneuvers make a big difference :) The key is in learning when to use which maneuver.

Hey is there a version of the combat simulator available for Macintosh? I'd love to try it out.

Matt

Emiricol-

Awesome.

Deliverator-

Mac user, huh? AFAIK, there is no Mac Version of the simulator. Sorry.

Jake

Not sure if this is adding anything useful to the thread, but....

Some months ago Wolfen and Draigh and I were dueling on OpenRPG pretty regularly. I used Julianos (case of rapiers,leather jack or no armor) and they used armored characters.

Wolfen used Tiberius (did I mis-spell it again?) and in those combats Jules came out pretty even. Tiberius had chain if I recall... Jules and Tiberius are in OBaM if you want to see the exact stats...

Against Draigh's characters (a variety of steel turtles) I had little trouble winning roughly 2 out of 3 fights if I recall correctly. Until he learned to use full-face helms, then it got ugly.

Lots of full evasion and thrusting for the face, mainly.

In the end, the rapier wielder can hold his own against an armored opponent quite well as long as two criteria are met:
1) They have to be clever and fast.
2) The armored opponent must have some area where the rapier can penetrate.

With regards to #2 above, there were many successful hits with Jules where I struck the face but the d6 hit location roll put the hit on an armored part of the head and thus no damage was done. But I don't think any suit of armor was ever created that didn't have at least a small gap somewhere. You have to be able to move in that suit after all...

Never underestimate the rapier. There's a reason they were outlawed in many places during their age. They are deadly in the extreme and armor is far too expensive for it to be common.

If you want to modify rapiers against various types of armor, I'd say that they'd get bonuses against leather and chain, due to their ability to pierce it so easily. Against plate I'd say they would have no ability to penetrate - you have to aim for the gaps. For scale mail it would be somewhere between chain and plate depending on the size of the scales... LOL...

Personally, I feel that the revised edition of the game has incorrectly modelled rapiers. The original printing has a much more accurate representation of their lethal nature...

Brandon

@ Rattlehead

Remember that bout where I countered your silly rapier with a pommel to the throat? Man, that was classic...

Yeah... that was pretty harsh.... Counter is nasty...

B