Sitting on the sofa once again, my wife is learning French and I’m chilling after a game of Traveller 5 with referee Wandererbill.
In that game, two player characters were fighting two non-player characters in a public toilet, as you do. A punch to the nose, put everything into that blow, and the opponent goes down. Ready an improved T11 laser pistol and be ready to deal 6d6 damage.
6d6 damage is harsh because your three physical attributes are your hit-points and they are determined using 2d6 each. They never improve. Furthermore, if the first attribute drops to zero, you faint; if the second attribute drops to zero, only a top-shot medic and many weeks of convalescence can save you. If the third attribute drops to zero, you’re extremely dead.
In Classic Traveller, wearing armour makes you harder to hit. It uses a weapons vs. armour table to model this. In later Traveller version I’ve seen, armour soaks damage. In today’s fight, the player character didn’t want to fire their laser pistol on the body guard; but the body guard did shoot their body pistol at the second player character, dealing 13 points of damage. I thought they might die! But the cloth armour soaked up 14 points of damage (or more?) – and so the player character was unhurt.
Since I’m always in favour of terrible consequences of combat happening quickly, that means I prefer Classic Traveller. When push comes to shove, I prefer all combatants to be unarmoured. I don’t want to go as far as Electric Bastion Land and have damage be dealt automatically, but this is the right direction, I think. Nothing is more boring than a exchanging ineffectual blows at the table using dice. I find the decision of whether to fight and when to fight a lot more interesting than how to fight. I don’t want to make fights more interesting, I want to make them shorter.
Having people fall unconscious but not die immediately is genius.
It all came together for me when I read an essay by Frank Westenfelder about Swiss fighters (translation below).
Es war ein wildes, archaisches Kriegertum, das seine passende Ausdrucksform im “Gewalthaufen” fand. In diesen gewaltigen Menschenblöcken waren die ersten Glieder mit dem bis fünf Meter langen Langspieß bewaffnet. Ihre Aufgabe bestand hauptsächlich darin, den Ansturm der gepanzerten Reiter abzuwehren, weshalb zunehmend darauf geachtet wurde, dass eine Mindestzahl mit dieser eigentlich unpopulären Waffe ausgerüstet war. Denn die große Masse bevorzugte die Halmbarte (Halm mit Bart), aus der später die Hellebarte wurde. In Untersuchungen wurde nachgewiesen, dass Spieß und Armbrust aber auch Harnische bei den Schweizern äußerst unbeliebt waren. Sie waren schlecht im Nahkampf zu verwenden und behinderten bei der Verfolgung und beim Beutemachen. Es gab immer wieder Klagen der Tagsatzung (des Parlaments), dass viele Krieger ihre Harnische und Spieße zu Hause gelassen hatten. Manchmal musste den Aufgeboten dann die die notwendige Ausrüstung hinterher geschickt werden, um zumindest die ersten Glieder entsprechend zu bewaffnen. – Die Schweizer: Reisläufer aus den Alpen
Die Schweizer: Reisläufer aus den Alpen
A rough translation: The outer ring was armed with 5m long spears to defend against cavalry. Apparently this spear was not popular but they made sure that a certain number of them used this weapon. Most of them favoured the halberd. Spears, crossbows and the cuirass were extremely unpopular because they were not easy to use in melee and they hindered you when chasing others and when plundering. Apparently there were repeatedly complaints that many fighters had left their cuirass and spear at home and sometimes this equipment had to be sent after the armies such that at least the first rows were suitably armed.
They didn’t like to wear armour! It was bad for melee unless you were a knight, or if your job was to stop a knight.
This is why Helmbarten (“Halberts”) doesn’t have armour. The stories we tell are not about charging knights and the front rows of the Gewalthaufen (the “violent bunch”). All weapons do 2d6 damage except for the halberd which does 3d6 damage. And thus the chances of half the people dropping after the first round is very high, and that’s how I like it.
When the fighting begins, all odds are off.
#RPG #Halberts
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This is an interesting account. I imagine most enlisted soldiers fought in no more than a few battles per year. I wonder how many left this heavy/bulky stuff at “home” because most of the war is lugging your stuff around in mud, snow or under a baking sun?
On a related note, I find armor challenging for my suspension of disbelief. My players happily wear their armor all day every day, climbing mountains, trekking, shopping… I used to pique them about the discomfort, body odor and strange looks they get in a desperate attempt to maintain my illusion of my own game world being plausible. To little effect.
Maybe I just need to stop worrying and just let it be a game. You seem to have found your peace with 2019-03-19 Metal Armour.
Perhaps I ought to make stealth a bigger factor in my game? Make the enemy powerful enough that good AC will not save you if your noisy armor prevents you from picking who/when/where to fight…
– Björn Buckwalter 2022-02-16 19:57 UTC
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Maybe armour should be something you equip your bodyguards with. Then be in the background, throwing spells, and then running for your life. 😀
– Alex 2022-02-17 17:47 UTC
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Then again… see 2022-02-20 Pike vs. Lance which talks about how we might implement armour: it turns 2d6 rolls to hit into 3d6 rolls to hit.
– Alex 2022-02-20 15:55 UTC