The Gaming Den

souran wrote:A Single handed Axe
A single handed mace (usually with a leather thong to tie it to the wrist so it can be "thrown" out of the hand a few inches as its swung)
A straight sword that was modeled after the swords brought into the empire proper by german "barbarians" in the late period of empire. however, the sword retained the large triangle shape at the tip that is seen on roman era swords like the gladius.
A horsemans thowing lance that was an evolution of the roman javalin
A horsemans lance that seems to have been derivative of the ones brought into the Byzantine empire by norman mercenaries
A recurve horsemans bow stolen wholesale from the bedouwin/arab peoples in the eastern edge of the empire who likely stole it from encounters with mongols.

In addition he wore armor and carried a body sized oval shield.


Now did each man carry all this shit with him to every battle? I find that unlikely. However, each man knew all of these weapons, and the emperor was on the hook for arming each man with all of that equipment.

They were the most bad ass guys that that Byzantines could put in the field.

I suspect he may have actually brought all that gear wherever he went, but not necessarily into battle. When on the march (emergencies exempted) cavalry typically walked rather than rode their horses, so you could have the horse carry the gear. Also, you could also have a packhorse that specializes in just carrying the heavy gear.

It's worth noting that the Roman infantryman of earlier periods carried almost quite as much gear without a horse. He didn't have to carry a bow, a lance, or a mace, but he had to lug just about all the other items above while on foot in addition to enough food to feed himself. Estimate is 60 pounds was the normal load for a Roman soldier on the march.

Zinegata wrote:The English didn't have any other bows at Agincourt.

Tea in China?

-Crissa

Zinegata, now you're just deliberately not reading posts so you can argue. That, or internet discourse is beyond you. Welcome to the Ignore list.

K wrote:Zinegata, now you're just deliberately not reading posts so you can argue. That, or internet discourse is beyond you. Welcome to the Ignore list.

Right. Says the person who deliberately ignored I was talking about the English Longbow.

Fact is K, you got embarassed because you were being an ass, and I called you on it. That's the only reason you're putting me on the Ignore list - because you don't wanna man up to the fact that you were an ass and now you're just going "Haha! I'm so above your level!".

Stop being such a fucking baby and grow up. You're a has-been designer who's been riding on stuff he wrote ages ago as an excuse to be "right" at every argument he gets into.

Crissa wrote:

Zinegata wrote:The English didn't have any other bows at Agincourt.

Tea in China?

-Crissa

You're a moron.

The english probably did have other bows; but Henry V's plan specifically worked not in massed fire but line of fire volleys using trained, yes, trained archers. Archers which outnumbered the most generous counting of volley archers on the French side.

So you give an example of twice as many using heavier pull bows on hills beating half as many lighter pull bows approaching on foot.

Woo. Skill? Maybe. But it wasn't the difference in your example. That was raw strength and range.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:The english probably did have other bows; but Henry V's plan specifically worked not in massed fire but line of fire volleys using trained, yes, trained archers. Archers which outnumbered the most generous counting of volley archers on the French side.

Nope. This is you talking without knowing what actually happened as far as history (as we know it) is concerned.

The English did have other bows, yes. The problem is that none of them had the range nor penetrating power of the Longbow. Without the range or power, the arrows would just bounce off the French armor. That's why they didn't bring those other bows along.

The alternative to the Longbow which could penetrate armor was the Crossbow. Which the French used in that battle (they also didn't use bows - their bows were sucky short-ranged ones with no armor penetration).

The problem is that while the Longbow was mainly weather-proof, Crossbows were not. That's another huge reason why the Longbow was so favored by the English - it took a lot of training and skills to use (especially compared to Crossbow), but it at least works in wet weather.

Woo. Skill? Maybe. But it wasn't the difference in your example. That was raw strength and range.

-Crissa

Nope, if you're talking about the ranged combat phase, it was skill vs technology. The French had cannons too, which have far more raw strength and range. Those cannons killed a total of... 1 or 2 archers. The French crossbowmen did even worse and killed no enemy soldiers.

Compare that to several thousand dead Frenchmen because of English archery.

Skill won that particular battle.

So, why did the French bring 'other' bows? Estimated two to six thousand of them, not counting the thousand or so crossbows. Because they're stupid?

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:So, why did the French bring 'other' bows? Estimated two to six thousand of them, not counting the thousand or so crossbows. Because they're stupid?

-Crissa

Because while the majority of the French soldiers wore plate armor, the English did not.

Thus even light French bows would theoretically work against the English.

In practice though... well... the French bowmen didn't kill anyone either. The only ranged weapon that scored a kill on the French side was one of their cannons.

Now you're an expert in cannon and plate armor? Do you have a source? Sounds fascinating.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:Now you're an expert in cannon and plate armor? Do you have a source? Sounds fascinating.

-Crissa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt

Only "Men-at-Arms" got to wear plate mail armor. The English army was about 6,000 strong, of whom only 1,000 wore heavy armor. The rest were longbowmen.

The French fielded at least 10,000 Knights in heavy armor.

I have two other sources, but you'll have to buy the books. Great Commanders & Their Battles, and Keegan's Face of Battle. The latter has an almost blow by blow account of the battle, and it's one of the best works showing how a lot of historical "mysteries" can be solved by simply examining how the weapons actually worked. The wiki quotes Face of Battle extensively - particulaly how the archers contributed to each phase in the battle.

Great Commanders & Their Battles mentioned the cannons and noted they killed at least one archer, but were otherwise ineffectual. Keegan mentioned the guns but no casualties, only that they contributed practically nil to the battle.

GC&TB also goes on to explain how Longbowmen were armed vs Men at Arms. Men at Arms wore full plate, with no shield (the armor was so good the man needed no shield in most cases). Longbowmen by contrast were lucky to have leather armor, and maybe a few had chainmail.

The French crossbowmen and bowmen aren't featured so prominently in either book, but both point to how they were rendered ineffective because they were mostly stationed behind the main line of French Knights. The French didn't have the skills to shoot over their own men, so they remained mostly inactive (assuming the Crossbowmen managed to dry out their weapons).

The English by contrast did train for massed volleys - and Keegan is very explicity in point out that while the French were packed like sardines, the English were also pretty tightly packed as well. That's why they were trained to engage via massed volley fire, as opposed to skirmishing (each trooper picks out one target and shoots) like the French.

(For a detailed explanation as to why volley fire is a skill and not simply "point everyone to one direction and fire", read the second part of Face of Battle, which covers Waterloo. It details how the firing drill requires high discipline and skill, otherwise there'd be a lot of friendly fire losses within the ranks)

I read the wikipedia. And it doesn't define men at arms, apparently there's some dispute on what the French forces were. As far as I know, French men at arms just means a guy with a weapon, a skullcap, and a breastplate. And looking at the diagrams, it's not rate of fire so much as the English had range, and let the French walk into it.

But yes, I can read those books.

No, drills are not skill, Zinegata. They're drills. You take idiots and drill them to do the same things at the same time. That's why they're drills.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:I read the wikipedia. French men at arms just means a guy with a weapon, a skullcap, and a breastplate.

But yes, I can read those books.

Nope. GC&TB is very specific in saying that the majority of Men-At-Arms had full plate by this time. Maybe not all of them had the best quality, but they're almost all full-plated guys by this point. That's why they weren't carrying shields and most had two-handed lances and swords.

In fact, if they weren't in full plate the French line would probably have been massacred even before reaching the English line.

Face of Battle is also very specific in that it was nearly impossible for archers to make a killing blow in melee against the French because they mainly wore platemail - the only weak spots being a visor stab, or a groin stab.

The exception may be the third line of French soldiers - who were made up of non-Nobles. This part of the army barely participated at all at Agincourt, but it' possible they all didn't have full plate.

And looking at the diagrams, it's not rate of fire so much as the English had range, and let the French walk into it.

Given that the English archers had run out of arrows just before the French entered melee range, I would say rate of fire was also very critical. The English fired fast enough that by the time the French got into melee range, the English literally had no arrows left to shoot at them with.

No, drills are not skill, Zinegata. They're drills. You take idiots and drill them to do the same things at the same time.

Nope. You're engaging in semantic wankery now. Drills are a skill. One of many the English archers were taught.

Definition of skill:

"A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both."

Being able to do a complex series of actions (as many as 15 steps for loading and firing old matchlock guns for instance) at the same time is a skill. It is something learned by troops.

Otherwise, learning how to properly slash using a sword isn't a skill. It's the same thing - practiced motion in order to achieve a pre-determined result.

It's not flashy, nor is it some super-uber technique. But it's a skill.

FrankTrollman wrote:Just confused. Andy Collins and Ed Stark teamed up to do the form shifting changes from 3e to 3.5. Very approximately, they were:

• Form Changing granted Supernatural Abilities where before it did not.
• Form changing changed your type, while before you kept your own type.

So Wildshape + Animal Growth cheez was a creation of 3.5. So was Phoenix Duplication. Polymorph was still broken, and you could still make a Solar or whatever the fuck using any edition of Polymorph Any Object. But the revamp to Polymorph and Wildshape and Shapechange were pretty much across the board power-ups.

Thanks for clearing that up for me!

I long since gave up trying to keep track of their polymorph errata.

Wyzzard wrote:
I long since gave up trying to keep track of their polymorph errata.

Probably for the best. Every time they errataed the damn thing they became less comprehensible. Not less powerful, but harder to adjudicate. At the end they created a list of interdependencies and inheritances so convoluted that everyone just gave up. When you had to read the Tome and Blood Errata to figure out that you could still turn into a Planetar for the AC bonus and flight if you happened to be an Alienist or a Tiefling, people cared. But with the final errata, where you had to read Alter Self, the Alter Self Errata, Polymorph, the Polymorph Errata, the PHB2's Polymorph Subschool, the Polymorph Subschool Errata and the MM's Alternate Form and the Alternate Form Errata, then put all the text in order to figure out which "except as follows" lines contradicted which others before you finally figured out that anyone could just Polymorph into an Abeil Queen can cast as a Druid of higher level than themselves... that was just too much fucking work.

And it wouldn't work in a real game anyway, because there is no way that you could get your DM to sit still while you lined up the literally 9 references in 7 different texts needed to actually adjudicate the effects of that one spell. That was simple "balance through obfuscation." The spells became so confusing that they were defacto banned.

-Username17

Zinegata wrote:Nope, if you're talking about the ranged combat phase, it was skill vs technology. The French had cannons too, which have far more raw strength and range. Those cannons killed a total of... 1 or 2 archers. The French crossbowmen did even worse and killed no enemy soldiers.

Compare that to several thousand dead Frenchmen because of English archery.

Skill won that particular battle.

Of course according to the wiki page you linked the French did not actually use their ranged assets, instead deploying them in the rear. I imagine not getting to fire at all might account for not killing any enemies, eh?

Murtak wrote:Of course according to the wiki page you linked the French did not actually use their ranged assets, instead deploying them in the rear. I imagine not getting to fire at all might account for not killing any enemies, eh?

Yep. See my comment from above:

The French crossbowmen and bowmen aren't featured so prominently in either book, but both point to how they were rendered ineffective because they were mostly stationed behind the main line of French Knights. The French didn't have the skills to shoot over their own men, so they remained mostly inactive (assuming the Crossbowmen managed to dry out their weapons).

They did however use their cannon according to GC&TB, which scored the sole French ranged kill of the battle. So it's not true that they totally didn't shoot.

Crissa wrote:But yes, I can read those books.

Keegan's Faces of Battle is a great read and well worth it.

I'm glad Polymorph was never abused by any of my players in either edition. I'm going to go out on a limb and blame that on the text being over half a page in length. If they knew there was that much errata as well, they certainly never would have considered it.

RobbyPants wrote:I'm glad Polymorph was never abused by any of my players in either edition. I'm going to go out on a limb and blame that on the text being over half a page in length. If they knew there was that much errata as well, they certainly never would have considered it.

Yeah, I've never really had any PCs try to use this spell since it was just too confusing and mostly after reading the first paragraph they just got bored and looked for something simpler.

Similarly, I never had any problems with polymorph because my group used it only in really basic ways.

A) Save or Die turn badguy X into a sheep or goat or cow. Then they never used it on anybody or anything that might actually be able to change back without the aid of another person. So polymoph was the kill spell for the wizards Uberthug bodyguard.

B) To turn into various kinds of dinosuar because there natural attacks were pretty good and sometimes its just easier to crunch badguys by depleting their hit points.

Actually, my groups tended to have a fetish for dinosuars they were the favorite things to summon with summon natures ally spells.

OK, first post, finally registered 'cos this is starting to amuse me.

Zinegata.

As I understand it K's point is that physical conditioning is more important in combat than skill. He has illustrated this point by claiming he could train a child to put ten arrows a minute down range in a controlled fashion in under two hours.

You have countered this argument with a massive number of posts that are making K's point for him.

AFAIK the body of an English Longbowman can be identified by the skeletal deformation the intense physical training regime caused them.

English archers won the day at Agincourt because they were in substantially better physical condition than the French archers.

Which was K's whole point.

So crizh;

If you took a hundred modern Olympic athletes and a hundred Roman legionaries and gave them whatever ancient weapons they want do you think the Olympians would win? If not how much training do you think they'd need?

Juton wrote:So crizh;

If you took a hundred modern Olympic athletes and a hundred Roman legionaries and gave them whatever ancient weapons they want do you think the Olympians would win? If not how much training do you think they'd need?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadliest_Warrior

Juton wrote:So crizh;

If you took a hundred modern Olympic athletes and a hundred Roman legionaries and gave them whatever ancient weapons they want do you think the Olympians would win? If not how much training do you think they'd need?

Of course the Olympians would win. Roman Legionaries are like 5'2" and generally 14. It would be incredibly ugly.

The Olympians would only need a few hours to get accustomed to their armor and weaponry - and of course a long talking to about tactics and bravery. They already have the discipline or they wouldn't be Olympians in the first place. Discipline and health are the two largest factors in ancient warfare.

-Username17