I'm thinking of running an Imperial Roman campaign and I need help rules-wise for the pilum. A pilum is an iron headed javeline that was used as an anti-shield weapon. It was barbed and was designed to stick in a shield, therby reducing it's effictiveness since the shield now had a few feet of shaft attached. How should I rule this in game terms? Should a succesful hit totaly render a shield unusable until it's removed or should there be a cp penalty on shield based defence. What about the chance that it may hit the shield arm? Any help would be appreciated.

MikeJW wrote: I'm thinking of running an Imperial Roman campaign and I need help rules-wise for the pilum. A pilum is an iron headed javeline that was used as an anti-shield weapon. It was barbed and was designed to stick in a shield, therby reducing it's effictiveness since the shield now had a few feet of shaft attached. How should I rule this in game terms? Should a succesful hit totaly render a shield unusable until it's removed or should there be a cp penalty on shield based defence. What about the chance that it may hit the shield arm? Any help would be appreciated.

Wouldn't raising the TN of the Shield be more consistent than penalizing the defender's CP pool if he wants to use the Shield? The result is more or less the same, of course.

Matt

I'd go with raising the TN to block with the shield. What if they still held onto the shield but never used it after the pilum struck? WHy would they have a CP penalty?

well the shield would now be alot heavier, and just carrying around the extra weight could cause a cp pen.

MonkeyWrench wrote: I'd go with raising the TN to block with the shield. What if they still held onto the shield but never used it after the pilum struck? WHy would they have a CP penalty?

hkdharmon wrote: well the shield would now be alot heavier, and just carrying around the extra weight could cause a cp pen.

My thoughts are more in line with hkdharmon's

I'd say that, like armor, the problem with the weight isn't as much CP penalties as fatigue. That is, I might charge a couple of points of CP, but I'd definitely make the character fatigue faster if he was trying to even carry the shield. To say nothing of trying to block with it. Note that it's not so much that the pillum is even that heavy. It's the awkward lever arm that it represents, with a high moment of inertia relative to the arm, and the likely tendency to get tangled with things even dragging on the ground.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I'd say that, like armor, the problem with the weight isn't as much CP penalties as fatigue. That is, I might charge a couple of points of CP, but I'd definitely make the character fatigue faster if he was trying to even carry the shield. To say nothing of trying to block with it. Note that it's not so much that the pillum is even that heavy. It's the awkward lever arm that it represents, with a high moment of inertia relative to the arm, and the likely tendency to get tangled with things even dragging on the ground.

Mike

I'll knock off a couple of CP and increase the fatigue, which I hadn't thought of. If the fight moves into an area with undergrowth that could entangle the pilum I may make the shield wearer make a terrain roll to keep it clear. How quickly could someone drop a shield? Are shields buckled onto the forearm or could they just be dropped by opening your hand. Of course, TFoB probably has rules for all this.:) If it matters I'm probably going for the late 100's AD for a timeline.

MikeJW wrote: How quickly could someone drop a shield?

If I emember correctly, the pilum had a long thin metal spear head extending several feet after the shaft so that it would punch THROUGH the shield and get the man behind it... I always supposed that it sticking in the sield was more of an afterthought and killing the man behind it the main goal. I would house rule first the chances of the spear going through the shield- in other words give it a Vs SHields bonus like the flail, then rule the probability of hitting the man behind it then cap it off with the CP penalty for having a javelin like object stuck in your shield with the pointy end poking at your face and body.

Just my two cents.

There has been some debate on that point (no pun intended), but I believe that many think that it would have been very rare to achieve that sort of penetration. The theory about weighting the shield is a more recent idea, in any case. Based on the fact, again, of the softness of the heads, and the tendency to bend. They had better metal, why not make it hard if it was intended to penetrate?

Which is not to say that wounding never happened. Just that the goal was the shield weighting more than anything.

In any case, for the game, I'd just choose an interpretation and make the rules to match. This is one of those things that we're not going to solve in a forum like this.

Mike

On History International over the weekend they had a lot of shows on Roman history and had a lot of actors in historical clothing. Some were carrying pilums and the head doesnt seem long enough to penetrate a shield and strike the carrier unless it was really close to theire body. I'm sure it wasn't uncommon for a pilum to strike the hand or arm that was holding the shield though.

Mike Holmes wrote: There has been some debate on that point (no pun intended), but I believe that many think that it would have been very rare to achieve that sort of penetration. The theory about weighting the shield is a more recent idea, in any case. Based on the fact, again, of the softness of the heads, and the tendency to bend. They had better metal, why not make it hard if it was intended to penetrate?

Which is not to say that wounding never happened. Just that the goal was the shield weighting more than anything.

In any case, for the game, I'd just choose an interpretation and make the rules to match. This is one of those things that we're not going to solve in a forum like this.

Mike

In combat, the pilum was the primary weapon of the legionaire. The first two that were thrown, (one heavy, one light) upon closing with the enemy are only the first.

Turin wrote:

In combat, the pilum was the primary weapon of the legionaire. The first two that were thrown, (one heavy, one light) upon closing with the enemy are only the first.

My understanding was the lighter one was not actually as much like a pilum as it was like a standard javelin.

How about this, it has the same stats as a standard Javelin, with the aditions of: +1 damage against hard armors, if a pilum is successfully blocked, add a cumalitive +2 activation cost to the shields Block manuever.

from the legio xx site:

The pilum was probably thrown at a range of about 30 yards, just as the Roman line charged. The small point could penetrate a shield and wound the man behind it, or even pierce armor. Any man with a pilum stuck in his shield would find the javelin's weight so cumbersome that he would probably discard the shield. The pilum's head shape prevented its easy removal, and the iron shank prevented its being cut off. (This shield-removing capability has always been over-emphasized--the pilum was designed to kill.)

Avete!

Thanks, Drifter Bob, for doing most of the work for me! You and Mr. Holmes have made most of the pertinant points. Just a few clarifications, though, since you asked.

Yes, like any other weapon on the battlefield, the pilum was designed to kill. And yes, it was in use for a LONG time, so it went through a lot of evolution and variation along the way.

Back in the early Republic, c. 5th to 4th century BC, it did indeed come in "heavy" and "light" versions. The light one seems to have been the socketed style, with a long narrow iron shank and a small point, with a socket at the bottom to connect to the wooden shaft. The heavy version generally had a shorter, stouter iron shank with a barbed head, widening at the base into a large flat tang which was solidly riveted into block at the top of the wooden shaft. By about the 2nd century BC or so, the tanged variety also has a version with a longer, slimmer iron shank like the light pilum, though it seems the overall construction was still "heavy".

The general concept was to throw the light pila first, then the heavies just before the final charge. I don't know of any primary source that mentions more pila being passed through the ranks, though. More likely, the men farther back in the ranks held onto theirs at first, and moved up to the front as the men who started there got tired and moved back to rest. Of course, we don't KNOW for certain that they did this, either! Much would depend on the depth of the formation, which also varied.

I think it's Plutarch who says that Marius made a design change about 100 BC. He found that the iron shank was not bending very often, so that the enemy were able to throw the pila back at the Romans. So he had one of the two iron rivets that held the parts together replaced with a wooden peg which would break or shear off on impact, causing the head to flop and making it unusable. After the battle it was a simple matter to replace those pegs. One problem is that on many of the surviving pilum heads from this general era, the edges of the tang are bent to form flanges which essentially wrap around the wooden junction block. So they aren't going to flop if one rivet is missing! But of course few of these can be dated with certainty, and there do seem to be pilum heads with simple flat tangs which would function as Plutarch says, so there's no real reason to think he's making it up.

By the end of the Republic, however, it looks like the difference between heavy and light pila has gone away. The tanged variety is slimming down, and the points are generally a narrow pyramidal form, very rarely barbed any more. Some have 3 rivets rather than two, and most have an iron ferrule or collet at the top of the joint, so it looks like Marius' wooden peg system was no longer in use. But we do find that the iron shank will bend on impact, keeping the bad guys from chucking them back. I got a nice 45 degree bend in one of mine, last time I threw it. (Took it home and heated it red-hot with my propane torch before trying to straighten it, to avoid metal stress!)

Oh, there is also a lot of press about the specially hardened point or the special "soft" iron shank. Neither of these is backed up by metallurgical analysis of the archeological evidence. It's all just regular wrought iron. The point could certainly have been work-hardened as a regular part of its construction, but otherwise it simply penetrates because of its shape. The shank below it bends because it is thin, though it may have undergone a little annealing when it was made. Otherwise, it's all one piece of metal, nothing special about it.

Last year I threw one of my pila at a Roman shield which had been specially made for testing a Dacian falx on (photos on the Roman Days page, http://www.larp.com/legioxx/rdays.html ). My pilum went through the shield and stuck into the 2x4 post it was leaning against, splitting it. Ouch! It actually took us a few minutes to get the point out of the wood since we didn't want to bend it all up before the next demo. So, considering that the iron shanks ran from 18 to 30 inches in length, yeah, they are VERY capable of going through the shield and still nailing the guy behind it. Doesn't mean they always do, of course, but they can.

Somewhere around the mid- or late first century AD, the weighted pilum shows up. None have been found by archeologists, yet, but what we see in artwork is a regular tanged pilum with a ball behind the junction block. We are guessing that this is a lead weight, to add penetration power to the weapon since it had been getting progressively lighter over the years. The weight does not form part of the actual joint between iron and wood but is just below the joint. It might have been held in place by a cord wrapping on the wood below it, but there could easily have been some sort of nail or rivet holding it in place. Doesn't seem to be any suggestion that it was designed to be easily removed or replaced, but we just don't know enough. And since the wood shaft was under an inch thick by that time, the weight didn't have to be very big, maybe tennis-ball sized or less. Though there is a tombstone from the late 2nd or early 3rd century that shows a pilum with TWO weights...

Having a pilum stuck in your shield ruins your day in several ways, even if it hasn't hit you. As has been said, it has a lot of leverage and makes the shield very awkward to use. (Most people fighting the Romans, by the way, used shields with a single horizontal handgrip, so dropping it is very simple.) Since the Romans threw these immediately before charging, you only have a few seconds to try to remove it before the legionaries are all over you with their own shields and swords. Not enough time to put your shield down, brace it with your foot, and yank the pilum out! If you can slide back between your buddies to the rear, no problem, but are they going to let you do such a cowardly and disruptive thing at such a crucial moment? An approaching legionary can use that stuck pilum against you, knocking it aside to move your shield out of his way, or just jumping on it, if it's low enough, to rip your shield out of your hand.

If the pilum has some play in its hole, the butt end will be resting on the ground, and the buttspike will dig in and prevent you from going forwards. This could happen very suddenly--ever seen pole-vaulting? With a few hundred pila punching into your front ranks in a few seconds, just as they are all charging forwards, must have been a lot of guys tripping and cartwheeling over their shields, or trying to stop and get loose, or just going down dead and wounded. This would disrupt the whole formation! The pilum is a charge-breaker.

There were certainly other types of javelins used by the Romans, most of them having points shaped like regular spearheads, if smaller. The Republican skirmishers called velites carried a number of javelins behind their shields, some of which apparently had socketed heads like a lighter and shorter version of the socketed pilum. In the Empire, auxiliary infantry regularly carried a pair of lanceae, essentially a light spear suitable for thrusting or throwing, and these had the throwing loop mentioned above. (The pilum never did, as far as we know.)

The later Empire is not my area of expertise, and there is a lot of confusion about the terminology because the Romans tended to use words interchangeably--verutum, spiculum, gaesum, lancea, etc. Several new types of missile appeared, some of which evolved from the pilum (such as the later angon). The plumbata is pretty well known, though I'm not sure if modern experiments have been able to support the claims of its impressive range. (Which might only mean the we're doing something wrong!) On surviving examples, the lead weight was cast directly onto the joint between the iron and the wood.

Whew! That's some of it, at least. I should get back to work and stop wasting your tax dollars! I probably haven't simplified things as far as your game rules go, sorry about that. If you have more questions, feel free to contact me through my website, just be prepared to wait a few days in case I'm behind on my email (as usual).

Have fun, and Valete,

Matthew/Quintus, Legio XX

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply at all that it wouldn't be an effective killing weapon. Obviously, sans shields, you want the weapon to be able to kill. Or if it doesn't hit a shield carried, another possibility. That said, it's a pointy stick; of course it's potentially lethal. The only real question is whether or not the shield defeating mechanisms built in were more intended to kill on a shield hit, or to incapacitate the shield (after all we're looking to model this in a game). That doesn't make it less capable of doing either, just more capable of one or the other.

Basically it seems to me like a javelin that in some cases disables shields (pick whatever rate seems plausible to you). Does that all make sense? In any case, it really depends on the particular pilum design you're talking about in any case. So, for game purposes, I'd just design it to do whatever I wanted, and then just say that it looks like whatever would accomplish that task.

Mike

Thanks Matthew. That was interesting.