# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games >  Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

## Brother Oni

Real World Weapon, Armour and Tactics Thread XXIX

This thread is a resource for getting information about real life weapons, armour and tactics. The concept has always been that the information is for RPG players and DMs so they can use it to make their games better, thus it's here rather than in Friendly Banter.

A few rules for this thread:

This thread is for asking questions about how weapons, armour and tactics really work. As such, it's not going to include game rule statistics. If you have such a question, especially if it stems from an answer or question in this thread, feel free to start a new thread and include a link back to here. If you do ask a rule question here, you'll be asked to move it elsewhere, and then we'll be happy to help out with it.Any weapon or time period is open for questions. Medieval and ancient warfare questions seem to predominate, but since there are many games set in other periods as well, feel free to ask about any weapon. This includes futuristic ones - but be aware that these will be likely assessed according to their real life feasibility. Thus, phasers, for example, will be talked about in real-world science and physics terms rather than the Star Trek canon. If you want to discuss a fictional weapon from a particular source according to the canonical explanation, please start a new thread for it.Please try to cite your claims if possible. If you know of a citation for a particular piece of information, please include it. However, everyone should be aware that sometimes even the experts don't agree, so it's quite possible to have two conflicting answers to the same question. This isn't a problem; the asker of the question can examine the information and decide which side to go with. The purpose of the thread is to provide as much information as possible. Debates are fine, but be sure to keep it a friendly debate (even if the experts can't!).No modern real-world political discussion. As the great Carl von Clausevitz once said, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," so politics and war are heavily intertwined. However, politics are a big hot-button issue and one banned on these boards, so avoid political analysis if at all possible (this thread is primarily about military hardware and tactics). There's more leeway on this for anything prior to about 1800, but be very careful with all of it, and anything past 1900 is surely not open for analysis (These are arbitrary dates but any dates would be, and these are felt to be reasonable).No graphic descriptions. War is violent, dirty, and horrific, and anyone discussing it should be keenly aware of that. However, on this board graphic descriptions of violence (or sexuality) are not allowed, so please avoid them.A few additional comments following the premature demise of thread XXVI: Words from Roland St. Jude.
With that done, have at and enjoy yourselves!

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## Brother Oni

Previously in this thread: discussion of muskets, rifles, rifle-muskets and the transitional period thereof.

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## fusilier

> The examples in question are illustrative of trends, not proof entire. And just as individual examples may be misleading, so too can any number of mathematical arguments.


Yes.  But, the only studies to actually look at and analyze large numbers of battles in a systematic way, did not find those trends.  That's the strength of Griffith's et al's argument.  It's not based upon reasoning from a series of assumptions, it's based upon reasoning from the battlefield evidence.  Is that potentially flawed? -- of course, but I'm not aware of any other theories that have been able to work from the evidence and come to radically different conclusions for the actual battlefield effectiveness.




> 3. Artillery is drawn substantially further back, even when using the same cannon as youd find in Napoleonics.


What is the evidence for this?  Is this based upon actual battlefield reports, or an assumption about the increased range of rifle-muskets?  (I'm not trying to pick on you, I know these theories don't originate with you).  There were cases in the Civil War where artillery was rushed forward to decisively fill a gap, while at Waterloo the French artillery bombarded the allied lines at long range.  Theory may have stated that artillery should be sent forward to support the infantry and cavalry -- but how often did it happen in practice?  Did Civil War commanders fail to live up to the theory more than their predecessors?  [Griffith and Hess say no they didn't]

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## Gnoman

I can't remember the details, but I know I've read several accounts of officers detailing picked men to push forward a bit and harass enemy artillery with accurate rifle fire. Which could easily lead to the guns being pulled further back.


That said, the assertion that the cannon of the ACW were fundamentally the same as those used by Napoleon is correct - if you are talking about Napoleon III. They were far, far more capable than those used by Bonaparte.

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## fusilier

> I can't remember the details, but I know I've read several accounts of officers detailing picked men to push forward a bit and harass enemy artillery with accurate rifle fire. Which could easily lead to the guns being pulled further back.


I've read accounts from the Napoleonic Wars of the same thing, although with smoothbore muskets (some of them at surprisingly long ranges).  Skirmishers can absolutely harass artillery, but they can be driven off by cavalry or other infantry.  That's why the theory states you should support your artillery.  Again, theory and practice aren't always the same.  

I don't know if my point is being lost.  Griffith's and Hess's works are based on looking at the battle reports of many battles, and seeing if they confirm or dispute claims made about the effect of rifle-muskets on battle tactics.  Griffith started it, and others who have tried to add more datapoints, found those datapoints only reinforced Griffith's position.  I can't remember whether or not they provide alternate theories.  For example the terrain of American Civil War battlefields is often listed as a reason why they didn't use the same tactics as Europeans, although I'm not entirely convinced of that.

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## Blackhawk748

Well I have an easy explination for why cavalry was used the way it was in the ACW. Because most American Commanders considered the European Lancer (they aren't real lancers but I'm not gonna keep saying Charge with Sabers Drawn) was kinda dumb. And it made a lot of sense from where they were sitting.

Cavalry was for Scouting, Harrassing, Raiding, and maybe being Dragoons and that's about it, because in all the wars they fought that's mostly what cavalry really could do. There wasn't a whole lot of large units in the Seminole wars, and so the cavalry being much closer to Dragoons makes sense.

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## KineticDiplomat

So, looking for Paddy Griffith. I can find his napoleonic stuff, his WWI stuff, and some desert WWII. Does he have an off-brand name for the ACW study? 

Concerning artillery, napoleonic manuals dictated employing artillery 100-150m in front of the infantry on the defense, and the French tactics often relied on moving their guns into short range on the offense. (Kiley, artillery of the napoleonic wars). In many cases artillery was deliberately brought less than 250 meters from the enemy on the offense, with some examples bringing attacking batteries as into 50-60m, or within the typical range of musket vollies. 

While the ACW sees several cases where a defending battery ends up under 100 meters from attacking infantry by dint of misfortune or desperation, I cannot easily find examples where even light-medium smoothbore napoleons are brought forward under fire to deliver canister offensively.

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## Mike_G

I'm not entirely sure what point we're arguing here. 

Were rifled muskets better than smoothbores? Yes, in just about any measurable way, with the exception of the use of buck and ball, which was useful at close range only. Rifles with Minie bullets let you have rifle accuracy and range with the a rate of fire of a smoothbore

Did they make much difference on the battlefield? Probably not really.

But this is simply because the full value of the new technology wasn't going to be realized without a new doctrine that took advantage of those improvements. An accurate rifle or an inaccurate musket that a raw recruit points through the smoke in that vague direction of the enemy is probably gonna miss, either way. So both weapons require many, many rounds to produce a casualty.

Much like tanks in WWI. They probably could have been a game changer, but they weren't deployed in large enough numbers and the doctrine hadn't evolved to take advantage of the new weapon. So they made a modest difference ion a few battles, but probably didn't change very much. A massive tank breakthrough followed closely by infantry, and even cavalry might have blown the front wide open, but the commanders were learning how to use a new weapon, and probably didn't want to risk the whole tank corps in one push if things went badly.

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## fusilier

> So, looking for Paddy Griffith. I can find his napoleonic stuff, his WWI stuff, and some desert WWII. Does he have an off-brand name for the ACW study? 
> 
> Concerning artillery, napoleonic manuals dictated employing artillery 100-150m in front of the infantry on the defense, and the French tactics often relied on moving their guns into short range on the offense. (Kiley, artillery of the napoleonic wars). In many cases artillery was deliberately brought less than 250 meters from the enemy on the offense, with some examples bringing attacking batteries as into 50-60m, or within the typical range of musket vollies. 
> 
> While the ACW sees several cases where a defending battery ends up under 100 meters from attacking infantry by dint of misfortune or desperation, I cannot easily find examples where even light-medium smoothbore napoleons are brought forward under fire to deliver canister offensively.


The book by Paddy Griffith is called _Battle Tactics of the Civil War_.  Although, you might want to check up something by Hess as it would be more recent.

As mentioned before, there's a difference between theory and practice.  For clarification, for artillery on the defensive, are they talking about placing their artillery 100-150m in front of their own infantry?  (i.e. infantry should support the artillery at that distance).

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## fusilier

Earl Hess's more recent work is _Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness_
EDIT -- an earlier work of his, which probably covers this issue directly, is _The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth_ -- EDIT

I haven't read it, but there's a lecture about it here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?416997...actics-weapons

I have some issues with the comments on tactics (I think mainly his terminology is a bit off for a reenactor who's familiar with the details), but I think it's generally ok.  He gets to weapons around minute 25.

EDIT 2 -- at 57:30 he answers a question about artillery (and cavalry).  Hess admits that he's not sure of it, but is currently working on a book about the subject.  He points out that some European historians have claimed that it was very rare in the Napoleonic Wars for artillery to be used at close range.  Similar musings about cavalry.

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## Gnoman

> Much like tanks in WWI. They probably could have been a game changer, but they weren't deployed in large enough numbers and the doctrine hadn't evolved to take advantage of the new weapon. So they made a modest difference ion a few battles, but probably didn't change very much. A massive tank breakthrough followed closely by infantry, and even cavalry might have blown the front wide open, but the commanders were learning how to use a new weapon, and probably didn't want to risk the whole tank corps in one push if things went badly.


Probably not. Defensive firepower was only one of the major reasons breakthroughs were so hard to come by in WW1. The other (and far larger) one was logistics. Not only was a huge amount of supply transport still horse-drawn (after leaving the trains), but the attacker's supply lines would be crossing what had just previously been No Man's Land, and was barely crossable. Worst of all, the supply lines would be getting longer and longer. Meanwhile the defenders would be bringing up their supplies on much better ground (out of range of most of the guns, and aerial bombing was too new and light to make a real impact), and getting steadily shorter.

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## KineticDiplomat

As in the guns were placed in front of their own infantry.

Anyhow, I grabbed the newer Hess book on Kindle and am reading, but from the intro it looks like his argument is fundamentally:

A: The rifle musket did not actually get used beyond 100m effectively
B: Battles had similar casualty rates

Therefore

C: The rifle musket did not actually have a dramatic effect

On top of which:

D: linear tactics had many other valuable facets (this actually goes on, but isnt central to our discussion)

Therefore

E: The tactics of line and column were appropriate until the introduction of the breech loader.

BUT

E: American techno-fetishism and ingrained disdain for linear tactics which seem culturally repulsive to an individualistic society blinds us to this.



So, basically the foundational argument  that weve been going for/against  for the last few posts.

Im not sure that logic holds as a whole - most small arms fire in Berlin was under 100m, and the casualties were roughly proportional to Gettysburg, I wouldnt say that means that clearly the weapons had no dramatic change in effect on the battlefield. 

But Ill give it a read and check back in in a week or so.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The other (and far larger) one was logistics. Not only was a huge amount of supply transport still horse-drawn (after leaving the trains), but the attacker's supply lines would be crossing what had just previously been No Man's Land, and was barely crossable. Worst of all, the supply lines would be getting longer and longer. Meanwhile the defenders would be bringing up their supplies on much better ground (out of range of most of the guns, and aerial bombing was too new and light to make a real impact), and getting steadily shorter.


Well, yes and no. The real reason is that there is no single reason. WW1 was what is best called a paradigm shift in warfare on literally every possible level. It's not that you can't overcome the logistical problems enough to get a breakthrough and exploit it, the problem is that there was no one around who knew that.

Breakthrough of a frontline was achieved somewhat routinely on western front, the trouble was, no one knew to make proper followup plans, or even what they are. People like to say that's because the high command was rigid and aristocratic, but that's only partly true. In older battles, breakthroughs were exploited by the same people who broke through, but now you had dozens of kilometers of battlefield over several weeks, as opposed a few kilometers over maybe a few days.

That means all your planning and army organization needs to change completely. Add to that the little issue of being at war, and the pressure of if you screw up once, you're out, and if you screw up really badly, you'll cist us the war, and you can see why there was considerable reluctance to make any large changes and moving away from "old and proven" things. Especially since new things very, very often didn't work - French were actually the first to use chemical weapons in the war, but the Germans didn't even notice it.

This war is one of those that would change completely if you managed to get one guy with proper know-how into the past and have him be listened to. Which he probably wouldn't be, because switching an entire army from essentially Napoleonic organization to combined arms takes time. Most armies (most notably British) weren't done until mid-WW2.

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## Vinyadan

> That said, the assertion that the cannon of the ACW were fundamentally the same as those used by Napoleon is correct - if you are talking about Napoleon III. They were far, far more capable than those used by Bonaparte.


That's actually in the American moniker for the cannon: 12-pounder Napoleon, after Napoleon III.

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## fusilier

> As in the guns were placed in front of their own infantry.
> 
> Anyhow, I grabbed the newer Hess book on Kindle and am reading, but from the intro it looks like his argument is fundamentally:
> 
> A: The rifle musket did not actually get used beyond 100m effectively
> B: Battles had similar casualty rates
> 
> . . .


Which book are you reading?  I think the one about infantry tactics only references those points, and doesn't really lay out the case.

There is a third point to take into account: the tactics didn't fundamentally change either.  If we accept the evidence for these points, then it's hard to conclude that rifle-muskets effected a revolutionary change in warfare.

It's good to be skeptical, the data is invariably incomplete, and the analysis could be flawed.  But I don't think it's useful to reject data because it doesn't fit the expected conclusion.  We know that on the range the rifle clearly shows more accuracy (this was well tested at the time).  But that alone is not enough to reject the data.  If we can't find a flaw within the data itself, then we have to ask if there was something else on the battlefield that negated the superiority of the rifle musket.  A couple obvious candidates arise almost immediately:  1. a complete absence of marksmanship training, and 2. volley tactics that didn't give any time to actually "aim" the weapon.

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## Max_Killjoy

Regarding ACW artillery.  

There was a unit from near where I grew up, a Union light artillery battery that had been a volunteer militia unit before the war, equipped with six 10-lb Parrot rifles once the war started.  

They were more than once positioned to hold the _end_ of the Union line, and in at least one instance the Confederate dead were said to have literally been piled up within 100 yards of the their muzzles.   They were assigned to knock out Confederate artillery batteries at long range more than once, and are said to have routinely put the first or second shot on target from well over a mile away, including one time that took the Confederates completely by surprise as they had assumed they were out of effective artillery range at that moment.

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## fusilier

> Regarding ACW artillery.  
> 
> There was a unit from near where I grew up, a Union light artillery battery that had been a volunteer militia unit before the war, equipped with six 10-lb Parrot rifles once the war started.  
> 
> They were more than once positioned to hold the _end_ of the Union line, and in at least one instance the Confederate dead were said to have literally been piled up within 100 yards of the their muzzles.   They were assigned to knock out Confederate artillery batteries at long range more than once, and are said to have routinely put the first or second shot on target from well over a mile away, including one time that took the Confederates completely by surprise as they had assumed they were out of effective artillery range at that moment.


I'm kind of amazed by how accurate cannon fire could be.  The Civil War artillery reenactors I know, who have lived fired their cannons, tell some impressive stories.  Even with little mountain howitzers, they can expect to hit something the size of a tent at 600 yards (over half of its effective range).  I know historically, they trained a lot, learned to judge distances, etc.  I've been told that a smoothbore piece wears in, from the cannonball bouncing down the barrel.  After so many shots, the wear will be established, and the gun will fire consistently -- the ball is still bouncing down the barrel, but, as long as the cannon is loaded consistently, it bounces consistently each time.  So the artillerists learn how the gun shoots.  (Eventually the gun wears out, and the fire becomes inconsistent again).

There's a story from the Battle of Fredericksburg, on the Union left, not the attack on Marye's Heights, about a union battery commander.  He was seated on his horse talking to another officer, when a confederate shell flew by their heads and exploded a limber behind them.  Responding "that was unkind," the battery commander dismounted, walked over to a nearby gun that had just been loaded (I think it was a 3" ordnance rifle), took charge of the gun, very carefully aimed it, then stepped back and instructed the gunner to fire.  A few seconds later a Confederate artillery caisson(!) exploded in a huge fireball.  Troops fighting on the battlefield felt this huge explosion, and the fighting in that section of the battlefield kind of petered out.

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## Gnoman

> That's actually in the American moniker for the cannon: 12-pounder Napoleon, after Napoleon III.


Right, but a lot of people think it refers to Napoleon I of the Napoleonic Wars. Mostly because the later Napoleons are much less famous.

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## Mike_G

> If we can't find a flaw within the data itself, then we have to ask if there was something else on the battlefield that negated the superiority of the rifle musket.  A couple obvious candidates arise almost immediately:  1. a complete absence of marksmanship training, and 2. volley tactics that didn't give any time to actually "aim" the weapon.


I think those two factors are plenty.

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## Misereor

Does anyone have examples of words describing arms and armor having changed over time? 
Example: "Harness" originally meant something worn on the body. During the middle ages, it described a complete set of armor. Today it describes gear worn by types of domestic animals. 


Besides that, I would just like to add my appreciation to everyone who has contributed to this amazing series of threads.

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## rrgg

> Does anyone have examples of words describing arms and armor having changed over time? 
> Example: "Harness" originally meant something worn on the body. During the middle ages, it described a complete set of armor. Today it describes gear worn by types of domestic animals. 
> 
> 
> Besides that, I would just like to add my appreciation to everyone who has contributed to this amazing series of threads.


Alrighty! here's some of the stuff that I think i've sorted out when it comes to ~16th century english:

Starting with "arms and armor" - "arms" could refer to both weapons and armor but back then tended to lean more towards meaning armor in usage. i.e. you more often read "armed and weaponed" than "armed and armored", or you might see soldiers in an army categorized as "armed men" or "unarmed men" referring to respectively armored soldiers and unarmored soldiers.

- "Men-at-arms" in the 1500s treatises use to refer to a specific type of noble/professional heavy cavalry soldier, see the french ordinance gendarmes of the previous century, who were supposed to wear complete plate armor head to toe, carry a lance, sword, and mace, and also have armored barding for their horse. Though increasingly in practice even soldiers who were nominally men-at-arms seem to have been preferring to go into battle with less complete arming even when horse armor was available somewhere in their baggage train.

- On that note "barbed horses" or "barbed lances" = cavalry on horses with armored barding, not actual barbs.

- "Javelin" seems to have more often referred to a type of long, lightweight spear with a point at each end sometimes used from horseback, while dedicated throwing spears were just called "darts". Usually spelled "Iavelin" because the letter j wasn't invented yet, and other possible names may have included "punching staves", "lancegays", "zagayas", or "spears".

- infantry spears were called "half-pikes"

- a "corselet" referred to a complete infantryman's armor including the curiass, tasses, pauldrons, vambraces, gorget, burgonet, and sometimes gauntlets.

- "curiassiers" were cavalry who wore 3/4ths armor, not just a curiass

- "lancers" and "demilancers" Sir Roger Williams says are the same thing, were generally armed the same as the men-at-arms but with no horse barding, no greaves/foot armor, more likely to have a pistol or two instead of the mace, and typically has far fewer spare horses and servants with him. Sometimes, especially in translations of french and spanish sources, this type of cavalry continued to be referred with just the title "light horsemen", even at times when they had be come the most heavily-armed type of cavalry still in use.

- Conversely in Elizabethan english armies, "light horse" might be more likely to refer to cavalry drawn from the anglo-scottish "boarder reivers" an even lighter, usually mail-clad cavalry armed with light lances or spears, also known as "boarderers", "spear men" or "northern spears". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:T..._-_plate09.jpg

- "musket" originally referred specifically to infantry firearms so large and heavy they required a forked rest to fire. The lighter guns were just called "arquebuses" using many different spellings, or for a time in the late 1500s "calivers" after a series of wacky misunderstandings.

- As the musket and caliver became the more common infantry weapons the different spellings of "arquebusier"/"harquebusier" came to refer specifically to a type of light cavalry who carried a wheellock or flint-striking arquebus that could be used from horseback. It should be noted that this cavalry would usually be differentiated from "dragoons", who initially were not true cavalry but mounted infantry.

- "short swords" were swords roughly around 3 feet long

- "long swords" were this thing everyone writing military treatises seems to have hated and said no one should ever use

- a "battle" often referred to to a large formation of soldiers, a large pike square, or sometimes an echelon made up of small "battalions"

- a "spontoon" according to Robert Barret was "a small long instrument of iron, sharpe at the ende, to thrust thorough anie loade of haie, straw, or such like, to proue if any souldiers lie hidden within the same." here are some of his other definitions: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A0...;view=fulltext

I can probably come up with more later but hopefully that's a start

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## fusilier

> - a "corselet" referred to a complete infantryman's armor including the curiass, tasses, pauldrons, vambraces, gorget, burgonet, and sometimes gauntlets.


It could also refer to the person who wore such armor (at least in some Spanish sources -- they were paid more than the unarmored pikemen).  That list is a good start.

I'll add another one:

Captain was more of a title than a rank.  Anybody in charge of a "company" of soldiers was a captain (although before the late 1400s, purely infantry companies, a lower status, were commanded by "constables").  A mercenary company could be 50 men, or a 1,000 lances (3-4 men) and a few hundred infantry.  It was basically anything the Captain could raise and get paid for.  The captain in charge of an army, was called a "Captain-General."

In the Spanish tercios of the 1500s, the companies had become more standardized, but Captain was still kind of a title.  The commander of a tercio (approximately 10-12 companies) was the captain of the 1st company, and was also called a "coronel".  The captain of the 2nd company was also the "Sergeant-Major", who was responsible for organizing the tercio on the battlefield.

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## Clistenes

> It could also refer to the person who wore such armor (at least in some Spanish sources -- they were paid more than the unarmored pikemen).  That list is a good start.
> 
> I'll add another one:
> 
> Captain was more of a title than a rank.  Anybody in charge of a "company" of soldiers was a captain (although before the late 1400s, purely infantry companies, a lower status, were commanded by "constables").  A mercenary company could be 50 men, or a 1,000 lances (3-4 men) and a few hundred infantry.  It was basically anything the Captain could raise and get paid for.  The captain in charge of an army, was called a "Captain-General."
> 
> In the Spanish tercios of the 1500s, the companies had become more standardized, but Captain was still kind of a title.  The commander of a tercio (approximately 10-12 companies) was the captain of the 1st company, and was also called a "coronel".  The captain of the 2nd company was also the "Sergeant-Major", who was responsible for organizing the tercio on the battlefield.


Actually, the commander of a Tercio was a "Maestre"; coronels would command other units, like German and Walloon regiments...

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## Max_Killjoy

> Captain was more of a title than a rank.  Anybody in charge of a "company" of soldiers was a captain (although before the late 1400s, purely infantry companies, a lower status, were commanded by "constables").  A mercenary company could be 50 men, or a 1,000 lances (3-4 men) and a few hundred infantry.  It was basically anything the Captain could raise and get paid for.  The captain in charge of an army, was called a "Captain-General."
> 
> In the Spanish tercios of the 1500s, the companies had become more standardized, but Captain was still kind of a title.  The commander of a tercio (approximately 10-12 companies) was the captain of the 1st company, and was also called a "coronel".  The captain of the 2nd company was also the "Sergeant-Major", who was responsible for organizing the tercio on the battlefield.


This can be seen a few times in the LotR trilogy, when characters are referred to as "captains", or references more generally to "the captains" are made.

E:  Also, slightly outdated "captains of industry".  Or a "team captain".

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## Mike_G

That's still kind of a thing in the Navy. The captain of a ship is just the person in charge. A Lieutenant Commander who is in in command of the ship is addressed as Captain.

Of course, there's an actual rank of Captain in the Navy, which is confusingly equivalent to a Colonel in the Army or Marines

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## rrgg

> Actually, the commander of a Tercio was a "Maestre"; coronels would command other units, like German and Walloon regiments...


Yeah, the "Maestre del Campo" is what Williams and Barret said the spanish coronels were called. Somewhat confusingly though in english the "Camp-master" or "Master of the camp" would instead usually refer to something like a regimental-level or army-level quartermaster.




> It could also refer to the person who wore such armor (at least in some Spanish sources -- they were paid more than the unarmored pikemen).  That list is a good start.
> 
> I'll add another one:
> 
> Captain was more of a title than a rank.  Anybody in charge of a "company" of soldiers was a captain (although before the late 1400s, purely infantry companies, a lower status, were commanded by "constables").  A mercenary company could be 50 men, or a 1,000 lances (3-4 men) and a few hundred infantry.  It was basically anything the Captain could raise and get paid for.  The captain in charge of an army, was called a "Captain-General."
> 
> In the Spanish tercios of the 1500s, the companies had become more standardized, but Captain was still kind of a title.  The commander of a tercio (approximately 10-12 companies) was the captain of the 1st company, and was also called a "coronel".  The captain of the 2nd company was also the "Sergeant-Major", who was responsible for organizing the tercio on the battlefield.


That's true, the spanish would use "corselets" for what the english listed as "armed men" or "armed pikes." I think Melzo's cavalry manual also uses "corselets" as the name for pistoliers/curiassers.

Regarding the captain thing, I think the comparison to ships like Mike_G points out kind of makes sense. You might have many different sizes of ships, some with several hundred men and some with only a couple dozen, but each one has its own captain. The difference is that when preparing for a battle on land you might frequently do the equivalent of lashing a bunch of smaller ships together to create one really big ship, or lashing a couple of very different ships together to balance out their strengths and weaknesses. When this happens you would then have to elect one of the captains to be the head captain overall who steers the entire mass of ships at once, likely based on seniority, ability, or social status. 

You'd then usually assign things for all the other captains to do temporarily so they don't get bored. For instance you could assign them roles that might normally be done by a lesser officer such as putting one captain in charge of all the cannons on one side of the ship and another captain in charge of the other side's cannons, you might have some of the captains serving as advisors or relaying orders, or you might just mix a bunch of the extra captains into the front rank of the boarding party since they all have good weapons and armor as well as good motivation.

Once the battle is over though you then have to split everything back up into all the original ships each with their original captains and crews so that they can each sail back home to their individual home ports.

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## fusilier

> Actually, the commander of a Tercio was a "Maestre"; coronels would command other units, like German and Walloon regiments...


I stand corrected.  Coronels also commanded an earlier, smaller unit, a _coronelia_.  

The other thing about captains, is that their status depended upon multiple factors, usually the bigger the company they commanded (in the mercenary structures) the higher status they were granted.  So they weren't viewed as being "equal" in rank.

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## VonKaiserstein

> That's still kind of a thing in the Navy. The captain of a ship is just the person in charge. A Lieutenant Commander who is in in command of the ship is addressed as Captain.
> 
> Of course, there's an actual rank of Captain in the Navy, which is confusingly equivalent to a Colonel in the Army or Marines


Equally confusing, if you are a captain in the Marines, then while on board a navy ship you are socially promoted to Major purely to avoid the confusion of there being more than one Captain on the ship.  This promotion does not last once you get to shore.

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## Mike_G

> Equally confusing, if you are a captain in the Marines, then while on board a navy ship you are socially promoted to Major purely to avoid the confusion of there being more than one Captain on the ship.  This promotion does not last once you get to shore.


Naval tradition is really odd sometimes.

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## Brother Oni

> Naval tradition is really odd sometimes.


And sometimes very politically incorrect and cool. For example, it's still a standing tradition that UK submarines fly the Jolly Roger (yes, the pirate flag) when returning to port from successful missions.

The flags were often altered to reflect the crew's accomplishments, for example ship silhouettes for each ship sunk. In true British style, sometimes the additions are self-deprecating; HMS Sickle (P224) had an ace of spaces on their flag, reflecting the time near Monte Carlo when one of their torpedos missed a target, struck a cliff and the explosion subsequently shattered all the windows in a nearby casino.
HMS Proteus (N29) had a can opener on theirs, reflecting the time the submarine survived an attempted ram by an Italian destroyer after damaging it with the sub's hydroplanes.

Modern subs have modernised features these days to recognise their achievements, for example tomahawk axes when returning from a mission where they fired Tomahawk missiles at targets.

I also remember seeing a documentary of an Allied exercise with an Australian submarine playing OPFOR against an American fleet. The Australians snuck up on one of the USN ships, scored a 'kill' with a torpedo and got away scot free. They celebrated by playing Men at Work's _Down Under_ over the radio.  :Small Big Grin: 

In short, Navy traditions are weird and bubbleheads are even weirder.

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## Vinyadan

> I also remember seeing a documentary of an Allied exercise with an Australian submarine playing OPFOR against an American fleet. The Australians snuck up on one of the USN ships, scored a 'kill' with a torpedo and got away scot free. They celebrated by playing Men at Work's _Down Under_ over the radio.


This reminds me of that time in 2006, when, during an exercise, a Chinese sub snuck in the middle of a carrier battle group, and surfaced in torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk.

The Chinese were not part of the exercise, however.

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## Pauly

> I also remember seeing a documentary of an Allied exercise with an Australian submarine playing OPFOR against an American fleet. The Australians snuck up on one of the USN ships, scored a 'kill' with a torpedo and got away scot free. They celebrated by playing Men at Work's _Down Under_ over the radio. 
> 
> In short, Navy traditions are weird and bubbleheads are even weirder.


https://youtu.be/nqFVOL7mLd4

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> Alrighty! here's some of the stuff that I think i've sorted out when it comes to ~16th century english:


Good list, thanks!




> - "curiassiers" were cavalry who wore 3/4ths armor, not just a curiass


*Cuirass and cuirassier, if we're doing spelling anyway. Although I'll happily believe that both forms and more occured at the time, because the 16th century generally didn't bother with formalized spelling. I'm not sure about English, but 16th century Dutch is often held as harder to read than earlier medieval versions. Must be that in the middle ages most writing was done by professional scribes and monks, while these days someone like a sea captain can write.




> - As the musket and caliver became the more common infantry weapons the different spellings of "arquebusier"/"harquebusier" came to refer specifically to a type of light cavalry who carried a wheellock or flint-striking arquebus that could be used from horseback. It should be noted that this cavalry would usually be differentiated from "dragoons", who initially were not true cavalry but mounted infantry.


A fusil is another slightly later word for a lighter musket. I don't know why the new term was needed/what differentiates them.



As for the captain thing: funny, I always thought the navy standardized to "skipper" precisely to avoid this. I learn something every day.

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## Brother Oni

> https://youtu.be/nqFVOL7mLd4


That's the one.  :Small Big Grin: 

Edit: I just watched it again and there's a really funny bit I missed - they played the song over the ship's speaker not the radio, so the USN DD ASW guys could pick it up on their hydrophones.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## fusilier

> A fusil is another slightly later word for a lighter musket. I don't know why the new term was needed/what differentiates them.


In English, I've seen the term fusil defined as a "smoothbore rifle" -- which is, obviously, an oxymoron.  But it does convey an idea: something built like a civilian rifle, but smoothbore (i.e. a light musket).  In other languages the term fusil basically replaced musket.  But then it became the term for the standard infantryman's weapon; the French Lebel bolt action rifle was officially, _Fusil Modèle 1886_, and an assault rifle is a _Fusil d'Assaut_.

This sometimes leads to bad translations, with fusils being called rifles, although in context they should be muskets.

EDIT -- Originally, fusil referred to a flintlock, and fusiliers were simply those armed with one (when the matchlock was still common).  They usually had a specialist function at that time.  Later when flintlocks were common, the terminology shifted.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> .


Nice, we have an expert in the house.

Well, yeah, me too, but I meant a fusilier expert.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## rrgg

> Good list, thanks!
> 
> 
> *Cuirass and cuirassier, if we're doing spelling anyway. Although I'll happily believe that both forms and more occured at the time, because the 16th century generally didn't bother with formalized spelling. I'm not sure about English, but 16th century Dutch is often held as harder to read than earlier medieval versions. Must be that in the middle ages most writing was done by professional scribes and monks, while these days someone like a sea captain can write.
> 
> 
> A fusil is another slightly later word for a lighter musket. I don't know why the new term was needed/what differentiates them.
> 
> 
> ...


The cuirassier thing is probably just me being bad at spelling.

Yeah, the fusil I think was originally a french word for "flintlock" that later sort of turned into its own weapon. Aside from fusils being assigned to guard artillery and ammunition wagons since that was considered a bit safer than having lit matches around gunpowder, the main perceived advantages of the flintlock early on tended to be it's usefulness in ambushes, sneaking around, night operations, etc. so it generally made sense for the lighter, more agile sorts of long guns to become flintlocks first while the slightly heavier, "standard battle-line" weapons continued to stick with a much simpler, more reliable matchlock mechanism. You can find some examples of this in the english colonies in america which generally developed a very high demand for more flexible guns with flintlock mechanisms. One list of arms for 100 men setting sail for plymouth around 1630 for instance called for "80 bastard muskets with snaphaunces and without rests", and just "10 full muskets with matchlocks and rests", in addition to another 10 assorted fowling pieces. 

Fowling pieces and other privately purchased hunting weapons also tended to more often be flintlocks so that animals wouldn't be frightened off by the sight and smell of a burning match.

Over the course of the 1600s muskets generally became lighter where they no longer needed the rest. Additionally, the reliability of flintlocks seems to have been improving to where many soldiers and captains were preferring to switch out matchlocks for flintlocks in general. Eventually the matchlock largely disappeared and it seems the english continued calling their standard infantry weapon the "musket" while the French instead kept calling their flintlocks "fusils".

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## Blackhawk748

Ok, so I've been playing a bunch of Warhammer Total War and watchigng some lovely videos about Pike and Shot warfare, and my mind has, of course, wandered off to mixing the two.

Now, I don't know muhc about the Spanish Tercos other than it's layout and basic composition, so I'm rather curious what the thread thinks their eficacy against the Vampire Counts or Beastmen would be? I would assume they'd be pretty good, cuz Pikes are great against masses of infantry and guns are great against, well, pretty much everything but I'm curious if there's some sort of flaw I'm missing.

----------


## Vinyadan

I think that _fusil_ is a loanword that entered French from Italian (_fucile_) around the time the weapon was introduced, and substituted the older French term for the fire striker, _foisil_. As a time reference, I see that _foisil_ is still used in a dictionary from 1678.

_Fucile_ ultimately has the same origin as _foisil_, from a derivative of FOCUS = fire (maybe a form like FOCILIS; Italian also used to have _focile_, same meaning as _fucile_).

Erudite Latin developed its own word for the rifle, _fugillus_, which I don't think is the word from which _foisil and focile_ are derived, and may have been built after them on the basis of Spanish _fuego_.

I've found an interesting explanation for musket. Many guns, like falconets, take their names from birds of prey. The It. _moschetto_, Fr. _mouchet_, was the sparrowhawk, so one of the smallest of the birds of prey. In Italian, _smeriglio_ was the name of both a gun and the merlin.

In German the males of the sparrowhawk are called _Sprinz_, which could have been the origin for the springald's name (if it isn't just a relative of "spring", which I deem more likely). The springald itself has changed meaning within a military context, as it initially was a siege engine used to throw stones, and later became a gun.

Since nothing is ever simple, the springald and large ballistae threw ammo also known as _moschette_ or _moschetti_ in Italian.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> Ok, so I've been playing a bunch of Warhammer Total War and watchigng some lovely videos about Pike and Shot warfare, and my mind has, of course, wandered off to mixing the two.
> 
> Now, I don't know muhc about the Spanish Tercos other than it's layout and basic composition, so I'm rather curious what the thread thinks their eficacy against the Vampire Counts or Beastmen would be? I would assume they'd be pretty good, cuz Pikes are great against masses of infantry and guns are great against, well, pretty much everything but I'm curious if there's some sort of flaw I'm missing.


I'm mostly unfamiliar with Warhammer, but I'm still going to try and answer this one.

Pike and shot at its core is an anti-cavalry tactic. That's the biggest real world reason for doing it. Cavalry use hit and run tactics. Pikes deal massive damage on first contact, something you don't want to hit and run against. And while horses are big enough to eat some damage, pikes deal bonus damage based on the enemy's speed, and they are pretty good against large creatures in general as well. Pikes would be a brilliant defense against something like dinosaurs. The shot component is added because pikemen are slower than cavalry. A pure pike square can still be targeted by hit and run tactics, just use pistols or carbines (another word for shorter muskets, /crosstopic). Due to how much easier it is to raise large numbers of infantry though and how much closer you can pack those guys together, an infantry formation including a large number of pikes can still carry more firepower then a cavalry formation. And that advantage grows because the infantry can use full size muskets. And that's a good thing for the infantry, because their advantage shrinks because the cavalry can afford better armor, both money and weight wise. So charging is suicide, and attacking from a distance is still a bad idea, as long as the formation maintains cohesion. The fact that pikes are so horribly effective is also probably the main reason that over the time these tactics are used the percentage of pikemen used steadily goes down, to 1/3 or even as low as 1/4 of the formation using pikes by the time plug bayonets turn the landscape upside down. As long as there are enough pikes they're not going to charge, and as long as they're not charging you want maximum firepower.

Now, just because at its core this is an anti-cavalry tactic that doesn't mean it's bad versus infantry. Pikes still do that massive damage upon first contact. Small loose formations can be easily kept out with a forest of pikes pointing at them and large ordered formations basically skewer themselves. Of course if those orderly formations are using pikes you're skewering yourself as well. Formations of just ranged attackers do well against a pike and shot formation, be they skirmishers on foot, dragoons dismounting into action or artillery pounding the formation from afar. But all those formations share a key vulnerability to your own supporting cavalry, which need something to do now that they can't charge the main opponent formations anyway. So skirmishers and dragoons and such usually can't stick around to actually deliver a killing blow. (The pike and shot formations often also have a group of halberdiers on board. They mostly do stuff like protecting the officers and plugging holes in the formation, but they could conceivably run out at skirmishers if they feel invulnerable and get too close.) Which means that in the end the "game" of pike and shot tactics usually ends up being around using skirmishers, dragoons, artillery, maybe some cavalry maneuvering and your own pike and shot blocks firing to destabilize and demoralize the enemy pike and shot formations, and then sending your own pike and shot blocks in for the "push of pike". If you didn't do a good enough job and the enemy maintains cohesion it's going to be a massacre on both sides, but if you did do a good enough job you only lose your first few rows or something in the initial contact, upon which they break into a panic and hundreds of men start breaking formation and making themselves easy targets to be picked off by pursuers of pretty much any kind.

Now, on to the fantasy armies. The vampire lords apparently have no ranged capabilities, that's a good start. They depend upon hordes of zombies and skeletons controlled by magic, that's great too, because there is no way these units are individually controlled very well, so they're big dumb infantry formations with I'm assuming not a lot of pikes of their own, which are going to squash very nicely. They are also easy pickings for the supporting cavalry, the skirmishers, the artillery and basically any other unit. Seriously, who uses zombies? The problem comes in the shape of their special units. They have ghosts that are almost immune to physical damage, flying dragons and magic users. They apparently officially have no ranged units, which really makes me question how their magic and their dragons work. If they do have some short ranged ranged stuff they might still do pretty well. And they can probably choose to sacrifice a dragon by just crashing it into a formation, disrupting it to the point of an easy rout. They can also try to outmaneuver the pike blocks, luring them out, then bypassing them and going straight for the objective/artillery. They will still have to deal with the supporting cavalry, which is no joke and will have to be dealt with quickly to prevent the infantry from catching up, but it's better than jumping onto those pikes. So a smart vampire warlord could still do pretty well with their main forces being pretty much out of the fight. But if we assume the pike and shot guys are from the same universe, they ain't afraid of no ghost and their commanders have some familiarity with vampire tactics I give the general advantage to the pike and shot guys, because their infantry demolished the opposing infantry for being dumb blocks of HP. The lack of ranged options on the vampire side really hurts them as well, as it often leaves them with no options but charging pikes, getting shot or running away.

The beastmen seem to be like a biological mixture of infantry and cavalry, bigger, stronger and faster than regular men, with their special units being even bigger, stronger and faster. Did I notice pikes have a bonus against faster enemies and do at the very least just fine against large ones? They also seem to use primarily melee weapons, so the closest real world comparison really is mounted lancers, which almost entirely disappeared from the battlefield during the pike and shot days, because they are so completely hard countered by the basic pike and shot formation. Although to be fair, because beastmen are bipedal and don't have to control any horses they pack together a lot closer than regular Earth cavalry, which could help them a bit here. They are also apparently cleverer than their enemies are willing to admit, but they're going to have to be pretty clever to survive this match up. I'm probably missing several things, but the main essence of this faction mostly just gets slaughtered by pike and shot squares. Although as long as there is room to outmaneuver them they could still do well against all the side units.

So yeah, I think I agree with the premise of your post, pike and shot tactics would do great against these armies.

If you want to get more of a feel for pike and shot tactics, I can recommend grabbing the turn based tactics PC game Pike and Shot from Byzantine Games/The Lordz Game Studio/Slitherine next time you see it for a price you like in a Steam sale or on a bundle site. I've seen it come up a few times. It's fun to play around with a bit to get a sense of the warfare of the period.

----------


## Blackhawk748

> Now, on to the fantasy armies. The vampire lords apparently have no ranged capabilities, that's a good start. They depend upon hordes of zombies and skeletons controlled by magic, that's great too, because there is no way these units are individually controlled very well, so they're big dumb infantry formations with I'm assuming not a lot of pikes of their own, which are going to squash very nicely. They are also easy pickings for the supporting cavalry, the skirmishers, the artillery and basically any other unit. Seriously, who uses zombies? The problem comes in the shape of their special units. They have ghosts that are almost immune to physical damage, flying dragons and magic users. They apparently officially have no ranged units, which really makes me question how their magic and their dragons work. If they do have some short ranged ranged stuff they might still do pretty well. And they can probably choose to sacrifice a dragon by just crashing it into a formation, disrupting it to the point of an easy rout. They can also try to outmaneuver the pike blocks, luring them out, then bypassing them and going straight for the objective/artillery. They will still have to deal with the supporting cavalry, which is no joke and will have to be dealt with quickly to prevent the infantry from catching up, but it's better than jumping onto those pikes. So a smart vampire warlord could still do pretty well with their main forces being pretty much out of the fight. But if we assume the pike and shot guys are from the same universe, they ain't afraid of no ghost and their commanders have some familiarity with vampire tactics I give the general advantage to the pike and shot guys, because their infantry demolished the opposing infantry for being dumb blocks of HP. The lack of ranged options on the vampire side really hurts them as well, as it often leaves them with no options but charging pikes, getting shot or running away.


They use Zombies because they are cheap on magical energy which means you can bring a truly moronic amount of them to a fight. Skeletons are better, though still worse than live fighters, you just get more of them again.

As for ranged, it's pretty much Terrogheists (giant murder bat wyvern things that scream so loud they kill things. SO pretty short range, maybe 15 yards?), Banshees (the do the same thing as Terrogheists just on a smaller scale) and whatever the mage in question can hurl around and in Warhammer.... that's a lot. Now, and in universe Empire of Man Pike and Shot army would have Battle Wizards so they can fight back at least, but the magic advantage would go to Vamps.




> The beastmen seem to be like a biological mixture of infantry and cavalry, bigger, stronger and faster than regular men, with their special units being even bigger, stronger and faster. Did I notice pikes have a bonus against faster enemies and do at the very least just fine against large ones? They also seem to use primarily melee weapons, so the closest real world comparison really is mounted lancers, which almost entirely disappeared from the battlefield during the pike and shot days, because they are so completely hard countered by the basic pike and shot formation. Although to be fair, because beastmen are bipedal and don't have to control any horses they pack together a lot closer than regular Earth cavalry, which could help them a bit here. They are also apparently cleverer than their enemies are willing to admit, but they're going to have to be pretty clever to survive this match up. I'm probably missing several things, but the main essence of this faction mostly just gets slaughtered by pike and shot squares. Although as long as there is room to outmaneuver them they could still do well against all the side units.


Beastmen's only ranged units are Cygors (who have a magical eye laser and throw rocks), Ungor Archers, Centigors (centaurs with javelins and stuff) and Mages again. So, my original thought process of Pike and Shot wrecking Beastmen was correct. Thank you.

----------


## Grim Portent

I will point out that Beastmen generally prefer to fight in terrain that suits them and against enemies that aren't properly prepared, and due to a lack of infrastructure to defend are hard to force into a fight. They also use a lot of psychological warfare. Various monsters who along with the rank and file beastmen will happily start eating the living and dead soldiers of any unit they defeat right there on the battlefield, trophies made of rotting corpses, their own rampant mutation, nighttime attacks, the destruction of civilian infrastructure. It's a pretty demoralizing experience.

Vampires have similar strengths. They don't tire, they aren't particularly impaired by darkness or dangerous terrain, if a necromancer or vampire is ready with then the undead can more or less endlessly stand back up and any defeated enemies can be brought back to fight for them.

Both also have creatures that can fly in their ranks, bats, harpies, dragons, jabberslythes. Jabberslythes are theoretically the worst, looking at one can drive most people to immediate insanity.

In a 'normal' battle they'd both be relatively easy for late medieval tactics to beat, but neither are normal opponents.

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## KineticDiplomat

While still reading Hess before rebutting (for a man who claims rifling didnt change anything, he has significant numbers of statements like attacks in columns were no longer practical by the civil war with the reduction in firepower, and talking about the self same falling apart at the first volley 100 yards away...but I digress), pikes and magic stuff!

When it comes to pikes, the psychological factors are substantial in both directions. When a block of pike charges (hard to do) if youre on the other side theres a significant that is a impenetrable wall of spearheads racing towards me; if Im near the front of this formation, Im going to die without even a chance to fight that causes a great deal of the shock effect before the first pike head hits anything, followed by the actual shock of several ranks of pike heads being driven home with the force of charging men. Attacking pikes, or being the on the end of a walk forward slowly and then stop to poke, maybe walk forward a little more, then finally engage in a push of pike offense, requires being willing to try to break through a forest of spearheads. 

And then deal with the halberds etc once youre through. Basically, the shock effect of being charged or of having to close was often enough to break or deter formations. The physical damage was high, but the morale effect was massive - the renaissance equivalent of running right at the stream of tracers. 

The flip side is that pike formations were also very vulnerable to morale failures. Well disciplined and in tight formation, they may be the ultimate shock weapon on the field, but disordered the impenetrable hedge of pike heads becomes penetrable after all as gaps open up, pikes get tangled, men lose the space inside their formation needed to operate their weapons, etc. 

While people didnt actually get in close with pikes too often, when they did it became what was known as bad war. If you can imagine shield wall style fighting in a tight press, only without shields to protect you, you have the idea. This is not for the faint of heart.



So, whats that mean for vampires? Well, send in the undead. Unlike mortal men, they wont ball at the fact that their front ranks are going to be savaged by the leading edge of pikes. Arguably if you can get a zombie to simply grab a pike and keep it in his body and then fall to the ground, youll break up the formation pretty quick. The men behind them just close in to bad war. Hurrah. Allow the face to face, high ferocity, low skill killing begin. And thats assuming you didnt use any number of other items to break up the formation to begin with.

As for beastmen, well, one of the human answers to breaking pikes was to get a bunch of brave, big, bloody minded men with great weapons and have them chop their way in. I feel like this would be something you could find quite a lot of in beastmen land.

Now, this being said, war hammer isnt noted for its realism to begin with. So saying yeah, you could break a pike square is not the same as saying see, the devs grounded their decisions in solid military thought

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## Gnoman

Pikemen were generally heavily armored, and would usually carry a sword for close in defense. Even if a zombie or skeleton did manage to break through the forest of pikes (far from easy, as that deadly sharp point is connected to a stout shaft of wood 18 feet long, a massive barrier in itself), they'd still find the pikemen to be tough to crack. This ignores that a slow-moving and dense horde is pretty much the dream of shot units, who would inflict massive damage as the horde closed - even if a bullet can't kill because MAGIC, you aren't going to be fighting too well when your limbs are shattered.

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## Grim Portent

> This ignores that a slow-moving and dense horde is pretty much the dream of shot units, who would inflict massive damage as the horde closed - even if a bullet can't kill because MAGIC, you aren't going to be fighting too well when your limbs are shattered.


Amusingly enough, zombies in WHF are so bad at fighting anyway that when they get damaged or killed the necromancers just crudely patch them back into something resembling useful and throw them into the next fight. Broken spines are fixed straight with planks, severed hands replaced with spiked fence railings, teeth and fingertips with iron nails or broken glass.

A zombie loses to basically anything one on one, but they are almost infinitely reusable and make a good way to keep an enemy infantry group engaged.

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## Blackhawk748

Thanks everyone for pointing out some of the weirdness that come come out of these interactions. I really needed some more minds because of how odd WHFB can be. Like, I actually completely forgot about Jabberslythes and those do change things.

And by change I mean you shoot them with a Hellstorm Rocket battery and hope that works.

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## fusilier

> I think that _fusil_ is a loanword that entered French from Italian (_fucile_) around the time the weapon was introduced, and substituted the older French term for the fire striker, _foisil_. As a time reference, I see that _foisil_ is still used in a dictionary from 1678.
> 
> _Fucile_ ultimately has the same origin as _foisil_, from a derivative of FOCUS = fire (maybe a form like FOCILIS; Italian also used to have _focile_, same meaning as _fucile_).
> 
> Erudite Latin developed its own word for the rifle, _fugillus_, which I don't think is the word from which _foisil and focile_ are derived, and may have been built after them on the basis of Spanish _fuego_.
> 
> I've found an interesting explanation for musket. Many guns, like falconets, take their names from birds of prey. The It. _moschetto_, Fr. _mouchet_, was the sparrowhawk, so one of the smallest of the birds of prey. In Italian, _smeriglio_ was the name of both a gun and the merlin.
> 
> In German the males of the sparrowhawk are called _Sprinz_, which could have been the origin for the springald's name (if it isn't just a relative of "spring", which I deem more likely). The springald itself has changed meaning within a military context, as it initially was a siege engine used to throw stones, and later became a gun.
> ...


I have heard that _moschetto_ originally referred to a kind of light, long barreled cannon (like a falconet or robinet), later the term was applied to the more familiar heavy personal firearm.  But by the end of the 19th century, the M1891 Carcano Moschetto was a light, short barreled carbine.  (The long Carcano was called a _fucile_).  :-)

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## AdAstra

And thus the age-old lesson: language is a living, fluid, and fickle thing. It does as it wants. A word is rarely exactly what you think it is, it's merely close enough to work as a shared reference for a group of people.

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## KineticDiplomat

An extension of the pike and shot vs undead/beastmen question:

Assuming the shot in question is matchlocks, they fire one to two rounds a minute with a realistic range of 75-100 yards. Crossing one hundred yards in a minute doesnt require even a particularly brisk walk.

In a world of men, the problem becomes one of convincing men to go forward into the hedge of pikes - which lets the shot conduct all sorts of evolutions under the safety of the pikes. 

In our theoretical world of mindless zombies without fear, the horde isnt a dream for the shot armed troops - its a nightmare where they get one or two shots off and then the pikes are being dragged down by selfless sacrifices and the face to face killing begins.

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## Blackhawk748

> An extension of the pike and shot vs undead/beastmen question:
> 
> Assuming the shot in question is matchlocks, they fire one to two rounds a minute with a realistic range of 75-100 yards. Crossing one hundred yards in a minute doesnt require even a particularly brisk walk.
> 
> In a world of men, the problem becomes one of convincing men to go forward into the hedge of pikes - which lets the shot conduct all sorts of evolutions under the safety of the pikes. 
> 
> In our theoretical world of mindless zombies without fear, the horde isnt a dream for the shot armed troops - its a nightmare where they get one or two shots off and then the pikes are being dragged down by selfless sacrifices and the face to face killing begins.


They appear to be flintlocks from what I can see, which gets us about 3 shots instead of two.

And, interestingly, the Empire uses a lot of Halberdiers and handgunners as is, they just use them as separate groups instead of mixing them as a Tercios

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## Pauly

On the Warhammer issue. Years ago there were Warhammer Historical Battles books released.

The ECW (Pike and Shot) is very good, and I used it extensively, running a Scots Covenanter army.

I cant tell you how much I despise WFB, however once you strip away the special rules, half of which contradict each other, the basic game engine runs surprisingly well.

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## NRSASD

Why do shotguns continue to exist in modern military arsenals? What advantages do they possess, or what situations are they better suited for, then the current generation of assault rifle? 

The reason I ask is because of the existence of the M26-MASS , which seems like a very ineffective shotgun.

Thanks for your input!

Edit: Regarding the Pike/Shot vs Zombies question, I'd give the advantage to the zombies. Pikes tend not to dismember their targets, only destroy their organs and inflict enough pain/blood loss to incapacitate their opponents. As zombies have no blood, feel no pain, and don't care if their kidney is impaled on the end of a pike, I think they'd give the pikemen a very bad time indeed.

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## Vinyadan

There are two uses for a shotgun that I can think of: if you are on point and have to shoot someone from up close, and if you need to break a doorlock. People with more knowledge will probably tell you more.

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## Max_Killjoy

> Why do shotguns continue to exist in modern military arsenals? What advantages do they possess, or what situations are they better suited for, then the current generation of assault rifle? 
> 
> The reason I ask is because of the existence of the M26-MASS , which seems like a very ineffective shotgun.
> 
> Thanks for your input!


From what I've read:  

Military police are issued shotguns for the same reasons civilian police are. 

Marines are issued shotguns for shipboard and dockside security use  because buckshot is less likely to penetrate walls than rifle rounds.  These shotguns are often "marinized" versions using corrosion-resistant materials.  

Engineers are issued shotguns both for added defensive firepower and for the ability to fire special munitions.  

More generally, the ability to fire slugs, buckshot, flares, lockbreaking rounds, mini-grenades, "less than lethal" rounds, etc, etc makes them very useful.

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## Mike_G

> Why do shotguns continue to exist in modern military arsenals? What advantages do they possess, or what situations are they better suited for, then the current generation of assault rifle?


Well, as others have said, it can fire more versatile rounds, an buckshot is safer at CQB range in that it's less likely to penetrate the far wall of the room and endanger friendlies.  

It has its place. In general the assault rifle will be a better choice, but having a few shotguns available to a platoon isn't a terrible idea.




> The reason I ask is because of the existence of the M26-MASS , which seems like a very ineffective shotgun.


It's probably a worse _shotgun_ than what it's replacing. But it's an underbarrel accessory weapon, so you still have your M 4 ready after you breach the door with the shotgun, rather than having one guy in the fire team with a shotgun and thus one less assault rifle ready to go. 

It's an interesting concept. Not sure how useful it is, but I can see the thinking behind it. 




> Edit: Regarding the Pike/Shot vs Zombies question, I'd give the advantage to the zombies. Pikes tend not to dismember their targets, only destroy their organs and inflict enough pain/blood loss to incapacitate their opponents. As zombies have no blood, feel no pain, and don't care if their kidney is impaled on the end of a pike, I think they'd give the pikemen a very bad time indeed.


I have to agree with you. Musket balls and pikes probably won't be as deadly to zombies, since making holes in bodies won't stop zombies (depending on the source material for your zombies, not sure how WH thinks of zombies) I would think you'd need to dismember them of burn them or something.

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## Blackhawk748

> It's probably a worse _shotgun_ than what it's replacing. But it's an underbarrel accessory weapon, so you still have your M 4 ready after you breach the door with the shotgun, rather than having one guy in the fire team with a shotgun and thus one less assault rifle ready to go. 
> 
> It's an interesting concept. Not sure how useful it is, but I can see the thinking behind it.


Pretty sure it's for blowing open doors so they don't waste C4




> I have to agree with you. Musket balls and pikes probably won't be as deadly to zombies, since making holes in bodies won't stop zombies (depending on the source material for your zombies, not sure how WH thinks of zombies) I would think you'd need to dismember them of burn them or something.


In WH they're animated entirely by magic so ripping off ones head will probably drop it, but that's more because you've interrupted the flow of magic and less because it lost its head, so just inflicting bucket loads of damage will work.

The issue is that the Necro just brings them back up with a dose of more magic which means taking them out is top priority.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Why do shotguns continue to exist in modern military arsenals? What advantages do they possess, or what situations are they better suited for, then the current generation of assault rifle?


Specialist slugs have already been mentioned. As for why not just have a dedicated shotgun guy, if you are in narrow places, you may not have room enough for two people, and if the shotgun guy has loaded specialist rounds, he will not be as useful as he could be. 

Another reason is stopping power - there is a ton of BS when it comes to it, and terms like hydrostatic shock are bandied about a lot, but the short of it is this. If you have something like an AK or an AR, with intermediate cartridges, odds are you need to hit someone multiple times to take them down quick. Sure, one good hit will kill them eventually, maybe even in a few seconds, and being hit just once is usually enough for them to retreat.

But. That is only the case when you are engaging over a sizeable distance - once you are inside a building, those three seconds they get before they die are enough for them to pull the trigger on you, and at those distances, odds are good they will hit you. Shotguns not only make larger wounds, or more of them, they have more mass behind their projectile. That means it moves slower, and is therefore terrible at armor penetration, but it also means it will physically jostle you more.

So, a shotgun is more likely to inflict immediately debilitating wound and if it doesn't, it's more likely to throw off aim of whoever it hit. Thing is, that is a tradeoff that's usually not really worth the loss of AP capability and rate of fire. But, if you have a specialized team that will only really fight indoors (some SpecOps operations, police) or a team that needs those specialized shotgun rounds anyway, you may as well give them a shotgun.




> The reason I ask is because of the existence of the M26-MASS , which seems like a very ineffective shotgun.


There is a logistical reason for wanting everyone to have the same general weapon - if you have a shotgun guy, he needs standard buckshot or slugs for his shotgun, if you have everyone with underbarrel shotties, you only need a few of those specialist rounds. And once you have that underbarrel shotgun, it sure would be logistically neat if all you needed to do to turn it into a shotgun (fro those specialized teams) is add a stock.

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## Pauly

> I have to agree with you. Musket balls and pikes probably won't be as deadly to zombies, since making holes in bodies won't stop zombies (depending on the source material for your zombies, not sure how WH thinks of zombies) I would think you'd need to dismember them of burn them or something.


I think you are misunderestimating just how much damage a soft lead .75 cal. ball does.

The reason why amputation was so prominent in treating battlefield wounds in the musket era is that if a musket ball hit a large bone, such as a femur, it completely shattered about 3 inches of bone. Limbs got amputated not because they were broken, but because there was nothing left to re-attach the pieces together. Gut shots were famously deadly in that era too because of the massive tissue damage and spread of infection.

Its not like a modern small caliber high velocity copper jacketed round poking nice neat holes in someone. The ball deformed and transferred all of its kinetic energy across a relatively wide area.

In WFB terms the zombie or skeleton is rendered non functional because it no longer has a functioning sword arm, or its vertebral column suddenly has 3 inches missing

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## Mike_G

> I think you are misunderestimating just how much damage a soft lead .75 cal. ball does.
> 
> The reason why amputation was so prominent in treating battlefield wounds in the musket era is that if a musket ball hit a large bone, such as a femur, it completely shattered about 3 inches of bone. Limbs got amputated not because they were broken, but because there was nothing left to re-attach the pieces together. Gut shots were famously deadly in that era too because of the massive tissue damage and spread of infection.
> 
> Its not like a modern small caliber high velocity copper jacketed round poking nice neat holes in someone. The ball deformed and transferred all of its kinetic energy across a relatively wide area.
> 
> In WFB terms the zombie or skeleton is rendered non functional because it no longer has a functioning sword arm, or its vertebral column suddenly has 3 inches missing


I'm in no way underestimating a musket ball.

I'm just saying that blowing an inch wide hole out of the chest or abdomen of a redcoat advancing up Bunker Hill will stop him cold, and it won't bother a zombie or skeleton. To disable a skeleton or zombie or whatever, to mechanically damage the body to where it can't walk or fight, you have to hit bone, and you have to hit bone pretty dead center to shatter it to where it won't work, and it has to be a bone that matters for moving and fighting, not a rib or sternum or scapula or something like that. So, just a bit  less effective on a zombie than a flesh and blood human who cares about his aorta being blown out his back.

You can find photos of plenty of dead Civil War soldiers with all their limbs attached.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: Shotguns.

This one of those area where the theory and the practice are somewhat divergent. For a sort of combination of all the reasons listed, the average US infantry company keeps some shotguns in its arms room. And they tend to be very mechanically easy to use ones, so the training premium is pretty low. 

Buuuuttt....

Their infrequent use creates a circular effect where they are harder to use for anything but niche roles. 

The system is not set up to pump shotgun shells forward in the manner of 5.56 and 7.62, and "specialty" shells are unlikely to be available in most common circumstances. Every guy with a shotgun is not running around with a slug, buck, less-than-lethal and the like in a shell gourmets choice to pull from his large selection. He likely has a small belt/harness on his kit with a handful of buckshot quick to hand. Some, but not firefight sustaining quantities of the stuff. 

And if he should happen to have a specialty use - less-than-lethal let's say - even in normal counter-insurgency he won't have many, they might be in his assault pack or gun truck, or they may be sitting back in the company trains for "when we need them". Which may be bureaucracy, and may just be sensible not wanting to add another pound of ammunition you'll only use once in a blue moon to the 60 pounds of minimum fighting load already being carried. And who knows when more of this rare ammunition will work it's way forward. Maybe the deliberate riot response units in the Balkans will have those rubber rounds in abumdance, but not a random patrol in Kandahar. 

Then the gun itself is obnoxious. It's not as if the man carrying it only has a shotgun - his primary weapon is still his rifle. So the gun is either in a truck, or on an extra sling, or if the go-to-war-money has been particularly bountiful in a special shotgun back sheath. (This, incidentally, is the reasoning behind the under-attachment theory). You can imagine that carrying the damn thing around is extra weight and one more awkward bundle - and almost never in a position where the shooter isn't just going to use his rifle unless it's deliberate. Between "in my hands and one thumb switch away from shooting" versus "let go of rifle, draw shotgun, probably load shotgun (loaded shotguns bouncing and jangling in random directions off a moving soldier, the ground, etc are maybe not a great idea for him or his mates), then use shotgun" you can imagine which one wins.

So then we get to breaching. The shotgun is in a really fine niche here. You are basically blasting a pattern so that the lock no longer is held tightly by the door. Which implies that the door itself is of lighter construction. A great many doors can be breached quicker and easier by non-shotgun methods, such as "testing if they are open", "breaking a window and reaching through", "just lift it off it's hinges" and of course "get the big guy to do it." Those that can't in many cases are not susceptible to a shotgun breach to begin with - and sometimes metal lockplates send a bunch of bits of buck flying back out and around the courtyard in ways that make everyone cringe. The line between "kick" and "we need to hit this with real breaching tools or demo (or the ever popular find/make a different entrance)" doesn't hold a lot of shotgun space, no matter how cool it seems. 

And then we get to CQB. The theory of this is "shotgun, close range, brilliant." But....first, there's that whole part about still having a rifle. And that most people are trained (at least summarily) in shooting said rifle for CQB, while they almost certainly aren't beyond point-pull for the shotgun. And since good CQB involves your own side flowing through the building/trench/whatever with a decent tempo rather than getting bogged down in a firefight (you'll lose), there's a decent chance that there are friendlies in the area you're aiming. If you are aiming three feet off their nose, they are going to be way happier if it is with a rifle you trained with rather than a shotgun you haven't. And since in a military context anyone standing up in said room/trench/etc. is probably getting shot four to eight times as each man tracks his weapon through his sector and fires twice on the way...the stopping power of an individual small cartridge becomes less of an issue. Plus, ammo. When attacking a trench, lots of bullets get sent down the trench just to make sure no one decides to pop around the corner or even consider using that bend - then the frag goes over, and the you move down the next bend. Repeat. You almost certainly aren't carrying enough shotgun ammo to do that, nor is the magazine size large enough for a sustained advance. 

So - shotgun theory, hot. Shotgun execution - less practical than video games and individual theory would think.

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## SleepyShadow

Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!

A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.

The defenders number about 5,000 total troops. They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat, and have several artillery batteries at the ready. They also have two A7V tanks. Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.

The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach. The battle will be taking place at midnight.

So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down  :Small Smile:

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## KineticDiplomat

So...circa 1918-1919 for technology, organizations, etc?

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## Brother Oni

With regard to shotguns, I was reading a reddit post by an infantryman armed with one for CQB work during Iraq. Aside from the specialist rounds and breaching, you could also 'bounce' the shot off smooth concrete walls and floors, enabling you to hit targets from unexpected angles.

Someone who's just had their ankles smashed out from under them, isn't going to putting up much of a fight for next few seconds, giving your team time to get in and kill/secure them.

With a bit of wear and tear and some 'modifications', he could get the firing pin to protrude, resulting in the weapon being able to slam fire (ie when you cock the weapon, the shell discharges, rather than needing the trigger to also be pulled), thus he could maintain the necessary rate of fire for when things go loud.

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## Blackhawk748

> With regard to shotguns, I was reading a reddit post by an infantryman armed with one for CQB work during Iraq. Aside from the specialist rounds and breaching, you could also 'bounce' the shot off smooth concrete walls and floors, enabling you to hit targets from unexpected angles.
> 
> Someone who's just had their ankles smashed out from under them, isn't going to putting up much of a fight for next few seconds, giving your team time to get in and kill/secure them.
> 
> With a bit of wear and tear and some 'modifications', he could get the firing pin to protrude, resulting in the weapon being able to slam fire (ie when you cock the weapon, the shell discharges, rather than needing the trigger to also be pulled), thus he could maintain the necessary rate of fire for when things go loud.


Huh, interesting that he needed a modification (however small) for that. I know a fair few shotguns where you can do that by just holding down the trigger and working the pump

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## Martin Greywolf

> Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!
> 
> A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.


There are several odd thing here already. My first thought is, where's the artillery? It was the critical component of a WW1 era armies, and unless we're dealing with something like colonial troops, there should be plenty of it to go around.

I'll assume there is arty present, because without it, the attackers have no real chance of taking that fortress.




> The defenders number about 5,000 total troops.


Well, in that case my strategy would be to siege the fort. 2:1 are terrible odds if you are attacking a fortified position. Sure, battles like Verdun didn't need this disparity in numbers, but those were fought with odzens of divisions, and heavily fortified positions were suppressed and surrounded, creating a local outnumbering/defeat in detail. We're dealing with a sub-division scale here.

If the attackers have to attack, they are at a disadvantage and have exactly one shot at it, if they fail, odds are their manpower will be low enough to be routed by counterattack.




> They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat,


What is ranged vs close combat anyways? WW1 infantry has rifles almost exclusively, with only some LMG support (not even mortars, at least not universally), with some small assault trooper units getting submachineguns. Everyone also has some sort of bayonet or melee weapon. So, our standard, run of the mill infantryman has capability to engage from bayonet range to half a click away (well, in theory, battlefield marksmanship usually stops at 100-200 meters).




> and have several artillery batteries at the ready.


This may not help at all if the attack really is a surprise, at least not for the biggest arty pieces. At this time, you get pre-aimed artillery and balloon or landline observers, and that's it. You can't exactly react to sudden developments with great agility.




> They also have two A7V tanks.


These are almost irrelevant, they are effectively just another pillbox. Tanks were not meant for defense, they are there to bust through trenches specifically. If you want defenders to have some sort of agile counterattack response, go with armored cars instead.




> Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.


Well, what about surrender? Especially with that low morale.




> The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach.


How close tot hat pass can the attackers get before they get spotted? Are the defenders not running extensive patrols? Because that's a supremely bad idea, but the morale is low, so...




> The battle will be taking place at midnight.


This is not a good idea, you need soldiers specifically trained in night combat to do even halfway decently at it, especially at this time.

If the initial attack fails, attackers will descend into chaos. There is no night vision yet except flares, and no man-portable radios.




> So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down


Well, the absolute best bet the attackers have is to creep as closely as possible, initiate a counter-battery arty barrage to supress all pillboxes they possibly can, and then swiftly storm the fortress. This is still a bad idea that will result in absolute hell of an urban fight as they go deeper and deeper into the fortress - all sorts of grenades and chemical weapons will be used.

The plan for the attackers is to hit the fortress so quickly and so hard that the defenders, already at low morale, simply surrender - the night concealing the attacker's low numbers will also help in that regard. If the initial attack fails, or you don't want an immediate orgy of violence, attackers could try for some psyops shenanigans where they attempt to make their numbers and equipment seem better than it is - parading troops in a circle and so on.

If that initial attack fails, the defenders will launch a counterattack that will destroy opposing forces - they may not kill that many, but they will capture or wound a lot of them, rout them and loot a lot of equipment. And probably also get a morale boost. The defenders will have to play defensive roles from now on, as the attackers now outnumber them and have a strong point to retreat to.

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## KineticDiplomat

So, the good news is that given the lower troop densities, the attackers actually have quite a few options because this isn't "lines in flanders" it's a 360 degree strongpoint in the mountains. 

The first and foremost would be to simply bypass the pass. It's only half a mile. You aren't going to outrun your artillery support or your logistics. You have well trained troops high on human capital. Great. March right over those mountains, use the backsides to shield your approach from direct fire and artillery while small detachments make sure no one is coming up the slopes. You may even own the high ground by the end, and be plunging fire into the fortress - building anything more than field fortifications on the very tops of mountains is rarely practical unless you actually dig out the mountain as it's own fort. And hey. why not knock out the artillery while you're back there? Artillery requires big patches of semi level ground to work on (again, assuming you haven't just hollowed out the mountain and gone full Maginot/North Korea). Set up some machineguns and rake those firing positions but good.  

At the very least the defenders have to consider withdrawing to the fort main rather than holding the pass - and then you can bring up your heavy stuff. 

----

Even if you decide to go up the gut for the drama plot, assuming you have your own artillery and the enemy is conveniently in a box with not that many semi-level open areas where artillery could stage...well, you care going to offline his batteries pretty early in the game. You know where they are, WWI batteries don't displace quickly and if they do they lose most of their commo and accuracy. So smash those guys down with HE and short persistence chemicals. Slime the tanks while you're at it.  

If he is actually only defending a few hundred meters wide in a known position, you can roll a pretty intense barrage right over the bulk of his forces easily enough. There was a reason the Germans stopped holding the forward trenches with heavy troop concentrations. Opening barrages will never kill everything, but enough shells on known targets in a small area kills quite a few people none the less. 

Or siegfried line it. Suppress his heavy stuff. Probe forward. Bunker shoots. Gunners leisurely identify and destroy bunker from unanswered long range with direct fire. Repeat until you're in Germany. (Or, in this case, the fortress).

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## fusilier

> The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out.


This might suggest some sort of small commando raid, and not a full fledged attack.  Perhaps with the main force creating a distraction to draw some of the garrison out?  Although, if it just puts the garrison on alert it may make it harder for the infiltration team.  If the defenders' morale is low, it may be hard to draw them out of their fortifications.

Otherwise, if the fortress is not sufficiently manned, it may be possible to storm it.  But I'm guessing 5,000 men can easily defend the perimeter?  If there are too many defenders, then besieging the fortress may starve them into surrendering quickly, especially if morale is low.  A siege would be relatively low risk, and wouldn't require much coordination among the coalition forces*, but would be more time consuming.

Surprise is then the next best option for storming.  If the coalition can move their forces over the mountains as KineticDiplomat suggested, avoiding the well defended pass, and get them in position without being detected, then maybe they could achieve surprise.  Depends upon their intelligence of the terrain around the fort.

There's always the old fashioned, bribe the commander to leave the fort.  But I suspect you want something more climactic than that! ;-)

*Perhaps it would be better to say that a siege is usually easy to coordinate.  Whereas a complicated battle plan can be more difficult.

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## DrewID

> I have to agree with you. Musket balls and pikes probably won't be as deadly to zombies, since making holes in bodies won't stop zombies (depending on the source material for your zombies, not sure how WH thinks of zombies) I would think you'd need to dismember them of burn them or something.


One thing pikes *can* do, if fitted with a cross bar (like a boar spear, and for the same reason) is keep the foe at a distance.  They could be used in a combined arms block with whatever weapon type *is* effective against zombies.  

DrewID

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## Kaptin Keen

> Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!
> 
> A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.
> 
> The defenders number about 5,000 total troops. They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat, and have several artillery batteries at the ready. They also have two A7V tanks. Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.
> 
> The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach. The battle will be taking place at midnight.
> 
> So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down


If this is the full picture, I'd expect the attackers to get a bloody nose, very very quickly, and retreat. What you describe is a classic death trap, which your attackers intend to walk into with no plan. They fail, at best they retreat quickly - at worst, they are killed to the last man.

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## Misereor

> So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down


One fairly smart way of going about conflict is not doing what your enemy wants you to.

At Alesia Vercigetorix wanted Caesar to perform a head on assault, and then slip out the back once he had bled the attackers as much as he could.
Having previously been a victim of that ploy, Caesar instead flipped the script and forced the Gauls to assault a defensive position of his choosing.

At Tyre, the defenders had built an invincible fortress by placing it on an island and being on the same side as the greatest fleet around.
Alexander flipped the script by making the island into a peninsula and subverting said navy.

In countless wars from the beginning until today, defenders have built fortifications that it would just be too expensive to attack head-on.
The job of attackers has always been to flip the script. By digging underneath the defenses and collapsing them. By inventing siege weapons. By infiltrating. By cutting off supplies. By demoralizing.

So are your attackers smart enough to flip the script? 
Whatever the answer, just make it play out in an amsuing and exciting fashion. Go where story takes you.

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## AdAstra

> Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!
> 
> A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.
> 
> The defenders number about 5,000 total troops. They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat, and have several artillery batteries at the ready. They also have two A7V tanks. Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.
> 
> The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach. The battle will be taking place at midnight.
> 
> So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down


You could look to real-world conflicts for inspiration. In World War 1, there was a lot of fighting in the Alps, especially between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians. Research there is likely to be fruitful, as it's pretty much an exact match for the sort of situation you describe in terms of tech and environment. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_War

Things of interest:

-Avalanches, both natural and those triggered by artillery, intentional or not. This killed thousands of soldiers.

-Absolutely brutal close-in fighting. Fewer ways to bypass strongpoints (though it was very much possible) means ramming through an enemy defense is horrible. Taking a mountain fortress instead of bypassing or demolishing it means pushing your way through prepared killzones and trying to bust in and through labyrinths of tunnels in the hard rock. If you do the obvious, you will lose. By the end of the war the elite Italian _Alpini_ had counted 114,948 casualties, over 50,000 of which were killed or missing.

-Everything is harder on the mountains. Less oxygen means you get exhausted quicker. Rapid elevation changes are treacherous and energy-intensive. And you need to drag all your supplies with you. Without roads.

-A need for special troops is apparent. From the Italian _Alpini_ to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial-Royals, you need people specially trained to deal with these rigors, especially if you don't want to grind your army to a paste in direct frontal assaults. Engineers and artillery are also critical, to destroy mostly immobile fortresses and infantry, and demolish whole mountains, which might entail tunneling and placing explosives deep beneath.

Now, not all of these things are a factor if this is an isolated strongpoint, but if this is a proper conflict on the peaks? There are a lot of considerations.

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## rrgg

> One thing pikes *can* do, if fitted with a cross bar (like a boar spear, and for the same reason) is keep the foe at a distance.  They could be used in a combined arms block with whatever weapon type *is* effective against zombies.  
> 
> DrewID

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## Pauly

> Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!
> 
> A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.
> 
> The defenders number about 5,000 total troops. They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat, and have several artillery batteries at the ready. They also have two A7V tanks. Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.
> 
> The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach. The battle will be taking place at midnight.
> 
> So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down


As others have said a stright attack is doomed to fail.

The options for the attackers are
1) Psyops. Convince the defenders that they are a vanguard of a much more significant force and that its best to just surrender now.
2) Find an undefended route in to the fortress. Like the British at the Battle of Quebec, scale an unsaleable cliff and get behind the defenses.
3) Lure the enemy out where they can be defeated. What would induce a demoralized force to come out of their fortress is the difficult part, they arent going to send a large part of their forces out to attack a small group of enemy.

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## tyckspoon

> What is ranged vs close combat anyways? WW1 infantry has rifles almost exclusively, with only some LMG support (not even mortars, at least not universally), with some small assault trooper units getting submachineguns. Everyone also has some sort of bayonet or melee weapon. So, our standard, run of the mill infantryman has capability to engage from bayonet range to half a click away (well, in theory, battlefield marksmanship usually stops at 100-200 meters).


Equipment like shotguns, SMGs, and carbine-like designs over more traditional rifles? But it sounds like the terms of engagement (crowded spaces and poor visibility, especially if it is carried out as a night battle) will make it so that any potential range advantage the defenders might have will be largely irrelevant .. outside of the attackers being dumb enough to march into an obvious killing field with floodlights on it or something.

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## Blackhawk748

> 


I'm gonna assume I'm looking at a basic diagram of a huge Pike formation?

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## fusilier

> Equipment like shotguns, SMGs, and carbine-like designs over more traditional rifles? But it sounds like the terms of engagement (crowded spaces and poor visibility, especially if it is carried out as a night battle) will make it so that any potential range advantage the defenders might have will be largely irrelevant .. outside of the attackers being dumb enough to march into an obvious killing field with floodlights on it or something.


Arditi were armed with a dagger and hand grenades (realistically an offensive grenades), and these were considered the main offensive weapons.  They were supported by machine guns and SMGs, and used carbines on the defense.

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## Yora

So the German Army has three divisions. The 1st Armored Division, the 10th Armored Division, and the Rapid Response Division.

Within these are 7 Tank Battalions. Which are numbered the 93rd, 104th, 203rd, 363rd, 393rd, and 414th Tank Battalions, and the 8th Mountain Tank Battalion.

Seems like they are missing at least 7 Divisions and 407 Tank Battalions. Where those all scrapped after the Cold War? Did they ever exist?

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## Max_Killjoy

> So the German Army has three divisions. The 1st Armored Division, the 10th Armored Division, and the Rapid Response Division.
> 
> Within these are 7 Tank Battalions. Which are numbered the 93rd, 104th, 203rd, 363rd, 393rd, and 414th Tank Battalions, and the 8th Mountain Tank Battalion.
> 
> Seems like they are missing at least 7 Divisions and 407 Tank Battalions. Where those all scrapped after the Cold War? Did they ever exist?


As general notes, not specific to the Bundeswehr.  

1) Units often retain numbers for purposes of tradition.  
2) Some militaries don't re-use numbers across different unit types.  So there'd be a 93rd Tank Battalion, but not a 93rd Infantry or 93rd Engineers or whatever.

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## Vinyadan

> So the German Army has three divisions. The 1st Armored Division, the 10th Armored Division, and the Rapid Response Division.
> 
> Within these are 7 Tank Battalions. Which are numbered the 93rd, 104th, 203rd, 363rd, 393rd, and 414th Tank Battalions, and the 8th Mountain Tank Battalion.
> 
> Seems like they are missing at least 7 Divisions and 407 Tank Battalions. Where those all scrapped after the Cold War? Did they ever exist?


https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_...dierdivisionen Here's a list of the historical and active Bundeswehr Panzer granadier divisions, with the dates of their disbanding or integration or conversion in a different unit (like tank divisions). Lower there is a table with a list of the Panzergrenadierbattalionen, which were disbanded or turned into Panzer battalions.

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## Yora

For those who are curious but can't read the German article:

The 2nd to 9th divisions did exist anymore but once did, and the 10th division was not renamed. The West German Army had 36 divisions (1st to 36th) and the East German Army 6 divisions (which became the 37th to 42nd).
They *really* downsized after the Cold War and once conscription was suspended. (From 360,000 in the 80s to 60,000 now. Which means the sizes of the three remaining divisions doubled.)

Batallion numbers are codes that list both the battalion and its brigade one level up. 391st to 399th battalion would all be battalions of the 39th brigade, of which only the 393rd is a tank batallion.

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## KineticDiplomat

Most European powers retain comparatively small militaries. Frankly, most powers in general retain smaller militaries than they had at the zenith of industrial war writ large. So units keep famous designators. The 82nd airborne still exists in the US, as does the 25th Infantry Division, in an army that can field 10 active divisions...theoretically. (Realistically readiness rates mean getting more than six out the door would mean stripping a lot of the globe. )

Anyhow, was it 91 or 03 where the British ground force commander basically got a letter from the national leadership saying what you have is what we got, no more is coming, and any tank or helicopter you lose wont be replaced for a good long while. So if you lose it, GB just wont have it anymore.

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## Brother Oni

> As general notes, not specific to the Bundeswehr.  
> 
> 1) Units often retain numbers for purposes of tradition.  
> 2) Some militaries don't re-use numbers across different unit types.  So there'd be a 93rd Tank Battalion, but not a 93rd Infantry or 93rd Engineers or whatever.


3) Deliberate misinformation to potentially hostile foreign nations.

As an example - SEAL Team Six. At the time, there wasn't actually 5 other SEAL Teams (there was 1 other), but the numbering kept the Russians guessing.

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## Saint-Just

> 3) Deliberate misinformation to potentially hostile foreign nations.
> 
> As an example - SEAL Team Six. At the time, there wasn't actually 5 other SEAL Teams (there was 1 other), but the numbering kept the Russians guessing.


AFAIK Russians engaged in that themselves. There was, obviously, significant downsizing of the military after the WWII ended, and some regiments kept their famous numbers, but even newly-formed units sometimes were numbered out of sequence with the same aim - keep "potential enemy" guessing.

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## Khedrac

> 3) Deliberate misinformation to potentially hostile foreign nations.


This one is more important than one might think.  In WW2 the germans used sequential numbering on their tanks.  When one of the new varieties was rolled out the allies only encountered a handful, but using statistics they calcuated the probable size of the total production to date (no, I don't know how the maths works, though I think I did once) and they got it approximately correct.  Random issuing of serial numbers for some things is actually quite important.

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## fusilier

> This one is more important than one might think.  In WW2 the germans used sequential numbering on their tanks.  When one of the new varieties was rolled out the allies only encountered a handful, but using statistics they calcuated the probable size of the total production to date (no, I don't know how the maths works, though I think I did once) and they got it approximately correct.  Random issuing of serial numbers for some things is actually quite important.


Ah, the "German Tank Problem" --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

I'm not sure if the Germans were so careless as to sequentially number the tanks themselves, but they did sequentially number some of the components, like gearboxes.  (Wikipedia says that the chassis and engine numbers were used in analysis too, but they were more "complicated.") Also the wheels indicated a limited number of molds were used.  It was from these that the Allies were able to perform a statistical analysis to get quite an accurate estimate of the number of tanks produced in a month.  Which was confirmed after the war by looking at the official documentation.  This statistical approach was far more accurate than the intelligence estimates, which greatly overestimated the number being produced.

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## ExLibrisMortis

> This one is more important than one might think.  In WW2 the germans used sequential numbering on their tanks.  When one of the new varieties was rolled out the allies only encountered a handful, but using statistics they calcuated the probable size of the total production to date (no, I don't know how the maths works, though I think I did once) and they got it approximately correct.  Random issuing of serial numbers for some things is actually quite important.


Randall Munroe ("the XKCD guy") explained that one. Here's the post. He mentions Seal Team Six and the German tanks, too.

Here's the relevant bit (for someone who encounters a German tank in the field, that is):



> With one sample [...] the best strategy is probably to take the number you've seen and double it. [...]
> 
> The idea is that you're likely to be somewhere in the middle of the rangethere's only a small chance that you're looking at one of the first or one of the last movies.

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## Yora

For a single known registry number, that's the case. It becomes much more interesting when you have a couple more numbers. If you have 14, 26, 31, and 37, which you assume to be a random sample, there's a statistical method that can get you a pretty good estimate of the total number range.
Obviously, a range of 1-60 seems much more likely than a range of 1-100. And even intuitively you'd be really surprised if the highest number turns out to be something like 200 or 300. Statistics is rarely intuitive, but here it's fairly easy to see.

If you have something like a hundred samples (which are assumed to be random), you can get a really good estimate, even when the numbers you got range from 80 to 23.000. I believe it's not even a very complicated equation.




> 3) Deliberate misinformation to potentially hostile foreign nations.
> 
> As an example - SEAL Team Six. At the time, there wasn't actually 5 other SEAL Teams (there was 1 other), but the numbering kept the Russians guessing.


The German Border Guard did used to have eight regular Groups (7 land, one sea), which made the later introduced counter-terrorism unit Group 9.
The Border Guard has since been transformed into the Federal Police and been restructured, but the unit is still called GSG9 because it's famous.

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## Brother Oni

Another instrument to add to our list of battlefield music: Aztech Death Whistle.

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## Mike_G

Hypothetical for those black powder experts on the board.

Is is plausible to blast open a old fashioned lock, (Victorian Age or older. Picture the lock on a cell door in a western movie) by pouring gunpowder into the keyhole and setting it off with a long match?

If so, how much powder, and how big a boom, for purposes of safe distance do you think?

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## Yora

Not an expert expert, but that seems extremely unlikely to me. Old locks aren't tightly sealed and you wouldn't really be able to tightly pack the powder inside the keyhole. You'd probably get a flash and woosh, but that would be it.

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## Blackhawk748

> Not an expert expert, but that seems extremely unlikely to me. Old locks aren't tightly sealed and you wouldn't really be able to tightly pack the powder inside the keyhole. You'd probably get a flash and woosh, but that would be it.


And even if you do get a bit of a bang I doubt it'd be enough to really damage the lock all that much.

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## Mike_G

> And even if you do get a bit of a bang I doubt it'd be enough to really damage the lock all that much.


I can't imagine a simple door lock is stronger than the barrel of a gun, and you can blow those up if you load them wrong.

I can see a poor seal creating more of a flash than a contained explosion.

Like I said, this is hypothetical. It sounds plausible to me, but I have no real first hand black powder experience. I know it's not C4, but *how* not C 4 is it?

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## PhoenixPhyre

> I can't imagine a simple door lock is stronger than the barrel of a gun, and you can blow those up if you load them wrong.
> 
> I can see a poor seal creating more of a flash than a contained explosion.
> 
> Like I said, this is hypothetical. It sounds plausible to me, but I have no real first hand black powder experience. I know it's not C4, but *how* not C 4 is it?


I'm no expert, but one big difference is that black powder burns much slower than c4. Enough so that many don't consider it a primary explosive. It needs a sealed container to create an explosion. C4 doesn't. It creates its own shock wave.

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## rrgg

well, Petards could be used to blow open an entire castle gate. Don't know how much gunpowder would be needed to blow open just a lock though.

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## AdAstra

The powder charge would both need to be large enough and tightly packed enough to burst the lock before all the pressure escapes out all the holes. If the lock was loose and could be jiggled/finagled, you could probably manage it, but if the lock was set into the door? Might not be possible to pack enough powder in tight enough.

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## Yora

> well, Petards could be used to blow open an entire castle gate. Don't know how much gunpowder would be needed to blow open just a lock though.


A black powder bomb to destroy a lock certainly seems plausible. But using the body of a lock to turn itself into a lock seems very unlikely.

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## Mike_G

OK, in this hypothetical scenario, we need to get a door open and not take all day doing it. We have no axe, no battering ram, nothing else obviously better, but we have a musket and ammunition. The suggestion is to take a paper cartridge, which historically (based on the Brown Bess) contained 165 grains of powder (sources differed, but the low end was 110, and the high end closer to 200. 165 was mentioned specifically as the musket charge, so the lighter ones might have been for carbines) so about .37 ounces, rip it open, pour the powder into the lock and improvise a fuse (which I suppose you could do with the rest of the paper if nothing else.)

If the issue is just tightly packing the powder and eliminating an air gap, I imagine you could do that by plugging the hole with the wadded up cartridge paper.

And, isn't one of the dangers in loading a musket a _greater_ chance of blowing up the barrel if you have a gap between the powder and a ball? Like that's why they emphasize ramming the ball down and making sure you have it seated on the powder charge?

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## Yora

I think the best shot (hehe...) would be to try shooting your musket at the lock.

The issue is that there's a lot of empty space in old lock, and sticking some paper into it won't really seal it in any meaningful way. As someone mentioned earlier, black powder is not really an explosive. It just burns very quickly and produces a lot of gas in the process. It's only when the gas pressure builds up within a confined space to the point where it bursts the container that you get an explosion.
Here is a pretty big brass cartridge filled with black powder burning with no proper seal. This is what I would expect from pouring black powder into an old lock.

I never heard of an air gap between powder and ball damaging the barrel. And I can't think of a mechanism by which that would happen. What I would expect is to just lose some power on the ball being shot from the barrel.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> I think the best shot (hehe...) would be to try shooting your musket at the lock.


That would probably work.

If you have the time and munitions maybe load it with shot/buck(/buckshot), several slightly smaller balls rather than one big one. One regular musket ball might still have enough energy left to hurt the user after bouncing off the breaking lock, and at least intuitively it feels like shot would lower that chance (although it does add extra projectiles, so your mileage may vary there.) With shot you could even try aiming at the wood near the lock rather than the mechanism itself and maybe damage that far enough that you can kick the door in.

Alternatively, use a window.

Setting off blackpowder inside a lock seems like similar to setting off a firecracker after breaking it open. There's going to be a lot of burning powder, and you might even damage the lock with the heat applied directly into the mechanism. But there's no explosive force there to pop it open.

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## Mike_G

> I never heard of an air gap between powder and ball damaging the barrel. And I can't think of a mechanism by which that would happen. What I would expect is to just lose some power on the ball being shot from the barrel.


I don't understand it either, I've just seen a lot of people who know more than I do emphasize the need to seat the ball fully on the powder charge, with warnings that failure to do so could be very bad. 

All my shooting has been done with brass cartridge ammo, so I am admittedly unschooled in the alchemy of black powder.

This forum discusses the problem of poorly seated projectiles. I'm taking their word for it, owing to my lack of experience.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.ph...arrels.454853/

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## Max_Killjoy

I thought poorly seated projectiles would be a problem because a gap would leave room for the powder to burn without generating pressure to accelerate the projectile.  IIRC powder doesn't detonate, it deflagrates.

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## Brother Oni

> I don't understand it either, I've just seen a lot of people who know more than I do emphasize the need to seat the ball fully on the powder charge, with warnings that failure to do so could be very bad. 
> 
> All my shooting has been done with brass cartridge ammo, so I am admittedly unschooled in the alchemy of black powder.
> 
> This forum discusses the problem of poorly seated projectiles. I'm taking their word for it, owing to my lack of experience.
> 
> https://www.thehighroad.org/index.ph...arrels.454853/


Oh, I see what they're on about.

When the ball is seated on the charge properly, you have a known volume between the charge and the shot. When the powder ignites, the generated gas fills up this volume until the pressure is enough to overcome the friction between the ball and the barrel and push the ball down the barrel. Since the ball is seated on the charge, it accelerates as fast as the charge burns and everything is happy.

However gas is compressible; if you have an improperly seated shot, you have a bigger volume for the generated gas to fill. This means that depending of the speed of the burn, the pressure at the end of the barrel with the charge can potentially exceed the maximum pressure rating of the barrel before the pressure at the other end of the barrel, is great enough to push the ball down the barrel and release all that pressure.
In addition, since an improperly seated bullet doesn't see a uniform rate of acceleration (it just gets hit by the pressure wave), it might not be able to accelerate down the barrel fast enough to relieve the pressure, resulting in a burst barrel.

The example given in the linked forum is pushing a car with another one. If they start out bumper to bumper, then the pushing car could floor it and both vehicles can get up to quite a fast speed. It's a very different situation if the pushing car starts flooring it from several metres away.

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## Mike_G

> Oh, I see what they're on about.
> 
> When the ball is seated on the charge properly, you have a known volume between the charge and the shot. When the powder ignites, the generated gas fills up this volume until the pressure is enough to overcome the friction between the ball and the barrel and push the ball down the barrel. Since the ball is seated on the charge, it accelerates as fast as the charge burns and everything is happy.
> 
> However gas is compressible; if you have an improperly seated shot, you have a bigger volume for the generated gas to fill. This means that depending of the speed of the burn, the pressure at the end of the barrel with the charge can potentially exceed the maximum pressure rating of the barrel before the pressure at the other end of the barrel, is great enough to push the ball down the barrel and release all that pressure.
> In addition, since an improperly seated bullet doesn't see a uniform rate of acceleration (it just gets hit by the pressure wave), it might not be able to accelerate down the barrel fast enough to relieve the pressure, resulting in a burst barrel.
> 
> The example given in the linked forum is pushing a car with another one. If they start out bumper to bumper, then the pushing car could floor it and both vehicles can get up to quite a fast speed. It's a very different situation if the pushing car starts flooring it from several metres away.


OK, that makes a lot of sense.

Thanks for explaining it. I really didn't see how that worked before. I figured more space between the powder and ball would create a lower pressure.

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## Martin Greywolf

The thing about historical doors and locks is that they aren't very good. Most of the time, you'll likely be able to lift the things up their hinges or use any number of simple exploits, because they just weren't designed to be able to resist entry if no one was guarding them - the expense was too great, and metallurgy not quite there. Locks especially will be simple things, and you should be able to pick them with minimal practice.

*Spoiler: Typical 16th century lock*
Show







The real "you can't open this" device was the bar - you basically have to destroy the door to get past that, if they are seated properly. Locks often just locked some sort of a bar or latch in place.

*Spoiler: Roman pin tumbler lock, the kind used for fancy locks, and still in use today, note how easy it is to pick - you just lift all the tumblers as far up as you can - and that problem wasn't solved until 1805*
Show







Gunpowder in the lock will not work, and not just because there's not enough of it. Even if you do have enough to damage or break the lock, odds are you just broke the smaller parts that made the thing openable, bent the stuff blocking the door from moving, and basically jammed the whole thing shut. Most locks in pre-modern times are made of iron, not steel, and iron is much easier to bend than crack.

So, your best bet to disable the lock is probably either splinter the door itself by force (kicking, bashing it with a pommel/halberd) or disassemble the lock using a dagger as improvised screwdriver. Unless the lock is bolted to the wood, which is pretty likely, then it's brute force o'clock either way.

Barring that, a wire should enable you to either pick the lock or lift the latch.

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## KineticDiplomat

Black powder has, roughly, a 0.55 explosive equivalency to TNT. A steel cutting charge to deform/blast through a 2 inch piece of steel 1/4 inch thick requires 0.2 lbs of tamped TNT. Or a little over a third of a pound of black powder when properly set. Cast iron is generally considered far weaker due to its brittle nature, though no one really does calculations on that - p for plenty and all that. 

Enjoy your lock blowing.

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## fusilier

> OK, in this hypothetical scenario, we need to get a door open and not take all day doing it. We have no axe, no battering ram, nothing else obviously better, but we have a musket and ammunition. The suggestion is to take a paper cartridge, which historically (based on the Brown Bess) contained 165 grains of powder (sources differed, but the low end was 110, and the high end closer to 200. 165 was mentioned specifically as the musket charge, so the lighter ones might have been for carbines) so about .37 ounces, rip it open, pour the powder into the lock and improvise a fuse (which I suppose you could do with the rest of the paper if nothing else.)
> 
> If the issue is just tightly packing the powder and eliminating an air gap, I imagine you could do that by plugging the hole with the wadded up cartridge paper.
> 
> And, isn't one of the dangers in loading a musket a _greater_ chance of blowing up the barrel if you have a gap between the powder and a ball? Like that's why they emphasize ramming the ball down and making sure you have it seated on the powder charge?


Gunpowder was used to blow the locks on safes, before nitroglycerin became the preferred explosive of choice.  (You can see advertisements for "gunpowder proof locks" on safes).

Musket powder is going to be too coarse for the limited space, I would try to grind it as fine as possible (you can do this with the butt of the musket), and pack the lock with as much powder as I can find.  If the lock is particularly loose, then you might want to try to seal off gaps with some gum or something.  The intention is to prevent powder from leaking out, as I doubt you could get much resistance to it.  That said, when firing blanks, people can hear the difference between a load with paper wadding and and one without. It may have more to do with preventing the powder from "spreading out" inside the barrel, but sometimes I notice a little more recoil with wadding too.   

As others have said, the difficulty here is getting enough pressure for the gunpowder to work -- finely ground and tightly packed will cause a faster burn (packing serpentine powder was necessary in ancient cannons to get a proper burn, otherwise they just fizzled).  Old locks aren't terribly sophisticated, so you may be able to damage it sufficiently that it can be easily forced.  

If you have enough powder, and the design of the lock is such that it won't simply direct the blast out the keyhole, you might destroy the lock.  I've seen people serious injured by overloading muskets with blanks with no wadding at all . . . add enough gunpowder, and it can be bad.  I've seen the fore stocks on repro Sharps carbines blown off: the Sharps has a design problem, when the tail of the paper cartridge is cut off, some powder can escape, and collect in a hollow in the fore-stock.  Eventually enough collects there and a flash will set it off.

Honestly, it might not require that much gunpowder to break a lock.  It's the kind of thing that Mythbusters could have proved.

Musket charges:  The last American smoothbore musket used a 110 grain charge (.69 caliber).  Generally speaking as the windage became smaller, the charge decreased.  Also the switch from flintlock to percussion usually reduced the charge by about 10 grains (as the pan no longer needed to be primed).  But there could be national variations (e.g. French seemed to use a heavier charge and less windage than a similar American musket).  165 grains sounds right for a Brown Bess -- which had a fairly large windage -- the Mexican Army was known to overcharge their Bess's, apparently in the opinion that more powder could make up for poorer quality powder . . .

I too have heard that a musket can explode if the ball is not firmly seated on top of the powder.  Perhaps it has something to do with the pressure and burn rate of the propellant increasing, before it acts on the projectile?  It does seem to be a documented problem, and it can be a serious issue in undercharging blackpowder metallic cartridges.

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## Mike_G

> Gunpowder was used to blow the locks on safes, before nitroglycerin became the preferred explosive of choice.  (You can see advertisements for "gunpowder proof locks" on safes).
> 
> Musket powder is going to be too coarse for the limited space, I would try to grind it as fine as possible (you can do this with the butt of the musket), and pack the lock with as much powder as I can find.  If the lock is particularly loose, then you might want to try to seal off gaps with some gum or something.  The intention is to prevent powder from leaking out, as I doubt you could get much resistance to it.  That said, when firing blanks, people can hear the difference between a load with paper wadding and and one without. It may have more to do with preventing the powder from "spreading out" inside the barrel, but sometimes I notice a little more recoil with wadding too.   
> 
> As others have said, the difficulty here is getting enough pressure for the gunpowder to work -- finely ground and tightly packed will cause a faster burn (packing serpentine powder was necessary in ancient cannons to get a proper burn, otherwise they just fizzled).  Old locks aren't terribly sophisticated, so you may be able to damage it sufficiently that it can be easily forced.  
> 
> If you have enough powder, and the design of the lock is such that it won't simply direct the blast out the keyhole, you might destroy the lock.  I've seen people serious injured by overloading muskets with blanks with no wadding at all . . . add enough gunpowder, and it can be bad.  I've seen the fore stocks on repro Sharps carbines blown off: the Sharps has a design problem, when the tail of the paper cartridge is cut off, some powder can escape, and collect in a hollow in the fore-stock.  Eventually enough collects there and a flash will set it off.
> 
> Honestly, it might not require that much gunpowder to break a lock.  It's the kind of thing that Mythbusters could have proved.
> ...


Thanks. I appreciate it. I know this is more your wheelhouse than mine

Yeah, this falls under the category "just has to seem plausible" not "best way to open doors."

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## rrgg

regarding unseated musket balls. Come to think of it, I've come across a lot of instructions for digging mine chambers that mention making them fairly high relative to their width with the gunpowder placed at the bottom because that's supposed to help redirect the blast upwards and make it more destructive.

"After you haue made a myne platte according to this doctrine or in any other manner, you must instruct the Pyoners to vndermine deepe within harde grounde, and to make the way of the myne three foote in breadth, and sixe foote in heigth, and to digge the sayd Ouen and place of greatest effect sixe or seuen foote in breadth, and nine or tenne foot in heigth, to this ende that the gunpowder laide in that place may make his vent vpwardes, and that the ayre which is within the saide holloe place may ayde the gunpowder to open and ouerturne the ground which is right ouer it."

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## Brother Oni

> I figured more space between the powder and ball would create a lower pressure.





> I too have heard that a musket can explode if the ball is not firmly seated on top of the powder.  Perhaps it has something to do with the pressure and burn rate of the propellant increasing, before it acts on the projectile?  It does seem to be a documented problem, and it can be a serious issue in undercharging blackpowder metallic cartridges.


When the ball is seated correctly, the pressure starts up high, which immediately starts moving the ball. As more powder burns and increases the pressure, the already moving ball moves faster to make more space, thus the pressure remains relatively constant until the ball exits the barrel and all the gas is vented.

A bigger gap between the ball and the powder gives rise to possibility of a pressure gradient down the barrel, with the pressure at the high end exceeding the tolerances of the barrel, since the pressure at the low end doesn't hit the necessary level to push the ball out of the way fast enough to let the pressure vent off.

From reading up on other forums and about catastrophic misfires, you can achieve much the same effect with using smokeless powder in a black powder weapon - the smokeless powder burns too fast for the weapon and the pressure buildup exceeds the weapon's tolerances:

*Spoiler: Never swap powders*
Show



The associated story says that the man had run out of black powder and decided to cut up 20 gauge shotgun shells instead - he put 75 grains of smokeless powder in the muzzle loader (which is the equivalent of 300 grains of black powder), effectively turning his weapon into an impromptu pipe bomb.

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## Saint-Just

> From reading up on other forums and about catastrophic misfires, you can achieve much the same effect with using smokeless powder in a black powder weapon - the smokeless powder burns too fast for the weapon and the pressure buildup exceeds the weapon's tolerances:
> 
> *Spoiler: Never swap powders*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> The associated story says that the man had run out of black powder and decided to cut up 20 gauge shotgun shells instead - he put 75 grains of smokeless powder in the muzzle loader (which is the equivalent of 300 grains of black powder), effectively turning his weapon into an impromptu pipe bomb.


I know that even having a different pressure profile can ruin the gun (enough manufacturers of civilian arms in the late 19th/early 20th centuries have stamped some variant of "nitro proof" or "black powder only" on the weapon itself and many more included booklets or whatnot saying the same with a gun), but in this case amount is surely more important (if you poured 300 grains of BP in it from the muzzle end and then tightly seated the bullet over it maybe results would be a little bit less spectacular but I do not think that the weapon would remain functional)

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## Gnoman

No, that's very much a "wrong kind of powder" kaboom. 300 grains of BP would be pretty close to a "proof" load - quite possibly enough to deform or otherwise ruin a gun, not enough to kaboom it

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## comicshorse

Due to COVID I've been in the house a lot more and so have been watching some of my old DVD's again. Including an old favorite the TV series 'Robin of Sherwood'

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086791/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

  What I've noticed is often the heroes when using long bows (which they all do) don't have arrow heads on the arrows, they just have sharpened the wooden shaft to a point
   While this makes sense that a group who live entirely as outlaws in the depths of Sherwood Forest would have trouble getting ahold of arrow heads I did wonder how effective would these arrows actually be ?
   (Their enemies are generally the Sherrif's troops who are clad in chain mail but as they tend to fight in the forest they are obviously firing at close range)

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## Mike_G

> Due to COVID I've been in the house a lot more and so have been watching some of my old DVD's again. Including an old favorite the TV series 'Robin of Sherwood'
> 
> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086791/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
> 
>   What I've noticed is often the heroes when using long bows (which they all do) don't have arrow heads on the arrows, they just have sharpened the wooden shaft to a point
>    While this makes sense that a group who live entirely as outlaws in the depths of Sherwood Forest would have trouble getting ahold of arrow heads I did wonder how effective would these arrows actually be ?
>    (Their enemies are generally the Sherrif's troops who are clad in chain mail but as they tend to fight in the forest they are obviously firing at close range)


I've used arrows with no points, largely when I've had points come off and I wanted to keep shooting. They fly differently, because of weight distribution, but they will still drive deep into the target. It's a pointy stick moving very fast, so it's dangerous. And I'm using a 50 lb recurve, not a 100+ lb longbow. 

I think it would have a tough time penetrating armor or even gambeson. I think at close range it might be effective against unarmored targets.

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## Martin Greywolf

> While this makes sense that a group who live entirely as outlaws in the depths of Sherwood Forest would have trouble getting ahold of arrow heads


Not really. This is medieval Englands, with mandated archery practice, arrowheads are a dime a dozen here, you could get some from every blacksmith. Sure, for the heat-treated fancy ones, you need a specialist, but a simple iron bodkin is doable. Hell, you can even improvise it yourself in a pinch and make some from knives and such.

And even if our outlaws somehow started with no iron and no disguises to go buy/steal some, you can always loot it from your enemies, in proud tradition of assymetrical warfare.




> how effective would these arrows actually be? (Their enemies are generally the Sherrif's troops who are clad in chain mail but as they tend to fight in the forest they are obviously firing at close range)


The thing about forest ambushes is that armor matters a lot less if you do them right. If your targets are under ~50 meters, you can just aim at their soft, unprotected face and not any chainmail they may or may not have. At that point, arrowheads almost don't matter.

If you hit gambeson alone, your wooden tip will behave much like a metal one would have - if it is bodkin-shaped, it will have some trouble getting through that fiber (but at short range and from a longbow, it will get through by sheer force alone), if it is mimicing a broadhead, it will cut the fibers. Yeah, it will be dulled much faster than a metal one, but that matters a whole lot less when it comes to arrows.

If you hit a chain mail or plate, that's when you get problems. Not only is wood easier to break, the arrow tip is directly connected to the shaft. That means a big enough force will crack or splinter the entire shaft, and both eat up energy, and that means less energy delivered to target. If the entire arrow splinters, it now has several smaller splinters that spread the impact over a large area, so unless your guy is supremely unlucky and catches a splinter in the eye, he's gonna be fine.

Metal heads don't entirely avoid the splinter problem, but they move the thresholds quite a bit higherm especially since a slightly bent arrowhead mamy still kill you if it gets through - as plintered arrow, not so much.

And let's not forget that the main anti-chain mail arrowhead is actually a broadhead and therefore also increases wound profile and makes extraction of arrow from person a lot more difficult. That also explains why you don't see hunting without arrowheads all that often.

All that means that, while wooden tips will do in a pinch, they are best avoided.

A final note on wooden arrowtips - if you have to make them, you shouldn't just sharpen the shaft like a pencil. Take your shaft and put the tip of it into a fire until its surface is charred, then take it out. Sharpen ithe resulting product into a screwdiver-like tip and then do your best to flatten it into a broadhead-like cross-section. The burning makes the wood harder, and this sharpening gets you best bang for your buck out of it. You won't see this done anywhere outside of stone age reenactment or survival guides, though, metal tips are just that much better.

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## Duff

Re gunpowder bursting locks, while it seems unlikely that the lock would seal well enough, what would be the effects of the sudden heat of the burn?
Could the sudden heating crack it? (I think probably not, but I'm no blacksmith)
Could it make the lock so brittle that a hard blow would then break it?
How much clay/mud would you need to effectively tamp a black powder bomb to destroy the lock?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Re gunpowder bursting locks, while it seems unlikely that the lock would seal well enough, what would be the effects of the sudden heat of the burn?
> Could the sudden heating crack it? (I think probably not, but I'm no blacksmith)
> Could it make the lock so brittle that a hard blow would then break it?


No effect, pretty much. When it comes to heating things, you need two things: heat and time. Gunpowder has enough heat to mess with an object -gun barels can be heated to glowing red by firing alone - but not enough time. You'd actually be better off by burning it rather than exploding, but there's little of it to fuel a long fire.




> How much clay/mud would you need to effectively tamp a black powder bomb to destroy the lock?


This won't work for two reasons. Firstly, if the lock is in a closed door, you don't have access to its other side, and that means there are gaping holes for the pressure to escape from, at least with old locks.

Second problem is mud, it's soft and easily deformable, an explosion will deform or splatter it far before it builds pressures high enough to break metal. This can, however, be solved by putting clay specifically on the lock and making a pottery-contained explosive. At this point, however, you're probably better off finding a rock.

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## VoxRationis

Continuing the discussion on gunpowder, but on a different tangent: is there any sort of technological prerequisite which would prevent a Bronze Age society from developing black powder? My cursory knowledge of the topic doesn't suggest any real reason why it was invented when it was other than historical accident, but as I said, that knowledge is cursory, and I might be missing something.

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## Gnoman

Sulfur, saltpetre, and charcoal all appear in nature. Arguably, Stone Age people could have stumbled on black powder (though they'd have had a hard time using it for anything without at least pottery). The ability to produce it gets much greater with widespread animal herds (one source of saltpetre is dungheaps, though guano's been the primary source for a long time), and there's advances in chemistry that make extraction of saltpetre easier, but there's pretty much no time in human history that black powder couldn't have been discovered.

Now, there's the argument that the sort of alchemical experiments that lead to the discovery woudln't have been undertaken in earlier eras, so you might consider specific modes of thought as a prerequisite technology.

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## KineticDiplomat

Mostly its a matter of what technologists have taken to calling them Adjacent Possible. In essence, innovative ideas about things that can then be practically applied require certain developments and mindsets to be in place before they are discovered/invented even if they are technically possible between both natural law and some off-purpose use of then existing technology. 

Black powder would definitely qualify as one of those things that was technically possible from almost the earliest point in recorded history but was not an Adjacent Possible until much later. 

In theory theres nothing saying that a human living near the calorie poverty line wouldnt witness some extremely unlikely natural occurrence where in all the three elements made a fast burn/slow explosion, imagine in his head that this could not only be useful, but consistently reproducible and controllable, imagine how that would be applied in a practical sense to warfare that seemed better than fire (better be a big boom he sees, or why bother?) extrapolate that it was those materials that caused it, realize that it wasnt specifically those materials so much as the elements witthin, begin an empirical process greatly hampered by a lack of chemistry being a thing yet where he determined exactly what the right composition is, find a way to reliably obtain those materials in a society where excess productivity is low and trade is often limited to more luxury items by bulk constraints, obtain the capital needed to produce consistent and reliable black powder in more than trace amounts in an age where credit/banking is primitive, demonstrate that black powder to a local leader who frankly hasnt seen significant technological change in his life, get him to visualize the possibility of employing it militarily (while assuring said leader that his elite status as a warrior or gentleman planter wont change), find a new set of capital to actually set up production facilities, train a work force (who come from...somewhere?) prior to the concept of most items being craftsman work, establish a supply chain (again, in a pre-capitalist world), and then go through the whole process again to make that into anything more than a pot of black powder that will probably need to be remixed on site.

Or he sees a flash in the dark where the guano was, asks Zeus for protection, and gets on counting his sheep.

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## Mike_G

> Continuing the discussion on gunpowder, but on a different tangent: is there any sort of technological prerequisite which would prevent a Bronze Age society from developing black powder? My cursory knowledge of the topic doesn't suggest any real reason why it was invented when it was other than historical accident, but as I said, that knowledge is cursory, and I might be missing something.



While others have mentioned the unlikelihood of stone age people figuring it out, a bronze age civilization is quite plausible. To make bronze you need an infrastructure, you need to be able to mine and smelt ores, so an accidental discovery of explosive would very probably lead to further experimentation. And I'm pretty confident the ancient Egyptians or Greeks could figure out a use for gunpowder.

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## AdAstra

> While others have mentioned the unlikelihood of stone age people figuring it out, a bronze age civilization is quite plausible. To make bronze you need an infrastructure, you need to be able to mine and smelt ores, so an accidental discovery of explosive would very probably lead to further experimentation. And I'm pretty confident the ancient Egyptians or Greeks could figure out a use for gunpowder.


We might've seen more rocket-swords. History could've used more rocket-swords.

I kid, but the rocket-swords were legitimately impressive, also coming in incendiary and explosive variations, and were the inspiration for the British Congreve rockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets

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## KineticDiplomat

To Mike Gs point, again, the issue wasnt the theoretical technical capability to harness natural law. If you can smelt and practice Bronze Age medicine, you almost certainly have the  theoretical capability for black powder. Then again, you have the theoretical capability for a steam engine, an early electric grid, and a great deal of what we think of as industrial revolution tech. 

The gap between the theoretical and the practical can be enormous, and the gap between the obvious ability to do a thing in hindsight and the ability to even conceive of such a thing being done, let alone harness enough of society to the idea,  can often be wider. We have Greeks mapping the solar system in models...its not like they lacked the math, or the metal, to accomplish most of what you could have found in the late renaissance and parts of the industrial revolution. But thats a long way from saying it was in any way likely.

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## Mike_G

Well, the original question was is there a technological reason that a bronze age civilization couldn't have developed gunpowder.

I think the short answer is "no."

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## Saint-Just

I definitely agree that is not impossible for a bronze age civilization to invent the gunpowder, but I think there is a need for a caveat: while incendiaries and explosives are not improbable, firearms are.

To elaborate: firearms need advances in metallurgy, which (if we are talking about anything like historical Bronze Age civilization) wasn't there yet. Bronze metallurgy necessary for firearms is very different from that required for swords, it took significant amount of time to figure it out after gunpowder was already there. Iron is even trickier - cannons continued to be made primarily from bronze for even longer time, because making a large, sufficiently homogeneous inclusion-free casting is really hard.

Explosive pottery vessels of all sizes can be used, however concussion is likely to be a primary damaging factor. Making a hand grenade with good fragmentation took a long time IRL, higher ductility of a bronze will make it even worse. Mines, petards, fougasses and other "engineering" explosive charges can be in theory made really early. Incendiaries of all kinds (carcass bombs lobbed by the catapults, fire lances, fire arrows, incendiary rockets) can be made about as effective as their IRL counterparts, assuming they are used at least once in a while to be refined based on practical experience.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Continuing the discussion on gunpowder, but on a different tangent: is there any sort of technological prerequisite which would prevent a Bronze Age society from developing black powder?


Very technically no, but it's one thing to invent it and quite another to do anything useful with it. Firearms have already been discussed as impossible on account of metallurgy, so let's focus on other uses.

*Grenades*

Well, first of all, it will take you quite a bit of time before you get ones that are safe to carrry, convenient to use and so forth. Clay pot with some powder does not a good weapon make, you need at least some string to set it off, and that string has to not go out as you throw it. Also consider that early gunpowder isn't terribly explode-y in the first place and has a lot of inefficiency - some of that can be mitigated by prepareing it the right way (mix with water and dry into flakes, granulation etc), but all of that costs resources.

Much more damningly, what are you using them against? Yeah, sure, you do get the occassional civilization with large enough standing armies to make it practical, but that will not be the case everywhere. At this point, you're investing a lot of time and money into a weapon that will maybe be useful at some point.

*Incendiaries*

Gunpowder isn't all that great at setting things on fire either. Yeah, there are receipes for incendiary arrows that use gunpowder, but the most effective ones don't use just that - instead, gunpowder is there to provide initial kick that will not get snuffed out by arrow flight, and resin is what does the lasting burn that sets things on fire. Fire pots work much the same way.

Sure, gunpowder will work, but that's mostly true if you already have a massive amount of it because you need it for cannons and muskets, since incendiary devices are a very niche thing anyway.




> To Mike Gs point, again, the issue wasnt the theoretical technical capability to harness natural law. If you can smelt and practice Bronze Age medicine, you almost certainly have the  theoretical capability for black powder. Then again, you have the theoretical capability for a steam engine, an early electric grid, and a great deal of what we think of as industrial revolution tech. [...] its not like they lacked the math, or the metal, to accomplish most of what you could have found in the late renaissance and parts of the industrial revolution. But thats a long way from saying it was in any way likely.


This is, for the most part, a myth that came from the worship of classical era, or to be more charitable, from some historian seeing a greek steam engine and getting excited without understanding the engineering side of things.

Industrial revolution has a single bottleneck requirement - metallurgy good enough to manufacture boilers capable of holding high pressures. If you don't have that, you can make some steam tech, but it won't be able to do much. Electrical grid is even worse, since most of its uses need some advanced manufacturing tech (lightbulbs with glassmaking, vacuum sealing, engines need electromagnets).

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## VoxRationis

> I definitely agree that is not impossible for a bronze age civilization to invent the gunpowder, but I think there is a need for a caveat: while incendiaries and explosives are not improbable, firearms are.
> 
> To elaborate: firearms need advances in metallurgy, which (if we are talking about anything like historical Bronze Age civilization) wasn't there yet. Bronze metallurgy necessary for firearms is very different from that required for swords, it took significant amount of time to figure it out after gunpowder was already there. Iron is even trickier - cannons continued to be made primarily from bronze for even longer time, because making a large, sufficiently homogeneous inclusion-free casting is really hard.
> 
> Explosive pottery vessels of all sizes can be used, however concussion is likely to be a primary damaging factor. Making a hand grenade with good fragmentation took a long time IRL, higher ductility of a bronze will make it even worse. Mines, petards, fougasses and other "engineering" explosive charges can be in theory made really early. Incendiaries of all kinds (carcass bombs lobbed by the catapults, fire lances, fire arrows, incendiary rockets) can be made about as effective as their IRL counterparts, assuming they are used at least once in a while to be refined based on practical experience.


What's the limiting factor on cast bronze cannon? Cast bronze pieces of substantial size go back quite a ways (such as Shang ceremonial pieces), and could in the right contexts be made very durable (such as naval rams, which were cast in one piece and built to absorb a dramatic shock).




> This is, for the most part, a myth that came from the worship of classical era, or to be more charitable, from some historian seeing a greek steam engine and getting excited without understanding the engineering side of things.
> 
> Industrial revolution has a single bottleneck requirement - metallurgy good enough to manufacture boilers capable of holding high pressures. If you don't have that, you can make some steam tech, but it won't be able to do much. Electrical grid is even worse, since most of its uses need some advanced manufacturing tech (lightbulbs with glassmaking, vacuum sealing, engines need electromagnets).


This was the main reason for my question; I knew this and that industrial technologies typically have significant hurdles that appear in small ways not obvious to the modern layperson, and was wondering if one applied to the manufacture of gunpowder.

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## AdAstra

> What's the limiting factor on cast bronze cannon? Cast bronze pieces of substantial size go back quite a ways (such as Shang ceremonial pieces), and could in the right contexts be made very durable (such as naval rams, which were cast in one piece and built to absorb a dramatic shock).
> 
> 
> 
> This was the main reason for my question; I knew this and that industrial technologies typically have significant hurdles that appear in small ways not obvious to the modern layperson, and was wondering if one applied to the manufacture of gunpowder.


Basically, no. Every ingredient in gunpowder is something that could conceivably have been produced in the Bronze Age. The chance of someone actually discovering it would be very low, but the technical capacity was there.

-Saltpeter/Potassium Nitrate in mineral form was being extracted as early as 300 BC in India. Extraction from things like Bat guano is also not a particularly complicated process.

-Sulphur can be found near volcanos in pretty much pure form, so that's not a major concern.

-Charcoal is charcoal.

Fuses merely require a different formulation of gunpowder that burns slower. They require no additional ingredients other than something to hold the powder. Slow matches only require the nitrate.

Even if you couldn't manufacture full-sized cannons, you could make rockets out of bronze or bamboo, and use that to make fire arrows or things similar to the Mysorean Rockets. That should be of use, especially in combination with incendiary agents that were available at the time.

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## VonKaiserstein

Forgive me if this is a distraction from the thread, for I offer no real world explanation.  But the topic seems to have gone to what various levels of societies are capable of with different technologies- to that end, I'd recommend a few novel series in the subgenre of military history with advanced knowledge in primitive worlds.

The Belisaurius series, by David Drake and Eric Flint lets the Romans fight a militarized India that goes up through armored Steamships and primitive tanks.

The Safehold Series by David Weber spends a lot of time on cannon development of bronze and iron, and the limitations of various materials.

And in more brief form, The Empire of Man series by David Weber and John Ringo talks a bit about the requisite industries required to create mass produced military firearms.

Enjoy!

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## Saint-Just

> What's the limiting factor on cast bronze cannon? Cast bronze pieces of substantial size go back quite a ways (such as Shang ceremonial pieces), and could in the right contexts be made very durable (such as naval rams, which were cast in one piece and built to absorb a dramatic shock).


Disclaimer: I am not a metallurgist, not even an amateur one (though would a modern metallurgist know what kinds of metals and techniques were available in the particular point in the past, or is it more a history of technology?)

I suppose that there is no absolute limiting factor on cast bronze cannons, but a multitude of small ones. One I know about**: impurities which made bronze-age bronze softer or brittler than Early Modern bronze. It's not as if it was impossible to produce purer bronze (or purer bronze constituents before making them into bronze) but some technologies wasn't there, and some were known but were highly uneconomical. Rams mostly needed to survive compressive stresses instead of tensile stresses. So maybe people who could make ram could make a cannon or maybe they couldn't, too much uncertainties to speculate. Since Shang ceremonial pieces are, well... ceremonial they also do not prove or disprove the ability to make cannons.

I have just looked at the history of the naval ram and found a bigger problem: ram seems to be invented well after the Bronze Age collapse, so properly speaking it was not a Bronze Age technology. This points me to a possible confusion: guys in bronze armour do not a Bronze Age make. Bronze was used in niche applications - large single-piece plates (including breastplates, greaves), corrosion-resistant fittings for marine applications (including rams), springs (including some ballistae springs), cannons - well after the end of the Bronze Age.

So if you ask what a civilization or a world with very little iron can achieve - I have no idea. Given sufficiently favorable other conditions and a lot of time - probably anything up to and beyond IRL technology. But if you are talking about something resembling Bronze Age IRL - I'd say give up on practical firearms or bronze-cased explosives. Grenades, mines, fougasses, petards, fire pots, fire arrows, fire lances, incendiary rockets, kinetic rockets (like hwacha), and that should be about it. And that is being optimistic - Martin Greywolf's criticisms while not insurmountable are grounded in reality.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Fuses merely require a different formulation of gunpowder that burns slower. They require no additional ingredients other than something to hold the powder. Slow matches only require the nitrate.


That's a big only, since you have to essentially invent gunpowder twice, once for fuses and once for the powder itself. It's trivial today, when everyone that manages to complete basic education has a rudimentary understanding of chemistry, but without that, we're looking at a lot of time spent chasing false leads.




> Even if you couldn't manufacture full-sized cannons, you could make rockets out of bronze or bamboo, and use that to make fire arrows or things similar to the Mysorean Rockets. That should be of use, especially in combination with incendiary agents that were available at the time.





> What's the limiting factor on cast bronze cannon? Cast bronze pieces of substantial size go back quite a ways (such as Shang ceremonial pieces), and could in the right contexts be made very durable (such as naval rams, which were cast in one piece and built to absorb a dramatic shock).


These are both sort fo related, and come down to lack of a reason to develop this.

First use of cannon was siege warfare, and for that to be useful, you need to have a kind of opponent that forces you to engage in it a lot. Renaissance Europe was uniquely saturated with all sorts of fortifications, but it was more of an exception. Rome, Egypt or China didn't have these to the degree of Europe, and that means they were often perfectly happy with starving out the things they needed to siege. Try that in Europe, and you'll get horrifically bogged down, as the Mongols found out when they couldn't quite conquer Hungary in two years after defeating their field army decisively.

So, while a cannon or a rocket - former against walls, latter as incendiary - are pretty useful in this one situation, it's not a situation you really need to solve just yet.

Second use of cannon and rockets is in ship battles, and here, they would both be incredibly useful at any time, even somewhat primitive bronze cannon. Trouble is, shipping is a very small portion of a given civilization's armed forces at this time, for a wide variety of reasons. You'd need age of sail ships to change that - mostly because they need vastly less crew and therefore can operate over much longer distances. Maybe if you had an ancient civilization that went that way for some reason? I know only bare basics about the age of sail ship construction, so there may be a reson why that won't work.

Anyhow, unless you increase proportion of naval forces, then there is no reason to invest massively into naval-specific technologies, as ROmans demonstrated when their naval tech was centered around the idea of "how do we fight the same on sea as we do on land".

Third use is against massed units, and that also has a problem - there aren't any. Largest pre-medieval armies come up to about 200 000 soldiers (Rome, Cao Cao) if you take the lower estimates. But that's not what really matters, because you rarely had the capability of deploying all of those in single battle. Taking Cannae for a pretty well researched large battle, it was 80k against 60k, and that was noted as massively large. You usually see numbers around 50k in logistically well-developed states, and falling as low as 30k for medieval armies without the dedicated logistics support.

Now compare that to Napoleon's army to invade Russia, which had almost 700k troops. In one army.

A good turning point is perhaps the battle of Mohacs (70k vs 40k) or Domazlice in Hussite wars (100k vs 50k), this time not as a large exceptions to the rule, but as standard armies of the given sides. This shows that the army size at which cannon was starting to be useful is, while not necessarily larger than possible, only very rarely achieved in pre-renaissance times. And you don't want to develop weapons for the exception, especially not if they also come with a host of disadvantages - like slowing you down or draining manpower and bronze.

Finally, bronze alone is not enough, neither is large bronze, you need to make it uniform and strong, and there's definitely a trick to that, which you will need to figure out. Cannon makers were a respected and lucrative profession, after all.

But, let's say we have a kingdom we're developing for a novel, and they were lucky enough to stumble into gunpowder, and we want to give them the best case scenario. They have bronze age, maybe early iron age tech otherwise, so what can they do with it? Well, rockets as occassional incendiaries and expensive fireworks, much like the Chinese did. If they realize that cannons are possible, there will be some wooden and bronze ones, but will likely be limited to a very small number, with the strong possibility of the necessary formula for making them (metallurgical and chemical) being a greek fire-like secret. Gunpowder will certainly not be deployed on a wide scale until someone figures out a musket, and for that, we need good steel. Steel to save on bulk, good steel because no one is going to put that thing near their face if it explodes 1 times out of 20. If someone is really brainstorming about using this new weapon, then you may start to see some early mortars, as a weapon that is somewhat man-portable - but then and again, maybe not, it really depends oin whether there is a need for it.

That would mean muskets in early medieval era, maybe as late as high medieval, provided that secret isn't lost or declared so sacred any experimentation is stopped. You can then go all the way up to bolt actions over a few centuries, but they will be horrendously expensive until industrial revolution hits because making machines that precise out of steel is a lot of work - think wheellocks but even worse. You will not be able to get self-loaders until smokeless powder, so no jumping the gun there.

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## fusilier

> Fuses merely require a different formulation of gunpowder that burns slower. They require no additional ingredients other than something to hold the powder. Slow matches only require the nitrate.


Fuzes can be made by simply taking gunpowder and putting it in a paper cone.  Quick match can be made by gluing powder to slow match (or a string).  However, why do you need a fuze?  A powder train can suffice in many cases.  Early guns were set off with a heated wire, rather than slow match (the invention of slow match made guns significantly more portable).  

Corning of gunpowder, i.e. the forming of gunpowder into grains rather than a simply incorporated powder, was a pretty significant development, and opened up many different avenues of development.

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## fusilier

> What's the limiting factor on cast bronze cannon? Cast bronze pieces of substantial size go back quite a ways (such as Shang ceremonial pieces), and could in the right contexts be made very durable (such as naval rams, which were cast in one piece and built to absorb a dramatic shock).


There are some pretty serious issues with casting bronze cannons -- the earliest known depictions of cannons show small bronze "vases."

Getting the alloy correct is part of the problem.  Also when the bronze cools the impurities tend to drift (and I think some of the alloyed metals?), on a large cannon the quality of the bronze can vary across the cannon, as different parts cool at different rates.  Furthermore the weight of the metal can cause the bronze to be denser at different places.  By the 16th century it became common (but not universal) to cast the cannon muzzle up.  This meant the breech of the cannon, which underwent the greatest stresses, was also where the metal was most dense.  Longer cannons (like culverins) gained a reputation for being safer, probably for this reason.

Using stone as the projectile has many benefits, chiefly you can use lower pressures to reach the same velocity as an iron cannon ball of the same weight.  So stone throwing cannons became very large, pretty quickly.  Nevertheless, I think it's telling that many early, large, cannons of the 14th century were made from iron using the "hoop and stave" method, rather than cast bronze.  Casting large bronze cannons was a process that developed mainly during the 15th century (I think).

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## Vinyadan

A slight correction to Martin Greywolf: as far as I know, the Romans generally tried to end sieges by storming the city, rather than waiting for starvation. Alesia is the obvious exception. But we know that they made a rampart to get in Masada, breached the walls of Jerusalem, scaled those of Syracuse, and told stories that digging a tunnel beneath those of Veii had been key to success.

They still did try to starve the defenders, though. But they probably had many reasons to want to end things more quickly: the army was a target (compare Alesia), maladies were a concrete possibility (compare the last Punic war), and the siege could be just a step in a wider campaign, one you wanted done as fast as possible. The fact that fortifications back then weren't too great probably helped set this mindset, since, at least in theory, the quality of the walls doesn't change the quantity of food you can store behind them.

EDIT: I think I get now what you meant -- that the Romans would have had fewer things to besiege, compared to later Europe, where there was a castle at every corner.

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## Gnoman

> a local leader who frankly hasnt seen significant technological change in his life, get him to visualize the possibility of employing it militarily (while assuring said leader that his elite status as a warrior or gentleman planter wont change),


While the rest of your post is pretty solid, both of these two bits are really not. First, we tend to think of days long past as not having rapid change in technology, but that has more to do with the way we only interact with their technology in a final, finished form. Bronze Age tech might not have advanced with the same breakneck speed as today (because there's no mass communication means that allows ideas to metastasize within days), but over the course of a decade or two there would be significant and notable differences. 

Likewise, technological change alone never had the widespread social ramifications we associate with them. Most "this weapon was banned to keep the peasants in line" stories are myths.

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## KineticDiplomat

I would cite Harari, Tridimas, and Kaufman as those who would back that general technological progress was slow to stagnant through many parts of human history - even when certain sciences are academically advancing, so to speak - with practical advancements being nearly so limited or small as to be seen as little more than a minor qualitative increase. Enough that our gentleman planter would certainly not have the modern mindset of inventing/alternate exploitation/discovering that we almost take for granted as part of the whole hacker-backer-manager triangle.

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## AdAstra

> Fuzes can be made by simply taking gunpowder and putting it in a paper cone.  Quick match can be made by gluing powder to slow match (or a string).  However, why do you need a fuze?  A powder train can suffice in many cases.  Early guns were set off with a heated wire, rather than slow match (the invention of slow match made guns significantly more portable).  
> 
> Corning of gunpowder, i.e. the forming of gunpowder into grains rather than a simply incorporated powder, was a pretty significant development, and opened up many different avenues of development.


Having a fuse helps a lot for making the resulting weapon actually practical. You're right that it's hardly essential, but it's something you could do, and it would be a great help.

My main point is really that there is no technological barrier, merely barriers in the form of no reason to actually be playing around with all these things in the first place, and few people actually doing this kind of research.

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## Thiel

I can't help but notice that we're showing our gaming biases pretty heavily in this thread by focusing entirely on the military uses of black powder.
Black powder would be incredibly useful for mining for example. Being able to produce a loud bang and a cloud of noxious smoke would be quite handy for hunting. And then there's the religious aspect. Humans as far back as the neolithic have gone to extreme length building religious/ceremonial structures. I see no reason to believe they wouldn't go to the same lengths with their ceremonies.

----------


## AdAstra

> I can't help but notice that we're showing our gaming biases pretty heavily in this thread by focusing entirely on the military uses of black powder.
> Black powder would be incredibly useful for mining for example. Being able to produce a loud bang and a cloud of noxious smoke would be quite handy for hunting. And then there's the religious aspect. Humans as far back as the neolithic have gone to extreme length building religious/ceremonial structures. I see no reason to believe they wouldn't go to the same lengths with their ceremonies.


I think part of the issue is getting enough black powder to really allow you to use it that way. Fireworks for high-profile events, sure, but I doubt most Bronze Age societies are going to have blackpowder available or cheap enough to use in hunting. As for mining, does anyone know roughly how much gunpowder would be used in a typical blasting charge? That might give us an idea of how viable it would be.

As a reference, the first recorded use of gunpowder for mining was in 1627 (Hungary), despite its use in firearms as early as the 14th century.

EDIT: Okay, found another useful reference. The Box Tunnel was constructed in the mid-19th century, being close to 3 km long and taking 3.5 years to construct. A 2400 ft. stretch of that was blasted out with gunpowder, taking one ton of gunpowder per week over two years. So that single tunnel section consumed somewhere around 100 tons of gunpowder.

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## Pauly

> I can't help but notice that we're showing our gaming biases pretty heavily in this thread by focusing entirely on the military uses of black powder.
> Black powder would be incredibly useful for mining for example. Being able to produce a loud bang and a cloud of noxious smoke would be quite handy for hunting. And then there's the religious aspect. Humans as far back as the neolithic have gone to extreme length building religious/ceremonial structures. I see no reason to believe they wouldn't go to the same lengths with their ceremonies.


Hunting:
In the age of exploration animals that werent exposed to European hunting were known to be easily shot until they learned big loud bangs were dangerous. The same applied to indigenous tribes. Fire does the job of flushing animals out only better and cheaper.

Mining
Labor was cheap and powder expensive. Processing facilities and transportation were limited, so greatly increasing how much you can dig doesnt help until you can move enough of it and turn it into something useful. In pre-modern economies a huge percentage of overall production capacity was needed for food production, which limits the amount of labor you can divert to mining and refining.

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## Talakeal

With all the recent talk about boob-plates, one thing that I haven't seen addressed is this article's claim that if you trip while wearing a molded breastplate you will shatter your sternum, likely fatally. 


https://bikiniarmorbattledamage.tumb...hate-the-shape


To me, this seems a difficult claim to swallow, and if true I think people would bring it up more. Does anyone have any knowledge on that subject?

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> With all the recent talk about boob-plates, one thing that I haven't seen addressed is this article's claim that if you trip while wearing a molded breastplate you will shatter your sternum, likely fatally. 
> 
> 
> https://bikiniarmorbattledamage.tumb...hate-the-shape
> 
> 
> To me, this seems a difficult claim to swallow, and if true I think people would bring it up more. Does anyone have any knowledge on that subject?


That sounds like a thing that should be avoidable, honestly. The idea is that armor takes an impact that happens on a single point and spreads the force out over a larger area. If armor does exactly the opposite it's bad armor. This is the one area though were being the outer shell being form fitting should actually help. You should be able to make the force spread out well enough with simple padding. Sure, the hard bits on your body are still going to get a little more force transferred into them than the soft bits, because the soft bits bend away, but an impact across the entire breastplate should still not fracture let alone shatter your sternum. Also note that simply tripping and falling does not usually result in an incredibly hard impact. Sure, there's some weight and gravity behind it, but between your legs trying to complete their steps, your knees landing and your hands going out in a reflex the actual force on your torso is usually not that big. This would mean that you could also letally shatter the sternum of someone in this armor by kicking them in the chest, or by landing a solid blow with most main battlefield weapons. You might be able to make armor like that, but I'm thinking you're going to need to put poisoned needles on the inside of it or something.

I don't particularly like boob plate from a practical armor perspective, I figure there are ways to get more protection from less material. But it doesn't come across to me as something that's worse than fighting naked. Far from it. It's more like having a sword with a bit of a too ornamental blade. It might be a little heavier or less durable than a simpler design, but it's still a sword, not an active danger to the wielder.

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## Max_Killjoy

> With all the recent talk about boob-plates, one thing that I haven't seen addressed is this article's claim that if you trip while wearing a molded breastplate you will shatter your sternum, likely fatally. 
> 
> https://bikiniarmorbattledamage.tumb...hate-the-shape
> 
> To me, this seems a difficult claim to swallow, and if true I think people would bring it up more. Does anyone have any knowledge on that subject?


While the specific claim is dubious (why doesn't the wearer do anything to turn or brace to avoid falling flat on their face?), the basic idea that the molded shape runs exactly counter to multiple design requires for armor is true.  

First, armor is supposed to spread out impact, not focus it.

Second, the angles may form an "arrow trap" that could send fragments towards the neck and chin, or underarm, of the wearer.   (This was already a problem that lead some armor to having that little V-shape piece affixed right below the collar level.)





> I don't particularly like boob plate from a practical armor perspective,  I figure there are ways to get more protection from less material. But  it doesn't come across to me as something that's worse than fighting  naked. Far from it. It's more like having a sword with a bit of a too  ornamental blade. It might be a little heavier or less durable than a  simpler design, but it's still a sword, not an active danger to the  wielder.


Yeah, better than no armor, but worse than well-designed, practical armor.  

And here's the thing about "boob armor"... as far as I know, we have zero historical examples across many cultures, and yet we know that in some of those cultures women did engage in combat and sometimes go to war.   So the arguments that grasp at some notion of realism for "boob armor" come down to a pair of counterfactuals -- "Women didn't fight" and "but if they had, their armor would have had cups on it".

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## Vinyadan

It depends on whether the armour is built in such a way that only the breast keeps it in place when you fall forward. In other words, do the belly and the sides and the shoulders give a lot of leeway for the armour to move?

If things go wrong, I personally wouldn't worry about a broken sternum, and more about the way your sternum can travel backwards and hit what's behind it. Some people die from a headbutt this way. It's something an irked physician observed after Zidane headbutted Materazzi.

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## Saint-Just

> With all the recent talk about boob-plates, one thing that I haven't seen addressed is this article's claim that if you trip while wearing a molded breastplate you will shatter your sternum, likely fatally. 
> 
> To me, this seems a difficult claim to swallow, and if true I think people would bring it up more. Does anyone have any knowledge on that subject?


Like in many other situations if people think that idea is bad (and this one is genuinely bad) they will try to find more flaws than there are. If I squint just right then maybe it would incredibly rarely happen if you wear such a breastplate with no padding at all... but wearing plate armour of any shape with no padding is idea comparable in stupidity with the boob-plate.

Obviously metal boobs are an additional weight and expense for no gain, and there are examples of historical "barrel chested" breastplates made for men, whose design can in principle accommodate even unusually large breasts if tweaked a little, so there is no reason for a boobplate to exist as anything other than ornamental piece, but there is a world of difference between "it is a feature which makes it worse than normal product" and "it makes a product with that feature worse than nothing" (though in some situations even normal armour is worse than nothing, but that has nothing to do with the boobplate).




> If things go wrong, I personally wouldn't worry about a broken sternum, and more about the way your sternum can travel backwards and hit what's behind it. Some people die from a headbutt this way. It's something an irked physician observed after Zidane headbutted Materazzi.


I am not a doctor (though I have played one in an RPG), but this is a peculiarity of the brain physiology, AFAIK. I do not see how sternum can sufficiently damage internal organs without being detached and\or broken. Now, cardiac arrest may result from a sudden hit, but even boobplate shouldn't make it worse than being hit by the same blow without armour.

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## AdAstra

If the boob plate is really poorly designed, the center divot could very well crunch your torso like a wedge in the event of a serious impact. Even without that, better to just leave the area between the breasts raised up, as that serves as a better "crumple zone", in addition to providing superior ventilation and being easier to make/fit.

At best, boob plate is unnecessary and weird-looking to many people

The Mandalorian armor wasn't particularly egregious (only marginally different from the cartoon, which also was hardly excessive), except for one aspect that applies to all mando armor. _The torso plate being split into two sections in the middle_. It's completely unnecessary for the design and creates a weak point in exactly the place where you don't want or need weak points. It's not just a ridge either, it's either a gap or a very deep furrow. There are armor designs that have a similar gap, but those are armors that are already made of multiple smaller plates, or muscle cuirasses that have a pretty shallow crevice there. There's no reason for the cuirass-like unitary chestplate to be constructed that way except for aesthetics. Given how overpowered Mandalorian Iron is, you can probably afford a little extravagance, but it irks me because it doesn't even look good IMO.

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## Talakeal

Thanks for the replies; that's pretty much what I thought.

IMO both sides have minor points but overstate their claims on the issue of boob-plates; at it has kind of become a geek microcosm of the "anti-porn vs sex-positive" debates of second wave feminism.





> Second, the angles may form an "arrow trap" that could send fragments towards the neck and chin, or underarm, of the wearer.   (This was already a problem that lead some armor to having that little V-shape piece affixed right below the collar level.)


Wouldn't two bulges on the side be less likely to send an attack into the throat than the standard single bulge in the middle?

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## Pauly

My knowledge on armor is fairly limited, but my understanding is:

Historically there have been women who fought or at least lead armies. The most studied being Joan of Arc. Where we have good evidence  their armor is armor. i.e. Practical armor was non-gemdered.
Which means that
- The armor did not need to be modified for women.
- Any issues of discomfort were so minor as to not bother with the cost of modification, or no external modifications were needed.

Some  ceremonial/cosplay Boobplate type armors that were obviously not meant for battle does exist.

For me boobplate would be like codpieces on 16th Century plate, Roman muscled cuirasses or horned samurai helmets. Something decorative and for psychological effect, not practical value. It would be the equivalent of a female CoD player having Yougotkilledbyagirl as a gamertag.

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## Mike_G

> Wouldn't two bulges on the side be less likely to send an attack into the throat than the standard single bulge in the middle?


I don't see how.

On boob plate, any hits to the inner slope of the "breast," so pretty much the center third of the chest, would deflect toward the cleavage, and then upward toward the neck. A standard breastplate would slope away from the centerline in both directions, so a hit on either side of that exact center would be directed off to the side, never toward the sternum.  A hit high on the chest might be deflected upwards, but I don't see how boob plate would make that any worse, and the "valley" might actually lead more arrows that way, keeping arrows that might have been deflected high and sideways toward an 'over the shoulder' direction in the middle lane

----------


## Lapak

> The Mandalorian armor wasn't particularly egregious (only marginally different from the cartoon, which also was hardly excessive), except for one aspect that applies to all mando armor. _The torso plate being split into two sections in the middle_. It's completely unnecessary for the design and creates a weak point in exactly the place where you don't want or need weak points. It's not just a ridge either, it's either a gap or a very deep furrow. There are armor designs that have a similar gap, but those are armors that are already made of multiple smaller plates, or muscle cuirasses that have a pretty shallow crevice there. There's no reason for the cuirass-like unitary chestplate to be constructed that way except for aesthetics. Given how overpowered Mandalorian Iron is, you can probably afford a little extravagance, but it irks me because it doesn't even look good IMO.


Clearly Beskar steel loses its fantastical properties if it is shaped more than about a foot square (unless it is drastically curved, like a helmet.)

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## AdAstra

> Clearly Beskar steel loses its fantastical properties if it is shaped more than about a foot square (unless it is drastically curved, like a helmet.)


See, the idea that the metal is difficult to create and shape in large plates would work (after all, steel was like this for much of history). Except we see beskar melted into a liquid state and cast. That too irritates me, for it deprives us of watching some nice hammering.

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## Sapphire Guard

My understanding of plate armour was that combat was based around stabbing through eyeslits and underarms, and knocking someone over so you have the opportunity to get to the weak points.
 There might technically be a structural weakness, but humans can't cut plate steel anyway.

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## Mike_G

> My understanding of plate armour was that combat was based around stabbing through eyeslits and underarms, and knocking someone over so you have the opportunity to get to the weak points.
>  There might technically be a structural weakness, but humans can't cut plate steel anyway.


It's not cutting through the steel that's the issue. It's that if the breastplate traps the point instead of deflecting it, the impact all gets transferred to the wearer. The force might knock you down, rather than sliding off to the side. Or the blade might ride the cleavage path up the breastplate to the throat. 

And something really heavy, like a lance or a bolt from a heavy crossbow might punch through armor.

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## AdAstra

> My understanding of plate armour was that combat was based around stabbing through eyeslits and underarms, and knocking someone over so you have the opportunity to get to the weak points.
>  There might technically be a structural weakness, but humans can't cut plate steel anyway.


That's mostly if you have a weapon like a sword or a dagger which can't get a ton of inertia behind it. Historical plate armor was remarkably thin: 3 millimeters was considered high, and it's thickness varied quite a bit.

With weapons like warhammers, lucerne hammers, and poleaxes (even a sword being held by the blade to use as a makeshift hammer), you could leave a sizeable dent in plate (and ideally the person inside), or even punch through it. Against such brute force, often concentrated into small points, you really don't want armor to be too close-fitting if you can avoid it. The more you can deflect a blow away from you, the more of a "crumple zone" you have, the better.

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## Sapphire Guard

Isn't that what the padding inside is for? 

Seems like situations where the structural weakness makes enough difference to matter would be fairly small. Lethal strikes from things like heavy crossbows and lances seem like they would likely be lethal anyway.

I don't have a dog in this race particularly, but y'all tend to know these things.

Another open ended question that may not have a useful answer: If you're missing your ring and pinky fingers from one hand, how much of an obstacle is that likely to be when using firearms? Seems like it would make it very hard to hold steady, but I have no gun experience.

Obviously, this is another 'it depends' question, but how would someone optimise things so it would be as little an obstacle as possible? What would be the easiest or most difficult weapon to use?

Thanks. Not super important, just a question I've been wondering.

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## Vinyadan

> It's not cutting through the steel that's the issue. It's that if the breastplate traps the point instead of deflecting it, the impact all gets transferred to the wearer. The force might knock you down, rather than sliding off to the side. Or the blade might ride the cleavage path up the breastplate to the throat. 
> 
> And something really heavy, like a lance or a bolt from a heavy crossbow might punch through armor.


About lances, jousting with boob plate looks like a terrible mistake. Many hits to the breast that would otherwise glance off to the side would have their force driven towards the centre, or glance towards your throat and chin. Lots of broken lances!

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## AdAstra

> Isn't that what the padding inside is for? 
> 
> Seems like situations where the structural weakness makes enough difference to matter would be fairly small. Lethal strikes from things like heavy crossbows and lances seem like they would likely be lethal anyway.
> 
> I don't have a dog in this race particularly, but y'all tend to know these things.
> 
> Another open ended question that may not have a useful answer: If you're missing your ring and pinky fingers from one hand, how much of an obstacle is that likely to be when using firearms? Seems like it would make it very hard to hold steady, but I have no gun experience.
> 
> Obviously, this is another 'it depends' question, but how would someone optimise things so it would be as little an obstacle as possible? What would be the easiest or most difficult weapon to use?
> ...


Padding helps, but it's better to have padding AND more space. Plus, more space means more room for padding.

Against things like powerful projectiles, lances, and powerful weapon strikes, the value of deflecting blows rather than meeting them directly is _everything_. If the hit connects cleanly, it will most likely hurt you. If it glances off, the vast majority of energy is lost (unless it's deflected into another body part, which you want to avoid). Deflecting a blow away from your body often means the difference between being knocked off-balance and getting a hole punched in you.

For firearms and missing fingers, it'll depend on the weapon and the hand. For a pistol, a hand with two fingers missing is going to be very inconvenient. You'd have the other hand to support it, but it would probably better to just learn to shoot with your non-injured hand and use the injured one to support.

But for rifles, it's not such a huge deal to be missing those two fingers in particular. When you're shooting a rifle, you've got three points of contact: your shoulder, your firing hand, and your supporting hand. Your shoulder is taking most of the recoil, and you can hold/fire a rifle with only three fingers. Is it ideal? No, but it's not even close to impossible.

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## Telok

Does anyone know or have links to stuff about military "rules of thumb" or actual guides regarding how far away troops shpuld be able to spot & recognize tanks, planes, apcs, etc.?

I'm trying to set up a system agnostic set of tables for visual and audible detection and identification using real data. I've been searching for studies and experiments but it's slow going, there's lots of signal noise involving eye charts and autonomous vehicle systems. The eye charts are particularly annoying because it's everyone's frst recommendation but there turn out to be bias and cognition issues related to preparation, simple shapes, and high contrast static images.

The best stuff I've come across so far was a study of using different types of image degredation to mimic distance effects when using pictures to study vision & distance relationships (it included a beautiful charts of Y% correct identification of faces at X distance by different methods), and a paper about proving the accuracy of some visual distance measurement in air traffic control situations with images of aircraft at different angles (less useful as I'll have to spend a couple hours reading the paper to figure out which equation they're trying to prove, if it was proved, and if it's actually relevant to my needs).

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## Saint-Just

Elaboration and concurrence on shooting with missing fingers.

First I want to note that I will not discuss possibility of shooting with freshly detached fingers. I am not sure if there is anyone who knows more than a few anecdotes about how much fresh open wounds hamper ability to shoot, and if someone knows more it's a very niche knowledge.

Also missing fingers on non-dominant hand should not affect accuracy significantly with a long arm as long as one has a time to adjust to it instead of getting into shooting war right after removing stitches on finger stumps. So further cases are about dominant hand

With a pistol: you are screwed. Mostly. I would not say it is impossible to hit a man at three meters but it should hamper shooting greatly, especially ability to go back on target after the first shot. Supporting mangled hand with intact off-hand is unlikely to be good enough. Retraining to shoot with your other hand is recommended if you have enough time.

With a long arm: nowhere near as bad as pistol, still bad enough, especially for ability to go back on target, especially without time to adjust. What can help significantly is adding more points of contact, by using a bipod, bracing a forend against something of appropriate height (make sure you don't have one of those guns which jam when a force is applied to the barrel\forestock), or using a shooting sling. Just in case - ability to fire heavy weapons from tripods will be affected not at all. Probably.

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## Martin Greywolf

> With all the recent talk about boob-plates, one thing that I haven't seen addressed is this article's claim that if you trip while wearing a molded breastplate you will shatter your sternum, likely fatally.


Boob plate as a concept won't shatter your sternum necessarily, but the most common execution definitely, absolutely will.

To make that clearer, the idea behind boob armor is to make it female-form-fitting for eye candy, and that is sonething that's fundamentally opposed to how armor works. We're not really talking about cuirass that has boobs on it but otherwise acts as a cuirass when it comes to what's under it (i.e. gap and padding), we're talking almost form-fitting plate of steel.

If that takes a strong hit from pretty much anywhere from the front, it will apply sudden leverage directly on your sternum, and the problem is, sternum (unlike, say, an arm) has nowhere to go. Most solid blows (and remember, this is armor fighting, so mace at a minimum, likely a pollaxe) porbably won't shatter it with immediately fatal results, just crack it, but that alone is likely to decide the fight. If you catch a lance? Game over.

Bolts and arrows don't have the necessary momentum (they do have the energy, but low momentum means they will be easily flipped or redirected) to break bones, so you'll be fine there, unless your boob plate redirects those straight under your chin. Which it will in some cases.




> Deflecting a blow away from your body often means the difference between being knocked off-balance and getting a hole punched in you.


It's not just getting a hole punched in you, a lance impact is strong enough to break your neck, and blunt force trauma alone can bruise or tear off your organs. Armor being partially penetrated and blow being stopped short of your fleshy bits is actually better from blunt force perspective, because that penetration and subsequent deformation not only spend some of the blow's energy, they also spread the blow out over a longer timeframe, reducing the impulse of force. That latter part means the modern abaltive bulletproof vest isn't really analogous to how a plate armor functions in this regard, either.

Jousting especially involves extreme blunt forces being passed around - there are numerous accounts of a lance impact on the rider breaking the back of a horse. Put that kind of power anywhere near your neck, or into the middle of a boobplate, directly on top of your sternum, and, well...




> Isn't that what the padding inside is for?


The important thing to remember is that padding is still heavy - I have two gambesons, one for under chain mail and one for standalone use, the standalone is made from looser padding, insanely protective and clocks at about 3-4 kilos. The under mail one has the same weight, but is significantly thinner when we measure from skin to top layer of gambeson, about 2-3cm when compared to 10-12cm.

The idea here is that you need some padding, but don't want to increase weight, and there is a point at which more padding doesn't matter, because you either stopped the blow or are getting shot at by cannons.

Then there is the issue of lessening the impulse of force I described above, but I'm unsure if anyone knew about that in the period, the equations for this sort of thing involve maths that weren't discovered quite yet, and there were no high-speed cameras. It is entirely possible that people just figured out that a gap works better than no gap, without really knowing why.

Finally, if you pierce a plate of steel and keep driving in, there is going to be friction between your piercing spike and edges of the hole. The bigger the distance it has to travel, the more force it will absorb. Combine this with we don't want to add weight approach, and gaps suddenly make sense.




> I'm trying to set up a system agnostic set of tables for visual and audible detection and identification using real data. I've been searching for studies and experiments but it's slow going, there's lots of signal noise involving eye charts and autonomous vehicle systems. The eye charts are particularly annoying because it's everyone's frst recommendation but there turn out to be bias and cognition issues related to preparation, simple shapes, and high contrast static images.


Well, good luck. This is a topic that depends so much on time of day, place, weather, paint of target, foliage and many, many more - you will likely end up with "and then DM can apply a modifire that goes to just about +-100% of a value you have gotten".

For man-sized targets, you should probably talk to Ian from ForgottenWeapons YT channel, I remember him mentioning several times how difficult it was to identify a target at x yards in a three gun match. I don't really remember which videos it was in, so you can either watch a few of them or just send him a message.

For vehicles, only thing I can think of are warships, which are conveniently placed on a flat surface most of the time. There are some issues with camo paint, but looking at various pre-carrier battles should give you a good idea when it comes to at what range it is possible to spot a ship - Jutland, for example, has a spotting distance of 20-30 km.

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## Yora

How many times did Julius Caesar build a wall to force a battle on his own terms? I know he did it at least twice, but I seem to remember he did it even more than that. (And there was also the time he build a giant bridge over the Rhine , just to make a point.)

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: seeing things. 

If you really want to read it, this sort of thing was a popular technical research subject back in the day. Long story short, humans can fairly consistently be observed at 100m or less in any terrain where they are not literally physically obstructed (e.g. very thick woods, jungle, or other areas where there is no actual line of sight),  but by 300m the variables start coming in to play...detection in an open field remains easy, detection in a far wood line becomes extremely improbable. 

So...thats probably where your chart starts. In difficult conditions or terrain, you will not get a chance to observe a human until they close to under 300m. At 100m you detect by default unless they do some deliberate sneaky stuff. 

Double that for medium terrain. 

Double it again for open terrain. 

In theory you can actually potentially visually resolve a human at nearly 5km, but 1200m chance and 400m auto unless stealthed in the plains seems fair to actually human mental acuity.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/753600.pdf

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## Telok

I'm not looking less for just spotting things than for recognizing them and, ideally, how accurate people are at it. That's why the facial identification study (I'll try to get the link, I promise, when I can use an actual computer) was pretty much perfect. I'm not worried about obstructions, concealment, etc., yet. Just trying to find actual data on the basics for now.

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## Martin Greywolf

I just remembered there was something perfect for your purposes, a WW2 wargame used by Brits Western Approaches Tactical Unit to very effectively counteract German submarines. It had to have rulesets for spotting and identification, and accurate ones, since it has proven to work almost flawlessly in real world. Unfortunately, ruleset seems top be lost to time, and only person who remembers it and is known to us is Prince Phillip. He probably won't answer your email.

Fortunately, the ruleset was based on wargames by Fred Jane, which are available. There's a couple of books out there - which I'm not spending money on, but you may want to - and there are some online files, for example this one, which gives sighting range at 20 miles. It also gives semaphore signaling distance at 12 miles and flags at 5, and since you need to identify those properly, it would give you what you need once you look up naval signal flag size.

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## AdAstra

> I'm not looking less for just spotting things than for recognizing them and, ideally, how accurate people are at it. That's why the facial identification study (I'll try to get the link, I promise, when I can use an actual computer) was pretty much perfect. I'm not worried about obstructions, concealment, etc., yet. Just trying to find actual data on the basics for now.


I mean, people are so good at recognizing faces that we frequently recognize faces where there are none, so that's a start. Generally, the way people spot other people is by recognizing a familiar shape, like a face, or body outline, which draws attention to our brains. Telling the difference between specific people will be a lot harder, but you can pretty much recognize a human at any distance where you'd spot the person to begin with.

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## Telok

Sweet, thanks. The infantry time-to-spot also had a little daya point I could use and, importantly leads me towards a tanks/vehicle version of that paper.

There was a facial recognition one that I started with, great graphs summarising what I needed. It was done as part of studying criminal witness accuracy.

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## KineticDiplomat

Vehicles mostly get treated for acquisition by other optics. For all you ever wanted to know about what platforms can detect a vehicle at what range and recognize it at another, the WEG is your go to. Or you can just assume acquire at 3600m and recognize at 2000m. This is a older one, but modern enough:

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/weg.pdf

That does not cover the mark one eyeball however. Dont quote me on it, but I believe the older concepts were that an unaided eye should be able to recognize a fighting vehicle in the open at 800m provided time and knowledge. To the degree that you could know western tank or Russian tank though probably not wild specifics.

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## Telok

Haven't gotten to look at anything more since last post but found the facial ID file

faculty.washington.edu/gloftus/downloads/loftusharleydistance.pdf

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## Vinyadan

Trivia question: whose hand is on the shoulder of this sailor as she shoots? Does it have a purpose? Is it a common thing to do? File:US Navy 080725-N-4236E-391 Fire Controlman Seaman Rachel Hubley fires an M4 carbine from the fantail of the guided-missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG 72).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

*Spoiler*
Show

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## Yora

My first guess would be a firearm instructor checking on how she is dealing with the recoil to give advice how her posture could be improved. Or as a signal to start and stop shoting when other noise makes hearing spoken instructions unteliable.

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## KineticDiplomat

Who knows? Even for a propaganda shot, they laid that one on thick. Im pretty sure that standing with a CCO and a gangster grip isnt the stuff of match grade teaching. And its not like 5.56 is going to cause any recoil that youll notice.

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## Ajustusdaniel

Is Pathfinder's sickle-sword based on anything actually or quasi-historical?  My searches just keep turning up the khopesh.

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## Zombimode

Well for Sickle-swords there is the Shotel: 

It lacks this "second grip" thingy, though.

----------


## Yora

The description sounds completely unlike anything I've ever seen, and I have no clue how it is even supposed to work or look like.
Seems like the silliest fantasy "weapon" since the double ended flail.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Is Pathfinder's sickle-sword based on anything actually or quasi-historical?  My searches just keep turning up the khopesh.


It's not. The reasons are in three rough categories.

1) Too long

Most swords with weird curvatures tend to be fairly short, 3 1/2 feet is 105cm, which is the length of bastard swords and longswords if it's just the blade. If it's total, it's the upper end of arming swords, and remember, it curves, so it would be pretty unweildy.

2) How does it even curve

The description of it is remarkably bad, I can't really picture it in my head. It could be falcata, kopesh, yatagan, falmberge...

3) This is not how swords work

The only reason for a secondary grip is halfswording, and to my knowledge, while halfswording isn't exclusively European, secondary grips are. Unpredictably twirling it mid-fight is a good way to either get your hand chopped off, or to get stabbed because your reach is now reduced.


So, it could very well be based on something initially, but with a bad description and worse ability when in use, it's hard to tell.

----------


## Berenger

> The description sounds completely unlike anything I've ever seen, and I have no clue how it is even supposed to work or look like.
> Seems like the silliest fantasy "weapon" since the double ended flail.


"If exotic weapons were any good, they wouldn't be exotic."

----------


## Ajustusdaniel

About what I figured, but given that the Nine Branch Sword turned out to be based on an actual (ceremonial, non-battleworthy) weapon, and the urumi is apparently (somehow) a real historical weapon, I figure it never hurts to check in case there's some actual obscure artifact or technique these things are loosely based on.

For what it's worth, Pathfinder's core setting associates it with their Spooky Fantasy Russia culture, so _maybe_ it's a bizarre attempt at fantastifying the Shashka?

----------


## Yora

A shashka is just a pretty plain and straightforward cavalry saber.

As far as I am able to tell, there is no illustration for the Pathfinder sickle sword. Who knows what kind of abomination the writer might have imagined.

----------


## Saint-Just

> Well for Sickle-swords there is the Shotel: 
> 
> It lacks this "second grip" thingy, though.


It's not a shotel, because Pathfinder have  shotel as a separate weapon, and even gives it bonus for stabbing around shields in line with real-world use of shotel. 




> About what I figured, but given that the Nine Branch Sword turned out to be based on an actual (ceremonial, non-battleworthy) weapon, and the urumi is apparently (somehow) a real historical weapon, I figure it never hurts to check in case there's some actual obscure artifact or technique these things are loosely based on.
> 
> For what it's worth, Pathfinder's core setting associates it with their Spooky Fantasy Russia culture, so _maybe_ it's a bizarre attempt at fantastifying the Shashka?


Unlikely. Shashka is not that weird, unusual, or distinct from other blades (with exception of the "handle goes into the scabbard" bit which is mostly associated with Caucasian shashkas and not Russian/Cossack shashkas).

----------


## Mike_G

The "curves multiple times" could apply to the Yatagan, which curves forward like a Khopesh or Kukri at the center of percussion and then curves back as it nears the point, bringing the point more or less in line with the grip, so it's probably easier to stab with than other curved blades. 

I've never heard of one with a secondary grip for half swording though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yatagan

----------


## Saint-Just

Also wave-bladed swords. Flambards (two-handed swords), flamberges (one-handed swords), and krises (daggers/ short swords). Flambards even have a ricasso like many other two-handers, but none of these blades look even a little bit like sickles.

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## Yora

I think I got it!

It's probably a twisted final fantasy interpretation of a bardiche with a short handle.

*Spoiler*
Show




If you make the handle all metal and hammer it flat to fuse with the blade, it could kind of look like a sword. Still wouldn't work as described, but it would be one plausible explanation what the writer was thinking.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Could they be misinterpreting the falx?

----------


## Martin Greywolf

Oh, I think I know what it's based off of. Once Yora's post suggested to not think of just swords, it hit me.

It's a mambele.

Mambele itself is a word used for two distinct weapon types, one a sword shaped a lot like horseman's pick/bec de corbin, the other a throwing dagger. If you heard mambele was a sword and then googled pictures for it, you'd get results of the dagger versions as well, and some of those are drawn very simplistically, which could make it seem like it has a secondary grip, if you know little about melee weapons.

*Spoiler: Sword mambele*
Show




*Spoiler: Dagger mambele*
Show




*Spoiler: Picture that is likely responsible for this*
Show




I have no idea if the terminology for these on the web is correct or not, this area and period is really far outside of my area of interest.

----------


## Saint-Just

> Oh, I think I know what it's based off of. Once Yora's post suggested to not think of just swords, it hit me.
> 
> It's a mambele.
> 
> Mambele itself is a word used for two distinct weapon types, one a sword shaped a lot like horseman's pick/bec de corbin, the other a throwing dagger. If you heard mambele was a sword and then googled pictures for it, you'd get results of the dagger versions as well, and some of those are drawn very simplistically, which could make it seem like it has a secondary grip, if you know little about melee weapons.
> 
> *Spoiler: Sword mambele*
> Show
> 
> ...


Wow, I've seen those things in GURPS Low-Tech (as "Hungamunga or mongwanga") but because the picture there is mostly accurate I would never think about them as having a second grip.

----------


## Telwar

It sounds like it's based off a scythe with a short grip, which would (I think) normally be a sickle.  Which I guess is where they pulled the name from.

----------


## Saint-Just

> It sounds like it's based off a scythe with a short grip, which would (I think) normally be a sickle.  Which I guess is where they pulled the name from.


Only if you apply the same logic that was suggested for bardiche: replace the haft with  a blade, Because "its blade bears a small secondary grip partway up its length", and the second grip on a scythe is nowhere close to the blade.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

Maybe a really misunderstood war scythe?

*Spoiler: Standard-issue war scythe, just take a scythe blade and mount it more sensibly*
Show




*Spoiler: German or Swiss war scythe, 17th c.*
Show



Especially if you saw the first picture only and didn't read in description it's 2 meters long



Edit: if anyone wants to know, the weird handle up there is for hooking shafts of other polearms, occasionally a sword or an axe. It can also be used to bind opposing blow in a pinch, but you're better served by batting that away. Oh, and it's also useful in storage, just hang that from a tree branch or a rope or something, or prop several of them together, musket-with-bayonet style.




> Wow, I've seen those things in GURPS Low-Tech (as "Hungamunga or mongwanga") but because the picture there is mostly accurate I would never think about them as having a second grip.


Yeah, there are a bunch of different tribal names for them, but only one that conflicts with an actual sword name is mambele. As far as I know, which in this case isn't that far.

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## Matuka

What would be the blast radius of a barrel full of gunpowder and how destructive are they? I'm planning on introducing gunpowder in a future campaign and I am rightfully concerned that they are both smart enough and chaotic enough to build a bomb, to Pandemonium with the consequences.

----------


## Vinyadan

> What would be the blast radius of a barrel full of gunpowder and how destructive are they? I'm planning on introducing gunpowder in a future campaign and I am rightfully concerned that they are both smart enough and chaotic enough to build a bomb, to Pandemonium with the consequences.


How big a barrel? Beer barrel? Oil barrel? Gun barrel?

This page contains a table with different sizes simplified as with creatures (medium etc.) as well as damage and blast radius, you can adapt the numbers as you see fit. Gunpowder (D&D equipment) - Hastur It looks easier than calculating per pound or kg.

----------


## fusilier

> What would be the blast radius of a barrel full of gunpowder and how destructive are they? I'm planning on introducing gunpowder in a future campaign and I am rightfully concerned that they are both smart enough and chaotic enough to build a bomb, to Pandemonium with the consequences.


The third edition of GURPS High-Tech had rules to figure this out.  I'm sure it could be adapted to another system pretty easily.  You'll have to figure out how many pounds of powder they are using and then go from there.  You can probably find a copy of the third edition used and cheap.  I'm not sure about the 4th edition, but I think it has much of the same information.

----------


## Telok

> What would be the blast radius of a barrel full of gunpowder and how destructive are they? I'm planning on introducing gunpowder in a future campaign and I am rightfully concerned that they are both smart enough and chaotic enough to build a bomb, to Pandemonium with the consequences.


Rule of thumb (from mining saftey I hit up while reasearching similar for cannons) is that to double the blast radius you 10x the explosives.

----------


## Matuka

> Rule of thumb (from mining saftey I hit up while reasearching similar for cannons) is that to double the blast radius you 10x the explosives.


Thank you and the two above, that really helped.

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## Telok

> Thank you and the two above, that really helped.


You're welcome. Fast note that I worked up cannons & bombs for a D&D 3.5 setting. Tried to keep as close as possible to RL ranges & blasts as I could figure. Will post spreadsheet/text later when have real computer time. It should be reasonably convertible, although I added a negative effect modifier at amounts smaller than a kilo or so because I wanted cannons but not small arms in that setting.

Edit: Got file https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ZG...ew?usp=sharing

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## Martin Greywolf

It also depends on what powder. Any tables you will find floating around are probably out of reach for your average medieval black powder, it took quite a while to figure out granulation after all. Even then, there is a pretty sharp upper limit on gunpowder explosions, or any slow burning medium explosions - once you get to certain size, the explosion near the fuse will throw powder away without really igniting it.

Black powder is inefficient enough for this to happen on a pretty small scale - I remember seeing a video where some guys loaded a black powder musket, and by loaded I mean stuffed the entire barrel save for the last 10 cm full of powder and set it off. The damage was about equivalent to a quintuple load IIRC, because a lot of the powder was ejected unlit.

That's not to say you can't have big gunpowder explosions - churches storing it went away after a lightning strike often enough - but the efficiency of adding more powder will start to decrease rather quickly.

----------


## AdAstra

> It also depends on what powder. Any tables you will find floating around are probably out of reach for your average medieval black powder, it took quite a while to figure out granulation after all. Even then, there is a pretty sharp upper limit on gunpowder explosions, or any slow burning medium explosions - once you get to certain size, the explosion near the fuse will throw powder away without really igniting it.
> 
> Black powder is inefficient enough for this to happen on a pretty small scale - I remember seeing a video where some guys loaded a black powder musket, and by loaded I mean stuffed the entire barrel save for the last 10 cm full of powder and set it off. The damage was about equivalent to a quintuple load IIRC, because a lot of the powder was ejected unlit.
> 
> That's not to say you can't have big gunpowder explosions - churches storing it went away after a lightning strike often enough - but the efficiency of adding more powder will start to decrease rather quickly.


Yeah, the main way you get REALLY big gunpowder explosions is when you have large numbers of containers and a confined space, where they can chain off each other. Especially if theres a lot of powder in the air. Even things like coal dust and flour can cause huge explosions when dispersed in air.

But you will have a hard time getting that effect from a single charge.

----------


## fusilier

> Yeah, the main way you get REALLY big gunpowder explosions is when you have large numbers of containers and a confined space, where they can chain off each other. Especially if theres a lot of powder in the air. Even things like coal dust and flour can cause huge explosions when dispersed in air.
> 
> But you will have a hard time getting that effect from a single charge.


Gunpowder can indeed be tricky, and involves many factors.  Old serpentine powder (simple dry compounded powder) often requires careful packing (tamping) to get the desired effect.  For granulated powder, the size of the grains can be used to slow down or speed up the rate of combustion.  (GURPS covers different forms of gunpowders, but not with too much detail).

GURPS calculates damage based on distance from the explosion for concussion, although the damage can be enhanced if used in an enclosed space.  Fragmentation damage in GURPS is consistent across the blast range, but the chances of being hit by a fragment decreases with distance.  Fragmentation depends upon the container.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Persian chromium steel?

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-chromi...nt-persia.html

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Persian chromium steel?


Clickbait title. What they actually found was medieval era crucible steel with some added chromium from a specific ore, something that doesn't break any records, really. Any pre-modern-chemistry manufacturing process was discovered by trial and error, and there were some... interesting things added to steel while it was made in crucible or heat-treated (e.g. blood of a buck in rut). The bit about deliberately adding a mineral with chromium content is mildly interesting.

And under no circumstances should this steel be confused with modern chromium steel, since it would have all the usual problems and impurities of pre-modern steelmaking.

I may as well claim that first combat divers were deployed in 1052, which is also technically correct, but falls apart in detail.

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## Max_Killjoy

Figured I'd get a straight analysis here.  

Thanks.

----------


## Vinyadan

Huge arms and armour donation to the Met Museum
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/a...gtype=Homepage

Contains a couple of nice photos, especially of a top class 1490 pair of gauntlets made for Maximilian I.

----------


## Gizmogidget

How much power would a laser need to be to instantaneously blow a hole in a person like in TV and movies?

I'm thinking 10 nanosecond pulse, visible blue, about as wide as a Star Wars plasma shot.

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## Martin Greywolf

> How much power would a laser need to be to instantaneously blow a hole in a person like in TV and movies?
> 
> I'm thinking 10 nanosecond pulse, visible blue, about as wide as a Star Wars plasma shot.


Depends on what you mean by blow a hole through, lasers don't actually do that, they burn. According to a wonderful article, it's

 267 kJ to boil 1 kg of person 2.5 MJ to vaporize 1kg of person

Since we need to deliver that in 10 ns, or 1/100 000 000 of a second, the power (where 1 watt is one joule per second) is:

 26,7 TW to boil 1 kg of person 250 TW to vaporize 1kg of person 2.5 TW is current global energy consumption

That is only necessary energy, though, and we aren't delivering that with perfect efficiency. Laser diode efficiency is, per this thread, about 50 percent, so we need double the energy in power source to get target energy in laser beam. Then you have things like diffraction, and with lasers of this high an energy, I have no idea how atmosphere in the way would react, you'd probably burn it away as well.

Also consider this:
 Little Boy is 63 TJ Tsar bomba is 245 PJ

What I'm saying is, you better hope whatever energy source you have doesn't have a failure, because you're walking with at least a low-yield nuke strapped to your gun.

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## Max_Killjoy

That very short time to deliver the energy (10 nanoseconds) makes a huge difference. 

There are lasers that can burn a hole in a missile in flight and ruin the inards, but they have to stay exactly on target for several seconds.

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## Saint-Just

> How much power would a laser need to be to instantaneously blow a hole in a person like in TV and movies?
> 
> I'm thinking 10 nanosecond pulse, visible blue, about as wide as a Star Wars plasma shot.


I do not think it is a question that can be answered with any meaningful precision. To start with Star Wars plasma shot is different depending on the weapon and the era of the film. Additionally all or almost of all of them seem wider than the muzzle of the weapon, which should not be the case if the shot can fly for hundreds of meters without dissipating. Finally even if we only look at, say Stormtroopers' blasters in _A New Hope_ perception of those fast-moving never-seen-directly-from-the-front objects may vary.

And then we go to calculations of actual values, which are even more insane. Even if we have people well-versed in physics here it's like asking them to predict them how big a powder charge should be for a bullet to penetrate a person front-to-back if they have never seen or heard about firearms before. There so are so much unknown values (pressure profile of the powder, construction and materials of the bullet, even the ambient temperature - and that is assuming that we know bullet weight and the length of a barrel) that it is absolutely impossible to calculate except in the roughest possible terms ("500 grams is enough in any circumstances").

I will give you insanely lowball answer. Assume that width is 9 mm, like the actual Sterling SMG, and a depth of penetration required is 30 cm (about the depth of chest front-to-back). Assume that we need enough energy to boil a cylinder of water 9x300mm (insanely low, because energy will dissipate to the sides, and flesh is likely to require more energy, and vaporized anything will not go out of the way but will continue to absorb energy, oh and we ignore bringing it to the boil). This works out to 1.06 moles of water which require 43.1 kJ. Oh, and we assume 100% efficiency of energy conversion, of course.

I suspect that if we were building a real laser...thing we would actually need to know it's wavelength. But since we're in the ideal world with 100% efficiency we only need to know how much power will be needed to deliver 43.1 kJ in 10 ns. Which is 4.31 TW. And this with all uncertainties rounded down to probably lower order of magnitude.

The only laser weapon successfully deployed in the field as far as I know was THEL (and it was not adopted even then). Northrop Grumman claims it's a "megawatt-class" laser weapon. It was immobile, another Northrop Grumman "megawatt-class" thingamagic was mobile by the virtue of placing it on Boeing 747. US army currently "considers" systems that are supposed to be between 30 and (questionably) 150 kW.

It's not like you can't kill (maybe even instantly kill) a human with much lower amount of energy delivered by a laser, but it still doesn't really work for anything man-portable. Lasers causing prolonged or permanent blindness at a few hundred meters can be made today (Norinco was offering a blinding laser in the 90's) but open development of such weapons has been stopped by the UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.





> That very short time to deliver the energy (10 nanoseconds) makes a huge difference. 
> 
> There are lasers that can burn a hole in a missile in flight and ruin the inards, but they have to stay exactly on target for several seconds.


If it is in a "tomorrow world" it would be hard to argue that it doesn't run afoul of aforementioned Protocol IV of CCWC, but even there is no legal problems, I think it's still likely to act less like a bullet and more like... let's say flamethrower, but with better range and requiring a direct hit. Since it's unlikely that all the pulses will fall in the same spot, or even close to same spot it will make many shallow holes, unlikely to immediately damage the vital organs but which may incapacitate the target with pain, or even with damage to the muscles well before he dies.

----------


## Gizmogidget

Thanks to those who answered my question! I figured the required energy would be insanely high.

Though just in case this changes the answer what if the laser is pulsing on and off (something like 10 ns on, 10ns off, 10 ns on)? I'd heard continuous lasers can have trouble burrowing through a target versus pulse lasers because the layer of plasma created at impact acts as a reflector, where as if the laser flicks on and off it doesn't have to worry about the plasma because it has dissipated.

----------


## TheStranger

What is the benefit of a laser weapon, anyway? It seems like bullets or explosives do far more damage to the target without a prohibitive energy requirement. So... why bother?

I guess theres some theoretical advantage in the fact that a laser travels at the speed of light and therefore cant be evaded, but it seems like if youre firing at a range where that matters your lasers effectiveness is going to be diminished by things like cloud cover or atmospheric dust. 

And a laser doesnt need ammo, but you have to go through an awful lot of ammo before you match the bulk and cost of your lasers power source. 

Is this just a case of people trying to apply Rule of Cool to real life, or are there real benefits that justify the ongoing research into this?

----------


## Gizmogidget

> What is the benefit of a laser weapon, anyway? It seems like bullets or explosives do far more damage to the target without a prohibitive energy requirement. So... why bother? ... Is this just a case of people trying to apply Rule of Cool to real life, or are there real benefits that justify the ongoing research into this?


I had an inkling that you'd need absolutely massive power outputs to use lasers the way you do in sci-fi (though IRL antipersonnel lasers exist), and that it'd be better in practice to just go for using railguns or something if you were thinking about raw numerical damage vs power required.

However a quick google search for laser weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZM-87), shows that the intent of these laser weapons is not to turn humans into fine red mist but rather to maim them (permanent blinding can occur with a "mere" 5 mw beam after all). Additionally the lasers the Navy uses to shoot down drones aren't nice awesome cinematic lasers, they're invisible lasers (and they light the drones on fire, not vaporize them).

IRL you don't actually need to do insane amounts of overkill damage to take out an enemy combatant, so there is no need to have a small-nuke strapped to your back.

----------


## Saint-Just

> Thanks to those who answered my question! I figured the required energy would be insanely high.
> 
> Though just in case this changes the answer what if the laser is pulsing on and off (something like 10 ns on, 10ns off, 10 ns on)? I'd heard continuous lasers can have trouble burrowing through a target versus pulse lasers because the layer of plasma created at impact acts as a reflector, where as if the laser flicks on and off it doesn't have to worry about the plasma because it has dissipated.


The greatest problem in your example was not pulsed/continuous laser but requirement to deliver that amount of energy in so little time. If you wanted to use a laser pulsing 0.1 ns on 0.1 ns off for 20 ns the required power would stay the same. Practical effectiveness may have been better but for our order-of-magnitude-calculations we have been already granting 100% effectiveness.

Now let's say you have a pulsing laser which is pulsing X ns on X ns off for 1 second. It's the same power requirement as continuous laser working for 0.5 second (practical-effectiveness-may-differ-but-we-are-already-granting-100%).

My benchmark (boil 1.06 moles of water, 43.1 kJ) requires 83.2 kW

Martin Greywolf's benchmark (boil 1 kg of human tissue, 267 kJ) requires 534 kW   To the MG: I take the issue with idea that personhood is in any way relevant to the boiling temperature :P

Both require a lot of energy instead of insane amount of it. Maybe even something a little bit plausible if you look far enough in the future. But even in ideal situation unless the weapon is used on an immobilized person, the shots are not going to hit the same area. So you are going to see a lot of shallow wounds, burns etc, and a really low probability of a lethal hit. I already compared it with a flamethrower, but now I can give you even better comparison: shotgun slug vs a birdshot shell with 500 pellets (it's hard to kill people with birdshot that small). I do not mean it would have a worse range (it may even have a better range because each individual impulse is insufficient to turn atmosphere into plasma) but the wounding characteristics. So it's gonna be messy, unpleasant, will leave combatants crippled or dying a slow death where one tenth of that energy in any sort of kinetic projectile is more likely to produce "cleaner" either-dead-or-ok situation, and will be significantly worse vs any armour (even modern body armour, but if it's going to be a normal weapon and not screw-the-phhysics-I-am-a-mad-genius one-off you can bet there would be development in armour to stop lasers; in fact Chinese seem to already have a good vehicular anti-laser coatings). So it's kinda useless.

If you really want a directed energy weapon against humans I think microwave weapons are more useful. Current iterations for "non-lethal" employment are reported to be very painful while causing no identifiable damage (except maybe to the eyes, as usual). If you can crank the power up to actually cause damage the incapacitation may be very quick and it can fry electronics into bargain. And the weapon is already available vehicle-mounted and man-portable variants may follow in the nearest future. It also may have trouble with armour but it's unlikely to be worse than a laser.

If agony beam/crucio/algolizer is not how you imagine whatever you are trying to imagine, tough luck. Stick with kinetics and explosives, for now.

P.S. With the current electronic advancements if blinding lasers were to actually become a thing I feel that in the worst case the greatest military powers would soon go to a helmet with screen and cameras. Cameras can be made less sensitive, cameras can be replaced. Or even simpler, auto-darkening faceplates as used by the modern welding helmets (though I am not 100% sure that they can be made to react quick enough).

----------


## TheStranger

> I had an inkling that you'd need absolutely massive power outputs to use lasers the way you do in sci-fi (though IRL antipersonnel lasers exist), and that it'd be better in practice to just go for using railguns or something if you were thinking about raw numerical damage vs power required.
> 
> However a quick google search for laser weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZM-87), shows that the intent of these laser weapons is not to turn humans into fine red mist but rather to maim them (permanent blinding can occur with a "mere" 5 mw beam after all). Additionally the lasers the Navy uses to shoot down drones aren't nice awesome cinematic lasers, they're invisible lasers (and they light the drones on fire, not vaporize them).
> 
> IRL you don't actually need to do insane amounts of overkill damage to take out an enemy combatant, so there is no need to have a small-nuke strapped to your back.


Fair point about the feasibility of lower-powered laser weapons. But still, whats the perceived advantage of using a laser instead of a gun, other than being awesome if you grew up in the 80s?

----------


## Mike_G

> Fair point about the feasibility of lower-powered laser weapons. But still, whats the perceived advantage of using a laser instead of a gun, other than being awesome if you grew up in the 80s?


Looking at current or near future tech, there really isn't one. Assuming energy supply gets better and more portable, then it might get better as an option. As far as space weapons go, the fact that lasers are more or less unlimited range, and don't have to deal with bullet drop like traditional guns, which will need to be recalibrated in different gravity, if you take your standard ballistic firearm to another planet or the moon or on a ship in zero G, your earth sights will be way off. So, there's a theoretical advantage, if we assume the tech gets better.

----------


## Gizmogidget

> Fair point about the feasibility of lower-powered laser weapons. But still, whats the perceived advantage of using a laser instead of a gun, other than being awesome if you grew up in the 80s?


Lasers are awesome no matter when you grew up.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Saint-Just

> Looking at current or near future tech, there really isn't one. Assuming energy supply gets better and more portable, then it might get better as an option. As far as space weapons go, the fact that lasers are more or less unlimited range, and don't have to deal with bullet drop like traditional guns, which will need to be recalibrated in different gravity, if you take your standard ballistic firearm to another planet or the moon or on a ship in zero G, your earth sights will be way off. So, there's a theoretical advantage, if we assume the tech gets better.


Eh, without clarketech it's still unlikely to be as good as kinetics in converting power at the originating end to physical damage at receiving end, at least as long as we are talking anything remotely resembling infantry.

Sights are not a problem at all. 1) there are already sights auto-adjusting for atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed. adding a gravity sensor would be nothing (in fact it's smaller, cheaper and more reliable than atmosphere sensors). 2) Even for iron sights I am not sure what scenario you propose where infantry would not be able to use quick-swappable or quick-adjustable sights calibrated for different gravity strengths.




> Lasers are awesome no matter when you grew up.


Truth.

----------


## Lapak

For man-portable weapons, there are only two _possible_ things I can think of as an advantage.

Item one is stealth. Chemically-driven projectile weapons are generally loud; lasers are relatively quiet and invisible as well (though once you start talking enough energy to instantly disable/kill, both may become less true? As you turn atmosphere to plasma and/or convert water to vapor with enough speed to kinda explode.)

The other that I can think of being theoretically possible, but I don't have the physics chops to know if it can actually be true - that's the question of mass. _If_ it's theoretically possible to have power generation and/or storage tech such that you can get more shots-on-target than you can by carting physical ammo around, but at the same time you are still dealing with issues of fuel-to-mass ratios in moving your ammunition supply around, then it might be more practical to be issuing lasers to your soldiers. But that's absolutely not the case with current or near-future tech.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Fair point about the feasibility of lower-powered laser weapons. But still, whats the perceived advantage of using a laser instead of a gun, other than being awesome if you grew up in the 80s?


It really depends on where and for what you want to use them. Riot control is different than anti-infantry is different to ship-mounted.

First thing that bears mentioning, and that is the reason we will pretty much never see any sort of laser rifle tech, is atmosphere. Anything that blocks light will block lasers, so mist, rain, sandstorms and so on and so forth drastically reduce your possible range. That means that even if you had a laser rifle that would work ono a clear day, it would stop once that fog rolls in. That makes it unreliable and unusable in global terms, and that in turn makes it an absolute logistical nightmare to even attempt to deploy.

Which means that, no matter what, lasers will only be used if nothing else can do the job.

That said, all of these pesky problem disappear if you go into space, and there, lasers are actually a pretty good idea.

Okay, so, actual advantages. Stealth is not one of them, really, even if the beam itself is silent, the target certainly won't be. Screams aside, burning is bright and loud, and if you have enough power to turn air into plasma, well...

One potential advantage is ammunition supply. If you have the sort of energy tech necessary for lasers, odds are you can pack quite a few shots into a battery pack. For near future tech, this doesn't apply, because near future tech doesn't have man-portable lasers. However, one thing does apply - all you need to laser is electricity, so there are no pesky issues of right kind of bullet, one battery pack can power any laser weapon it has enough juice for, be it a sniper, SMG or a pistol. That would allow you to standardize quite a lot, and e.g. make HMG batteries made of several pistol batteries duckttaped together. And to top it off, if you are mounted on a vehicle that needs power, you will be able to just plug it into that, so any sort of, say, nuclear sub or carrier will be able to have them without needing space to store ammo. And will also be able to recharge smaller weapons on board - but that will only happen if you can mount lasers on things smaller than a Boeing 737 that can actually launch from carriers.

The big one is travel time. Lasers travel at just under the speed of light, so there is little need to lead most targets. If you need to shoot a hypersonic target, aim straight at it and pull the trigger. This is why lasers tend to be used in point defence systems - nothing else can really do that, maybe except microwaves.

Travel time, incidentally, also makes it trivially easy to walk your shots, if you have LoS on the target. That will also allow you to aim several lasers into the same spot fairly easily. There is no bullet deviation to take care of.

Finally, and this depends on how exactly you are producing the laser, you may not need long barrels or heavy lens to make it work. That could allow you to bring the size of a very powerful laser way, way down. With enough fingaling, you may also be able to make a variable power version, and in this case, the key is to imagine IJN Yamato where every gun on board of it (main, secondary, AA, ...):

has main gun capabilitiescan hit small, fast targets as wellis capable of tracking aircraft because of small size, and therefore agilitydoesn't need ammo storage, just a reactor

And that is what we call a whole lot of gun.

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## Saint-Just

> Okay, so, actual advantages. Stealth is not one of them, really, even if the beam itself is silent, the target certainly won't be. Screams aside, burning is bright and loud, and if you have enough power to turn air into plasma, well...


I was arguing that lasers are not going to be man-portable weapons, ever, but if they can be made stealth is a (little) advantage, for the same reason there are "silent" (captive piston) grenade launchers and mortars. Keeping the opposition guessing or disoriented for even a short period period of time is worthwhile.




> The big one is travel time. Lasers travel at just under the speed of light, so there is little need to lead most targets.


I thought lasers travel at the speed of light, because they are, well, light. Are you talking about speed of light in the air being lower than speed of light in vacuum, or I am missing something?




> Finally, and this depends on how exactly you are producing the laser, you may not need long barrels or heavy lens to make it work.


I cannot quickly find the source but I remember reading that with currently known technologies powerful lasers do not scale quite perfectly, and it would be easier to make a laser for the (Space Battleship) Yamato capable of taking down another Yamato than a laser for a TIE-Fighter capable of taking down another TIE-Fighter.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I was arguing that lasers are not going to be man-portable weapons, ever, but if they can be made stealth is a (little) advantage, for the same reason there are "silent" (captive piston) grenade launchers and mortars. Keeping the opposition guessing or disoriented for even a short period period of time is worthwhile.


Man portable are sort of grenade launcher-like, but if you can't have them replace mortars, because lasers can't fire indirectly. That means they are inferior to just about all of traditional ground artillery in what they can hit from where.




> I thought lasers travel at the speed of light, because they are, well, light. Are you talking about speed of light in the air being lower than speed of light in vacuum, or I am missing something?


There is air vs vacuum, then there is possible rain or fog in the way, and there is also deplay between pulling the trigger and the weapon firing - while circuitry does function at near c speed, there may well be some delay before the necessary light/energy levels build up to fire, and there is also sensor input delay, even if you are aiming using naked eyes. This depends a lot on the details, if you have pulse laser or standard beam, how much time you have from target detection to target no longer being viable and so on.

In the end, you're not quite lightspeed, but can get pretty close.




> I cannot quickly find the source but I remember reading that with currently known technologies powerful lasers do not scale quite perfectly, and it would be easier to make a laser for the (Space Battleship) Yamato capable of taking down another Yamato than a laser for a TIE-Fighter capable of taking down another TIE-Fighter.


By the time we have lasers capable of taking out armored warships, we're pretty far away in handwave land. Even so, I don't think there is quite as much of a difference between laser pistol and laser naval cannon as there is between a 9mm Glock and Yamato's main guns. Though that may depend on whether you're counting power source of the lasers into the equation.

Even then, lasers don't seem to need long barrels, which means you can give them a considerably higher rotational speed at lower power requirements when compared to naval guns, even if their weight is the same.

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## KineticDiplomat

The continued fascination with them in near future / development circles in their ability to consistently hit fast, fragile, and sometimes quite small given the distances involved, targets at longer ranges than traditional CIWS and at a lower cost per shot than the traditional missile - or at the very least, with ability to store more shots and fire them off rapidly.

Concepts have ranged from using them to shoot down artillery shells (the original THEL did this for a demo) to more traditional air/ballistic missile defense (a battery of air defense missile launchers might only have 12-24 missiles loaded , and long reload times - vulnerable to saturation with TBMs or a gorilla package), and nowadays there is some renewed interest in if it can be used as a cost effective drone counter (missiles like the Patriot or S300 use are millions of dollars a piece; a host of drones that live in the airspace where shorter range missiles would fall short are cheaper).

But almost all of those rely less on Star Wars esque pew-pew-boom and more on doing just enough damage to disable the target platform.

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## Brother Oni

> Martin Greywolf's benchmark (boil 1 kg of human tissue, 267 kJ) requires 534 kW


Except you don't need to boil 1 kg of a person to disable them, you just need to inflict 3rd degree burns to a centimetre or so of depth, which is a lot less flesh.

Looking at some papers, the specific heat capacity of flesh is 3.5 kJ/kg/K and you need to hit about 80C to cause a severe burn. Assuming a standard 34C for skin temp, that's (80-34)*3.5 = 161 kJ/kg.

Assuming a 9mm round equivalent to a depth of 2cm and a human flesh density of 1.1g/mL, that's (pi*(0.45^2)*2)*1.1) = 1.4g of flesh to heat, which is (1.4/1000)*161 =  0.2 kJ

There's a thermal transfer coefficient I haven't figured out yet (duration of laser contact, strength of laser, heat dispersion of human flesh, etc); this paper (link)seems to have the answer, although I need a couple days to recover from the Christmas crunch before I can science that hard in an unfamiliar field.

That said, one alternate weaponisation of 'burning a hole through things' that's popular, is causing plasma formation by ablating and boiling the outermost layers of the target, causing an explosion. On a human combatants, this is pretty much as effective as burning a hole in them.

There's also the potentially banned EM field generation by a similar mechanism, causing nerve excitation and extreme pain to humans, or the ever favourite 'microwave' laser (which has much the same effect).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Except you don't need to boil 1 kg of a person to disable them, you just need to inflict 3rd degree burns to a centimetre or so of depth, which is a lot less flesh.


Except we need to blast a hole the width of a Star Wars laser through a guy, as per the original question.




> That said, one alternate weaponisation of 'burning a hole through things' that's popular, is causing plasma formation by ablating and boiling the outermost layers of the target, causing an explosion.


If you are turning a point of contact into plasma, I suspect you are also doing something weird to air in the way - sure, we do have real lasers in pettawatt range, but I don't think those send the beam through air. At this point you need to either invest several days of research into finding out, or try to ask a xkcd what if.

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## AdAstra

> Except we need to blast a hole the width of a Star Wars laser through a guy, as per the original question.
> 
> 
> 
> If you are turning a point of contact into plasma, I suspect you are also doing something weird to air in the way - sure, we do have real lasers in pettawatt range, but I don't think those send the beam through air. At this point you need to either invest several days of research into finding out, or try to ask a xkcd what if.


Nah it's possible to do that with somewhat practical tech (in an engineering sense). Particularly powerful laser ablation will turn stuff into plasma easy peasy, it just takes way more equipment than a person would want to carry, plus an external power supply.

Ablation of the target (or the atmosphere) into plasma is actually a major barrier to viable laser weaponry, since typically light that air is transparent to, plasma is not. That's the main appeal of pulse lasers. By using extremely powerful, short pulses, you give enough time for the plasma/vapor "cloud" to dissipate, allowing you to zap it again.

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## Brother Oni

> Except we need to blast a hole the width of a Star Wars laser through a guy, as per the original question.


True.




> If you are turning a point of contact into plasma, I suspect you are also doing something weird to air in the way - sure, we do have real lasers in pettawatt range, but I don't think those send the beam through air. At this point you need to either invest several days of research into finding out, or try to ask a xkcd what if.


Explosive boiling by laser ablation is a real thing and doesn't require lasers in the power range you mention: link.

The US Navy LAWS is a 30kW laser and does a good job of making things explode, although not in the same timeframe as a conventional ballistic weapon after making contact: see approx 0.59 onwards of the US Navy LAWS demonstration.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Explosive boiling by laser ablation is a real thing and doesn't require lasers in the power range you mention: link.


To repeat myself. Can it blast a hole through a person? If not (and the linked paper has ablation depth of micrometers listed, so...), can the results of a particular study be scaled upwards to energy levels that can blast a hole through a person? A tennis ball behaves very differently at mach 1 and mach 20, how sure are we we aren't hitting a similar threshold.

The linked paper shows that increase from 10^11 to 10^12 in wattage gives us an increase of 12 micrometers. Scaling that up to human torso would get us absurd energies if we tried to ablate in one hit, and if we need repeat hits, we get about 25 000 individual hits before we get through 30 cm.




> The US Navy LAWS is a 30kW laser and does a good job of making things explode, although not in the same timeframe as a conventional ballistic weapon after making contact: see approx 0.59 onwards of the US Navy LAWS demonstration.


No it doesn't. The first target looked like a mortar shell, so the laser is powerful enough to set off other explosives. Once they start to shoot at the drone, there is no explosion, only a fire. It seems to be great at taking out relatively fragile complex things, and at taking out things that explode if overheated enough. Which is why it is a point defense weapon, not a traditional secondary armament.

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## Brother Oni

> To repeat myself. Can it blast a hole through a person?


Except I wasn't stating it could blast a hole in a person, I was stating it was another way of incapacitating a person, much like my 'third degree burns' estimation.

Your previous post sounded like it was contesting the science of laser ablation causing boiling, to which I posted that paper. I wasn't trying to use laser ablation causing explosive boiling as an alternate means of blowing a hole through a person - it's overkill, pointless and I simply don't have the energy to crunch the math, so I conceded the point.




> No it doesn't. The first target looked like a mortar shell, so the laser is powerful enough to set off other explosives. Once they start to shoot at the drone, there is no explosion, only a fire. It seems to be great at taking out relatively fragile complex things, and at taking out things that explode if overheated enough. Which is why it is a point defense weapon, not a traditional secondary armament.


I didn't say anything about the LAWS being a PD or traditional secondary armament, just whether the practicality of whether the LAWS can trigger explosive boiling. You seem to be setting up strawmen that don't have anything to do with the original post.

From other papers, 2x1010watts/cm2 (~20 gigawatts/cm2) seems to be the threshold to significantly make things go boom, so I concede the point that the LAWS has the wattage to make things explode like that, using the mechanism presented.

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## jayem

How much of a distant obstacle is required to seriously impair a war arrows flight.
For example would a tent be enough to keep you basically safe (aside from the obscuring effects) or would it go through it without noticing.  What is the minimum you'd need.
Canvas is obviously enough for 'fairground' archery but they are blunt and weak.

For the sake of completeness, I'll escalate the question up via guns.  Although I know that can go through even things you think ought to protect you.

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## Gnoman

I can't answer the arrow question, but I can do something with the expanded question.


Even at terminal ballistics, any military bullet that can still wound you will not balk at any cloth. It is theoretically possible for a bullet to have just enough energy left that punching through cloth will keep it from penetrating the skin, but that's highly unlikely. Hollowpoint bullets are potentially a different story - cloth can jam up the hollow and either keep them from expanding or expand them prematurely. Either would significantly change how the bullet performs.

To reliably stop any rifle bullet, you need several inches of wood, a significant amount of mild steel, or about a half-inch of hardened steel (or, of course, properly backed ceramics, but the question is more about environment).  Nothing less will significantly matter except at very long range. If somebody's using AP ammo, you need significantly more of all such substances. Some light, fast bullets can be deflected by less, but slower and heavier bullets won't be.

Pistol rounds tend to have about half the penetration or less that rifles do, so about 2 inches of wood, an inch of mild steel, or a quarter-inch of hard stuff. Historical weapons such as muskets or other black powder rounds will perform similarly to pistols because they are in the same velocity range.

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## Saint-Just

> How much of a distant obstacle is required to seriously impair a war arrows flight.
> For example would a tent be enough to keep you basically safe (aside from the obscuring effects) or would it go through it without noticing.  What is the minimum you'd need.
> Canvas is obviously enough for 'fairground' archery but they are blunt and weak.
> 
> For the sake of completeness, I'll escalate the question up via guns.  Although I know that can go through even things you think ought to protect you.


I know very little about practical effects of arrows but I want to to ask one clarifying question: what exactly would you mean by "distant obstacle"? I interpret that as "obstacle which projectile passes through, so it will not save you if it's against your skin but which will save you if you are some distance behind it" but I may be wrong.

Any obstacle which is insufficient to stop a bullet but still can save you will do so by redirection/deflection. There are a lot of situations where material will not stop a bullet will redirect it. One example seen in the firefights in the cities: modern (very sloped) windshields of cars will not stop 9mm Parabellum (typical pistol round) but can (if fired at from the front) significantly change the trajectory. Modern intermediate cartridges are susceptible to that effect to a degree that shooting through the bush can result in bullets being deflected and even keyholing (when the bullet starts to rotate in abnormal direction, so sometimes it flies sideways). It will not save you if you are say 1 meter behind the bush, but it can result in a bullet missing you if you are 10 meters behind the bush, or if you have a body armor it may result in a keyholing bullet failing to penetrate the armor which the same bullet flying normally would penetrate with ease. All of the above says "may": it may or may not, it's pretty random. Heavier and slower are much less affected, I would guess that musketballs are practically not affected.

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## Pauly

On the subject of obstacles that wont stop a bullet but will deflect it is widely discussed in what are called brush guns. Any hunting forum will have a few threads dedicated to the subject and a significant number of youtube firearms channels have videos showing practical demonstrations.

Generally speaking high velocity small calibre jacketed bullets are more likely to be deflected and slower heavy lead bullets more likely to stay on target. So even if you have 2 rounds with the same energy both will behave very differently with respect to deflecting from obstacles.

In WWII in the Pacific and in VietNam there were many reports of soldiers reporting light fast rounds getting deflected by foliage and comparatively slow heavy rounds punching through.

Now getting back to arrows. Will a canvas tent stop/deflect a war arrow?
Stop - not unless you are at extreme ranges.
Deflect - depends a lot on the arrow head. My guess is that bodkin points will deflect more as the smaller hole will leave more canvas in contact with the shaft as it passes through and the initial hole will be a more uneven punch, a broad head will have a larger hole that will be more evenly cut and to my mind that should pass through with less deflection. Tests on penetration show that broadheads pass through gambeson better than bodkin points.

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## Vykryl

One thing I remember from hunter's safety training was a demonstration using a large coffee can full of sand. It stopped a rifle bullet within the can. The arrow penetrated through the can and into the target behind the can.

I cant give caliber or grain weights as it was 25 or so years ago.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: guns. Some of that will be considered by the yaw dependency of the bullet. Many newer rounds are less yaw dependent and so tend to deliver much higher average penetration despite a theoretical physical equivalency.

The current generation 5.56mm will go through cinder blocks at 50 yards, or a quarter inch of soft steel (or a 5mm hardened plate - basically double medieval full plate) at 400 yards. It will also go through a lot of light construction materials, but be tossed rather off course in the process. Which wont matter if the guy is using a flipped over table for cover or some such.

Long 7.62mm  (medium machine gun stuff) hasnt been modernized, so it actually has less effective penetration of thin hard surfaces (read: steel), but tends to deal with thicker softer surfaces better. Still, you can forget the hole movie idea of hiding behind a car door, or for that matter anything other than the engine block - and itll go through several interior walls.

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## jayem

> I know very little about practical effects of arrows but I want to to ask one clarifying question: what exactly would you mean by "distant obstacle"? I interpret that as "obstacle which projectile passes through, so it will not save you if it's against your skin but which will save you if you are some distance behind it" but I may be wrong.
> 
> Any obstacle which is insufficient to stop a bullet but still can save you will do so by redirection/deflection.


Yes.

In the case of arrows I'd assume that would also include cases of significant rotation deflection (so it hits you edge on), however due to the higher parabola course the distances that are interestingly feasible are quite small.

Interesting to see the numbers, collations of stories.  I'd seen the Top Gear where they 'armour' their car and it's utterly ineffective, and similar.  So no major surprises.

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## Max_Killjoy

I don't recall the name right now, but the cloth thing that billows out behind a mounted warrior when moving really will catch arrows and prevent them from penetrating the armor at all.  

So if the cloth of a tent or banner or something has any give and any resistance, it's possible that it would do something similar.

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## Mike_G

Arrows will shoot through sandbags

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPXL...od%27sWorkshop

Yeah, it's a crossbow, but it's set up to shoot longbow arrows and mimic the energy. The guy isn't a professional archer but wants to test archery versus stuff. Poke around his channel for more interesting experiments with bows and slings and pila and plumbata and so on

And I rigged up a backyard archery range (because lockdown) and used an old carpet as a backstop, and my 45 pound recurve sent arrows with target points right through it. No there are no neighbors back there, just forest, so the backstop was more to keep me from losing arrows than endangering the neighborhood. 

So I would say you'd need something substantial, or maybe as Max pointed out, something that has some give to catch them and tangle them up.

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## Saint-Just

> I don't recall the name right now, but the cloth thing that billows out behind a mounted warrior when moving really will catch arrows and prevent them from penetrating the armor at all.  
> 
> So if the cloth of a tent or banner or something has any give and any resistance, it's possible that it would do something similar.


It's called horo (母衣) and while it is surprisingly effective against arrows I doubt any historical tent would be even half as effective at stopping arrows. Now, can  some sort of frame or maybe even ropes with stakes attached at specific points provide a comparable resistance? Probably yes, but I doubt it was developed. Normal modus operandi would be not getting shot at by hiding, or by having a standing night watch which would awake you in case of attack.

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## jayem

> Arrows will shoot through sandbags
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPXL...od%27sWorkshop
> 
> Yeah, it's a crossbow, but it's set up to shoot longbow arrows and mimic the energy. The guy sin;t a professional archer but wants to test archery versus stuff. Poke around his channel for more interesting experimanets with bows and slings and pila and plumbata and so on
> 
> And I rigged up a backyard archery range (because lockdown) and used an old carpet as a backstop, and my 45 pound recurve sent arrows with target points right through it. No there are no neighbors back there, just forest, so the backstop was more to keep me from losing arrows than endangering the neighborhood. 
> 
> So I would say you'd need something substantial, or maybe as Max pointed out, something that has some give to catch them and tangle them up.


(I'd seen the channel before, but not the latest).  That was a *lot* more 'obstacle what obstacle'.  My prejudice would have expected it to be more akin to the way it stuck out the butt afterwards*, and for cloth to be anywhere somewhere hanging off the fletchings to a fair chance of lethality (partly because of examples like Max gave.)

*A combination of that and up and over, would have imo been a satisfactory explanation of the inspiration story, if t had been needed.

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## fusilier

> On the subject of obstacles that wont stop a bullet but will deflect it is widely discussed in what are called brush guns. Any hunting forum will have a few threads dedicated to the subject and a significant number of youtube firearms channels have videos showing practical demonstrations.
> 
> Generally speaking high velocity small calibre jacketed bullets are more likely to be deflected and slower heavy lead bullets more likely to stay on target. So even if you have 2 rounds with the same energy both will behave very differently with respect to deflecting from obstacles.


The geometry of the bullet is also a factor.  I've heard some hunters like 6.5mm Carcano for use in the brush.  It is small caliber, jacketed, but round nose, instead of spitzer.  The round nose design is "nose heavy" and less easily deflected than a sptizer round which is base heavy.  Older, non-jacketed bullets, are usually round nose too.

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## fusilier

> How much of a distant obstacle is required to seriously impair a war arrows flight.
> For example would a tent be enough to keep you basically safe (aside from the obscuring effects) or would it go through it without noticing.  What is the minimum you'd need.
> Canvas is obviously enough for 'fairground' archery but they are blunt and weak.
> 
> For the sake of completeness, I'll escalate the question up via guns.  Although I know that can go through even things you think ought to protect you.


Musket balls were known to have a range at which point they were considered "spent."  You'll hear reports of someone being hit by a "spent ball" at long range, which bruised them, but often didn't break the skin.  You have to consider the amount of lead flying around a Napoleonic or American Civil War battlefield, some of which must have been fired at significant elevations, that this did happen from time to time.  I think the standard explanation is energy loss due to aerodynamic drag, but I suspect many were also ricochets.  Not sure if there is a study on what ranges this occurred at.

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## Yora

> It's called horo (母衣) and while it is surprisingly effective against arrows I doubt any historical tent would be even half as effective at stopping arrows.


I believe those would have been made of silk. Which supposedly is much better at resisting arrows than wool, cotton, or hemp. And below that, there would still be a solid iron cuirass and helmet.
It's not magic, but I can see it sometimes making a difference.

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## Martin Greywolf

Concerning arrows.

If you have a tent wall, and the arrow is still in flight, it will probably get through with lethal force. Sandbags as tested by Tod's Stuff have already been mentioned, but keep in mind, those weren't proper, packed sandbags, and were sideways-on to arrow flight, which you shouldn't do when making anything out of sandbags. For what he was testing - a story from a civil war somewhere where arrows did just that - it was enough, since civil wars rarely see properly constructed barricades.

Now, as for horo and that canvas you see on fairgrounds. It doesn't matter that much what they are made of, what matters is how they are, or rather are not, attached. The idea here is that loose fabric like that will catch the arrow early and then, by virtue of being loosely attached, will flip it a little. That may not seem like much at first glance, changing impact angle by a few degrees, but remember that these aren't bullets.

An arrow flies in a given direction usually while pointing in said direction, and that means that it will deposit its energy pretty directly into the impact target. Make the arrow fly even a little bit sideways, and that direct energy transfer suddenly becomes vastly less efficient - in extreme case, we can talk about being slapped with side of an arrow rather than being shot with it. Being slapped with a bullet is, well, still being shot (unless we bring vests into the equation), but arrow going sideways will:

have very little force and momentum behind its headspend considerably more energy on bending and breakingwill deliver this energy over a longer period of time as it rotates and slaps after a hitpossibly spend some of that energy by continuing on because of deflection


Horo has an additional advantage in its billowing, the canvas no longer relies on arrow motion alone to destabilize it, it also adds some movement of its own.

As for the original question, arrows will behave somewhat counterintuitively. Every obstacle slows them down, obviously, but that slow down depends on how well an obstacle grips the arrow. Thin wooden plank will probably reduce arrow speed a lot more than water, baceuse that wood will apply friction to entire length of arrow shaft. Loose cloth will also tend to destabilize arrows, potentially enough to make them non-lethal - but if you take the same cloth and put it on a tent, or make a roof with it, then it looses its arrow-stopping properties.

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## Khedrac

When considering devices to slow/stop arrows we really need to consider what bows were used by the opponenets of the deployers of said devices.

There is a huge difference in the penetrating power of arrows loosed from the selection of bows used over history.

For example, in one of the early crusades the English troops marching on their way to Palestine were subjected to harassing archery by the locals whose lands they were marching through.  This archery was so ineffective that the English foot (the ordinary soldiers not nobles) were able to completely ignore the arrows - they didn't even bother to pull them out of their kit most of the time!  (The main objective of said archery was to get the column to break up and engage them which eventually 'worked' in that the templars who had rearguard were goaded into an attack.)  That sort of technique (ignore) would never have worked against longbow arrows, hence the need to consider the type of bow and arrow a defense is supposed to be useful against.

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## Martin Greywolf

> When considering devices to slow/stop arrows we really need to consider what bows were used by the opponenets of the deployers of said devices.
> 
> There is a huge difference in the penetrating power of arrows loosed from the selection of bows used over history.


The thing about that is simply that late medieval English warbows are a major anomaly, but are so popular it's what most people keep talking about.

A good rule of thumb is thus:

you want to be using a bow with as little draw weight as possible to be able to shoot quickly or for long periods of time, therefore:a culture with little need to penetrate metal armor will have bows in large game hunting range of 50-90 lbs, stone and most of bronze age archery falls herea culture that needs to penetrate metal armor regularly will have bows in range of 90-120 lbs, this is where almost all archery in iron age belongsonly cultures dealing with comparetively high-quality steel plate will have bows in range of 120-160 lbs, this is pretty much a European-only thingan archer can shoot a bow up to about 220 lbsall of these cultures will have legendary heroes and unusually strong bows in a category that is a tier above what they generally useyou want to be using a bow with as little draw weight as possible to be able to shoot quickly or for long periods of time

As far as training goes, these days, you need people to train drawing anything above 50 lbs, but my experience with people who do physical labor for their day job suggests that they can go up to about 100 lbs without specific training. That means you will see effort to train up archers specifically once you hit metal armor in regular use.

Also note that all you need is having to deal with metal armor, availability of metal armor among your culture is irrelevant - which is the case with, for example, Mongols, who had little metal armor of their own (well, initially, after they capture China, they got), but had to go up against Chinese armies.




> For example, in one of the early crusades the English troops marching on their way to Palestine were subjected to harassing archery by the locals whose lands they were marching through.  This archery was so ineffective that the English foot (the ordinary soldiers not nobles) were able to completely ignore the arrows - they didn't even bother to pull them out of their kit most of the time!  (The main objective of said archery was to get the column to break up and engage them which eventually 'worked' in that the templars who had rearguard were goaded into an attack.)  That sort of technique (ignore) would never have worked against longbow arrows, hence the need to consider the type of bow and arrow a defense is supposed to be useful against.


To put a long story very short, most of those accounts are Crusaders going against Muslim light horse, with support of their own foot archers. There are three factors at play here.

First factor is that Crusader knights have heavier armor that is usual, using gambeson-mail-gambeson layers, and they pay the price for it as often as they gain the advantage. That much padding and weight plus Outremer sun does not a good combination make, and there are numerous examples of it massively hindering the knights. Hattin is definitely the most famous for it.

Second factor is Crusader archer support, that discourages Muslim horsemen from getting too close. Hitting a moving target at 50 meters is much harder than doing so at 20. There is significant evidence that shield wall used archers in back rows, hidden behind havily armored troops and their shields, to pop up and shoot anyone who got too close.

Third factor is that a lot of middle eastern archery was focused on range (one standard in mameluke archery was to hit a 1 meter diameter target at 75 meters). Their sources most often praise people on how far they were able to shoot, rather than on how strong a bow they could draw - compare that with Odysseus or Japanese legends of five-man bows. That seems to suggest the Musilm archery at this time was centered around range, and therefore used lighter arrows. Lighter arrows, even shot from a strong bow (and reproductions suggest pre-Ottoman bows are at about the 90-100 lbs range, post-Ottoman at the 110-160), will have significant difficulty penetrating metal armor.

And, well, it seems they adapted rather quickly. By the time of Third Crusade, Saladin's archers were able to seriously impede Richard's foot forces on march to Arsuf, to a point where they lost cohesion (this time approaching much closer, to a point where they could hit with javelins as well, so about 20 meters compared to mamelukes' 75), and at Hattin, Saladin's horse archers were able to counter mounted charges by shooting the knight's horses. By the time of Ottomans, there are no records suggesting their archery was less effective than the European standard - which is quite a feat, since European standard at this time includes English warbows and crossbows.

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## Saint-Just

While we are at it is there enough examples of Japanese yumi longbows to gauge a draw weight for them? Especially 16th century and before, since I am not sure that bows would stay the same during the Edo period.

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## Pauly

> While we are at it is there enough examples of Japanese yumi longbows to gauge a draw weight for them? Especially 16th century and before, since I am not sure that bows would stay the same during the Edo period.


I live in Japan, but archery isnt my interest. However Japanese people collect an amazing number of things and if they are from an important person they usually get donated to a temple. The number of weapons and suits of armor with full history of the maker and original owner is mind blowing.

I would be very surprised if there arent a large number of extant bows from which you could do the comparison.

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## Brother Oni

> I would be very surprised if there arent a large number of extant bows from which you could do the comparison.


Battlefield yumi have been estimated between 70-200 lb (approx 32-91 kg) draw weight, with the standard being 120 lbs (54 kg). This is based from experimental archaeology, the few yumi bowyers that still make such warbows and contemporary records of draw weight.

Like many things related to Japanese warfare, they did their own thing when it came to measuring their bows in terms of draw weight; rather than measuring the draw weight directly, they measured them in terms of how many men it took to string the bow, with a 'standard' warbow needing three men (a sannin-bari, 三人張り) to string it. The Kamakura period (~13th Century) 'The Illustrated Tale of Obusama Saburo' (男衾三郎絵詞) shows a 3 man bow being strung.

*Spoiler: Obusumasaburo emaki, panel 11, on the left hand side*
Show






Records of up to 10 man bows exist, although they're regarded as either impractical (much like the bow weights required for the Qing Military officer examinations) or exaggeration.
Practical recreations put the 5 man bow (gonin-bari, 五人張り) as the upper limit as any more than 5 people trying to string a bow just get in the way of each other.

Legendary archer Minamoto no Tametomo (源為朝) was said to use a 5 man bow.

In this video (link, no English subtitles alas), some kyudo/kyujutsu practitioners test out some yumi on steel targets, including assessing the draw weight of a historical early Edo period 3 man bow at 5:18, getting a draw weight of 89 kg (89キロ in the captioning).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Battlefield yumi have been estimated between 70-200 lb (approx 32-91 kg) draw weight, with the standard being 120 lbs (54 kg). This is based from experimental archaeology, the few yumi bowyers that still make such warbows and contemporary records of draw weight.


These numbers are not quite representative. Most modern replicas of war yumi are around the 100-110 lbs mark, which is where I'd expect most of them to sit in their period, and I think this would be the two-man bows.




> In this video (link, no English subtitles alas), some kyudo/kyujutsu practitioners test out some yumi on steel targets, including assessing the draw weight of a historical early Edo period 3 man bow at 5:18, getting a draw weight of 89 kg (89キロ in the captioning).


The thing to remember is that measuring bow power in men is extremely subjective and non-linear. You can have three burly dudes who can span a bow you normally need 5 people for, and the difference between 3 and 5 isn't the same as between 1 and 3. There are legitimately-looking records of some people using 5 man bows, so I'd say those are probably in the 200 lbs area.

All of that together places Japan circa Sengoku Jidai into the "has to deal with metal armor" 90-120 range, with the occassional stronger bow. After that, Edo hits and by the end of it, bows are firmly made obsolete by things like Martini-Henry. In an alternate history where Japan doesn't go isolationist and mostly peaceful, import of Portugese cuirasses continues (and maybe some domestic production with imported steel) and we would probably see a shift in bow weight up to anti-plate armor levels. Or just more guns, who knows.

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## KimberlyGarr

Was the United States involved in the Rhodesian Bush War?

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## KineticDiplomat

Oh, the answers youll hear...that was not a short war, or a well understood one, and it happened on the periphery of the Cold War with influences across a large chunk of Africa. 

To keep it simple, the US never sent troops, it imposed sanctions on the minority government, and in the end was a player in the peace talks that ended Rhodesia - but at the same time it found itself caught on the horns of trying to support a perception of racial justice (or more cynically, win points with the newly empowered black voting block) in a war where the Soviets were backing rebel groups who were also ostensibly fighting for the same thing.

Add on top that quite a few Americans decided they disagreed with the government and went out as mercenaries to work for the Rhodesian minority government, South Africa has its hands in the pot and we still wanted to support the UK who wanted influence in South Africa....

Pretty much anyone involved can find SOMETHING to scream about how the US was actually doing them wrong via some item or another, usually before launching into a pro-whatever-their-side-is diatribe.

But, TLDR, mostly diplomatically and economically in support of majority rule.

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## Brother Oni

> These numbers are not quite representative. Most modern replicas of war yumi are around the 100-110 lbs mark, which is where I'd expect most of them to sit in their period, and I think this would be the two-man bows.


I found this picture of what I assume to be a two man bow, but no providence of the image.

*Spoiler: Two man bow stringing*
Show




Generally though, I can't find any record of anything less than a 3 man bow. Whether this is because of an imposed minimum standard for warfare (like with English archery) or anything less than a 3 man bow wasn't worthy of mention, I don't know.

I found an unsourced legend/myth/rumour that legendary figure Minamoto no Yoshitsune (no link as the board censors it) was mocked for using a very light draw (by the standards of the time) 24kg draw yumi, which would barely be a 1 man bow.




> The thing to remember is that measuring bow power in men is extremely subjective and non-linear. You can have three burly dudes who can span a bow you normally need 5 people for, and the difference between 3 and 5 isn't the same as between 1 and 3. There are legitimately-looking records of some people using 5 man bows, so I'd say those are probably in the 200 lbs area.


As I said, Japan did its own thing - I deliberately didn't put a poundage correlation to draw weight because of the massive variance; even if all those men were equally strong and could pull 50 kg each (for sake of argument), any bow between 101-150kg draw weight would be counted as a 3-man bow.

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## Mike_G

> Concerning arrows.
> 
> If you have a tent wall, and the arrow is still in flight, it will probably get through with lethal force. Sandbags as tested by Tod's Stuff have already been mentioned, but keep in mind, those weren't proper, packed sandbags, and were sideways-on to arrow flight, which you shouldn't do when making anything out of sandbags. For what he was testing - a story from a civil war somewhere where arrows did just that - it was enough, since civil wars rarely see properly constructed barricades.


So Tod did a follow up, comparing various arrows and crossbow bolts vs sandbag to guns vs sandbags. Every caliber from .22 LR up to .308, and the bullets did far worse against the same set up. Simple bag of construction sand set up the same way. The only round that made it through was the 7.62 x 39, and that had very little energy left. It was going sideways, went through a sheet of cardboard and dented the wood behind. Everything else (including 5.56 and .308) never made it through the bag. 

So a single sandbag from Home Depot will stop most bullets, but not an arrow.

It seems that mass and momentum trumps velocity as far as penetrating sandbags.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNo5...od%27sWorkshop

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## Clistenes

> Battlefield yumi have been estimated between 70-200 lb (approx 32-91 kg) draw weight, with the standard being 120 lbs (54 kg). This is based from experimental archaeology, the few yumi bowyers that still make such warbows and contemporary records of draw weight.
> 
> Like many things related to Japanese warfare, they did their own thing when it came to measuring their bows in terms of draw weight; rather than measuring the draw weight directly, they measured them in terms of how many men it took to string the bow, with a 'standard' warbow needing three men (a sannin-bari, 三人張り) to string it. The Kamakura period (~13th Century) 'The Illustrated Tale of Obusama Saburo' (男衾三郎絵詞) shows a 3 man bow being strung.
> 
> *Spoiler: Obusumasaburo emaki, panel 11, on the left hand side*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Those are pretty high draw weights for guys who were 155 cm/5 ft tall on average (based on the size of their armour), and were mostly vegetarians (only those who lived close to the sea could get proteins regularly from fish...). The draw weight of the longbows from the Mary Rose was of 100185 lb (50-83 kg), and those were elites, the tallest, strongest men in England, with a height of around 175 cm (and, as usual among late medieval/renaissance elites, mostly carnivores with high protein, high calcium diets...).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Those are pretty high draw weights for guys who were 155 cm/5 ft tall on average (based on the size of their armour),


Shorter build also translates to shorter arms and shorter draw length. We like to talk about draw weight, but a bow doesn't have a draw weight, it has draw weight at a given distance. One major criticism of those draw weight measurements is that they were made with maximum length of arrows in mind, rather than size of archer. I'd be interested to see if that would change things.




> and were mostly vegetarians (only those who lived close to the sea could get proteins regularly from fish...).


This is a complete lie, mostly coming from timespan around WW2 when Imperial Japan had several famines, and several foods were pushed as quintessentially Japanese, among them sushi and several types of sea grass, along with the idea of scarcity of meat being somehow traditional.

{Scrubbed}

Take this as a cautionary tale, when articles on the internet tell you something about historical whatever, be very sceptical until you find an academical paper confirming it.

Even if that were the case, I have no idea where the thought of "away from sea means no fish" comes from. Carp and lobsters are a thing, as is any number of fresh water fish, and fisheries were popular things to have worldwide.




> The draw weight of the longbows from the Mary Rose was of 100185 lb (50-83 kg),


Not representative. Mary Rose was full of elites, but their bows were in 150-160 range, with a few exceptions either way, which is a cautionary tale on how to handle statistics. A range rarely tells the whole story. Most non-elite bows are estimated to be in 120-140 range in this era.





> and those were elites, the tallest, strongest men in England,


Not really. Elite soldiers yes, definitely, possibly chosen for ability to draw bows as well, but there was no formal selection pool. There were likely many stronger or better archers in England, perfectly happy to not serve in the navy.





> with a height of around 175 cm (and, as usual among late medieval/renaissance elites, mostly carnivores with high protein, high calcium diets...).


Rice is high in protein. As for carnivore, not really, Japanese diet is not that different from European one when it comes to nobles, a solid amount of meat, lot of protein. I already discussed the myths on Japanese side, on European, far too many people look at what a ducal feast looked like and try to apply that to everyday life of your low-level noble, most of whom were quite cash-strapped.

The largest point of difference is that, in Europe, paesants had meat much more readily available to them when compared to their Japanese counterparts.

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## Brother Oni

> Those are pretty high draw weights for guys who were 155 cm/5 ft tall on average (based on the size of their armour)...


To reinforce the 'draw weight at a given distance', bows are usually rated as x lbs at y inches. The standard quoted draw length is 28", although longer bows are sometimes measured at 30" or 32".




> Shorter build also translates to shorter arms and shorter draw length. We like to talk about draw weight, but a bow doesn't have a draw weight, it has draw weight at a given distance. One major criticism of those draw weight measurements is that they were made with maximum length of arrows in mind, rather than size of archer. I'd be interested to see if that would change things.


I do disagree with measuring the draw weight at the arrow length as being unrepresentative of a Japanese bow's draw weight though. Japanese archery has possibly the longest draw of any historical style, with a thumb draw to somewhere out past the ear. The arrows are similarly sized for that - a recurve arrow or even an English longbow's arrow wouldn't be long enough for a yumi.

Looking it up, the suggested length of a Japanese arrow (ya, 矢) is the distance between the middle finger of your outstretched left hand to the middle of your throat plus 3 finger widths (~5cm). Anecdotally, for me that's 91cm; meanwhile my recurve arrows are 74cm from the tip of the pile to the nock. For reference, the vast majority of the arrows recovered from the _Mary Rose_ were 76cm (~30").

Going by this measurement, the early Edo period bow in the video is somewhere in the region of 89kg at 90+cm, or 196lb at 35+inches. Whether the original owner could draw his bow that far back is a different question though (for example, my bow's actually rated for 36lb at 30", but my draw length's 29").

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## Clistenes

> *snip*


Most sources I have consulted mention that while peasants ate whatever they could lay their hands on, from birds to deer {Scrubbed}

River fish is less abundant that sea fish; it is harder to provide the recomended amount of protein if you rely on river fish...

A lot of the Japanese used to eat way more millet and barley than rice, but I guess samurai archers were among the social class able to afford rice...

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## Martin Greywolf

> To reinforce the 'draw weight at a given distance', bows are usually rated as x lbs at y inches. The standard quoted draw length is 28", although longer bows are sometimes measured at 30" or 32".


Which is fine for European man height, not for Japanese.




> I do disagree with measuring the draw weight at the arrow length as being unrepresentative of a Japanese bow's draw weight though. Japanese archery has possibly the longest draw of any historical style, with a thumb draw to somewhere out past the ear. The arrows are similarly sized for that - a recurve arrow or even an English longbow's arrow wouldn't be long enough for a yumi.


Not true. Most military archery styles do have draws past the ear, longbow being no exception. The length of draw varied, from what we see in period artwork, from in front of the chest to as far past the ear as your hand will let you, through pretty much entire middle ages.

*Spoiler: 1150 AD past the head draw*
Show







> Looking it up, the suggested length of a Japanese arrow (ya, 矢) is the distance between the middle finger of your outstretched left hand to the middle of your throat plus 3 finger widths (~5cm). Anecdotally, for me that's 91cm; meanwhile my recurve arrows are 74cm from the tip of the pile to the nock. For reference, the vast majority of the arrows recovered from the _Mary Rose_ were 76cm (~30").


Length of arrow is... kind of irrelevant. It tells you what the maximum possible draw length is - sometimes, there are ways to shoot shorter arrows - and that's about it. If you look at

*Spoiler: This image*
Show




...you can see some of the bows having arrowhead right at the bow staff at full draw, while others poke out quite a lot. Since arrows have to be mass manufactured, I'd think the standard arrow length was long enough that no one in the army would have it too short, plus some safety margin.




> Most sources I have consulted mention that while peasants ate whatever they could lay their hands on, from birds to deer{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}
> 
> [...]
> 
> A lot of the Japanese used to eat way more millet and barley than rice, but I guess samurai archers were among the social class able to afford rice...


I linked an academic study that said otherwise. That's all that I can really do on that front.




> River fish is less abundant that sea fish; it is harder to provide the recomended amount of protein if you rely on river fish...


And this is just not correct, fisheries exist and catching sea fish is considerably harder than catching river fish, on account of sea being kinda big. Northern Hungary, an entirely land locked area, had a significant portion of its diet being fish in middle ages (sure, some of the fish were expensive, but carp was a dime a dozen), and claiming Japan couldn't do the same is something that requires a lot more proof.

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## Brother Oni

> Which is fine for European man height, not for Japanese.


What does that have to do with the standard nomenclature for stating longbow poundage and draw weight? The 28", 30" and 32" example lengths are for recurve/longbow, but that's what they are - examples.




> Not true. Most military archery styles do have draws past the ear, longbow being no exception. The length of draw varied, from what we see in period artwork, from in front of the chest to as far past the ear as your hand will let you, through pretty much entire middle ages.


Looking at pictures of the draws from the English Warbow society, they've got a lot of draws to the collar bone or the ear which reflect your example art but on a real person, but it's simple biological fact that you can't pull as far back with a three finger draw as you can with a thumb draw, barring unique hand physiology putting your thumb joint up by your finger joints.*

*Spoiler: Joe Gibbs, 170lb longbow*
Show




I've skimmed through a book on Arabic archery and the furthest they pull pack is the ear, using various reference points like the corner of the eye, edge of the beard, the tragus, etc for consistency.




> Length of arrow is... kind of irrelevant. It tells you what the maximum possible draw length is - sometimes, there are ways to shoot shorter arrows - and that's about it. If you look at
> 
> *Spoiler: This image*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> ...you can see some of the bows having arrowhead right at the bow staff at full draw, while others poke out quite a lot. Since arrows have to be mass manufactured, I'd think the standard arrow length was long enough that no one in the army would have it too short, plus some safety margin.


Practicality would indicate that mass produced arrows would all be about the average length required of an arrow; if they were all too short or too long**, then you'd get issues from either poor accuracy from too long arrows or lots of compensating devices (either arrow tubes on the bow or a device hooked to the drawing hand); short drawing the bow due to having too short arrows isn't a long term solution (less power = less effectiveness = less likely to survive the battle).

Given that Japanese ya are consistently longer than western arrows, that says to me that the average draw length for a Japanese archer is longer than it is for western archery, thus making average arrow length a reasonable estimate of draw length and hence draw weight when subsequently measured.

*I vaguely remember this being Eastern European folklore for checking if somebody was a werewolf...
**To be precise, what I mean by 'too long' is anything over 3-4". Anything more than that and you have to start messing around with the arrow spine to get it to flex correctly around bow - I'm not familiar with how this is done with wooden arrows.

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## Pauly

> Most sources I have consulted mention that while peasants ate whatever they could lay their hands on, from birds to deer, the higher classes tended to follow buddhist dietary restrictions (well kinda... eating fish should be as bad as eating meat, but they did so...).
> 
> River fish is less abundant that sea fish; it is harder to provide the recomended amount of protein if you rely on river fish...
> 
> A lot of the Japanese used to eat way more millet and barley than rice, but I guess samurai archers were among the social class able to afford rice...


{Scrubbed} there are an awful lot of paintings of hunting scenes on the walls of Japanese temples and historic buildings for a culture that supposedly wasnt into eating meat.

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## fusilier

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} there are an awful lot of paintings of hunting scenes on the walls of Japanese temples and historic buildings for a culture that supposedly wasnt into eating meat.


{Scrubbed}

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## PhoenixPhyre

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


Now that's sophistry I can get behind.

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## HeadlessMermaid

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


{Scrubbed}

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## Brother Oni

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}





> Now that's sophistry I can get behind.


Now that's a 5 a day that I can happily keep to.  :Small Big Grin: 
While looking up various sources, I found mention of yama kujira (山鯨) or 'mountain whales' as a reference to wild boar (whales were classified as fish so were exempt from a number of prohibitions).


In any case, adherence to food restrictions by individuals was variable

{Scrubbed}

tofu starts appearing in the diets for the elites and upper classes, as the practice of kaiseki, where dishes are served in small individual portions and eaten on a separate plate, rather than massive group servings which are taken then dumped on top of rice as is the Chinese custom. Green tea and hence the tea ceremony also starts appearing around this time.

The Muromachi period (14th-16th century) was largely influenced by the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th Century and later, the necessities of war during the Sengoku Jidai. The Portuguese passed on some of their cuisine (notably sweets, tempura* and bread) including the eating of beef, although with some resistance as farm animals were far more useful as work animals rather than for food.

*That is, the technique of dipping food in batter and deep frying it; it was devised as a way of meeting the fasting and abstinence requirements of not eating red meat for Lent and other Catholic observances, referred to as the times/periods by the Portuguese and Spanish, which is 'Tempora' in Latin.

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## Saint-Just

Regarding diets in Japan - two further anecdotes about the early and late Edo period:

During the early Tokugawa shoguns at least there was a yearly crane hunt led by the shogun himself around the New Year where supposedly a crane was taken and split into two halves, and one half was sent to the Emperor and the other used for a crane soup served at the shogun's New Year banquet (other retellings mention two birds). One tale has Okubo Tadataka mocking the resulting soup by promising to make another soup like that the next day, and bringing nothing but vegetables. Which at least shows that even Emperor was supposed to partake, and that nobility of that period definitely was quite open about at least occasional enjoyment of meat (the shogun's soup was of course served for symbolical value but it was not normal at all to have a "meat" soup with so little meat).

in 1864  Dr William Willis receives a letter in Japanese addressed to him in capacity of the British mission's medical officer, inquiring whether Western medicine considers it true that consumption of meat increases height, muscle mass, endurance and other qualities desirable for a warrior. Writes back that it is true (though obviously to get increase in height you need to feed children before they has stopped growing), especially for the red meat, but he is not sure what exactly would be the effect on Japanese, so if his correspondent want to introduce high quantity of meat into the diet a cautions experimentation is recommended to avoid possible side effects. Receives another letter three months later saying that experiments has been successful, the only additional observation is that consuming significant amount of pork in combination with strenuous physical activity causes somewhat heightened aggression "which should not be considered a negative in the current situation". His correspondent was supposedly Hijikata Toshizo, Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi. I cannot cite a primary source, and there are most fanciful stories invented about Shinsengumi, if not as large in number as ninja stories and "facts", but at least it should be dateable and traceable (to the writings of either Dr Willis, or Ernest Satow who was translating), and seems like Shinsengumi kept and slaughtered pigs of their own, which has caused conflict with Nishi Hongan-ji when they moved there.

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## Clistenes

> {Scrubbed} there are an awful lot of paintings of hunting scenes on the walls of Japanese temples and historic buildings for a culture that supposedly wasnt into eating meat.


Hunting was a form of training for war that was done in full battle gear. Of course somebody was probably going to quietly eat the meat, be servants o samurai themselves, but hunts weren't events everybody took part in often, nor would all daimyos approve of their vassals eating the meat.

The crane soup was a ritual event, and it shouldn't be considered representative of a nornal diet.

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## Yora

Now I am really curious about the food that must never be named.
What could the japanese possibly have eaten that it is too horrible for us to imagine?

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## VoxRationis

I believe the typical answer would be natto.

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## Yora

:Small Big Grin:  :Small Big Grin:  :Small Big Grin: 

You, sir, win +1 internets.

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## Brother Oni

> I believe the typical answer would be natto.


The other option is uni, or sea urchin gonads.

Natto is a bit of an acquired taste, but it at least it still looks like food.

Uni sushi does not look appetising at all, however:
*Spoiler: Uni sushi*
Show

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## Vinyadan

Hijikata Special? (From Gintama). GINTAMA Hijikata Special Vs Gintoki Don - YouTube

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## Clistenes

> Now I am really curious about the food that must never be named.
> What could the japanese possibly have eaten that it is too horrible for us to imagine?


I you are speaking about the portion of my post that was scrubbed, I mentioned some religious dietary restrictions, which is against the forum's rules.

I didn't think it was important, since I didn't discuss religion itself, only that they influenced Japanese diet, but that's enough to get a warning...

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## Yora

Oh, the horror.

Oddly specific question time with way more historic accuracy than practically needed:
Is there some kind of standard issue 19th century military saber that could be found relatively easily and inexpensively in Denmark, but also looks decently nice and well made?
I got an NPC who deludes herself to be one of the world's best saber fencers and prides herself in her authentic antique sword that was handed down through the generations, but really isn't anything special.

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## Vinyadan

From a quick search, maybe the M1843 sabre? More than 5,000 pieces were made. 

https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/bayonets-trench-knives-world/unit-marked-danish-model-1843-sword-need-help-identifying-regiments-356627/

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## Yora

I was thinking of something Danish, Prussian, or Swedish.

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## Gnoman

A fair bit older, and not a saber, but the Swedish http://www.kultofathena.com/product....85+Sword]M1685 might be a good fit. 17th century, but produced in the hundreds of thousands.

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## fusilier

> I was thinking of something Danish, Prussian, or Swedish.


Officer sabers tend to be a bit fancier, but without really being anything special.  Here are some Danish officer swords:

https://www.militariaweb.dk/stor-dan...svaerk-klinge/

https://www.antique-swords.com/B71-D...-officers.html

An online search for "Danish saber" should bring up plenty of examples.  Most seem to be from the 1800s.

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## Mike_G

There were a crapload of sabers produced throughout the late 18th early 18th century, because of Napoleon. Most are pretty serviceable, and most European swords look fairly similar. 

The iconic 1796, which was British, but the Prussians modeled the Blucher saber after it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patter..._cavalry_sabre

A German trooper's sword

https://www.militariahub.com/german-...roopers-sword/

This would work nicely because it's a mass produced trooper model, not a custom officer's sword

A Swedish saber. It's a straight blade, but I've seen a few Swedish sabers that are straight, so maybe that's a Swedish thing.

https://sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/t...rs-sabre-m1864

I'd just Google "Danish Saber" until you see one you like

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## Pauly

> Oh, the horror.
> 
> Oddly specific question time with way more historic accuracy than practically needed:
> Is there some kind of standard issue 19th century military saber that could be found relatively easily and inexpensively in Denmark, but also looks decently nice and well made?
> I got an NPC who deludes herself to be one of the world's best saber fencers and prides herself in her authentic antique sword that was handed down through the generations, but really isn't anything special.


Some things that would help.
1) era. Early, mid or late 19th century?
2) history. Is the sword attached to any specific battles or events? Is it Danish issue or possibly captured by the Danes or some gift from a friendly foreign service?
3) type of service. Cavalry? Naval? Engineer? Artillery? Infantry?
4) design. More curved or more straight?

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## Yora

Doesn't really matter. I just need something that looks impressive to the untrained eye, but really isn't. Something that any Danish collector or antiques store might have gathering dust somewhere in the back.

I think I might go with an 1811 Blücher saber from the first Schleswig War. Second Schleswig War would fit more nicely with the backstory, but the new Prussian service sword from that time doesn't look as impressive. The 1796/Blücher looks nasty. Much more choppy than later military swords.



And you need to be an expert to see that this is mass produced. One source says that 13 years after a new sword was introduced, they still had 70,000 of these in the armory inventory. Something that looks fancier would have been neat, but  the character is completely delusional, so it doesn't matter that her ancient family heirloom looks factory made.

Side question: What are those metal protrusions near the tip of the scabbard? I remember them always being drawn very exaggerated in Lucky Luke comics. I always assume they were to make the scabbard more blunt and not irritate a horse getting poked in the side all the time, but those on this image wouldn't do anything for that purpose.

----------


## Pauly

There was a Saxon contingent in the 2nd Schleswig war and Saxons had some very nice swords. They probably would fit the not obviously a mass issue sword but not too fancy criteria you are looking for.

Here is a link to a slightly later period saxon uhlan officers sword.
http://www.sailorinsaddle.com/product.aspx?id=804

Another example
https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/imper...-saber-586857/

NB the wings at the bottom of the scabbard are the scabbard drag, and they do exactly what the name says, they drag on the ground and protect the main scabbard from damage.

----------


## Telok

Thanks all.

Some time ago I was looking for real world research information on spotting distances in order to translate them to a game. Well I finished that, mostly through US military basic research documents from the 60s and 70s.

My conclusion is interesting and not something I've seen in any RPGs. Details vary but all the final graphs I needed had the same basic shape, a sort of stretched out Z. While the exact percentages and distances depend on many factors everything from spotting people in the jungle, to jets in the air, to trucks in the desert from a jet, all ended up having that sort of stretched Z shape. The first 1/3rd to a bit more of the zero to whatever distance it goes from 100% down to 80% or 75%, then in the last 1/2 to 1/3rd of the distance it's going from 25% or 20% down to 0%, and in the middle there's something that generally looks like a cliff.

Anyway, thanks for the initial direction of searching. Partial bibliography to follow and then the typed up data I used in a spoiler for the morbidly curious. There's a pile of handwritten notes too but I'm not transcribing those.

AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and Development (Army)
November 1972

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM, MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY 
by Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers, USAIHRU, January 1964

Dobbins, D.A. et al. Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance, Horizontal Placement, and
Site on Personnel Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest, U.S. Army Tropic Test Center,
Fort Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

Louis, Nicholas B. The Effects of Observer Location and Viewing Method on Target
Detection with the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight, HumRRO Technical Report 91,
June 1964.

ASTIA, Report Bibliography on Target Detection and Range Estimation by
Humans, Armed Forces Technical Information Agency, Arlington, Virginia,
November 19 60.

Louis, Nicholas B. The Effects of Observer Location and Viewing Method on Target
Detection with the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight, HumRRO Technical Report 91,
June 1964.

*Spoiler: raw data stuff*
Show


open terrain 95%
middle terrain 88%
heavy foliage 55%

100m 90%
200m 90%
300m 55%

AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and Development (Army)
November 1972

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM, MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY 
by Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers, USAIHRU, January 1964

TABLF 4
VISIBILITY AT NIGHT
Moon Age Ground and Background
Object SingleSoldier(meters)	Patrol	Unit
Starlit Night 
Level, Grassy Ground
25	30	40
Level, Rare Ground
30	40	45
Dark Background
10	10	15
Silhouetted Against Sky
35	55	80

12th Day from the Full Moon (Crescent)
Level, Grassy Ground
30	60	75
Level . Bare Ground
30	45	50
Dark Background
10	15	20
Silhouetted Against Sky
130	140	180

7th Day from the Tull Moon (Half)
Level, Grassy Ground
60	70	80
Level, Bare Ground
35	50	55
Dark Background
10	15	20
Silhouetted Against Sky
140	170	230

3d Day from the Full Moon (3/4) 
Level, Grassy Ground
70	75	120
Level, Bare Ground
40	50	70
Dark Background
15	20	25
Silhouetted Against Sky
160	220	280

15th Day of the Moon (Full) 
Level, Grassy Ground
75	100	150
Level , Bare Ground
50	80	100
Dark Background
15	20	25
Silhouetted Against Sky
180	250	300
50

1. Patrol is three or four men. Unit is a platoon in column. The above figures show the visible range when the object is not in motion. It is easier to Identify an object in motion especially when it is moving crosswise.
2. This experiment was conducted on clear nights during January and February, [t can be assumed that the brightness is practically equal for two or three nights before and after each age of the moon in the chart.

IDENTIFICATION of person size object
FULL MOON %% NO MOON
20m  95%  
40m  90%  5m
55m  80% 12m
60m  70% 15m
70m  60% 18m
85m  50% 27m
100m 40% 33m
110m 30% 40m
120m 20% 50m

TABLE 7 -- moonless & cloudless
RECOGNITION RANGES (YARDS) FOR THE
M-48 TANK AND THE 2-1/2-TON TRUCK
recognition = identification
paths 1=60m, 2=60mstraight, 3=50m, 4=125m, noise/no-noise
drive towards observer, 'no noise' = white noise covering
PATH	TANK		TRUCK
4	111/210		86/77
3	126/192		100/95
2	184/155		83/108
1	152/173		91/97

TABLE 8 -- moonless & cloudless
VISIBILITY RANGES FOR TARGETS GROUPED ACCORDING TO SIZE
"Large" targets included such things as a 2-1/2-ton truck, "medium" targets included such +hings as a jeep, and 2-man tents and similar size material were grouped as "small" targets.
	detect / recognize
Large Targets 73/45
Medium Targets 43/24
Small Targets 16/11

TABLE 9 -- full moon & 2minute time limit
VISIBILITY RANGES FOR HUMAN TARGETS
dist, stand, walk
250, 25, x
180, 50, 25
130, 75, x
100, 90, 45

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dobbins, D.A. et al. Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance, Horizontal Placement, and
Site on Personnel Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest, U.S. Army Tropic Test Center,
Fort Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

TABLE II
Detection thresholds and 25-75% range at
each of three evergreen rainforest sites.
25%	50%	75%
82	62	47 - dim (50% others), wild palm, stilt palm, maquengue palms, *Geonoma decurrens*
92	80	55 - wild fig, stilt palm, wide leaf palm, *wide-leaf palms*
95	76	59 - Scheelea zonensis, broadleaf evergreens, Str6manthe lutea, *panama hat palm*
90	72	56 - averaged

%%  feet  time
95% 40 
80% 50 25s
70% 60 33s
60% 68 34s
50% 75 
40% 80 39s
10% 100 61s

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Louis, Nicholas B. The Effects of Observer Location and Viewing Method on Target
Detection with the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight, HumRRO Technical Report 91,
June 1964.

Probability of Detecting Targets & observer distance from searchlight
yards		time		%%
0		10		.14
0		20		.23
10		10		.23
10		20		.35
20		10		.29
20		20		.37
40		10		.21
40		20		.35
80		10		.40
80		20		.54
160		10		.33
160		20		.41

Probability of Identifying Targets
dist	%%
0	.20
10	.26
20	.26
40	.25
80	.37
160	.36

Performance on Targets Viewed
From 80-Yard Position by Observers Using Binoculars
type	655yd	780yd	900yd	1055yd
detect
tank	87	89	74	54
apc	96	83	81	60
jeep	90	66	59	32
ID
tank	84	72	46	39
apc	84	56	49	21
jeep	70	28	35	21

----------


## Yora

I am working on a Vampire the Masquerade campaign set in Germany, and part of the concept is that the city is very efficient at hiding its crimes and supressing the true amount of corruption and criminals from the public. So even though it's the World of Darkness, guns won't be any more common than they really are. This means vampires are not supposed to have them or get reprimanded by their elders for shooting, because it will draw heavy attention from the police, and vampires are trying to stay secret.

Does anyone know anything about what kinds of weapons are commonly seized from criminals in Germany (or even central Europe in general)?
The only thing I was able to find is that there are about 5.5 million registered guns, of which 3.6 million are long guns. But no indication if this is for hunting rifles and shotguns, or also includes sport shooting rifles.

I guess handguns would almost all be 9mm pistols, which in game terms are all the same thing. Maybe drop some well known German brand names for local color, and that's good enough.
Wealthy clan leaders having stocks of hunting guns to equip their minions for extraordinary situations would also seem very plausible, as they would raise few eyebrows to get all the legal paperwork to make them completely legit. But I don't have the slightest clue what kinds of rifles and shotguns European hunters commonly use. Probably not World War 2 Mausers or double barrel shotguns. Any suggestions for generic hunting gun models would be helpful.

----------


## KineticDiplomat

Well, Benelli and Beretta are both Italian companies with substantial recreational gun lines, and Steyr has a few flagship models for hunting and target guns as well. In terms of pistols, Glock is in fact an Austrian company, and SIG Sauer does European production. Theres also a smattering of crappy Russian companies, but they wouldnt be your hunting and skeet crowd. H&K is also over there as has civil product lines, but they are very much black guns.

----------


## Brother Oni

> Maybe drop some well known German brand names for local color, and that's good enough.


The problem is when you have the likes of Heckler & Koch, SIG Sauer and Walther as well known local German brands (plus there's Glock just over the border in Austria), it's very hard to get a sense of local colour.  :Small Tongue: 

There's a Wikipedia page on German firearms manufacturers which would help on random colour: link.

I've found this global report on gun trafficking, along with breakdowns for Europe on page 26 (link), where they breakdown the number of seized firearms as 35% pistols, 27% rifles, 11% revolvers, 22% shotguns and the remaining 5% divided up between SMGs, MGs and other unclassified firearms.

As for what model and brands, it's a mix of pretty much everything, from looking at reports on busts on firearms traffickers: 2020 raids, 2017 raids.

For what weapons a German hunter might have, you could check the stock of local gun shops - here's one I found with a quick google search: link.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Does anyone know anything about what kinds of weapons are commonly seized from criminals in Germany (or even central Europe in general)?


Criminals almost universally use handguns for the actual crimes, if even that. Bottom line is that they are concealable, and that's all that matters, because honestly, why would you need an SMG to rob a house? Some occassional hunting weapons for long range assassinations, Kennedy-style, if you want to be really gung ho.

Thing is, Europe has the gun laws it has, and that means it's extremely hard to get a non-registered firearm to the market. The serial number will be recorded somewhere, and if the cops catch you with a stolen gun, it's curtains. This registration of firearms holds even when it comes to private trades, so there's no way for the guns to fall into the cracks the way they can in the US. Even things like smoothbore muskets tend to have at least a duty to inform the police you have one around here.

A lot of the more prominent crime world members will actually have a legal gun, as a self defense carry, because if someone jumps them, it's perfectly legal to use it, and they don't do roberries any more, they organize things. Sure, such a gun could get "lost" and make its way to hands of someone, but if he does any sort of crime with it, it will bring massive scrutiny to you.

So, yeah, most common weapon siezed from criminals is nothing, followed by knife, followed by a pistol. Well, from an organized criminal, because remember, crime does include domestic disputes and crimes of passion, where numbers one and two are axe and kitchen knife.

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## Max_Killjoy

Mike Loades on weapons and combat in video games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFFs_LW7iOM

----------


## Yora

> I've found this global report on gun trafficking, along with breakdowns for Europe on page 26 (link), where they breakdown the number of seized firearms as 35% pistols, 27% rifles, 11% revolvers, 22% shotguns and the remaining 5% divided up between SMGs, MGs and other unclassified firearms.


Those are some great numbers. I was already thinking about not including revolvers at all. To my knowledge, military and police phased out revolvers in the 19th century. To normal people they would seem really exotic. (Though I don't know about gun nuts.)
At the very least, I see no need to have anything but "pistol" on the weapons list.




> Thing is, Europe has the gun laws it has, and that means it's extremely hard to get a non-registered firearm to the market. The serial number will be recorded somewhere, and if the cops catch you with a stolen gun, it's curtains. This registration of firearms holds even when it comes to private trades, so there's no way for the guns to fall into the cracks the way they can in the US. Even things like smoothbore muskets tend to have at least a duty to inform the police you have one around here.


Guns do fall through the cracks all the time. Of course still nowhere near as much as in the US, 20 to 30,000 registered guns are reported lost or stolen in Germany every year. And there are no customs checks in central Europe. Once a gun enters the EU in Latvia, Romania, or Bulgaria, it can get all the way to Portugal with nobody ever going to check a car.

----------


## Gnoman

> Those are some great numbers. I was already thinking about not including revolvers at all. To my knowledge, military and police phased out revolvers in the 19th century. To normal people they would seem really exotic. (Though I don't know about gun nuts.)
> At the very least, I see no need to have anything but "pistol" on the weapons list.


Revolvers remain super popular. You're correct that military and law enforcement use is fairly spotty (although way, way off on the date - police use of revolvers was still common in many places through the 1980s), but the civilian market loves the things. There's several advantages to them, particularly in the very small super-concealable range of things where you aren't getting more than 6 shots anyway.

----------


## Yora

I assume that's in the context of the American market?

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## Gnoman

Capacity matters a lot more there, but most of the European gun people I'm in contact with are revolver fans as well.


EDIT: Note that the German gun store page linked features more than one revolver quite prominently.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Mike Loades on weapons and combat in video games.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFFs_LW7iOM


Mike Loades is one of those people who pioneered a lot of things way back when and then absolutely refused to move with the times. With this video:

KCD - minor nitpick, but alchemy wasn't ever used to make swords.

Dark Souls - ignores vastly improper use of shield.

Dark Souls - you do not ever block with the sword... except for all those many, many time when period treatises explicitly tell you to block.

Dark Souls - okay, did no one explain DS twohanding to this guy? Two handing a sword does increase your reach and damage. The block animation is a little potato, though, but you can't do much better with tech limitations.

For Honor - single edged blades need just as sophisticated temper as double edged ones do, they just need less of it.

Mordhau - why would you throw away a sword? Well, a plethora of reasons, but as a historian, that's not important. What is important is that we have treatise with explicit instructions on how to throw a sword, so we know for a fact it was done. The technique is very different from the spinny throw in the vid, though.

Chivalry - neck is definitely not one of the first areas to get protected. Roman to Carolingian to high medieval shows progression of head first, torso second, arms and legs third, neck fourth. It's one of the last areas to get protected, only followed by hands.

For Honor - flamberge blades can be grabbed, about the only thing wavy blade does is bind slightly better. Overall, not worth the hassle.

For Honor - blade decorations are sometimes done on high status weapons, though not to that extreme. Behold!

*Spoiler: Sabre of Charlemagne, 10th century Hungarian make*
Show




For Honor - pollax vs pole axe is pointless sophistry. And there is no one end of a pollaxe you do all your fighting with, otherwise Fiore, among others, would have mentioned that when he was telling us how to use one.

Mount and Blade - the game has a third person mode, and you can see how the crossbow is loaded, it's a simple stirrup. That rate of fire is entirely achievable in real life by, among others, me.

Leather bracers in archery - were not used by military archers because they were redundant on account of armor. They seem to be rather rare throughout.

Defeating spears - well, that's utter BS. It's hard to get past a spear point unless you have a shield, and you definitely, absolutely can't easily cleave the spear head off. People tried, and failed. Even once someone's inside a spear's point, it's still useful as a lever, and can be used to shove a large man downhill when he decides to rush you.

Maces and morningstars - both can be one or two handed, distinction is based on how the head looks. Morningstar is a later thing, though.

Flail - pardon me? We have no evidence it was ever a real weapon... except for all of those flails in Hussite museums, or all those flail heads Czech metal detector hobbyists still dig up to this day (pro tip: google "remdih", that's the Czech word for it).

*Spoiler: Or this Russian example from 14th century*
Show




KCD - taking over a village: shows a clip of attack on a small castle. Okay, there was a village under it, but still.

KCD - Armies of that size could still sneak up on you, but it did take some doing.

KCD - You need 30 men to pillage a village, but that is a castle with three layers of wooden walls and one earthwork or stone one, my man. Why the hell is cavalry charging the walls, though? And that is a pretty shoddy gate, but then again, small castle village, so eh.

Bannerlord - depending on what he means by lance bebing a one use weapon, he may be wrong. Only some late military lances break upon first impact. But he may have meant the charge-disengage-charge cycle, one use in a sense of "you're not supposed to stay in melee with this".

Kite shield - lasted considerably longer, but only in niche cases, there are IIRC some 14th century examples from Byzantium.

Targe - does not have more mobility than viking round shield on account of being strapped to your arm. Hell, it's not even lighter than them. It's also not really meant against arrowstorms, because it's small. And was used against bayonets, at which point shield against arrowstorms was rather pointless.

Buckler - Don't punch with a buckler and for the love of God, don't try to punch an incoming strike away with it. Where does that dumb idea even come from?

Mordhau - Armor gives you as much protection as possible, unless it doesn't. We have numerous counts of people forgoing more protection for more mobility, stamina or vision.

*Spoiler: Observe a king in a kettle hat he opted to wear, likely because of health problems, c1350*
Show






In conclusion, about third of the video is legitimate facts, a quarter is silghtly questionable or not telling the whole story and the rest is complete BS. All in all, rather disappointing from a professional historian, but nothing we're unaccustomed to.

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## rrgg

There are references to military archers wearing bracers in the 16th century.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A1...;view=fulltext

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## Brother Oni

> I assume that's in the context of the American market?


The standard firearm issued to uniformed Japanese police officers is a 5 round revolver, the New Nambu M60.

The security forces and police assault teams carry 'modern' firearms much like western police forces, plus the JSDF carry weapons on par with any NATO military.




> EDIT: Note that the German gun store page linked features more than one revolver quite prominently.


I think that's because they're primarily an importer of American firearms, so I should have found a better example for Yora.

That said, they wouldn't be importing revolvers if there wasn't a client base for it.

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## Martin Greywolf

> There are references to military archers wearing bracers in the 16th century.
> 
> https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A1...;view=fulltext


And much like the flail, the existence of a thing and its widespread use are two different things. From what you will see today, you'd assume bracers and gloves are necessary for heavy bow archery, but the historical evidence doesn't support it.

First clue is that seeing these tools is extremely rare, to a point there are hundred depictions without them for every one with. Even if you discount some depictions with insufficient detail to tell one way or another, you are still left with overwhelming amount of no bracers or tabs, even in settings where you would expect them.

*Spoiler: Low status archers, 1370*
Show


Detailed enough to show different hair styles nad undershirt poking from under upper clothing



*Spoiler: Low and high status archers, 1370*
Show


Details include individual horse teeth and belts differing from string to leather to leather with studs



*Spoiler: Military archers, 1150*
Show


Shows some people having leg wraps and some not



*Spoiler: Cuman archer, 1340*
Show


Unusual amount of detail, as expected of Codex Manesse, and nomadic archer depiction is, for once, accurate, since it managed to capture both the ethnic clothes and quiver of Cumans



*Spoiler: Rare bracers, 1420*
Show




*Spoiler: Even rarer tabs, no date given*
Show




Furthermore, we have numerous graves from pre-Christian cultures in Europe, and especially in eastern Europe, pre-Christian can mean up to 13th century. Cuman, Avar and so forth graves are easily identifiable because they packed them with all the tools of the trade of the deceased, to give them to him in the afterlife. That means warrior graves give us warriors with their full military equipment, from which tabs and bracers are almost universally absent. That not only further supports their rarity, it also rules out the possible explanation of "it was worn under the clothing".

The reasons why depend on which bit of equipment we're talking about.

For tabs, the reason is surprisingly that people were "tougher". You can see something similar even today - find someone who does a lot of manual labor without gloves on, maybe someone like a carpenter, and you will notice that the skin on their palms is pretty rough. You can see the same things with people who do manual farming, and can often read descriptions of someone having leathery palms in older books. A hand like this not only has a much greater resistance to splinters, to a point where you can get splinters and not notice as long as they're relatively small and shallow, but also gets you a protections normally reserved to gloves. That's why we rarely see leather gloves worn outside of hunting or dressing up in medieval illuminations, they just weren't as necessary as they are for our hands.

The bracer is a matter of git gud. If you shoot enough, with proper form, there is no need to wear it because you get the string slap only very rarely, if at all. Add to that the mitigation offered by three to six layers of clothing worn every day, and it was probably thought of as a learning experience, and not worn militarily most of the time because gambesons made it redundant.

To sum up, wearing tabs and bracers is not, strictly speaking, ahistorical, and you can get away with it in your kit, but it was not common in the period.

----------


## Brother Oni

> To sum up, wearing tabs and bracers is not, strictly speaking, ahistorical, and you can get away with it in your kit, but it was not common in the period.


From a personal perspective, I'd still want a bracer, although not to protect me, but to protect the string.

If you're wearing a mail shirt with long sleeves, any burrs or edges on your links can potentially cause your string to fray - you're unlikely to get a nice calm full draw every time in the middle of combat, so you'd want to prepare for eventualities and even if you're perfectly calm and can hit a perfect draw every time, the bowman next to you might not be.

The other issue is that bracers are generally made from leather, making their finds highly unlikely in graves as they will simply decay. Even with thumb rings for Middle Eastern and Far Eastern archery, only the more durable metal/horn/bone part of thumb rings have been found, with no trace of any possible leather part.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> From a personal perspective, I'd still want a bracer, although not to protect me, but to protect the string.
> 
> If you're wearing a mail shirt with long sleeves, any burrs or edges on your links can potentially cause your string to fray.


Thing is, does this really matter in a combat archery enviroment? You will likely be shooting at crowds with poor-ish armor about 100-200 meters away, or at heavuly armored targets under 50 meters, at that distance, you don't need competition grade accuracy.

As for string actually breaking, that's almost impossible to happen. Keep in mind you will have abundant spares on campaign, so you can swap it between actions. In battle, you are likely to shoot less than 30 arrows.

And even then, this is only a problem if you have long mail sleeves, and disappears with short sleeves or plate armor, which seems to be what most, though not all, archers chose to wear.

That said, for modern reenactment, go for bracer over mail. We need to take safety of anyone around us, especially the spectators, a lot more seriously. If the string snaps and manages to whip someone in the eye back in the period, it's a one in a million act of God on an already deadly battlefield. If it happens today on a family outing, it's a potential lawsuit.




> The other issue is that bracers are generally made from leather, making their finds highly unlikely in graves as they will simply decay. Even with thumb rings for Middle Eastern and Far Eastern archery, only the more durable metal/horn/bone part of thumb rings have been found, with no trace of any possible leather part.


This is brought up regularly, but it's a misunderstanding of how archaeology works. While it is true, in general, that leather decomposes much easier, it is not a universal thing.

In the end, it comes down to what the local conditions are - weather, climate, type of soil, acidity and salinity are the most important. That means there are numerous regions where you will not find leather artifacts, but there are also severral where you will.

Furthemore, all of the above factors also dictate if the leather decomposes partially, completely or completely but while leaving a trace of leather-infused soil behind. Sometimes, even things you'd think cannot possibly be preserved, are.

*Spoiler: Cuman chieftain from 13th century*
Show


the black line across the torso that looks like the spine a bit, 10, is the central hem of kaftan, an overshirt, entire left side of which is still there as 11
there is also a leather quiver at his left knee

these remains were well-preserved enough to identify original embroidery




We have several of these grave goods available, and as I said, they all lack bracers and tabs, and sometimes have thumb rings.

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## InvisibleBison

> In battle, you are likely to shoot less than 30 arrows.


I find this rather surprising, given how long battles last and how quickly archers can shoot. Do you know why this was the case?

----------


## KineticDiplomat

While I defer to martin if he knows better, I seem to recall the average archer only carried two dozen or so arrows - addittional ammunition would be carried in the trains, though in a few famous English battles they broke out the stocks to give the archers two or three basic loads after the battleground was picked and everyone was relatively static.

If I had to guess a combination of weight/bulk and resource constraints.

----------


## fusilier

> While I defer to martin if he knows better, I seem to recall the average archer only carried two dozen or so arrows - addittional ammunition would be carried in the trains, though in a few famous English battles they broke out the stocks to give the archers two or three basic loads after the battleground was picked and everyone was relatively static.
> 
> If I had to guess a combination of weight/bulk and resource constraints.


If I remember correctly, physical exhaustion was also a problem. Rapid fire from a powerful bow quickly fatigued the archers.  I suspect that in most lengthy battles, there would be rest periods where they could be resupplied and recover some of their strength.

----------


## Saint-Just

> I find this rather surprising, given how long battles last and how quickly archers can shoot. Do you know why this was the case?


How quickly? I was under impression that with serious war bow the answer is "slower than you think", or at least slower than I thought. There is an oft-quoted "12 arrows per minute" for an English longbowman. Even if it was minimal qualification instead of average it's still slow enough.

Andyes, in any case however fast you can shoot it definitely will be tiring.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

*Amount of arrows archers carried*

It varies. A lot. A humongous lot. At the extreme ends, we have as little as 3-4 arrows per archer, although this is mostly either "you get surprised and have to go shoot RIGHT NOW" or for purposes of hunting, where you have a guy to carry your arrows for you. At the extremely large end of spectrum, you have about 200, carried in several quivers on horseback, done sometimes by nomads.

The most common amount is somewhere between 20 and 30. We know medieval English archers had sheafs of arrows numbered at 24 per, with one sheaf per standard quiver. They sometimes carried multiple of these (2 sheafs at Agincourt, where they had pre-prepared static position), but 24 seems to be the standard for when you have an archer that will have to move, for example as part of a hedgehog formation or on a plundering raid (chevauchee, if you need to be French or fancy about it). Arab source, Book on the Excellence of the Bow and Arrow from 1500, gives one quiver size as 25-30, while saying an archer should not limit himself to this number in battle - probably meaning you should carry more if the circumstances call for it, but again, 25-30 is the standard.

This seems like less than you can fit in a quiver, but keep in mind that most of these quivers had a leather bit with spaced holes for easy and quick access to arrows if you needed to shoot quickly.

Byzantine sources gives slightly higher numbers, with the provision that these are Roman-ish style armies - this is not necessarily combat load, but rather marching load. Strategikon says 40 in one quiver, Praecepta militaria gives monstrous 40+60 in two quivers, both for foot archers.

As for why, well, they are unlikely to need more. See below.

*Rate of fire limitations*

There are several of them. Best English warbow archers were required to shoot more than 10, probably up to 20, arrows a minute. Which means one sheaf lasts you about a minute and change of shooting, and you get two of those at Agincourt. This is a bit of an artificial limit to your rate of fire, though, since it disregards things like people (or yourself) resupplying you, and it's not that hard to carry more arrows.

Second limiter is physicality. The best thing to do if you want to have an idea about it is to go to anyone in your local club who has one and draw it a few times. I have a 60 lbs bow and if I rapidly draw it, I can go for maybe 30 reps before my forearms and back decide to take a break (over about 2 minutes? I never actually timed it). It's a physical activity, on par with lifting weight of the bow's draw weight, and quickly at that. You can train yourself, sure, but 1) people tend to slack off as much as they can and 2) only up to a point. You are also wearing armor, on campaign, maybe had to march for a few days, maybe had dysentery and so on.

Your physicality also limits you based on how quickly you shoot, not just how many times. Belting out those 20 arrows per minute will destroy you, but doing 20 arrows over five minutes can give you more arrows shot before you need to take a break.

Third limiter is targets. There is little point in shooting all of your quiver into a single guy, especially if there are two of your frineds targeting him as well. Since you are a person and not a robot, you will probably shoot him until he's out of the action, either due to death, pain or exhaustion. There are several targets you have at any given time, but making a judgement call on every one of them, picking a good one, aiming and shooting him all take time, which limit your practical RoF.

Fourth factor is the what if - what if you shoot quickly now, become exhausted, run out of arrows and then, when you need it the most, there comes a dedicated enemy charge right at you. If you see your enemy is routing, you may wel opt to stop shooting and let them and save breath and arrows for when you really need them.

*Length of battles*

I don't want to get rambly, so I'll keep this short. Just because a battle takes from dawn till dusk doesn't mean one archer will have enemies in effective range all the time. The amount for which he will have them will be extremely short, because the melee enemy will endeavour to cross the distance where he's getting shot at as quickly as possible. Most medieval battles tend to take at most 3 hours, with only rare expections - those exceptions can drag, though, like battle of Mohi/Sajo, where Hungarian and Mongol armies had some for of continuous action going on for over a month, or Richard the Lionheart's pincushion march.

*More arrows is not more good*

Let's establish this real quick - you want to carry as few as you can, because it's less weight and less chance of accidental breakage - baggage train tends to have less knocking around than a quiver, and those numbers add up. The ideal situation is you expend every single one of your arrows and need not one more.

*How does one restock*

I wish we knew. There is the obvious solution of just going to the cart with arrows yourself, but there is also possibility of squires or hired help of some sort doing dedicated resupply. Or maybe the new guy would get the job if a major battle happened?

*So how does one archer in battle?*

In general you have four modes of action in battle as an archer.

Mode 1: Nothing is in reach, you either march around or wait.

Mode 2: Something is in reach at your long range and it may or may not shoot at you. In this case, you can answer with long range harassing, skirmishing fire - but only if your army has enough ammunition. Sometimes, you're better off hiding behind the closest guy with a shield. This kind of shooting tends to be slow, because there is no need for speed.

Horse archers especially love this mode, and they may opt to have 100+ arrows on them or rapidly circle back to their resupply to continue it, or both. You want former if you are drawing enemy to chase you with a false retreat and the latter if the enemy is stationary and you want to keep up harassing fire.

Mode 3: Oh **** mode. Enemy infantry or cavalry charges, enemy archer formation moves into effective range and opens up. It's essential for you to expend as many arrows as possible to take them out, and take them out quickly. This is where those 20 arrows per minute over a minute comes in, and where it shines. This is also the exact situation at Agincourt.

In this mode, you shoot only when the enemy is at the distance where you can take direct, aimed shots into their weaker armor bits (armpit gap, face, groin, horse) - it tends to be at about 50-60 meters. You can sprint that distance in about 10 seconds in clothes and 20 seconds in armor, but if you need to keep cohesion, you will be slower. Probably more than twice as slow, which gives us 40+ seconds, which is about a minute. Which means the English knew what they were doing, which is not surprising.

The thing about this mode is, once the melee begins, you revert into a sort of mode 2 - you can take point blank aimed shots, but only at a more measured pace, because you really don't want to accidentally spike a friend of yours into the back of his head.

If you have a very good terrain advantage and have elevated bank or something, you can still keep going at it full pelt, but consider this: you still want to take out as many of them before the lines clash, to make your infantry's life easier and disrupt enemy lines. It's better to go pedal to the metal and then be at 1/3 capacity than to go half and half, even in this somewhat rare ideal case.

Mode 4: Either something went FUBAR or you want to finish off a routing enemy. It's time to gently put down the bow, draw that falchion and buckler you have and have at it.



With this in mind. If there is a battle, organizing those dedicated charges takes time. In that time, you cen be resupplied. So, even if, and that's a very big if, there is a battle so big against a foe so disciplined there will be multiple main clashes, you can restock.

For one clash, you will likely only have a minute to shoot at them effectively, and in that minute, you will be able to expend 10-20 arrows. If there is no skirmish phase, you only need that much. If there is a skirmish phase, you may need more than that, so carrying some reserve is not necessarily a bad idea, but skirmish phases tend to be slower-paced, and therefore give you the option to resupply.

So, after that wall of text: you only carry 20-30 arrows because that's all you will likely need, and you will almost certainly have some time to restock in battle.

All that said, I'm absolutely positive there was at least one guy at Agincourt who ran out of arrows, just as the French charge came, because he was plinking at distant targets. I would dearly like to go back in time to take a picture of his face at that moment.

Edit: typo

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## fusilier

> Most medieval battles tend to take at most 3 hours, with only rare expections . . .


And it's not likely that an archer would be engaged (i.e. with targets to feasibly shoot at) for all three hours continuously.  Battles tend to have an ebb and flow with different forces engaged at different times for different durations.

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## Martin Greywolf

> And it's not likely that an archer would be engaged (i.e. with targets to feasibly shoot at) for all three hours continuously.  Battles tend to have an ebb and flow with different forces engaged at different times for different durations.


Which is why that paragraph goes:




> Just because a battle takes from dawn till dusk *doesn't mean one archer will have enemies in effective range all the time*. The amount for which he will have them will be extremely short, because the melee enemy will endeavour to cross the distance where he's getting shot at as quickly as possible. Most medieval battles tend to take at most 3 hours, with only rare expections - those exceptions can drag, though, like battle of Mohi/Sajo, where Hungarian and Mongol armies had some for of continuous action going on for over a month, or Richard the Lionheart's pincushion march.


That said, there are exceptions once again, even with regards to individual archers fighting. Agincourt saw English archers being in action pretty much for the full duration, and battle of Marchfeld/Morava field had action by cuman horse archers from dawn until noon. However, there are, once again, factors that made restocking possible and not a major issue.

Agincourt was mostly static, at least for English infantry - every archer got two sheafs of arrows, and there was probably a quite lively effort to resupply. Marchfeld was done by cavalry archers, who had little trouble in withdrawing and restocking.

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## fusilier

> Which is why that paragraph goes:
> . . .


Wasn't arguing with you.  I was just reiterating that point for the original question.

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## Martin Greywolf

One more caveat to add to this that I just thought of. Naval archery.

It's a pretty specific subset of general archery, but it does have its specifics. Since we're usually discussing warbows in medieval to late renaissance contexts, we need to talk about both galleys and sail-powered ships. Fortunately for us, the archery consideration changes only in degree.

The thing about naval combat is, it's slow. Really slow. Even something like a small galley is much less agile than a formation of infantry - sure, two ships at ramming speed may give you as little time as an infantry charge, but anything other than that will keep the enemy in effective range for hell of a lot longer. This may be one of the reasons why we see such a wide dispersion of draw weights at Mary Rose, you may well opt to switch to a lighter bow if the situation allows for it.

The oar-powered ships are better off here, in most circumstances. While they are definitely not faster over a long voyage, they have an option of going to ramming speed, and get a short sprint in that the sail-powered ships can't do. That lets archers to shoot for a shorter amount of time that the sailing ships can only match when crossing the T of a fromation (i.e. passing  aship in range at 90 degrees, possibly as part of a failed ramming attempt, possibly as a tactic).

The exact time you will be in effective range is hard to ballpark, but with galleys, we're talking in several minutes, possibly up to an hour or so. With sail ship, it could be several days if it's a stern chase and you start opening up at extreme ranges, but will probably be at the level of several minutes to several hours most of the time.

For the most part, however, the solution to this problem was fortifications. Ships were built with mini castles on them, and that turned the entire thing into more of a siege "try to slap things that pop up" scenario, and woe upon whoever had the lower "castle".

Restocking is even less of a problem here, because there is nothing stopping you from having a quiver with a few dozen arrows bolted on every meter of the ship.

*Spoiler: People ducking behind ship battlements when not shooting, 1330*
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*Spoiler: Proof that artists *will* get things wrong no matter the era, 1310*
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"Can someone please tell Godfrey to turn that trebuchet around before he hits the duke behind us?"

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## Brother Oni

> I find this rather surprising, given how long battles last and how quickly archers can shoot. Do you know why this was the case?


Further to other replies about repeated drawing/bending being tiring, remember the draw weight of warbows - as discussed earlier in the thread, we're looking at somewhere in the region of 90 - 110+lbs minimum.

While proper form dictates you draw with your back, you're still holding all that weight via a string on three fingers or a thumb plus 1 or 2 fingers, hence the strain on your forearm as well. You're also going to eventually get strain on the other arm holding the bow; locking your elbow is just asking for string slap, so you angle it out to the side (part of Martin's 'git gud'), meaning you have to learn to take the full weight via your muscles without skeletal/joint assistance.




> That said, there are exceptions once again, even with regards to individual archers fighting. Agincourt saw English archers being in action pretty much for the full duration, and battle of Marchfeld/Morava field had action by cuman horse archers from dawn until noon.


To add another famous battle onto that list, the Battle of Hastings, 14 Oct 1066 went on from approximately 9 am to dusk (around 5 pm at that time of year). While Norman/Saxon archery wasn't anything particularly notable, the battle itself is notable for the death of the Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, who may or may not have taken an arrow to the eye as immortalised in the Bayeux Tapestry.

*Spoiler: Not to the knee and no Xiahou Dun-style eye eating here.*
Show

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## Martin Greywolf

> you're still holding all that weight via a string on three fingers


Or on just two fingers. The long story short version is that the shorter the bow is, the less you can afford to put that third finger there. Early Magyar mounted archery used surprisingly long bows (~160cm), later cuman horse archery uses a two-finger direct draw. What that means for Cuman bows isn't clear, as there is not enough research there. Mongols used thumb rings (you can see it on many depictions, Suenaga scrolls among them), and it was them that really popularized them for Ottoman and eastern European area.

*Spoiler: Kitâb al-funûn by ibn akhî hizâm, showing direct draw, Egypt, 1470*
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*Spoiler: Italian fresco showing typical Italian bow of the time, two finger draw, 1275*
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*Spoiler: Another italian example, two finger draw, late 15th century*
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*Spoiler: Cuman horse archer from Velka Lomnica, two finger draw, 1275*
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Also note he's holding two more arrows in his drawing hand for speed shooting - no wonder since there's an angry king chasing him


*Spoiler: Cuman in Chronica Picta, two finger draw, 1350*
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It looks like the fingers are under the bow, that is an illusion, the metal bit near fingers is leading opponent's lance tip
Also notice how dead guy shows us the bow isn't exactly short


*Spoiler: But switch to Germany, and you start to see longer bows and three finger draws, 1360*
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## Zombimode

> *Spoiler: But switch to Germany, and you start to see longer bows and three finger draws, 1360*
> Show


Are... are those war elephants? What exactly is this picture showing, anyway?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Are... are those war elephants? What exactly is this picture showing, anyway?


Battle of Beth Zechariah. It's from a Weltchronik, i.e. History of the world manuscript, much of which was based on the Bible at the time. And yeah, those are Seleucid war elephants, persumably the now-extinct north African kind. The authors couldn't have seen those (kinda obvious from the picture), since they went extinct sometime during the Roman era, but you did get occassional subsaharan or Indian elephant witnessed by an European - a travelling monk, or maybe one elephant was brought to Mediterranean coast as a rare curiosity, so whoever illustrated these probably had some reference sketches or descriptive reports.

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## Saint-Just

A question about swell of muzzle/muzzle band.

As far as I know it's primary purpose is to make the barrel stronger, wiki talks about internal diameter increasing to make the loading easier, but it is present on cannons where internal diameter is uniform (at least to the limits of manufacturing techniques). Why it's specifically end of the barre l that needs that reinforcement, and not the middle?

Additionally, was there any purpose to place it on a) any pistol ever b)cartridge revolver c)post-1900 automatic pistols? I know that rigorously answering that question would be inordinately hard, but if anyone who is knowledgeable about historical firearms can make a guess I'd be grateful.

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## Martin Greywolf

> As far as I know it's primary purpose is to make the barrel stronger, wiki talks about internal diameter increasing to make the loading easier, but it is present on cannons where internal diameter is uniform (at least to the limits of manufacturing techniques). Why it's specifically end of the barre l that needs that reinforcement, and not the middle?


It depends on how you cast that cannon, but if you do it in a vertical mold, with breech at the bottom and muzzle at the top, muzzle will be weaker because of faster cooling, and you can see that bronze cannons at least do have a tendency to split at the muzzle. The middle is reinforced by being thicker, but the muzzle still needs a bit extra, hence the flare. It also stops any splinters that crack off from the front from flying off.

For the really early guns, we're talking Hussite era here, they reinforced the gun barrell just like they reinforced a barrell of beer, saw that it worked, and called it successful. It took a lot of experimentation to get from there to true muzzle swell.




> A question about swell of muzzle/muzzle band.
> Additionally, was there any purpose to place it on a) any pistol ever b)cartridge revolver c)post-1900 automatic pistols?


You'd need to look into barrell manufacturing process specs to answer that, but it could be that in some cases, that was how a barrell was always done, so they kept doing it. Remember, you have no infrared, no thermal cameras, no x-ray imaging of the blasted things, and no high speed cameras either, to study where they fail in detail. You have a camera at most, and guesswork from what's left.

Edit: Link to a Napoleonic-era specific article.

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## fusilier

> A question about swell of muzzle/muzzle band.
> 
> As far as I know it's primary purpose is to make the barrel stronger, wiki talks about internal diameter increasing to make the loading easier, but it is present on cannons where internal diameter is uniform (at least to the limits of manufacturing techniques). Why it's specifically end of the barre l that needs that reinforcement, and not the middle?
> 
> Additionally, was there any purpose to place it on a) any pistol ever b)cartridge revolver c)post-1900 automatic pistols? I know that rigorously answering that question would be inordinately hard, but if anyone who is knowledgeable about historical firearms can make a guess I'd be grateful.


Sometimes the intention of the muzzle swell was to ease sighting of the weapon -- if the (exterior) muzzle diameter is the same as the breech diameter, then the weapon can be sighted by looking along the barrel.  If tapered all the way to the muzzle, then when sighting over the barrel, the cannon would have a slight elevation.  *See EDIT

For more accurate shooting temporary rear and front sights could be added to the cannon, but most gunners preferred to aim along the barrel with good result.  By the time of the American Civil War, you will start seeing more cannons made without a muzzle swell -- there was a desire to make cannons as light as possible and it was just an extraneous bit.  Some still had the swell, but it was rare on new pieces like Parrott rifles, or the big smoothbore Rodman cannons.  

Similar reasons could exist in the early days of muskets -- occasionally you may see a reference to a "swamped" barrel.  But with the introduction of at least front sights, it seems to have become uncommon for military weapons at least.  For pistols?  I have a single shot pistol with a muzzle reinforcement, but it has both front and rear sights.  My guess is that if the barrel is on the thin side, a muzzle swell helps prevent the muzzle from becoming easily dinged and dented.  A pistol is regularly inserted into a holster, so it may expect a little more wear around the muzzle.  I doubt that a thin barrel would become dented so as to deform the bore (without really trying), so the desire to reinforce it may be more cosmetic.

*EDIT -- While I have seen rifle and musket barrels that had muzzle swells equal to breech diameter, after checking my sources, on most muzzle-loading cannons the muzzle was a smaller diameter than the "base ring" (thickest part at the breech).  However, the muzzle swell would still reduce the amount of elevation if sighting directly over the barrel.  A slight amount of elevation may have been more acceptable.

EDIT -- We don't actually know why cannons had muzzle swells.  To add a little to the reason that Martin Greywolf gave, the manner in which the barrels were cast may also have been a factor.  When cast muzzle up, the weight of the metal will cause the metal at the bottom to be denser, thus making the breech stronger.  Additionally, core samples from renaissance-era bronze cannon show lower proportions of tin at the muzzle when compared to the breech.  Apparently the tin migrated during cooling.  This would make the metal at the muzzle more brittle, and "may" have encouraged the use of a muzzle swell.  However, by the American Civil War even bronze cannons were starting to dispense with the muzzle-swell (e.g. Confederate copies of the Napoleon cannon).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Sometimes the intention of the muzzle swell was to ease sighting of the weapon -- if the (exterior) muzzle diameter is the same as the breech diameter, then the weapon can be sighted by looking along the barrel.  If tapered all the way to the muzzle, then when sighting over the barrel, the cannon would have a slight elevation.


This is a very stupid way of assisting aiming. You absolutely, positively don't want to waste expensive bronze and add hell of a lot of weight to a weapon you need to move than absolutely necessary - you could achieve the same thing with wood. Sure, the sighting was a nice side-benefit, but as a main reason? This would be one of those extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence.

That's not even mentioning early cannon where reinforcing bands make sighting alongside a barrell harder, not easier - although at this point, accurate sighting doesn't really matter.

*Spoiler: Tsar Cannon, finished 1586*
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Or mentioning that many canons don't have swell the same diameter as the breech.

*Spoiler: Cast iron cannon from Chernihiv*
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*Spoiler: Somewhat rare example of swell being larger than the breech, unknown provenance*
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## fusilier

> This is a very stupid way of assisting aiming. You absolutely, positively don't want to waste expensive bronze and add hell of a lot of weight to a weapon you need to move than absolutely necessary - you could achieve the same thing with wood. Sure, the sighting was a nice side-benefit, but as a main reason? This would be one of those extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence.


At no point did I say it was the main reason. There is a theory that muzzle swells were used due to poor casting techniques which caused the muzzle to be brittle.  But this is speculation.  Even after it was understood that a muzzle swell was unnecessary they remained in use for a long time.  

Manuals of the time mention different ways of sighting along the barrel.  As I noted in my edit, sighting directly over the barrel would usually give a slight elevation even with a muzzle swell.  This was often considered the maximum effective range, shooting at higher elevations was considered to be "firing at random"

Tapered musket barrels without a swell are evidenced fairly early, but "swamped" barrels continued to be used for a long time.  As you said why waste the metal on something that's not strictly necessary?




> That's not even mentioning early cannon where reinforcing bands make sighting alongside a barrell harder, not easier - although at this point, accurate sighting doesn't really matter.
> 
> *Spoiler: Tsar Cannon, finished 1586*
> Show


This cannon appears to have a breech diameter the same as the muzzle diameter, why do you think that would make sighting it harder?  A line crossing the top points of the reinforcing bands at the breech and the muzzle would be parallel to the axis of the bore.  So sighting along those two points would give point blank fire. Which is the way most gunners preferred to fire.

It also appears to be a pedrero, a cannon used to launch stone cannonballs.  These cannons had powder chambers of significantly smaller diameter than the barrel.  When cast in nearly cylindrical form (as in this case) the metal was very thick around the powder chamber, but thin along the barrel walls.  The use of stone allowed them to achieve similar velocities with lower pressure, so the walls could be thinner and the cannon was still safe.  The Ottomans were known to cast such cannons muzzle down.




> Or mentioning that many canons don't have swell the same diameter as the breech.
> 
> *Spoiler: Cast iron cannon from Chernihiv*
> Show


Already referenced in my post.




> *Spoiler: Somewhat rare example of swell being larger than the breech, unknown provenance*
> Show


This cannon does not appear to me to have a larger muzzle swell than base ring.  Do you have a source with measurements?

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## fusilier

Some general information on how muzzle loading cannons were aimed.  First some definitions from an 1862 Ordnance Manual (_Ordnance and Gunnery_, Benton).  Italics are original:




> "The _natural line of sight_ is a line drawn, in a vertical plane through the axis of the piece, from the highest point of the base-ring to the highest point of the swell of the muzzle, or to the top of the _sight_ if there be one."
> 
> "The _natural angle of sight_ is the angle which the natural line of sight makes with the axis of the piece."
> 
> "The _dispart_ is the difference of the semi-diameters of the base-ring and the swell of the muzzle, or muzzle-band."


Depending upon the type of cannon the natural line of sight would either yield a slight elevation, or zero elevation (for something like a howitzer). 

From at least the 1500s, the gunners' tools included a collection of various devices for aiming, and these would still have been familiar to a gunner in the mid-19th century.  Some cannon had built-in front sights, but usually both rear and front sights were removable.  

There are instructions in old manuals about determining where the top of the muzzle is and marking it with a piece of wax -- if the cannon is placed on uneven ground, it was necessary to determine where the top was compared to a level horizon for proper aiming.  The rear sight usually involved a plumb-bob to make sure it too was placed level.*  Elevating and depressing the barrel would also throw the aim off to the left or right, depending upon which way the ground "tilted."  For determining the elevation of the cannon a quadrant (which also used a plumb-bob) would be placed in the muzzle -- again it would determine elevation regardless of "tilt"

If cannon were being placed more permanently (like during a siege), platforms were erected to provide a level base, so the annoying issues of determining where exactly the aiming points should be could be avoided.

So after determining where the sights should be placed, the gunner would estimate the range and the angle needed, aim the piece, then remove all the sights/quadrants before firing the cannon.  The fall of the shot would be observed.  Recoil would mean that the cannon would have to be moved back into place, and it would need to be "re-trained" (aimed), adjustment being made to elevation if necessary.

All trained and experienced gunners would know how to use the instruments for sighting the piece -- but in practice they often wouldn't bother.  Experience taught them how the gun fired, and they simply eye-balled the piece without bothering with the sights.  The renaissance-era gunnery tables were generally inaccurate anyway, and based on (incomplete) theory rather than experimentally determined.  

This is why the _natural line of sight_ and _natural angle of sight_ were important factors to understand when operating a cannon.  A cannon-maker could adjust these values, primarily by adjusting the size of the muzzle swell (as the size of the breech is generally dictated by other considerations).

This is not to say that there weren't metallurgical considerations, but that those considerations do not seem to have been well understood, or remarked upon.  Some cannon profiles -- like howitzers or pedreros -- didn't really employ a swell, but usually had a ring.  This muzzle-ring is often so short and thin, that the chase (the thinner section immediately behind it), would probably suffer from the same metallurgical defects.  Even on some 16th century cannons with a proper muzzle swell, the swell was very short, again implying that the chase would have suffered from similar defects.  

Regardless of the reasons as to why swells may have been used, they were eventually determined to be superfluous.  But there were a lot of things that were superfluous that stuck around cannons.  Ornamentation, fancy rings along the barrels, handles, etc.  There was a general trend of streamlining that reached its zenith in the 19th century, and swells were about the last thing to be removed.  It is around this time, you begin to see more permanent front sights mounted to cannons too.  

Link to a 16th century "gunner's sight and level"
https://catalogue.museogalileo.it/ob...Level_n02.html

*EDIT -- conversely the plumb-bob could be used to "level" the cannon itself.  But the design of the sight, meant that it could be slid to a position around the base-ring until it was level.

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## Martin Greywolf

Something that might be relevant to playground at alrge: I just finished a series about medieval slings and slinging, something that is somewhat relevant to DnD. It is a story in four parts, and you can find the first one here. As for the subsequent parts, well... you know how to use reddit, I'm sure.

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## Saint-Just

I do not read all that much historical literature, so forgive me if I am missing something obvious, but I am a little bit confused about evolution of crossbows. It is reasonably well-known that very heavy steel crossbows are inefficient, because of how heavy the limbs are and how short the stroke is. And some earlier crossbows with composite horn/wood construction had longer strokes and (it seems) lighter limbs for the same poundage. So if there is a need for a crossbowman to launch 70+ g bolts at 50+ meters/sec, is there is any reason you cannot make a man-portable crossbow with such performance with wooden or composite limbs?

If the answer is yes what is the probable reason for steel? Cheaper cost?  Durability? Was there high-power crossbows with organic limbs in 14th century and beyond (man-portable weapons, not siege engines)?

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## Brother Oni

> I do not read all that much historical literature, so forgive me if I am missing something obvious, but I am a little bit confused about evolution of crossbows. It is reasonably well-known that very heavy steel crossbows are inefficient, because of how heavy the limbs are and how short the stroke is. And some earlier crossbows with composite horn/wood construction had longer strokes and (it seems) lighter limbs for the same poundage. So if there is a need for a crossbowman to launch 70+ g bolts at 50+ meters/sec, is there is any reason you cannot make a man-portable crossbow with such performance with wooden or composite limbs?
> 
> If the answer is yes what is the probable reason for steel? Cheaper cost?  Durability? Was there high-power crossbows with organic limbs in 14th century and beyond (man-portable weapons, not siege engines)?


You can - the Chinese had composite prod (limbs) crossbows with a long power stroke as early as the Warring States era (5th to 3rd Century BC).

Composite prod crossbows didn't start appearing in Europe until the 12th Century AD, with steel prods started appearing in the following century. Steel prods didn't fully supersede the wooden/composite prods until the 14th century, as the wooden prod crossbows were more resistant to water and cold.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it's due to metallurgy improving enough to make steel of a quality that's suitable for the stresses required. Since composite prods take a long time to cure (partly due to the glues of the time, partly because the glue has to fully impregnate the materials), making steel crossbows are much quicker, especially if your industry base is already geared up to make steel for other uses.

However, despite how good steel is, it still doesn't bend that much, so you're forced to stay with a short power stroke. This leads to a cycle of wanting higher power crossbows which need stronger steel prods which means a shorter power stroke thus you want higher power crossbows, and so on.

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## Fuzzy McCoy

I've got a question about plate and mail combos, as worn by the Ottoman, Mughal, and Persian Empires. Why did they develop these armors instead of full plate harness?

Something like
*Spoiler: Full mail and plate combo*
Show




or 

*Spoiler: Zirah Baktar*
Show




Obviously in the case of the ottomans, they had knowledge of full plate harness, and yet it seems like they stuck with plate and mail combos. Is it because the empire was outfitting them and cheapness/standardization was required, they provided better heat dissipation, a metallurgy issue, or it's just a complete unknown?

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## AdAstra

> I've got a question about plate and mail combos, as worn by the Ottoman, Mughal, and Persian Empires. Why did they develop these armors instead of full plate harness?
> 
> Something like
> *Spoiler: Full mail and plate combo*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Could've been as simple as not having enough smiths with the skills for making the necessary large contiguous multi-thickness interlocking plates required, or having better things for those smiths to do than making armor.

Climate and simplicity of outfitting is also definitely going to factor in. Mail will insulate less and gives good coverage without needing to be fitted, which is a great help when you're outfitting troops yourself rather than relying on familial wealth.

Another factor could also be doctrine. The Ottomans employed heavily armored troops with bows or other ranged weapons to a degree that wasn't as common in Europe, especially for armored cavalry. The greater flexibility of mail would likely be better than plate for fiddling around with a bow.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I do not read all that much historical literature, so forgive me if I am missing something obvious, but I am a little bit confused about evolution of crossbows. It is reasonably well-known that very heavy steel crossbows are inefficient, because of how heavy the limbs are and how short the stroke is.


And like any reasonable well knownknowledge, this is mostly wrong.

First of all, you can't compare them to modern crossbows - no carbon fibers or anything similar, all you have is sinew, horn, wood and steel. With those three, there is a difference in weight, but it's not as drastic as you might think.

Second problem is that force and weight of limbs isn't the whole picture. A heavier bow will have better performance when launching heavier bolts (conservation of momentum). There is also a top speed on how quickly a given spring returns to its original state, and this rate of return imposes a maximum top speed on how quickly a bow can launch a bolt, regardless of weight. All of these are interdependent and have complex relationships.

Shortness of stroke, that is inefficient. Thing is, you can absolutely have longer stroke on medieval crossbows, and the best idea we have for why we don't see them is one Oni already mentioned - metallurgy. Or rather, mistrust of any bow material, because if you put too much strain on it, that thing will snap right next to your face.




> And some earlier crossbows with composite horn/wood construction had longer strokes and (it seems) lighter limbs for the same poundage. So if there is a need for a crossbowman to launch 70+ g bolts at 50+ meters/sec, is there is any reason you cannot make a man-portable crossbow with such performance with wooden or composite limbs?


Aforementioned conservation of momentum. The heavier the bolt is, the better a heavy bow will perform. If you take a 25g bolt and increase weight to 50 g, that is not really doubling the weight of mass that is accelerated, because that mass also includes bow and string in it. So the heavier the bow, the better it will perform if you double or triple bolt weight.

Of course, the heavier the bow, the more energy it needs to move itself, so the whole thing is kind of like a complex adjustment of several sliders that depend on each other, and maxing out any one isn't necessarily a good thing. More maximum energy is useless if the efficiency is so bad most of it is wasted, less weight is not great if there is less total energy stored in a drawn crossbow.




> If the answer is yes what is the probable reason for steel? Cheaper cost?  Durability? Was there high-power crossbows with organic limbs in 14th century and beyond (man-portable weapons, not siege engines)?


Most low poundage crossbows are made of wood. It's cheap, convenient and everywhere.

Once you upgrade to composite or steel, convenience, cost and having a guy who knows how to make it are all factors. As is the perception, because even if there was little difference between steel and composite crossbows, the perception that steel is stronger could have played a role.

All in all, I'd go for cost as the main reason, though not the exclusive one, since there is... a hell of a lot more research needed.




> I've got a question about plate and mail combos, as worn by the Ottoman, Mughal, and Persian Empires. Why did they develop these armors instead of full plate harness?
> 
> Something like
> *Spoiler: Full mail and plate combo*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thing is, Europe had pretty much the same thing in coat of plates and brigandine, and even first plate harnesses, and those were actual most commonly seen armor types of the day. Full plate was absolutely brilliant, but prohibitively expensive - enough so that it was not affordable to even all the nobles.




> Could've been as simple as not having enough smiths with the skills for making the necessary large contiguous multi-thickness interlocking plates required, or having better things for those smiths to do than making armor.


Thing is, we don't see full plate even for Ottoman sultans, and as the Japanese proved, if there is an advantage to getting full plate, the rich will absolutely pay through the nose for it.




> Climate and simplicity of outfitting is also definitely going to factor in. Mail will insulate less and gives good coverage without needing to be fitted, which is a great help when you're outfitting troops yourself rather than relying on familial wealth.


Climate, not so much. Once you have a gambeson on, only thing that really matters to how quickly you overheat is the total weight. There probably is some small difference, but... just not that big of one.

On the other hand, the ease of fitting is definitely a factor, we tend to see the decrease of plate components as European armies grow for this exact reason.




> Another factor could also be doctrine. The Ottomans employed heavily armored troops with bows or other ranged weapons to a degree that wasn't as common in Europe, especially for armored cavalry. The greater flexibility of mail would likely be better than plate for fiddling around with a bow.


Not true in the slightest. English archers were entirely happy to use full plate, as did any other. We have ample evidence for that.

Mughals aren't my cup of tea, but for Ottomans, I believe I can offer an answer.

The thing is, they were ahead of their time. In several things, but the one that is relevant here is the army organization and size. They were able to field larger, more organized, more trained and more disciplined armies when compared to the Europeans (look at Mohacs, 60k vs 100k, but then logistics took their toll and we get 40k (at best) Hugarians against 80k Ottomans split into two armies), to the degree where I'd say that they had about reassaince organizational approach in 1400.

And that meant similar equipment philosophy, where even a lot of the elite Janissaries had not that much in the way of armor - possibly none at all, the argument about chain mail sewn into their tunics rages on.

This was met with quite some disdain from European knights who derided them as commoners, but that tended to... not work out so well for them, just aske the French at Nicopolis. Ottomans basically decided that quality was all fine and good, but they wanted medium quality of equipment, quantity of troops and high quality of training.

Europe didn't lag behind for that long, 1400s are time of Hussites, Nicopolis and reformations and counter-reformations and assorted wars, where highly armored knights are proven to be, while not obsolete, not quite as dominant as they have been until now. I'd go as far as to say that true full plate armor, of the gothic german kinds (late 15th to early 16th century), is not very effective when you look at the big picture, something of a last swan song of knights.

Impressive, to be sure, but you may as well grab thirty men with a mix of pikemen with a cuirass and serpentiners (is that what we should call guys with serpentines?) for the cost and get more bang for your buck. Or a few howitzers. Or light field cannons.

After that, it's essentially a matter of cultural heritage when it comes to what exact bits the partial armor of the pike and shot era looks like. Europe with its long history of cuirasses picked those, Ottomans had their own thing in plate-reinforced mail. These are no longer meant to make you pracitcally immune to almost all weapons, they have more of a modern bulletproof vest approach of "they maybe will help you not get killed in some circumstances". And they all have their pros and cons, with cuirasses being able to resist pistol and some musket fire, but chain mail offering better protection in a melee.

----------


## Brother Oni

> Thing is, we don't see full plate even for Ottoman sultans, and as the Japanese proved, if there is an advantage to getting full plate, the rich will absolutely pay through the nose for it.


To support this point, the Sengoku era daimyo, Uesugi Kenshin, supposedly wore this set of Dragon armour:

*Spoiler*
Show

----------


## Saint-Just

> And like any reasonable well known knowledge, this is mostly wrong.
> 
> First of all, you can't compare them to modern crossbows - no carbon fibers or anything similar, all you have is sinew, horn, wood and steel. With those three, there is a difference in weight, but it's not as drastic as you might think.
> 
> Second problem is that force and weight of limbs isn't the whole picture. A heavier bow will have better performance when launching heavier bolts (conservation of momentum). There is also a top speed on how quickly a given spring returns to its original state, and this rate of return imposes a maximum top speed on how quickly a bow can launch a bolt, regardless of weight. All of these are interdependent and have complex relationships.
> 
> Shortness of stroke, that is inefficient. Thing is, you can absolutely have longer stroke on medieval crossbows, and the best idea we have for why we don't see them is one Oni already mentioned - metallurgy. Or rather, mistrust of any bow material, because if you put too much strain on it, that thing will snap right next to your face.
> 
> Aforementioned conservation of momentum. The heavier the bolt is, the better a heavy bow will perform. If you take a 25g bolt and increase weight to 50 g, that is not really doubling the weight of mass that is accelerated, because that mass also includes bow and string in it. So the heavier the bow, the better it will perform if you double or triple bolt weight.
> ...


All of the above seems very weirdly formulated. I understand or think that I understand all of the above, and I understood it before I wrote my question, that is why I phrased it as "confused" not as "I don't know"

I never compared historical European crossbows with the modern crossbows. I compared them with earlier European and Chinese crossbows. Many factors you mentioned are true for all bows. Light bow will also have better efficiency when shooting heavier projectiles; efficiency gains for the light bow may be less than efficiency gains for the heavy bow but if it started with higher efficiency (usually) heavy bow will never be equally efficient.

From the material standpoint it seems that it was possible to have at least composite if not wooden prod to have equal poundage with steel (specifically 14-15th century steel) while having longer power stroke (always better) and lighter limbs (also always better, though how much depends on the projectile weight). Broadly speaking I wanted to know: if 300 pounds composite is not up to the task of chucking the bolt of appropriate mass fast enough are you forced to go for less efficient steel or you can just have a bigger composite prod? (the answer seems to be yes, you can even from you).

Thank you for pointing out people being cautious of overloading high-powered springs; I read about it a long time ago but forgot until you reminded me.

----------


## fusilier

> It is reasonably well-known that very heavy steel crossbows are inefficient, because of how heavy the limbs are and how short the stroke is.


I've heard this, but I've also read:




> The energy which a steel crossbow imparted to its projectile was greater than that given to an arrow by even the most powerful bow  draw forces in excess of a thousand pounds were common. Because the bow was short, relatively little of the energy was expended in accelerating the tips of the bow and most of its considerable force was applied directly to the bolt.
> . . .
> The energy stored in a tensed bow, when expended, drives not only the arrow, but also the bowstring or cord and the mass of the bow itself. It follows that a bow with less mass will be capable of driving its projectile (assuming a sufficiently small projectile mass) with greater velocity. The easiest way to reduce the mass of the bow while holding the force applied to the projectile constant is to make the bow stiffer and shorter.


This comes from Guilmartin's work, _Gunpowder and Galleys_, which was originally written in the 1970s (although I have the updated 2003 copy, it says substantially the same thing).  While I believe it is generally a good work, I have some issues with Guilmartin's specifics.

Anyway, this seems to imply the opposite, that steel crossbows are more efficient because of the shorter stroke.  My question is, does anybody have sources for the claims about efficiency in bows, and perhaps can explain the difference?  (For example are they looking at different questions of efficiency or framing the question in such a way that they appear to come to the opposite conclusion).

----------


## Saint-Just

> I've heard this, but I've also read:
> 
> This comes from Guilmartin's work, _Gunpowder and Galleys_, which was originally written in the 1970s (although I have the updated 2003 copy, it says substantially the same thing).  While I believe it is generally a good work, I have some issues with Guilmartin's specifics.
> 
> Anyway, this seems to imply the opposite, that steel crossbows are more efficient because of the shorter stroke.  My question is, does anybody have sources for the claims about efficiency in bows, and perhaps can explain the difference?  (For example are they looking at different questions of efficiency or framing the question in such a way that they appear to come to the opposite conclusion).


This is relatively easy and requires only knowledge of physics: the less limbs move the less energy they waste on moving the prod. This can be achieved by using stiffer materials or using shorter spring (limb) of the same material. Using longer limbs than strictly necessary to achieve desirable power stroke is wasteful energy-wise.

All of the above assumes the same power stroke. By shortening the power stroke you always achieve less efficiency with the same power. Both for steel limbs compared to other steel limbs and for organic limbs compared with other organic limbs there is a general trend of more power stored -> less efficiency especially when confined to man-portable format. If you thicken the limb then you increase mass and shorten power stroke, if you lengthen the limb then you increase mass and the distance the limb moves (so effective mass of the prod increases more than physical mass) etc. Because people knew what they were doing 1200-pound steel crossbow does deliver more energy than 400-pound steel crossbow, but not thrice as much (despite often having heavier bolt which increases the efficiency for any crossbow). I am only confused about how moving between wood<->composite<->steel affects things, within the same category it's easier to understand

Notice how compound bows use very stiff prods (so limbs move as little as possible) while going for the longest possible power stroke.

The primary source (I admit that I actually haven't read it, only skimmed and read a simplified summary) would be http://bio.vu.nl/thb/users/kooi/thesis.pdf
But after encountering those ideas for the first time I have seen them discussed (and broadly accepted) by people who actually make and shoot period-correct projectile weapons.

----------


## fusilier

> This is relatively easy and requires only knowledge of physics: the less limbs move the less energy they waste on moving the prod. This can be achieved by using stiffer materials or using shorter spring (limb) of the same material. Using longer limbs than strictly necessary to achieve desirable power stroke is wasteful energy-wise.
> 
> All of the above assumes the same power stroke. By shortening the power stroke you always achieve less efficiency with the same power. Both for steel limbs compared to other steel limbs and for organic limbs compared with other organic limbs there is a general trend of more power stored -> less efficiency especially when confined to man-portable format. If you thicken the limb then you increase mass and shorten power stroke, if you lengthen the limb then you increase mass and the distance the limb moves (so effective mass of the prod increases more than physical mass) etc. Because people knew what they were doing 1200-pound steel crossbow does deliver more energy than 400-pound steel crossbow, but not thrice as much (despite often having heavier bolt which increases the efficiency for any crossbow). I am only confused about how moving between wood<->composite<->steel affects things, within the same category it's easier to understand
> 
> Notice how compound bows use very stiff prods (so limbs move as little as possible) while going for the longest possible power stroke.


Thank you.  The only thing I will observe, regarding energy, is that Work is Force x distance.  So a lighter bow with a longer stroke will apply a lower amount of force, but across a greater distance.  So "muzzle velocity" isn't simply a matter of force, but how long (or across how much distance) that force is applied?  At least that's how interpret a longer stroke as being more "efficient"

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## Saint-Just

> Thank you.  The only thing I will observe, regarding energy, is that Work is Force x distance.  So a lighter bow with a longer stroke will apply a lower amount of force, but across a greater distance.  So "muzzle velocity" isn't simply a matter of force, but how long (or across how much distance) that force is applied?  At least that's how interpret a longer stroke as being more "efficient"


Yes. Proper warbows are often limited by the human physiology, so especially within the same era within the same tradition (English longbow vs English longbow, yumi vs yumi) it seems that draw weight can be taken as a simplified measure of how much actual power can be transferred to the projectiles. But given how inefficient a system can be there can be a huge difference between different engines - and steel-limbed crossbows are outperformed energy-wise by "lighter" longbows half of their draw weight (that is not to say that steel-limbed crossbows are bad or strictly inferior).

In addition to the longer stroke there is a matter of force curve. "Draw weight" is the weight at the start of the power stroke and it invariably decreases by the end of it but it matters how much it decreases and in what way exactly. I do not how to put it into proper terms but depending on the shape and material of the bow during your initial draw weight may be very low (some hunting bows are almost straight even when strung) and linearly increasing to the max, or start higher and increase faster (pre-modern it's probably best exemplified by the horn/sinew composite bows, I am not sure whether there is a significant distinction between Korean, Mongolian or Turkish traditions). So while during the first 1mm bows with N draw weight would exert the same* force on the projectile, by the middle of the travel some will apply less force than the others and even more so by the end. That difference is (mostly) orthogonal to the bow vs crossbow, both bows and crossbows can have limbs of different materials and forms.

*well, close enough to be considered the same

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## Max_Killjoy

Tod's Worshop -- circa 1400 BCE 960lb crossbow vs modern 150lb crossbow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghoVmc12vEs

----------


## AdAstra

> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> And like any reasonable well knownknowledge, this is mostly wrong.
> 
> First of all, you can't compare them to modern crossbows - no carbon fibers or anything similar, all you have is sinew, horn, wood and steel. With those three, there is a difference in weight, but it's not as drastic as you might think.
> 
> Second problem is that force and weight of limbs isn't the whole picture. A heavier bow will have better performance when launching heavier bolts (conservation of momentum). There is also a top speed on how quickly a given spring returns to its original state, and this rate of return imposes a maximum top speed on how quickly a bow can launch a bolt, regardless of weight. All of these are interdependent and have complex relationships.
> 
> ...


Do you actually have evidence of English archers using plate in places other than the legs and helmet? Because I did do some research on this to determine if it was correct before posting my earlier spiel. You see _a lot_ of archers (or descriptions of archers) wearing plate on the legs, but mail or brigandine on their upper body, and I've yet to find an example of an archer wearing a proper plate cuirass. If plate really was not a meaningful hindrance to drawing a bow, why would these archers have fully articulated plate on the legs, but not on the arms or chest?

Which come to think of it, should put a pin in the idea that Europeans didn't do this, so that part's definitely incorrect. But you do see more cases of Ottoman armored troops being equipped with bows in addition to their normal weaponry, rather than as their specialization.

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## Martin Greywolf

> steel-limbed crossbows are outperformed energy-wise by "lighter" longbows half of their draw weight (that is not to say that steel-limbed crossbows are bad or strictly inferior).


It's far worse than half, I think the ballpark estimate is 10:1 in favor of bows when you count raw poundage, mostly on account of short draw. Still, it really depends on whether you're counting kinetic energy, momentum, initial velocity or something else entirely - all of these are relevant for what the arrow in question can do, and all are interdependent.




> Do you actually have evidence of English archers using plate in places other than the legs and helmet? Because I did do some research on this to determine if it was correct before posting my earlier spiel. You see _a lot_ of archers (or descriptions of archers) wearing plate on the legs, but mail or brigandine on their upper body, and I've yet to find an example of an archer wearing a proper plate cuirass. If plate really was not a meaningful hindrance to drawing a bow, why would these archers have fully articulated plate on the legs, but not on the arms or chest?
> 
> Which come to think of it, should put a pin in the idea that Europeans didn't do this, so that part's definitely incorrect. But you do see more cases of Ottoman armored troops being equipped with bows in addition to their normal weaponry, rather than as their specialization.


You didn't look all that hard then, this is something that has been well known among re-enactors for at least the last decade. On some of the following links, people in question are wearing jupons, which means you can't really prove or disprove whether they have a cuirass under there, but they at least have full plate legs, stringly suggesting full plate. Others are indisputably plate. Some even have helmets with visors down - I tired it out, and it's possible, but not great for your accuracy.

Item
Item
Item
Item
Item
Item
Item
Item
Item
Item

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## adso

Since we were on a bit of a bow kick, I have a question about the interaction between strength and archery. As many of you may be aware, 3.5 D&D had mighty composite bows with a specific strength bonus seemingly to model draw weight. You took a penalty if your strength score was less than the specified draw weight and could add your strength modifier to damage up to the draw weight. In trying to come up with a more realistic system, I have a few questions about draw weights for those of you with experience or knowledge of archery:

1. How much would strength beyond the minimum necessary to draw a bow help the arrow's speed/damage? If a person is capable of using an X lb bow, would a stronger person with an X lb bow be able to do more damage with it? Or would the extra strength only impact the speed with which they get fatigued and the length of time they can keep the bow drawn in order to aim?
2. In the medieval era (say, 14th and 15th centuries), were there fairly fine gradations in draw weight (as we see today with exact poundage), or would bows be distributed/sold as "for someone of average strength" or "someone of exceptional strength" or similar?
3. To get a bit more gamey, how much is it that raw strength affects one's ability to use a higher poundage bow vs. proficiency with bows writ large? My understanding is that, while a certain degree of form/proficiency is necessary to effectively use one's strength, beyond that it comes down to the strength of (a very particular set of) muscle, is that correct?

Thank you for any assistance!

----------


## Brother Oni

To preface my comments - I'm speaking primarily from a modern target archery perspective. Martin Greywolf and I will disagree on the importance of a number of points as we have difference archery experiences.




> 1. How much would strength beyond the minimum necessary to draw a bow help the arrow's speed/damage? If a person is capable of using an X lb bow, would a stronger person with an X lb bow be able to do more damage with it? Or would the extra strength only impact the speed with which they get fatigued and the length of time they can keep the bow drawn in order to aim?


To answer these questions, you need an understanding of how bows work and some finer details of the draw weight terminology.

Bows and crossbows work by being essentially a big spring. You deform the spring when you draw it, putting energy into the system. When you release the string, the spring returns back to its original shape, imparting the released energy into the arrow.*

If you pull the spring beyond its elastic limit into its plastic limit, it will deform and not return back to its original shape, thus imparting less power into the arrow. Pull it back far enough its plastic limit and the bow will break, normally with catastrophic effect (injuries up to and including amputations and fatalities are known with medieval crossbows breaking).

So what is this elastic limit of bows? It depends on the bow's design and materials and is based on its intended draw length.

This leads me onto the finer points of draw weight; by hanging about on this thread, you should be familiar with the concept of draw weights (90lb, 120lb, etc). There's actually a second measurement associated with draw weights, the draw length, so when we say a '90lb draw weight', what we actually mean is a '90lb draw weight at 30" draw length'.
This rated draw length normally gets missed off, since people tend to all be about the same size, resulting in the majority of draw lengths being in between 28" - 30".

So taking a 90lb draw weight at 28" draw length bow, if say a halfling used it, they would be unable to draw it back to that 28", resulting in a lower powered shot (the exact power delivered is dependent on the bow's force/draw curve and how far they managed to pull it back). The same would be for a normal sized but weak human - they would struggle to pull it back to the rated 28". This is known as short drawing.

In comparison, a larger and strong person would be able to draw it back beyond that 28" and be able to get some additional power out of the bow (known as stacking) until they hit the elastic/plastic point. How much more is again dependent on the bow's force draw curve and its tolerances.

A person significantly stronger but of the same size, would be able to shoot for longer, but wouldn't be able to put more power into the bow without altering their form/technique (this is known as over drawing) which may affect their accuracy. Whether this is significant or not, is one of those differences I mentioned in my preface.

Bows have tolerances around their rated draw length and generally you can go beyond a couple inches with no ill effects. You may prefer longer limbs with a heavier draw weight and short draw (for example to get the string angle less acute) or shorter limbs with a lighter draw weight and stack (e.g. horse bows and other archery where space is at a premium), but the end effect is generally the same.

*Releasing a drawn bow or crossbow without an arrow is known as dry-firing and is very damaging to the bow as the energy goes back into the limbs instead of the arrow. As an example of this, accidental dry firing is specifically excluded from the warranty of all modern bow or crossbow manufacturers I know of.




> 2. In the medieval era (say, 14th and 15th centuries), were there fairly fine gradations in draw weight (as we see today with exact poundage), or would bows be distributed/sold as "for someone of average strength" or "someone of exceptional strength" or similar?


A bowyer would make a range of bows of different lengths and different draw weights, but would generally aim towards a certain standard. A potential archer would then test shoot a range of these bows (initially they would select a range based on the length of the bow versus the archer's height) to find a particular one that they liked or which suited them best.

The standard depended on the culture and the requirements for the time - in England, the Unlawful Games Act 1541**, stated that '_All Men under the Age of sixty Years "shall have Bows and Arrows for shooting. Men-Children between Seven Years and Seventeen shall have a Bow and 2 Shafts. Men about Seventeen Years of Age shall keep a Bow and 4 Arrows - Penalty 6s.8d._'.
This was expanded the following year by an Act of Parliament with a minimum target archery distance of 220 yds for men aged 24 years and above; in other words, you were legally required to be able to hit a target at that distance and were inspected regularly.

It's important to note that serious archers have their bows made personally for them; bows are not like a gun which can be massed produced then fine tuned to a user's personal characteristics afterwards.

**Incidentally, this Act wasn't repealed until 1960!




> 3. To get a bit more gamey, how much is it that raw strength affects one's ability to use a higher poundage bow vs. proficiency with bows writ large? My understanding is that, while a certain degree of form/proficiency is necessary to effectively use one's strength, beyond that it comes down to the strength of (a very particular set of) muscle, is that correct?


This gets complicated as the higher the bow's poundage, there's a drop in efficiency as you need to make the bow bigger to handle the stresses - see the earlier posts on this page.

While you can brute force the technique with lighter poundage bows (I did during my learner's course with a 29lb bow), once you start getting towards your limit, you rapidly learn how to draw properly, else you tire very quickly.

I do agree that once you get the technique correct***, it's all down to your back muscles.

Anecdotally, my Olympic recurve bow is rated for 38lb at 30" - I don't have a 30" draw length, so I effectively get a 36lb draw at 29". Why didn't I buy a 36lb at 29" bow? The shop didn't have them in stock.

***To emphasise the importance of technique, my archery club has a silver and gold para-olympian archer; I've carried her, her wheelchair and all her kit across a muddy field - she shoots a heavier draw weight bow than me.

----------


## Mike_G

Does anyone here know of weapons laws in Europe in the late 19th Century?

I know there were a lot of concealed weapons, pocket pistols, cane swords, cane guns etc. Would it be legal to wear a sword openly on the streets of Paris or London or Vienna in, say 1870? It doesn't seem to come up in literature that I've seen. 

And if not, when did it become not the done thing for a man of a certain class to wear a sword in civilian life?

----------


## Gnoman

Europe _loved_ tiny pocket pistols in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To the point where a lot of tiny .32ACP semiautomatics wound up serving in WWI armies because there were already companies cranking them or closely related models out in huge numbers for civilian sale.

Restrictions in general didn't really show up until after The War To End All Wars.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Since we were on a bit of a bow kick, I have a question about the interaction between strength and archery. As many of you may be aware, 3.5 D&D had mighty composite bows with a specific strength bonus seemingly to model draw weight. You took a penalty if your strength score was less than the specified draw weight and could add your strength modifier to damage up to the draw weight. In trying to come up with a more realistic system, I have a few questions about draw weights for those of you with experience or knowledge of archery:
> 
> 1. How much would strength beyond the minimum necessary to draw a bow help the arrow's speed/damage? If a person is capable of using an X lb bow, would a stronger person with an X lb bow be able to do more damage with it? Or would the extra strength only impact the speed with which they get fatigued and the length of time they can keep the bow drawn in order to aim?
> 2. In the medieval era (say, 14th and 15th centuries), were there fairly fine gradations in draw weight (as we see today with exact poundage), or would bows be distributed/sold as "for someone of average strength" or "someone of exceptional strength" or similar?
> 3. To get a bit more gamey, how much is it that raw strength affects one's ability to use a higher poundage bow vs. proficiency with bows writ large? My understanding is that, while a certain degree of form/proficiency is necessary to effectively use one's strength, beyond that it comes down to the strength of (a very particular set of) muscle, is that correct?
> 
> Thank you for any assistance!


Brother Oni pretty much answered everything you asked, but I'm here with something you didn't think about. CON.

See, when it comes to battlefield shooting, especially the rapid-fire into an oncoming charge bit, the limiting thing to your accuracy and performance isn't how strong you are, but for how long you can use the bow you have. Pretty much everyone can draw a 100 lbs bow if you show them the correct technique - once. After that, your arms will begin to shake, and if you are tired enought, you will just be unable to use the bow.

Most tabletops have you shoot in that fast rate of fire, DnD has one round-one attack-6 seconds thing. That means you are flinging 10 arrows a minute out there, which is... pretty hard and demanding on your stamina. No, really, I mean it - people who don't shoot high poundages underestimate this immensely, even the best modern archers can go full speed for about a minute or two at best before they need to rest.

If we assume STR, CON, DEX for physical stats, I'd say that you need STR to be able to use the bow and CON to be able to use it for more than one round effectively, and DEX does very little. So, for bows, you have STR requirements, add STR bonus to damage within some narrow range to account for draw length (like, 15 STR bow can have +1 to +3 from STR added to it) and you add your CON to accuracy.

Compare that to thrown weapons with DEX for accuracy and STR to damage. Or sling with DEX for accuracy and damage but heavy penalties if you aren't proficient. Or crossbows that get DEX to accuracy and nothing to damage and everyone including your grandma is proficient with them.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> Brother Oni pretty much answered everything you asked, but I'm here with something you didn't think about. CON.
> 
> See, when it comes to battlefield shooting, especially the rapid-fire into an oncoming charge bit, the limiting thing to your accuracy and performance isn't how strong you are, but for how long you can use the bow you have. Pretty much everyone can draw a 100 lbs bow if you show them the correct technique - once. After that, your arms will begin to shake, and if you are tired enought, you will just be unable to use the bow.
> 
> Most tabletops have you shoot in that fast rate of fire, DnD has one round-one attack-6 seconds thing. That means you are flinging 10 arrows a minute out there, which is... pretty hard and demanding on your stamina. No, really, I mean it - people who don't shoot high poundages underestimate this immensely, even the best modern archers can go full speed for about a minute or two at best before they need to rest.
> 
> If we assume STR, CON, DEX for physical stats, I'd say that you need STR to be able to use the bow and CON to be able to use it for more than one round effectively, and DEX does very little. So, for bows, you have STR requirements, add STR bonus to damage within some narrow range to account for draw length (like, 15 STR bow can have +1 to +3 from STR added to it) and you add your CON to accuracy.
> 
> Compare that to thrown weapons with DEX for accuracy and STR to damage. Or sling with DEX for accuracy and damage but heavy penalties if you aren't proficient. Or crossbows that get DEX to accuracy and nothing to damage and everyone including your grandma is proficient with them.


One ameliorating factor is that D&D combats (at least 5e) are over very quickly in universe time (not player time). 3-5 6-second rounds is my experience. So call it one minute, max. With tens of minutes if not an hour or more between fights.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> One ameliorating factor is that D&D combats (at least 5e) are over very quickly in universe time (not player time). 3-5 6-second rounds is my experience. So call it one minute, max. With tens of minutes if not an hour or more between fights.


I don't know, from what my experience is, you usually see a handful of fights of about 5 rounds, separated by a few minutes at best - at least, if you're exploring a dungeon or some such. And there are, of course, more attacks per round than just the one, at least sometimes. And, taking more abstract approach to this, there is no guarantee that 1 attack is 1 arrow, much like 1 attack isn't one sword swing - the rules tell us they don't have to be, only to turn around and imply that they are.

I still think CON is the stat to use for bow accuracy, though, your hands can be shaky even on the first shot if you already had to march up a steep hill, going from tree to tree while dodging arrows. Or had to run through a mine to get to people you need to rescue in time. I have done both, and while it was fun, it wasn't easy - although morale was raised when one of our enemies in the mine adventure managed to faceplant himself into a puddle when ambushing us from a side tunnel.

----------


## DrewID

> Restrictions in general didn't really show up until after The War To End All Wars.


Which one?

DrewID

----------


## fusilier

> Does anyone here know of weapons laws in Europe in the late 19th Century?
> 
> I know there were a lot of concealed weapons, pocket pistols, cane swords, cane guns etc. Would it be legal to wear a sword openly on the streets of Paris or London or Vienna in, say 1870? It doesn't seem to come up in literature that I've seen. 
> 
> And if not, when did it become not the done thing for a man of a certain class to wear a sword in civilian life?


The sense I get is that openly carrying weapons was regulated, even if ownership was not.  Officers in uniform wore their swords in public at that date, but, like you, I don't see depictions of civilians in the 19th century openly wearing swords on the streets. A little digging around on the internet, finds claims that openly wearing swords fell out of favor with the nobles in England in the middle of the 18th century, and a little later in France.  So perhaps when they fell out of favor among the nobles, laws were passed prohibiting them in general?  I don't have any sources though. 

Perhaps looking for the history of some specific laws may help, from wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firear...United_Kingdom



> The first British firearm controls were introduced as part of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which was set up in a reaction against the large number of people roaming the country with weapons brought back from the Napoleonic wars. It allowed the police to arrest "any person with any gun, pistol, hanger [a light sword], cutlass, bludgeon or other offensive weapon ... with intent to commit a felonious act". It was followed by the Night Poaching Acts 1828 and 1844, the Game Act 1831, and the Poaching Prevention Act 1862, which made it an offence to shoot game illegally by using a firearm.


Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."

----------


## Telok

> The sense I get is that openly carrying weapons was regulated, even if ownership was not.  Officers in uniform wore their swords in public at that date, but, like you, I don't see depictions of civilians in the 19th century openly wearing swords on the streets. A little digging around on the internet, finds claims that openly wearing swords fell out of favor with the nobles in England in the middle of the 18th century, and a little later in France.  So perhaps when they fell out of favor among the nobles, laws were passed prohibiting them in general?  I don't have any sources though. 
> 
> Perhaps looking for the history of some specific laws may help, from wikipedia
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firear...United_Kingdom
> 
> Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."


Weirdly enough I have a couple of old bookmarks about this. Try a 2011 thread from myarmoury.com and a 2006 thread from a HEMA and history forum. I think I have a text file somewhere too. Ah, this is something I have in an old epub file in a directory marked 'law' that I was once using in world building.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."


This particular bit is still in effect somewhat in Slovakia where I happen to live, when it comes to melee weapons and weapons that don't require registration (weak bows and crossbows, mostly), you can carry them openly or concealed as long as "it isn't apparent from your behaviour" you are about to commit a crime, unless you have that weapon for sporting purpose or for acting. Thinking about it a bit in depth, it's pretty clear why it is phrashed the way it is - having a sword is fine, waving it around and shouting threats is not. That sporting and acting exception is there so that no one will be able to call the cops on the re-enactors.

For eastern Europe in general, you see some restrictions before ww1 - 1853 Waffenpatent permits ownership to anyone unless they are on a blacklist, but requires you to have a permit (issued to "respectable citizens", so whoever isn't currently discriminated against) to carry them. Nazis expressly forbade Jews from owning weapons, which was overturned in 1945, and only real overhaul of the laws happened in 1967 - well, in Austria.

In Hungary, which promptly fell apart into Czechoslovakia (then to Czech protectorate and Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia again and then to Czech republic and Slovakia), Yugoslavia (not even attempting to describe that mess) and so on, and was part of Warsaw pact, the situation is complicated. In general, Warsaw pact countries allowed smoothbore hunting shotguns and restricted everything else to state officials (which could be quite a lot of people, not just police and standing military), with the idea that only hunting firearms should be allowed. This was enforced... unevenly, and we keep finding grandparent's machineguns from their partisan days in the attic to this day.

These laws were liberalized quite a bit after 1989, usually taking USA, Great Britain or France as a template, but it varies on a per nation basis. We even had a bit of an idea to ban ninja weapons a la UK before people came to their senses and realized it was incredibly dumb.

----------


## Brother Oni

> Although I suppose it would depend upon how the police interpreted the qualification "with intent to commit a felonious act."


That sort of nebulous qualification is still present in modern firearms licensing laws in the UK, where you need 'a good reason' to be allowed to get a license.

Similarly, actually owning a firearm involves a police inspection of how it will be stored and secured in your home or the registered location.

----------


## Saint-Just

> In Hungary, which promptly fell apart into Czechoslovakia (then to Czech protectorate and Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia again and then to Czech republic and Slovakia), Yugoslavia (not even attempting to describe that mess) and so on, and was part of Warsaw pact, the situation is complicated. In general, Warsaw pact countries allowed smoothbore hunting shotguns and restricted everything else to state officials (which could be quite a lot of people, not just police and standing military), with the idea that only hunting firearms should be allowed. This was enforced... unevenly, and we keep finding grandparent's machineguns from their partisan days in the attic to this day.
> 
> These laws were liberalized quite a bit after 1989, usually taking USA, Great Britain or France as a template, but it varies on a per nation basis. We even had a bit of an idea to ban ninja weapons a la UK before people came to their senses and realized it was incredibly dumb.


I thought that single shot or bolt-action rifles were also legal in the Warsaw pact, maybe not of military design or military calibers, but hunting rifles were allowed AFAIK.

And Soviets specifically produced quite a few different models of semi-auto hunting rifles. Nether security guards nor foresters would need to have so many different options. Now if you needed to be a state/party official to get one to hunt with that's a maybe but that still a lots of people.

----------


## Vinyadan

I have a question: I remember a description of resistance towards the expansion of monarchies in the Baltic sea by tribesmen who lived in societies where rights and powers were more widely distributed among the population. I think Gotland and the territories of the modern Baltic states were examples. Are there works describing these societies? Can they be compared to the non-monarchical institutions of more-or-less independent cities?

----------


## Martin Greywolf

If we're talking early/high medieval period, then... kind of?

Thing is, for most of northern half of Europe, big, centralized states weren't a thing up until this point, at least not stable ones. You see some loose alliances like the Cuman Khaganate and areas that had multiple city states, ancient Greek-style, that often allied against foreign threats but were effectively independent (Rus, Kiev, Novgorod, Muscovy etc). Then Carolingian era hits and some of these areas are rolled into large states - I read a pretty poetic description by an academic historian that said something like "A kingdom's borders stretched as far as the king's whip". Which, fair - rebellions and instability were pretty common.

Edit: You had some larger kingdoms for a short time, like Great Moravia or Samo's Realm, but they usually didn't last long past their founder's deaths.

Then once we get to high medieval period, some areas, usually those close tot he Vatican (we can't discuss why this is on this forum), became increasingly centralized and stable - while borders did move, it was a movement in frontier regions. Sure, Austria, Hungary and Bohemia kept tossing Bratislava/Pressburg between the three of them like a hot potato, but towns deeper in either of those (e.g. Viena, Brno, Budapest) kept belonging to one state.

You needed three things, roughly, for this stabilization to occur: 1) ruling party (usually a house) that managed to be the boss for at least a few generations, 2) administrative background, what with record keeping and tax collection (this is where both the Catholic and Orthodox churches were helping out immensely) and 3) borders defensible enough to make it difficult for an army to straight up march to your core territories and take over.

All of that effectively means that large towns and cities were, no matter where in northern Europe, part of the same lineage of semi-independent entities. Sure, a king is your nominal ruler, but it's well within his interests to keep you happy. Problem is, until you get to rise of royal chancelleries that keep detailed records (~1200 in Hungary, I don't know enough about the details of it to speak for other places), we have no way of knowing what those agreements, that were entirely verbal, actually entailed.

Come the Baltic crusades, you have what are essentially the burgher class in kingdoms and then independent city states where their inhabitants are much the same. There is no real "tribesmen" out here, all of these people are using roughly the same equipment and often have roughly the same beliefs (there are pagans openly living in Hungary, after all). The reason why we see them called infidels, savages and tribesmen is that, well, we only have the accounts of their enemies to go by, outside of archaeology.

The whole idea with more widely distributed power structures and freedoms have some merit, but you see it taken way too far, to a point where people claim they had a sort of neo-liberalizm in there, which... unless you find some hard proof, no. There usually was greater religious freedom, and women had a slightly more equal standing perhaps (but then and again, high medieval women were much better off than their renaissance counterparts), and sometimes you had a sort of a democracy - only, there was a very stringent set of rules as to who could actually vote. You see the same voting systems in Free Royal Cities in Hungary and Imperial Cities in HRE - sure you can vote who is the boss, if you own a house in city worth at least X, and no, you can't force anyone to sell one to you if they don't like you.

*Spoiler: On the supposedly democratic tribes, from Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (5001300) by Florin Curta*
Show


One of the most resistant misconceptions about the societies of East Central
and Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages is that in the course of their mi-
gration (see chapter 4), the Slavs have brought to the region specific forms of
social organization. Neighborhood communities, such as the opole of Poland
or the upa of the northwestern Balkans (present-day Croatia and Slovenia),
long pre-dated, but also contributed to the rise of medieval states.1 Several
neighboring villages or hamlets within a micro-region (e.g., a river valley)
formed a political entity, which governed itself and had unrestricted rights to
the surrounding landsboth cultivated and grazing fields. That such forms of
social organization existed since the early Middle Ages is a 19th-century idea,
largely derived from evolutionary theories about state formation. That idea
was only recently challenged primarily on grounds of lack of any evidence that
the opole, for example, existed before ca. 1100, or that it was more than an in-
formal association with none of the legal traits attributed to it by an earlier
generation of scholars. Similarly, 19th-century theories about the supposedly
rapid Slavicization of Eastern, Southeastern, and East Central Europe being
the result of a specifically Slavic mode of life and society have been revived
in Slovenian scholarship. Andrej Pleterski claims that the upa was the build-
ing block of Slavdom: the upa was nothing less than the Slavic equivalent of
the polis in ancient Greece, the Gau in the Germanic world, and the oppidum
among the Celtsall being small units of spatial organization of society.3
However, the evidence of upa as a territorial, or even an administrative entity
is of a much later date. The mir of imperial Russia was still on the minds of
Soviet-era Russian historians, who believed that the transition to feudalism in
Byzantium was made possible only by the Slavs



They did resist being rolled up into other kingdoms, for the same reason why anyone resists that, really - people in charge didn't want to share their power.

For works on them, well. There is obviously Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, there are a few works on that one. You could also go for works on Teutonic order, since that one was rolling these Baltic city-states over. Other than that, however, there are no really good comprehensive works on the area, you'll have to look for specific studies on individual power blocks, e.g. Cuman Khaganate, Kiev and so on. Unfortunately for us, most of the work on it done by the local academics was done during the USSR era, which means funding was... erratic, and you could go to the gulag if you dared to not shoehorn class struggle into every other sentence. And it's written in half a dozen languages as well, to make it more interesting.

The seminal work, albeit a little dated at this point (e.g. familiares in Hungary predate the banderial system by about a century or two), is the already mentioned Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (5001300) by Florin Curta - be warned, ye who read it, it is a monstrous 1378 pages of dense text. It's not strictly about what you want, but you can get information from it if you read enough of the relevant parts.

There is also the Chronicle of Novgorod, which has been translated to english, and is a primary source on the area - I don't knwo if it is online legally, but, y'know, torrents.

----------


## Saint-Just

> There is also the Chronicle of Novgorod, which has been translated to english, and is a primary source on the area - I don't knwo if it is online legally, but, y'know, torrents.


It's out of copyright in the UK (where it has been printed) and the US (just in case), and should be out of copyright literally everywhere on Earth. It was printed in 1914. http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh...xts/MF1914.pdf

----------


## Yora

I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.

Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?

I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.

----------


## Vinyadan

Martin Greywolf, thanks for the long answer! I don't know much about the history of Eastern Europe. I am pretty much locked out of libraries because of the crisis, so I think I'll take a look at the Chronicles of Novgorod. The introduction of the version linked by Saint-Just is pretty fashinating.

----------


## Pauly

> I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.
> 
> Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?
> 
> I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.


Flechettes are essentially advanced shotgun shells. Fin stabilized for greater accuracy than the round shot Used in shotguns. There was development of them for use in combat rifles in the 60s and 70s. The increased projectile speed (thank APDS type mechanics) was supposed to give better penetration. They ended up being a dead end, I think mainly because the effect wasnt worth the time and hassle to manufacture.

Their modern use is in artillery/tank rounds as a modern version of grapeshot.

----------


## AdAstra

> I just encountered guns firing flechette rounds again. Had not seen those in years.
> 
> Does anyone remember what flechette rounds were actually supposed to do, and why the development apparently became a complete dead end?
> 
> I recall that gyrojets were just stupidly expensive per round and a solution looking for a problem. But I think flechette seemed like it would at least be plausible.


So, flechettes as projectiles in small arms mostly came about due to project SALVO and its many derivatives. Long thin metal darts with fins, usually with a sabot, yadda yadda, practical effect is that you can get very high velocities with minimal recoil, barrel wear, and cartridge weight (I can explain that part more thoroughly if required), very good for achieving high rates of fire and armor penetration. You saw them as both single projectiles akin to rifle rounds, packed into shotgun shells/artillery shells, and as tank projectiles. The latter two were not really related to SALVO, though, just developments that utilized the advantages of the flechette.

For rifles, they failed because their terminal ballistics were pretty terrible, and they had a tendency to be deflected very easily by things like foliage and rain drops. It was also hard to reliably make the sabots in such massive quantities with the tech of the time, further messing with accuracy. Expense was also high, due to both the sabot and the need to machine each flechette. Muzzle blast was atrocious as well.

For shotgun shells, they did alright, but were again expensive and didn't have great wounding characteristics. Also the semi-auto shotguns that the US Army wanted to fire them were way too heavy and bulky. Note that the velocities from theses were not particularly high. High for shotguns, but nothing special compared to say, a rifle.

For artillery, they were very well liked. In this case, the shells were basically a more modern iteration of Shrapnel shells. The shell had tons of flechettes packed together, with a very small bursting charge, which mostly just served to release the flechettes from the shell body. Most of the velocity came from artillery piece itself, thus velocity was nothing special in this case. These were much more deadly, both due to the quantity of flechettes and the fact that they tended to bend and "J-hook". These were mostly replaced with airbursting conventional shells as the fuses became more precise, as they could achieve similar effects plus some additional ones.

Tank guns are the only military applications where you still see substantial use of flechette projectiles. Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot rounds are basically just giant (single) flechette rounds, taking advantage of the very high velocity and sectional density of the projectile to maximize penetration. No other tool has proven as reliable for killing things like tanks.

----------


## Gnoman

To expand on this, normal ammunition manufacture is little more than casting or swaging (basically stamping, but for more complicated parts) and cleaning up for proper balance and such. For fletchette or sabot ammunition, each round has to be _machined_ to fairly tight tolerances. This is a much more expensive process (and in a more expensive material to boot - lead core bullets have been the standard for so long because lead is _cheap_) and drives the cost of ammunition into the stratosphere.

Add in the fairly marginal performance benefits in smaller guns, and the project was rightfully a stillbirth.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> Which one?
> 
> DrewID


WW1, at least in this context.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

If you want more info on specific flechette guns, Gun Jesus provideth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFANjlr4I9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1W8iz8DyRw

----------


## Archpaladin Zousha

Bit of an odd question, but I'm trying to figure out a weapon that would work efficiently in melee for a character I'm building based on her physical aptitudes.

In terms of her height and build (using fantasy ancestries for comparisons), she'd be built like a dwarf, but about a halfling's height, and sort of balances sturdiness with mobility, as her stats include a bonus to damage on her first melee hit after moving 10 ft, so she's supposed to be tanky, but moving from opponent to opponent rather than staying in one spot and letting enemies come to her.

Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage?  My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike.  Am I making sense?

----------


## Mike_G

> Bit of an odd question, but I'm trying to figure out a weapon that would work efficiently in melee for a character I'm building based on her physical aptitudes.
> 
> In terms of her height and build (using fantasy ancestries for comparisons), she'd be built like a dwarf, but about a halfling's height, and sort of balances sturdiness with mobility, as her stats include a bonus to damage on her first melee hit after moving 10 ft, so she's supposed to be tanky, but moving from opponent to opponent rather than staying in one spot and letting enemies come to her.
> 
> Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage?  My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike.  Am I making sense?


For a style where you keep moving and use your momentum, I'd look at light cavalry weapons, like a saber. Good for slashing on the move and keeping moving. A lance or other pointy weapon will use momentum, but then get stuck.  A light mace or hammer could work if you fight people with more armor, or a longsword or katana if you wanta  two handed slash-on-the-move weapon.  

In fact, just flavor wise, a katana is a nice fit. Plenty of samurai movies show the hero slashing his way through many enemies, always on the move.

----------


## Brother Oni

> Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage?  My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike.  Am I making sense?


Some other suggestions to Mike_G's: some sort of long slashing weapon, like a glaive, guandao or naginata, although with the haft cut down a tad to compensate.

A long two handed swords using particular sword styles also works (there's an Italian sword style for long swords which involved large sweeping motions, as it was intended to fend off multiple attackers while protecting someone, but the name escapes me at the moment), although the weapon length might need to be cut down a bit.

----------


## KineticDiplomat

An issue with the short and squat trying to use longswords/bastard swords/katanas is that inherently theyre already at a reach disadvantage against any similar armed opponent (as well as those with classic arming swords and shields) if they stay on the outside because of their height, but the reach difference isnt so big that if they work their way inside they have an advantage - you still need room to swing those things before it turns into headbutts and pommel bashing. 

Rather than try to make up for a weakness that two extra feet of height would actually need, why not play to the strength? Go full infighter, either with a classic Roman set up (short stabbing weapon and shield) or a more Hollywood duck and weave style approach. Once youre inside the guys caught with the long weapons are going to be sucking and that low center of mass is going to really come into advantage in landing short stabbing and hooking blows they cant hope to defend against, setting up the grapple, or even just if you end up in a raw shoving match.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> An issue with the short and squat trying to use longswords/bastard swords/katanas is that inherently theyre already at a reach disadvantage against any similar armed opponent (as well as those with classic arming swords and shields) if they stay on the outside because of their height, but the reach difference isnt so big that if they work their way inside they have an advantage - you still need room to swing those things before it turns into headbutts and pommel bashing. 
> 
> Rather than try to make up for a weakness that two extra feet of height would actually need, why not play to the strength? Go full infighter, either with a classic Roman set up (short stabbing weapon and shield) or a more Hollywood duck and weave style approach. Once youre inside the guys caught with the long weapons are going to be sucking and that low center of mass is going to really come into advantage in landing short stabbing and hooking blows they cant hope to defend against, setting up the grapple, or even just if you end up in a raw shoving match.


Yeah, if I were going to include dwarves in a setting, I'd be tempted to make them more "Roman" in arms.  

Doesn't make sense to me to fight in tunnels with weapons that need big arcing swings to be effective, it seems like stabbing swords and spears used from behind shields would be best for holding tunnels.  And on the surface, those strong low bodies would, as you note, be good for holding and pushing a line.

----------


## Tobtor

> Given these parameters, what kinds of melee weapons would best complement her build and the style her bonuses encourage?  My understanding is that long weapons that may compensate for her short height, like pikes or polearms, tend to encourage a very stationary fighting style, like the Greek phalanx or Saxon sheild wall, so they don't really fit with the way she's encouraged to fight, staying mobile and letting the momentum from her advancing carry through to her strike.  Am I making sense?



I think the answers above is generally good. Though, I do not think sabers and similar is ideal. The thing is when you get Halfling size reach is a different thing altogether. Halflings are like 120-125 cm in height or so, right? So that means not only normal reach disadvantage, but also height is in completely different scale. 

I have trained with very young kids and my head is a almost unreachable target with most swords, and also so is shoulders and upper torso (as the taller person also have much longer steps etc). This also means that the tall fighter can keep any shield down to protect against swings and cuts etc. Thus I would highly recommend a weapon with some longer reach than sabres or arming swords! A longsword at the least. Normally if you have a normal height disadvantage (30 cm/1 foot or less), the small fighter can compensate by getting very close with a sword etc. This is much less true if you get very big differences like halfling/human.

BUT there are also advantages. If your opponent isn't trained to fight very small adversaries, then a small figher can go "under" the normal defensive stances. Also it opens up new areas of attack, like some of the typically least armoured parts like behind the knees, or thrust from below to the groin etc. Here I would consider something like a short spear the best. It would also allow trusts into armpits from below, a dangerous spot for armoured opponents. Also many aroursm are weak form upwards thrusts (most gaps points downwards) I would go with something that thrust well, but also can cut, like a spear. But you could go for more cutting focused weapons as well, like Brother Oni suggested glaives or naginatas. You could also have something like a light glaive with a spike at the but end for thrust at gaps. And have a large sharp knife/dagger/short-sword at hand, in case you get close and need to stab your opponent in the knee or slice their angles.


Try not to get rushed, but move around!

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## AdAstra

I would definitely be in favor of a medium-sized shield (think stereotypical viking shield) and one-handed stabbing weapon suitable for getting real close. Big enough protective implement to effectively hold the line in tunnels/formations and keep you alive on the charge, small enough that it's not too cumbersome in said tunnels and charges.

For stabbers, you've got lots of swords available, potentially some kind of compact estoc-like weapon. Take full advantage of most weaknesses of armor being very accessible from a lower height (armpits, groin, the back of knees). Short spears or punching daggers like katars could also be neat if you're going for something a touch less conventional.

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## Martin Greywolf

I'm going to go against the mold a lot here.

First of all, you need to consider fighting not in tunnels as well - even in Middle Earth that has an ancient underground city in every mountain range, many if not most battles will be fought outside - Azanubizlar and Five armies both were. That means you *need* to have assets that can do so effectively, and can defeat cavalry and massed archery.

Problem is, you're at a disadvantage no matter what you do in melee, so... avoid melee as much as you can. Macedonian style phalanxes can keep melee opponents at bay and have shields for arrow resistance, and you can transform them into tunnel fighters by ditching pike an using their stabby sword - something they will need to train for anyway. If you want to be really fancy, give some of them langxian to defend attacks from above.

*Spoiler: Langxian*
Show




The bulk of your army, however, isn't this line infantry, it's heavy skirmishers. Crossbows work well - physical stature makes little difference to them - and so do thrown weapons. Hell, maybe you even have some room to put some dart slings in there, somewhere. Anything that is capable of ranged combat as well as armored enough to act as a flanking force, with bonus points awarded if you can carry a shield (yes you can, even as an archer).

For cavalry, there's probably not much of it and there is little point in heavy shock cav, so you ged medium cavalry that can still charge from the rear but is agile enough to avoid shock cav, and horse archers or horse crossbowmen.

This army moves and fights much like pike-and-shot formations did in real life, with one caveat being that once the infantry does the pinning, it's the skirmishers that flank, not cavalry. You also need to organize it so that there are small units of about a dozen people in units, and those units have both phalanxes and skirmishers - that way, you can disassemble your entire main body into smaller chunks and still keep their combined arms approach.

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## KineticDiplomat

I think OP was asking for a specific character, a sort of halting dwarf who would be fighting in the typical action movie loose band of federated heroes. When I say infighting/outfighting I mean in the personal violence sense, akin to how you would use the phrases in boxing.

But, if were goin army size I think tactically Martins Pike & Shot Dwarf Redux theory holds some merit, though I would wonder about the survivability of the commanded shot, so to speak, operating away from their Tercios when the dwarf types are notoriously short of cavalry and are by fantasy convention a bit slower than the average human.

I think strategically the pike and shot concept might run into the issue of the dwarves often being a slow breeding population in decline, making it hard to generate the raw numbers needed to form the large formations, and making any victory that involved trading volleys a pyrrhic one at best. Humans can match you and in discipline and eat the losses better, elves are famously machine gun archers (honestly, I never quite understood how despite them being 20-30 RPM archers with deadly accuracy most LoTR battles dont turn into Crecy or the Somme...I digress), and green skins...well...I guess it depends whos greenskins were using. 

I do wonder if a variant of salvo foot or even just plain Swiss pike charge might be better - break the enemy fast or get into bad war where being 250 pounds of low slung muscle is an advantage.

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## VonKaiserstein

I think another major factor to consider is whether the character is specialized in fighting armored, or unarmored opponents, or both.  For unarmored, some sort of short slashing spear and a maneuverable shield would be best for mobile combat- think iklwa, ixlwa.  If everything's a target, dancing around and slashing at any exposed body is great.  

If they're armored, then a sword's not a great choice- the penetration power just isn't there, and your number of targets is limited.  Something heavier and crushing would be better- a military pick should take out anyone's knee, even swung by a smaller being.  Fighting this style, your goal isn't to kill anyone, just trip them, cripple them, or severely injure them. Driving 3 or 4 inches of metal beak into a joint or limb should drop somebody- carry a stiletto for finishing anyone off.  This weapon would surrender reach, so you'd need to use the shield to block their blow as you closed.  That seems to fit the theme of a mobile, rushing fighter that strikes in passing.  Done right, you should be unpredictable, and able to weave through combat without alerting your targets that you're coming.

 A spiked mace would work as well, but as that relies a bit more on strength, it may not be the best choice for a smaller person.  I'd avoid axes for the same reason, it's a weapon that works better in the hands of a strong fighter.

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## Archpaladin Zousha

Well, you're kinda right?  It's set in Starfinder, and the character is specifically an alien called a Ferran.
*Spoiler: Picture*
Show


So, I'm trying to figure out the kinds of weaponry these people might favor or develop given what their bonuses encourage, should one go adventuring with a ragtag crew of spacefarers...less in terms of numbers and more in narrative/physics terms of just how people of this size and shape would likely prefer to fight.  :Small Red Face:

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## adso

I have a few questions about impalement.

How frequently did thrusting weapons get stuck in armor or flesh to the degree that they could not immediately be removed and used?Is the risk of a weapon getting stuck in flesh/armor/shield substantially lower for cutting/hacking weapons than piercing ones?How did different types of armor affect the likelihood of impalement?How advantageous is it to impale an enemy versus having your weapon available in a one on one setting?How difficult would it be to remove a weapon from an active combatant? From a corpse?

Any advice is appreciated!

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## halfeye

> Well, you're kinda right?  It's set in Starfinder, and the character is specifically an alien called a Ferran.
> *Spoiler: Picture*
> Show
> 
> 
> So, I'm trying to figure out the kinds of weaponry these people might favor or develop given what their bonuses encourage, should one go adventuring with a ragtag crew of spacefarers...less in terms of numbers and more in narrative/physics terms of just how people of this size and shape would likely prefer to fight.


The blurb says they're a high gravity species, currently living on a moon. How strong they are depends on whether they've been on the moon long enough to lose their high gravity characteristics, but if they have not, they are supposed to be strong, not like Dwarves are strong; much stronger than that, more like minotaur strength.

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## KineticDiplomat

I mean, youre in space with casual interstellar travel, so the real answer is autonomous kill bots that have long since surpassed humanoids in the realm of immediate violence and are resource cheap, with those humanoids that have to be in danger riding in suits/pods that are really AI run to hope to have a chance of surviving by escaping in major combat...but if thats not happening because RPG:

Youre small and short but have the mass and muscle to handle the heavy stuff. So long as you have G, you can stay in cover easily and crack skulls and armor with high caliber (or equivalent ) weapons. Can probably move around in a lot of crawl spaces and other such areas easier than humans as well, making you a natural tunnel rat. When you lose G youll be at a disadvantage - you can explode off a surface easily enough (not sure what the power to weight will be to determine acceleration), but your going to have a harder time converting angular momentum rapidly - stubby little limbs and all. Plus assuming everyone is running weapons with personal fire control (trakcingpoint already makes these, famously having a novice outshooting the NRA rifle champ, including pulling shots from around corners and the like)  your size wont be an issue, but a slow predictable flight path will. If its assisted flight, then...who cares?

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## Yora

> I have a few questions about impalement.
> 
> How frequently did thrusting weapons get stuck in armor or flesh to the degree that they could not immediately be removed and used?Is the risk of a weapon getting stuck in flesh/armor/shield substantially lower for cutting/hacking weapons than piercing ones?How did different types of armor affect the likelihood of impalement?How advantageous is it to impale an enemy versus having your weapon available in a one on one setting?How difficult would it be to remove a weapon from an active combatant? From a corpse?
> 
> Any advice is appreciated!


I don't think I've ever actually heard of a weapon getting stuck in a body in a way that makes it impossible to pull it out again. Ribs are really quite flexible, and the shape of blades designed to penetrate easily also helps with them getting back out easily.
The most likely situation where this happens is for cavalry fighting, where a soldier makes a quick stab at an enemy while riding past him. Because the horse keeps moving forward, you can't really pull your spear or saber back in the direction it went in, and it would be wrenched from your grip. The weapon is of course still sticking inside the enemy, but it's not actually stuck.
In a sword fight on foot, I could see someone getting run through and then falling sideways, or the body turning sideways as the legs give out, and if the attacker doesn't pull is back fast enough, it could again be pulled from his grip. I've seen sword instructors comment several times on movie sword fights that it's really bad form to just stand there while your sword is burried to the hilt in a defeated enemy. Mostly because he still might have a few seconds to stab you back, but I guess also in part to keep your sword when he does fall down.

I don't see armor making a big difference. You don't stab through plates, but through the gaps between plates. And those plates have to be flexible, so they can't really grab on to anything stuck between them.

Soldiers loosing a sword or a spear that ends up left behind in an enemy surely did happen with some frequency. But it you can keep hold of the grip, I don't think getting it pulled out was really a problem.

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## Martin Greywolf

> How frequently did thrusting weapons get stuck in armor or flesh to the degree that they could not immediately be removed and used?


All the time, if you really mean immediatelly immediatelly. Probably the most common offender is cut to the head that gets wedged a little bit in the skull.

Then and again, this was something people tended to train for with hunting, and were fairly used to, and most of the time, all you had to do was give the sword a good tug to free it.

Thrusts get stuck in things all the time, to a point where you're sometimes better off running the offending party through to the hilt and using the sword in them to steer them around, rather than try to extract and recover. This goes doubly so for thrusts delivered from horseback - to a point where some treatises (e.g. Capo Ferro) advise you to prefer cuts on a horse.

For sticking in armor, any weapon that pierces plate by design (bec de corbin, spike on warhammers) will do it at least a little bit, but again, once that happens, your foe is probably having problems that will stop him from immediately and you're also in armor, so you will have time to tug it out.

You do occassionally have cases where a weapon gets stuck so badly you can't get it out, but those are pretty rare and usually involve solid plates and blows with counter movement. Or shields, it's not that hard to get a weapon stuck in those, and it may require some wrangling to get it back out. Then and again, most trained fighters will not attack a shield with any kind of force and go around it.

There is even some evidence that some of the viking duelling shields were made specifically to trap swords.




> Is the risk of a weapon getting stuck in flesh/armor/shield substantially lower for cutting/hacking weapons than piercing ones?


No, because weapons aren't divided along those lines. A machette and an axe are both hacking, but I'll let you decide which one is much, much likelier to get stuck in a shield.

If we rephrase it to "are some weapons more likely to get stuck", then yeah. The most likely are weapons with narrow business ends that strike with them on a line that isn't directly connecting your centers of mass - so, axes, warpicks, daggers in icepick grip and so on. Thrusts are likely to get stuck, but relatively easy to extract. And so on.




> How did different types of armor affect the likelihood of impalement?


In general, they tried to prevent it.




> How advantageous is it to impale an enemy versus having your weapon available in a one on one setting?


Pretty good, because now he's stabbed, as opposed to you just standing around with a weapon in hand. If we're talking impalement with weapon getting stuck versus stabbing and recovering, then it's better to recover, but again, this is something people trained for. One on one, the disadvantage of stuck weapon is smaller than a disadvantage of a weapon through the lung that can be used to steer you.

*Spoiler: Medieval hunting as training for war, Swinney and Crawford*
Show

Manipulation of the blade after its placement in a vital area is key not only to neutralizing the opponent, but also to remaining uninjured. Understanding how to manipulate the blade to cause maximal injury once on target is tremendously important -- as is the understanding of how to employ the blade to prevent the (often mortally) wounded opponent from returning the favor.





> How difficult would it be to remove a weapon from an active combatant? From a corpse?


As always, it depends, but not that hard in most cases. Also keep in mind that, for most of the history, the weapon likely to get stuck wasn't your only weapon - if the spear gets stuck in someone's shoulderblade, leave it there and draw your sword, that's why you have it. It's once you get to bayonets, revolvers and sabers era that you see some pretty bad problems on account of no sidearms.

Also consider that, if you are far enough into a fight where your weapon gets stuck in someone, there's good odds of weapons of dead or fled opponents being around, so you can pick up one of those.

*Spoiler: Some quotes from Swordsmen of the British Empire*
Show

A second received my bayonet in his heart; but whether owing to its not having been greased, or to its having carried along with it some of the fellows cotton jacket, it stuck fast for a minute; and before I could withdraw it, the sabre of a third glanced across my eyes, uplifted to cut me down.

[...]

The head of Hussein, severed from his body, was stuck on his own spear; and it is, I believe, preserved by his conqueror to this day as a trophy.

[...]

Captain Moorhead [of the 26th Foot] was engaged in single combat with a Tartar soldier [at the storming of Ningpo in 1841]; and his sword having stuck fast in the Tartars body, he was twice cut down. (Maj. H. G. Hart, New Annual Army List, 1851.)

[...]

The dragoon on the left of the front rank, going in at the charge, gave point at the Sikh next him; the sword stuck in the lower part of his body, but did not penetrate sufficiently to disable him; so the Sikh cut back, hit the dragoon across the mouth, and took his head clean off. 

[...]

The brutes fought till we regularly cut and hacked our way through them with sword and bayonet. Unfortunately, the first thing my sword stuck in was the body of a colour sergeant of mine, just alongside of me on the next ladder, who was shot and fell on my sword. But the next moment it was skivering through a Pandy, and then another. All order and formation was over, and we cut and hacked wherever we could. I never thought of drawing my pistol, but poked, thrusted, and hacked till my arms were tired.

[...]

The shields were very troublesome articles. Made of tough buffalo hide with brass bosses, they were proof against a sword cut; and if you stuck your bayonet into one of them, there was generally some trouble in getting it out again. 

[...]

Lieutenant Langlands, of the 74th, was close to us in the action, when a powerful Arab [Maratha partisan] threw a spear at him, and drawing his sword, rushed forward to complete his conquest. The spear, having entered the flesh of the leg and cut its way out again, stuck in the ground behind him, when Langlands grasped it, and turning the point, threw it with so true an aim that it went right through his opponents body, and transfixed him within three or four yards of his intended victim!

[...]

A dragoon of the Third Regiment, charging with his squadron, made a thrust at the Sikh next him; the sword stuck in the lower part of his body, but did not penetrate sufficiently to disable him, when the Sikh cut back, hit the dragoon across the mouth, and took his head clean off.

[...]

So he dug his spurs in, rode at him, and stuck him from behind; and that was the end of the gentleman in the blue coat. The major strained his wrist drawing out his sword. That is always the difficult point. It went in like butter, a subaltern of horse told me, describing a similar incident at Barjisiyeh Wood. I didnt know Id got him, but I was almost pulled off my horse drawing it out.

[...]

One tall man, a corporal of the 24th, killed four Zulus with his bayonet [at Isandhlwana in 1879]; but his weapon stuck for an instant in the throat of his last opponent, and then he was assegaied.

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## Hjolnai

I have a couple of questions which have been eating away at me, so here goes:

1) I'm aware that guns (particularly cannon) came along well before plate armour. However, the earliest cannon were made from bronze. Since bronze was much more expensive than steel, there was a clear incentive to develop means to make large, reliable pieces of steel. So my question is, did firearm development cause the invention of techniques needed to make plate harness viable? 

Now, that might not be answerable, but my second question should be a little easier.

2) I've heard of an incident where people died of overheating in the Russian winter, because of fighting in heavy armour. Unfortunately, I don't remember any more than that, so it's hardly a reliable claim. Are there any historical sources which document cold-weather deaths from armour heat?

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## Vykryl

Dont work up a sweat in freezing temperatures. Once you cool off, the sweat soaked clothing is going to cause problems. Something I've more heard from survival shows/stories

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## Martin Greywolf

> I have a couple of questions which have been eating away at me, so here goes:
> 
> 1) I'm aware that guns (particularly cannon) came along well before plate armour. However, the earliest cannon were made from bronze. Since bronze was much more expensive than steel, there was a clear incentive to develop means to make large, reliable pieces of steel. So my question is, did firearm development cause the invention of techniques needed to make plate harness viable?


Not really. What you need to realize is that, since about WW1 era, we have seen a rise of a pretty targeted and directed research and development in, well, all walks of life. That wasn't the norm at any point before, especially not on national level. Hell, Manhattan project is WW2 and it was somewhat unique even then.

What you have is a ton of individual people doing their craft and occassionally figuring out a better way, and some of those better ways catch on. For our cannon/plate example, it means there was no "better metallurgy researched" moment, but rather incremental developments in the sciences of making plate and making cannon. There probably was overlap, but of the "I heard the cannon makers put in this weird rock, let's try it as well" kind, rather than anything explicit.

The one area where there was a common ground between weapon makers and plate makers is in making of steel ingots themselves, which is often an entirely separate profession - advances there benefit both plate and gun side.

As for incentives, there was always incentive to develop bigger pieces of steel, starting with "let's take the gladius and make it longer" and ending with battleship armor plates.




> 2) I've heard of an incident where people died of overheating in the Russian winter, because of fighting in heavy armour. Unfortunately, I don't remember any more than that, so it's hardly a reliable claim. Are there any historical sources which document cold-weather deaths from armour heat?


I can't think of any, but this sort of incident is recorded pretty rarely. It's definitely possible, I'll tell you that much, gambeson alone gives you sufficient thermal insulation for it to happen, epsecially if you don't drink - but it would happen pretty rarely. For starters, you have water literally everywhere around you in a Russian winter.




> Dont work up a sweat in freezing temperatures. Once you cool off, the sweat soaked clothing is going to cause problems. Something I've more heard from survival shows/stories


This is less of a problem with a gambeson on, since it tends to keep the sweat and warmth inside of it. You could, in theory, sweat it clean through, but that takes a lot of doing, and even then, wool makes for good insulation when it's that thick, even soaked.

You do get to see a pretty interesting effect when someone in armor approaches fire, though - they start to generate steam from their gambeson bits, it looks pretty cool.

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## Clistenes

> 2) I've heard of an incident where people died of overheating in the Russian winter, because of fighting in heavy armour. Unfortunately, I don't remember any more than that, so it's hardly a reliable claim. Are there any historical sources which document cold-weather deaths from armour heat?


Taking into account that people fought in gambeson and mail or in gambeson and plate in places like Syria, Palestina, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, southern Italy and Southern Spain, sometimes even during summer (like the First Crusade), and they survived (how come the Crusaders didn't suffer heavy losses due to heatstrokes during the Siege of Nicaea...?), I find hard to believe people could die due to overheating during the Russian winter...

I guess somebody could suffer some kind of heart condition and die due to a stroke caused by excessive activity, but heat alone? It's hard to believe...

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## Mike_G

I can actually answer this one.

OK, exertion in the cold is worse for your heart than exertion in the heat. Within reason. I mean you will sweat more and dehydrate faster in the heat.

But you're more likely to have a heart attack in the cold. 

Cold makes your blood vessels constrict. That why ice packs help reduce swelling. It also happens internally. If you breath heavily while exerting, you pull a lot of cold air into your lungs, which constricts blood vessels nearby, including those in your heart. And since you're exerting yourself, you're asking your heart to work harder, with less blood supply.

This is a big reason people have heart attacks while shoveling snow.   

So I don't think you can die of overheating in the dead of a Russian winter per se, you can give yourself a heart attack, so you die a sweaty mess while over working and it look like you had heat stroke

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## Brother Oni

> 2) I've heard of an incident where people died of overheating in the Russian winter, because of fighting in heavy armour. Unfortunately, I don't remember any more than that, so it's hardly a reliable claim. Are there any historical sources which document cold-weather deaths from armour heat?


The Battle of Towton 1461 was fought in the snow and although contemporary sources (Jean de Wavrin's _Account of the chronicles and old histories of Great Britain_ primarily) recount soldiers suffering from exposure and later exhaustion, it's not clear whether the exhaustion is from overheating from fighting or the fact that the battle supposedly went on for 10 hours.

It's definitely possible to overheat while in just a gambeson and mail - on those rare warm summer's days in the UK, we'd have re-enactors having to be taken off the field due to heat exhaustion.

As Martin Greywolf points out, if you don't drink or don't have the opportunity to drink (because people are busy trying to kill you all day), then it's perfectly possible to get dehydrated which only exacerbates the onset of exhaustion.

Edit: Mike_G's explanation is far more logical.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: did guns cause plate. 

Well, common firearms use didnt come around until the renaissance, whereas plate is making itself known during the Hundred Years War, so the intuitive answer is no.

I was under the impression that plate was mostly a response to things breaking your bones in mail, but Im sure Martin will be by with a more detailed answer.

2) Ive personally seen people go down with heat exhaustion in up state NY. Not many, but a handful, all with core temps over 102. Typically the pattern goes:

Its really, really cold so Person decides he should wear lots of warm layers, hats, gloves, etc. if Im going to be standing around outside.

Person has to wear constricting protective gear on top of that and carry heavy things, but is mostly standing around so leaves all those cold weather layers on.

Person has to go full out for 15-20 minutes with lots of sprinting, lifting, burpee-esque motions, and sudden strain. He heats up his body in response, but it doesnt dissipate out into the cold, it gets trapped in all those layers that are meant to trap heat - and its worse because hes wearing constrictive protective gear on top of it.

Person cant remove any of his stuff during this period. The ambient temperature doesnt matter, the temperature near his skin for those few minutes is extreme and his body reacts by pouring out sweat. He becomes a sweat soaked mess and collapses. 

For the double whammy, not only is he overheated now, but is soaked in sweat and clinging layers - and its still realllly cold out, so if you dont get him inside or near a moderate-able source of heat, youll plunge from the extremes of heat exhaustion to hypothermia quickly. 

So...could I see some poor Russian dude who wore too much under his armor going through the same? Yep.

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## Brother Oni

> Re: did guns cause plate. 
> 
> Well, common firearms use didnt come around until the renaissance, whereas plate is making itself known during the Hundred Years War, so the intuitive answer is no.
> 
> I was under the impression that plate was mostly a response to things breaking your bones in mail, but Im sure Martin will be by with a more detailed answer.
> 
> 2) Ive personally seen people go down with heat exhaustion in up state NY. Not many, but a handful, all with core temps over 102.


1) Hand bombards and other early man portable firearms started making themselves known around about the 100 Year's War (there's records of them being used in the Siege of Calais 1346 and there's a quartermaster's note of a ribauldequin in Edward III's muster lists in 1339). I do agree that their effect on the development of plate harness is very hard to conclusively prove or disprove this early.

Firearms absolutely did precipitate the importation of all metal breastplates for nanban gusoku samurai armour in the 16th Century in Japan though.

2) Firefighters?

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## Max_Killjoy

> Re: did guns cause plate. 
> 
> Well, common firearms use didnt come around until the renaissance, whereas plate is making itself known during the Hundred Years War, so the intuitive answer is no.
> 
> I was under the impression that plate was mostly a response to things breaking your bones in mail, but Im sure Martin will be by with a more detailed answer.


The timeline I like to post when guns vs armor, or medieval vs "renaissance", comes up:  

1300s -- firearms start appearing in Europe 
1420s to end of 1600s -- full plate armor 
1430s to 1450s -- Gutenberg's work on printing press
1452 to 1519 -- da Vinci  
1453 -- fall of Constantinople  
1475 to 1564 -- Michelangelo  
1492 -- Columbus' first voyage  
1529 -- Siege of Vienna

Firearms initially pushed the development of better armor, not the end of armor.

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## fusilier

> I don't think I've ever actually heard of a weapon getting stuck in a body in a way that makes it impossible to pull it out again. Ribs are really quite flexible, and the shape of blades designed to penetrate easily also helps with them getting back out easily.


I've heard anecdotes of soldiers getting bayonets stuck between ribs.  I think maybe there's a reference to that in All Quiet on the Western Front, but it's been a long time since I read that book.

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## KineticDiplomat

When I say common firearms, I mean as a predictable and regular feature on the battlefield. As in theres a good chance Ill be shot at with an arquebus, what should I do about that? as opposed to I hear there was some new fangled device over there, bit of a novelty, like a cannon but smaller!

Generally the early 1500s is about the time you hear about firearms really coming into their own as a battlefield, though the arquebus starts rising in prominence in the late 1400s. Prior to that, sure you can find a gun made in 1398 with no Burt stock? trigger, or what not, but the idea they had permeated the tactical conscience sufficiently to drive a generational upgrade from mail to plate that  happens in the late 1300s to early 1400s seems unlikely...though their presence will certainly lead to increasingly full plate culminating things like the white harness (although at the same time cheap(er) 3/4 munition plate is becoming more common for everyone thanks to manufacturing).  

2) 10th Mountain.

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## Gnoman

> I have a couple of questions which have been eating away at me, so here goes:
> 
> 1) I'm aware that guns (particularly cannon) came along well before plate armour. However, the earliest cannon were made from bronze. Since bronze was much more expensive than steel, there was a clear incentive to develop means to make large, reliable pieces of steel. So my question is, did firearm development cause the invention of techniques needed to make plate harness viable?



I may just be reading this wrong, but it feels like you're asking if the desire to use steel for cannon helped proliferate the use of steel plate for armor. If this is the case, then the answer is a simple "no". Cannon didn't start being made out of steel until the 1870s - even the Napoleons and Parrot Guns of the American Civil War were iron. This is true for handgonnes as much as it was the larger artillery cannon.

Arquebus and musket barrels were made of steel earlier, but that's more of a 30YW era thing IIRC.

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## Garimeth

Regarding overheating in the cold:

When I went through USMC Mountain Warfare Training for cold weather I and our Corpsmen were told to specifically to look for heat injuries on our more arduous movements.  We did not have any injuries, but overheating was definitely a thing, and we had our guys pumping water constantly.  

For reference our loadout was typically lightweight goretex jackets and ski pants, polypropylene undershirts, a 45 lbs pack, our rifles, and a sled with all our bivouac gear that got dragged by a hip harness and rotated among a fire team.  I can see how if you were wearing alot of thick warming layers it could be a problem pretty quick.  The location of the training (to compare altitude and climate) was Bridgeport, California MWTC in January. 

I think its worth pointing out that alot of "heat injuries" are essentially the result of dehydration, and in a cold enough environment and without proper prevention your drinking water can freeze, so now if you don't have the time to start a fire or are for some reason prevented from using your body heat to thaw your water DEHYDRATION could be a real threat.

EDIT: Also, I love reading the amount of knowledge some posters in this thread have.

----------


## fusilier

> When I say common firearms, I mean as a predictable and regular feature on the battlefield. As in ÂthereÂs a good chance IÂll be shot at with an arquebus, what should I do about that?Â as opposed to ÂI hear there was some new fangled device over there, bit of a novelty, like a cannon but smaller!Â
> 
> Generally the early 1500s is about the time you hear about firearms really coming into their own as a battlefield, though the arquebus starts rising in prominence in the late 1400s. Prior to that, sure you can find a gun made in 1398 with no Burt stock? trigger, or what not, but the idea they had permeated the tactical conscience sufficiently to drive a generational upgrade from mail to plate that  happens in the late 1300s to early 1400s seems unlikely...though their presence will certainly lead to increasingly ÂfullÂ plate culminating things like the white harness (although at the same time cheap(er) 3/4 munition plate is becoming more common for everyone thanks to manufacturing).


While mobility with firearms seems to have become possible with the introduction of matchcord (late 14th century?), how quickly they were adopted seems to have varied.  The hussites were known for their handgunners, but they were taken up fairly quickly in Italy too, with specialists in the field armies showing up in the 1430s.  At the Battle of Caravaggio (1448), there was so much smoke from the hand gunners that they couldn't see each other.  The next year the short lived Republic of Milan claimed it could field 20,000 men equipped with hand-guns (certainly an exaggeration).  Gunpowder weapons also made siege warfare more deadly; many condottieri of the period were wounded at least once by firearms. They also appear in sieges, and the defense of towns, earlier than they appear in open battle.  Clearly it was making a significant impact by the mid-15th century, but it's not clear how much impact they had earlier.

----------


## fusilier

> Arquebus and musket barrels were made of steel earlier, but that's more of a 30YW era thing IIRC.


Many were still being made of iron into the 19th century.

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## Martin Greywolf

I really don't know where the dumb idea that firearms somehow magically appeared in renaissance comes from. Hussite wars happen 1419-1434 and have an absolutely massive amount of gunpowder. A war wagon of 18 people had 6 crossbowmen and 2 gunners as its ranged complement, which gets us firearms making up over 10% of an army, and 25% of ranged troops. This isn't counting actual light artillery of which there was one per wagon, so one per 20 people. Assuming Teutonic Order's ratios of knighte and infantrymen, that's as many artillery guns in an army as there are knights.

This development wasn't a one-off thing either. Black army of Hungary was created a bit after 1450 and had a hefty complement of arquebusiers - partly because a lot of them were the ones from Hussite wars or their enemies who promptly decided to adapt this new weapon.

So, for chronology, you see some rare guns pre-1400, you start to see guns fairly often in 1400-1425 and after that, they are a standard part of a medieval army. This means that widespread gun use post-dates plate elements on top of chain mail, since we start to see those in about 1350 as a matter of course, with some early examples as far back as 1275. Well, in western Europe, near-steppe areas (Poland, Russia, Hungary, Balkans, Baltic) have had lamellar and scale cuirasses for centuries at this point.

There in also lies the hint - the cultures around the steppes, with an awful lot of bow use, have some additional armor on top of their chain mail if they can afford it.

That's right, it's bows. Or rather, it's widespread use of powerful bows, powerful enough to make chain mail alone an uncertain proposition, so about 110+ lbs range. If you have a lot of those, you will want to have some extra protection. You start to see this protection in Europe as a result of crossbows increasing their draw weight - goat's foot lever starts to become popular around 1300, being the first mechanical advantage spanning device. With it, you have crossbows that can match the more powerful nomadic bows and with that, an increased need for protection against them.

That, of course, means melee weapons want to keep pace, and you start to see developments like warpicks and flanged maces at about the same pace, culminating with leaving shields behind and taking up warhammers in 1400, as seen in Fiore who doesn't even bother to tell you how to use a shield.

All this means that armor needs to be even more protective, so it gets things like layering three different types of metal in one plate, increased thickness and so on. At this point it gets far too expensive to outfit any but the most elite troops in it and we start to see it gradually decline in use.

So, rough comparision for western Europe is:

1220 - first maybe coat of plates depiction I know of, most people who want more armor just use second gambeson or chain mail layer in their surcoat

1241 - first gunpowder used on European soil in battle, Mongols bring rocket launchers to Sajo, Hungarians not amused

1250 - first unambiguous coat of plates, the famous Saint Maurice from Magdeburg

1300 - chain mail honeymoon ends with more powerful crossbows being the norm, William Wallace is introduced to Welsh longbowmen

1325 - coat of plates is widely popular

1346 - Crecy happens

1350 - coat of plates or brigandine is standard, almost no one goes without it

1400 - plate cuirass is standard, chain mail starts to be removed entirely from bits covered by plate

1410 - serpentine lock

1415 - Agincourt happens

1419 - first mass deployment of gunpowder weaponry on a national level in Europe as part of Hussite wars

1448 - second battle of Kosovo, Ottomans deploy arquebusier regiments

1450 - full plate armor as we know it

1453 - Black army of Hungary begins

1475 - matchlock

1520 - heavy arquebus, aka musket, for use against heavy cuirasses at long-ish range

Ugh, that's it for now, I really need to catch some sleep.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I really don't know where the dumb idea that firearms somehow magically appeared in renaissance comes from. Hussite wars happen 1419-1434 and have an absolutely massive amount of gunpowder. A war wagon of 18 people had 6 crossbowmen and 2 gunners as its ranged complement, which gets us firearms making up over 10% of an army, and 25% of ranged troops. This isn't counting actual light artillery of which there was one per wagon, so one per 20 people. Assuming Teutonic Order's ratios of knighte and infantrymen, that's as many artillery guns in an army as there are knights.
> 
> This development wasn't a one-off thing either. Black army of Hungary was created a bit after 1450 and had a hefty complement of arquebusiers - partly because a lot of them were the ones from Hussite wars or their enemies who promptly decided to adapt this new weapon.
> 
> So, for chronology, you see some rare guns pre-1400, you start to see guns fairly often in 1400-1425 and after that, they are a standard part of a medieval army. This means that widespread gun use post-dates plate elements on top of chain mail, since we start to see those in about 1350 as a matter of course, with some early examples as far back as 1275. Well, in western Europe, near-steppe areas (Poland, Russia, Hungary, Balkans, Baltic) have had lamellar and scale cuirasses for centuries at this point.
> 
> There in also lies the hint - the cultures around the steppes, with an awful lot of bow use, have some additional armor on top of their chain mail if they can afford it.
> 
> That's right, it's bows. Or rather, it's widespread use of powerful bows, powerful enough to make chain mail alone an uncertain proposition, so about 110+ lbs range. If you have a lot of those, you will want to have some extra protection. You start to see this protection in Europe as a result of crossbows increasing their draw weight - goat's foot lever starts to become popular around 1300, being the first mechanical advantage spanning device. With it, you have crossbows that can match the more powerful nomadic bows and with that, an increased need for protection against them.
> ...


And as I understand it in many place the expense issue is compounded by the transition to larger armies equipped and fielded directly by monarchs and other state-level powers.  The cheaper mass-produced (sometimes referred to as "munitions grade" IIRC) plate is much less resistant to firearms than the high-end custom suits, and the cost of improving 10s of 1000s of plates to the high-end standard would have been nuts.   And the role of the warrior-noble or warrior-aristocrat starts to fade as well.  Demand for high-end armor fell, and the highly specialized skills for making it faded.  





> So, rough comparision for western Europe is:
> 
> 1220 - first maybe coat of plates depiction I know of, most people who want more armor just use second gambeson or chain mail layer in their surcoat
> 
> 1241 - first gunpowder used on European soil in battle, Mongols bring rocket launchers to Sajo, Hungarians not amused
> 
> 1250 - first unambiguous coat of plates, the famous Saint Maurice from Magdeburg
> 
> 1300 - chain mail honeymoon ends with more powerful crossbows being the norm, William Wallace is introduced to Welsh longbowmen
> ...


Either of the timelines posted should give someone reason to doubt the standard simplified narrative that "firearms ended armor".

----------


## Gnoman

> Many were still being made of iron into the 19th century.


It is shockingly hard to find good information on what kind of metal was used.

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## fusilier

> It is shockingly hard to find good information on what kind of metal was used.


Indeed.  During the Civil War some companies in the Union produced M1861 "Special Contract rifle-muskets," the best known being Colt.  The 1861 Colt Special was basically the same as the standard Springfield, but had some different features, many of which would be incorporated into the M1863 rifle.  Anyway, the barrels of the Colt rifles were marked "STEEL", which would seem to imply that the standard M1861 (which lacked such a marking) had an iron barrel.

Digging on the internet, I found this article, which is rather long, but refers to the difficulties faced in mass producing steel at that time, and makes it clear that iron was used in the U.S. for most (not all) gun barrels through the Civil War.

https://www.muzzleblasts.com/archive.../mbo43-3.shtml

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## Hjolnai

Lots of good information here. Looks like I was off the mark to suggest that gun manufacture made plate manufacture feasible. Instead, it's probably more accurate to say that both rely on the same root technology - the ability to produce large quantities of decent iron (and alloys), including large individual pieces. Although the blast furnace is a bit late on to the scene - spreading in Europe in the late 15th century - would it be accurate to say the large scale production of both required much the same technology base? That is, even if the ideas were around much earlier, both technologies required early 15th century iron production capacity to deploy in numbers?

Plenty of information on the cold weather overheating, too. I find the dehydration point particularly interesting; in hindsight maybe it should have been obvious, since humans can survive high temperatures for a sustained period... as long as we drink lots of water. Horns of Hattin, anyone? 
One thing which hasn't come up yet, I think, is the wind chill factor. I don't think any medieval textile will stop the wind entirely, but steel plates should. I can certainly see the constrained airflow in plate having a huge impact on internal temperature, even as the plate itself would be dangerously cold to the touch.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> It is shockingly hard to find good information on what kind of metal was used.


For pre-industrial revolution, this is even harder to do, because only thing that will give you comprehensive answer is to take the whole artifact and destructively drill through it in several places. Needless to say, this isn't done.




> Lots of good information here. Looks like I was off the mark to suggest that gun manufacture made plate manufacture feasible. Instead, it's probably more accurate to say that both rely on the same root technology - the ability to produce large quantities of decent iron (and alloys), including large individual pieces. Although the blast furnace is a bit late on to the scene - spreading in Europe in the late 15th century - would it be accurate to say the large scale production of both required much the same technology base? That is, even if the ideas were around much earlier, both technologies required early 15th century iron production capacity to deploy in numbers?


Almost. For personal guns, yeah, you need this kind of metallurgy - but artillery can be made with bronze. In theory, a country like China had capability of fielding Ottoman-style large cannons surprisingly early, there just wasn't the incentive to. Europe was unique in the sheer mindboggling number of fortified castles and towns - Hungary had something like 900 castles per 3 million people, not counting fortified towns, churches, monasteries and villages, that's one fortress per 3 000 people. You could quite literally put all of the Europe's population behind a fortified wall of some sort if you had to, and that's a hell of an incentive to develop sophisticated siege weapons.

Still, you can't go too early, bronze smelting technology also has to be at a certain level to make cannons like these - I think we had a discussion on this point a few pages back.




> the ability to produce large quantities of decent iron (and alloys)


Frankly, it's all about steel. You need to have a reasonably large chunks of it, and it has to be without too many flaws, since we don't want it to fail under blows or pressure. It's also important that the soldiers have a perception of this sort of weapon being reliable, because no one wants to put a pipe bomb next to their face and light it.




> One thing which hasn't come up yet, I think, is the wind chill factor. I don't think any medieval textile will stop the wind entirely, but steel plates should. I can certainly see the constrained airflow in plate having a huge impact on internal temperature, even as the plate itself would be dangerously cold to the touch.


As someone who was in a night forest with waist deep snow at -20 C, wind is not a problem. You really, really underestimate what medieval fabrics can do if you have proper replicas - a linen tunic with upper clothes made of wool and linen already gets you a minimum of 3 layers, and then you add a linen-backed cloak on top. At that point, the only kind of wind that can get through is strong enough to bodily pick you up. If you have a cloak that is made of a single layer of bedsheets, like a proper starting LARPer (I burned that cloak in the dead of night, there were no wtinesses), you'll have problems.

Armor is even better to have, to a point where you can put your shield on the snow and go to sleep in a gambeson on it using your pack as a pillow. It's not a tremendously comfortable experience, but it's survivable without you getting sick, especially if you also have a cloak and a hood, which you really should.

What really kills a winter campaign is the wetness. That snow will melt at some point and you will inevitably end up with wet, miserable soldiers, and if you are wet and then a wind picks up, you will get sick quickly. In winter, statistics say this will hit a sizeable portion of your troops eventually, so... just stay home. There's also an issue of roads not... existing under all that snow, really, but I'm off on a tangent here.




> And as I understand it in many place the expense issue is compounded by the transition to larger armies equipped and fielded directly by monarchs and other state-level powers.  The cheaper mass-produced (sometimes referred to as "munitions grade" IIRC) plate is much less resistant to firearms than the high-end custom suits, and the cost of improving 10s of 1000s of plates to the high-end standard would have been nuts.   And the role of the warrior-noble or warrior-aristocrat starts to fade as well.  Demand for high-end armor fell, and the highly specialized skills for making it faded.


Let's also not forget that these large armies have also shifted how they acquire equipment for their baseline troops from personal acquisition to state-issued kit. Once a state has to pay for the gear, well, lowest bidder time it is.

----------


## DrewID

> Lots of good information here. Looks like I was off the mark to suggest that gun manufacture made plate manufacture feasible. Instead, it's probably more accurate to say that both rely on the same root technology - the ability to produce large quantities of decent iron (and alloys), including large individual pieces. Although the blast furnace is a bit late on to the scene - spreading in Europe in the late 15th century - would it be accurate to say the large scale production of both required much the same technology base? That is, even if the ideas were around much earlier, both technologies required early 15th century iron production capacity to deploy in numbers?


Bret Devereaux has a blog called A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry where he takes a historian's look (He is an ancient historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at NC State U) at many pop-culture views of history, or just at elements if ancient and medieval history that are misunderstood.  He recently did a 4-part series (in six parts) at pre-modern iron and steel production.  I cannot recommend his blog highly enough.

Pre-modern Iron and Steel Production starts at this post.  Today's post is starting a series on textile production.  

DrewID

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Bret Devereaux has a blog called A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry where he takes a historian's look (He is an ancient historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at NC State U) at many pop-culture views of history, or just at elements if ancient and medieval history that are misunderstood.  He recently did a 4-part series (in six parts) at pre-modern iron and steel production.  I cannot recommend his blog highly enough.
> 
> Pre-modern Iron and Steel Production starts at this post.  Today's post is starting a series on textile production.  
> 
> DrewID


That blog is spectacular. 

I highly recommend it.  

He deconstructs the myth of Sparta, the "Fremen Mirage", multiple aspects of GOT/ASOIF, etc.

----------


## Saint-Just

> a 4-part series (in six parts)


That's a true mark of distinction.

Seriously, the Sparta putdown was brutal. I considered myself sophisticated for understanding the brutal oppressiveness and inequality in Sparta but for some reason I had an image of it as a successful long-standing military power. Kind of "I abhor their ideals but admire their results". To know how relatively little it achieved was really weird. And to understand that the source of the problem was demographics which everybody has seen but no one did anything about was even worse/better.

----------


## DrewID

> That's a true mark of distinction.
> 
> Seriously, the Sparta putdown was brutal. I considered myself sophisticated for understanding the brutal oppressiveness and inequality in Sparta but for some reason I had an image of it as a successful long-standing military power. Kind of "I abhor their ideals but admire their results". To know how relatively little it achieved was really weird. And to understand that the source of the problem was demographics which everybody has seen but no one did anything about was even worse/better.


I was pulled in by his analysis of the Siege of Minas Tirith.

To me, the best thing is that I don't always agree with him.  Sometimes I find myself having to adjust my thinking based on his evidence, but sometimes I still disagree with his conclusions, and that's OK.  He makes his presentation, backs it up with published sources (especially when he moves further outside his primary specialty, which is the Mediterranean region and the Greco-Roman period), and does it without being rude or offensive.  And is frequently entertaining to boot.  I think if you have an interest in this thread, you will enjoy his blog.

DrewID

----------


## Martin Greywolf

For me, it's too basic, there isn't any new information or analysis there, it just compiles what we've already known for a few decades into sometimes interesting points of view.

Problem is, much like Lindybeige, he doesn't clearly say what are facts and what is just his opinion and makes some very... facepalm inducing mistakes when speaking about topics outside of his area of expertise.

One of those was that, apparently, soldiers in musket warfare era had high starched collars because aristocracy believed they needed to see less from their peripheral vision. This is so, so overwhelmingly stupid - mostly because any even cursory glance at any of these uniforms shows that the collar limits bugger all.

A less silly but more revealing mistake was in the originally linked series, claiming that while medieval mines were technically free of taxes, the owner wast he king who took his cut, and so they were effectively still taxed. This is not how medieval taxation works and is a result of surface level reading of the privileges without really understanding the context.

So, my verdict is, that blog is good for very general or Greco-Roman specific topics, but not that great for details in other areas.

----------


## Gnoman

I haven't read everything on there, but that sort of thing usually happens when he makes an off-the-cuff or side comment, such as the "early modern" stuff in his Game Of Thrones teardown. When he's focused on something, he usually seems to put in the research to avoid that.

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## fusilier

> Bret Devereaux has a blog called A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry where he takes a historian's look (He is an ancient historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at NC State U) at many pop-culture views of history, or just at elements if ancient and medieval history that are misunderstood.  He recently did a 4-part series (in six parts) at pre-modern iron and steel production.  I cannot recommend his blog highly enough.
> 
> Pre-modern Iron and Steel Production starts at this post.  Today's post is starting a series on textile production.  
> 
> DrewID


Thanks for reminding of that blog, I just read his series on the Universal Warrior.  That was a very good read.

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## fusilier

> One of those was that, apparently, soldiers in musket warfare era had high starched collars because aristocracy believed they needed to see less from their peripheral vision. This is so, so overwhelmingly stupid - mostly because any even cursory glance at any of these uniforms shows that the collar limits bugger all.


Leather neck stocks were definitely a thing, well into the mid-19th century.  And I can tell you from personal experience that they do inhibit turning your head somewhat!  (You have to kind of lift your chin to turn your head to the side . . . it's not as bad as a neck brace -- I imagine -- but it does encourage you to keep your head facing straight ahead).  

I'm not sure about starched collars. 16th/17th century soldiers are often depicted wearing ruffs, and large (stiff looking) falling collars. I haven't found those to be too restrictive, but I don't starch mine.  18th century soldiers are shown with high neck collars on their shirts, and cloth neck stocks wrapped around their necks.  

It wasn't necessarily the coat's collar that would be particularly particularly restrictive -- although in the early 19th century they could be quite tall -- instead it was the neck stock, or (in an earlier period) detached shirt collar.

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## Mike_G

One of my HEMA buddies and I (both medics, both vaccinated, so we can be in melee range) got ahold of two Black Fencer musket and bayonet trainers and took them out to play.

https://southcoastswords.com/product...kfencer-musket

This is not a paid endorsement, I just wanted to show the weapon in question.

My God, the bayonet is really really tough to beat. We did bayonet vs bayonet (obviously even), then vs saber, broadsword, spadroon, rapier and longsword (the last two are kinda iffy historically, but the others all did share the same battlefields)

The bayonet was hands down the better choice. It surprised both of us just how much of an advantage it was. Obviously it has a reach advantage, but the thrust is really fast, very accurate, and hard to parry. The extra mass of the musket, plus the fact that the bayonet fighter has both hands on it makes it tough to parry or beat aside unless you catch it very much on the forte of your blade, and I mean like "right up against the guard" forte. Of all the weapons, the longsword did best, since it had a comparable reach, plus the leverage of two hands. I'd still choose a bayonet though, if my life depended on it.

The only tactic that seems to work well is to parry the initial thrust then grab the barrel of the musket, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Cutting at the forward hand kind of works, but it's very easy for the bayonet fighter to thrust into your attack and impale you when you go for that cut.

I imagine a shield, like a Scottish targe or a Zulu shield might be effective if you catch the thrust and control the weapon while you make your attack with your broadsword or knobkerrie or iklwa.

Anyway, I just thought it was very interesting and wanted to share.

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## KineticDiplomat

That is pretty interesting, especially as officers kept carrying swords for a good long bit. Granted those were nothing more than prestigious edged swagger sticks after a point, but they kept using them as real weapons for a good chunk of the black powder era.

Do you think that you guys were using any rules or restrictions that gave the bayonet an ahistorical edge? 

As a corollary, do you think the bayonet would have been as advantageous compared to a sword in general battlefield work as opposed to one on one in a ring, so to speak?

Both of those are non-rhetorical questions by the by.

----------


## fusilier

> One of my HEMA buddies and I (both medics, both vaccinated, so we can be in melee range) got ahold of two Black Fencer musket and bayonet trainers and took them out to play.
> 
> . . .
> 
> The only tactic that seems to work well is to parry the initial thrust then grab the barrel of the musket, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Cutting at the forward hand kind of works, but it's very easy for the bayonet fighter to thrust into your attack and impale you when you go for that cut.


I've seen manuals from the 1850s, showing that tactic of a swordsman parrying then grabbing the muzzle of the musket.  

Glad you had fun!  Haven't had a chance to use something like this myself, but I know someone who was looking into having something similar made.  (Doing bayonet v. bayonet drills with real bayonets and antique muskets . . . you have to take things slow, and just kind of go through the motions).

----------


## fusilier

> That is pretty interesting, especially as officers kept carrying swords for a good long bit. Granted those were nothing more than prestigious edged swagger sticks after a point, but they kept using them as real weapons for a good chunk of the black powder era.
> 
> Do you think that you guys were using any rules or restrictions that gave the bayonet an ahistorical edge? 
> 
> As a corollary, do you think the bayonet would have been as advantageous compared to a sword in general battlefield work as opposed to one on one in a ring, so to speak?
> 
> Both of those are non-rhetorical questions by the by.


While I haven't tried it myself, I will point out that the "fake" musket and bayonet, weigh about half as much as the real thing.  I'm speculating here, but I imagine that would probably make the fake musket/bayonet a little faster in things like parrying and going from one position to another (i.e going from a parry to an attack).  On the other hand, the lighter weight might make it easier for a swordsman to parry an attack.  Mike_G, what are your thoughts?  

I've found, over the years, that my upper body strength has improved, and makes it a little easier to throw around real muskets in these drills.  But the younger reenactors (and I remember when I was one), their arms wear out quickly -- they are hefty things, and some of the positions are kind of stressful.  

I have missed bayonet drill -- the ceilings are too low in my apartment for me to really practice. ;-)

----------


## Mike_G

> That is pretty interesting, especially as officers kept carrying swords for a good long bit. Granted those were nothing more than prestigious edged swagger sticks after a point, but they kept using them as real weapons for a good chunk of the black powder era.
> 
> Do you think that you guys were using any rules or restrictions that gave the bayonet an ahistorical edge? 
> 
> As a corollary, do you think the bayonet would have been as advantageous compared to a sword in general battlefield work as opposed to one on one in a ring, so to speak?
> 
> Both of those are non-rhetorical questions by the by.


My guess for officers using swords is that a sword is a sidearm. They didn't want officers fighting, they wanted them commanding. Once the fight gets to melee, you need to be able to defend yourself, so a sword is a good weapon to give them. Keeps them from turning into a rifleman when they should be a leader, but gives them some ability to fend off an enemy at close quarters. It's also easier to carry a sword and do other things. A musket is big and heavy and if you have one, that's more or less what you are using. You can have a different primary job and still carry a sword. I think of a sword in the past like a pistol today. A handy backup weapon, easy to wear for every day, and useful for self defense, but nobody's primary battle weapon.

We're not using any rules at all, other than "don't hurt one another so badly we can't go back to work next week." We're wearing a lot of padding and using blunt sparring weapons, so we're not pulling many punches. Grabbing the musket is allowed, light grappling and so on.

I think the bayonet would be even better in a battle. If you have fifty of your friends in a line on either side of you, bayonets would be easier to use without tangling one another up than swords.

I imagine this is why spears were so common for so long. Same principle. Spears would probably be ever deadlier in melee, but having a musket or rifle with a bayonet combines the pike and shot roles and lets every man in the regiment do double duty

----------


## Mike_G

> While I haven't tried it myself, I will point out that the "fake" musket and bayonet, weigh about half as much as the real thing.  I'm speculating here, but I imagine that would probably make the fake musket/bayonet a little faster in things like parrying and going from one position to another (i.e going from a parry to an attack).  On the other hand, the lighter weight might make it easier for a swordsman to parry an attack.  Mike_G, what are your thoughts?


I agree on both counts. But I don't think the extra weight will slow a thrust down all that much, and if you parry with the musket presented forward, you don't have to move it very far to cover your line, so I don't think it will suffer all that much. If you swing the musket, I can see having a hard time recovering. We learned a bayonet slash in the Marines, but that was with a shorter, lighter rifle, so the recovery wasn't so bad. Not really something you can do with the triangular socket bayonet. And not that they expected us to use the bayonet in combat as much as the average Redcoat with a Brown Bess.

The fact that even a 5 pound sparring musket is really difficult to beat or parry with a two pound sword will probably mean stopping a ten pound musket will be like trying to parry a freight train.




> I've found, over the years, that my upper body strength has improved, and makes it a little easier to throw around real muskets in these drills.  But the younger reenactors (and I remember when I was one), their arms wear out quickly -- they are hefty things, and some of the positions are kind of stressful.  
> 
> I have missed bayonet drill -- the ceilings are too low in my apartment for me to really practice. ;-)


I hear you. It's been a year since I have been able to go to fencing/SCA/HEMA club. I'm lucky that I have a sparring partner and we can fight in the back yard if the weather permits

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> I imagine a shield, like a Scottish targe or a Zulu shield might be effective if you catch the thrust and control the weapon while you make your attack with your broadsword or knobkerrie or iklwa.


If you go against any competent shield fighter with spear of any kind, he will destroy you and feast on your tears. Then and again, once you have two lines of people and everyone is discouraged from moving in and you get into a poke-y poke-y fight, spears have the edge again.

It's just that, most HEMA people who are doing sabre or longsword for the most part are overthinking it and trying to make something work - there's not a lot of science to it, you just take that shield and keep pressing him, because he gets precisely one opportunity to stab you before that shield is blocking his hand too much.




> That is pretty interesting, especially as officers kept carrying swords for a good long bit. Granted those were nothing more than prestigious edged swagger sticks after a point, but they kept using them as real weapons for a good chunk of the black powder era.


Oh no, they got used quite a lot. You forget that while these people had gunpowder, their opponents very often didn't, or had little of it, and therefore were entirely too happy to engage, whether we're talking about Zulu, Little Big Horn or Sikh rebellions. Swords got used quite a lot there, and that lasted pretty much up to WW1 when large industrialized nations brought a massive amount of artillery to the field - hell, Matt Easton put up a video about how swords weren't discontinued in British army because they weren't effective (they were in trench raids), but because they identified the officers for any sniper paying attention.

That said, you do want your officer to command up until the situations gets so chaotic it is not possible, and that happens when the enemy gets close to you. And for that, sword is still not that good, but sword and several pistols/revolver/howdah pistol are pretty great, especially since bayonets tend to get stuck in bodies, sometimes even by bending.




> I agree on both counts. But I don't think the extra weight will slow a thrust down all that much, and if you parry with the musket presented forward, you don't have to move it very far to cover your line, so I don't think it will suffer all that much. If you swing the musket, I can see having a hard time recovering.


Well, my experience is with spear, spear with heavier handle and a halberd, and it matters quite a bit. The thrust remains unaffected, but recovering it is a lot more challenging, especially if you're going against a weapon of similar reach. A lot will also depend on where a rifle would have center of mass, put it forward of your front hand (a la halberd) and you get to the point where parries with the tip become... kinda impossible to do against a spear.

A few historical quotes, taken from the ever-reliable Swordsmen of the British Empire.

*Spoiler: Col. G. Fitzclarence, Memoir, Naval and Military Magazine, 1828*
Show

They [Asian warriors] are ever desirous of the closest combat, and are well satisfied to meet their enemy with the sword and dagger. This was ever the desire of the Eastern nations south of Tartary; and to this day, like the ancient Janissaries, the British sepoys would prefer the use of the sword (a heavy curved broadsword, a weapon of the most destructive nature in the hands of the natives) to the bayonet, and which, on several occasions, has been found more than a match for the latter. The Rohillas, in 1773, cut to pieces more than one battalion by rushing in upon them, putting aside the musket with one hand and using the sword with the other; while one of the assaults at Acre is celebrated from the French being overpowered by the Turks in the like manner.


*Spoiler: Lt. Col. Richard Scott, Campaigns in India, Naval and Military Magazine, 1828*
Show

The enemy [Rohillas] rushed on, sword in hand, and in many instances seized and turned aside the bayonets of our troops with one hand, whilst with the other they made most dexterous use of their broadswords.


*Spoiler: The Ottoman Empire, The Church of England Quarterly Review, 1854*
Show

The Janissaries had always proved formidable to their enemies by the wild impetuosity of their attack, which resembled that of the Highlanders. When they neared their enemies battalions, they poured in a destructive volley, and throwing down their muskets, attacked them with the scimitar in one hand and their favourite weapon, the formidable yataghan [or double-curved sword knife] in the other; and these often proved an overmatch for the bayonet, even in the hands of the most disciplined troops in Europe.


*Spoiler: Maj. Gen. David Stewart, Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland, 1825*
Show

Sergeant John Macrae [of the 78th Highlanders], a young man about twenty-two years of age, but of great size and strength of arm, showed [in the Egyptian Expedition of 1807] that the broadsword, in a firm hand, is as good a weapon in close fighting as the bayonet. If the first push of the bayonet misses its aim or happens to be parried, it is not easy to recover the weapon and repeat the thrust when the enemy is bold enough to stand firm; but it is not so with the sword, which may be readily withdrawn from its blow, wielded with celerity, and directed to any part of the body, particularly to the head and arms, while its motions defend the person using it. Macrae killed six men, cutting them down with his broadsword (of the kind usually worn by sergeants of Highland corps), when at last he made a dash out of the ranks on a Turk, whom he cut down; but, as he was returning to the square, he was killed by a blow from behind, his head being nearly split in two by the stroke of a sabre.


*Spoiler: Highland Battles and Highland Arms, Celtic Magazine, 1877*
Show

The strength of the musketeer rests in his bullet, not his bayonet. The claymore was of precisely the length to enable its wielder successfully to encounter a bayoneteer, as it could always over-cut the bayonet when caught by the target; or even if the bayoneteer succeeded in transfixing his adversary, the length of the broadsword enabled the compliment to be returned.


*Spoiler: Diary of Colonel Bayly, 1896*
Show

 Our soldiers were animated with a degree of fury beyond any I have ever known; and one of them plunged his bayonet with such force through the body of a Travancorean that it remained firmly fixed in the back bone, from which in his hurry he could not withdraw it; he therefore unfixed it, leaving the carcass in that state.


So, the chief methods to defeat the bayonet are:

extend your sword hand for maximum reachuse a shield or an off hand weaponuse... just an off hand - possibly wrap it in a bit of cloth a la cloak fencing, especially for sparringparry and grabparry and close - the preferable way to do this seems to be to parry upwards

And since Mike_G mentioned using the parry and grab method, I think I know where the problem lies. To borrow terminology from Fiore, if you exchange points with a bayonet, you can only grab, and the bayonet wielder will be able to recover quickly. But, if you break his point, the much higher weight of his musket will come into play and he will not have enough time to recover before you close.

The real question is, was the universally poor performance of bayonets in history a result of not that much training, or a feature of the weapons used? And honestly, I don't know how to call this one.

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## Mike_G

> If you go against any competent shield fighter with spear of any kind, he will destroy you and feast on your tears. Then and again, once you have two lines of people and everyone is discouraged from moving in and you get into a poke-y poke-y fight, spears have the edge again.
> 
> It's just that, most HEMA people who are doing sabre or longsword for the most part are overthinking it and trying to make something work - there's not a lot of science to it, you just take that shield and keep pressing him, because he gets precisely one opportunity to stab you before that shield is blocking his hand too much.


Oh I fully expect shields to do very well. We just don;t have any shield to practice with, and I expected swords to do better than they did, so  I wont commit. 

But I do think I'd take a sword and targe over a bayonet. 







> Well, my experience is with spear, spear with heavier handle and a halberd, and it matters quite a bit. The thrust remains unaffected, but recovering it is a lot more challenging, especially if you're going against a weapon of similar reach. A lot will also depend on where a rifle would have center of mass, put it forward of your front hand (a la halberd) and you get to the point where parries with the tip become... kinda impossible to do against a spear.


The mass of a rifle is going to be toward the butt. The stock is wider there, often the stock doesn't go all the way to the muzzle and you have the whole lock and all that hardware pretty far back. the musket center of mass will almost always be between the hands, unless you are gripping it very far back. So yeah, it's heavier than a sword, but you have two hands on it, and the point of balance between them so it's not hard to thrust or recover.

I wouldn't swing it like an axe. That would take it far out of line and be hard to recover, but extend the point and lunge, then you can recover quite quickly, like a foil fencer. 

And in any kind of attempted bind, the big heavy weapon with two hands will easily displace the light weapon with one hand on it.





> A few historical quotes, taken from the ever-reliable Swordsmen of the British Empire.


Great anecdotes. Can't beat first hand accounts.





> So, the chief methods to defeat the bayonet are:
> 
> extend your sword hand for maximum reachuse a shield or an off hand weaponuse... just an off hand - possibly wrap it in a bit of cloth a la cloak fencing, especially for sparringparry and grabparry and close - the preferable way to do this seems to be to parry upwards


Tried all of these. The thing is, the thrust is quick, has lot of reach, and if it misses, it really isn't hard to draw back and thrust again. It just isn't. You can use the thing like a sewing machine needle, jabbing repeatedly from beyond the swordsman's reach until he misses a parry if you don't over extend. 

I also think some of these might work one on one, but if you figure bayonets were used by formed troops, yeah, sure you can parry and try to close, and maybe the guy you parried can't stab you, but his buddy might.




> And since Mike_G mentioned using the parry and grab method, I think I know where the problem lies. To borrow terminology from Fiore, if you exchange points with a bayonet, you can only grab, and the bayonet wielder will be able to recover quickly. But, if you break his point, the much higher weight of his musket will come into play and he will not have enough time to recover before you close.
> 
> The real question is, was the universally poor performance of bayonets in history a result of not that much training, or a feature of the weapons used? And honestly, I don't know how to call this one.


My guess is poor training and forgetting the drill in the heat of the moment. In a safe, friendly bout between two people who  have sparred with one another quite a bit, the bayonet has a ton of advantages over the single sword. But if you are a green conscript facing a screaming Highlander or Zulu, you probably just panic and shove the point out and hope.

Which brings me to my other thought. Swords were generally used by people who spent a lot of time training in their use. Officers probably had been fencing since their youth, and likely practiced enough that it became instinctive. The common soldier with his Brown Bess and bayonet was probably not sent to fencing lessons by his family when he was young. He probably had some basic instruction from a sergeant who shouted commands like "Parry left! Thrust! Jesus Christ, Atkins, what the hell are you playing at?" for an afternoon.   

So maybe the gentleman who has spent countless hours learning to use a sword can beat a man who has learned two parries and three attacks by the numbers and practiced for a day or so.

Seen here, the bayonet isn't easy to get past with a sword

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKbOj3i0rQ8&t=380s

And is harder to get past if you have a line of troops with the infernal things 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoc0CwpuqkM

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## Max_Killjoy

A lot of weapon vs weapon "which is better" discussions seem to ignore that little thing about the better fighter making a huge difference.

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## fusilier

> The mass of a rifle is going to be toward the butt. The stock is wider there, often the stock doesn't go all the way to the muzzle and you have the whole lock and all that hardware pretty far back. the musket center of mass will almost always be between the hands, unless you are gripping it very far back. So yeah, it's heavier than a sword, but you have two hands on it, and the point of balance between them so it's not hard to thrust or recover.


The point of balance will either be between the two hands, or at the leading hand, for guard and some attacks.  At the end of something like a lunge the point of balance will be in front of the hands, but the guard position is quickly regained.  There are some attacks designed to be used close in, which would put the leading hand near the muzzle, and the rear hand close to the point of balance.  [This is all from the manual that I'm most familiar with, from around 1852.  There were many other manuals.]




> I wouldn't swing it like an axe. That would take it far out of line and be hard to recover, but extend the point and lunge, then you can recover quite quickly, like a foil fencer.


The standard US manual of the Civil War was copied from a French manual.  The only major difference (or so I've been told) is that the US version omitted "club muskets", which is basically swinging it like club overhead to strike with the butt. Without consulting the manual, I can only think of one swinging attack off the top of my head, and it's a low strike with the butt which was used to push an opponent away.  Given the tactics used at the time, soldiers could easily end up in hand-to-hand and crushed together with little room to maneuver (although that's probably true for a very long stretch of history).





> My guess is poor training and forgetting the drill in the heat of the moment. . . .
> 
> So maybe the gentleman who has spent countless hours learning to use a sword can beat a man who has learned two parries and three attacks by the numbers and practiced for a day or so.


This!  From what I can tell bayonet training was often very rudimentary, and probably rarely practiced.  I would not be surprised if many veterans had never received any training.  The French during the 2nd Empire seem to have given a lot more attention to this.  Some anecdotes from the Crimean War caused other powers to take notice of the French improvements in bayonet training, and I think that influenced the spread of more sophisticated bayonet drills and more time spent training.  (I remember reading US inspectors-general reports from the late 1850s, and they were commenting on the levels of bayonet training among the infantry they saw at the various posts.  The implication was that training was new).

Also to actually spar with bayonets was difficult.  All sorts of special equipment was required which just wasn't part of the standard army budget.  And the infantry was the largest arm.  A soldier of the Civil War, may have been considered well trained with use of the bayonet, and probably had never done any real sparring.  Cadets from military schools may have done such sparring, and an *exceptionally* well trained soldier, probably from a pre-war militia Zouave regiment, may have as well (and possibly some old regular enlistedmen).

After the Civil War, training improves, but now we are no longer in the musket era.

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## Clistenes

> Bret Devereaux has a blog called A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry where he takes a historian's look (He is an ancient historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at NC State U) at many pop-culture views of history, or just at elements if ancient and medieval history that are misunderstood.  He recently did a 4-part series (in six parts) at pre-modern iron and steel production.  I cannot recommend his blog highly enough.
> 
> Pre-modern Iron and Steel Production starts at this post.  Today's post is starting a series on textile production.  
> 
> DrewID


It's a very good blog, but I think he focuses a bit too much in Britain when he studies European warfare. He skips the Tercios, the Landsknecht and the Swiss when he studies Warriors vs Soldiers, and I think these three are very important, being transitional between warrior and soldier mentality...

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## KineticDiplomat

If Im reading the above posts correctly, then it would appear that the great irony is that by and large the amount of training with the bayonet went up as its actual battlefield usefulness went down...

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## fusilier

> If Im reading the above posts correctly, then it would appear that the great irony is that by and large the amount of training with the bayonet went up as its actual battlefield usefulness went down...


That's probably true!  But it's also a reflection of more complete and sophisticated training of soldiers.  As tactics developed common soldiers had to act more independently.  Skirmish drill was becoming more common for all troops, and not just elite light infantry units, for example.  I believe by the 1850s French enlistedmen were even beginning to receive some classroom training.  National service models were also being implemented, so large numbers of the population were being given some peacetime training.  The old way of drafting huge levies for the first time during a war, meant that basic training was often very short, and things like bayonet drill were, understandably, neglected as low priority.

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## DrewID

> It's a very good blog, but I think he focuses a bit too much in Britain when he studies European warfare. He skips the Tercios, the Landsknecht and the Swiss when he studies Warriors vs Soldiers, and I think these three are very important, being transitional between warrior and soldier mentality...


TBH, his whole Warriors vs. Soldiers series is by far the most opinionated piece he has done, and the most consistently out of his specialization (which is Classical Mediterranean).  He is usually better when he focuses on presenting factual data, even if it is outside his specialty (like the recent steel making series), or presenting opinion pieces that are within his specialty (like the Sparta series).

DrewID

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## Pauly

> If Im reading the above posts correctly, then it would appear that the great irony is that by and large the amount of training with the bayonet went up as its actual battlefield usefulness went down...


All of the studies done about the effect of bayonet in battle have shown that very few casualties have ever been inflicted by the bayonet. The first studies I am aware of come from the Napoleonic era, so it may have been different with earlier technologies.
My books are in another country but iirc one study of casualty reports after famous bayonet charges found the percentage of casualties by bayonet wounds was in the single digit percentages. This is in well documented situations where the common report was that the bayonet was the deciding factor. 

The bottom line take away is that the bayonet is primarily a psychological weapon. If you look like you can more confidently and more competently stick 18 inches of cold steel into your opponent than he is to you, he is more likely to run away. So while there is some combat value in training your soldiers being able to fight effectively with the bayonet, the main advantage is the morale effect (your soldiers are more likely to stay, the enemy more likely to run).

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## KineticDiplomat

As a follow up question to that, since weve gotten on to the topic of training, does anyone know the ratio of actual skills training to other soldier stuff at various points in history? 

Within the same technological era? Since we have the bayonet in question, for instance a small professional army from the seven years war (or whenever you think is more approaches) vs the levee en masse for example?

Or out of era. Did a legionnaire practice with sword and shield daily, or was he more akin to a modern soldier who might fire far fewer rounds in a year than a shooting enthusiast?

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## Tobtor

> As a follow up question to that, since weÂve gotten on to the topic of training, does anyone know the ratio of actual Âskills trainingÂ to Âother soldier stuffÂ at various points in history? 
> 
> Within the same technological era? Since we have the bayonet in question, for instance a small professional army from the seven years war (or whenever you think is more approaches) vs the levee en masse for example?
> 
> Or out of era. Did a legionnaire practice with sword and shield daily, or was he more akin to a modern soldier who might fire far fewer rounds in a year than a shooting enthusiast?


I know most about dark age-medieval periods. Most training was done as "fun", that is games and sports. This seem to continue well into the  post medieval era (at least until the late 18th/early 19th century). It seem many people would have been quite adept in several weapons, and some with a specialized skill (like bow, crossbow, sling, spear-throwing, staff use, fencing etc). That means you have a quite broad skill set of the individual. Sparing and mock fights where also a regular occurance (developed into tournaments etc. during the medieval period). Though "proper training" was also a thing for personal combat skills and even small group combat. Both for regular men-at-arms and mercenaries, but also for levies etc. (such as the English/Welsh rules that stipulates weekly training with the longbow, many other regions had similar laws).

What seem to be missing is specialized training in large scale manoeuvring/formations, which in large battles most be considered more important that the individual soldier. Mock battles was fought ("battle tournaments"), but I have seen no evidence of specialised training before the late medieval period (where it still seem fairly rare).

What I read about Roman military, it seem that combat training was conducted on a (nearly) daily basis (perhaps baring when doing battles/campaign), as well as regular formation training.

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## Martin Greywolf

> All of the studies done about the effect of bayonet in battle have shown that very few casualties have ever been inflicted by the bayonet. The first studies I am aware of come from the Napoleonic era, so it may have been different with earlier technologies.
> My books are in another country but iirc one study of casualty reports after famous bayonet charges found the percentage of casualties by bayonet wounds was in the single digit percentages. This is in well documented situations where the common report was that the bayonet was the deciding factor. 
> 
> The bottom line take away is that the bayonet is primarily a psychological weapon. If you look like you can more confidently and more competently stick 18 inches of cold steel into your opponent than he is to you, he is more likely to run away. So while there is some combat value in training your soldiers being able to fight effectively with the bayonet, the main advantage is the morale effect (your soldiers are more likely to stay, the enemy more likely to run).


This is one of those things you need to pretty much ignore. Sure, there aren't many casualties - what is a casualty? Dead, injured, taken out of combat? And by this metric, modern guns are psychological weapons as well, since you expend a tremendous amounts of bullets (thousands) to injure one guy.

Even medieval melee weapons weren't that kill-y, a battle that had a 10% casualty rate was usually thought of as unusual, anything over 30% was a massacre - with some exceptions where the loosing force got either encircled or hunted down for days after the battle was over.




> Or out of era. Did a legionnaire practice with sword and shield daily, or was he more akin to a modern soldier who might fire far fewer rounds in a year than a shooting enthusiast?


To answer this, we must first acknowledge a fundamental principle of writing things down: advice is not given if everyone follows it, laws are not written if everyone follows them. Therefore, when Vegetius writes De Re Militari and waxes poetic about how the ancients fought and trained daily, we can safely assume that this wasn't the norm in his time.

Similarly, when we look at medieval England and it's bow practicing laws, we can safely assume that they are written as a reaction to people not training enough for the king's liking. If we find a point in Landsknecht company rule about how you will be hella punished for cutting down your pike, we can assume this was something people did out of lazyness.

So, with that in mind, it was a lot like today. If you had a knight who was a tournament enthusiast (Ulrich von Lichtenstein) or  aknight that was really into the science of fencing (Fiore de'i Liberi), they had much, much more training than your average knight or mercenary - they are the equivalent of the shooting enthusiast.

At the same time, not only are the non-enthusiasts motivated to get a solid amount of training (by, y'know, having to go and fight at some point, which is klinda dangerous), but the enthusiasts are involved in "the real thing", so you will not see much in the realm of medieval equivalent of range toys or techniques that are utterly impractical in the field.

If you're looking for exact numbers, we don't know.




> I know most about dark age-medieval periods. Most training was done as "fun", that is games and sports. This seem to continue well into the  post medieval era (at least until the late 18th/early 19th century). It seem many people would have been quite adept in several weapons, and some with a specialized skill (like bow, crossbow, sling, spear-throwing, staff use, fencing etc). That means you have a quite broad skill set of the individual. Sparing and mock fights where also a regular occurance (developed into tournaments etc. during the medieval period). Though "proper training" was also a thing for personal combat skills and even small group combat. Both for regular men-at-arms and mercenaries, but also for levies etc. (such as the English/Welsh rules that stipulates weekly training with the longbow, many other regions had similar laws).
> 
> What seem to be missing is specialized training in large scale manoeuvring/formations, which in large battles most be considered more important that the individual soldier. Mock battles was fought ("battle tournaments"), but I have seen no evidence of specialised training before the late medieval period (where it still seem fairly rare).
> 
> What I read about Roman military, it seem that combat training was conducted on a (nearly) daily basis (perhaps baring when doing battles/campaign), as well as regular formation training.


Well, the above is true for the nobility - although I'd hesitate to call a hunt a "fun" thing, sure, some enjoyed them, but it was also a sort of a social obligation, a part of your job as a noble, not the least because it prepared you for war, as several people in the period noted outright. It's also likely that, especially when it comes to ranged weapons, a given individual would pick one and stick with it, so bow or crossbow, really.

For non-nobles, which usually means some form of mercenaries, we have pretty much no data. We do have hints, though, and the most prominent of them is that one of these mercenaries, or rather their captain, was Fiore de'i Liberi, the guy who wrote the seminal work on melee fighting in 1400. The idea that he would not train his soldiers is... yeah, he absolutely trained them.

Problem is, these guys didn't have option to engage in a lot of things the nobles did, like tourneys, hunting and such, so they had to make do some other way. WHat other way, we don't know.

*People are lazy, and often idiots*

Remember this point and burn it into your heart. Sure, you're a mercenary and expected to fight, but meh, you will train _tomorrow_, you're just feeling kinda not like doing anything today.

Look into any industry that needs specialized training, and you will find it being cut down to reduce costs, not followed out of lazyness and so on, and we can be sure medieval era was no different. For every mercenary who dilligently trained and saved his silver to buy better armor eventually, you had five who loafed about and spent money on booze.

This is why organizations that enforced discipline were so successful and famous, be it the Roman army, Templars or Swiss pikemen.

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## KineticDiplomat

I had seen something by van Creveld that basically said (and any errors in the phrasing are mine) that the transition to the gunpowder era suddenly saw a mix where you had a lot more soldiers who were hasty productions, combined with all of a sudden gunpowder means training is no longer a two way affair (and much more expensive), and on top of all that youre approaching a tactical era where being able to keep your pike pointed up or down on command is worth more than personal prowess. 

That part sounds as good as anything Id heard. Concerning bayonets within the same era, I have no idea...

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## Clistenes

> As a follow up question to that, since weÂve gotten on to the topic of training, does anyone know the ratio of actual Âskills trainingÂ to Âother soldier stuffÂ at various points in history? 
> 
> Within the same technological era? Since we have the bayonet in question, for instance a small professional army from the seven years war (or whenever you think is more approaches) vs the levee en masse for example?
> 
> Or out of era. Did a legionnaire practice with sword and shield daily, or was he more akin to a modern soldier who might fire far fewer rounds in a year than a shooting enthusiast?


During the Renaissance most armies expected recruits to arm and train themselves to some extent before joining the army, and then they were taught to fight as a group.

It varied greatly from country to country: 

In the British Isles they still kept pretty much a feudal system.
Italy relied heavily on mercenary companies, using guild-based medieval militias when things turned ugly; powerful nobles kept their own feudal retinues too...
France had the gendarme companies as the core of their armies: Heavy horse companies made up of men-at-arms loyal to the king but organized pretty much following the model of mercenary companies. In time of war the army was strengthened with foreign mercenaries and feudal retinues.
Spain ditched feudal retinues pretty soon, leaving the defense of the Iberian Peninsula to them (the crown didn't expect it to be in any serious danger, so they sent the actual professional army abroad); the Tercios were a professional army organized around companies recruited and trained by a captain.

In most cases, it seems European governments expected the soldiers they were paying for to come trained on their own; they either came trained or were trained by the captains who recruited and led the unit.

Soldiers from the Tercios were expected to bring their own weapons and to have some basic training, but that wasn't always the case, and sergeants (usually veteran soldiers), ensigns and captains were tasked to find any inadequacies  and start their training as soldiers (which wasn't quite sistematized, each sergeant, ensign and captain did whatever they felt like... some put quite an effort, some did barely anything...). 
Some rich captains sought to give them better weapons; Alonso de Contreras, an_ alferez_ (ensign) at the time, stole a cache of weapons from a smuggler in order to arm his company, but the smuggler turned to be rebel conspiring against the crown and Contreras got into an ugly mess (because he didn't report the smuggler...

Afterwards the company was shipped to Italy, a low intensity combat scenario. Maestres the Campo (commanders of Tercios) usually broke the companies, mixing veterans and recruits so the recruits could complete their training on the field observing and taking advice from the veterans.

Once the soldiers were considered trained and toughened enough to operate in a high intensity scenario, they were shipped to Flanders... In Flanders they were joined by non-Spanish mercenary companies hired by the crown.

The Spanish veterans had a saying: "EspaÃ±a, mi cuna, Italia, mi ventura, Flandes, mi sepultura" (Spain, my craddle, Italy, my joy, Flanders, my tomb...". Whatever they did in Italy, it didn't left them bad memories; it seems recruits were treated quite softly (young soldiers were rarely executed for showing cowardice there; it seems officers expected them to "toughen" gradually, rather than using the shock treatment of throwing them into a carnage). Flanders was the real deal; soldiers were expected to be fully trained professionals there, and discipline was draconian...

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## Tobtor

> Well, the above is true for the nobility - although I'd hesitate to call a hunt a "fun" thing, sure, some enjoyed them, but it was also a sort of a social obligation, a part of your job as a noble, not the least because it prepared you for war, as several people in the period noted outright. It's also likely that, especially when it comes to ranged weapons, a given individual would pick one and stick with it, so bow or crossbow, really.


I am not only talking about nobles. Games that involved weapons where fairly common. There are many examples of for instance crossbow shooting contests practised by "middle class" people (citizens in towns, free farmer etc) in the late medieval periods. In earlier texts such as the Icelandic Sagas (written in the 12-14th century) we also hear about bow shooting contest, training fights, swimming contests and al sorts of "martial" activities practices by farmers.

Various games in Denmark stems from semi-martial training. For instance every year at lent there today children take turn to hit a barrel with a club until et breaks. The winner is the one who smashes it. In the 18th century it  was done on horseback and done by young men - the winner (and any household he lived in) in each parish would be exempt for certain taxes for 1 year. This would intice people to train riding skill as well as "swinging while you rigt" skills.




> *People are lazy, and often idiots*


I completely agree. Whenever we see a text about training or any manual it specify how the people higher up would like it to be (within reason). So surely we should take any texts as a "high point", and deduce that the average is lower.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I am not only talking about nobles. Games that involved weapons where fairly common. There are many examples of for instance crossbow shooting contests practised by "middle class" people (citizens in towns, free farmer etc) in the late medieval periods. In earlier texts such as the Icelandic Sagas (written in the 12-14th century) we also hear about bow shooting contest, training fights, swimming contests and al sorts of "martial" activities practices by farmers.


First issue I have with this is defining what is a martial activity - swimming is not it. Sure, it can occassionally help you and it builds stamina, but so does running or just walking, so we're putting the definitions far too broad here.

As for the contests themselves, they were not very high level. Your bottom rung modern amateur BJJ gym probably has a much higher quality of wrestling that your annual village tournament, simply because the pool of possible participants is very low, and the pool of willing participants even lower. If you are a mildly talented at the given sport, you will have practically no incentive to get better - there are no big leagues to get into, really - and the bar is low.

We should look at these activities the way we look at today's football/soccer - sure, every village has a team, but that doesn't mean the entire village male population is at the skill level of said team, and the team itself is far, far below the professional players. It's a recreational activity more than anything else, and any serious footballer/soldier would wipe the floor with them - well, with the usual caveat for wrestling specifically of size mattering.

That said, this activity does have the potential to evolve into something useful, whether by enforcing training by law (archery) or by introducing higher leagues with higher prizes (wrestling, boxing). Once you have either of those, then you get people with martial skills at a higher level than usual. The issue is finding these cases, and for most of the medieval world, they are closed to the non-noble public.

There are some exceptions, e.g. English archery and German burghers developing a decidedly martial mindset, but hey are just that, exceptions.




> Various games in Denmark stems from semi-martial training. For instance every year at lent there today children take turn to hit a barrel with a club until et breaks. The winner is the one who smashes it. In the 18th century it  was done on horseback and done by young men - the winner (and any household he lived in) in each parish would be exempt for certain taxes for 1 year. This would intice people to train riding skill as well as "swinging while you rigt" skills.


I don't know enough about Denmark to call this, but be very sceptical about statements like these unless backed by some serious facts and original documents. 17th-19th centuries are especially suspect, because everyone and their mother was trying to come up with some nationalistic martial spin to make their country look biggest and baddest, and a lot of idiocy resulted from it, like the idea that sabres are inferion to straight swords, that sabres are superior to straight swords, that sabres were brought to Europe by the Ottomans and so on.

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## Zombimode

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKbOj3i0rQ8&t=380s


I don't know, I find videos like this to be pretty much without any value for learning something about the use and comparison of historic weapons.

The environment of these "fencing" style match up are just so artifical. There are usually three problems, all of the present in this video:

1. The fencers are religiously fixated on their weapon instead of winning an actual fight. They are not using their hands, they are not using their bodies.

2. They are bound by the artifical scoring system where even a weak tip with the weapon counts as a "hit". This creates its very own metagame and results in the very cautious distance fighting we see in the video. It disregards any effects of armor or technique of deflecting the opponents weapon even unarmored.

3. They are not using the "real" weapon but some fencing props. These might resemble the weapons in some respects but not in all. The ability to damage the opponents weapon for instance is not accounted for at all.

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## Mike_G

> I don't know, I find videos like this to be pretty much without any value for learning something about the use and comparison of historic weapons.
> 
> The environment of these "fencing" style match up are just so artifical. There are usually three problems, all of the present in this video:
> 
> 1. The fencers are religiously fixated on their weapon instead of winning an actual fight. They are not using their hands, they are not using their bodies.
> 
> 2. They are bound by the artifical scoring system where even a weak tip with the weapon counts as a "hit". This creates its very own metagame and results in the very cautious distance fighting we see in the video. It disregards any effects of armor or technique of deflecting the opponents weapon even unarmored.
> 
> 3. They are not using the "real" weapon but some fencing props. These might resemble the weapons in some respects but not in all. The ability to damage the opponents weapon for instance is not accounted for at all.


So what do you propose as a valuable way to learn something about a weapon?

I merely ask as a former infantry Marine with 30 years of fencing. I'm sure if you speak slowly enough and use small words I'll be able to understand 

And I'm not sure what you watched, but there are a lot of instances of the guy with the sword grabbing the barrel of the musket , so nobody is "religiously fixated on their weapons."

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## Pauly

> This is one of those things you need to pretty much ignore. Sure, there aren't many casualties - what is a casualty? Dead, injured, taken out of combat? And by this metric, modern guns are psychological weapons as well, since you expend a tremendous amounts of bullets (thousands) to injure one guy.
> 
> Even medieval melee weapons weren't that kill-y, a battle that had a 10% casualty rate was usually thought of as unusual, anything over 30% was a massacre - with some exceptions where the loosing force got either encircled or hunted down for days after the battle was over.


Just to be clear the studies I have seen refer to returns of wounds, not MIA, captured, ill etc. In bayonet charges the number of wounds inflicted by shooting exceeds wounds inflicted by bayonets by an order of magnitude. Again I dont have my books with me so I cant give you the references, but the studies isolated casualties as best they could to exclude casualties from the battle as a whole and to isolate the casualties from the bayonet charge.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I don't know, I find videos like this to be pretty much without any value for learning something about the use and comparison of historic weapons.
> 
> The environment of these "fencing" style match up are just so artifical. There are usually three problems, all of the present in this video:
> 
> 1. The fencers are religiously fixated on their weapon instead of winning an actual fight. They are not using their hands, they are not using their bodies.
> 
> 2. They are bound by the artifical scoring system where even a weak tip with the weapon counts as a "hit". This creates its very own metagame and results in the very cautious distance fighting we see in the video. It disregards any effects of armor or technique of deflecting the opponents weapon even unarmored.
> 
> 3. They are not using the "real" weapon but some fencing props. These might resemble the weapons in some respects but not in all. The ability to damage the opponents weapon for instance is not accounted for at all.


Look, we've seen your kind before. The crowd that claims that HEMA is useless because they aren't killing themselves with real weapons and therefore aren't real viking warriors doing real things and your particular fantasy fighting style than never went up against any properly resisting opponent is superior to theirs because it is more real.

The people you're taking potshots at are one of the most respected practitonars of martial arts of that period, having both practical and academical knowledge to back up what they do - unless they are doing some goofy thing, which is not the case in this video.




> Just to be clear the studies I have seen refer to returns of wounds, not MIA, captured, ill etc. In bayonet charges the number of wounds inflicted by shooting exceeds wounds inflicted by bayonets by an order of magnitude. Again I dont have my books with me so I cant give you the references, but the studies isolated casualties as best they could to exclude casualties from the battle as a whole and to isolate the casualties from the bayonet charge.


And that's not really a good way to asses the effecto fo bayonet as a weapon or to call it psychological - a charge with any other weapon would have similar result, because it's not the bayonet that is psychological, it's the charge. Another factor that makes bayonet seem a lot less effective is that, well, in a melee fight, your opponent can surrender a lot easier. A better study for the effectiveness of a bayonet would probably be something like looking at bayonets storming an encircled mildly fortified position, and looking at how many were killed by gunfire versus how many wounded, killed or surrendered during battle thanks to bayonets - but even that is flawed, since guns are at a disadvantage when taking potshots at a fortified position.

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## Zombimode

> So what do you propose as a valuable way to learn something about a weapon?
> 
> I merely ask as a former infantry Marine with 30 years of fencing. I'm sure if you speak slowly enough and use small words I'll be able to understand 
> 
> And I'm not sure what you watched, but there are a lot of instances of the guy with the sword grabbing the barrel of the musket , so nobody is "religiously fixated on their weapons."





> Look, we've seen your kind before. The crowd that claims that HEMA is useless because they aren't killing themselves with real weapons and therefore aren't real viking warriors doing real things and your particular fantasy fighting style than never went up against any properly resisting opponent is superior to theirs because it is more real.
> 
> The people you're taking potshots at are one of the most respected practitonars of martial arts of that period, having both practical and academical knowledge to back up what they do - unless they are doing some goofy thing, which is not the case in this video.


Dudes, chill. This kind of hostility is _really_ not warrented.

I'm a mostly silent but active follower of these threads and do very much value both your and Mike's extensive contributions.

If you think my takeaway from the video in question is misguided I would rather hear your clarifcations that could help me putting things into perspective instead of dismissive comments like the above.

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## Mike_G

> Dudes, chill. This kind of hostility is _really_ not warrented.
> 
> I'm a mostly silent but active follower of these threads and do very much value both your and Mike's extensive contributions.
> 
> If you think my takeaway from the video in question is misguided I would rather hear your clarifcations that could help me putting things into perspective instead of dismissive comments like the above.


OK, I will concede to taking a bit of a tone and give this a shot.

Your comments, however, was the most dismissive thing I've read in a long time, about people who have been doing HEMA as well as tests with historical swords, who have actually consulted on the design of new HEMA swords, who have read and translated historical manuals. The AHF guys are not playing tag with foils.

To get at the specifics, 

*The weapons they are simulating were not generally used against armor, being Napoleonic in era, so effectiveness vs armor is not a thing here.  

*They do not use "artificial rules." The techniques are out of Hutton and Roworth's manuals of swordsmanship for the British army. The Bayonet drill is also from the British Army manuals. The simple footwork is also a result of army drill, since one was expected to use a bayonet in formation, so there isn't a lot of lateral movement. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

*There is a lot of grabbing of bayonets and musket barrels and offhand parries so you clearly missed a lot of that if you say "they don't use their hands or bodies." 

*The swords are very accurate as far as weight and balance. I have one of the same sabers, and a few antique 19th century sabers, and the weight and balance are very close. Yes, the musket is light. Because if I thrust even a blunt bayonet on the end of a rigid ten pound rifle at you, it would probably come out your back. Simple safety and not wanting to kill your friends is going to create some limits, yes.

*They are not using "artificial" rules for hits. Most HEMA clubs, at least when not in direct competition, use a kind of loose agreement on what's a good hit, indicating good hits vs light ones. "Junk hits" get thrown out in sparring all the time. Like, yeah you hit, but it wouldn't have hurt me, or it was flat or whatever. In sport fencing, which I did for decades, yes, a hit is a hit is a hit, fatal or not, so long as it's on target, but that ain't this. 

*These same people do a lot of actual cutting with real blades, so they know what cuts will actually be effective and which will not. Clearly there's no good way to combine a cutting test and sparring, unless we bring back the Colosseum.

A lastly, if you're going to trash an entire system of what is basically experimental historical research, and probably the best way to learn how a weapon worked, ie "try to hit someone with it who tries not to let you with it, or as close a facsimile as you safely can" then please explain what would be a good way to learn. There will always be compromises because we don't actually want to cripple one another. That's just reality. Real troops train with safe weapons to learn how really kill people with unsafe weapons. Trying to make a good hit with a realistic weight weapon simulation is the gold standard of discovering what works. Blunt weapons and padded jackets do not invalidate this exercise   


So, yes, those of us who follow this get a bit defensive.

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## Brother Oni

To support Mike_G's comments, the objections would be akin to saying 'MILES gear is not representative of actual weapons due to the lasers not simulating real round ballistics like travel time and bullet drop, so therefore any manoeuvrer and fire training isn't worthwhile. Also, since any registered hit is also automatically a fatal one and doesn't take into account the protection offered by modern body armour, they should be using plastic rounds at least, if not live ammunition'.

The point is, there are good videos on weapon comparisons and bad videos on weapon comparisons; the linked video is one of the former.
If you can't tell whether a video is good or bad, have a look at the people presenting it and a look at their credentials - if you're still not sure after that, then ask people with more experience, preferably phrasing any question in a less dismissive manner.




> The ability to damage the opponents weapon for instance is not accounted for at all.


Since this wasn't addressed - how much damage are you expecting to do to an opponent's weapon in a 10-15 second bout? Each bout is effectively between a 'new' pair of fighters since one or both were 'killed' in the previous one, so they start with 'new' weapons every time.

About the only damage that could be done, is the sword breaking off the bayonet - the sword isn't cutting through the metal barrel of the musket/rifle, and the bayonet isn't breaking the sword blade.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: bayonet percentages. I took Paulys reference to be per capita for wounds inflicted, not an overall percentage of the force lost. Still has the usual statistical vulnerabilities of anything with so many variables that cant be measured. I would esucatedlt guess that those black powder numbers represent one cylinder of an engine where apparently bayonet drill was not a big deal (from what Ive heard here)...whereas if I had to hazard a guess Mike_G spent some amount of time learning to bayonet things with an M16, though I doubt anyone imagined he would actually use the thing for more than utility work. (Or, ever popular, pile them all in an inventoried tough box, band it, and leave the inventory on top to save everyone counting them monthly)

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## Mike_G

> Re: bayonet percentages. I took Paulys reference to be per capita for wounds inflicted, not an overall percentage of the force lost. Still has the usual statistical vulnerabilities of anything with so many variables that cant be measured. I would esucatedlt guess that those black powder numbers represent one cylinder of an engine where apparently bayonet drill was not a big deal (from what Ive heard here)...whereas if I had to hazard a guess Mike_G spent some amount of time learning to bayonet things with an M16, though I doubt anyone imagined he would actually use the thing for more than utility work. (Or, ever popular, pile them all in an inventoried tough box, band it, and leave the inventory on top to save everyone counting them monthly)


Ironically, I think modern bayonet training (if we can consider the 1980s modern, if I want to speak from experience) is largely psychological. It's not that they expect troops to get into bayonet fights, but they want to instill some aggression and get you used to fight someone else in close quarters.  The Pugil Stick fights we had were never going to turn us into master bayonet fencers, but the idea is that hand to hand still happens, and if you have done some sparring at least the idea of trying to face off against someone isn't completely alien. So maybe, when the moment comes, you won't freeze up. If you only remember one or two blocks and attack aggressively, you'll probably win a close quarters fight.

I don't know what the training is now, but I would think that there is a greater chance of meeting an enemy at uncomfortably close range when clearing houses in Falluja than any of the Cold War scenarios they were thinking of back when I was in boot camp and Reagan was President.

If nothing else, hand to hand practice is _fun,_ where as most training really isn't.

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## Max_Killjoy

> Ironically, I think modern bayonet training (if we can consider the 1980s modern, if I want to speak from experience) is largely psychological. It's not that they expect troops to get into bayonet fights, but they want to instill some aggression and get you used to fight someone else in close quarters.  The Pugil Stick fights we had were never going to turn us into master bayonet fencers, but the idea is that hand to hand still happens, and if you have done some sparring at least the idea of trying to face off against someone isn't completely alien. So maybe, when the moment comes, you won't freeze up. If you only remember one or two blocks and attack aggressively, you'll probably win a close quarters fight.
> 
> I don't know what the training is now, but I would think that there is a greater chance of meeting an enemy at uncomfortably close range when clearing houses in Falluja than any of the Cold War scenarios they were thinking of back when I was in boot camp and Reagan was President.
> 
> If nothing else, hand to hand practice is _fun,_ where as most training really isn't.


Haven't US and allied troops had a few, ahem, "opportunities" to fix bayonets in Iraq and Afghanistan?  

IIRC most of the instances a bunch of pissed-off screaming marines with knives on their guns has convinced the enemy that they'd rather be somewhere else.

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## Mike_G

> Haven't US and allied troops had a few, ahem, "opportunities" to fix bayonets in Iraq and Afghanistan?  
> 
> IIRC most of the instances a bunch of pissed-off screaming marines with knives on their guns has convinced the enemy that they'd rather be somewhere else.


That's a big part of the weapon's charm.

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## Brother Oni

> IIRC most of the instances a bunch of pissed-off screaming marines with knives on their guns has convinced the enemy that they'd rather be somewhere else.


Interestingly enough, that's that Pauly pointed out in his original post and possibly why the bayonet casualties are so low - people really don't want close up face time with an screaming enemy soldier with sharp blades on sticks, so would rather retreat than receive a bayonet charge.

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## Lapak

> Interestingly enough, that's that Pauly pointed out in his original post and possibly why the bayonet casualties are so low - people really don't want close up face time with an screaming enemy soldier with sharp blades on sticks, so would rather retreat than receive a bayonet charge.


I think about this a fair bit when thinking of situations like Little Round Top. There are a fair handful of examples where a bayonet charge broke the enemy and where that charge was ordered at least in part because ammunition and/or morale was running low. In some ways, receiving a bayonet charge could mean that you were on the verge of winning the day up to that point, but the sheer morale impact flips things around.

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## KineticDiplomat

The US, at least, pulled bayonet training from the menu back in 2010. The aggression part has largely been replaced by wrestling/brawling/dirty-knife (not sure what that is actually called, but its of the pull it and stab a dude while wrestling variety as opposed to a knife-duel variety) hybrids with different names depending on the service. 

I believe only a handful of engineer units issue bayonets out these days, mostly for engineer work. 

So it appears we have this sort of historical curve where bayonet importance (in the raw physical sense, elan not withstanding) declining in some sort of reverse logarithm graph, while training grows close to linearly before suddenly dropping to near zero.

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## Mike_G

> The US, at least, pulled bayonet training from the menu back in 2010. The aggression part has largely been replaced by wrestling/brawling/dirty-knife (not sure what that is actually called, but its of the pull it and stab a dude while wrestling variety as opposed to a knife-duel variety) hybrids with different names depending on the service. 
> 
> I believe only a handful of engineer units issue bayonets out these days, mostly for engineer work. 
> 
> So it appears we have this sort of historical curve where bayonet importance (in the raw physical sense, elan not withstanding) declining in some sort of reverse logarithm graph, while training grows close to linearly before suddenly dropping to near zero.


I wondered so I looked this up, and while the Army did drop the bayonet training, the Marines still teach it as part of MCMAP, or Marine Corps Martial Arts Program.

Because Marines, basically.

I wonder if the Army still issues them. It's useful when house clearing or meeting an enemy in the brush at bad breath range to have a knife already poised on the weapon rather than trying to transition from your rifle to a pistol or knife when the enemy is already that close. It also makes the enemy hesitate to grab the muzzle of your rifle when it has a blade on the end of it.

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## KineticDiplomat

MCMAP added that back in? Thats new (or old I guess). Wonder when?

As for the army...

Theyre still on company property books, and with the recent focus back on the Close Combat Force (theres all sorts of good stuff headed their way, for which you can thank one of McCains last major pieces of legislation which grants comparatively low cost programs to bypass traditional procurement channels via a set of rapid authorities) soldier level equipping, the MTOEs even actually have one for every rifle in infantry units.

That said, issuing them is another deal entirely.   

CQB theyre generally a liability. One of the results of updating room clearing is that barrels spend a lot of time close to your own people. Like resting over their shoulder in a stack, or inches away from them as you try to get barrels up and into the room. Adding knives to those barrels could end badly. The typical response to someone in first two feet of a door is shoot if armed, but if you dont know,  non dominant hand to the face and toss them into the room for the guy behind you to decide to shoot or not while you get out of that doorway. 

At a more personal level, the army virtually only uses carbines these days. The whole weapon is quite short, particularly when the butt gets collapsed to deal with body armor and room clearing. Like so short that if you cant blow someone off your muzzle, you are now wrestling and head butting. Add on that when you do it right, driving the gun smoothly through its arc is what creates those lethal few seconds that win or lose an entry, and anything that makes it harder, slower, or delays getting off that center mass pair on a target is frowned upon. 

That said, prevailing wisdom in the army is that trying to clear a barricaded shooter in CQB is folly, particularly after the Rangers went and proved it by failing spectacularly to do so despite their intensive training for CQB. You dont enter rooms unless you have shock and surprise on your side. If its digging out time, its time to employ firepower.

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## Vinyadan

About carbines, I remember reading an article that lamented US infantry not having sufficiently long-range weapons to efficiently answer fire when ambushed outside cities. Does any of this ring true?




> That said, prevailing wisdom in the army is that trying to clear a barricaded shooter in CQB is folly, particularly after the Rangers went and proved it by failing spectacularly to do so despite their intensive training for CQB. You dont enter rooms unless you have shock and surprise on your side. If its digging out time, its time to employ firepower.


Does this refer to a particular episode with the Rangers?

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## fusilier

> Interestingly enough, that's that Pauly pointed out in his original post and possibly why the bayonet casualties are so low - people really don't want close up face time with an screaming enemy soldier with sharp blades on sticks, so would rather retreat than receive a bayonet charge.


The general understanding seems to be that this was the case.  Bayonet charges rarely resulted in hand-to-hand combat -- usually one side would lose their nerve, and either the defenders would flee, or the attackers would hold up short, and then both sides would exchange fire at close range, until one side retired.  

Various stratagems were used to try to prevent the attackers from stopping: having them charge with unloaded muskets, to discourage them from stopping to shoot, was relatively common.  Using a deep formation was another; those in the rear, screened from whatever chaos was taking place in the front, would keep pushing those in front forward.  I'm not sure how well either of those worked, but they were tried.  

There's an old tabletop Civil War wargame I used to play, one of these games based on charts derived from statistics of actual events.  It was very difficult to get two regiments to engage each other in hand-to-hand.  When it did happen, the outcome was hard to predict, and often times entire units were just wiped out.  I don't think it was simulating how deadly hand-to-hand combat was, but that it tended to *shatter* those units that participated.  Many soldiers surrendered/were captured in hand-to-hand, others fled individually from the combat.  The loser would be so disorganized/scattered, that they would effectively cease to be an effective fighting force for the rest of the battle (and even the winner could find itself in a bad way), even if the total casualties were relatively low.

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## Gnoman

> About carbines, I remember reading an article that lamented US infantry not having sufficiently long-range weapons to efficiently answer fire when ambushed outside cities. Does any of this ring true?


There's a lot of garbage articles on stuff like that out there. An M4 is capable out to 500 meters, which is pretty much the limit of what is practical for hitting a person-sized target reliably anyway. The current development push is for a higher-caliber (~6.5mm) rifle with higher velocity, but htat has more to do with the proliferation of body armor.

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## fusilier

> All of the studies done about the effect of bayonet in battle have shown that very few casualties have ever been inflicted by the bayonet. The first studies I am aware of come from the Napoleonic era, so it may have been different with earlier technologies.
> My books are in another country but iirc one study of casualty reports after famous bayonet charges found the percentage of casualties by bayonet wounds was in the single digit percentages. This is in well documented situations where the common report was that the bayonet was the deciding factor. 
> 
> The bottom line take away is that the bayonet is primarily a psychological weapon. If you look like you can more confidently and more competently stick 18 inches of cold steel into your opponent than he is to you, he is more likely to run away. So while there is some combat value in training your soldiers being able to fight effectively with the bayonet, the main advantage is the morale effect (your soldiers are more likely to stay, the enemy more likely to run).


I'm not disagreeing with the conclusions, but I do want to point out that most of those studies suffer from a particular bias --

When calculating the percentage of casualties caused by "X" weapon, the studies (all that I've seen) are based on field hospital reports.  This means they do not include those *killed* outright on the battlefield (or wounded but died before reaching the hospital).  They only count those treated at a field hospital.  As a result the more deadly weapons are probably underrepresented (artillery for example).  

It could be that bayonet wounds were more deadly and therefore are underrepresented.  However, it could also be that they were *less* deadly and are actually overrepresented.  Again, I'm not disagreeing with the conclusions, just pointing out that the evidence is potentially flawed.

----------


## fusilier

> As a follow up question to that, since weve gotten on to the topic of training, does anyone know the ratio of actual skills training to other soldier stuff at various points in history? 
> 
> Within the same technological era? Since we have the bayonet in question, for instance a small professional army from the seven years war (or whenever you think is more approaches) vs the levee en masse for example?
> 
> Or out of era. Did a legionnaire practice with sword and shield daily, or was he more akin to a modern soldier who might fire far fewer rounds in a year than a shooting enthusiast?


I have seen "camp schedules" from the American Civil War.  A lot of drill, with breaks for meals.  However, while they follow a particular pattern, they weren't necessarily standardized, and sometimes drill periods were set-aside for officers and NCO's -- many of them were also totally green -- so the schedules don't necessarily reflect what would be typical for a peacetime army.  I even looked in my copy of the 1861 US Army regulations, and didn't see any "standard" drill schedule.  I'll let you know if I dig anything up.

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## Mike_G

> MCMAP added that back in? Thats new (or old I guess). Wonder when?


Yeah, not a clue. I've been out for a long time. I just googled "does the Marine Corps still teach bayonet fighting" and that's what came up.

I think it has some value, but more like "spend a day on it in Boot camp and maybe play with it from time to time in an infantry unit" rather than extensive training like you do with rifles and with small unit tactics





> As for the army...
> 
> Theyre still on company property books, and with the recent focus back on the Close Combat Force (theres all sorts of good stuff headed their way, for which you can thank one of McCains last major pieces of legislation which grants comparatively low cost programs to bypass traditional procurement channels via a set of rapid authorities) soldier level equipping, the MTOEs even actually have one for every rifle in infantry units.
> 
> That said, issuing them is another deal entirely.   
> 
> CQB theyre generally a liability. One of the results of updating room clearing is that barrels spend a lot of time close to your own people. Like resting over their shoulder in a stack, or inches away from them as you try to get barrels up and into the room. Adding knives to those barrels could end badly. The typical response to someone in first two feet of a door is shoot if armed, but if you dont know,  non dominant hand to the face and toss them into the room for the guy behind you to decide to shoot or not while you get out of that doorway. 
> 
> At a more personal level, the army virtually only uses carbines these days. The whole weapon is quite short, particularly when the butt gets collapsed to deal with body armor and room clearing. Like so short that if you cant blow someone off your muzzle, you are now wrestling and head butting. Add on that when you do it right, driving the gun smoothly through its arc is what creates those lethal few seconds that win or lose an entry, and anything that makes it harder, slower, or delays getting off that center mass pair on a target is frowned upon. 
> ...


I'm a big fan of the old fragmentation grenade for clearing buildings, but sometimes that's not an option.

I make no claim to knowledge of any doctrine after 1990. I'm confident that the military that did urban fighting in Iraq probably knows better than I do.

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## Martin Greywolf

> At a more personal level, the army virtually only uses carbines these days. The whole weapon is quite short, particularly when the butt gets collapsed to deal with body armor and room clearing


A short weapon with bayonet isn't necessarily bad because of it's shortness in this day and age - your enemies are no longer likely to be armed with sabers or charging you on horseback, so you only need enough length to make it more effective than a knife. Which it is. All of the other problems, however, still apply.

*Bayonet charges being psychological weapons*

They really aren't. It's a misconception born out of some eearly attempts to apply maths to warfare without really understanding the nuances of the situation. There are several problems with the claim, so let's pick them apart one by one.

*Two components, not one*

This is what everyone tends to forget the most. We aren't talking about bayonets here, we're talking about bayonet charges, and charges inherently do have a psychological effect. But that doesn't mean bayonets do, and that is an important distinction. Because most of the charges people cite when they talk about bayonets being a psychological weapon would end up exactly the same if the charging force was armed with anything else, be it broadsword, daneaxe or half a brick in a sock.

*Factors of a rout*

Your morale breaks, you run. Simple. But the reason that morale breaks are several: preexisting conditions (well rested, good food), perception of battle, trust in leadership, training and expectation. And the expectation is key here, if you are going into the battle with the expectation of fighting in a melee (like a medieval spearman or renaissance pikeman), enemy closing in won't do much on its own, some other factor will need to be there.

But, if your expectation is to take potshots at the enemy, then you're in trouble if they close, and it really doesn't matter what era this happens in - we have several cases in medieval battles of archers holding fast against charging infantry and driving them back, as well as many cases of archers routing once engaged - and this most likely depended on whether these archers were armored yeomen expecting to fight it out, or poorly equipped.

This isn't really limited to range vs melee either, since anything unexpected happening can break morale - sudden artillery barrage when you weren't expecting any, enemy cavalry appearing where you don't expect them and so forth.

And evidence we have supports this, Sikh rebellions saw the native troops on both sides having little trouble fighting in melee, even against bayonet charges, and you see this over and over all over Africa and middle east.

*Ranged and melee destruction*

In a battle your goal is rarely to kill them all, killing people is just a way to make claiming your objectives easier. A dead soldier is as good as one incapacitated for a month in most conflicts - until we come to WW1 and a battle can last for more than a year. The best way strategically to get rid of enemy soldiers is actually to capture them, at least in times without international agreements on POWs, because then you can put them to work for you.

Problem is, ranged weapons don't really give you a non-lethal option, and they don't give the enemy an opportunity to surrender. Melee weapons, on the other hand, do both. It's also easier to not rout under ranged fire, since you're standing among frineds with no enemy close, and that's what monkey brain likes - but that doesn't mean bayonets are psychological weapons, if anything, any melee weapon has a greater psychological impact when compared to ranged combat.

But even that is questionable - what is the psychological impact of closing into melee vs the psychological impact of a unit of dragoons (or maybe just skrimishers) closing quickly and unloading a bunch of carbines and pistols into you at a point blank range? I don't know, because I've never seen a study that delved into this.

*Bayonets as weapons*

If you start looking at eyewitness accounts of bayonets being actually used as weapons when fighting someone, they seem to be... just a weapon? Without any psychological component to them, and with some disadvantages that come from trying to cosplay as a spear when you are a rifle.

*Spoiler: Lt. Hugo James, 44th Bengal Infantry, A Volunteers Scramble, 1854*
Show

But when they [Sikhs] did use the bayonet, the foe received a cut over his head and a prog in the stomach at the same moment.


*Spoiler: Lt. Gen. Sir W. Napier, Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier, 1857*
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As Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Napier observed during the Sind War in 1843, more men fall by the sword and the bayonet than I ever expected to see in modern warfare, where fire is all in all


*Spoiler: Military Reminiscences, 1830*
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Lieutenant Bryant, a very powerful man, first saved the life of ODonnell,who had snapped his pistol [misfired] at the leader of the Arabs, and was about to be cut down by him, when Bryant put him to death, and then attacking their colour bearer, cut him down also and seized their standard. Amongst other feats, having broken his sword on some Arabs skull, he seized a musket and bayonet; and so dexterous was he with this newweapon that he frequently put the bayonet through one man and knocked a second down with the butt end. Seeing a leader mounted on a beautiful mare, he immediately singled him out for his prey, and running him through the body, seized the mare by the bridle and bore her off in triumph.


*Spoiler: Viscountess Combermere & Capt. W. W. Knollys, Memoirs and Correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Combermere, 1866*
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Major Hunter put up his scabbard as a guard; but such was the stoutness of arm of the gallant Jat, so great the sharpness of his sword, that the scabbard was cut through as if it had been paper, and Major Hunters left arm nearly severed. Our men then rushed on Khoosial Singh, who fell pierced with innumerable bayonet wounds.


*Spoiler: Single Combat With The Sikhs, Colonial Times, Aug. 28, 1849*
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Just then, I heard the discharge of several muskets; there was a desperate struggle for a moment; and the Sikhs were quickly overpowered by the strong detachment which I had accompanied to the trenches, and who were most fortunately brought back by the report of firearms. In a few moments, every Sikh was struggling on his back, pinned to the ground by our mens bayonets.


*Spoiler: Rifle Clubs and Volunteer Corps, 1859*
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 I have seen many instances of desperation on the part of sepoys who defended themselves with firelock and bayonet or sword with such success that it required the efforts of three or four troopers to dispose of them.


*Spoiler: Charles Ball, History of the Indian Mutiny, 1858*
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After the blow, I had my turn and gave my friend one across the head, which did not cut him down to the shoulder as I had imaginedthe skull being a very tough article. At the same moment, one of our men bayoneted this fellow; and [Captain] Daly cut him down too. As I got my cheek cut, I felt a cut just below my hip. The man who did it was instantly bayoneted, and a moment afterwards a third fellow rushed at mea rather short little scoundrel. He made a vicious cut at my head too; but, being much taller, I easily guarded it; and as I stepped a little forward after this blow, I had full time to raise myself, arm, and sword to their full stretch. My sword caught him a fearful gash at the back of the neck and down across the shoulder, and he fell on his face to rise no more; for a dozen bayonets were stuck into him in a moment. At this instant a number of Her Majestys 60th Rifles came up, and the enemy were all shot down or bayoneted. After this I fainted from the profuse bleeding of an artery which was cut in my face, and remember no more till I was picked up and carried back to camp.


*Spoiler: Lady MacGregor, Life and Opinions of Major General Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor, 1888*
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I went at one fellow with my sword, and the two men went at the others with their bayonets. Well, they soon polished off their two; but I couldnt manage my chap so soon, as he was, like most of these natives, a pretty tolerable swordsman.


*Spoiler: Mutiny Memoirs, 1892*
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To resume: A few minutes afterwards, another adventure of a touch and go nature befell me. In a mêlée, a brother officer had singled out a rebel foot soldier and was hotly striving to cut him down; but his antagonist, with bayonet fixed, kept him at bay, and had just brought his musket to his shoulder to fire, when most luckily in the very nick of time I saw what was going on and charged the Pandy, who, disconcerted by the sudden attack, hurriedly attempted to shift his aim onto me, but ineffectually. As he pulled the trigger, his bullet sped harmlessly past my face; while I brought the edge of my sword down on his skull with such good will that it clave in two, and he fell dead.


One thing I noticed when reading through these is that, if the enemy was surrendering to a bayonet charge, it usually happened in a situation where morale was so low many others have surrendered or fled without any fighting at all. 

And then there's this gem that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, but is an account of a... creative use of bayonets.

*Spoiler: Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny, 1893*
Show

In addition to their muskets, all the men [insurgents] in the Secundrabâgh were armed with swords; and the native tulwars were as sharp as razors. When they had fired their muskets, they hurled them amongst us like javelins, bayonets first, and then drawing their tulwars, rushed madly on to their destruction, slashing in blind fury with their swords. As they rushed on us, they actually threw themselves under the bayonets and slashed at our legs. It was owing to this fact that more than half of our wounded were injured by sword cuts.

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## Max_Killjoy

Maybe melee weapons, including the bayonet, gain more psychological effect as they become more rare?

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## Mike_G

> Maybe melee weapons, including the bayonet, gain more psychological effect as they become more rare?


I think that ties into the "expectation" thing that Martin mentioned.

These days, soldiers expect to be in contact with their team or squad, taking cover and firing at an enemy who is a nice comfortable distance away. When that enemy is no longer a figure on the horizon, but a screaming madman who jumps into your fighting hole trying to stab you, that's not what you signed up for.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: Mike and hand grenades. As much as people wanted to disagree and do the SWAT thing, that became the prevailing wisdom (just not in frame construction buildings youre in at the same time) - to the point where it got upped, and squads going into serious urban fights usually packed a SMAW or two as the squad leaders Sunday punch if someone really wanted to fight from a building. 

Re: range issues and carbines. This became a bit of half logic out of Afghanistan primarily - particularly the eastern mountains. Firefights would often be across a mountain valley or at ranges where any modern assault rifle would struggle, converted M14s and sniper rifles being the only real rifles in the inventory that had the reach. To handle this most patrols would pack extra machineguns in lieu of SAWs, and company 60mms were converted to platoon weapons. OPs armed with TOW missiles and Javelins were another popular answer to the range problem, what with there not being any tanks to shoot...

Which should make it pretty clear that the issue wasnt one the difference between a carbine and small caliber assault rifle was going to cover. There was at the time a thought-faction that marksmanship had become a lost art (marginally true) along with big war soldier skills (at the time very true) which naturally allied with the idea that the movement to carbines rather than rifles was just one more sign of the decline. You can imagine they were quite vocal about the range issue, despite it largely being one that was not really addressable by rifles or individual marksmanship. 

Re: Rangers. 2003 saw several raids where the mix of SWAT style clearing and heavy resistance didnt end well. The most public one was actually special operating forces, but it demonstrates a trend the Rangers often encountered - the units sent to kill/capture Uday and Qusay entered the building to find its handful of defenders had barricaded themselves in good firing positions on the second floor, dominating the entrances and stairwells. The SOF had gone in with eight men expecting to do a fairly standard raid, and lost four of them very quickly. Cue a 4 hour firefight and pummeling the building with helicopter launched missiles before round two, which basically saw a walk over except for one shell shocked survivor who had the poor judgment to try to resist further and dies quickly.

Anyhow, that raid and other less public incidents caused most people to figure that if even the guys who trained this religiously like a pro sports team couldnt force a position, normal troops were best off answering that sort of situation with firepower.

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## Mike_G

> Re: Mike and hand grenades. As much as people wanted to disagree and do the SWAT thing, that became the prevailing wisdom (just not in frame construction buildings youre in at the same time) - to the point where it got upped, and squads going into serious urban fights usually packed a SMAW or two as the squad leaders Sunday punch if someone really wanted to fight from a building.


This really is a case of "nothing really changes." This is how they fought in Stalingrad and Seoul and Hue. 

I love me some hand grenades. Yes, they have limitations, but all weapons have limitations. When the situation is right, they're amazing.





> Re: range issues and carbines. This became a bit of half logic out of Afghanistan primarily - particularly the eastern mountains. Firefights would often be across a mountain valley or at ranges where any modern assault rifle would struggle, converted M14s and sniper rifles being the only real rifles in the inventory that had the reach. To handle this most patrols would pack extra machineguns in lieu of SAWs, and company 60mms were converted to platoon weapons. OPs armed with TOW missiles and Javelins were another popular answer to the range problem, what with there not being any tanks to shoot...
> 
> Which should make it pretty clear that the issue wasnt one the difference between a carbine and small caliber assault rifle was going to cover. There was at the time a thought-faction that marksmanship had become a lost art (marginally true) along with big war soldier skills (at the time very true) which naturally allied with the idea that the movement to carbines rather than rifles was just one more sign of the decline. You can imagine they were quite vocal about the range issue, despite it largely being one that was not really addressable by rifles or individual marksmanship.


I would think that with advanced optic becoming more common, like almost universal over the past decade, marksmanship would improve. 

That said, low hit percentage has been a complaint since forever. And the Old Guard will always hate on the new weapons. I like the M -14, and I learned on the M-16A2, which is a decent enough rifle. But once you have troops in vehicles so much of the time, and for urban combat, I can see that the nice, compact M-4 would be a very effective choice. And it's not _that_ short, really, that it's going to lose much range or accuracy. It's not like the difference between an M-1 Garand and an M-1 carbine.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Maybe melee weapons, including the bayonet, gain more psychological effect as they become more rare?


Sort of, but it also depends on who you are. Speaking of modern world, someone from SWAT or GIGN is going to be a lot more comfortable in melee ranges than your average WW2 soldier, even without accounting for training. Basically, anyone who expects close up fight is going to be better at it that someone who doesn't.

Historically, you get a sort of ebb and flow of these issues, with colonial era being interesting in that the soldiers were drilled and trained for European style wars, and then had to go to fight in Indian jungles against a completely different kind of opponent. Or your standard regiment met someone who had a tradition of melee fighting a la the Highlanders. According to Kinsley, British started to put more emphasis on bayonet training in 1850s, but that is basically the doorstep of the WW1, so we had little time to see if or how it paid off.




> I think that ties into the "expectation" thing that Martin mentioned.
> 
> These days, soldiers expect to be in contact with their team or squad, taking cover and firing at an enemy who is a nice comfortable distance away. When that enemy is no longer a figure on the horizon, but a screaming madman who jumps into your fighting hole trying to stab you, that's not what you signed up for.


Although these days, it starts to be, what with extensive training in CQC we are seeing in various militaries - it's just that you have carbines and grenades instead of swords and flintlock pistols. The soldiers are also, for the most part, volunteers and part of an army with training so extensive it almost reaches the knightly levels, although there is a lot more things to train them in - your average knight doesn't have to worry about learning how to operate five different radios.

On a flintlock-related note, Forgotten Weapons recently put up a video on a waterproofed hunting rifle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK4wSNhdSxU

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## thereaper

How do kite shields stand up (or not) against serpentine-powder handgonnes of the 14th century? I can't find any sources on this.

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## neceros

How often did people actually use a short sword?

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## Brother Oni

> How often did people actually use a short sword?


You'll need to be more specific on the period you're interested in. For example, post Marian reforms, every Roman legionary was equipped with a gladius, which is classed as a short sword.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: optics. Yes, the ACOG in particular has done wonders for turning low to mid grade shooters into better shooters - the issue comes at 250m+ where fundamentals still have an outsized effect; you just cant better at follow-through/squeeze without conditioning the shooter. During the GWOT years, the sudden call to learn lots of new skills combined with the long term desire not to burn out formations in training when youd need them for another tour a year from now often meant marksmanship was abbreviated to qualification, or perhaps a few days until an infantryman could shoot expert one time. There has been a return to spending more time on it these days, but it was not an entirely untrue complaint back in the years of big commitments. It didnt help that sudden scaling of the force meant a lot of the junior and mid grade NCOs were accelerated into position - in many cases they absolutely deserved their positions and performed well, but a guy whos been shooting for seven years tends to know more about it than a guy whos been shooting for three on an abbreviated program. 

In interesting technical news, the prototypes for a fire control system on the new infantry rifle all include not just the scope, but a LRF and the ability to shift the reticle in scope to adjust for the range. 


Re: knights and training. This kind of harkens to the heart of my earlier question. Just how much did that knight train, within the understandable variance? For comparison, a good CQB training path includes 1-2 weeks of just shooting and other personal skills, followed by 3-4 weeks of escalating unit sized shoot houses and scenarios. The preponderance of the time and resourcing is spent on the unit (even if its just a fire team) rather than the individual skill. How that stacks against a knight, a legionnaire, a redcoat, thats the interesting bit of the question...

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## Clistenes

> How do kite shields stand up (or not) against serpentine-powder handgonnes of the 14th century? I can't find any sources on this.


I don't think kite shields ever faced handgonnes... they went out of fashion before gunpowder reached Europe. 

But I don't think they would have been useful at all... for what I have read and heard, kite shields were made with flexible, lightweight materials (Roman legionnaire shields were three times heavier or more...) and a handgonne ball would probably have punched through it.

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## thereaper

> I don't think kite shields ever faced handgonnes... they went out of fashion before gunpowder reached Europe. 
> 
> But I don't think they would have been useful at all... for what I have read and heard, kite shields were made with flexible, lightweight materials (Roman legionnaire shields were three times heavier or more...) and a handgonne ball would probably have punched through it.


It went out of fashion with men-at-arms (they usually went with heater shields or nothing at all), but not with normal soldiers. I've seen illustrations from the 14th century where they're shown (such as this one: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yb5J0NUtKl...shields_40.jpg). Matt Easton has also confirmed they "never really went away".

I wouldn't be surprised if one could send a lead ball through a shield, but I'm curious how much energy it would have after doing so (whether it would still be lethal to a common soldier).

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## Pauly

Shields generally arent designed to prevent punch through, with the exception of pavises. They are much lighter than most modern people suppose.
The Sheer amount of material to cut through blocks cuts. Thrusts are protected against by diverting the thrust away. Obviously Im casting a very wide net and there will be plenty of examples do things differently, one obvious exception being the jousting shield..

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## eru001

> It went out of fashion with men-at-arms (they usually went with heater shields or nothing at all), but not with normal soldiers. I've seen illustrations from the 14th century where they're shown (such as this one: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yb5J0NUtKl...shields_40.jpg). Matt Easton has also confirmed they "never really went away".
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if one could send a lead ball through a shield, but I'm curious how much energy it would have after doing so (whether it would still be lethal to a common soldier).


So it is difficult to create a hard and fast rule for "what will safe you from a bullet"

Stopping/deflecting a bullet is a complex mathematical equation in which, type of material, angle of impact, thickness of material, distance of travel from shooter, weight to bullet, quantity of powder behind bullet, shape of bullet, quality of powder behind bullet, amount of give in the impact area, exact weather conditions, and several other factors are all variables. 

Historically, bullets have been stopped or deflected by a significant number of improbable things, and have and have at times failed to be stopped by things designed to stop them. It's less a question of exactly what "Will" stop a bullet and more a question of what improves your odds and how lucky you are at any given point. 

Suffice to say. A foot soldier with a shield between him and the bullet has a better chance than one that does not, but without having information on quite a few more variables than just the presence or non presence of a shield, it would be impossible to comment on to what degree. 

It is entirely possible that say, a foot soldier wearing a cheap munition's breastplate, which would not on its own stop a bullet, might survive if the bullet first hit his shield, expended energy going through it, and then impacted his armor at a less than ideal angle. It is also entirely reasonable to say that it wouldn't make enough of a difference.

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## Clistenes

> It went out of fashion with men-at-arms (they usually went with heater shields or nothing at all), but not with normal soldiers. I've seen illustrations from the 14th century where they're shown (such as this one: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yb5J0NUtKl...shields_40.jpg). Matt Easton has also confirmed they "never really went away".
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if one could send a lead ball through a shield, but I'm curious how much energy it would have after doing so (whether it would still be lethal to a common soldier).


I dunno... that shield is the type with a flat upper side, not a tear-shaped one... at what point does a shield stop being a kite shield and becomes a heather shield...?

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## fusilier

> Maybe melee weapons, including the bayonet, gain more psychological effect as they become more rare?


They may have had more of a psychological effect among different groups at different times.  I heard that during WW2, Germans would get nervous if they saw *Americans* fixing bayonets, because Americans did so very, very rarely at that time, it was a signal they meant serious business.

Americans generally seem to have been less likely to fix bayonets than their European counterparts throughout history.  During the American Civil War, if you saw the enemy approaching with fixed bayonets, you knew they at least *intended* to charge, rather than simply advancing to exchange close range volleys (intentions didn't always carry through, of course).  At the same time, European infantry would have entered battle with bayonets fixed.

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## VoxRationis

How does the seating arrangement in a modern tank (say, an Abrams) work? Are some of the crew members rotating as the turret traverses?

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## Brother Oni

> How does the seating arrangement in a modern tank (say, an Abrams) work? Are some of the crew members rotating as the turret traverses?


For most modern MBTs, all the crew except for the driver are in sort of a hanging basket attached to the turret, so they rotate with the turret.

For the Challenger 2, the driver is lying almost prone in front of the tank:

*Spoiler: Challey II Seating arrangement*
Show




The Abrams is much the same, but I believe the driver isn't as prone.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Re: knights and training. This kind of harkens to the heart of my earlier question. Just how much did that knight train, within the understandable variance? For comparison, a good CQB training path includes 1-2 weeks of just shooting and other personal skills, followed by 3-4 weeks of escalating unit sized shoot houses and scenarios. The preponderance of the time and resourcing is spent on the unit (even if its just a fire team) rather than the individual skill. How that stacks against a knight, a legionnaire, a redcoat, thats the interesting bit of the question...


If you have someone like Fiore, or a member of a fencing guild that makes a living teaching fighting, they train several hours each day, with some exceptions when travelling or some such, for theit entire lives.

A more standard knight or noble, who spends a lot of time on politicking, administrative duties and so on will probably clock in at something like an hour a day? It really depends on circumstances, if he's travelling as part of king's retinue, it may be that little or even less, if he's assigned to a castle it will probably be more. A lot of this training will be hunting or mock unofficial tournaments and melees - problem is, no one recorded what they looked like, exactly, so we have very little data to go on.

Our best guess is "less that Fiore or Lichtenauer".

As for how long, well, their entire lives. They start at ~15 and never really stop, but the training is less intensive than modern courses. Many knights elected to travel around Europe for a year or a few to learn from foreign (not only) fighting styles, if they had the funds and the time.

I think it's fair to say a knight would be, at a minimum, at a level of an amateur boxer who takes his hobby pretty seriously.




> It went out of fashion with men-at-arms (they usually went with heater shields or nothing at all), but not with normal soldiers. I've seen illustrations from the 14th century where they're shown (such as this one: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yb5J0NUtKl...shields_40.jpg). Matt Easton has also confirmed they "never really went away".


You do see them as long as you see shields, but they also become far, far less common after ~1300 AD, and disappear from some roles entirely.




> Shields generally arent designed to prevent punch through, with the exception of pavises. They are much lighter than most modern people suppose.
> The Sheer amount of material to cut through blocks cuts. Thrusts are protected against by diverting the thrust away. Obviously Im casting a very wide net and there will be plenty of examples do things differently, one obvious exception being the jousting shield..


There are different types of shields within the same shape, meant to do different things. Even looking at viking round shields, some of them are very light and thin, others are much thicker. Some shields aren't meant to absorb ranged shots from front, others very much are. After all, a high poundage warbow can shoot clean through a standard kite shield and your mailed hand behind it. Let's also not forget that the above doesn't apply to large shields like kite and Roman, whose arguably main purpose was stopping missiles.

Pavaises also have handheld forms, some can be carried and others can't, pavaise is more about the shape of the shield, rather than the purpose for which it is made. As it is with all shield terminology, actually.

Then there were gun shields which were shields with integrated gun - they didn't work in practice because they were too heavy to use the gun properly with one hand.

And then there's this German 16th century bullet proof shield, complete with proofing mark and a hole from a bullet that almost made it through.

*Spoiler: Front and back views*
Show





So, you can make a shield bulletproof against black powder weapons, especially inefficient black powder weapons. Or even against modern weapons.

But there will be drawbacks in cost (hardened steel instead of mild) or weight that you can't really avoid, and the latter especially limits how big you can make them while still being practical. And no matter what you do, a cannonball will kill you dead, shield or no shield. In general, it seems that once gunpowder weapons got popular, the preferred solution wasn't to get shields that were bulletproof, but rather to get more guys with firearms - which is reasonable once you realize that a shield can't cover all of you and repeated impacts are a problem.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: tanks.

There are two basic configurations, and one that is prototyping.

The one it sound like youre interested in is the standard 4 man crew, common to western MBTs. 

They run a driver separate in the hull, laying down in either a seat, or in most modern conversions, a blast hammock to improve survivability. While doing this the driver is reliant on his vision blocks (or, in a few cases, digital cameras feeding screens). For night time, he slots in appropriate thermals/light enhancement to the block. All of this comes at a price in overall awareness.

For easier driving, the driver can crank his seat up and drive with his head out of the hatch - not a great idea if contact is possible, but it certainly makes life easier and saves crew fatigue (the commander and loader dont have to feed the driver awareness). Most modern tanks wont allow you to traverse the turret in this configuration to avoid ripping his head off. They do have a commanders override though...

The turret is a three man set up, with the the center being dominated by the breach of the gun. Its actually mostly open space until recoil, at which point it will shatter the bones of anyone caught in that space. Safety gates can be set up, and indeed will be in any live training event -informally, combat decisions may vary. 

The loader has a seat that does double duty as a standing point for when he is riding out of the hatch. He has a comparatively spacious side of the tank to himself, framed by the radios (he doubles as the RTO for the vehicle beyond the pre-set channels everyone can toggle) and the ready rack storage doors behind him. When actually loading the gun he almost always just stands up on the floor of the turret to do it for better position, then gets back out of the way of the breech. 

Standing, the loader is behind a machine gun on his side of the turret (and famously needs to remember not to shoot the barrel by mistake) covering his side of the tank and taking over junior TC duties. It is not uncommon for junior NCOs being groomed for the TC position to spend a lot of time in the loader position even though its actually manned by a very new soldier. He learns to direct the driver, manipulate the radio, and get a feel for whats happening outside the tank. He is also way less likely to direct the driver into a ditch while the TC looks at a map, a screen, etc. Extra officers (an A/S3 for instance) may also grab the loader slot if moving with the tank, as it gives them radios and visibility while not demanding much technical proficiency.

Then we go to the other side of the turret. The tank commander has a seat/standing stool mix that allows him to either stand out of the turret for visibility and to man the commanders machine gun (older and the newest models can/must operate from inside) 

When he drops down, hell have an array of control panels on the turret wall, as well as any additional computers the tank is carrying, a master control handle for the gun (or independent viewer), and an optics extension to let him look through the sights. He is staggered with the gunner, so sitting down will put the gunners head between his legs. Comedy ensues. Sat down he is reliant on vision blocks and optics, so many TCs prefer to leave the hatch in at least open-protected unless they absolutely have to button up completely.

And the we come to the poor cramped gunner. He is on line with the TC seat but lower, the breech to his side and a diverse array of fire control computers, screens, and switches for gun options on the turret wall to his front and side, and of course the primary optic extension, back up sight, coax mount, and hand cranks for the turret. Easily the most cramped position on the tank, and no standing up - the sight doubles as a convenient brow rest for napping. 

As a final caveat, by spinning the turret on some tanks, you can open a narrow access between the turret and the driver. Theoretically for pulling the driver out when evacuation by his hatch is impractical, its say to day use is allowing the turret crew to poke the driver with a stick if he falls asleep or his commo helmet disconnects without him noticing.

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## Martin Greywolf

Since the topic of ancient steam power keeps cropping up here every so often, here's a useful video done on development of naval steam engines. If nothing else, it showcases why doing this is Not Easy and why having a steam engine doesn't mean it's suited for uses on warships.

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## fusilier

> Since the topic of ancient steam power keeps cropping up here every so often, here's a useful video done on development of naval steam engines. If nothing else, it showcases why doing this is Not Easy and why having a steam engine doesn't mean it's suited for uses on warships.


That video is a very nice overview of the development of marine engines (from roughly 1800-1950).  Thank you for sharing.

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## Tacticslion

Awkwardly copying and pasting this whole thing, since I was informed that it should probably go in this thread, rather than the thread that I started for it. Sorry!

So, I've asked several other places, and figure I might as well ask here. I'm putting this thread here because, though I'm hoping to use some of the ideas in games, it's not really for any given system, and applies more broadly to history in general. 

So, my fellow history nerds, I'm looking for nautical quasi-experts to yammer at me so that I get an idea for boats able to be crafted with Hellenic skills c. 600 to 500 BC - obviously triremes, of course, but I'm specifically asking, "What is a boat (including triremes) that could have conceivably been used at the time, possibly even in war, even though it wasn't?" For example, why didn't they build ships akin to longships? It seems obvious that longships wouldn't do well in direct combat with triremes (as the latter could simply crush the former from sheer weight), but were they in use in the Mediterranean at all c. 550? If not, why not? Similarly, what were the far eastern peoples (most specifically those of India and China - though I beleeeiiiiiiiive India was still being slowly consolidated and the Zhou dynasty was pretty firmly eastern China)? 

Basically, I'm asking about possible methods of nautical revolution, if it's even possible, under those conditions and if, when, and how such a thing might happen. 

I'm pretty excited to see any feedback folks have, because navel history is nooooooot my forte, and it really is a fascinating subject. Any links that can be provided are, of course, welcome. 

Also, it's a given that people of the ancient world were very intelligent (and certainly knew more about the subject than I do!); but different peoples had differing ships and different designs and uses and similar all at the same time period, so I'm curious why some developed in one place and not others. The triremes, for example, were uniquely Mediterranean, while the ancient Chinese and Indians had their own thing going on, to say nothing of the ancient South Sea and Pacific peoples. While a longship wouldn't fare well against a trireme, would it fare well against a the Mediterranean lembos or even the hemiolia and how do those differ (if they do)? I'm not even sure how the lembos or hemiolia were used (if they were) in combat when the triremes were on the field, simply because the triremes were so incredibly massive with literal armies aboard each it's hard to even think about comparisons. 

Anyway, thanks! :D

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## Tacticslion

I was previously on talk-type, and this is an after-the-fact clean up, so apologies for any oddities from auto correct and things missed by me! 

I also felt like I should clarify that in addition to just general seaworthiness and boat making stuff across-the-board, Im also curious about how combat tactics in general might interact with each other from other local seafaring cultures. The primary interaction for triremes was to hit the other ship real hard and hope that was enough, and if not, your men went and stab their men. I would tend to expect this is the general method of naval combat, also adding archers at times, or something, but, again, I am really not familiar with naval warfare in this time period. 

Edit: Talk-type is often not my friend. XD

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## VoxRationis

You seem to have a very high estimation of the size and mass of a trireme. They wouldn't have "literal armies" on them; a crew of 170 rowers was used for the reconstruction _Olympias_, and having a complement of marines even close to that would, if it didn't capsize the ship, probably immobilize it. You might be thinking of some of the larger polyremes.

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## Khedrac

> boats able to be crafted with Hellenic skills c. 600 to 500 BC


I believe the Egyptians were constructing large reed-boats prior to this time, even if the techniques hadn't made it over to Greece.  Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions showed that they could have worked quite well with a few caveats:
1. Cut the reeds in August or they will float under the water not on it.
2. "Large" here probably equals up to 10 crew with room for a cargo or more men.
3.  Although sails will provide some control, the boat will be very much at the mercy of ocean currents.

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## Pauly

The design of a ship is heavily dependent on where it is designed to go.

In a shallow enclosed sea, such as the med, broad shallow designs work. In rough oceans deeper narrower designs work.

Harbor facilities are also important. Does the ship have to be beached to load/unload? Are there deep water docks readily available?

Navigation is another important consideration. In the Odyssey Odysseus spends 10 years mucking about in the Western Med before finding his way hime. Polynesians were able to conquer the Pacific in outrigger canoes and a bit of nouse.

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## DavidSh

To be fair to Odysseus, seven of those ten years he spent with Calypso.

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## Martin Greywolf

> "What is a boat (including triremes) that could have conceivably been used at the time, possibly even in war, even though it wasn't?"


The answer is, almost none. All kinds of ships were used in the Med at this time, and about the only exceptions to this are ocean-sailing ships. These could be constructed, concievably, and weren't because there wasn't much incentive to do so. Much of the age of sail has been inspired by colonial expansion, and ancient and medieval kingdoms in the area didn't have the desire to expand in this way, for a host of reasons.

If you give them some reason to really try to get to Americas - in real life, it was finding trade route to India - they will develop these over time.




> For example, why didn't they build ships akin to longships? It seems obvious that longships wouldn't do well in direct combat with triremes (as the latter could simply crush the former from sheer weight), but were they in use in the Mediterranean at all c. 550? If not, why not?


Well, first problem is, what are you building them for? The scandinavian longships were meant for quick plundering raids, if you have a culture that doesn't value those all that much, they have less reason to build them.

The other reason is that, well, they did build ships that were longship-like, shields on the sides included.

*Spoiler: Illyrian Lemboi*
Show




I could write more, but I'd just be paraphrasing this link.




> Similarly, what were the far eastern peoples (most specifically those of India and China - though I beleeeiiiiiiiive India was still being slowly consolidated and the Zhou dynasty was pretty firmly eastern China)?


Usually, they did, much like Lamboi was a greek longship. Thing is, it's the Norse that are weird in that they had longships and little else, while others had longships for specialized tasks and also other, bigger warships. As for specifics of Asian ship design, remember that they don't get the advantage of having a relatively calm and easy to navigate sea like the Med, almost entirely enclosed from all the oceans.

*Spoiler: Song dynasty, warship that is basically a medieval galley, with the fore and aft castles moved to the center*
Show




*Spoiler: Pretty sure you know about these, Korean turtle ships are triremes of Asia, complete with ram in form of angry face*
Show







> Basically, I'm asking about possible methods of nautical revolution, if it's even possible, under those conditions and if, when, and how such a thing might happen.


You need some form of major upheval to status quo, that either wrecks the old ways or opens up new opportunities you have to jump on, as a nation, lest you are left behind.

The issue is that ship design is hideously expensive. I don't think there is any other object that even comes close to the cost of a warship, both in terms of designing and building it and maintenance and crew training and pay. Even castles are cheaper, because they tend to not sink or get damaged in storms much.

With that in mind, unless there is a massive payoff in resources or prestige on the horizon, no one will invest into building ships.

The one exception to this would be some kind of setting that is entirely island-based, where entire national economies would be driven to near collapse to maintain fleets, because they need them to stave off existential threats.

For comparision, when the Dutch wrecked British fleets at Medway in Second Anglo-Dutch war, the cost for the Royal Navy in terms of purchasing power was something over 6 billion pounds in modern money. Granted, yearly modern UK navy budget is 40 bil (with army getting 20, because ships are still incredibly costly), but that is still a significant chunk of it.




> Also, it's a given that people of the ancient world were very intelligent (and certainly knew more about the subject than I do!); but different peoples had differing ships and different designs and uses and similar all at the same time period, so I'm curious why some developed in one place and not others. The triremes, for example, were uniquely Mediterranean, while the ancient Chinese and Indians had their own thing going on, to say nothing of the ancient South Sea and Pacific peoples. While a longship wouldn't fare well against a trireme, would it fare well against a the Mediterranean lembos or even the hemiolia and how do those differ (if they do)? I'm not even sure how the lembos or hemiolia were used (if they were) in combat when the triremes were on the field, simply because the triremes were so incredibly massive with literal armies aboard each it's hard to even think about comparisons.


This is like asking "Explain 20th century in three sentences." The quick and dirty version is that once you ignore the mostly superficial details, you have a few distinct ship types, meant for different tasks, with different levels of seakeeping and resistance to bad weather.

Triremes specifically, and their medieval descendants, are a specific case of a large ship that carries a lot of troops and can manuevre quickly. It does that very well, but is absolutely awful at endurance of any kind, be it in rowing or in provisions. Longship is a light vessel that can move quickly, whether by oar or sail, and outpace and outturn pretty much anything, ideal for quick raids of merchant vessels or poorly defended coasts, but is awful for fighting anything in it. A merchant vessel sacrifices crew numbers and as much agility as it can to maximize cargo space and endurance.

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## VoxRationis

> Navigation is another important consideration. In the Odyssey Odysseus spends 10 years mucking about in the Western Med before finding his way hime. Polynesians were able to conquer the Pacific in outrigger canoes and a bit of nouse.





> To be fair to Odysseus, seven of those ten years he spent with Calypso.


Yeah, the ten-year Odyssey is rather like the Biblical 40 years of wandering between Egypt and the Levant. They're meant to be larger-than-life tales of deprivation, not realistic expected travel times for those journeys at any point in human history. There are lots of routes one can take between Ilium and Ithaca, and none of them should take even a month in a penteconter (in good weather). Remember that all of Odysseus' "friends" made it back home before he did to start pestering Penelope, and though they were heinous guests, their point that someone who was ten years late returning home probably wasn't ever going to return was pretty valid.




> Well, first problem is, what are you building them for? The scandinavian longships were meant for quick plundering raids, if you have a culture that doesn't value those all that much, they have less reason to build them.


And conversely, building ramming ships implies that your society is engaging in conflicts where it makes sense to sink ships in fights on the water, rather than capture them through boarding actions or simply use one's own ships to transport to the site of a land battle.


If you're looking for reading on the subject of ancient galleys, I would recommend this source; it's a series of reports on the subject of the reconstructed _Olympias_ (including some critiques and divergence of opinion; I would take Tilley's essay with a grain of salt, as he appears to have an... idiosyncratic idea of how we should interpret the numbering system), getting into the nitty-gritty of all sorts of technical details as well as analyzing historical sources.

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## Tacticslion

> You seem to have a very high estimation of the size and mass of a trireme. They wouldn't have "literal armies" on them; a crew of 170 rowers was used for the reconstruction _Olympias_, and having a complement of marines even close to that would, if it didn't capsize the ship, probably immobilize it. You might be thinking of some of the larger polyremes.


Hey! A hundred seventy dudes is a literal army... of rowers! 
I could definitely have worded that better, however! XD 

Mostly I'm just pointing out they had ludicrously large numbers of people on them (people they were dependent upon to do stuff), plus be built explicitly for ramming (and their mass is increased by that bronze ram in front). 

The larger polyremes were simply too large to use ramming maneuvers on (or, at least, they got that way: ramming the ship really wasn't the way to win a battle after the triremes), but they didn't come online until the 300s or later, if I'm not mistaken, a little beyond my 600 to 500 BC: a time period in which, again to my limited knowledge, had only the karvi, smallest versions of the longship available, with c. 16 benches, making the triremes seemingly simply significantly out-mass them without effort. Of course, I could be wrong on that - perhaps triremes were even more crowded than I realize or longships were roomier. But 170+20+6=196 (I think?) seems a heck'v'a lot more than ~32. 

I think it's 75 ft. by 11 ft. compared to 130 ft. by 20 ft. That's just shy of double in both dimensions, and I'd be unsurprised if the heavier warship, loaded with tons of dudes (highly exacting mathematical figures, here), also road deeper in the water with higher sides. 

But the fact is, I honestly don't know about how the Mediterranean ships of smaller size really functioned (heck, I don't understand how the ones of bigger size function!). Speaking of which... 




> The design of a ship is heavily dependent on where it is designed to go.
> 
> In a shallow enclosed sea, such as the med, broad shallow designs work. In rough oceans deeper narrower designs work.
> 
> Harbor facilities are also important. Does the ship have to be beached to load/unload? Are there deep water docks readily available?
> 
> Navigation is another important consideration. In the Odyssey Odysseus spends 10 years mucking about in the Western Med before finding his way hime. Polynesians were able to conquer the Pacific in outrigger canoes and a bit of nouse.


... this is more or less what I was talking about when I was asking about the comparison of, say, a lemboi to a longship. What are their comparative goals? How are they designed similarly or differently? What's the comparison? A great emphasis is often put on how great the longship design was, but is it just because they're pretty, because they last long, or is there some significant mechanical advantage they have? 

As to, 




> This is like asking "Explain 20th century in three sentences."


Hey! I said, "Yammer on at length!" I mean, it's right there! "At length!" XD 

I know that ships are built differently for differently, but that's part of what I'm asking (and even why I was asking if the longship actually compared to the lemboi in any way, which it seems they do based on your acknowledgement of them later). 

I'd be interested in going more into the stuff you posted, but alas: I have children and probably have to stop now.




> I believe the Egyptians were constructing large reed-boats prior to this time, even if the techniques hadn't made it over to Greece.  Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions showed that they could have worked quite well with a few caveats:
> 1. Cut the reeds in August or they will float under the water not on it.
> 2. "Large" here probably equals up to 10 crew with room for a cargo or more men.
> 3.  Although sails will provide some control, the boat will be very much at the mercy of ocean currents.


... okay, not really a Mediterranean ship, but still: I was informed elsewhere that the dhow, odam, and another woven ship of an unknown type were active in the middle and far easts at this time, and were all "woven" boats with no pitch, which is... something that I really don't know about. How does one craft a watertight vessel without pitch? What were they woven _from_? 

I know nothing of odams except they're an Indian woven boat of some sort (though vague picture searches might suggest they're a circular small boat? Possibly akin in size to a coracle? But I really don't know), and I was under the impression that dhow were seaworthy ships that allowed cargo transfer, which likely means good steering. (I kind of thought dhow were a later stage, but I seem to have had literally everything wrong about them so far, so...) 

Anyway. I gotta go! Later and thank you all for your responses so far!

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## fusilier

> ... this is more or less what I was talking about when I was asking about the comparison of, say, a lemboi to a longship. What are their comparative goals? How are they designed similarly or differently? What's the comparison? A great emphasis is often put on how great the longship design was, but is it just because they're pretty, because they last long, or is there some significant mechanical advantage they have?


This is definitely outside of my bailiwick, but one area I would look to would be construction techniques and what limitations those might have imposed.  My understanding is that ancient mediterranean vessels were made using a mortise and tenon technique, which involved building the hull first, then adding a frame.  Lapstrake (or clinker) construction might have been developed a little later than the period you are interested in, but I believe that's the construction technique used by viking longships.  Carvel built, where the frame was built first and then the hull built with flush planking, was a development of the middle ages.

As others have mentioned, there were different designs for different purposes.  A bulk cargo ship might have a rounder hull to efficiently carry as much cargo as possible.  A warship would be built narrow for speed.  There would be ships that lie in between, trying to balance competing goals.

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## Calthropstu

I came across an unholy abomination called a lantern shield. How the hell did someone defend against that?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Yeah, the ten-year Odyssey is rather like the Biblical 40 years of wandering between Egypt and the Levant. They're meant to be larger-than-life tales of deprivation, not realistic expected travel times for those journeys at any point in human history. There are lots of routes one can take between Ilium and Ithaca, and none of them should take even a month in a penteconter (in good weather). Remember that all of Odysseus' "friends" made it back home before he did to start pestering Penelope, and though they were heinous guests, their point that someone who was ten years late returning home probably wasn't ever going to return was pretty valid.


Let's also not forget that the whole premise of that journey is Odysseus really, really ticking off Poseidon. The sea god. The god of the seas. While planning to sail on sad seas. Seas that belong to the sea god.




> I came across an unholy abomination called a lantern shield. How the hell did someone defend against that?


Fairly easily. (links to a sparring video on YT, not mine)

While it isn't completely useless, it tries to combine a sword/dagger with a shield and a lantern, and therefore suffers the drawbacks of all three. It's significantly less agile than a sword/dagger OR a shield, it has to be strapped to your arm, if you use it to attack, you can't use it to defend and if you have a lit lantern in there, you better pray to all the gods you know the oil doesn't spill and ignite all over you.

It's preferable to a parrying dagger when facing a halberd, but pretty much anything is at that point. The best use is probably if you absolutely, positively must storm into a dark room (whether at noght or underground), then it can serve as source of light, tool for blinding opponents and keeps your off hand useful in a fight. Pretty small niche overall, but it exists.

The lantern shields were unpopular enough that you sometimes, albeit rarely, see... just... a lantern in off hand, used kinda like a shield. Making it a shielding lantern? It is used to blind people, though.

*Spoiler: Marcelli*
Show

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## Yora

Not actually a weapon, but in the same manufacturing sector:

Does anyone know when the modern pickaxe first appeared in its current shape? Those are long and thin pieces of steel that are made to endure a lot of abuse. I think this would require some pretty high quality steel, but as a digging tool also would have to be quite cheap. So I am wondering if these have been around before the industrial revolution, and what people would have used to break hard compacted dirt before.

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## AdAstra

> Not actually a weapon, but in the same manufacturing sector:
> 
> Does anyone know when the modern pickaxe first appeared in its current shape? Those are long and thin pieces of steel that are made to endure a lot of abuse. I think this would require some pretty high quality steel, but as a digging tool also would have to be quite cheap. So I am wondering if these have been around before the industrial revolution, and what people would have used to break hard compacted dirt before.


Uh, define current shape. Because people have been using points at right angles to shafts since basically forever. You can make a crude pickaxe-like tool out of an antler without much trouble, which should be sufficient for dirt. Adzes, mattocks, and hoes would also be used for manipulating dirt, being especially useful for digging out furrows for planting, clearing undergrowth, or digging out things you don't want in the dirt. All are incredibly ancient tools. Even the plow is about as old as things get, and the hand tools are older.

Simplest of all is the digging stick. Literally just a sturdy, sharpened stick, useable for most agricultural digging tasks. Still used in many places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digging_stick

People have had to dig since before we even learned to _farm_. A lot of gathered food or hunted critters lived underground, so tools to do it predate, a lot.

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## Pauly

> I came across an unholy abomination called a lantern shield. How the hell did someone defend against that?


Slightly off topic, but something like this

https://youtu.be/rXAOXa-ayKE

My, albeit limited, understanding is that shield lanterns were for the city guards apprehending criminals at night, not serious warfare.

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## Pauly

> Let's also not forget that the whole premise of that journey is Odysseus really, really ticking off Poseidon. The sea god. The god of the seas. While planning to sail on sad seas. Seas that belong to the sea god.
> 
> ][/SPOILER]


To come full circle though, the Illiad and the Odyssey use the gods to explain phenomena that the Greeks of the time didnt have the science to explain.
Flash floods caused by distant rain in the catchment head of a river? - The River god rose up and left it banks.
Morale failure in battle? - The opposing God came down and caused the enemy to run away.
Armor suddenly failing catastrophically because of inclusions in the metal? - A god broke the shield.
Storms at sea caused by a low pressure system moving into your local  area? You p-ed off Poseidon.
Unmarried maiden falls pregnant? Zeus is up to his shenanigans while Hera had her back turned.
You suck at Navigation and dont know how to tack against the wind? - The gods of winds and clouds conspired against you

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## Vknight

I'm been thinking about how people would apply titanium to usage on the battlefield if they had access to it.

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## Max_Killjoy

> I'm been thinking about how people would apply titanium to usage on the battlefield if they had access to it.


What time period and other technology level are we looking at?  

Titanium doesn't hold an edge, so not great for blades. 

Not very dense, so not great for impact weapons.  

I's strength per weight is good, and its corrosion resistant, so the right alloy might be good for armor.

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## Calthropstu

> What time period and other technology level are we looking at?  
> 
> Titanium doesn't hold an edge, so not great for blades. 
> 
> Not very dense, so not great for impact weapons.  
> 
> I's strength per weight is good, and its corrosion resistant, so the right alloy might be good for armor.


Good for armor? Try amazing for armor. They created a titanium breastplate. It stopped hollow point bullets at short range. But did redirect the splattered bullet upwards so you needed to protect the neck and head.

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## Martin Greywolf

Well, with modern metallurgy and plastics and non-newtonian fluids, you might get some limited use out of armor. Problem is, that low weight is actually pretty bad for making you not hurt purposes.

While a titanium helmet or cuirass may well stop penetration, the other way of hurting a guy in armor, short of stabbing him where armor is not, is blunt force. Contrary to pupular belief, and according to an often misquoted study (Fragment Hazard Criteria by Feinstein, available online for free), it isn't the kinetic energy that matters when it comes to blunt injuries, but rather momentum. Or, more precisely, a linear relationship between velocity and mass that is slanted in favor of velocity, but not to a point where it is exponential.

Long story short, if you take a projectile and take its p = m*v, then bigger p means more hurt.

However, when that projectile hits armor and does not go through, it will (in ideal circumstances) transfer all of its p to the target. If you are wearing rigid armor, like a helmet, it means it needs to move either the entire plate, or the bit of it which it deforms. Assuming former, your standard great helmet (which is Bolzano helmet replica I own) weights 5 kg (with helmet 3 kg, coif and crevelliere 2kg).

Take your average slinger, with a 100 gram anti-armor rock, slinging it at 50 m/s. This gives it a p=5 kg/m/s, which means that should it impact that helmet, it will move it, conveniently, at 1 m/s, or 3.6 km/h. This is an impact that is comparable to walking into a doorframe with the helmet on, something which, uh, I may have done in the past.

Reduce the helmet weight by half, and you get over 7 km/h speed, which is more like jogging into a doorframe with your forehead, which while not fatal, will almost assuredly knock you on your butt. Take an elite slinger that can sling at close to 100 m/s, or take a much heavier pollaxe (3 kg) moving at ~30 m/s overhand twohanded blow, and you really, really need every bit of that weight not to get a nasty hit.

That said, titanium armor would be great against arrows that have lower weight and primarily rely on penetration to do their damage.

Or you could make it titanium but thicker, but at that point, why bother? Maybe heat resistance for that dragon breath?

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## Grim Portent

You could probably use titanium for specific pieces of armour that are more likely to take a glancing hit, or almost never be hit, while using steel for helmets, pauldrons and breastplates and so on. It won't save much weight overall, but even a small reduction in weight can be desirable.

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## halfeye

> Well, with modern metallurgy and plastics and non-newtonian fluids, you might get some limited use out of armor. Problem is, that low weight is actually pretty bad for making you not hurt purposes.
> 
> While a titanium helmet or cuirass may well stop penetration, the other way of hurting a guy in armor, short of stabbing him where armor is not, is blunt force. Contrary to pupular belief, and according to an often misquoted study (Fragment Hazard Criteria by Feinstein, available online for free), it isn't the kinetic energy that matters when it comes to blunt injuries, but rather momentum. Or, more precisely, a linear relationship between velocity and mass that is slanted in favor of velocity, but not to a point where it is exponential.
> 
> Long story short, if you take a projectile and take its p = m*v, then bigger p means more hurt.
> 
> However, when that projectile hits armor and does not go through, it will (in ideal circumstances) transfer all of its p to the target. If you are wearing rigid armor, like a helmet, it means it needs to move either the entire plate, or the bit of it which it deforms. Assuming former, your standard great helmet (which is Bolzano helmet replica I own) weights 5 kg (with helmet 3 kg, coif and crevelliere 2kg).
> 
> Take your average slinger, with a 100 gram anti-armor rock, slinging it at 50 m/s. This gives it a p=5 kg/m/s, which means that should it impact that helmet, it will move it, conveniently, at 1 m/s, or 3.6 km/h. This is an impact that is comparable to walking into a doorframe with the helmet on, something which, uh, I may have done in the past.
> ...


I suspect you are oversimplifying the maths here. I am terrible at maths, so I'm not going to try to explain that, but it comes down to you can take an impact as a collision, and collisions are _known_ in physics.

There are two sorts of collisions, elastic and inelastic (not elastic). In an elastic collision, all of the energy that came into the collision as velocity leaves the collision as velocity, but that doesn't mean that it leaves with the object that it came in with, ke is maintained, but so is momentum, there are equations for both, and to solve for what happens you have to find the one solution where both equations work.

What actually works in elastic collisions is that most of the energy leaves with the lighter particle, in some function (which I don't remember) of the ratio of the two masses. This has the effect that almost all of the energy in a cartridge leaves a gun with the bullet, and the bigger the difference in mass between the gun and the bullet, the less kick there is, a lighter gun with the same cartridge will kick more (not allowing for muzzle brakes, suppressors or other complications). So, your case of the weapon bouncing off and lighter armour being worse is probably rightish, but it is not quite that simple, and you do have to know the mass of the projectile, a smaller lighter projectile with the same ke would take more of that ke away again.

Inelastic collisions are much messier, in most aspects of thinking about that.

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## Mike_G

Armor that is lighter reduces fatigue, and if it's good against points and edges, that isn't nothing. It's probably perfect for mail.

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## Max_Killjoy

> Armor that is lighter reduces fatigue, and if it's good against points and edges, that isn't nothing. It's probably perfect for mail.


I was also thinking that corrosion resistance counts for something.

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## Mike_G

> I was also thinking that corrosion resistance counts for something.


Agreed.

It might be great marine armor.

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## Calthropstu

The bullets not only failed to penetrate, they didn't even scratch or dent. This was from a 45 too. Assuming some serious padding underneath to absorb shock, or other methods for redirecting the force, you could withstand hundreds of bullets. All of this was part of an attempt to turn Iron Man from science fiction to science fact. They apparently succeeded pretty well.

Finding the best method for kinetic dispersement is definitely beyond my capabilities, but I see no reason that a full suit of "bullets can't hurt me" can't be made using titanium.

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## Brother Oni

> The bullets not only failed to penetrate, they didn't even scratch or dent. This was from a 45 too.


.45 ACP is a pistol round which any Level IIa vest can stop - that's honestly not particularly impressive. If it can stop full rifle rounds, then yeah it starts looking practical.




> Assuming some serious padding underneath to absorb shock, or other methods for redirecting the force, you could withstand hundreds of bullets. All of this was part of an attempt to turn Iron Man from science fiction to science fact. They apparently succeeded pretty well.


You mean this link? Being immune to pistol fire is fine for civilian purposes, but kinda insufficient in a military setting, especially since Iron Man flying in would probably trigger CIWS or other AA defences and they all use much bigger munitions than .45 ACP.

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## stack

> Good for armor? Try amazing for armor. They created a titanium breastplate. It stopped hollow point bullets at short range. But did redirect the splattered bullet upwards so you needed to protect the neck and head.


Important thing I note in this statement: "hollowpoint".

Hollow points are designed to deform. They are not good for penetrating a hard surface. Stopping a full metal jacket would be more impressive. Besides, pistol rounds are wide and round, relatively speaking. Less powder, shorter barrel. Much easier to stop than a rifle or intermediate cartridge. Lack of deformation on a rigid plate is impressive though.

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## Calthropstu

> .45 ACP is a pistol round which any Level IIa vest can stop - that's honestly not particularly impressive. If it can stop full rifle rounds, then yeah it starts looking practical.
> 
> 
> 
> You mean this link? Being immune to pistol fire is fine for civilian purposes, but kinda insufficient in a military setting, especially since Iron Man flying in would probably trigger CIWS or other AA defences and they all use much bigger munitions than .45 ACP.


Yes that was the link I saw. I would like to see that thing go up against some military hardware.

And, to be honest, at some point, I see no reason to even put a man in the suit. Remote control should do fine. Maybe even better.

----------


## Pauly

> I was also thinking that corrosion resistance counts for something.


I work daily with carbon steel knives. The amount of effort you need to put in to prevent corrosion is minimal. Just make sure it is clean and dry before you put it away.

It might count where the item is stuffed in the back of a damp closet for months at a time, but for stuff thats used regularly its a minimal advantage.

----------


## Mike_G

> .45 ACP is a pistol round which any Level IIa vest can stop - that's honestly not particularly impressive. If it can stop full rifle rounds, then yeah it starts looking practical.


Yes, plenty of vests can stop pistol rounds, but there was almost no deformation of the armor in the video, so clearly it wasn't tested to the limit. I'd love to see a titanium plate in a modern plate carrier tested against rifle rounds.

----------


## Pauly

> Yes, plenty of vests can stop pistol rounds, but there was almost no deformation of the armor in the video, so clearly it wasn't tested to the limit. I'd love to see a titanium plate in a modern plate carrier tested against rifle rounds.


Lack of visible deformation may not be a good thing. It might be an indicator of brittleness. Which is good if you arent getting hit by things liable to cause failure, but a very bad thing if you are getting hit by things that can cause failure.

----------


## Mike_G

> Lack of visible deformation may not be a good thing. It might be an indicator of brittleness. Which is good if you arent getting hit by things liable to cause failure, but a very bad thing if you are getting hit by things that can cause failure.


Which is all speculation until we test it to the point where either 

A) It fails

or 

B) It stops a .50 BMG round 

We know it will stop pistol rounds. We don't know it will stop rifle rounds, but that's it. We don't know it won't either.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

----------


## Pauly

> Which is all speculation until we test it to the point where either 
> 
> A) It fails
> 
> or 
> 
> B) It stops a .50 BMG round 
> 
> We know it will stop pistol rounds. We don't know it will stop rifle rounds, but that's it. We don't know it won't either.
> ...


The fact they chose to use .45 ACP hollow points (fat subsonic rounds designed to splash) when there are a wealth of better armor penetrators readily available tells you something.

----------


## Mike_G

> The fact they chose to use .45 ACP hollow points (fat subsonic rounds designed to splash) when there are a wealth of better armor penetrators readily available tells you something.


No, it doesn't

And the .45 was ball ammo. The 9 mm was one hollow point and one ball.

All this test tells us is that it will stop a .45.

This isn't the DOD evaluating a proposed item. This is the guy from Mythbusters making television.

----------


## GeoffWatson

Peasant Levies? Real or not?

We've often seen stories where soldiers would round up a group of farmers, and force them to fight with just their farm tools or basic spears.

But I've heard that this didn't really happen, and was just propaganda to convince early musket armies accept being conscripted and forced to fight with hardly any training.
Basically the peasants were far too weak, untrained, and cowardly to stand up against trained and equipped soldiers, except maybe in defence of their homes.

----------


## Grim Portent

To my understanding most medieval armies were made of paid volunteer soldiers, with varying degrees of professionalism. Levies were a thing, but generally meant the local lord was obliged to call up the locals who had the skills and equipment to be soldiers already rather than drafting every single male that could hold a pointy stick. Armies are expensive to feed and transport, so it's generally always been better to bring five guys with gear and basic skills than to bring twenty five with no gear and no skills.

Some countries did have a practice of encouraging the common folk to learn military skills, such as having mandatory archery practice.

----------


## Calthropstu

> Peasant Levies? Real or not?
> 
> We've often seen stories where soldiers would round up a group of farmers, and force them to fight with just their farm tools or basic spears.
> 
> But I've heard that this didn't really happen, and was just propaganda to convince early musket armies accept being conscripted and forced to fight with hardly any training.
> Basically the peasants were far too weak, untrained, and cowardly to stand up against trained and equipped soldiers, except maybe in defence of their homes.


This happened. Mainly Poland, Japan and China that I know of. I think other Eastern european nations as well. They did this to look far more threatening than they actually were.

----------


## halfeye

> Peasant Levies? Real or not?
> 
> We've often seen stories where soldiers would round up a group of farmers, and force them to fight with just their farm tools or basic spears.
> 
> But I've heard that this didn't really happen, and was just propaganda to convince early musket armies accept being conscripted and forced to fight with hardly any training.
> Basically the peasants were far too weak, untrained, and cowardly to stand up against trained and equipped soldiers, except maybe in defence of their homes.


The Monmouth Rebellion was allegedly mainly farmhands, but I think they were supposed to be volunteers.

----------


## Tobtor

Peasant levies WERE a thing. Especially in the early medieval period. Both in the Carolinian period, in Anglo-Saxon England, in Scandininavian late VIking age and Early medieval period.

After around 1200 it became less so. In theory the system still applied and peasant where supposed to turn up for war (with gear dependent on how much land they owned) or send someone else in their stead (son, brother, farmhand etc.). 

But as armies became more professional and knights on horses dominated, the Kings etc. typically wanted better more professional soldiers to deal with the knights. So gradually the "punishment for not showing up for military duty was a small fine, that gradually turned into a tax. The fine/tax was low enough that that the pesant just paid it, and thus giving the king or noble more money to equip knight or hire mercenaries.

The timing of this development differed from areas, and in some areas it never really disappeared completely, but by 1400 it seem to be rare (from what we can gather, it is hard to know for certain).

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.

We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.  

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...ulk_of_armies/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...rmies/cz82lh4/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...nized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...feudal_lord_i/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...nized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria..._and_soldiery/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...01450/cffbn8h/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...y_standing_in/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...s_in_medieval/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria..._handy_with_a/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...ising_an_army/

----------


## fusilier

Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time).  I suspect most peasant levies of a large size were for local defense.  I seem to recall reading that when peasants were levied for more distant conflicts, they were usually in smaller numbers, and used in a logistical role: helping to manage the supply trains, perhaps digging field fortifications, etc. -- but I can't find my source on that, so I may be mistaken. 

Similarly, cities often had a militia that was usually called out to man the city walls when needed, but was rarely used in an offensive capability.  That changed over time, but still the size of the militia that could be used to defend the city would usually be significantly larger than that which could be sent on offensive operations.

I'm also sure all this varied by time and place.  I think in some places there were prohibitions against arming serfs, and a peasant levy would only be of the free and wealthier peasants (those who could afford some weaponry and maybe had a little training).

----------


## fusilier

> Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.
> 
> We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.  
> 
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...ulk_of_armies/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...rmies/cz82lh4/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...nized/cu269h2/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...feudal_lord_i/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/
> ...


I found the response here to be particularly interesting:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/

Thanks for sharing those links.

----------


## Calthropstu

> Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.
> 
> We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.  
> 
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...ulk_of_armies/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...rmies/cz82lh4/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...nized/cu269h2/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...feudal_lord_i/
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/
> ...


Not even going to bother with these links. Reddit is the very definition of "non credible source." If you can point me to some ACTUAL journals on the subject, cool. But reddit links are useless as credible sources.

----------


## Tobtor

> Not even going to bother with these links. Reddit is the very definition of "non credible source." If you can point me to some ACTUAL journals on the subject, cool. But reddit links are useless as credible sources.


While some reddit things ARE poor, several of the links are from people with some knowledge. So dismissing it outright is silly. People spendt time to give an approximating answer.

I would like to second fusilier's recommendation the the link about England in the 12th century witch ends in a bibliography for more scholarly nature.

So Calthropstu, I think your answer is somewhat arrogant.

A note on peasants etc: Danish laws from around 12-13th century mention specifically that you can send another member of your household (but not slaves, and if you do so anyway the slaves can be freed by the king). So while fusiliers "Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time)." is important, it is also important to note that any household might encompass several adult males, and also among peasants there er _expandable younger sons_ or farmhands from poor families.

Also note that the "military" service was mostly meant for _landholding_ peasants, a way to get out it was sell you land to knights/nobles and then rent the land. At least in Scandinavia this was part of reducing the number of "free peasant" and turning them into "serfs" during the 13th century.

Also some peasants might be free but not have enough land to do military service, these where lumped together in clusters and then only one of them need to go (either by volunteering a male person of their household, drawing lots, taking turns etc.).

Alas a lot of the answers you get is from the late medieval period, and thus from a period when it was outfaced.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

AskHistorians is not a generic subreddit.  

It has high standards for both the questions and the answers it allows, and is moderated by actual historians, etc.

----------


## Calthropstu

> AskHistorians is not a generic subreddit.  
> 
> It has high standards for both the questions and the answers it allows, and is moderated by actual historians, etc.


If I went to quote it on a research paper, would it be admissable? I have a very high standard for what I believe to be credible facts when it comes to history, especially since I AM LITERALLY WATCHING CAMPAIGNS TRYING TO REWRITE FACTS I MYSELF LIVED THROUGH.

So with ancient historians who literally can no longer defend themselves, I will have to go with established fact rather than some subreddit. Seeing as how I know 100% that peasant levies were in fact a thing, the fact that subreddit is claiming otherwise tells me exactly how 'credible' it isn't.

----------


## fusilier

> If I went to quote it on a research paper, would it be admissable? I have a very high standard for what I believe to be credible facts when it comes to history, especially since I AM LITERALLY WATCHING CAMPAIGNS TRYING TO REWRITE FACTS I MYSELF LIVED THROUGH.
> 
> So with ancient historians who literally can no longer defend themselves, I will have to go with established fact rather than some subreddit. Seeing as how I know 100% that peasant levies were in fact a thing, the fact that subreddit is claiming otherwise tells me exactly how 'credible' it isn't.


Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).

But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.

----------
Since you asked for more "grounded" information, this is one of the references I have to hand, but it's a little more narrow in scope:

_Mercenaries and their Masters_, by Michael Mallett, is considered to be the major "point of departure" for study into Italian Warfare and mercenaries from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.*  The focus is on the developments of the 15th century, so the earlier large communal levies aren't covered in depth.  But this is what he has to say on militia levies in that period:




> . . . a significant proportion of the infantry in any Italian army were local men, and this proportion of course increased enormously when one looks beyond the professional infantry to the militia.  Militia levies were used by all the Italian states of the fifteenth century, if only as pioneers.  In Venice and Milan by the 1470's they were being put on a semi-permanent, trained basis . . . All the Romagna condottiere princes used militia levies, and papal cities were occasionally called upon to produce them for local service. Not even in Florence did the rural militia organisation disappear completely as the humanists thought, although the levies were usually largely used for pioneer duties.
> 
>     However, even given this degree of local participation in the army, one is not implying something approaching a national army nor suggesting that many men were fighting for home and country.  The militia were conscripts and usually unwilling ones; the desertion rate was high and they could not be relied upon to move far from their homes.


pg. 226.

Referencing a thirteenth century battle, he gives this breakdown:



> The Florentine army which was defeated by the Sienese at Montaperti in 1260 contained about 1,400 communal cavalry and about 6,000 communal infantry supported by some 8,000 infantry levies from the rural areas of the Florentine state.


pg. 12.




> Furthermore, the use of militia levies survived longer into the fourteenth century than has sometimes been thought. . . . In May 1302, when the Florentine army took the field to besiege Pistoia, it was made up of 1,000 cavalry, and 6,000 infantry.  The paymaster's accounts, which have survived, show that about half the cavalry were Florentines, and of the infantry only 1,000 were foreign mercenaries while the rest were made up of crossbowmen and shield-bearers from the city militia, and contingents of militia infantry and pioneers from the countryside.


pp. 43-44.

These quotes reflect a shift in the system in Italy, although levies continued to be used throughout the period, they made up a smaller proportion of the armies than before and in some periods may have been omitted completely.  Italy was fairly dense in population, and politically fragmented, so while some lessons could be applied to a broader scope, details would likely vary across Europe.

------
*So of course most popular representations ignore it, and regurgitate outdated, debunked, 19th century writings of Sir Charles Oman.

----------


## fusilier

> A note on peasants etc: Danish laws from around 12-13th century mention specifically that you can send another member of your household (but not slaves, and if you do so anyway the slaves can be freed by the king). So while fusiliers "Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time)." is important, it is also important to note that any household might encompass several adult males, and also among peasants there er _expandable younger sons_ or farmhands from poor families.


That's a good point!  There would be some number of "excess" peasants that could be employed in a military campaign for a longer period (if not, possibly, looking to a "career change").  So while you couldn't expect to levy all able-bodied peasants (except perhaps, for a very short period of time), a smaller proportion could be levied for longer term service.  Which would seem to fit well with some of the accounts I've read.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).
> 
> But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.


I was going to say, some of those posts have what amounts to a bibliography.

----------


## Calthropstu

> Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).
> 
> But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.
> 
> ----------
> Since you asked for more "grounded" information, this is one of the references I have to hand, but it's a little more narrow in scope:
> 
> _Mercenaries and their Masters_, by Michael Mallett, is considered to be the major "point of departure" for study into Italian Warfare and mercenaries from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.*  The focus is on the developments of the 15th century, so the earlier large communal levies aren't covered in depth.  But this is what he has to say on militia levies in that period:
> 
> ...


So yeah, this kind of information directly refutes what was being claimed earlier. The specific army being called out was more than half levies. The original statement was that there was no levies or rounding up of people to act as soldiers. The information you provided directly refutes that.

----------


## fusilier

> So yeah, this kind of information directly refutes what was being claimed earlier. The specific army being called out was more than half levies. The original statement was that there was no levies or rounding up of people to act as soldiers. The information you provided directly refutes that.


Yes. However, the issue wasn't just about whether or not levies were used, but what was the character (or make up) of a levy.  And Mallet's work doesn't really go into that detail.  

The popular image, that they rounded up all the peasants and forced them to fight with whatever farm implements they had on hand, seems unlikely.  Although it may have happened from time to time, only in cases of extreme emergency.*  On the other hand, peasants who had sufficient wealth might be expected to maintain arms and give service if levied.  That's what the detailed response in this link covered:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/

In a two part response it described who was likely to be levied, under what conditions, what obligations they had, and also provided a bibliography so that the sources could be checked (note: I have not checked those sources).  In this case, however, it is specific to Norman England (which, frankly, probably more people on this board care about than medieval Italy, but my sources are my sources).

I find it's often the case that a refutation of some part of a popular image: i.e. that peasant levies rarely, if ever, involved rounding up all able bodied peasants and forcing them into service, ends up being exaggerated: i.e. peasant levies weren't a thing.  Nuance is lost, and a different, but also wrong, idea creeps into the popular imagination.

*Also consider that not everybody levied was necessarily expected to fight.  Pioneers were mentioned, and many farm implements would be useful in that role.  Furthermore, the logistical needs of an army could be quite large, and often each man-at-arms might have several people to support him.  Those support personnel may also be armed and capable of fighting, but in a diminished capacity.

----------


## Calthropstu

> Yes. However, the issue wasn't just about whether or not levies were used, but what was the character (or make up) of a levy.  And Mallet's work doesn't really go into that detail.  
> 
> The popular image, that they rounded up all the peasants and forced them to fight with whatever farm implements they had on hand, seems unlikely.  Although it may have happened from time to time, only in cases of extreme emergency.*  On the other hand, peasants who had sufficient wealth might be expected to maintain arms and give service if levied.  That's what the detailed response in this link covered:
> 
> https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria...t_working_the/
> 
> In a two part response it described who was likely to be levied, under what conditions, what obligations they had, and also provided a bibliography so that the sources could be checked (note: I have not checked those sources).  In this case, however, it is specific to Norman England (which, frankly, probably more people on this board care about than medieval Italy, but my sources are my sources).
> 
> I find it's often the case that a refutation of some part of a popular image: i.e. that peasant levies rarely, if ever, involved rounding up all able bodied peasants and forcing them into service, ends up being exaggerated: i.e. peasant levies weren't a thing.  Nuance is lost, and a different, but also wrong, idea creeps into the popular imagination.
> ...


It's actually fairly easy to reason out. My rejection was the "levies weren't used and that never really happened" however, those things did in fact happen from time to time.

I remeber reading something about gathering unwilling soldiers as levies during an incursion from another lord. I also remember looking for the exact law that allowed it. Never actually found it, but this was in high school before google. I basically just browsed library shelves and read random stuff.

----------


## Brother Oni

> It's actually fairly easy to reason out. My rejection was the "levies weren't used and that never really happened" however, those things did in fact happen from time to time.


You really should go read the links. For example, this link has the question "I am a healthy male English peasant working the land for a minor Baron circa 1100 AD. One day the Baron comes and says the King has asked him to raise an army. Who is responsible for arming, armoring, and training me? If I have money saved up can I buy better equipment? Who decides?"

The top answer has the bibliography: 
    Alfred's Wars, by Ryan Lavelle
    Military Obligation in Medieval England, by Michael Powicke
    The Military Organisation of Norman England, by C. Warren Hollister
    England Under Norman and Angevin Kings, by Robert Bartlett
    Warfare Under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066-1135, by Stephen Morillo
    "The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd", by C. Warren Hollister, The English Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 304 (Jul., 1962), pp. 417-436
    "Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Saxon england", by Richard Abels, in The Battle of Hastings, ed. Stephen Morillo, p57-78
    Medieval England: Rural society and Economic Change 1086-1348, by Edward Miller and John Hatcher
    "The Knight and the Knight's Fee", by Sally Harvey, Past & Present, Volume 49, Issue 1, November 1970, Pages 343

This post quite clearly supports the levy system was in place.


In any case, your earlier answer to peasant levies was "This happened. Mainly Poland, Japan and China that I know of. I think other Eastern european nations as well. They did this to look far more threatening than they actually were."

Aside from the blip of the Yuan Dynasty, the other main Chinese Dynasty of the medieval era, the Song, didn't really go in for peasant levies and dealt with invading barbarians by paying off other barbarians to do their fighting for them (yiyi ziyi).
During the Yuan, the Mongols made up the cavalry, while the vast bulk of the infantry were Chinese and Korean conscripts or defected soldiers.


Japan is complicated. You had ashigaru who were the definition of peasant levy (ie peasants stripped off the land, given a spear and told to fight), but by the time of the Kamakura period, you also had the semi-professional ashigaru 'mercenary' bands who prowled the edges of the battlefield and were paid in loot. When the majority of your fighting is done by ashigaru, it's a far cry from 'making them look more threatening than they actually were'.

It's not until the Sengoku period (which is more Early Modern than medieval) that the ashigaru solidify into a 'professional' soldier caste, primarily under Oda Nobunaga. There were even samurai generals who specialised in leading ashigaru troops (Toyotomi Hideyoshi being the prime example).

----------


## Calthropstu

> You really should go read the links. For example, this link has the question "I am a healthy male English peasant working the land for a minor Baron circa 1100 AD. One day the Baron comes and says the King has asked him to raise an army. Who is responsible for arming, armoring, and training me? If I have money saved up can I buy better equipment? Who decides?"
> 
> The top answer has the bibliography: 
>     Alfred's Wars, by Ryan Lavelle
>     Military Obligation in Medieval England, by Michael Powicke
>     The Military Organisation of Norman England, by C. Warren Hollister
>     England Under Norman and Angevin Kings, by Robert Bartlett
>     Warfare Under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066-1135, by Stephen Morillo
>     "The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd", by C. Warren Hollister, The English Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 304 (Jul., 1962), pp. 417-436
> ...


Yes. The purpose of warfare in Japan was a lot different than elsewhere. Japan didn't battle other countries very often. Attacking Japan was difficult externally. Most of it was internal. So the use of peasants was a lot more useful. You were basically fighting your near neighbors and, assuming you survived, you could be back quickly. A lot of that happened in China as well. The use of peasant levies falling into disuse in Europe probably coincided with someone realizing how dumb an idea it was to deplete your work force for war.

But it was definitely in widrspread use for a long time. Not exactly sure why, since the Romans didn't use them and lasted a really long time.

----------


## Pauly

> But it was definitely in widrspread use for a long time. Not exactly sure why, since the Romans didn't use them and lasted a really long time.


Before the Marian reforms the legionnaires were essentially levies. Citizens obliged to arm and equip themselves for war and subject to being called up. Same with the citizen hoplite in Greece.

The whole reason of why the Marian reforms were enacted is complicated, but one of the reasons was that the voters didnt like it when friends and family, not to mention themselves, were called away for extended military campaigns.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

*Definition of levy*

This is our main issue, really. What even is a levy? Sure, you can say it's anyone who is going into a war unwillingly - but then, what about people who enlist these days into the army in times of peace for 5 years and are told just before they go out that a conflict started and they have to deploy? Are they levies?

With that in mind, we need to distinguish between not just un/willingness to fight, but also between an obligation to do so.

However, that obligation is also problematic - if it comes form voluntary enlistment, it's all well and good, but historically, they also come from social status, and even modern day voluntary enlistment can be driven by economic factors, i.e. you are so dirt poor and economy is so bad that is your only option. To say nothing of not reading what, exactly, you're signing.

What further complicates this is that while these days, we are all citizens with theoretically equal rights and liberties, this was not the case historically, and this divide goes much deeper than just nobles and paesants. For Hungary between 1000 - 1300, there are about four not quite distinct phases of development, where the number of social strata fluctuates between about a dozen to as few as five. Without accounting for monastic hierarchies, so the real number is probably double that at least.

And every social category has their own set of freedoms and obligations, and is some cases, a social category is umbrella term for a number of real groups. Take conditional nobles, for example, who had almost "full noble" freedom (called golden freedom), but that freedom wasn't tied to their social status, but raher to the land via royal grants that, while somewhat standardized, were issued on case by case basis. So, Spis/Zipser saxons had different conditional nobility rules than those of Transylvania, despite both being conditional nobles.

*Spoiler: Social strata in 1300 Hungary*
Show


EN
LAT
Military duty
Personal freedom
Land ownership

King
Rex
does what he wants
is freebird
all the land

Nobles
Nobiles
to the king
golden
full

Castle iobagions
Iobagiones castri
to the castle
yes
yes, cannot be stripped of it

Citizens
Cives
to the castle
yes
No

Castlemen
Cstrenses/Udvornici
to the castle
No
No

Villagers
Villani
none
no
no



Personal freedom = can get up and leave for brighter futures without telling anyone, those that don't have it must seek permission from their lord

Land ownership = only land tied to their social status, they all can own land if they buy it from the owner, although renting in exchange for a yearly tax was far more common

Note the lack of freemen paesants, by this time they were merged into the nobiles. Villani also have no military duty expectation, so legally they can't serve unless they want to and get their lord's permission.

There was also a church heirarchy separate from this, and Hospites was a legal status that could be tacked onto almost any of the above, save for the king, with some special privileges on case by case basis (so, that doubles our chart, really).

There were also privileged cities, that stratum was elevated from cives, castrenses and iobagionnes castri and was, again, case by case, so we get 3 more rows to that table.



*What is the levy myth, and why Eastern Europe*

There is this idea that medieval non-nobles were forced to go into battle with a single pitchfork. Both sides of the Cold War used it, for very different reasons, and so this myth infested popular culture and even academia to some degree.

This is most definitely a myth, barring extreme emergency situations. Even USSR-style conscripts, taken en masse from unwilling and untrained general population, weren't done very often, at least not until pre-modern era. Hell, even that Soviet example was born of extreme emergency.

Seeing as noth NATO and Warsaw pact said that Eastern European history had these, they are very much associated with Eastern Europe, and examples that are given of them usually include Hungarian paesant rebellions, Hussite uprisings and so on. All of these should be judged on individual basis, and the scope of that discussion is beyod me - I know a fair bit about Hussites, but Hungarian paseant revolts are not in my area of specializing.

That said, there are examples of these kinds of unrests in western Europe in equal numbers, what with several French revolutions, Froissart explicitly mentioning poor farmer slingers and so on. But, much like eastern cases, these are in medieval times (barring migration period), exceptions rather than rules.

*Spoiler: Three hussite depictions across the ages*
Show



15. century VIenna codex


Czech Jan Zizka movie, 1955


modern Osprey book



*Spoiler: Froissart's Paesant revolt*
Show


Illustration has them heavily armored, text says:




> The commons of Spain according to the usage of their country with their slings they did cast stones with great violence and did much hurt





*Who has to serve?*

This is a complex question. The real answer is, look at the time and place of choosing, find out what all the social strata are, and figure out what their obligations happen to be.

Nobility, which is in itself a groups that likely has several strata in it (iobagiones regis, servientes regis, nobiles, hospites, cives etc.), usually have to serve, no exceptions. Under what circumstances they are obliged to show up (all, defensive wars only, etc) varies, but the expectations is there.

This sort of olbigation also applies to social classes we wouldn't call nobles, but are still privileged - burghers, iobagionnes, people who were given land on the border to settle in with the understanding that they will defend said border and so on. The obligation to serve is as baked into their social standing as it is into the nobles.

Problem is, are you required to serve personally, and what do you do in the meantime? Because if one family is required to give one fully armed soldier to the army if the call comes, you can run into issues. Small families, individuals that are badly needed at home for one reason or another and so on. If you aren't rich enough to afford a mercenary to go instead of you (which may or may not even be possbile, depending on time, place and social stratum), you have to go even if you don't want to - does that make you a levy?

And that is what most medieval levies are - raised from population that usually does some other thing (farm, craft etc) that is required to supply one soldier in X equipment per Y households. In theory, those soldiers are either mercenaries, or the population itself, and since they knew they will have to serve, their training is reflective of that.

In practice, some areas with martial culture (german Landsknechts, Hungarian border nomads in ~850~1100), you get pretty solid, even elite, troops out of them. In other cases... not so much. And if they aren't mercenaries on long term contracts, they will definitely want to return home fairly soon, to get back to their usual craft.

*When you levy even more*

Note that these levies are all legally required, and the king is the law. Meaning that if the king says so, the levy amounts can increase, much like issuing special taxes - both of which are almost foreign to us modern folks, but were par for the course historically, the city of Presov was paying 100 florins of special war tax in 1516, wich was a fifth of their usual taxes on top.

That means that all of that previous point? Yeah, it can get tossed right out the window if the king or other person capable of changing laws decides they need more soldiers. One can find himself in position of expecting to never have to serve on account of having paid for mercs, and then the laws change and he has to go.

And since this depends on how, exactly, laws are written and what the unwritten traditions are, we get even more chaos.

*But should you levy?*

This is probably the key point here - while a given lawmaker theoretically has the ability to call all men to arms, it's a really bad idea. There have been constant attempts to establish a standing army once migration period was over - in Hungary, we have: royal army, banderial systems, royal cities required to supply soldiers, royal army again, all supplementing nobles (just nobiles, not servientes regis, or... you get the picture) who should show up - how nobles should show up is regulated by two Golden Bulls and many more lesser documents.

All of that means that you try to levy as few people as you can, because famines and economic shortages are not fun. That said, you do have tha capability, so these sort of soft levies, where you increase some numbers in already pre-established laws, are done fairly often (as in, every time a really major war break out), if not every time.

Even monetary taxes for times of war were frequently abolished for a given city or person if they were in a bad spot.

*Who pays for all that crap? And what about training?*

Depends. Usually the guy who gets levied is expected to come prepared, gear and all.

How that expectation is managed varies, from "if you own X worth of stuff, you have to have at least Y equipment" to "you are required to serve, show up however you want", in the latter relying on the unwillingness of the person in question to be shanked and therefore investing in gear. Hungarian royal cities were required to supply one soldier "in full panoply of war" per about a hundred people. Since these were wealthy citizens, a popular theory is that this "full panoply of war" was in reality a knight-like combatant, with heavy armor and one or two squires.

That said, many cities and castles had armories that stored surplus weapons, in case they got attacked and had to arm their population. People who would be issued these were probably not the most capable combatants, and if you levied these regardless, you were about to run into morale problems. Incidentally, this is how Hussites were armed initially, by emptying these stores and then making more weapons out of whatever thay had on hand.

As for training, we know this was an issue no matter what level of society you were on. People like Ulrich von Lichtenstein (noble and a pro jouster) or Johannes Lichtenauer (probably burgher, pro swordsmanship teacher) did exist, but weren't all that common - devoting your whole life to martial pursuit was kinda rare, as you can glean from Fiore de'i Liberi's foreword to Flower of Battle, where he mentions not only teaching high-ranking nobility right before thay had to fight, but also (according to him) lesser, bad teachers he put in their place - on five occassion, with swords.

There are aslo many laws that suggest that the people in charge were aware of this and supported pastimes that would get you a pool f semi-trained soldiers. England's famous longbow laws, Balearic isles and their sling-oriented child rearing, general support of wrestling as a pastime for the lower classes and so on. You can find this even in modern times, with pre-WW2 countries supporting civilian shooting clubs to get a population with unusually high levels of marksmanship and weapon familiarity.

As for formalized training, run by the military authority, that was vanishingly rare before early modern era (Greek city-states militia and Roman armies being the major notable exceptions) - at least on a higher level. It is very possible, even likely, that, for example, some of those border villages in 900s Hungary had some sort of training regimen they went through, but it has been lost to time and illiteracy.

*So did levies happen?*

Short answer is yes, but they were more willing and better armed and trained than you imagine, and those unarmored, pitchfork-weilding paesant mobs were very, very rare.

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## Clistenes

> Aside from the blip of the Yuan Dynasty, the other main Chinese Dynasty of the medieval era, the Song, didn't really go in for peasant levies and dealt with invading barbarians by paying off other barbarians to do their fighting for them (yiyi ziyi).
> During the Yuan, the Mongols made up the cavalry, while the vast bulk of the infantry were Chinese and Korean conscripts or defected soldiers.


I would like to point than Sun Tzu mentions, in his book "The Art of War", the problem of conscripted soldiers running away and returning to their villages. He said that was one of the several reasons it was a good idea to enter enemy territory as soon as possible (so the conscripted soldiers were afraid of splitting from the army and wouldn't desert...).

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## PhoenixPhyre

Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?

I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.

Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.

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## GeoffWatson

> Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?
> 
> I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.
> 
> Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.


I guess the king would ennoble them (or one of them?) and grant them the land, on condition that they pay taxes and work for him - having powerful adventurers in his employ could be very useful. Limited to a certain amount of time per year (or whatever you agree on).

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## Lvl 2 Expert

Thinking with my gamer hat on another option might be for them to get a pet noble. Some younger child from an impoverished line who is allowed to own property but doesn't have too much else going for him (or her) maybe. His name goes on the deed to the land, he gets a corner of it to himself to build a nice little cottage or something and he gets to brag about his large estate and maybe could get another title or a good match for marriage out of it if he plays his cards right. He signs an agreement with the party to lease the rest of the land to them indefinitely for the grand sum of nothing per year, and all the buildings on that land are owned by the party separate from the ground. The deal could even work without the noble living there. He just stays where he is now on the other side of the country, but he gets to brag about how much land he owns elsewhere.

I am not basing this on any actual historic situation, but deals like that must have been made around the rise of wealthy traders and such.

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## Brother Oni

> I would like to point than Sun Tzu mentions, in his book "The Art of War", the problem of conscripted soldiers running away and returning to their villages. He said that was one of the several reasons it was a good idea to enter enemy territory as soon as possible (so the conscripted soldiers were afraid of splitting from the army and wouldn't desert...).


He also says 'Do not raise soldiers twice, nor food three times', implying that a skilled commander doesn't need to raise a second levy and by getting into enemy territory, you can live off their supplies rather than your own.

That said, the 5th Century BC is a long time difference from the medieval era, not least culturally (during the Warring States, almost everybody fought and soldiering wasn't as looked down upon).

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## snowblizz

> Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era?


Yes. The Kingdom held some lands (the exact intermingling with what is the king's demesne and more abstractly state land would vary a bit depending on how the king managed to operate). The Church held some lands. The nobility held some lands (the king's demesne would sort of land here). And peasants held some lands. These are the 4 major categories of landowning. However, there are variations to the exact status and rights and ownership over the lands.

State lands and peasant lands were the main taxable subjects. Nobles and church held someone their land tax free, but not necessarily all of it.




> Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?


That would depend a lot on where you are, Hungary and Poland e.g. were more strongly nobility controlled and as such tended to have laws that favoured them more. Other places had other rules. It should be noted, for the benefit of the crown normally. I'll take Scandinavia, mostly Sweden as my example. It wasn't for an overt concern of the peasantry the crown protected them. They were the only subjects that could easily be taxed so normally it was in the interest of the crown that as many free peasants existed. It was not uncommon that royal tenants were allowed to buy their land to become freeholding peasants. Usually because the crown needed quick cash.

Mostly it was perfectly fine for not-nobles to own land. The main exception I've seen was that land that had belonged to nobility could not be sold to a lesser social strata. This doesn't mean any land ever owned by a noble was out of bounds, just a more tightly limited inherited land considered essentially as your family estate. Usually this would also be the lands you were entirely exempted from taxation or had special rights on. e.g. from 1396 in the Kalmar Union a noble could only claim tax exemption one such manorial complex that was considered their place of residence. If a noble had received a land grant or bought land from other land owners they'd be generally free to dispose of it as they saw fit.
Similar rules could also apply to peasant land where your relatives enjoyed a legal first right to refusal on lands that has been inherited in your family. IIRC these rules were in part still around into the 19th century when rules on landownership became more modern and holders got complete rights to the land they owned. Again if you expanded by purchase or breaking new ground those lands were not necessarily considered part of your family's property and could be freely sold to others. Sometimes restrictions on nobles buying up land from peasants also existed.
The rules could also be applied to royal lands farmed by tenants that had been sold or donated to nobility or church or even the tenants themselves, usually retroactively to shore up the crown's financial difficulties. 

Not all of these land revisions were successful ofc but as the state develops they do get more effective in controlling who owns what. In general thus we have a system that to a certain degree tries preserve ownership of land in appropriate categories (and medieval society tended to like their godly anointed social order, at least those benefiting from it). The most annoying actor for the crown was ofc the church from whom donated land could not easily be returned. Even land owned by nobles could eventually fall outside of inheritance or otherwise be returned. 




> I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.
> 
> Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.


A wiped out church would probably be claimed by the royal treasury and revert back to the kingdom. Conceivably also if land was donated to the church by nobles they might want to have it returned to them. Historically, powerful and ruthless kings sometimes managed a reduction on both nobility and/or church to restore lands donated, usually in a bid to strengthen the state and/or the secular rulership class. Normally under the guise that the land had not been properly turned over, which ofc might very well have been true.

In the context of a wider European mediaeval system there is nothing strange with your players being able to purchase land. There is no need for them to become nobles. The main issues I can see would be in the owning the property as a group and not an individual. Though mediaeval society did feature the idea of a group, a society of sorts, owning property. So e.g. would a guild work, or certain "social guilds" I don't really know what are properly called.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?


It varies by time and place. Generally, there are these ways you can own land:

*In perpetuity*

The land is yours, can be passed down as inheritance and you can do whatever you want with it.

*As holder of office*

If the king chooses you to be the Ispan of a county, or magister tavarnicorum or any other function, low or high, you will get temporary ownership of said land with it. You are to take care of it and not defraud it for your own personal use, but you do get tax income from it. It is essentially a form of payment for your services, and in case of Ispans it also gets you the money you need to carry out said office of Ispan - closes Anglofrench title being a duke.

Since the land is not yours, you cannot sell it, but you can rent either it or profits from it to people - but the second you are stripped of that Ispan title, the land reverts back to the king, potentially leaving people you gave it to to pay off your debts dry - standard procedure is, it will lower your debt and they dutifully hand the land back over.

If you see a LOT of potential for misuse and conflict, well, you're absolutely correct.

*Rented*

You rent the land in exchange for one or more of: military service, cut of what the land produces, hard cash. This is often used to pay off large debts, by the by.


These three ways of owning land then further interact with your own personal freedoms and obligations.

If you are a farmer, you are tied to the land in the sense that you need to farm it and pay taxes from it and in exchange receive a cut from what you produce. The difference between a serf and a free farmer is in whether you can decide to just up and leave one day, a free farmer can, no questions asked, a serf has to have an agreement with the owner of the land (usually involving monetary compensation for his freedom, and such an agreement can either free the serf entirely or just transfer his services to someone else).

This sort of dynamic carries on through all social strata - if you are a conditional noble, the king ennobled you with the understanding that you will own a piece of land and give military service. But said ennoblement doesn't give you the land in perpetuity, merely rents it out to you from the king, meaning that while you can rent it, you can't sell it. And yes, this may result in chains of renting on occassion.

However, said renting is often regulated - see the post above where castle iobagions have land that cannot be taken away? Well, that land belongs to the castle, which will have a castellan appointed to it, and that stipulation means the castellan will get the castle's lands, some of which belong to the iobagions. The castellan cannot take this specific portion of iobagions and rent it out to someone, he has to let iobagions take care of it and merely tax them - he can only rent out the non-iobagion portions of the land.

You can probably see the huge mess this is (or to use the academic parlance "land ownership and relations tied to it are complex"), as well as a good potential for PCs being conditional nobles.

*Buying land*

Theoretically, everyone but slaves can do it, and slaves are almost or entirely gone from Hungary at this time. Problem is that actually buying a land in perpetuity isn't cheap, and renting is far more affordable.

Buying a piece of land does not grant you any privileges, if you were a serf, a serf you remain, but that land you bought is now yours and your lord cannot tax it, he can only tax the land he rents you, your own land belongs under either royal, city or church taxation.

So, you are still taxed, but taxes are lower. Usually.

Also consider that if you local lord rolls up with a few gentlemen and demands you sell him that land for a pittance, you - an unarmed serf - will have hell of a time refusing. Strongarming like this did happen, and on occassion even made it in front of the judicial system and was punished.

*Land as means of upwards social mobility*

While land doesn't in theory get you social status, having some will almost definitely see you move up the social ladder, usually by means of marriage, either yours or that of your children.

The jump will not be high, but moving from a serf to a burgher is a pretty good deal, and nothing is stoppping your children from doing another upwards hop the next generation - there are quite a few families that did very well for themselves in this way.

*This is all in flux*

Remember that this sytem is inherently unstable. Someone can come and claim the land he inherited came with the status of a iobagion or a cives and so he should be given said title, and all he needs to do to convince courts is get some people in good standing to vouch for him. A social status can be stripped, someone who was just a iobagion can be elevated to a cives for his services and/or bribes and so on.

Entire social strata can disappear, such as free farmers - they either climbed the social ladder up into nobiles, or down into villani, because one bad harvest can ruin you to a point where you have to sell your land to local noble and become a serf. And if you start to give a specific set of loosely related privileges to some people, you can end up with another social stratum appearing, that being the burghers of royal free cities that only started to apper in 1300.




> Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.


If they get that land in perpetuity, they will have even more freedom than modern day, because only laws that will matter will be royal, none of those pesky local lord's laws. If they have it rented or as part of an office, more laws will apply and what they can do with the land may or may not be limited further by specific conditions.

Even then, a king can still stop them from doing whatever they want, there was a royal ban on building stone castles without permission in Hungary until Mongols came and almost wiped it out - after that, it was lifted, and a century later, there was a massive amount of noble magnates that destabilized the kingdom, showing us exactly why that ban existed in the first place.

All in all, there will be a contract to sign, and that should spell those conditions out, especially in DnD - using "they will own it in accordance with ancient customs" formula is kind of a low blow on DMs part, even though it is historical. And very annoying if you want to know what those customs were.

*Edit:
One last chapter*

Oh, right, one more thing. A piece of land has three components you can sell or rent: administrative and judicial control, actual land and profits. Let's take this for an example.

You, a noble, decided to rent a patch of land to a bunch of serfs to start a village. They will work the land, and you get the stuff - hell, you even gave them a break from your (but not oryal or church) taxes to help them start out. THis is actual land.

After five years, you decide that coming over there is too much of a hassle for every time two guys have a row and tell the villagers that they can elect a villicus, a mayor, from among them, and if you okay their choice, he will ahve judicial and administrative powers in your name. This is, obviously, renting a judicial and administrative power over said land. And yeah, it's usually not worth much by itself, since it's more of an obligation rather than gain.

Then, you want to arm up to do well in a coming war, and decide to take out a loan. You tell the merchant who gave you the cash that, until the time the debt is repaid, he will receive all the taxes due from the village mentioned above, he just has to collect.

After the debt is repaid and war won, and you gained a lot of land and status, you decide that one of your familiars (nobles in your service, not a magic raven) needs to be rewarded, so you rent him the administrative control and profits from that land, so long as he remains in your service.

Note that, unless you said otherwise in some contract, all of this renting is done at your pleasure and you can decide to rescind it at any time.

So, yeah, you can absolutely rent the same piece of land two times and be on the level.

*Can a serf rule a village this way?*

Theoretically yes, in practice, there would be a royal petition started to elevate him (with that much land, straight to nobiles), and it would amost certainly be granted. Or he would get strongarmed by the local lords to sell it to them.

You usually saw this land in personal ownership done in small bits by non-nobles, as a nice bonus to majority of what they had rented - thee exceptions being wealthy iobagiones castri and cives, whou would own sizeable patches of the countryside, and could be either elevated to nobiles, or remain as they were until burgher social stratum formed properly in 1350ish. And it was, of course, named cives, despite having very little to do with the preceeding cives social stratum, because this is medieval terminology and you can't have nice things.

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## Catullus64

Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.

I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.

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## Martin Greywolf

> If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?


The academic consensus is that while it probably did happen, it happened much more rarely.

The chief reason we see PTSD so often these days is that, in a warzone, nowhere is safe, what with artillery, rockets, snipers and inability to parry any of the above. A pre-modern warfare doesn't usually have that problem, if you're camping out in a field, you will be able to see the enemy coming and either get ready or run away. And while the melee battles are arguably more personal (albeit not more visceral, a bullet does a lot to a body), they also last a fraction of the time.

The longest battles in medieval times usually lasted about 3 or so days of intermittend clashes, now compare that to battle of Somme that was measured in months. Even occupying a small town properly will take weeks of fighting if the enemy decides not to pull back - battle of Berlin took two weeks, and that was with overwhelming Soviet advantage and a lot of Germans surrendering.

That said, there are rare references to people suffering from PTSD, most often quoted being Achilles, and I remember seeing references to knights retired to a monastery who had very loud nightmares about his time in war.

Finally, there is cultural aspect to it. We can't get too deep into it because it ties into religion, but the gist of it is that modern society places a high inherent value on human life, and we are told that taking it away is one of the worst things you can do from an early age. Take a society that isn't built around that notion, like ancient Rome, and you will have greatly lessened PTSD from that direction. 

On the flip side, PTSD is not limited to wartime trauma only, so you will see it to develop from whatever that particular society has as a taboo - Spartans and covardice being an excellent example.




> If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?


Can't discuss that as per forum rules, unfortunately, as most if not all of it is directly tied to religion.

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## PhoenixPhyre

Thanks everybody. That gives me something to start with. Of course, there are complications--the noble who owns that property[1] is a misandrist, adventurer-hating, hyper-religious-traditionalist. And the ex-mother-in-law[2] of one of the party members. And the people they're trying to ward out are actually covert agents provocateurs of the neighboring nation, who are trying to start a fight.

[1] A duke, technically. Because the "kingdom" is more like an umbrella group of dukes. The whole area is new to this whole "nobility/fantasy feudalism" thing, having formed as part of the explosive self-disassembly of a larger fantasy-communism-but-with-unions nation about a generation ago. The "king" really only controls one small area and has persuasive power over the Council of Dukes. The dukes were mostly[3] just the largest land "owners" or the highest-notoriety union bosses in a particular area. No serfs. The only other real noble rank is the yarl. And the direct power of the dukes and yarls strongly depends on which duchy you're in. Some? Nobody cares about rank except when dealing with people from other duchies. Others? Rank is very important. Sadly, they're in one of the latter types.

[2] Halflings are matriarchal, with men being quite rare (1/10 adults, the rest die in infancy due to genetic issues), are (functionally) sold off to another family. The party-member's wife was the adopted heir to the duke, before she got (rightfully) accused of being involved with the group that destroyed the church in the first place and fled from the law. But before this, the husband had run away from home with their son (a grave act against tradition) and become an adventurer (an even graver breach of tradition). Which leaves that particular party member rather in a bad odor with the duke. So he's not even going to the negotiations.

[3] 3 of the 6 anyway. One of the others was chosen by vote of the clans of the area that was going to be made a duchy--she lost the vote. She's only a notional ruler, and knows it. A second was chosen by a fair competition--he out wrestled the other contenders. But isn't actually all that harsh. In fact, he's one of the more progressive dukes. The last of the other dukes was somewhat of a pirate (ok, privateer) during the tumultuous end years of the fantasy-communistic government, although her daughter now runs the ship. All she really cares about is that the trade keeps flowing.

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## Grim Portent

> Then, you want to arm up to do well in a coming war, and decide to take out a loan. You tell the merchant who gave you the cash that, until the time the debt is repaid, he will receive all the taxes due from the village mentioned above, he just has to collect.


This makes me wonder what legal recourse, if any, the merchant has if the lord who rented them the right to collect the taxes from a village loses their title over the village to another lord through any mechanism, like having their land stripped from them or being deposed in a war. Can the merchant sue for the right to keep collecting taxes until the original deal is paid off, do they have to chase up the former landholder for their dues, do they just have to eat the financial loss, does the new title holder have to pay off the debts accrued by the previous incumbent?

Presumably the fallout for the merchant, the village, the former lord and the new lord would all vary on a number of specifics, but it does strike me as something that has the potential to be an interesting scenario.

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## snowblizz

> If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?


We can mention one way it would be "treated". Get yourself started on a hard case of alcoholism. 

Without the knowledge of a clinical diagnosis you'd be falling back on traditional explanations such as being possessed, madness, etc etc etc.

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## Martin Greywolf

> This makes me wonder what legal recourse, if any, the merchant has if the lord who rented them the right to collect the taxes from a village loses their title over the village to another lord through any mechanism, like having their land stripped from them or being deposed in a war. Can the merchant sue for the right to keep collecting taxes until the original deal is paid off, do they have to chase up the former landholder for their dues, do they just have to eat the financial loss, does the new title holder have to pay off the debts accrued by the previous incumbent?
> 
> Presumably the fallout for the merchant, the village, the former lord and the new lord would all vary on a number of specifics, but it does strike me as something that has the potential to be an interesting scenario.


The crucial point here is that the debt belongs to the noble who, well, borrowed money in the first place, it is in no way tied to the land. So, theoretically, once the land changes hands for any reason and you are no longer legally allowed to collect taxes, you keep going after the man, or after whoever inherited the debt. If who inherited the debt is in question, you will likely face hell of a legal battle to get your money back.

If a noble is stripped of his lands, well. That is extremely rare and usually happens because treason or some such (a case of attempted assassination that saw execution of family to third degree and stripping of titles to second comes to mind), but should that happen, the land reverts to the king. That usually means he will pay off any outstanding debts because, well, he's the king and therefore wealthy enough to make the bad rep from not paying up not worth it.

What tends to be more interesting is the exact opposite, where the merchant either claims the taxes weren't good enough to pay off the debt yet (it can happen with bad harvests, and proving it one way or another is tricky) or where the merchant is not merchant but rather another, more powerful noble, and he simply assumes direct control.

Turns out, if a powerful noble decides not to leave a castle when his rent expires, it can be pretty hard to make him do so. There were many, many cases of this, happening during Arpad-Anjou interregnum (and also land held as a result of an office being appropriated this way), including cases where nobles A and B were about equally influential, but noble B had backing of a powerful noble C. Fun times were had by, well, absolutely no one, it was utter chaos.

Fallout for the village itself was usually fairly mild - unless the country was in utter chaos (as during the Ottoman wars), they still just paid one tax. If the country was in utter chaos, well, there are cases from post-medieval Hungary of the same village being taxed seven times (by four sides of a two-sided war) for any number of claims, and looted if they refused to pay up.

----------


## fusilier

> Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.
> 
> I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?
> 
> I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.


There's a list of pre-modern examples here, but it's pretty short (more from the early modern period on).  It does give some older terms for PTSD, but again they are from the early modern period.

http://traumadissociation.com/ptsd/h...-disorder.html

Actually took me longer than expected to dig up even that, but the history of PTSD has been researched, so there should be some useful sources out there.  

This article is less detailed and technical than I would usually share, but it provides a few examples from the ancient world, and a "contrarian" view.  
https://medium.com/lessons-from-hist...d-eb83752b7d4e

[Part (emphasis on "part") of the contrarian argument is that many modern PTSD cases are associated with concussions, which on a modern battlefield are mostly caused by explosions.  Such explosions being absent from ancient battlefields would, so the argument goes, result in fewer cases of PTSD.  But I wonder if ancient (and medieval warfare) would have involved many concussions from being bashed over the head with some weapon . . .]

More generally, you might want to look for how they approached "madness" throughout history.  Mental disorders do appear in various popular representations, _Orlando furioso_ comes to mind, but not often attributed to combat stress (even if it affected a "warrior").

Wikipedia has a fairly detailed web page on the History of mental disorders:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...ntal_disorders

(Religion features heavily, but so do some other ideas like humoral theory).

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## Pauly

> Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.
> 
> I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?
> 
> I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.


Lindy Beige has a video on it. 
Short version is that it was rare in pre-modern times. Randomness seems to be a key element as being attacked by a bear or lion was seen as more stressful than being in battle.

Historically the first war that I am aware of that had large numbers of what we would now call PTSD was the American Civil War which featured long periods in trenches in the latte part of the war.
WWI had shell shock which we now consider to be PTSD. Armies learned that rotating troops in and out of the line, keeping comrades together and avoiding keeping troops in extended stays under fire were key elements to controlling the development of shell shock. By WW2 the British army was using tables to work out just how many combat hours a soldier could endure and withdrew soldiers with high number of battle hours from fighting units. With their systems of counting battle hours and keeping social and support structures for soldiers together they were able to get roughly double the number of combat hours out of each soldier than the US Army did with its repple depple system.

If you look back at Ancient warfare
1) There was a much lower degree of randomness.
2) Hours in combat situations were much lower
3) The social/support networks within the units were stronger than their industrial age counterparts.

PTSD obviously did occur, just to a significantly lower degree than it does in modern long distance extended timeframes warfare.

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## PhoenixPhyre

A question about building fortifications:

Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?

Assumptions:
* Technology level is pre-industrial (schitzo-medieval, with some Renaissance level improvements, plus magic described below). No non-animal power (water and wind power of course, but those aren't relevant here as much I don't think, as the site doesn't have much in the way of either).
* Area to be enclosed is roughly 2 acres, shape is free (does not have to be the star-shape, as no cannons), roughly a square 300'/90m on a side.
* Intent is for the earthworks to be ~8-10' high, with a stone topping.[1]
* Wood is available, but use of wood should be minimized[2]
* This is not intended to be a defense against a significant army incursion, and replacing it with a full stone wall is likely, but not currently in the picture. Speed is more important than defensive strength. Think that this is a replacement for a town's wood and stone palisade wall, not a primary military fort
* Only civilian, non-forced labor is available (this being a private enterprise), so cost matters.

Magic:
* There are specialist teams (groups of 5 specialized spell casters) who can move earth roughly at the rate of a modern excavator. They're expensive (~100x the cost of the same number of unskilled laborers) and limited--you can get no more than 2 of them on site at a time.

Terrain:
* Prairie, much like the Great Plains of the US before settlement.

[1] Stone is available, but the nearest good quarry is some distance (~5 miles) away and somewhat expensive. Most of the buildings in the area are packed earth (cob-style) or brick.
[2] Since there aren't significant local forests, all the major lumber has to be shipped from up-river and is thus expensive for large pieces. Small planks and beams are less so, but major timbers and logs are not readily available. Otherwise they'd use timber for the initial wall (palisade style).

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## KineticDiplomat

As a sort of historiography note for the PTSD question, its worth noting that during 2005-2020 period or so western militaries placed a substantial and expanded emphasis on de-stigmatizing PTSD and mental health issues. It might be the result of expanded research, it might be the result of making the grant source happy, but youre going to find more than a few articles in that period that are going to be firmly on the side of look - its been around all along, it just wasnt reported for reasons x, y, and z. 

That said, anyone seeking to say otherwise is going to run into the fact that things like large scale peer reviewed statistical studies about mental health simply arent going to exist in many periods, making comparisons hard. And then we could get into conflated data - if a soldier has PTSD and a discipline issue, did the PTSD contribute to the discipline issue, did being disciplined contribute to the PTSD, are they unrelated, did the soldier falsify a PTSD claim in hopes of escaping consequences, did the chain of command end up disciplining the soldier over a legitimate mental health issue? If a drone pilot who never leaves the US reports PTSD, can it be laid against a Greek spearman breaking down with nightmares? We cant possibly know, all we know is that any of those cases could be one more count in the data - and that the use of any of the above is likely to coincide more with the predetermined ideological bent of an author...

----------


## fusilier

> A question about building fortifications:
> 
> Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?
> 
> Assumptions:
> * Technology level is pre-industrial (schitzo-medieval, with some Renaissance level improvements, plus magic described below). No non-animal power (water and wind power of course, but those aren't relevant here as much I don't think, as the site doesn't have much in the way of either).
> * Area to be enclosed is roughly 2 acres, shape is free (does not have to be the star-shape, as no cannons), roughly a square 300'/90m on a side.
> * Intent is for the earthworks to be ~8-10' high, with a stone topping.[1]
> * Wood is available, but use of wood should be minimized[2]
> ...


What exactly do you mean by stone topping?  Basically an earthwork faced in stone?  That's basically how most thick walls were made anyhow: two faces of stone and the interior is filled with rubble, earth, etc.

The "earth" to make an earthwork is obtained by digging the surrounding ditch, so the earth needs to be moved, but not very far.  The ditch also serves to effectively increase the height of the wall that needs to be scaled.  As you're not using the walls to resist artillery, then they don't need to be very thick, and the wood you have could be used to make "fraise" (a barrier of pointed sticks at the base of the wall).

However, if you have enough stone, you can make walls tall, while sacrificing width (again, no artillery to face), and so you could move less earth.  Unfortunately I loaned my Civil War era engineer's manual out to somebody a couple of years ago, and never got it back -- so I don't have my estimates how much earth a man can move in x-hours, based on the hardness of the soil.  Frankly I don't think it matters much.  Unless you have a very limited number of workers, 3 months should be plenty of time to make a small fort.  If you lack skilled masons, then field stone walls would probably suffice, although you need to be able to make mortar.  5 miles is not that far to haul stone from a quarry (you're not building Stonehenge, the stones don't have to be that large).

Oh, if you have source of clay and can fire bricks (this requires fuel), then bricks will work quite well as a replacement for stone.  

Those are the musings off the top of my head.  I do need to try to get that Engineer's manual back . . .

EDIT -- I was responding quickly and missed some key things.  Again, I don't know how many man-hours it takes to move the required amount of earth, but also it's unclear how much you need to move.  If simply piling up earth, then it will take more to get to the desired height. If making a composite stone(or brick)/earth wall, which will be thinner, it requires less earth, but more stone (and I don't think my manual covered that).

Also, 300 feet on a side is actually pretty big.  A good sized camp could fit inside that enclosure, so that could house a fairly large number of soldiers.  I'm not finding it quickly, but the roman legions would often make a temporary "marching fort" when they camped at night, the dimensions of that, and how many soldiers it contained, might be a useful guide.

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## Grim Portent

While not a wall, the motte for a small motte-and-bailey castle could take as little as 1000 man hours to make. The motte is basically a man made hill upon which you place a wood or stone keep, so it's not exactly a flimsy pile of loose dirt or anything. The whole thing, hill, keep and wall around the hill could take under a month to build, so using that as a general guide it should take just a few weeks at most to build just the wall and a trench.

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## PhoenixPhyre

> What exactly do you mean by stone topping?  Basically an earthwork faced in stone?  That's basically how most thick walls were made anyhow: two faces of stone and the interior is filled with rubble, earth, etc.
> 
> The "earth" to make an earthwork is obtained by digging the surrounding ditch, so the earth needs to be moved, but not very far.  The ditch also serves to effectively increase the height of the wall that needs to be scaled.  As you're not using the walls to resist artillery, then they don't need to be very thick, and the wood you have could be used to make "fraise" (a barrier of pointed sticks at the base of the wall).
> 
> However, if you have enough stone, you can make walls tall, while sacrificing width (again, no artillery to face), and so you could move less earth.  Unfortunately I loaned my Civil War era engineer's manual out to somebody a couple of years ago, and never got it back -- so I don't have my estimates how much earth a man can move in x-hours, based on the hardness of the soil.  Frankly I don't think it matters much.  Unless you have a very limited number of workers, 3 months should be plenty of time to make a small fort.  If you lack skilled masons, then field stone walls would probably suffice, although you need to be able to make mortar.  5 miles is not that far to haul stone from a quarry (you're not building Stonehenge, the stones don't have to be that large).
> 
> Oh, if you have source of clay and can fire bricks (this requires fuel), then bricks will work quite well as a replacement for stone.  
> 
> Those are the musings off the top of my head.  I do need to try to get that Engineer's manual back . . .
> ...


What I was thinking was that the wall would look like (seen from the outside):

1) ditch
2) small horizontal space to keep the dirt from tumbling in
3) packed earth (probably sodded with the heavy sod from the ditch to prevent rain from washing it away) slope, roughly triangular but with a flattened top several feet wide, about 8-10' high at the peak.
4) held in place with a field-stone + mortar retaining wall that also serves as the patrolling walkway.
5) (eventually) with a shorter regular stone wall, 5-6' tall, on top of the earth slope as as breastwork.

The point being to not need quite so much stone/stonework because all you're using it for is to support one side of the wall, not facing it.

I did some calculations and it seems doable just in earth-moving time assuming you have the equivalent of a mini-excavator + roller (in the ritual crew) and then most of the labor being building the retaining wall. Estimate was you have about 50 cubic feet of earth in a 1-foot-wide segment, or (roughly, with rounding) 6 m^3 per m of wall. From that and excavator speeds, I figured you could probably handle somewhere between 40 and 50 m of wall per day (just in earth-moving time), so I said roughly 1 month (32 days, in setting, as a round number) for a 200'x200' area (basically 1 acre) assuming you had one specialist crew and "plenty" of less-skilled labor. Shorter if you can hire another specialist crew (the real limiting factor here).

----------


## KineticDiplomat

You might find an instructive case in Fort McAllister, near Savannah (pop ~22k c 1861). Basically its little more than a dirt battery in 1861, because everyone thinks that the pride and joy masonry-based Fort Pulaski will hold the river. In April 1862, the union comes and proves brick forts dont work anymore and all of a sudden the CSA needs a fort near Savannah, and they need it now. 

Cue going from little more than a battery without any permanent quarters (the garrison lived in houses a bit down the road at the time), to a 30 acre enclosed earthwork fort with a proper ditch, bomb catches, traverses 10-15 feet high, shelters, firing points for six seaward and three landward guns, all made of dirt. Its pretty forted up by July...so three months after the oh crap moment.

So, a two acre enclosure thats basically just a tall berm? So long as you have the motivation, any town of decent size shouldnt have an issue in three months.

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## Fatefulforce

> Tod's Worshop -- circa 1400 BCE 960lb crossbow vs modern 150lb crossbow


Tod is awsome and runs one of the best Youtube chans

----------


## TheStranger

> A question about building fortifications:
> 
> Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?


I know nothing about fortifications, but I know a little bit about moving dirt with a shovel so I'll weigh in.

First, let's use a circular enclosure for minimal necessary earth moving.  A two-acre circular enclosure will have a perimeter of ~1,050 feet, which saves us ~150 feet of wall over your square fortification.  So there's that.

Second, let's assume that you can maintain a 45 degree slope on your earthwork without the use of expensive wood/rock to stabilize a vertical wall.  This has the disadvantage of being easier to scale than an actual wall, and the added disadvantage of needing more material because your wall is twice as wide at the base at it is high.  But my intuition is that the labor to move dirt is going to be substantially cheaper than importing rock or wood, so let's go with that.  Besides, building a good retaining wall takes its own labor and a bit more skill than hauling dirt, so you might not save anything in the end (but you do get a nicer wall out of it).

Let's also say that you want your wall to be three feet wide at the top.  That means that a 10' high wall will have a cross-sectional area of about 130 square feet, and each foot of wall will require about five cubic yards of dirt.  From personal experience, I'm going to estimate that one hard-working adult can move about that much dirt from Point A to Point B in a day.  The actual amount might be a bit more or less, but that's probably close enough for our purposes and it makes the math easy. (If you go with an 8-foot wall, each linear foot takes about three yards of dirt.)

All of which means you need about 1,050 person-days of labor to complete your wall, or about 12 people working for three months.  If you have three months, I'd suggest two crews, each with an ox-pulled cart to move the dirt from the ditch to the wall (two carts, actually - that way you can always have one being filled and one being emptied).  Have your two crews work around the wall in opposite directions, with each crew having a few people in the ditch loading carts and a few people on the wall emptying carts, plus somebody driving the carts back and forth.

Since you have lots of time to do this, you can use that as a starting point but plan to take stock after a few weeks and hire more workers if needed.  As for the mages, a little googling suggests that an excavator moves about 300 cubic yards in a day, so you save money having your mundane work crews and only bring in the mages if you start falling behind schedule or if you run into some hard digging.

----------


## Pauly

> A question about building fortifications:
> 
> Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?
>  (palisade style).


If its civil war era which implies gunpowder cannons, you do not want stone, least of all small stones that havent been expertly masoned into position.

Stone shatters and creates shrapnel. Packed earth is all around better. Packed earth gambions were heavily used in the ACW as were sandbags. Stone, if used, would be better on the interior facing of the walls and allowing the packed earth to absorb the shock of cannon balls. You may have some interior stone buildings, but that would be to protect against stray ricochets and musket balls not aimed direct cannon fire.

Depending on the expertise of the engineers your basic design will be along the lines of a Vauban star fart with bastions and ramped walks deflecting cannon shots upwards. Ditches in the front to slow down assaults.

If youve got druids available you could grow grass on the sod to help keep it in place and bomba bushes as natural barbed wire where required, possibly in the ditches.

As previously sad 3 months is more than enough time to build an elaborated earthworks.

----------


## fusilier

> What I was thinking was that the wall would look like (seen from the outside):
> 
> 1) ditch
> 2) small horizontal space to keep the dirt from tumbling in
> 3) packed earth (probably sodded with the heavy sod from the ditch to prevent rain from washing it away) slope, roughly triangular but with a flattened top several feet wide, about 8-10' high at the peak.
> 4) held in place with a field-stone + mortar retaining wall that also serves as the patrolling walkway.
> 5) (eventually) with a shorter regular stone wall, 5-6' tall, on top of the earth slope as as breastwork.
> 
> The point being to not need quite so much stone/stonework because all you're using it for is to support one side of the wall, not facing it.
> ...


Seeing as the ditch is made out of the same dirt as the wall, the angle should be the same, and you won't need a small berm between the ditch and wall.  While sometimes used on larger fortifications, it could be undesirable as it might make it easier for enemies to climb.

So what kind of cross section are you imagining?  A typical civil war earthen fort, with walls as high as you describe, would have a very wide "firing step."  The parapet would be roughly breast high when standing on this  "step."  The interior of the parapet would be "revetted", some material would be used to make it vertical, and prevent earth from spilling *into* the work.  This allows the soldiers to stand next to the wall to fire their muskets over the top.  Typically all interior edges would be revetted, but it wasn't always done.

However, it appears that you intend just an earth wall, 8-10 feet high, that soldiers can stand on top of?  That fits with some older (pre-musket) styles.  Given that you're using prairie sod, I don't think you even need to pave the walkways with stone.  The sod should be tough enough to take being trodden upon.  Maybe use some stone to provide steps to the top?  Or terrace the interior so that it's easier to get to the top?  Gaps in the earth wall, for things like gates, entryways, posterns, etc., can be faced with stone.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> Seeing as the ditch is made out of the same dirt as the wall, the angle should be the same, and you won't need a small berm between the ditch and wall.  While sometimes used on larger fortifications, it could be undesirable as it might make it easier for enemies to climb.
> 
> So what kind of cross section are you imagining?  A typical civil war earthen fort, with walls as high as you describe, would have a very wide "firing step."  The parapet would be roughly breast high when standing on this  "step."  The interior of the parapet would be "revetted", some material would be used to make it vertical, and prevent earth from spilling *into* the work.  This allows the soldiers to stand next to the wall to fire their muskets over the top.  Typically all interior edges would be revetted, but it wasn't always done.
> 
> However, it appears that you intend just an earth wall, 8-10 feet high, that soldiers can stand on top of?  That fits with some older (pre-musket) styles.  Given that you're using prairie sod, I don't think you even need to pave the walkways with stone.  The sod should be tough enough to take being trodden upon.  Maybe use some stone to provide steps to the top?  Or terrace the interior so that it's easier to get to the top?  Gaps in the earth wall, for things like gates, entryways, posterns, etc., can be faced with stone.


So what you're proposing has the wall be simply the extension of the ditch's inner surface? That could work. As for cross-section, I had been working under the (mistaken, it seems) assumption that dirt-moving was the bottleneck here and thinking of it as a right triangle, roughly as wide as it is tall, so probably 11 ft across at the base, ramping up at a (roughly) 45 degree angle for 8 feet, then a 3 foot "walk" on the top, with the vertical side being held up by a field-stone retaining wall. That was to save on dirt needing to be moved. But if, as it appears, dirt-moving isn't the binding constraint, I could instead just do a roughly 20' wide (at the base) flat-topped triangle--8' of slope, then 3-5' of flat, then 8' sloping down on the inside. Then put a field-stone wall, roughly 4-5' high (with battlements) on top for cover for soldiers on the top.

Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.

One other side note--the culture in question shouldn't have much problem with the skills for building walls--their (common-language) culture name is the Wallbuilders. They build walls of some sort (ranging from a token string-and-stake border marker to one city having multiple stacked, serious stone walls cutting off access to the city, which nestles in a pocket canyon with inaccessible cliffs on all but a small approach. They're somewhat of defensive specialists. However, no one in the region has fought a serious war[1] in, well, centuries. First because there was no one neighboring to war against (expanding into wilderness), then because there's an international organization who owns all the adventurers/superheroes who tends to stomp on serious wars hard.

[1] there have been skirmishes and a protracted "civil war" that was basically just a bunch of feuding groups raiding each other, but those raids had force sizes in the low hundreds at most. Most of the nations of the region have only token militaries. Lots of monsters on the borders, but this area is way far away from any of the wilderness.

----------


## fusilier

> So what you're proposing has the wall be simply the extension of the ditch's inner surface? That could work. As for cross-section, I had been working under the (mistaken, it seems) assumption that dirt-moving was the bottleneck here and thinking of it as a right triangle, roughly as wide as it is tall, so probably 11 ft across at the base, ramping up at a (roughly) 45 degree angle for 8 feet, then a 3 foot "walk" on the top, with the vertical side being held up by a field-stone retaining wall. That was to save on dirt needing to be moved. But if, as it appears, dirt-moving isn't the binding constraint, I could instead just do a roughly 20' wide (at the base) flat-topped triangle--8' of slope, then 3-5' of flat, then 8' sloping down on the inside. Then put a field-stone wall, roughly 4-5' high (with battlements) on top for cover for soldiers on the top.
> 
> Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.
> 
> One other side note--the culture in question shouldn't have much problem with the skills for building walls--their (common-language) culture name is the Wallbuilders. They build walls of some sort (ranging from a token string-and-stake border marker to one city having multiple stacked, serious stone walls cutting off access to the city, which nestles in a pocket canyon with inaccessible cliffs on all but a small approach. They're somewhat of defensive specialists. However, no one in the region has fought a serious war[1] in, well, centuries. First because there was no one neighboring to war against (expanding into wilderness), then because there's an international organization who owns all the adventurers/superheroes who tends to stomp on serious wars hard.
> 
> [1] there have been skirmishes and a protracted "civil war" that was basically just a bunch of feuding groups raiding each other, but those raids had force sizes in the low hundreds at most. Most of the nations of the region have only token militaries. Lots of monsters on the borders, but this area is way far away from any of the wilderness.


This sounds reasonable to me.  I did remember I have a "Hand-Book of Active Service" which does have some information about field fortifications.  I don't see anything about digging rates, but it does recommend a 45 degree slope for the earth, as your calculations used.

I would still consider using "fraise" (large pointed sticks sticking out from the base of the earthwork), if the wood can be found.  At the very least it looks cool. ;-)  It's also got a long history in the use of field fortifications.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

> This sounds reasonable to me.  I did remember I have a "Hand-Book of Active Service" which does have some information about field fortifications.  I don't see anything about digging rates, but it does recommend a 45 degree slope for the earth, as your calculations used.
> 
> I would still consider using "fraise" (large pointed sticks sticking out from the base of the earthwork), if the wood can be found.  At the very least it looks cool. ;-)  It's also got a long history in the use of field fortifications.


Good to know that my "make the math easier" simplification, which I arrived at by looking at a table of angles of repose, was about right.

I think that instead of fraise (because wood long enough to be meaningful is really scarce here[1]), I'll instead use thorn bushes, which are...not scarce. And grow big and gnarly and tangled. Plant those in the ditch and you'll strongly discourage people passing through.

[1] In fact, wood isn't used for fuel at all except as a show of ostentatious wealth. Instead, there's a (fantasy) form of bush, something like a compact tumbleweed that burns for a long time. That, plus animal dung, provides much of the heat and cooking fuel. Culturally, they're all about planting trees (often as wind-breaks or orchards)--cutting down live trees is discouraged. Much of the native wood that ends up used for things came from dead or dying trees. The rest was floated down the major rivers from the heavily-wooded hills and mountains ~100 miles away.

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## Pauly

> Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.
> .


For fortifications.
- Tall vertical obstacles keep out people (and orcs et al). Thickness is only a consideration in answering the question how hard is it to make the wall less tall?
- Sloped thick obstacles keep out firepower. A trench is essentially a fortification with infinite thickness walls. Height only matters in making fields of fire for your defensive batteries.

The purpose of sloped fortifications in ancient forts was to make it harder to get over the vertical part of the wall. As soon as fortification technology was sufficiently advanced defenders built vertical walls of sufficient height and abandoned sloping earthworks as part of the built defenses. Even then forts were built on the top of hills where possible.

In the absence of cannons, or the magical equivalent, there is no need to make thick sloping earthworks a part of your fortification, unless it exists to put a tall wall on the top of it.

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## PhoenixPhyre

> For fortifications.
> - Tall vertical obstacles keep out people (and orcs et al). Thickness is only a consideration in answering the question how hard is it to make the wall less tall?
> - Sloped thick obstacles keep out firepower. A trench is essentially a fortification with infinite thickness walls. Height only matters in making fields of fire for your defensive batteries.
> 
> The purpose of sloped fortifications in ancient forts was to make it harder to get over the vertical part of the wall. As soon as fortification technology was sufficiently advanced defenders built vertical walls of sufficient height and abandoned sloping earthworks as part of the built defenses. Even then forts were built on the top of hills where possible.
> 
> In the absence of cannons, or the magical equivalent, there is no need to make thick sloping earthworks a part of your fortification, unless it exists to put a tall wall on the top of it.


But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.

As I see it, the hybrid approach gets you some of the benefits of the vertical, while being much cheaper/faster. If they were in the mountains or forests, the calculus would change to favor stone and wood. And field stone (which isn't all that common there either, but more than blocks of cut stone) is extremely labor intensive at scale.

Plus, there are aesthetic considerations. This particular culture has a history of using earth as a building material. Cob-style rammed earth buildings are the norm, with only rich buildings being timbered.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I think that instead of fraise (because wood long enough to be meaningful is really scarce here[1]), I'll instead use thorn bushes, which are...not scarce. And grow big and gnarly and tangled. Plant those in the ditch and you'll strongly discourage people passing through.


Not really. I remember one occassion where I, a re-enactor with 1300 padded leg armor and leather boots, was a part of a LARP, with most of the LARPers using the usual not-that-durable costumes. A fight broke out, as it does, and I gleefully stomped right through thorn bushes, knowing full well my armor and actual, proper boots can take it, to flank the enemy shield wall. Unless your thorn bushes are some exotic variety with long and durable spikes, anyone with padded armor will be able to get through with a few small nicks in the armor, and anyone in metal will only be slowed down slightly by them.




> But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.
> 
> As I see it, the hybrid approach gets you some of the benefits of the vertical, while being much cheaper/faster. If they were in the mountains or forests, the calculus would change to favor stone and wood. And field stone (which isn't all that common there either, but more than blocks of cut stone) is extremely labor intensive at scale.


The main reason this wasn't done is cost and labor. Pallisades and walls go quite a lot deeper down than you probably think, and erecting any earthworks on top of actual surface will make replacing the previous defensive structure a pain - not only do you need to excavate some ground twice, but you need to stabilize the new hole to make sure it doesn't just... fill itself in during the next rain.

This isn't to say walls weren't upgraded, clearly they were, and often, but if you are planning a defensive measures and already know you will be building a stone wall in near future, the logical thing to do is to make a mound-and-pallisade ring that will be fairly far away from where you want your stone wall to be, getting two layers of defense and avoiding having to dig up the same ground twice.

*Spoiler: Side slices of several fortification types*
Show


Pallisade and mound

Schematic stone wall

Actual stone wall, note both the scale (that wide base is ~5 meters deep) and the retaining wall to the far right



This was a fairly common practice, although you rarely see it nowadays, most stone castles don't have their pallisades reconstructed, and even then, finding any evidence for or against a pallisade can be a challenge archaeologically.

*Spoiler: Beckov castle with reconstructions of two of its pallisade towers visible in bottom right*
Show


The white bits at the bottom is sun-bleached wood that for some reason lost to posterity (of the last two decades) wasn't slathered with whatever product they used to stop weather and bugs from eating it





> Plus, there are aesthetic considerations. This particular culture has a history of using earth as a building material. Cob-style rammed earth buildings are the norm, with only rich buildings being timbered.


This was always a weak excuse. Sure, some aesthetic considerations will affect the final look, but when it comes to gross construction, functionality rules over all. There's a reason why fortifications against similar weapons looked almost the same.

*Spoiler: Great Wall, Babylon and Spis castle, note the walls*
Show

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## Telok

> But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.


Adobe. Sun, mud, straw. You said they have some experience with bricks? It's a cheap brick wall that should help until a more permanent wall is built.

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## Tobtor

> Adobe. Sun, mud, straw. You said they have some experience with bricks? It's a cheap brick wall that should help until a more permanent wall is built.



Depend on climate. Mud bricks will fail unless you a firing them. That requires firewood (it needs quite alot!). Making bricks isn't a short cut to making a wall. It requies about the same time and resources (though it is different resources).




> Sure, some aesthetic considerations will affect the final look, but when it comes to gross construction, functionality rules over all. There's a reason why fortifications against similar weapons looked almost the same.


Well... wooden walls and first doesn't last as long, so you cant see them today. That is what we see today is NOT what did did, but only the part that lastet.




> Not really. I remember one occassion where I, a re-enactor with 1300 padded leg armor and leather boots, was a part of a LARP, with most of the LARPers using the usual not-that-durable costumes. A fight broke out, as it does, and I gleefully stomped right through thorn bushes, knowing full well my armor and actual, proper boots can take it, to flank the enemy shield wall. Unless your thorn bushes are some exotic variety with long and durable spikes, anyone with padded armor will be able to get through with a few small nicks in the armor, and anyone in metal will only be slowed down slightly by them.


I disagree.  Bushes big and gnarly and tangled DOES stop you - al least for a time. Maybe you have seen different bushes than me. But even in full wintergear where "damage from thorns" is not an issue they do stop you cold. During an archaeologcal excavation we had to uses the big digging machine to clear it. Even that had some issues when it had to cross a 1m heigh dike with bramble (it was a komatsu PC240 digger).

The slowdown is not from "hurt" or injuries, but that is so tangled than you cannot push past it. You ceend to clear it with a weapon, wich slows you down. I think I saw a reference to Roman defenses used bushes/branches in ditches?

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## VoxRationis

I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.

What does a Bronze Age (more like Mycenaean Greece, not Egypt or Mesopotamia) rural landscape look like? How far apart are villages usually spaced? How big are the villages? I have been trying to find good claims on this. I've seen Medieval Demographics Made Easy; obviously, its purview is somewhat later than the era I wish to emulate. It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France. (And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.)

Some setting notes for clarification: this takes place in a Bronze Age society that practices partitioning of holdings between sons, usually leading to the penury of the average farmer and consolidation under large landowners (who often kill second sons at birth in an effort to prevent such partition). Socioeconomic status is flexible but viciously unequal; accidents of birth, death, and available neighboring land can cause a family to rise or fall in station dramatically. Elite males ride horses into battle and fight as archers, so it stands to reason that there should be a fair amount of pasture land somewhere. The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.

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## PhoenixPhyre

> 1) Depend on climate. Mud bricks will fail unless you a firing them. That requires firewood (it needs quite alot!). Making bricks isn't a short cut to making a wall. It requies about the same time and resources (though it is different resources).
> 
> 2) I disagree.  Bushes big and gnarly and tangled DOES stop you - al least for a time. Maybe you have seen different bushes than me. But even in full wintergear where "damage from thorns" is not an issue they do stop you cold. During an archaeologcal excavation we had to uses the big digging machine to clear it. Even that had some issues when it had to cross a 1m heigh dike with bramble (it was a komatsu PC240 digger).
> 
> The slowdown is not from "hurt" or injuries, but that is so tangled than you cannot push past it. You ceend to clear it with a weapon, wich slows you down. I think I saw a reference to Roman defenses used bushes/branches in ditches?


1) Yeah, that was my concern. They can fire bricks, but it's fairly expensive in fuel costs. That's why they prefer packed earth building. It's not a particularly dry climate, especially during the winter. Think Great Plains--hot and somewhat humid (there's a very large inland, freshwater sea not all that far away) during the summer, cold and wet during the winter.

2) And I was thinking of those big, totally tangled bushes that are hard to push past. Not rosebushes, but 3-4 foot high, densely-tangled thorny bushes. The kind that will act as a decent cattle fence, unless they're stampeding.

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## rrgg

Just for the record and to avoid any confusion, "rammed earth" often refers to a specific construction style that isn't the same as sloped, earthwork fortifications like what you'd usually see in early modern bastion forts. It was a somewhat labor-intensive process which involved slowly compacting bricks of earth down to about 50% of their original volume creating an almost stone-like material which was extremely sturdy and definitely could be used for vertical construction, including vertical fortifications. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammed_earth


Regarding the simpler sloped earthworks and ditches, they have been used frequently for fortification quite a bit even before gunpowder weapons and seem to have been generally considered fairly cheap and quick to construct if you've got the manpower at least. Earthworks were a frequent feature of iron age forts and settlements, no matter what the period it's pretty difficult to fight across a deep ditch or up a steep slope.

According to vegetius regarding entrenched encampments: "There are two methods of entrenching a camp. When the danger is not imminent, they carry a slight ditch round the whole circuit, only nine feet broad and seven deep. With the turf taken from this they make a kind of wall or breastwork three feet high on the inner side of the ditch. But where there is reason to be apprehensive of attempts of the enemy, the camp must be surrounded with a regular ditch twelve feet broad and nine feet deep perpendicular from the surface of the ground. A parapet is then raised on the side next the camp, of the height of four feet, with hurdles and fascines properly covered and secured by the earth taken out of the ditch. From these dimensions the interior height of the intrenchment will be found to be thirteen feet, and the breadth of the ditch twelve. On the top of the whole are planted strong palisades which the soldiers carry constantly with them for this purpose. A sufficient number of spades, pickaxes, wicker baskets and tools of all kinds are to be provided for these works."

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## AdAstra

> 1) Yeah, that was my concern. They can fire bricks, but it's fairly expensive in fuel costs. That's why they prefer packed earth building. It's not a particularly dry climate, especially during the winter. Think Great Plains--hot and somewhat humid (there's a very large inland, freshwater sea not all that far away) during the summer, cold and wet during the winter.
> 
> 2) And I was thinking of those big, totally tangled bushes that are hard to push past. Not rosebushes, but 3-4 foot high, densely-tangled thorny bushes. The kind that will act as a decent cattle fence, unless they're stampeding.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillfort

Depending, this may offer a little bit.

The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.

Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.


Okay, if you make the brambles thick enough to a point where they stop you be their sheer mass, it will work if it is high enough. Bu thorns will be of limited effect there, you will get simlar effect with hedges. How you want to get them grown in a few months, though... well, I guess you could always claim magic.




> Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.


This is a terrible idea and will get your wall to crumble in a few years, damage by roots is quite a problem, even grass can damage a castle wall given enough time. Earthern wall will fare even worse.




> I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.
> 
> What does a Bronze Age (more like Mycenaean Greece, not Egypt or Mesopotamia) rural landscape look like? How far apart are villages usually spaced? How big are the villages? I have been trying to find good claims on this. I've seen Medieval Demographics Made Easy; obviously, its purview is somewhat later than the era I wish to emulate. It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France. (And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.)
> 
> Some setting notes for clarification: this takes place in a Bronze Age society that practices partitioning of holdings between sons, usually leading to the penury of the average farmer and consolidation under large landowners (who often kill second sons at birth in an effort to prevent such partition). Socioeconomic status is flexible but viciously unequal; accidents of birth, death, and available neighboring land can cause a family to rise or fall in station dramatically. Elite males ride horses into battle and fight as archers, so it stands to reason that there should be a fair amount of pasture land somewhere. The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.






> It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France.


The problem here is the local maximums and minimums - the population desity will not be uniform for a country. Arable lowlands will have more people, tall mountains will have barely any and cities will have high concentrations. Things like gold deposits and major rivers will impact this, as well as stable vs unstable borders and so on and so forth. The more profitable and peaceful the region is, the more population it will usually have.

*Spoiler: Major settlements in high medieval Hungary*
Show


You can see the settlements, and therefore population, mostly concentrated in a west to north crescent





> And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.


Viable how? Self sustaining community has 50 people per 2 ha, with very, very primitive farming (fallow cropping with no fertilizer), as per this article. In that sense, yeah, you need 200 ares for a sustainable farming village, but that village has several farms, probably five or so (10 people per household is sort of a standard rule of thumb), and a portion of them does not look like farms (pasture, maybe, depends on how you fallow crop).

Problem is, you can't easily scale it down, just because the math works out to 4 ares per man doesn't necessarily mean one man can sustain himself off of that amount of land. And 50 people is a very small village, any lower and it will probably disappear by people moving out. Villages are usually in the 100-200 people range.




> I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.
> [...]
> The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.


Assuming this is in a relatively stable region, likely all of it. Farmable areas will be concentrated in the lowlands, with hills reserved for pasture. Habsburg first military survey map from 1700s shows us a village every 5-10 km on a road, with road and therefore village network denser in arable areas and sparse in the hills.

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## VoxRationis

> The problem here is the local maximums and minimums - the population desity will not be uniform for a country. Arable lowlands will have more people, tall mountains will have barely any and cities will have high concentrations. Things like gold deposits and major rivers will impact this, as well as stable vs unstable borders and so on and so forth. The more profitable and peaceful the region is, the more population it will usually have.
> 
> *Spoiler: Major settlements in high medieval Hungary*
> Show
> 
> 
> You can see the settlements, and therefore population, mostly concentrated in a west to north crescent


No, I get that factors like the availability of water and arable land tends to affect density; I was asking more about layout within a particular density; a region composed of an approximate grid of ~100-person villages every kilometer will be somewhat different than one with ~400-person villages every two kilometers, despite having the same population density overall.




> Viable how? Self sustaining community has 50 people per 2 ha, with very, very primitive farming (fallow cropping with no fertilizer), as per this article. In that sense, yeah, you need 200 ares for a sustainable farming village, but that village has several farms, probably five or so (10 people per household is sort of a standard rule of thumb), and a portion of them does not look like farms (pasture, maybe, depends on how you fallow crop).
> 
> Problem is, you can't easily scale it down, just because the math works out to 4 ares per man doesn't necessarily mean one man can sustain himself off of that amount of land. And 50 people is a very small village, any lower and it will probably disappear by people moving out. Villages are usually in the 100-200 people range.


They didn't really say what "viable" meant; I rather suspect a bias towards more modern farm systems in that thread.





> Assuming this is in a relatively stable region, likely all of it. Farmable areas will be concentrated in the lowlands, with hills reserved for pasture. Habsburg first military survey map from 1700s shows us a village every 5-10 km on a road, with road and therefore village network denser in arable areas and sparse in the hills.


Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.

Anyway, thank you for the information.

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## snowblizz

> Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for the information.


Roads will avoid woods wherever possible, they are terrible places to put a medieval style road unless the other options are worse. It will also try to avoid water. Around these parts a lot of old roads were following the sand-ridges left by the iceage icesheet as it waxed and waned over the years.

Since the road will likely have been built to service the communities along the way you'd be seeing a lot of them. More than their area of coverage would indicate. So mostly you'd be passing fields and pasture. Fields around the villages which turn into pasture further out and if there's a lot of distance between two villages or the terrain is unfavourable they will have left it as woodland.

In a heavily settled area you don't have forest as such, you have highly managed woodlands. The problem is most of how it would go depends on the geography of your area.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.


Assuming it's fully settled area and there are no wars to empty it:

100% will be on a road, probably dirt, unless you have Roman-style highwaya village every 5-10 km, the shapes of which will vary, some will be more or less a circle, others will stretch alongside a stream, a village portion can be anything from 100 meters to a kilometerfor outside, vast majority (80-90%) will be some sort of agricultural land (wheat, vegetables, pasture, orchards, vinyards), small plots (~1 acre) divided by hedges or buttsthe rest will be timber forests, planted and maintained specifically to provide timber, so les undergrowth and a lot of straight growing trees

This isn't a proportion of land, mind you, there is a lot more forest around, it's just that roads tend to avoid them for the most part, and since this is a coastal region, most of the villages will e on the coastline to have access to fishing and ship transport, and will therefore concentrate farmland to the shore and push the forests out. This is mostly due to you having to go to farm a lot more often than go to timber, and the kind of operation that needs a lot of timber (smelting, for one) being concentrated next to forest and deliberately away from housing.

Roads will follow villages, so you're likely to visit every single one between your starting and ending points, unless you deliberately try to avoid them by going via the side roads, which will slow you down, potentially quite a bit. If you try to cut straight through without following roads, you will be slowed down quite a bit and attract angry farmers.

If the area isn't fully settled yet or had a crisis or several recently, you will get some percentage of abandoned land, but what that percentage is depends on political situation - coastlines and river banks are usually first places to be settled at any rate.

Example road:

small village A, 130 meters (elongated)farmland, 6 kmmedium village B, 130 meters (circular)farmland 2kmforest 3 kmfarmland 3kmlarge village C, 1km (runs along a stream)

As a rule of thumb, a 2-3km radius around a village will almost always be farmland, with the upper limit being at about 10km in special circumstances (e.g. farming a fjord), although this should really be determined by travel time, not distance. About double that (4-6km, maximum stay at 10km) goes for grazing areas, and meadows for making hay and straw for animals in winter go all the way to that maximum of 10km. Beyond 10 km, the travel time is so long that anything but dedicated pastures with temporary summer camps is not viable.

Important note - this radius of 3-6-10 km is per village, if you have a village A and village B, they could be as far apart as 20 km without overlap. What you are more likely to see is villages concentrated along a road and having a kind of ellipse-shape to their zones, so you won't ever hit zones 2 and 3 while going on the main road. Terrain will dictate most of this, though.

Of the first two zones (3km farms and 6km pastures), 80 percent will be some kind of farmable thing, the final meadow zone has about 50 percent being in use. The rest goes to the forests, streams and otherwise unusable land. However, even the first famring zone will only have about 10 percent of its area used to actively grow crops, the rest of it being orchards or pastures.

You may have noticed that that gives a given village an area of ~2500 ha in the first zone, 250 ha of which is actively worked for crops. That's a lot more than 2-10 ha needed to sustain a village of 50-200 people, but keep in mind that's the bare minimum for subsistence, our actual villages want to 1) make a profit and 2) have some variety in their diet.

That area of 250 ha needs 1 000 man-hours to plow, which translates to 100 man-days assuming you take a ten hours of plowing a day. While this is hard physical labour, you only need one person strong enough to operate the plow, while driving the animlas can be done by a child. Assuming a household of 10 and traditional gender roles, we can estimate 3 males that can plow (2 being too young or too old) per 10 people. In a village of 50, that's 15, so even in that lowball case, a plowing can be done in a week (although I doubt this would actually be attempted, I have plowed with a small hand-tractor and it's hard, hard work, six days will make everything hurt). A more reasonable village of 200 people can do it in two days.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillfort
> 
> Depending, this may offer a little bit.
> 
> The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.
> 
> Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.


As a side note on plants: larger forts and fortified towns apparently historically often had quite a few trees growing in/on them, possibly looking closer to modern "abandoned and overgrown" remnants than to clean cut restorations. Especially ones we start getting to the early modern period, where larger forts and longer sieges become the norm. Not only do plants work as cover for the defenders and obstacles for the attackers, but when you're actually under siege they form a source of firewood and material for repairs. Why only have stockpiles of dead wood that slowly rot away in peacetime when you can have a stockpile of living wood that keeps growing bigger?

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## AdAstra

> Okay, if you make the brambles thick enough to a point where they stop you be their sheer mass, it will work if it is high enough. Bu thorns will be of limited effect there, you will get simlar effect with hedges. How you want to get them grown in a few months, though... well, I guess you could always claim magic.
> 
> 
> 
> This is a terrible idea and will get your wall to crumble in a few years, damage by roots is quite a problem, even grass can damage a castle wall given enough time. Earthern wall will fare even worse.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


In areas with significant rainfall, _not_ having plant growth in your earthen walls will cause them to erode without question, unless it's rammed earth or adobe/cob (which will hold up fairly well, but will still be affected over very long periods of time). Curtain walls are a whole different thing, but for the sort of earthworks proposed plants should only be beneficial. Deep roots stabilize soil and are generally speaking, a good idea (though earthen dams can be compromised by woody growth, grass is beneficial). Elevated hedgerows, even those faced with stone that will be more vulnerable to damage from growth, have maintenance cycles on the order of over 100 years, as in Cornish and Devon hedges (though these are farm walls meant for soil protection and sectioning off land, they are very much walls).

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## adso

I'm interested in learning more about the relationship between distance and accuracy with ranged weapons. I'm particularly interested in bows, but anything relating to crossbows, spears, slings, etc would be similarly helpful. I've found a lot on the effective range of various historical weapons, but it tends to be presented as a fairly broad range. I'm wondering, within that range, what is the relationship between accuracy (ability to hit a human-sized target) and distance? Even some anecdotal evidence from someone familiar with a weapon regarding whether it is a linear vs. exponential decrease in accuracy would be great!

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## Pauly

Accuracy is essentially a function of velocity. The more arc you need to get the distance to the target the less accurate you become. There are some confounding variables such as stabilization (spin and/or fins), aiming devices and so on, but velocity is the main variable affecting the device/projectile. Skill of the user is probably higher importance, but I am assuming equally skilled users for this.

Edit to add:
Projectile mass is another factor at longer ranges. Lighter projectiles get affected by air resistance more than heavier projectiles. However I dont know if man powered projectiles have enough flight time for this to be an important consideration.

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## Squire Doodad

> In areas with significant rainfall, _not_ having plant growth in your earthen walls will cause them to erode without question, unless it's rammed earth or adobe/cob (which will hold up fairly well, but will still be affected over very long periods of time). Curtain walls are a whole different thing, but for the sort of earthworks proposed plants should only be beneficial. Deep roots stabilize soil and are generally speaking, a good idea (though earthen dams can be compromised by woody growth, grass is beneficial). Elevated hedgerows, even those faced with stone that will be more vulnerable to damage from growth, have maintenance cycles on the order of over 100 years, as in Cornish and Devon hedges (though these are farm walls meant for soil protection and sectioning off land, they are very much walls).


So a crude mud wall having patches of grass or being studded with ferns would actually make it stronger?

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## Gnoman

There's two kinds of accuracy - mechanical accuracy and practical accuracy. Mechanical accuracy is the ability of a weapon system to hit a target absent any other factor. For this purpose, velocity isn't that important at all. What matters is the weight of the slug (which helps it avoid aerodynamic effects), the mechanical properties of the weapon (how well made it is, and how much error it introduces to the projectiles it launches), and the aerodynamic qualities of the missile - for firearms this is called the _ballistic coefficient_, and measures how "slick" it is toward the air it is passing through. 


Practical accuracy is another matter. Most ranged weapons are much more accurate than the people firing them, and this is where velocity becomes the defining factor - the less ballistic drop you have, the better your hit rate will be. The nature of the weapon itself also makes a big difference. Something like a sling or javelin is going to be much harder with distance, because you basically have to aim it with your entire body. Meanwhile a crossbow, like a modern firearm, will be much more capable of finely refined aim. It will also be much less dependant on the physical state of the shooter - raising and firing a crossbow (though not necessarily loading it) is much less physically taxing than a bow or throwing weapon, and thus will be less likely to experience the effects of physical strain when firing.

As far as distance goes, the biggest thing is that every single negative factor is multiplied the farther out you're aiming. To give a concrete example (albeit one much more modern than you're looking for), a very good rifle will be accurate to "one minute of angle". This means that you can expect the mechanical accuracy of the rifle to place every round within a 1/60th degree cone extending from the muzzle. A rule of thumb to estimate the effect of this is that the base of this cone will be 1" across per 100 yards of range. So, at 100 yards, it will place every shot within a 1" circle - a very nice and precise grouping. Go out to 500 yards, and that circle becomes 5" - not nearly so nice. At 1000 yards, the circle is 10" - approaching the proverbial broadside of a barn. That's just the mechanical effects of the construction. Every factor - slightly off aim, trembles from fear or fatigue, a fly making you blink, whatever - will be multiplied in the same way.

This applies to all ranged weapons. Same reason why a throw from outfield to home base is harder than the same throw from shortstop even if you have the arm for it, or why basketball players usually find free throws much easier than 3-points from the other end of the court.

----------


## halfeye

> Accuracy is essentially a function of velocity.


This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.




> The Firefly 17-pounder was theoretically able to penetrate some 163 mm of armour at 500 m (550 yd) and 150 mm at 1,000 m (1,100 yd) using standard armour piercing, capped, ballistic capped (APCBC) ammunition. Armour piercing, discarding sabot (APDS) ammunition could penetrate some 256 mm of armour at 500 m and 233 mm at 1,000 m, which on paper could defeat the armour of almost every German armoured fighting vehicle at any likely range.[11] However, war production APDS rounds lacked accuracy, and the 50 mm penetrator was less destructive after it had penetrated enemy tank armour than the 76.2 mm APCBC shell


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly

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## Brother Oni

> This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.


Given the mechanics of a saboted shell (the outer casing falling off while in flight resulting in an unstabilised long rod flying through the air), it's not surprising that accuracy and precision are affected; as Gnoman said, the mechanical accuracy of the weapon system is low due to the poor aerodynamic qualities of the projectile.

It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart.  :Small Big Grin:

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## halfeye

> Given the mechanics of a saboted shell (the outer casing falling off while in flight resulting in an unstabilised long rod flying through the air), it's not surprising that accuracy and precision are affected; as Gnoman said, the mechanical accuracy of the weapon system is low due to the poor aerodynamic qualities of the projectile.
> 
> It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart.


Yeah, I don't dispute that, I was just pointing out it's one example of the alleged rule not being true.

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## snowblizz

> It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart.


If you ask me it was just an excuse for the British to turn tank-shooting into a pubgame.

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## Pauly

> This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.
> 
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly


Another problem was that the sights werent calibrated for the APDS shot initially, although that may have affected the 6pdr more as APDS was introduced on the 6pdr first. But as I said in my initial post on the subject _ There are some confounding variables such as stabilization (spin and/or fins), aiming devices and so on,_

If you take a level playing field of comparing 2 different APDS rounds fired from the same gun then, all other things bring equal, the one with higher velocity will be inherently more accurate.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I'm interested in learning more about the relationship between distance and accuracy with ranged weapons. I'm particularly interested in bows, but anything relating to crossbows, spears, slings, etc would be similarly helpful. I've found a lot on the effective range of various historical weapons, but it tends to be presented as a fairly broad range. I'm wondering, within that range, what is the relationship between accuracy (ability to hit a human-sized target) and distance?


Well, it depends on weapon, ammunition and training a person has. You listed a vastly different amount of weapons there, so I'll address them in turn. I've at least used all of them for a bit.

Note that I'll be glossing over a lot of stuff. Entire libraries have been written on some of these weapons, after all.

*Ye olde arc minutes*

First, we must discuss arcminutes. It's how you measure accuracy after all.

Imagine a circle with a centre, and two points on it. If you draw a triangle consisting of those two points and the centre, the angle of the tip at the centre of circle will be some number. That number is represented by degrees, and it goes from 0 to 360 for the whoile circle, with 90 being quarter of a circle and 180 a half. Every one of those degrees can be subdivided into minutes and seconds.

So, that's what a minute is.

Now, as you are shooting, imagine yourself as the centre of said circle, the circle being horizontal. The two points are the left and right edges of the target. The angle at your position will be some number, usually pretty small, and therefore represented in arcminutes. If you can consistently land shots inside that target, then that number is your accuracy.

Another way of looking at it is to take your target, inscribe a circle that will have all your hits in it and make a cone with that circle as its base and yourself as the tip. The angle at the tip is your accuracy in arcminutes.

*Bows*

Are we talking modern or traditional, heavy or light arrows, and waht draw weight? A difference in single factor can throw you quite a lot, and if you combine them? There's a lot of room for error.

Modern hunters using modern bows, with high velocity but light arrows and low draw weights (but high mechanical efficiency) usually list 50 meters as ethical maximum range - that is, beyond that range, they don't want to shoot at an animal because they aren't sure they will kill it quickly and painlessly.

Maximum range of traditional bows is a hair over 500 meters, which was done with Ottoman recurve and flight arrows, and you do have people who can hit a man-sized target at 200 meters fairly consistently. Do keep in mind that at that distance, your first shot is unlikely to hit unless there is no wind, or if you are insanely skilled and can accurately estimate it. Standard archery practice with English warbows was to shoot from one butt to another, where butt is not a bodypart, but rather a small mound of dirt that ran alongside a field - this distance was 220 meters, and the traditional target was a pole of willow wood, ~2 meters high and ~60 cm wide. Assuming a 60cm group, that gets us a 9 arcminute accuracy, which is... pretty good actually, since this was a standard target, and more serious archers can exceed that.

Note that previous paragraph is talking about bows that are very heavy, in the 130+ lbs range, a hunting bow at 50 lbs will behave differently - but ranges may or may not be the same, since it will probably use lighter arrows.

Why not use lighter arrows? Because when it comes to target penetration (especially important with armor), the more of an object's momentum is made up of its mass, the better it penetrates. Meaning a heavier and slower arrow is better than lighter and faster, so long as their momentums are the same.

Even with heavy arrows, the effective range against heavy armor is at about ~100 meters, not because you can't penetrate it at that range, you usually can't penetrate it even point blank, but because it's extremely hard to aim for armor's weak spots on moving targets at that range, not the least because those weak spots keep moving, and flight time starts to be significant enough that you can't easily lead your shots.

*Crossbows*

I have no idea about modern ones, but traditional crossbows top out at approximately 200-300 meters at best, almost irregardless of whether they are direct draw lightweight 150 lbs, or heavy 1200 lbs cranequin. They fire heavier arrows than bows (usually), and seem to do either a little better or at least comparably to heaviest warbows when it comes to penetrating armor.

There is almost no limits to how accurate you can make one, but the costs of manufacture for the bolts will reflect that. It shoots a lot like a rifle, really, so practical accuracy is "yes" on a man-sized target. Being able to identify the target at that range, especially in heavy terrain, is another matter entirely.

It has the same effective range against heavy armor as the bow, for the same reasons.

*Spears, javelins, franciscas and so on*

The range on these is about 20 meters from the actual wartime accounts, albeit theoretical top is at about 50 meters. Current Olympic record is almost 100, but you are unlikely to find an Olympic level athlete, with that amount of specialized training and completely unencumbered on a battlefield. Not the least because that distance is well within bowshot, and the archers will be entirely too happy to give you surplus miniature spears they call "arrows".

At that range, provided you have a modicum of skill, you can hit a man easily, and a weak armor spot fairly easily. The reason they weren't popular weapon is 1) bulky ammunition and 2) that distance is not much when the enemy decides to charge you. Still, there were armies that could make use of these, most notably the Romans.

For a more spherically-adjecant objects, like rocks or throwing axes, well, a professional baseball pitcher can reach about a hundred meters consistently. From that we can conclude that effective range will be similar to spears (Olympic record also at about 100 meters), maybe slightly longer, so let's call it 25 meters.

*Atl atl*

I have absolutely no insights to offer, aside from the obvious "increases javelin range", since I never used it.

*Sling*

This is a surprising one. Period accounts tell us that it can reach out to 200 meters (according to Vegetius, it's 180 really, but 200 is easier to remember) with stones and 400 meters with lead shot. The 200 meters range is explicitly stated as for training against man-sized straw dummies, the 400 was against a unit of archers. Maximum range is at about 550 meters.

Unlike bows, it uses battlefield ammo for its maximum range shots, but it does have one fatal weakness. Armor.

Or rather, certain types of armor. Research on slings is so sparse it is almost non-existent, but we can say this with some certainty: chain mail of the Roman and early medieval time, worn over thicker tunic, doesn't protect you against slings sufficiently, if at all. Chain mail of high medieval era, with gambeson underneath, offers better protection, but to what degree is uncertain, probably significantly higher, but not perfect. A solid armor, lamellar or plate, on the other hand, damn near nullifies sling's effect entirely.

You can defeat armor with heavier sling ammo - the nubmers above are for 30-50 gram shot, and we know heavier shot of 100-150 grams was used even in antiquity, but your range will go down. Medieval period sees some stones that would clock in at 1-1.5 kg (that is, 1000-1500 grams), but an experiment has shown that your range will be at 40-60 meters at best with those.

There is, of course, the elephant on the room here. Slings are incredibly hard to aim. Seriously. I cannot overstate how much of a pain in the neck they are. I ran some numbers on it, and after 6 moths of rigorous slinging, one hour every bleeding day (680 hours of training), I'm at about 100 arcminutes (so, 1 degree and 40 minutes, really) of accuracy if I don't mess up the release, and I mess up the release about every third shot (which results in the shot going still in general direction of the enemy, but at 20 meters hitting the fourth guy to the left of what I was aiming at). The acceptable accuracy for handgun slef defence is usually given at about 17 arcminutes, with that getting you the effective range of 50 meters.

You can get good with a sling, really good. Balearic slinging competition has its highest range bullseye being a 60 cm circle at 60 meters, giving us a 34 arcminute accuracy, and Vegetius' range of 180 meters against a target about a meter wide at best gets us 18 arcminute accuracy that is historically attested. There's a reason why he says that the people should train doing that daily, though, and we know it wasn't done in practice, at least not on a legion-wide scale Vegetius wanted it to be.

*Summary*

In summary, all the weapons above can be trained in sufficiently enough that the real limitation becomes your eyesight and targets moving during flight time (for hitting armor gaps at 100+ meter ranges), or atmospheric conditions interfering (at long range shots). Or, in case of thrown weapons, are short range enough that none of it matters.

For practical accuracy, crossbow is like a rifle, you point (at or above the target) and shoot. Looking at accuracy of rifles with ironsights and accounting for slower projectile flight time will get you a good idea.

Bow is a tad harder. You can sight down an arrow just like with crossbow, but you can't do it in a relaxed state, or for too long. You can achieve comparable accuracy, but training for it takes longer, and fatigue will affect you more.

Thrown weapons have nothing to sight down, and are therefore significantly harder to aim, but compensate for it by means of short range.

A sling is literally the worst. Not only does it have nothing to sight down, like throwing weapons but without the mercy of short range, it also lacks the immediate tactile feedback of a thing you hold in hand. You can learn to compensate for it, but not easily, and definitely not quickly.

The feeling when you nail your steel helmet at 20 paces with a slung baseball and make it clang loudly is pretty great, though.




> Even some anecdotal evidence from someone familiar with a weapon regarding whether it is a linear vs. exponential decrease in accuracy would be great!


As a ballpark, and very rough one at that, it's linear for every factor of: distance, target movement, wind (at greater ranges only). Your accuracy technically stays at N arcminutes, but all of these three affect where your point of aim must be.

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## KineticDiplomat

To build on Gnoman, for human aimed weapons with static man sized targets (a lot of caveats there, I know) the bulk of missing is over-under rather than side-to-side. A) humans are not very good at visualizing ballistics without lots of practice, and B) between breathing and the biomechanics of fighting gravity, its possible for a weapon to fluctuate several degrees up or down, even when aimed. 

This dynamic creates three basic bands of ranges.

1. So close it doesnt matter. Basically a combination of when the ballistics drop and the potential for a few degrees of vertical variance wont change a hit to a miss. A 200 FPS crossbow drops less than two feet by 20 yards, and a couple degrees up or down will shift the vertical by another two feet or so

At twenty yards, even a barely trained crossbow shooter is going to hit a static standing man so long as they take a moment to point the thing at him. 

As you get into increasingly fast and low recoil modern weapons, the practical range for this goes up and is mostly limited by the humanthe classic 5.56 and 7.62 rounds drop less by 300 yards than the crossbow does at 20but as a rule of thumb for rifles, under 50m is almost impossible to miss from any position, while from a decent prone position anyone bothering to use the sights is going to hit at 150m and below. 

2. Grazing fire. For a certain range based on the weapon, the trajectory is essentially one that if there is a human along the path, theyre going to get hit because the projectile is traveling in a manner where it it is basically striking the target head on. 

->T

As a result, you can still aim AT the target. If you under-over, its human error and not a result of some technical issue. This is where shooting starts to require some practice, but isnt full on hard. 

For our previous 200 FPS crossbow, out to 35 yards you have something of a grazing trajectory before it gets to the point where you have 4+ feet of drop and really cant just aim AT the target anymore. So the difference between this and point and shoot isnt that big. Modern hunters tend to estimate 40-60 yards being the practical effective range for a deer, and they frankly have much nicer crossbows than your happy medieval mercenary. 

For modern rifles etc this covers most practical ranges out to 400-600 meters or so depending on the round/weapon. It really becomes a matter of how perfectly you can execute fundamentals by not having the barrel waver off target during the shotbeing half a degree off obviously makes a much bigger difference at 500m than 200m. 

3. Plunging fire. At a point the game becomes less one of hitting the target head on, and more one of dropping the projectile onto the target, creating a beaten zone where the final part of the trajectory crosses through a man height:

.\
.. T
  \


This is generally speaking, much harder to do against a single man than a large formation of men or a simple desire to fill the ground with enough rounds from an automatic weapon that the law of large numbers works out for you. 

This where effective range becomes very, very subjective. Yes, you can shoot a crossbow 350 yards, and with enough training reliably drop bolts into the beaten zone at the far end. And that is going to be a bad day for a block of men, or enough to make standing around the area for a single man seem dangerous (one will get him eventually), but its a far cry from the modern concept of can reliably hit a point target with a single engagement. 



So for RPG purposes where the PC is usually shooting a single target, the apparently low ranges on most medieval weapons are pretty rational. The low ranges on things like assault rifles are definitely not

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## rs2excelsior

I have a (maybe oddly specific) question. Does anyone have any good sources for what Transylvanian, Wallachian, or Hungarian military forces would have looked like in terms of organization, equipment, and so on anywhere in the rough period of 1500-1650 (although moreso towards the end of that period - roughly around the 30 Years' War)? Doesn't need to be anything super in-depth, but preferably more detail than a short wikipedia article.

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## Martin Greywolf

My first question is, what relevant (Slovak, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, ...) languages do you speak? English sources that actually focus on sub-kingdom provinces in eastern Europe are pretty much non-existent, outside of small academical papers.

For a very general overview, with some mistakes in it, Osprey has Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe that ends in this period, as well as Armies of the Ottoman Turks (see firther on why this is relevant).

Also, youre time period is... very problematic. Battle of Mohacs happens in 1526, and after that Transylvania, Wallachia and what is modern Hungary are eiter parts of Ottoman empire, or satellites, so you'd find more on them in sources on Ottoman military, as local troops would be serving as auxiliaries, if that. Kingdom of Hungary is pretty much reduced to modern Slovakia's territory, and even that gets nibbled on, Ottomans advance up to Nove Zamky in 1662. The soldiers fighting for the Kingdom of Hungary are therefore more often than not troops from other Habsburg realms, and this reliance on foreign mercenaries is pretty widespread in the region.

What I'm getting at is that yourr question is a bit like asking for what soldiers defending Constantinople looked like and then giving a date range that has fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans right in the middle of it.

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## snowblizz

I spent some time last night trying to figure out if Osprey actually covers the period and place, and as Martin says it cuts out at about that time and in about that region. Cossacks, Polish-Lithuanians, Ottomans


The material they have on the Ottoman military focuses more on earlier times and/or more famous troops, predominantly the Janissaries. The armies of Ottomans 1300 - 1774 yielded no help either.
While they are alluded to there is no detail what forces the #rebel Hungarians" would have brought either.

Basically, they are the less interesting sidekicks to a bigger Ottoman - Habsburg fighting in most material.

For the absolute close of your period I would suggest armies would be similar in equipment, though not in dress, to Western and Ottoman forces.

To make things more annoying I know I watched some youtube vids of battles fought between Ottomans and the principalities in the region, but I can't find them anymore.

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## Martin Greywolf

> To make things more annoying I know I watched some youtube vids of battles fought between Ottomans and the principalities in the region, but I can't find them anymore.


That's... probably for the best. This is a very, very nationalistically charged topic, so anything on YouTube is, well... suspect. Frankly, a lot of academic research is suspect as well, but at least they have to have some ground for their biases.

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## snowblizz

> That's... probably for the best. This is a very, very nationalistically charged topic, so anything on YouTube is, well... suspect. Frankly, a lot of academic research is suspect as well, but at least they have to have some ground for their biases.


It was made in a historical vein and not that controversial. 

Also it doesn't really matter what they say if they at least mention what weapons armies fought with...

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## rs2excelsior

> My first question is, what relevant (Slovak, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, ...) languages do you speak? English sources that actually focus on sub-kingdom provinces in eastern Europe are pretty much non-existent, outside of small academical papers.


Unfortunately none. Well, German, but not great - I could get by with it but would prefer English sources. Which I realize for a lot of places outside of Western Europe means sources are quite sparse.




> For a very general overview, with some mistakes in it, Osprey has Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe that ends in this period, as well as Armies of the Ottoman Turks (see firther on why this is relevant).


Should have known Osprey would be a decent place to look - they seem to have basic (if many times a bit flawed - which is fine, really, this is for an RPG setting that I'll probably be playing solo rather than an academic paper) overviews for a lot of periods.




> Also, youre time period is... very problematic. Battle of Mohacs happens in 1526, and after that Transylvania, Wallachia and what is modern Hungary are eiter parts of Ottoman empire, or satellites, so you'd find more on them in sources on Ottoman military, as local troops would be serving as auxiliaries, if that. Kingdom of Hungary is pretty much reduced to modern Slovakia's territory, and even that gets nibbled on, Ottomans advance up to Nove Zamky in 1662. The soldiers fighting for the Kingdom of Hungary are therefore more often than not troops from other Habsburg realms, and this reliance on foreign mercenaries is pretty widespread in the region.
> 
> What I'm getting at is that yourr question is a bit like asking for what soldiers defending Constantinople looked like and then giving a date range that has fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans right in the middle of it.


Yep, I am aware that the time frame is one where the region was in flux. I am more interested in what the independent soldiers of those principalities/kingdoms would have looked like... but I don't know enough about eastern European history in the time frame to know how meaningful a question that is.

Regardless, thanks (to both of y'all) for the insight - I'll take a look at some of those places.

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## Palanan

I have a question on forge temperatures, in particular how hot a blacksmiths forge would get using early 1800s technology.  

Ive just read a descriptive passage claiming that the forge burned blue hot, which doesnt feel right to me.  The only other information is that the blacksmith is using bellows and heating a long bar of iron.  This is all in a purely historical context, with no magic and nothing else special about the forge.

So, what temperatures could a typical forge of that period reach, and would they be hot enough to generate a blue color?

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## Gnoman

Coal can reach around 3500 degrees (f), and bellows can deliver enough air to do it.

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## Palanan

Okay, thanks.  Is that hot enough to produce a blue flame?

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## Kraynic

> Okay, thanks.  Is that hot enough to produce a blue flame?


Is it possible they were forge welding and the flux was causing the blue color?  As the son of a blacksmith that used coal in the forge, I haven't seen blue just from the coal itself.  That was primarily bituminous coal from northeastern Ohio.  That would be ranging from the deep reddish orange of the fire "at rest", to a very bright orange/white when running really hot.  I don't know if anthracite or lignite produces different colors or not. 

Keep in mind that temperature isn't the only factor for flame color.  Propane (air mixture) is only supposed to be burning at about 2,000F, and I haven't seen a propane stove burner that didn't burn blue (if it doesn't something is wrong).  Forge fires (of whatever fuel) have to be running above that to melt steel for welding (2,800F).  The trace elements of what you are burning will have an effect on the flames.

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## Palanan

Thanks, I appreciate the extra information.  This is historical fiction, mid-1800s, so no propane or exotic materials.  The only other details are that the forge is using charcoal, so no actual coal either.  Given this, I'm going to assume that the "blue hot" description is the author's mistake.  

Also, very cool that you grew up watching your father work at the forge.

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## Kraynic

> The only other details are that the forge is using charcoal, so no actual coal either.  Given this, I'm going to assume that the "blue hot" description is the author's mistake.


Ok, that might make the difference.  I have heard of forest fires burning so hot that there were purple flames from live trees.  Charcoal might very well produce blue sometimes.  My father did use charcoal (briquettes) at one point when he was out of coal for some reason.  I don't remember the color of the flames.  All I remember is that it produced a lot of sparks when the blower was being cranked for high heat.  As the kid turning the crank on the blower, I was either avoiding sparks to the best of my ability or leaving as quickly as possible when not needed for that duty any longer!

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## Palanan

Hmm, okay.  Sounds like this might be a question for someone who works as a reenactor at a period forge.

And sparks from the blower sounds like something you'd want to avoid, especially if there were a lot of dry leaves around.

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## AdAstra

> Hmm, okay.  Sounds like this might be a question for someone who works as a reenactor at a period forge.
> 
> And sparks from the blower sounds like something you'd want to avoid, especially if there were a lot of dry leaves around.


Coal/charcoal can absolutely burn blue, at least if grills and stoves are any indication. Wood, charcoal, coal, coke, whatever, can all be induced to burn with a bluish flame. CH, CO, C2, and methane will all burn quite blue and can be released from the charcoal in certain conditions.

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## Martin Greywolf

I second AdAstra here, I've seen some blue flames in forges over the years. Mind you, I don't think I ever saw a purely blue flame, but a lot of orange with a part of it blue. It could well be something specifically about forge-grade charcoal.

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## Pauly

Blue fire is usually an indicator that there is no soot.

Gas fires usually burn yellow->light blue>deep blue
Solid fuel fires (coal/charcoal/wood) usually burn orange->yellow->white.

For a coal fire to burn blue it would have to be not producing soot. I Assume it is possible, but not common.

Also what is being burned can affect the color of the flame.

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## Calthropstu

> Blue fire is usually an indicator that there is no soot.
> 
> Gas fires usually burn yellow->light blue>deep blue
> Solid fuel fires (coal/charcoal/wood) usually burn orange->yellow->white.
> 
> For a coal fire to burn blue it would have to be not producing soot. I Assume it is possible, but not common.
> 
> Also what is being burned can affect the color of the flame.


I have seen blue burning coal more than once. It is only a small portion of the flame, but it's there.

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## SpoonR

> I have a question on forge temperatures, in particular how hot a blacksmiths forge would get using early 1800s technology.  
> 
> Ive just read a descriptive passage claiming that the forge burned blue hot, which doesnt feel right to me.  The only other information is that the blacksmith is using bellows and heating a long bar of iron.  This is all in a purely historical context, with no magic and nothing else special about the forge.
> 
> So, what temperatures could a typical forge of that period reach, and would they be hot enough to generate a blue color?


Obvious question first, just to check. Are they talking about the Forge getting blue-hot, or the iron bar?

On coal or charcoal forge fires, chemistry can color flames. Copper is the most well known for making a flame turn blue. So, impurities in the charcoal or in the bar could change the color until the impurities are gone. Just color from heat alone? Dunno, but pretty dependent on how much air is flowing through the coals.

Un-natural gas can burn blue. I just double checked on wiki, and the process to make coal gas was known by 1800. Wide use waited a couple decades, but it was a known thing. I assume that under the right conditions the coal could be relasing some gases that burn blue.

And I have my own question about this. Is blue-hot actually good for working iron? Iirc, if the bar gets too hot it loses its carbon impurities and becomes brittle and unsharpenable. An extrahot forge makes it more likely you get into that heat zone.

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## Xuc Xac

Things don't visibly glow blue when they're hot enough. To the human eye, heat radiation goes red -> orange -> yellow -> white. 

Other colors are a result of the chemical reactions of the flame. The blue flame of a propane stove is a result of blue light being released by the reaction of CH radicals. If your gas stove was blue because it was radiating that much heat, your pots and pans would melt.

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## Catullus64

Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish asking, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.

What's so flipping important about castles?

I am conceptually aware that medieval warfare in Europe centered a lot around besieging or attacking castles, but I've never really gotten why a castle is so strategically valuable. I get why it's valuable as an administrative center, a status symbol, and a safeguard against domestic unrest, but I feel I don't fully understand the value of a castle as a defensive military asset.

Sure, a castle is very defensible, but what advantage does it actually confer in terms of defending territory? Most castles seem too small to house a very large number of troops or people, so even if it provides a place of safety, it doesn't allow you to offend against an enemy any more effectively. Unless the castle is positioned right near a natural chokepoint such as a river crossing or a mountain pass (which, I grant, many castles were, but just as many seem to have been built on hilltops or on open ground) the enemy isn't terribly impeded in moving about your country by the fact that you possess a castle. In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country. I feel there's something very fundamental about warfare, overland movement, or even just human psychology that I haven't grasped here. Any insights?

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## Grim Portent

One of the biggest advantages is that forces inside a castle can't easily be ignored, they can send out messengers or raiding parties to interfere with the advance of a hostile force that has decided to try and just move past the castle. A medieval army has a pretty big chain of non-combatants that follow it and take care of various things necessary for basic survival or for the army's morale. If you get forced into a fight near a castle the defenders can also sally out to join the defenders.

So you can't really leave the castle in enemy hands without guarding it, the enemies inside can sneak up behind you as you travel nearby and steal or destroy things. You also can't really leave a small force of guards to keep them trapped inside because they'll just get ambushed and killed by the defenders when the time is right.

This means you need to bring to bear enough forces for enough time to take the castle by force or by forcing them to negotiate. Castles are obviously really hard to attack, and a dozen people in the right castle can hold off hundreds or even thousands of people who lack the means to assault the particular castle they're facing effectively. Even once you capture it you have to leave people behind to hold it, which in turn means you have less people for the next fight.


If you try to drive deep into enemy territory without capturing the castles along the route you take you wind up getting harassed and harried and with no clear path of retreat if things go really badly, if you do capture the castles you have to commit resources to holding them. The defenders win either way.

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## halfeye

> Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish answering, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.
> 
> What's so flipping important about castles?
> 
> I am conceptually aware that medieval warfare in Europe centered a lot around besieging or attacking castles, but I've never really gotten why a castle is so strategically valuable. I get why it's valuable as an administrative center, a status symbol, and a safeguard against domestic unrest, but I feel I don't fully understand the value of a castle as a defensive military asset.
> 
> Sure, a castle is very defensible, but what advantage does it actually confer in terms of defending territory? Most castles seem too small to house a very large number of troops or people, so even if it provides a place of safety, it doesn't allow you to offend against an enemy any more effectively. Unless the castle is positioned right near a natural chokepoint such as a river crossing or a mountain pass (which, I grant, many castles were, but just as many seem to have been built on hilltops or on open ground) the enemy isn't terribly impeded in moving about your country by the fact that you possess a castle. In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country. I feel there's something very fundamental about warfare, overland movement, or even just human psychology that I haven't grasped here. Any insights?


They were big. The outer walls would be up to hundreds of yards from the inner ones, inside that you'd have a small town, and inside that you'd have a keep which was independently fortified. Without siege weapons, which pretty much disappeared between the end of the roman occupation of Britain and the British civil war, they were pretty nearly invulnerable.

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## Berenger

@Catullus64: This article from acoup.blog covers your question in some detail. Short version: enemy forces in your back make a mess of logistics. The castle garrison can ride out and engage vulnerable elements of the invading army (such as scouts, patrols, messengers or foraging parties), then retreat to the castle and do it again the next day.

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## KineticDiplomat

Theres also an operational-strategic reality to all of this: the ability to stand on a field is not the same thing as the ability to control a region,. You can raid, burn crops and huts, make yourself richer and leave, or just march right by on your way somewhere else, but if you wanted to take that land from lord Bob, well if he didnt like his odds he just pulled back into the castle. His fighting force, some chunk of the local population (or not), and for a medieval context the all important Lord Bob himself, are now behind walls. 

Want to proclaim yourself lord and master? Go ahead. He can wait years in there. You leave, hes back to governing the land. You say well Ill just sit here and govern and you get the joyous task of trying to keep a force supplied in the field long enough for that to matter, all while keeping Bob penned in, and all while draining your coffers and most likely the capacity of the local area to feed you - all while wondering if some pro-Bob folks are going to come over the hill any month now, or if winter is going to destroy your core retinue, thereby removing one of the pillars of your own political authority. And if you let up and just leave him be, you get to fight a war of a thousand cuts while he sallies whenever he wants. 

You can march by of course, and its not like you have supply lines in the modern sense, but if you lose a battle a week down the road you might not want to retreat this way

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## Pauly

To go a little deeper on something touched on earlier. In addition to the military damage a garrison can do and the difficulty of controlling an area where you dont control the local castle, castles were sited to interdict supply/communication lines.

Marching your army past the castle is pretty easy and happened a lot. But not when you need to run supplies down the road the castle overlooks. There were some pretty epic marches in medieval history where because of the chequered alliances you could march past castle A, meet your buddies in Town B, march past castle C then join up with Army D and attack enemy E. But those type of leapfrogging marches were the exception.


So if you could march past a castle and then keep doing your thing, armies did that. Its just that that was generally an uncommon thing.

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## snowblizz

> They were big. The outer walls would be up to hundreds of yards from the inner ones, inside that you'd have a small town, and inside that you'd have a keep which was independently fortified.


Most castles were never that large though. Dozens or some hundreds of troops was more likely.




> In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country.


And sometimes that was the whole point! The English kings' great castles in Wales lie around the coast. They don't seem great at controlling the Welsh hinterland standing at the edges of the sea. But they aren't meant to. They protect incursion points that the English would use to ferry in troops to invade against eventual Welsh rebellions. They can be supplied by sea regardless of the activities of a land based army. And you can therefore insert troops who can move out to attack the lands. So in a sense they do control the hinterland, as they provide a point where the English king can put in men and material at his leisure should you try and rebel. Sorry, I mean *when* you try to rebel.

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## eru001

> Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish answering, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.
> 
> What's so flipping important about castles?


So, the point that a number of people have touched on, which I will also lead with, is the issue of Enemy Troops in your rear. This is a very bad no good thing. Even a small amount of determined, well equipped enemies can cause trouble completely out of proportion to their numbers if in your rear area. This makes bypassing a castle a bad idea. Also worth noting that in medieval Europe armies were generally much smaller than in both Antiquity and in later times. A castle garrison might not have a huge number of troops present by modern standards, but still be considered a noteworthy force by medieval standards. 

If bypassing a castle isn't an option, the castle must be dealt with, either by taking it, or masking it. Taking a castle is either expensive financially, logistically, and in terms to time, or very expensive in terms of manpower. Masking a castle means detaching enough troops to keep the garrison from sallying out, which means significantly more than the size of the garrison. This masking force is now vulnerable to being destroyed by any enemy reinforcements that arrive once you have moved on, and significantly reduces the size of your useable army. A Castle serves as a force multiplier, allowing a relatively small number of troops to make themselves enough of a problem to an attacker that they have to be dealt with somehow, and making the dealing with of them very difficult.

The effect is even greater if the castle is placed at a strategic point, say, directly overlooking the main crossing point of a river, or in a position that dominates a mountain pass, as these natural choke points can allow a fortification to physically bar an army from entering a region without being taken first. 

You also brought up the issue of prestige as if it was something to be discounted. It is important to understand, that if you wish to control a region for any substantial length of time, you do have to convince the people you are controlling, one way or another, that you are in charge. This can be by making them want you to be in charge, or by making them fully, (and bloodily) understand that you are in charge whether they want it or not. This is easier when you have a castle, both from the practical physical aspect of making it harder for them to kill you, but also from the psychological aspect of controlling the largest and most impressive man made object most of the peasents are ever likely to see in their lives. That's the kind of thing a ruler controls, and if the populace thinks of you as a ruler, thats most of the way towards getting you there. Morale is an important factor, no two ways about it.

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## VonKaiserstein

The primary advantage of an attacker is that they have the initiative.  They have already concentrated their forces, armed them and know when they will strike.  Balancing this, the defenders are more familiar with the territory, and generally have the support of the local civilian population.  

If you march past the castle...  you just left the fighting forces of the region in your rear, fully supplied, on their home territory.  When they strike, and they will, they may attack your field army, or they may go off and invade your homelands knowing that your forces are over here.  They may even just start marching between you and the castle, threatening battle, and retreating into their safe zone when they need to. They now have the initiative, and because every man at arms will have heard about the invasion and rallied to the very obvious castle, they have had time to concentrate their force.  They also can leave an extremely small force in the castle, because it can be held with a massive imbalance of forces.

It's a deterrent, a fortress, and poses many problems for the invader that all have to be dealt with, which reduces their available forces- even before the battle is joined.

Also- never underestimate the psychological aspect of it.  Ok, you've decided to march past the castle.  Your men now know you don't think you can take the castle.  They know what it can do to them, and they look up at it and see certain defeat that they are avoiding, if not running from.

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## KineticDiplomat

Theres a bit too much focus on Front and Rear here to be accurate for the time period. These are actually comparatively modern concepts.

Simply put for much of history, there was no assumption that you would have a large and fairly politically unified strategic interior feeding men and materiel up to a line of contact, on one side of which (partisans not withstanding) you could expect to realistically exercise governance and move men and supplies fairly risk free, while on the other was the enemy whos extended presence along the line safeguarded his own operational and strategic depths full of useful political and economic objectives.

So modern in fact, that in the 1920s and 30s military theorists are still writing about it as a problem that had to be solved. While what we would think of as linear strategy starts evolving before that - Schlieffen writes Cannae about it - but it becomes increasingly strategy of the point as you go back in history. Which is to say operational art (such as it were) primarily concerned itself with maneuvering forces on a comparatively open canvas to arrive at a single point where it would seek either the destruction of an enemy force or seizure of a singular point of importance, and away from that point notions of front and rear lose most of their meaning. 

Take the Crecy campaign as a single example, useful because it contrasts so well with the allied advance of WW2. The English land in Normandy, sack Caen, raid Rouen, and eventually march all the way to Calais which they besiege for just short of a year, but not before the famous battle. During that time they leave multitudes of castles in their rear to no great detriment, because they are supplied predominantly by the land they are on, not lines of supply. When they are trapped short of food, its because the French removed it all prior to their arrival near the Somme. Rather than return to the rear back to Normandy, the English break through to the NE, or front - forcing the French to pursue, the French who it must be noted spend a decent portion of the campaign with the English in their rear. 

In the interim, it is not as if everything to the rear of the English army was now Englishit was still French, with a multitude of castles and towns untaken. And when they fight Crecy even though enemy territory is to their front on the way to Calais, that is considered a good line of retreat to the coast. 

In all that time, one, perhaps two, major field actions are fought at specific points, the rest of the time spent either with armies assembling, marching around, or besieging things. 



With that in mind the castle is really more about preservation of governance, wealth, your own skin, and of course the forces that make you a lord, not some intricate series of forts meant to force a threat to an enemy rear or allow for sudden decisive operational strokes (your adversaries after all also have castlesits not like your garrison gets bypassed and now you have a shot at the capital!)

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## Gnoman

> Most castles were never that large though. Dozens or some hundreds of troops was more likely.


Even the tiny castles in the Germanies would support hundreds, and those castles were tiny because the Germanies were home to huge numbers of tiny lords who operated on a scale where hundreds were a pretty significant force.

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## Martin Greywolf

First, let's address some errors people have already made here. Well, okay, one error, but it's an important one.

*Castles don't let you raid enemy supply lines all that well*

Yeah, sure, in theory they do, provided an enemy has them. But if your army is 30 000 or less, and some rare exceptions pump that number all the way up to 100 000 soldiers, you don't necessarily need supply lines for war. 100 years war and Mongol conquests demonstrated this point pretty clearly, as did the Hussites and really, any sort of a border region dispute. There were Hungarian cities 100 to 150 km deep into Hungary that Hussites besieged and conquered, while taking few if any castles.

The problem lies in what happens AFTER the war. Unless you have, in fact, conquered all those castles, or they have been ceded to you in the peace treaties, your newly conquered territories will be isolated islands that will have their economy absolutely destroyed, whether by raiding, or simply by hitting them with the kind of taxes that would give Emperor Palpatine chills.

That means a rational leader would instead arrange to cede territories that would be so isolated in exchange for some other concessions in the treaties - which is all well and good, but may or may not be the goal of your campaign.

(That said, seeing what an army like, say, ancient Roman would do when faced with a castle strategy would be interesting. The closest we came to that are probably Mongol campaigns (plundering, not conquest, though) and Ottoman wars (outside even renaissance for large part).)

On to more general points.

*There is no castle*

There are many types of castles. Even if we zoom onto high medieval period, you still get at least:
Representational castles - serve as seat of a familyFortress castles - guard a particular chokepoint (mountain pass, river crossing), usually so well you can't move past them without conquering or supressing themFortified manor houses - not as large, but are made of stone and do house a few dozen people... and there is a lot of themRefuge castles - meant to temporarily house a significant chunk of total population in times of needTown citadels - meant as a central point of a city

All of the above can function as fortresses, obviously, but their strategic roles are different. Representational castles and town citadels serve organizational roles, fortified manor houses are there to prevent an invading army's foraging efforts (well, mitagate them, now you need a froaging party of a hundred instead of a dozen), refuge castles make sure you can't enslave or extort the population and so on.

What's worse is that a single castle can have more than just one role, and they frequently do, which complicates the picture further.

*Terrain then and now*

This is best described in a picture. Behold, a refuge/representational/fortress/town castle:

*Spoiler: Beckov, Slovakia*
Show




That photo is taken from hills that are right next to castle, looking over a flat expanse of fields with a river in the middle of it, and hills again on the opposite side. The distance between these two foothills is about 20 km.

At first glance, there are things in that picture that are not medieval - the power lines and highway, for a start. But it goes deeper than that.

That wasily traversable flat plain of fields 20 km wide wasn't there in medieval times. WHat was there instead was the river, and it had an ever-changing network of small channels in that region. The castle is built in a place that had a river crossing, but even that river crossing kept changing, to a point where the castle's name, Beckov, comes from latin Castrum Blundix, the Maze Castle.

Long story short, before the river here was stabilized, any army that tried to cross it here would have to take the castle, because it was standing on top of an exit of a very treacherous ford. And because that castle is a refuge castle, any invading army would have a hell of a time finding some local to tell them where the ford is on this particular day, because all the locals would hopefully be inside.

What you should take from all this is that a lot of strategic details about a given castle is now lost because of our terraforming efforts. I'd like to point you to some good books on this point, but I don't think there are any - I picked that specific castle because it's one whose history I'm very familiar with.

*Defense in depth*

While you can't execute one with castles (there is little option of retreating from one if it is besieged), a castle will slow down an approaching army to a point where it will buy you time. This, of course, highly depends on the willingness of the castle crew to fight a hopeless fight, or wait for relief in really bad conditions, and that's a reason why it wasn't always used.

That said, if religious or cultural differences were present between the two sides, stands to the last man did happen. Fall of Acre in IIRC 1297 is one example.

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## Brother Oni

> That said, if religious or cultural differences were present between the two sides, stands to the last man did happen. Fall of Acre in IIRC 1297 is one example.


As an example, stands to the last man were the norm in Sengoku era Japanese warfare, with the defenders often sallying out in a final suicidal attack as their supplies failed while their commanders committed seppuku.

This isn't as unusual as it sounds, as normally, captured defenders would be ordered to commit suicide, or if they were especially hated by the besiegers, executed.

Example: The Siege of Takamatsu (1582), where the besiegers flooded the the castle by damming and diverting all the local rivers. The garrison commander, Shimizu Muneharu, committed seppuku on a boat in the middle of the artificial lake, in return for the rest of defenders being spared.

That said, more than one siege ended with mass casualties of all the defenders; Hachioji Castle (1590) fell in a single day, resulting in the death of all the defenders (male and female), many by suicide.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Sengoku era Japanese warfare


As much as we call those fortified buildings castles, and Japan feudal, the overall situation is very different to Europe. What I'm trying to say is that while we can sort of call high and renaissance European warfare and Sengoku Jidai Japanese warfare something like Castle-centric Strategies, they are really two different approaches to two different problems.

A large part of why we can't talk about, because it is rooted in religion, culture or politics.

Small part of it is rooted in practicality as well, since Japanese castles in general are a touch easier to conquer than European ones, and sengoku jidai happens in an era where cannons are fairly widespread in Japan (interestingly enough, casements for said cannons in castles are not), meaning the castles as a concept are less effective. That means the attackers have somewhat less incentive to allow the defenders an option of surrender instead of storming the castle, especially in a time where betrayals are frequent.

*Spoiler: Compare Osaka and Malbork/Marienburg*
Show


Three wall layers plus central keep, sightlines are wonky and kinda broken, especially once you get past first wall layer

Four layers (five from some directions), cleaner sightlines and all of those four layers have doubled up walls


I'd even go so far as to argue that Sengoku Jidai is less medieval era tech and more of a late renaissance pike-and-shot era tech, at which point even the most impressive of European castles loose some importance. But that's probably a discussion for another day.

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## Pauly

> As much as we call those fortified buildings castles, and Japan feudal, the overall situation is very different to Europe. What I'm trying to say is that while we can sort of call high and renaissance European warfare and Sengoku Jidai Japanese warfare something like Castle-centric Strategies, they are really two different approaches to two different problems.
> 
> A large part of why we can't talk about, because it is rooted in religion, culture or politics.
> 
> Small part of it is rooted in practicality as well, since Japanese castles in general are a touch easier to conquer than European ones, and sengoku jidai happens in an era where cannons are fairly widespread in Japan (interestingly enough, casements for said cannons in castles are not), meaning the castles as a concept are less effective. That means the attackers have somewhat less incentive to allow the defenders an option of surrender instead of storming the castle, especially in a time where betrayals are frequent.
> 
> *Spoiler: Compare Osaka and Malbork/Marienburg*
> Show
> 
> ...


I live about 80 minutes from Osaka-jō and walked over it many times. Theres nothing wonky about the sightlines. What may appear wonky on the drawing are pretty clear once you have the elevation, By the way the hill Osaka-jō sited on is the only significant rocky hill in the Kansai plain, which mean some of the decisions are forced on it by geography, not lack of skill of the builders. Osaka-jō also had an outer ring of walls not shown in that drawing.
Japanese castles have some problems that result from the inclination of walls to withstand earthquakes. 

Im not saying Japanese castles were as sophisticated or well built as European castles. Plainly theyre not. Theres lots of reasons for this, including the short history of castle building in Japan and the fact that castle building started after the invention of cannons.

If you want non-European stone fortifications that rival/surpass European designs you need to look at places like Pisaq and Ollantaytambo in Peru, but thats getting away from what a castle is.

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## Martin Greywolf

> If you want non-European stone fortifications that rival/surpass European designs you need to look at places like Pisaq and Ollantaytambo in Peru, but thats getting away from what a castle is.


We should really add Chinese and Roman fortified cities to that list - high skill, sofistication and organization, definitely not a castle.

Coming to think of it, these are good examples of another factor that makes castle strategies fail, bringing overwhelming force. A Roman or Chinese army on campaign is actually large enough to detach forces to besiege several smaller castles and storm them one by one in a matter of days or weeks. It will still be stopped by the largest of the enemy fortifications, be it Chinese sieges of largest cities or Romans at Alesia.

You could probably get a PhD paper out of in-depth comparision of land control and denial thereof by pre-gunpowder cultures, but for now, I think we can add "somewhat poor logistics" to a list of things you need for a successful castle defense strategy.

There is also an interesting caveat to early gunpowder era where castles or star forts actually work a bit - while the Hungarians at Vienna or Nove Zamky/Ujvar couldn't really defeat the Ottoman army, they could wait until reinforcements bailed them out. Which happened at Vienna, while Nove Zamky were forced to capitulate (after making the Ottomans use almost 200 tons of gunpowder against them). This is probably where we see the Japanese inexperience with anti-gunpowder forts the most, Nove Zamky fall in 1663 (fotress was built in 1546, but it's not like we have a full list of revisions), Sengoku Jiadai ends in 1615. And, well...

*Spoiler: Nove Zamky fortress sketch*
Show

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## PhoenixPhyre

Question about demographics (and related question about mercenaries), assuming a late-medieval, vaguely European context. Note: the time and space window is pretty broad, just absolutely pre-industrial and before the significant use of gunpowder (so no pike-and-shot era).

1) What percentage (roughly) of the able-bodied population would be generally "available for hire" (ie economically surplus, not part of a long-term occupation) and "trained at arms" (not necessarily with combat experience, but can hold a pike/spear and be expected to not break and run at the first sign of trouble), ie what percentage of the population could in principle be hired as guards/mercenaries/armed adventuring support[2]?

2) How did merchants/guilds (especially those involved in trade via land, but also those with workshops/etc) protect their property? Could they hire "private"[1] caravan/warehouse guards? Did they have to get them from the local rulers? I understand that most of the smaller towns didn't have much in the way of standing police forces (although I might be wrong).

[1] ie not directly maintained/hired/equipped by the local legal authorities.
[2] in a world where that would make more sense, not necessarily in the real world where "adventuring" meant something quite a bit different than delving through ancient ruins looking for treasures/fighting monsters.

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## Martin Greywolf

> 1) What percentage (roughly) of the able-bodied population would be generally "available for hire" (ie economically surplus, not part of a long-term occupation) and "trained at arms" (not necessarily with combat experience, but can hold a pike/spear and be expected to not break and run at the first sign of trouble), ie what percentage of the population could in principle be hired as guards/mercenaries/armed adventuring support[2]?


Long term, anything with medieval logistics will get you 10 000 soldiers per million people - this roughly checks out with HRE, France and Hungary for hig medieval period, although you can't get more than about 30 000 soldiers to a single battle (see France at Agincourt, where they have ~30k soldiers despite total French armed forces being at about 150-200k). That includes standing armies, mercenaries and so on - do note that medieval armies are as often as not composed primarily of mercenaries on long-term contracts.

This seems incredibly low, what with it being 1%, the issue is that in pre-modern societies, you can only devote about 5% of people towards non-production occupations (careful, merchants are production occupation, since they handle the supply chains). That means that 5% has to cover entertainment, religion, art and so on and so forth, as well as soldiers. If you have a erally, really prosperous kingdom with Galadriel pouring magic into the soil, you may be able to pump those numbers up to about twice that, but probably not more - your farmers are farming more, but still aren't combine harvesters.

That said, this is long term standing armies. If you have citizen militias, you can theoretically get the number of semi-trained combatants to 50% (if male only) or even all of the people. You did have societies that functioned like this, mostly of the nomadic types - both Mongols and Cumans had women in their armies and only real non-combatants were people old or young enough to not be able to ride a horse. For a more sedentary example, look at England with their archery training, that got you a lot of rural population with some sort of military training,

Whether or not these people will run is another matter entirely. Morale and a ton of other factors come into play, and even an untrained farmer may well hold his ground in some circumstances.

That said. This large pool of potential soldiers must be accessed with utmost care, because you must adhere to those 5% numbers. You could to a Landsknecht system and seasonally hire them, but then your military campaigns will be limited by time.




> 2) How did merchants/guilds (especially those involved in trade via land, but also those with workshops/etc) protect their property? Could they hire "private"[1] caravan/warehouse guards? Did they have to get them from the local rulers? I understand that most of the smaller towns didn't have much in the way of standing police forces (although I might be wrong).


Well, for smaller towns, they didn't have merchant guilds to start with. A necessary pre-requisite for a guild is that you must have a city large enough to support several craftsmen of a given trade, who will then band together. A small town with three merchants, each of whom trades is something different, will not have a guild of its own.

Now, as for protection. The first layer of protection is the nobles keeping the peace in their realms - it is always in their interest to keep the trade flowing, so they will fight off bandits and even stop other nobles from exploiting tolls. There is a fascinating history around tolls and fradulent tolls that I won't get into for fear of inadvertantly writing a book.

That layer of protection can fail, however, if there is crisis or war in a kingdom. If that happens, the seoncd layer of protection are often guilds or free cities. These have a vested interest in keeping order in their territories and will deploy their guards (usually mercenaries on long term contracts) to see to it.

Finally, there's hiring personal guards. This is always a good idea - it gives you a bit of prestige, makes your business partners at ease knowing you can protect your wares and so on, even outside of direct protection. That said, not everyone will be able to hire a lot of guards, and smaller merchants especially will have trouble. These will likely join some other group of people travelling in a given direction, maybe even a larger caravan, for mutual protection.

Outside of that, travelling merchants will always be armed themselves. Maybe not in full plate, but a discreet arming doublet, a sword, a buckler and a crossbow is a sound investment. Also remember that a merchant will have several people along with him to take care of the animals, help with transport and so on, so even without mercenaries, a small merchant wagon is maybe five people, all of them armed with crossbows. Band together with three or four other groups, and you are suddenly not quite so easy a target.

Finally, if you have a martial burgher culture - like the one in HRE's free cities - that merchant may well be trained in swordfighting by one of the fencing masters of the day.

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## PhoenixPhyre

Thanks. One clarification--I wasn't talking as much about _armies_ (ie raised by the sovereign or lords), but people who might be available for hire as mercenaries by private individuals of wealth. But an overall "men at arms" rate of ~1% fits my mental model well enough, and I'm not concerned with more precision than that (since the world I'm working on _is not_ truly medieval, nor is it Europe).

And it seems the answer to the second question is "they don't, at least not in an organized fashion", mostly relying on the local lord to handle security or handling it themselves at the guild/city level (which is government by another name, especially since it happens mostly when the "formal" government isn't handling the job due to crisis/etc). That works.
Related question--would that still hold true for the longer-distance caravans (such as the Silk Road[1])?

[1] Yes, I understand that the Silk Road didn't usually involve a single caravan going the entire distance, it was a series of shorter hops/"convection cells" between trading points/cities and only the goods made the whole trip, and did so in stages. But my naive impression is that a good chunk of those hops were still many days/weeks, often in relatively[2] unsettled territory once you got into Central Asia. But I could be wrong.

[2] compared to the much more densely settled areas of Western Europe or the river valleys of China proper.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Thanks. One clarification--I wasn't talking as much about _armies_ (ie raised by the sovereign or lords), but people who might be available for hire as mercenaries by private individuals of wealth. But an overall "men at arms" rate of ~1% fits my mental model well enough, and I'm not concerned with more precision than that (since the world I'm working on _is not_ truly medieval, nor is it Europe).


We roughly see this figure hold outside of medieval Europe - it is based on necessary manpower for farming output, after all. If you look at China circa Three Kingdoms, you'll see some very similar numbers, with total Chinese population at 56 million via official census (real population is higher), and battle of Red Cliff where all of China came to get a good kicking (and there was emergency conscription as a result) at about 300 000 combatants, with other troops serving as garrissons in other places.

The long and short of it is that you can afford 1% of population as combatants comfortably, and up to 5% if you want to risk torpedoing your art, science and entertainment. Any more than that and you risk serious famine problems.




> And it seems the answer to the second question is "they don't, at least not in an organized fashion", mostly relying on the local lord to handle security or handling it themselves at the guild/city level (which is government by another name, especially since it happens mostly when the "formal" government isn't handling the job due to crisis/etc). That works.
> Related question--would that still hold true for the longer-distance caravans (such as the Silk Road[1])?


Silk road, huh?




> Yes, I understand that the Silk Road didn't usually involve a single caravan going the entire distance


As a consequence, every subsection of this journey is handled by someone different, using the local systems, or lack thereof. A Silk Road merchant in Black Sea region will operate differently than one in Tibet.

The one common thread is relying on state protection to a degree where available, but as I mentioned above, the rich and more powerful merchants will likely hire at least some security. Once the state authority breaks down, most prominently when you enter the steppe, the local nomads are hired. Which yes, does mean they are fighting themselves as bandits and guards rather often, and you'll probably see some tribes gravitating towards one role, but that can change. Knowing local customs and names and tribes of important chiefs is crucial.

In some cases, even in the steppes, you can get a letter of introduction. They were called paizi (chinese) or gerege (mongolian) (or billog in Magyar, but if you find anything on them, drop me a note, all I have are two articles), and were letters of free passage. If you had one of those in times of strong local authority, you were pretty much left alone.

*Spoiler: Mongol Paizi*
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*Spoiler: Billog in Chronica Picta, 1350*
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Nomads on top right wear it around their necks


All of this also means that Silk Road is mutable. If it went through the Chwarezmian empire, and said empire just entered a civil war, it will get rerouted north into the steppes, because while the Khagans up there aren't as reliable as Chwarezmian's state organization, it's still better than trying to merchant your way through a civil war.

That said, from what fragmentary remarks we have, it seems the steppes region of Silk Road was more stable than you'd think. Yeah, sure, it was definitely more volatile than Chinese or French heartlands when at peace, but the local chieftains were perfectly happy to let the caravan go through their, often large, territory if given appropriate amount of gifts. Which is not really that different from taxes and tolls you'd get hit with as soon as you entered the Rus city states, Byzantium or Hungary.

Even if the chiefs changed, the customs seemed to remain relatively stable, since their successors were well aware of how lucrative this kind of trade was - there is a relatively recent paper published on grave of a Cuman chief that contained grave goods containing herbs from China and Europe, Byzantine silks and all sort of assorted loot from the two continents.

And then, you can bypass the entire Silk Road, but I don't think Red Sea-to-India trade is relevant to your interests.

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## PhoenixPhyre

I'm discovering that my true mental blind spot here is in underestimating how widespread "government control" and "civilization/density" was back then. I basically have this (probably wrong) mental model of the political map of Central Asia[1] being mostly blank with scattered "here's a nation or a tribe" regions, rather than having mostly touching actual borders. So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks _between_ the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.

[1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to _Europe_, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I *know* that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.

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## Brother Oni

> I'm discovering that my true mental blind spot here is in underestimating how widespread "government control" and "civilization/density" was back then. I basically have this (probably wrong) mental model of the political map of Central Asia[1] being mostly blank with scattered "here's a nation or a tribe" regions, rather than having mostly touching actual borders. So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks _between_ the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.
> 
> [1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to _Europe_, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I *know* that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.


It's important to remember that if you're off the the main trade routes, you could potentially accidentally travel through a nomadic tribe's territory and think it's just unclaimed land, if their main camp is elsewhere or their scouts don't think it's worth the trouble to challenge you, or you somehow miss their scouts.

A major trade route like the Silk Road would most definitely be monitored as often as possible, as they were an easy source of 'free' gifts and tributes as Martin Greywolf mentioned.

What also might be a bit of a blind spot is how early these trade routes sprung up; the Silk Road was in full flow during the late 1st Century, and if some accounts are true, even Julius Caesar had silk curtains brought all the way from China (JSTOR link).

Tacitus reports that in ~14CE, there was an attempted ban on silk clothing for men (the first of many attempts), as it was seen as feminising due to its sheer and almost translucent nature (Book 2, XXXIII)

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## Martin Greywolf

> So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks _between_ the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.
> 
> [1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to _Europe_, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I *know* that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.


This is not entirely inaccurate. From a certain point of view.

The entire mid-Eurasian region is made up of areas {Scrubbed}, a lot of these civilizations, especially the nomadic ones, didn't have a system of writing, so all you have is archaeological research. {Scrubbed}. And Soviet bloc had this weird... apathy, I suppose, towards any research on nomads. I don't think there were ever any official or semi-official bans, but the Soviet bloc rarely mentions them, with a few exceptions.

What's worse, many archives that had traveller's journals in them were bombed to hell in World Wars, so we mostly use {Scrubbed} Byzantine sources when dealing with these. There has been some cross-referencing with Chinese sources in recent years, but again, politics get in the way here.

So, your mental map is kind of what our historical map of the area looks like, a lot of empty space with occassional blotches of references or archaeological finds, the rest of it is extraploation.

Finally, there's the difference between different branches of Silk road:

*Sea route*

Start at  Chinese ports and coast-hop all the way to Red Sea and Egypt, or Persian gulf. There will be no nomads there, obviously, but there will be a metric ton of piracy. The tolls at ports will be steep.

*Indian sea route*

China to Tibet to India and get on the ship there, with end points at Persian Gulf and Red Sea. All of this land route is more or less within areas strongly controlled by some central authority. You will get taxed and taxed often, though.

*Oasis route*

China to Sinkiang to Afghanistan and Iran, potentially using Caspian sea routes. End points are either through Baghdad to the Outremer coast and Egypt or through Black sea coast or naval route to Constantinople.

While most of this route is inside kingdoms, they are kingdoms on steppe borders, so raids are a very real threat, and you do get a stretch right after you leave Sinkiang where you are practically at the southern steppe borders. That stretch especially will need more protection.

You will get many tax breaks here, even more than on the Sea and Indian to sea routes, but! Not only do you avoid having to use ships in pirate-rich areas and visit some cities those routes don't, and therefore tap untapped markets, you can also avoid Muslim sultanates, and therefore arrive to Constantinople with cheaper silks when compared to southern routes.

*Steppe route*

Starts in Mongolia and avoids most of the large kingdoms, going through steppes proper, through Kazakhstan and to Rus, Byzantium or Ukraine. This is the route closest to what you're imagining, going through a lot of steppe areas, and usually "gifting" local chiefs for free passage. It is the least taxed route, because if the local chief doesn't find you, you may avoid taxes entirely (not really an option in e.g. Persia), but also the riskiest, because all it takes is some outlaws getting you for you to loose it all.

*Why do you not know this?*

Well, because no one teaches it properly. Seriously, look at all these Silk roads:

*Spoiler: Has all land routes, but misses Red sea and Persian gulf*
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*Spoiler: No Steppe route*
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*Spoiler: Almost complete, but doesn't show China to India to sea route*
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And those are the good ones!

*Spoiler: You know how to use icons, but missed 2/3 of the thing*
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*Spoiler: Very, uh, ethnic, but shows Oasis route only, with some questionable end points*
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*Spoiler: Really?*
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All in all, I have found one (1) good map, and even that one is missing the Rus endpoints of the Silk Road:

*Spoiler: Bonus points for including Spice Islands though, you rarely see that*
Show

It also lacks a file format extension, so I have to link it


The common thread in all of them is balance of risk and reward: you have to pay tolls, pay for mercenaries to protect you and pay for expenses. You are at risk of bandits or local political uphevals. Balance it just right, and you make unbelievable amounts of cash. Balance it wrong, and you get robbed. And while merchants themselves operate locally, the big picture is potentially profitable enough for government action - Venice and Genoa established an outposts at Crimea pretty much just to siphon off these profits before the Byzantines could get to them.

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## Pauly

> This is not entirely inaccurate. From a certain point of view.
> 
> The entire mid-Eurasian region is made up of areas that {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}  and to top it off, a lot of these civilizations, especially the nomadic ones, didn't have a system of writing, so all you have is archaeological research. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}And Soviet bloc had this weird... apathy, I suppose, towards any research on nomads. I don't think there were ever any official or semi-official bans, but the Soviet bloc rarely mentions them, with a few exceptions.[/I]
> .


{Scrubbed}

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## Brother Oni

> And while merchants themselves operate locally, the big picture is potentially profitable enough for government action - Venice and Genoa established an outposts at Crimea pretty much just to siphon off these profits before the Byzantines could get to them.


Going the other way, the Chinese envoy Gan Ying made it all the way to the Persian Gulf in AD 97; he wanted to reach the Roman Empire, but the Parthians falsely told him that the journey would take another two years as they didn't want to lose control of the trade route, so he gathered what information he could from sailors in ports and headed back to China.


It should be remembered that the Silk Road lasted for a very long time, and both Martin and myself are talking about different periods of the Silk Road.

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## Martin Greywolf

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


Uh, well, I know a bit about this, but unless a mod comes here and explicitly states that discussing Soviet Union historical research policies and narratives is in line with forum rules, I won't comment on it. It falls a touch too close to "no real world politics" clause of forum rules.

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## Pauly

> Uh, well, I know a bit about this, but unless a mod comes here and explicitly states that discussing Soviet Union historical research policies and narratives is in line with forum rules, I won't comment on it. It falls a touch too close to "no real world politics" clause of forum rules.


Yeah, I got sent to the naughty corner for that. I didnt realize Soviet history/policies was off limits.

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## Vinyadan

> And those are the good ones!


How do you feel about this one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...t-one-road.svg It's actually a map of the proposed belt and road initiative, but it seems to overlap with the historical ones you mentioned.

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## KineticDiplomat

Well, geography doesnt change too quicklythough the modern one also has the implicit desire to ease/vary hydrocarbon delivery to the PRC to reduce strategic vulnerability.

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## Berenger

Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes: 

1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night? 

2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?

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## Martin Greywolf

> How do you feel about this one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...t-one-road.svg It's actually a map of the proposed belt and road initiative, but it seems to overlap with the historical ones you mentioned.


It shows the outlines of major routes, so that's good. It also shows a modern China as if it was pretending historical China was of that size and unity, which is definitely not good. I mean sure, overlay the routes over modern borders for the people to have better idea of where they are, but don't highlight a modern nation that didn't exist in period and use it as the starting point.




> Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes: 
> 
> 1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night?


Some did, some did not, and it's really easy to tell which is which: does the galley/nation in question use slaves/convicts as oarsmen? If yes, oarsmen are chained to oars or whatever their rest aeas are, and will super drown if the ship is sunk.

If they are free men, they will have some sort of weapon on hand. Not armor, mind you, because even a helmet is far more than you're willing to wear when you are at the oars (remember - a helmet is like strapping a two liter coke bottle to your head), but they will have some sort of weapons on them or more likely lying somewhere nearby. Probably in some sort of a holder, Royal Navy cutlasses style. Hell, maybe they will also have some easy to put on armor there, most likely helmets.




> 2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?


Assuming a 40 ton trireme, assigning a third of that to rowers, a third to ship itself, other crew and stationery and so on, we're left with a cargo of 13 tons. This trireme also has a crew of 170 rowers, 20 marines and 10 other.

The highest weight of naval diet comes from Danish navy at some 1.7 kg of food per day per person, but this is likely to include some reserve in their rations. Since most of the crew are rowers, let's assume 1 kg to make the calculations neater.

Water is much worse, at 5 liters per person per day, with as much as triple that if doing sweaty work in hot weather. Let's take best case scenario at 5 liters, and therefore 5 kg.

So, we need 200 kg of supplies to feed the crew per day, plus 1 ton of water, putting us at 1.2 tons of supplies per day. With our 13 ton capacity, we can have supplies for 10 days.

And that's why triremes aren't used to haul cargo, they are meant to be fast and agile warships and therefore make sacrifices to do so.

However, 5/6 of that weight is water. If you are sailing along the coastline - as if you were in the Med - you can get six times that amount of time out of your rations if you only take water from the shore, getting you to 65 days. That is pretty dangerous though (three days of bad luck and your crew dies of thirst), and you'd see some ratio of less water in days that you refill whenever you can. What that ratio is depends on the captain and his officers, the voyage, the weather and so on.

Also note that, if you have something that is not a warship, you also need to consider that the supplies tonnage eats up your cargo tonnage, and therefore profit. A warship will happily fill all of those 13 tons with supplies, a merchant ship may have twice the tonnage and no willingness to use even as much as a warship.

tl;dr An oar-powered warship will have something like 10-20 days of rations on board, and will need to make stops for water fairly often.

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## GeoffWatson

> Some did, some did not, and it's really easy to tell which is which: does the galley/nation in question use slaves/convicts as oarsmen? If yes, oarsmen are chained to oars or whatever their rest aeas are, and will super drown if the ship is sunk.


The ancient Greeks didn't use slaves as oarsmen, that's an early modern thing (1500s). They wanted trained, motivated rowers.

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## fusilier

> Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes: 
> 
> 1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night? 
> 
> 2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?


I'll have to go over my sources, but I believe John F. Guilmartin (_Gunpowder and Galleys_) considered water to be the limiting factor, and I believe estimated about two to three weeks or so of water (this amount decreased as ships became larger and had more oarsmen).*  However, he was referring to much later ships (16th century).  Nevertheless, descriptions of travel on a cargo galley in the 15th century indicate that they put to shore every night if they could.  So the need to carry a lot of water wasn't really necessary in the Mediterranean . . . usually.  If pushing into enemy territory, then it may have been different.  As noted before, however, the oarsmen did need a lot of water, and the Medieval and Renaissance galleys had the entire rowing crew on the top deck, exposed to the sun.

*There's a Spanish paper that challenges Guilmartin's calculations, based upon a description of an army being transported from Spain to northern Italy in the early 17th century (? I think).  However, I'm a little unconvinced as the account merely mentioned taking 2 or 3 months of supplies, which may have just been biscuit, and not water (certainly the amount of time at sea shouldn't have been any where near that long, and it was mostly along a friendly coast). 

I am going from memory, I will try to double check my sources when I get the chance.  I'll also see if I can find anything specific to Greek triremes.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The ancient Greeks didn't use slaves as oarsmen, that's an early modern thing (1500s). They wanted trained, motivated rowers.


Not entirely true. Ancient Greek, Rome and Carthage didn't use slaves as oarsmen as part of their standing army (sailing navy?), but did resort to them when they had manpower shortages - sometimes with the provision that the slaves will earn their freedom, which means you could actually get enslaved oarsmen that would be given weapons.

With Greeks especially, this claim is even weaker, since there was no Ancient Greece, but rather a collection of city states. Most of written sources are from modern Greece area, but there were Greek outposts as far as Poland's present day souther border. Kolchis was probably somewhere around Crimea. And we don't know much about those - most of the evidence from them is material culture that is the same as Greece proper. Without any central authority enforcing policies, well.

Then there's the matter of Egypt, or rather the several dozen individual kingdoms that were in Egypt at various times, and their navies. I honestly don't know enough about the subject to tell you which Egyptian kingdom did or did not use slave rowers.

Finally, above applies to the state navy, not the private merchants, who, in societies with slavery, could do as they pleased, especially since they were less concerned with arming the oarsmen. A military ship can make good use of extra 300 light infantry, a merchant ship, probably not quite so much.

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## Lord Torath

What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow?  If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?

Edit:  Or should I ask this question in the Mad Science and Grumpy Technology board?

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## Gnoman

None of the fundamental elements are all that complicated. The biggest problem would be materials - compound bows are built of advanced polymers, and I'm not sure how big a deal the physical properties of those play into the functionality. I'm sure that the pulleys use bearings as well, which would be a Problem.

The basic design could be copied in almost any era, but I don't know if they'd be any better until the materials became available in the mid-20th century

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## Pauly

> What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow?  If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?
> 
> Edit:  Or should I ask this question in the Mad Science and Grumpy Technology board?


Compound bows made of wood, bone and sinew have been a thing for a very long time, at least 1500 years. Although wikipedia seems to refer to them as recurve bows.

For a modern style with pulleys et al, the Victorian era is the earliest for precision machining, at least from a factory production pov. If youre talking a master craftsman hand fitting single items then you can arguably go back to at least the Greeks and the antikythera mechanism. Any civilization that had things like a windlass crossbow, oxybeles or ballista arguably has the knowhow to design a modern pulley compound bow.

The problem is going to be materials. Im not qualified to offer an opinion on that. But the fact it wasnt used historically suggests that it requires modern technology.

Historically the ballista with torsion springs replaced the oxybeles with a winch. It would be possible in theory to use an oxybeles with a winch and pulley as pulleys had been invented at least 1,000 years before the oxybeles, but I am unaware of this being done.

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## Max_Killjoy

Was there ever a time when composite and/or recurve bows were commonly referred to as "compound"?


(I've come across so much bad usage of the terms that I was totally confused about composite vs recurve for a long time...)

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## Brother Oni

> What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow?  If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?


Compound bows are always under tension, so without the aid of modern polymers, they would have to be made of steel, at which point, you essentially have half a crossbow or an Indian steel bow.

The problem is, steel is inferior to wood for the purposes required of a bow; the belly has to be resistant to compression, the back has to be resistant to stretching, etc. Crossbows get around the issues by having massive poundage, while the Indian bows were in response to their environment (wooden bows, especially composites, don't last long in the Indian heat and humidity) as they had no other choice.

So assuming you could bring back the design, the limitation is the metallurgy for the cams, which would put it about late medieval era. However that raises the question of why bother with compound bows in a European setting, when the longbow was more powerful and people already had crossbows?




> Compound bows made of wood, bone and sinew have been a thing for a very long time, at least 1500 years. Although wikipedia seems to refer to them as recurve bows.


As Max said, you're confusing composite bows (bows made out of more than one material) with compound bows (a bow type with machined parts and cams) and recurve bows (a bow type classified based on their shape, specifically the reverse curve of the bow's limbs away from the archer, ie why they're called recurves in the first place).

All compound bows are composite bows and you can get both composite recurves and self recurves (recurve bows made from a single piece of wood).
I've not heard of steel bows being referred to as either self or composite, just steel.




> The problem is going to be materials. Im not qualified to offer an opinion on that. But the fact it wasnt used historically suggests that it requires modern technology.


The fact that it wasn't used historically was that by the time they had developed the design technology to make compound bows, bows as a weapon system had already been superseded centuries previously by gunpowder weapons.

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## Berenger

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for the answers about the triremes, much appreciated.

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## Lord Torath

I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign.  The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.

Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows.  It has pulleys and winches.  Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?

This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.

I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.

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## Max_Killjoy

> I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign.  The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.
> 
> Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows.  It has pulleys and winches.  Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?
> 
> This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.
> 
> I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.



I don't think Athas has what it takes for that to be a thing. 

It would be entirely rool of kewl. 

Even then, I don't think D&D has the granularity to represent the benefits.

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## Pauly

> I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign.  The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.
> 
> Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows.  It has pulleys and winches.  Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?
> 
> This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.
> 
> I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.


Id offer the player an oxybeles (the precursor to the ballista) with some pulley and lever mechanism with the winch to allow faster loading. A half giant should be big and strong enough to operate it, and it doesn't break the technology of the world.

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## TheStranger

> I don't think Athas has what it takes for that to be a thing. 
> 
> It would be entirely rool of kewl. 
> 
> Even then, I don't think D&D has the granularity to represent the benefits.


I think this is the right answer, in terms of both the tech level to create and the effects under D&D rules. That said, rule of cool isnt inherently bad in a D&D game. IMO the way to handle it as a DM is to find out why the player wants it and what stats they think it should have. If this is a variant of how new players say they stab somebody in the neck expecting that means their dagger will do more than 1d4 damage, you may need to have a talk about how D&D works (doesnt mean they cant have it, though). If theyre an archery enthusiast and think compound bows are cool regardless of the stats, you might want to think about fitting it into the game. If theyre trying to munchkin their way to some mechanical advantage, thats another issue. 

If you do decide to allow a compound bow in the game, Id treat it as an extraordinary feat of craftsmanship by a legendary bowyer, not something that could readily be replicated without substantial advances in metallurgy and precision machining that would fundamentally change the setting. Essentially it would be a refluffed magic bow (but mundane for purposes of DR or in an AMF), not an invention thats introduced to the world.

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## Martin Greywolf

I'll speak only on the practical and historical bits of this, what you do with in-game stuff is up to you.

Can you make a compound bow with medieval tech? Yes, and it's not going to be that difficult, any jeweller will be able to make the necessary pulleys and the limbs will go to crossbow maker.

While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage. You'd also likely see similar methods of limb construction, mening wood, layered horn and sinew or metal. This would make the bow limbs quite chunky, making it look like vertical crossbow, but it would work.

So, why did no one do that?

Because there was no point. The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw. It doesn't necessarily shoot lighter arrows faster because of it, though, since there is a limit on how fast the limbs can move, no matter what they are shooting, but it does mean you could fire heavier arrows.

Thing is, only use for something like that is armor penetration, and you don't hit the limits of selfbows and composite bows when it comes to that until late medieval period, and by that point, you see serpentines around and flintlocks aren't that far off.

Which means that there is no reason to invest vast amounts of money into compounds before late medieval armor, and once late medieval armor comes around, compound bows have to compete with easy to make, easy to use arquebuses that also have comparably much cheaper ammunition.

If we didn't discover gunpowder, for some weird reason, we would probably see compound bows in military use, albeit in limited numbers. It's still far more expensive and harder to repair and maintain than self bows, or even composites.

As for crossbows, bows and crossbows have fundamentally different roles. A bow is a fast-firing weapon, a crossbow is a slow-firing poke-from-behind-cover weapon. While they can be pressed into each other's role, they aren't in direct competition, as evidenced by both bows and crossbows being used alongside one another.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I'll speak only on the practical and historical bits of this, what you do with in-game stuff is up to you.
> 
> Can you make a compound bow with medieval tech? Yes, and it's not going to be that difficult, any jeweller will be able to make the necessary pulleys and the limbs will go to crossbow maker.
> 
> While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage. You'd also likely see similar methods of limb construction, mening wood, layered horn and sinew or metal. This would make the bow limbs quite chunky, making it look like vertical crossbow, but it would work.
> 
> So, why did no one do that?
> 
> Because there was no point. The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw. It doesn't necessarily shoot lighter arrows faster because of it, though, since there is a limit on how fast the limbs can move, no matter what they are shooting, but it does mean you could fire heavier arrows.
> ...


I thought an advantage of the compound bow is that it can be held at full draw without straining, potentially improving accuracy.

----------


## PhoenixPhyre

Completely random, disconnected question--

I've been watching a bit more wuxia (and related) clips, and one recurring theme (with that and with the Dynasty Warrior games) is that chinese spears often have a "tassel" or tuft of colorful things or other cloth-like decoration near the tip (usually attached to the shaft just before the tip). 

Wikipedia says this:




> Common features of the Chinese spear are the leaf-shaped blade and red horse-hair tassel lashed just below. The tassel shows elite troop status. It also serves a tactical purpose. When the spear is moving quickly, the addition of the tassel aids in blurring the vision of the opponent so that it is more difficult for them to grab the shaft of spear behind the head or tip. The tassel also served another purpose, to stop the flow of blood from the blade getting to the wooden shaft (the blood would make it slippery, or sticky when dried).


Is that correct? Are there other meanings there? Is there a reason that you don't see western spears depicted that same way as much?

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## Brother Oni

> While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage.


Depends on the compound bow design. The older ones can be unstrung much like a recurve, but any vaguely modern compound requires a bow press and specialised gear. Meanwhile a medieval crossbow just needs a bastard string and whatever spanning mechanism it uses normally.




> The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw.


The compound bow's major advantage is that you can hold it at full draw with comparatively little effort, due to the way the cams have altered the force/draw curve. The permits longer time aiming, thus greater accuracy.
Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.


On a separate note, the limbs of a compound bow are very short, much like a horsebow. This means you're probably only going to manage a a two finger draw at most as the string angle will be too acute for a full draw, which limits the amount of power you can put it in (as you have less points of contact to draw the bow). Typically you'd get around the issue with a release aid, so that's another fiddly mechanism to add to the compound bow.

As Max said, D&D doesn't have the granularity to properly model the differences between bows in general, let alone a compound and a recurve (force/draw curves, being able to hold at full draw for longer, shorter bow lengths, string angles, etc) beyond giving it Masterwork status and a +1 to hit.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> I thought an advantage of the compound bow is that it can be held at full draw without straining, potentially improving accuracy.





> Depends on the compound bow design. The older ones can be unstrung much like a recurve, but any vaguely modern compound requires a bow press and specialised gear. Meanwhile a medieval crossbow just needs a bastard string and whatever spanning mechanism it uses normally.
> 
> The compound bow's major advantage is that you can hold it at full draw with comparatively little effort, due to the way the cams have altered the force/draw curve. The permits longer time aiming, thus greater accuracy.
> Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.


I wouldn't call it a major advantage, especially not in warfare. There are precious few places where the ability to hold your draw and aim slightly better would be useful, and in most of these (ambushes and shooting from behind cover or at people in cover), crossbow does better because you don't need to expose a lot of your body to use it.

I guess it gives you edge over other bows, but you aren't competing with just bows, you are up against all ranged weapons in use at the time.

The easier draw (as in, force expended by the human vs initial velocity), on the other hand, lets you get elite draw weight archery with people who aren't physically at that level, but the cost is... prohibitive.




> Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.


I mean, yeah. And they have optical sights, red dots and all maner of fancy things, some of which are transferable to other bow types, some of which aren't. But all of those make the situation even worse in the "how expensive is this thing going to be" department, especially in age without mass manufacture.




> Completely random, disconnected question--
> 
> I've been watching a bit more wuxia (and related) clips, and one recurring theme (with that and with the Dynasty Warrior games) is that chinese spears often have a "tassel" or tuft of colorful things or other cloth-like decoration near the tip (usually attached to the shaft just before the tip). 
> 
> Wikipedia says this:
> 
> Common features of the Chinese spear are the leaf-shaped blade and red horse-hair tassel lashed just below. The tassel shows elite troop status. It also serves a tactical purpose. When the spear is moving quickly, the addition of the tassel aids in blurring the vision of the opponent so that it is more difficult for them to grab the shaft of spear behind the head or tip. The tassel also served another purpose, to stop the flow of blood from the blade getting to the wooden shaft (the blood would make it slippery, or sticky when dried).
> 
> Is that correct? Are there other meanings there? Is there a reason that you don't see western spears depicted that same way as much?


Yeah, all of that is pretty much a myth. I do a lot of spear fighting, and let me assure you, no amount of tassels is going to make me not watch where the shiny stabby bit is pointing. I guess someone without much training may make that mistake? And as for grabbing the spear, that's about as likely as being able to parry a sword with a dagger. Can you do it? Yeah, especially against a weaker opponent. But it's extremely hard to do and not that hard to defend against.

Also, a tassel will, if anything, make it easier to grab.

Also, it's not just chinese spears.

*Spoiler: 17th century Germany, ceremonial*
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link


*Spoiler: English renaissance era*
Show




Also, while it's not a tassell per se:

*Spoiler: Austria, c1410*
Show




Does it stop blood then?

No. I mean, first of all, there won't be all that much blood on it that won't drip off, and more importantly, what makes you think someone won't get impaled enough to go past the tassel? Or someone gets impaled and then your friend stabs him in the neck and now blood is all over the place. And you. And your friend.

There is, however, at least one credible reference to a tassel being meant to stop a liquid:




> I will onelie say thus much more touching the pike∣man, that he ought to haue his Pyke at the point and middest trimmed with handsome tassels, and a handle, not so much for ornament as to de∣fend the Souldiers bodie from water, which in raine doth runne downe alongst the wood.
> 
> - William Garrard, 1591


*What is the tassel for?*

The number one use is decoration. Be it as rank/unit insignia, as a talisman or just to look nicer. Sometimes you even see the entire spear shaft painted, and there is no limit on how fancy the ceremonial spears can get.

As for practical uses, the rainwater stopper is mentioned above, although I wonder how effective it would be in heavy rain - not much, I imagine. Another use is reinforcing the wood, the tassel has some sort of binding under it, and that helps protect the wood a bit from splintering, whether as a result of blows landing on that bit of the shaft, or from general use. It's not a very big improvement, but it does help a bit.

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## PhoenixPhyre

> *What is the tassel for?*
> 
> The number one use is decoration. Be it as rank/unit insignia, as a talisman or just to look nicer. Sometimes you even see the entire spear shaft painted, and there is no limit on how fancy the ceremonial spears can get.
> 
> As for practical uses, the rainwater stopper is mentioned above, although I wonder how effective it would be in heavy rain - not much, I imagine. Another use is reinforcing the wood, the tassel has some sort of binding under it, and that helps protect the wood a bit from splintering, whether as a result of blows landing on that bit of the shaft, or from general use. It's not a very big improvement, but it does help a bit.


Interesting. So I guess the _big_ difference between chinese media depictions of spears and western media depictions of spears is the _media_ culture, not the actual spears.

I mean, I've seen _lances with pennants_ in western movies, and I've seen _flagbearers_, but the average "dude with spear" (who in western modern media seems be typecast as "faceless grunt who will die") generally doesn't. Or maybe I just didn't see them.

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## Vinyadan

In illuminations, lances of knights with pennants are very common. There also are spearmen with them, although they are a bit harder to find on Google. In particular, I found this one -- a fac simile from the early XIX century of a now lost manuscript, the Hortus deliciarum, from the XII century. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9400936h/f7.item See the bottom. Also the Varangian Guard in a contemporary representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varang...Skyla_Gate.jpg

They seem to be limited in the Bayeux tapestry, where however they are present for very important knights and occasions, like when Conan gives up the keys of St. Michael by passing them over with a lance to another lance, both with pennants. The weapons given to Harold by William also have a pennant.

By the way, there is something I find interesting about the tapestry: in it, the Normans are referred to as "Franci".

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## Brother Oni

> I wouldn't call it a major advantage, especially not in warfare. There are precious few places where the ability to hold your draw and aim slightly better would be useful, and in most of these (ambushes and shooting from behind cover or at people in cover), crossbow does better because you don't need to expose a lot of your body to use it.


We weren't talking about warfare but the advantages of a compound bow over a longbow.

You would be able to get a second shot off much quicker than a crossbow, plus the arrow shelf makes the compound bow innately more accurate and precise; if you look at the scores in target archery federations, longbow has the lowest average scores of the main three categories (longbow, recurve and compound).

The main circumstances where you'd find being able to hold at full draw for longer (or partially let down and rest) being a major advantage is during hunting, especially when stalking. I agree that in medieval times, they would have used a different solution; for hunting, the alternate solution would have been to use a crossbow instead.




> Yeah, all of that is pretty much a myth. I do a lot of spear fighting, and let me assure you, no amount of tassels is going to make me not watch where the shiny stabby bit is pointing.


Do you fight with a HEMA/Western style or a Chinese/Eastern style? There are clear differences between how the spear is used, which the favours the use of a tassel (e.g. Eastern uses slashes and is much quicker in the 'pool cue' style strikes, at least on comparison with HEMA spear sparring videos versus qiang long spear and short spear sparring videos).

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## Martin Greywolf

> In illuminations, lances of knights with pennants are very common. There also are spearmen with them, although they are a bit harder to find on Google. In particular, I found this one -- a fac simile from the early XIX century of a now lost manuscript, the Hortus deliciarum, from the XII century. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9400936h/f7.item See the bottom. Also the Varangian Guard in a contemporary representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varang...Skyla_Gate.jpg
> 
> They seem to be limited in the Bayeux tapestry, where however they are present for very important knights and occasions, like when Conan gives up the keys of St. Michael by passing them over with a lance to another lance, both with pennants. The weapons given to Harold by William also have a pennant.


Yeah, there is a fierce debate about how common they were, with the bottom line once again being "we don't really know". It may well be they were used as rank insignia in some cases at least, but these are the details that aren't really elaborated on in medieval sources.




> Do you fight with a HEMA/Western style or a Chinese/Eastern style? There are clear differences between how the spear is used, which the favours the use of a tassel (e.g. Eastern uses slashes and is much quicker in the 'pool cue' style strikes, at least on comparison with HEMA spear sparring videos versus qiang long spear and short spear sparring videos).


I did both, though I mostly stick to European these days. My favourite spear guard is stolen straight from Tai Chi, though.

*Eastern issues*

The katas, forms, whatever of eastern style of teaching MAs are meant to be a technique syllabus. You go through the sequence once and have all the things your style says you should be able to do with that weapon.

What they aren't is representative of the application. Just because you have a 50/50 ratio of stabs and strikes in spear form doesn't mean you will ahve that ratio in application. A lot of the techniques in the forms are meant to be used in specific cases only, if you see an opening, not as a general thing.

A good way to think about this is to imagine Fiore's blade grabs - if you had a form with all of his giocco largo techniques, you'd have ~20 techniques in total, two of which use blade grabs (and several more for stepping on blade and grabbing opposing hilt). That gives you a ratio of 1 in 10 for grabbing the blade, even though we only rarely see it done in practice.

Finally, tassel doesn't help you. It just... doesn't distract at all. If you are fighting someone, especially with a polearm, you watch him as a whole, you can't tunnel vision onto just the tip of his spears. Where his arms and legs are is just as important. And a spear is a rather large and visible object in the first place.

*Western issues*

You can't learn a European spear style by looking up a spear chapter in a treatise and study that. To take Fiore as an example, by the time he gets to the spear, he already went through grappling, dagger, sword in one and two hands, sword in armor and pollaxe in armor - and the techniques from previous steps are to be used where applicable. He explicitly tells us so several times.




> We are three masters using spear guards that are closely related to the sword guards.
> - Fiore on spear guards, ~1400


He then gives you a handful of examples, but the meaning is clear - look at what is in sword section and apply it where you can. More than that, sword section guards are also used in pollaxe section, so you need to look at that as well.

As for slashes/strikes and pool-cuing, well, let's listen to the first thing Fiore tells us about how to fight with a spear:




> The extended lance which is used in hand;
> The more it is extended, the less it deceives.


This literally tells you to use pool-cuing and switch up the targets so that your opponent can't defend easily.




> Six Masters stand in guard with it,
> And with a step and a beat, they suddenly strike,
> Both from the right side and from the left (for certain):
> The beat is made to the side and not up;
> And the beat wants to be one arm's length on the lance,
> And whoever goes against it will make such a failure.


This is a bit more arcane, but we know from the past usage that when Fiore says "strike", he means both a cut and a thrust, whatever is applicable in your position. "With a step and a beat", on the other hand, means you should cut into the opposing weapon to defend yourself.

Slashes aren't directly addressed by Fiore, not even with swords. The most likely explanation is that he considers them mostly interchangable with cuts.

This comes a bit later, and explicitly tells us to use a strike offensively:




> Guards from the left side can also cover and beat aside, but these will wound with a strike, because they cannot effectively place a thrust.


This isn't specific to Fiore either, if you want, for example, Lichtenauer tradition spear fighting, you need to look at Meyer's staff and go from there.

*Spoiler: Meyer, pool-cueing with the staff, top left*
Show




Couple this with a lot of disinterest in spear fighting in HEMA, the fact that you cannot do it safely in tournaments and, well, most people just don't get that deep into it. The situation is better with people who do armored fighting, but that is a tiny subsection of WMA in general due to cost of entry, so...

As for me, I do enjoy all sorts of causing damage to opponent's organs, including occassional lancing in battle.

*Spoiler: This is from 2016... man I'm old*
Show




*Eastern vs Western differences*

Ultimately, not that many. Eastern spear forms tend to have fancier footwork and more outright twirling of the spear and of the self, but that is true for Eastern forms in general, and probably not indicative of actual battlefield use. Unfortunately, there are very few historical Eastern sources translated, and usually only partially at that. I'd really like to know what Qi Jiguang had to say about spears...

Eastern forms also seem to lack the armored fighting syllabus, which is the most prevalent in Europe, but that could very well be lack of any instructions telling us what is supposed to be used against armor in the first place.

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## Pauly

Tassels on spears are not a uniquely Chinese thing.

They were widely used in cultures that had no direct or indirect contact with the Chinese. Incas in the Americas and in Sub Saharan Africa in many different cultures.

What that tells you is that the tassels had a real battlefield use. As far as it being stopping rain, the Peruvian Altiplano receives very little rain, yet tasseled spears were ubiquitous in Incan armies. Whilst it may be a consideration for the English on their damp little island it doesnt explain tassels being common in dry areas.

As for the distraction/blurring if vision thats something that sounds to me like a post facto rationalization. Quite simply if it were a thing it would only be applicable in duels, so thered be no point going to the expense and bother of putting a tassel on tens of thousands of spears for an army.

My thought is that its most likely use is some form of fields sign. Denoting which side of a battle you are on. Its possible to be a unit designation, but considering how many different units there were and then if the enemy is doing the sane thing that its a recipe for disastrous miscommunications. 

As for stopping blood, others have discussed the reasons why its impractical in reality. The other issue is that if you want something to tie around the end of your soear to stop blood running down it, there are other cheaper and easier options that a horse hair tassel.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Tassels on spears are not a uniquely Chinese thing.
> 
> They were widely used in cultures that had no direct or indirect contact with the Chinese. Incas in the Americas and in Sub Saharan Africa in many different cultures.
> 
> What that tells you is that the tassels had a real battlefield use.


It really doesn't. You see plenty of various items across the cultures that appear without any practical use whatsoever. The best example is probably carving reliefs into stone - sure, sometimes they are there to tell a story, but most often, they serve as a status symbol or a simple decoration.

Warfare is no different - give a soldier a partially wooden weapon, and he will soon carve stuff into the wood.

*Spoiler: 4th century Roman*
Show




*Spoiler: WW1*
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Rank insignia is a possibility, but placing that on the business end of a spear has its problems, and Occam's razor says we should lean towards the simplest explanation - soldiers wanted to make their stabby stick look nice. And that sometimes makes you do wildly impractical things:

*Spoiler: Germany, 1560*
Show

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## fusilier

I don't think I've seen this mentioned (maybe I just missed it), but I think I've heard it claimed that the pennant at the end of a lance would help prevent the lance from being driven too far into the target.  Most military lances don't seem to have crossbars as far as I can tell (like a boar spear might), and I could see a light lance going pretty far into unarmored target if hit in a soft spot.  But I'm skeptical myself -- it's just another reason I think I heard.

Checking my "Gunnery and Ordnance" textbook from 1862, it describes the lance as having a _pennon_ "which serves as an ornament, and to frighten the enemy's horses."

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## Martin Greywolf

> I don't think I've seen this mentioned (maybe I just missed it), but I think I've heard it claimed that the pennant at the end of a lance would help prevent the lance from being driven too far into the target.  Most military lances don't seem to have crossbars as far as I can tell (like a boar spear might), and I could see a light lance going pretty far into unarmored target if hit in a soft spot.  But I'm skeptical myself -- it's just another reason I think I heard.


Penants don't stop overpenetration even on blunt spears in one hand on foot, let alone on mounted lance charge. We'd see a whole lot more pennants and a whole lot less winged or boar spears if they worked.

More importantly than that, stopping overpenetration this way isn't something you want on a mounted lance - on foot sure, but put it on a lance and the shock you will get from impact will be even worse, able to push you back more, or in a weird direction. Or whatever bar you have on that pennant (and you will need one to do anything) will simply break.

If you do want to prevent the lance from overpenetrating and getting stuck, make it breakable. The really long lances that are 5-6 meters will need to be hollow to be carried anyway.




> Checking my "Gunnery and Ordnance" textbook from 1862, it describes the lance as having a _pennon_ "which serves as an ornament, and to frighten the enemy's horses."


I've read something similar about Polish hussar lances, with pennants that were ~4.5 meters long on 6 meter lances (lance length tops out at about 6.5 meters, pennants are described as going to the horse's ears when held vertical). It bears mentioning that this isn't something that will work reliably, the horses may or may not spook at the noise, and definitely won't spook if they belong to people who fought the pennant users regularly, since they will be used to it.

It also bears mentioning how large these things are.

*Spoiler: Most often seen depiction*
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This is all wrong, as that is at best the demilance, not an actual lance.

*Spoiler: No, this is a knoif, uh, lance*
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Even this depiction has penants that aren't long enough, though.

Something this large will be considerably louder that the pennants of a more sane size we're more familiar with.

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## fusilier

> I've read something similar about Polish hussar lances, with pennants that were ~4.5 meters long on 6 meter lances (lance length tops out at about 6.5 meters, pennants are described as going to the horse's ears when held vertical). 
> . . .
> It also bears mentioning how large these things are.


I don't know if it was the noise, or fluttering it in the eyes of the enemy horse that was the intention of the smaller pennants, but either way, I suspect some training might be possible to help.  (EDIT -- I'll also note, not sure if it is significant, but in the 1862 textbook the "frightening" the enemy horses purpose is mentioned *after* the "ornamentation" purpose).  Anyway . . .

Wow! Those Polish lances were very long.  Based on the imagery, is it 16th/17th century?  The 19th century lances are described as 8.5 to 10 feet (~2.5 - 3 meters).

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## Martin Greywolf

> I don't know if it was the noise, or fluttering it in the eyes of the enemy horse that was the intention of the smaller pennants, but either way, I suspect some training might be possible to help.


I read an account from napoleonic wars that claimed that horses who were in their first battle were scared of cannon fire, yet that one battle was enough to get them used to it. Same thing goes for horses these days that hang around stuntmen or reenactors. The traiing in question might not even be deliberate.




> Wow! Those Polish lances were very long.  Based on the imagery, is it 16th/17th century?


It tended to change. First problem is Polish, you have three words that could be translated as lance: lanca, kopija and pika. Lanca and kopija are obviously not Polish, but rather loan words, and stabby sticks were called kopija in Polish, as in most Slavic languages, without distinction between lances, spears and sometimes javelins.

The hussars were using two lengths of kopija, really, the extreme 6.5 meter ones and shorter lance that was about 3-4 meters. Polish word for the latter is kopijka, which is diminutive of kopija, and is translated as "little spear", albeit the diminutives are not necessarily related to size. A more accurate translation will usually call them short lances or demilances.

So, if you find a latin, english or whatever text talking about winged hussars, it is often not possible to tell whether the pokey stick is kopija or kopijka, and even Polish sources may not specify.

As best as I can tell, the kopija was used against western troops and kopijka against eastern - these are secondary sources claims, mind you, I don't specialize in this period to a point where I go down hunting specific ordinances. This was dictated by weapons used at the time, western armies used pike squares and long couched lances, so the idea was persumably to outrange them (especially in a flanking charge, a pike square can turn some of its people to fend it off surprisingly quick). Eastern troops had a different tactical doctrines in play (and at this time, especially after Mehmet II reforms, we can actually talk about state doctrines), and didn't use spears of that length, so using them against them was not that great of an idea.

Remember, the kopija is 6 meters, needs to be hollowed out and is one use only, making it a pretty expensive weapon. The hussars only carried a few of them (well, when I say hussars, I mean their retainers), the most often quoted number is three.

Also keep in mind that eastern vs western split in use is meant in general, a specific battle may well see the commander order a switch to the longer weapon, and there are a few accounts of battles against Ottomans or other nomads that mention a single lance impaling three or four mounted people at once - not very likely with a kopijka. And that's not even going into the possibility of an army simply running out of lances.

As the time goes on and pikes disappear from battlefield, lances shrink in size as well, since there is no point in making them that big. And since most of the really popular depictions of battle of Vienna - you know the one, the Sobieski one, the Sabaton one - were painted in 18-19th centuries, they tend to use lances that are about 4-5 meters, or right in between kopija and kopijka. As for what they really used here, I'm not sure.




> The 19th century lances are described as 8.5 to 10 feet (~2.5 - 3 meters).


Well, the Winged Hussars proper were disbanded in 1770s. Your lances are probably for the light cavalry kind of hussars, or maybe for dedicated lancers that survived until WW1, albeit not in great numbers. And since we have no pikes around at this time, I'd say that length is about right for the period.

*A note on outreaching*

Since this will inevitably come up.

You can't outreach a pike with a lance in the sense that you can charge into a prepared pike square. If length of a pike is 6 meters and you point it 1.5 meters above the ground, and it is braced into the ground as was the procedure, Pytagoras gives you 5.8 meters of reach, minus ~1.5 meters, because you're standing like this:

*Spoiler: Brace for impact*
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So, 4.3 meter reach.

Sure, that hussar 6.5 meter pike can reach you, but 6.5 meter pike length doesn't mean 6.5 meters reach. From the pictures, you get 5.5 meters tops from your face and only 4-4.5 meters from head of your horse. That's not a lot of meters to work with. In fact, it's less than one, meaning a charge will cross that distance in about 150-200 ms, meaning that even if the braced pike begins falling at the moment of impact, it will move only 20 cm (s = 1/2*g*t^2).

A direct charge into a pike formation will, if the pikes don't rout, get you a mutual slaughter at best, and cavalry will come off worse in this exchange as they are the more expensive soldier type.

However, take your average Landsknecht halberd:

*Spoiler: It's called Halberd because it cuts you in Halb!*
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That one is between 2 and 4 meters long, and used to guard the corners and sometimes flanks of pike formations. Brace it same as pike, and you get 1.3 meter reach to 3.7 meter reach (with a 3m halberd giving 2.6). Now, for that 1.3 meter reach (which is analogous to musket with bayonet on), you don't really need the 6 meter lance and its 4 meter reach. But it will let you outreach the long halberds to a point where a flanking charge will disrupt the braced halberds enough that, once you and your horse get to them, they will most likely not be braced much.

To put numbers on it, you have 4.5 meter lance reach vs 3.7 halberd reach, meaning four to five times as much time for falling, meaning the freefalling halberd will drop 80 cm to a full meter.

*Spoiler: Mair with ~3 meter halberd*
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*Spoiler: Bavarian sabre halberd, listed as 2.7 meters*
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link to czech description


*Spoiler: Wikipedia claims 1.5 to 1.8 meter length, yet THESE are their images*
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Edit: added a few more numbers to the latter part of this

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## snowblizz

> A direct charge into a pike formation will, if the pikes don't rout, get you a mutual slaughter at best, and cavalry will come off worse in this exchange as they are the more expensive soldier type.


And most importantly if the formation hasn't broken, the musketeers and cannon will shoot you or your horse to death long before.

This is why you have musketeers and why pikemen do not fight alone. Pike and shot, neither works alone for very good reasons.

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## Calthropstu

> *Spoiler: Wikipedia claims 1.5 to 1.8 meter length, yet THESE are their images*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: added a few more numbers to the latter part of this


Maybe those wer just really short soldiers?

----------


## Brother Oni

> *Spoiler: Wikipedia claims 1.5 to 1.8 meter length, yet THESE are their images*
> Show





> Maybe those wer just really short soldiers?


Using back of an envelope calculation, in the top image, the pike is about 21 cm long on my screen, with the soldier being about 16.5 cm.

Being generous and assuming that the pike's 1.8m long, the makes the soldier 1.41m tall or just under 4'8" in freedom units.

Surprisingly, the bottom image gives me almost identical values with the same pike length of 1.8m (9cm for pike, 7 cm for soldier) of 1.4m and just over 4'7".

I guess length of sharp pointy sticks is something that's conserved over the centuries.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Myth27

How far away can a regular handgun be heard normally? And with a suppressor?

Ideally give me 5 distances for a DC:0, 5, 10, 15, 20 listening checks

----------


## Gnoman

Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. To put into perspective, a Manowar concert set a volume record at 139 decibels, resulting in the Guiness Book of World Records deleting their "loudest band" record for future editions. An unsuppressed 9mm Parabellum shot is 160.

I'd put it at DC 0 for any practical range, and DC -10 within a mile or two.

----------


## Calthropstu

> Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. To put into perspective, a Manowar concert set a volume record at 139 decibels, resulting in the Guiness Book of World Records deleting their "loudest band" record for future editions. An unsuppressed 9mm Parabellum shot is 160.
> 
> I'd put it at DC 0 for any practical range, and DC -10 within a mile or two.


I don't think miles. Otherwise I'd hear a lot mor gunshots. I'd say maybe a mile on an open plain with little sound between.
Less if say a large number of insects or other noises were between them.

Adjust for buildings in the way.

----------


## Gnoman

If you're in a city, buildings attenuate a lot of sounds. That's something that is much to complex to really factor in. In more open country, I've heard gunshots that I know were several miles away quite clearly.


The important point is that you'll almost certainly not hear it at all before it becomes quieter than "people talking" (DC0).

----------


## Telok

> I don't think miles. Otherwise I'd hear a lot mor gunshots. I'd say maybe a mile on an open plain with little sound between.
> Less if say a large number of insects or other noises were between them.
> 
> Adjust for buildings in the way.


I did research into vision & hearing for a game with "perception" but no rules or examples. You can check the Other Games forum, I have a DtD49k7e thread and the stuff is in the book 1 download, or you can wait until later when the 2 year old child is out of the house and I can use the computer without a hairless howler monkey jumping on me. The handgun in a suburb is addressed.

OK, snagged time. Hearing stuff is in the spoiler.
*Spoiler*
Show


The system is a roll & keep using d10s from 2010. The DC/TN chart is exactly the same as the D&D 5e DC chart (and about as useful), but normal people in stressful situations have 2k2 (roll 2d10, keep the best 2) or 1k1 if they're completely untrained in something that needs training. That puts normal untrained perception 50% success at DC 11, DC 5 @ 93% and DC 15 @ 27%. You're basic competent PC is at 4k3 for DC 15 @ 85%, DC 20 @ 57%, DC 25 @ 30%. Maximum is generally 10k5 who 50%s at 43.



```
Locating the source and understanding the content of a sound (like making out what someone said, identifying a motor as a 2-cylinder as opposed to a 4-cylinder, or figuring the direction of a safety switching off in the dark) happens at about 1/4th or 1/5th the detection range, or about 1/10th the detection range if you're unprepared or facing the other way.

To notice the sound: at TN 10, TN 20, TN 30, TN 40
whisper, library, laser shot:	5m, 10m, 20m, 40m
running tap/shower, office or forest:	10m, 20m, 40m, 80m
conversation, busy restaurant: 20m, 40m, 80m, 160m
noisy household appliance, passing automobile: 40m, 80m, 160m, 320m
alarm clock, crying baby: 80m, 160m, 320m, 640m
lawnmower, shouting: 250m, 500m, 1km, 2km
circular saw, busy highway: 500m, 1km, 2km, 4km
disco, light rioting, las cannon: 1km, 2km, 4km, 8km
rock concert, gunpowder pistols: 2km, 4km, 8km, 16km
jet engines, gunpowder longarm: 5km, 10km, 20km, 40km
grenades, rockets, collapsing towers: 10km, 20km, 40km, 80km
artillery, thunderbolts: 50km, 100km, 200km, 400km

Silencers on guns move the distance down by an amount equal to their quality level with poor quality silencers moving pistol shots down to 'light rioting' distances and best quality silencers moving it down to 'baby crying' distances.

Apply in order:

x2 TN for each:
intervening wall (without large openings)
-> background noise of a higher level, per level <-
layer of hearing protection or sound-proofing

Distance modifier:
-1k1 or +10 TN per doubling of the distance (a crying baby at 160m is TN 20)
-10 TN for each halving of the distance (a crying baby at 40m is automatic)

+5 TN for each:
intervening chunk of forest, hill, or neighborhood (outdoors)
intervening light interior door or open room (indoors)
-> background noise of the same level <-
sound absorbing features of the environment

Note: Once the TN goes over 65 go back to adding +5 to the TN instead of doubling the TN.

Examples: Someone shoots a silenced hand cannon. The gunshot is TN 10 at 2km, reduced to TN 10 at 500m for the silencer and 120m to discern that it's a hand cannon instead of an autopistol or revolver. Inside a house a kilometer away would be TN 30 (10, x2 for the exterior wall, +10 for distance) to hear it and identifying it a TN 60 (10, x2 for the wall, and 4x10 for distance). A crying baby in the next room would double those TNs (10, x2 for a wall, -20 since it's less than 20m away, and TN 0 is less than TN 30 so the baby is louder at that range). Without the silencer but still a kilometer away and inside would be a TN 10 to hear it and TN 30 to identify it. Remember, this is out in the open. In a suburb or city you would add +5 or more to the TN from intervening houses and trees, and with another doubling of the base TN if there is a busy highway within 250m or cars passing within 20m.
```

Bibliography
*Spoiler*
Show


Bibliography (just in case you really want to replicate some of this for yourself)

AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and Development (Army), November 1972

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM, MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY 
Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers
USAIHRU, January 1964
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf

Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance, Horizontal Placement, and Site on Personnel Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest
Dobbins, D.A. et al. 
U.S. Army Tropic Test Center, Fort Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

The Effects of Observer Location and Viewing Method on Target Detection with the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight, HumRRO Technical Report 91,
Louis, Nicholas B. 
June 1964.

Report Bibliography on Target Detection and Range Estimation
ASTIA
Humans, Armed Forces Technical Information Agency, Arlington, Virginia, November 19 60.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Predictions of Sighting Range Based Upon Measurements of Target and Environmental Properties
Jacqueline I. Gordon.
http://misclab.umeoce.maine.edu/educ.../SIO_63-23.pdf

Google searches: target detection through visual recognition

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...55T--bKi8JZffc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...6nWRcf5Pnw4z3D

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...CZ5RKl3lLOzVQD

Detection of random low-altitude jet aircraft by ground observers (Tech. Memo. 7-60; AD 238 341)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...T02A3PZuTP8LlX





I amazes me, world militaries really care about this sorts of stuff but no RPG ever seems to make any effort to check previous research to fridge logic their see & hear rules.

----------


## KineticDiplomat

These guys make acoustic sensors for police support in major US cities:

https://www.shotspotter.com/

They say a mile is about right for a handgun. Two major caveats.

The first is that with range and wave variables you might have a very hard time telling it actually was a gunshot at that distance as opposed to a different sound closer.

The second is that your own surroundings matter a great deal, both in the raw decibel sense of when is the sound actually capable of overcoming sounds around you, and of the mental ability to pick out a noise as a gunshot. It helps that for modern firearms humans tend to fire in consistent patterns of shots which allows an initial identification of the noise, categorizing as yes, gunshots, followed by extra mental effort and focus on determine location. 

So on a still night in an open field where youre listening hard for a gunshot and being quiet yourself, and someone empties half a magazine, well at a mile it might still be DC 10.

In the middle of a day as you walk past a construction site paying attention mostly to your Uber pick up time, and someone fires a single shot a mile away in a city might be a Natural 20 Only.

----------


## fusilier

> Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. . . .


I've heard fifes and drums playing from a couple of miles away -- when the acoustics were just right.  And these were the same fifes and drums I stood next to, with no hearing loss. ;-)  There are also  "acoustic shadows" which resulted in people many (sometimes dozens) of miles away hearing cannon fire from a battle, but the army's commander, only a mile or two away, didn't hear a thing.  There's a good number of those stories from the American Civil War but they were reported in other wars too. 

I strongly suspect it comes down to local conditions and topography.

----------


## Pauly

Aside from the environmental factors affecting the hearer there are gun/ammunition factors at play.
1) subsonic -v- supersonic ammo. The De Lisle carbine was famously quiet because of the use of subsonic ammo and a large suppressor 
2) the mechanical noise of the action. Manually operated guns have significantly less noise than auto and semi auto actions. Allegedly the suppressed Sten gun had more mechanical noise than bullet noise.
3) the amount of charge in the round. More gunpowder = more noise
4) caliber. Large caliber guns tend to have a lower note (more boom than crack). Lower notes travel further than higher notes, but higher notes are more noticeable.
5) the type of powder, although this should just be broadly delineated as black powder -v- smokeless powder. Faster burning powder makes a louder higher pitched noise.
6) the size/condition of the suppressor.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> And most importantly if the formation hasn't broken, the musketeers and cannon will shoot you or your horse to death long before.
> 
> This is why you have musketeers and why pikemen do not fight alone. Pike and shot, neither works alone for very good reasons.


That's not a very useful argument to make, really. The problem we're trying to solver here is "is countering pikes with long lances a good idea", the fact that there are supporting troops is immaterial, because you're not trying to figure out how to beat them.

If the answer was "yeah, absolutely charge hussars into the pikes", then we'd see a host of tactics aimed at suppressing the elements of the pike square that would defeat this (suddenly pike-slaying) charge.




> Maybe those were just really short soldiers?


Sad thing is, every historian with a pet theory on this planet has used this exact argument.




> Using back of an envelope calculation, in the top image, the pike is about 21 cm long on my screen, with the soldier being about 16.5 cm.
> 
> Being generous and assuming that the pike's 1.8m long, the makes the soldier 1.41m tall or just under 4'8" in freedom units.
> 
> Surprisingly, the bottom image gives me almost identical values with the same pike length of 1.8m (9cm for pike, 7 cm for soldier) of 1.4m and just over 4'7".
> 
> I guess length of sharp pointy sticks is something that's conserved over the centuries.


There definitely seems to be. I don't think anyone did a large study on a variety of weapons, but if you take e.g. katana lengths and rescale them proportionally to height, you start to see numbers that are very similar to longswords. Now I'm wondering about yari lengths in realtion to this.




> How far away can a regular handgun be heard normally? And with a suppressor?
> 
> Ideally give me 5 distances for a DC:0, 5, 10, 15, 20 listening checks


There were several good asnwers, so I'll just pitch in in pointing out thet there are three diferent questions in this one:
Did I hear a gunshot?Did I hear a gunshot and recognize it as such?Do I know where that gunshot came from?

Your DCs and distances will depend on which one you're asking.

----------


## halfeye

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silenc...#Effectiveness




> even low-power, unsuppressed .22 LR handguns produce gunshots over 160 decibels.[54] A recent study of various suppressors reported peak sound pressure level reductions between 17 dB and 24 dB.
> 
> ...
> 
> Comparatively, ear protection commonly used while shooting provides 18 to 32 dB of sound reduction at the ear.[60] Further, chainsaws, rock concerts, rocket engines, pneumatic drills, small firecrackers, and ambulance sirens are rated at 100 to 140 dB.[61]
> 
> ...
> 
> Decibel testing measures only the peak sound pressure noise, not duration or frequency. Limitations of dB testing become apparent in a comparison of sound between a .308 caliber rifle and a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle. The dB meter will show that both rifles produce the same decibel level of noise. Upon firing these rifles, however, it is clear that the .300 Winchester Magnum sounds much louder. What a dB meter does not show is that, although both rifles produce the same peak sound pressure level (SPL), the .300 Winchester Magnum holds its peak duration longermeaning that the .300 Winchester Magnum sound remains at full value longer, while the .308 peaks and falls off more quickly. Decibel meters fail in this and other regards when being used as the principal means to determine silencer capability. Described mathematically, dB meters take a short-time average or root mean square (RMS), intensity of a sonic signal or impulse over a specified period of time (sampling rate), and do not take into account the rate of increase of the sound wave packet (first derivative of packet envelope), which would in practice provide a better sense of the human perception of sound


So, 160 DB goes to maybe 136 DB with suppression. It's not what you see in most movies that feature "silenced" guns.

Bigger guns are louder, and the suppression only brings them down a bit, not below the smaller unsuppressed guns.

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## Calthropstu

> Sad thing is, every historian with a pet theory on this planet has used this exact argument.


Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...

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## Brother Oni

> There definitely seems to be. I don't think anyone did a large study on a variety of weapons, but if you take e.g. katana lengths and rescale them proportionally to height, you start to see numbers that are very similar to longswords. Now I'm wondering about yari lengths in realtion to this.


I'll have a look at my sources later and see what I can dig up.

Edit: according to late Sendoku Jidai sources, most clan armies used nagae-yari up to 3 ken (4.8m) long, but Oda armies were renown for their longer yari of 3.5 ken (5.6m).
Bear in mind that ashigaru spear fighting was very different and consisted of repeatedly raising the spear high up in the air and bringing it down on the heads/shoulders of the enemy.




> Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...


Depends on the time period - any period where you had to stab your opponent rather than let gunpowder do the work for you, would favour a higher minimum level of strength and hence a larger body size.

During the Napoleonic Wars, grenadiers were chosen due to their greater size and strength. These days, most special forces tend to have small wiry physiques although US SOF have a tendency to look like they eat barbells for breakfast.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...


In a fight? Possibly, if it's not melee.

Overall, not so much. There are many other factors, far more important than size, that will tie into this.

For general armed forces, you want people who want to be there and are willing to play ball with the rules. Having 500 guys with spears is better than having 300 big guys with spears, because more stabbings will beat fewer stabbings no matter how hard you stab. As a consequence, basic recruitment selection will always be mostly based on goals and personalities, with some minimal requirements. Those requirements may well be physical (run a mile without wiping out), but can often be social (gentlemen only for officers) or even based off of wealth (bring your own weapons and armor and get paid more).

Once we get to elite units, like Napoleon gendarmes and grenadiers, or Swiss guard, you dou sometimes start to see size requirements. But that usually happens only for units that are in the public eye - how big and menacing they are is very much a factor there.

Most often, you see physical exams, especially today, and what those are will determine what body types will dominate, statistically speaking. Put emphasis on lifting heavy objects and big guys will get in. Put emphasis on endurance marching and wiry guys will have it better.

Even then, though, you will see very capable veteran soldiers who maybe couldn't quite make Spec Ops entrance exams, but are still scarier on account of greater experience. And because there's more of them.

Finally, being a smaller target only helps you in some forms of warfare. Medieval era, it helps in skirmishes only - large battles have you standing in a tight formation anyway, and sieges have cover. Modern era, it almost never matters, if you are using cover and concealment, then it's only a fraction of your total body mass exposed, and wheter that fraction is 10cm or 15 cm won't come into play too often. Especially not if they decide to use mortars.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re short soldiers. Assuming you mean the modern age by the context provided, this is one of those entirely opinionated and mostly irrelevant factors. While you might make any number of arguments for why being slightly taller, shorter, bigger, smaller is preferable in a given situation, it mostly balances barring severe physical capacity differences in terms of strength/endurance. 

The one factor I can think of is that some equipment designs placed an institutional limit on soldier size - soviet tanks were designed to be very low, with the idea (not always followed) you would crew them with smaller men, US pilots have an acceptable height range to make sure the human engineering for $100M aircraft wasnt offset by a 49 pilot

But for most general purpose forces, the name of the game is whats the minimum acceptable standard to get a body into a uniform. Theres a Surgeon General report on WWII body standards with an entire chapter dedicated to Higher Manpower Requirements - Lower Entrance Standards.  The US Army, which had the luxury of being very choosey about manpower in WW2, had a standard where soldiers intended for general service should be between 60-78 inchesso barely above legally recognized stunted growth to six and a half feet. Clearly the issue was not considered that important.

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## Mike_G

> Re short soldiers. Assuming you mean the modern age by the context provided, this is one of those entirely opinionated and mostly irrelevant factors. While you might make any number of arguments for why being slightly taller, shorter, bigger, smaller is preferable in a given situation, it mostly balances barring severe physical capacity differences in terms of strength/endurance. 
> 
> The one factor I can think of is that some equipment designs placed an institutional limit on soldier size - soviet tanks were designed to be very low, with the idea (not always followed) you would crew them with smaller men, US pilots have an acceptable height range to make sure the human engineering for $100M aircraft wasnt offset by a 49 pilot
> 
> But for most general purpose forces, the name of the game is whats the minimum acceptable standard to get a body into a uniform. Theres a Surgeon General report on WWII body standards with an entire chapter dedicated to Higher Manpower Requirements - Lower Entrance Standards.  The US Army, which had the luxury of being very choosey about manpower in WW2, had a standard where soldiers intended for general service should be between 60-78 inchesso barely above legally recognized stunted growth to six and a half feet. Clearly the issue was not considered that important.


Five foot two.

Qualified for Marine Corps Infantry.

Never had any issues.

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## KineticDiplomat

Youd still make it. Their pre-waiver accessions range is now 48 to 610.

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## Vinyadan

> Depends on the time period - any period where you had to stab your opponent rather than let gunpowder do the work for you, would favour a higher minimum level of strength and hence a larger body size.
> 
> During the Napoleonic Wars, grenadiers were chosen due to their greater size and strength. These days, most special forces tend to have small wiry physiques although US SOF have a tendency to look like they eat barbells for breakfast.


Napoleon also had the voltigeurs, who were the best shots in the army and didn't have the size requirements of the grenadiers.

In the case of the images, however, the Swiss Guard has very clear size requirements, with a minimum if 174 cm.  :Small Big Grin:  So they actually make for decent comparison for the size of the halberds.

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## Brother Oni

> In the case of the images, however, the Swiss Guard has very clear size requirements, with a minimum if 174 cm.  So they actually make for decent comparison for the size of the halberds.


Calibrating against the soldier in the modern picture as 174cm gives a halberd length of 221.5 cm.  :Small Big Grin:

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## Pauly

The only units I know of where smallness was considered an advantage were mining units. Smaller soldiers meant more efficient mining and better combat ability if they ran into enemy miners underground.

There were some specific equipment were smallness was a requirement, such as the ball turret gunner on a B-17.

In WW1 the British recruited Bantam regiments where the height maximum was 5 3 (roughly 1.6m). I believe this was to encourage more volunteers as the small fellers thought they wouldnt be useful soldiers. In any event these regiments did end up having pretty good war records, although that may be due to self selection leading to a belief that they were superior and hence higher motivation.

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## Brother Oni

> The only units I know of where smallness was considered an advantage were mining units. Smaller soldiers meant more efficient mining and better combat ability if they ran into enemy miners underground.
> 
> There were some specific equipment were smallness was a requirement, such as the ball turret gunner on a B-17.


There were the American tunnel rats in Vietnam whose job was to go into VC mud tunnels armed with nothing more than a flashlight, a pistol and maybe a bayonet.

Generally all the soldiers were no bigger than 5'5" (165cm).

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## Pauly

> There were the American tunnel rats in Vietnam whose job was to go into VC mud tunnels armed with nothing more than a flashlight, a pistol and maybe a bayonet.
> 
> Generally all the soldiers were no bigger than 5'5" (165cm).


The Aussies also sent in ex-miners down those tunnels. Same thing little guys with a pustol.

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## Mr Beer

Soviet tankers were all 5'4" or less apparently.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id...height&f=false

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## AdAstra

Pilots in the US Air Force at least have height ranges, due to the need of a pilot to fit within their seat, operate all controls, have a good field of view over the dashboard, etc. Currently it's "a standing height of 5 feet, 4 inches to 6 feet, 5 inches and a sitting height of 34-40 inches".

However, as mentioned previously, they care about this to the extent that it affects your ability to operate the controls of your aircraft and fit in them. Therefore, these requirements by themselves are only a rough guideline. They have other, more precise measurements that better reflect your ability to perform the above tasks, and meeting those requirements will typically result in receiving a waiver that will let you sign up anyway. The smallest height mentioned to receive a waiver was 4'11". Thus the practical requirements are extremely broad.

It's also not just the Soviets that have a height limit for tankers. Currently to receive an M1 MBT MOS from the US Army, you can't be taller than 6'1". NATO tanks are roomier, but very much still limited in space.

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## Pauly

> Soviet tankers were all 5'4" or less apparently.
> 
> https://books.google.com.au/books?id...height&f=false


But that wasnt because smallness was an advantage. It was because smallness was a requirement to operate the machinery. Its not just tanks. I was at the Kyoto Railway Museum the other day, and I dont fit through the door to get into the drivers compartment of the first series Shinkansen, let alone sit in the drivers seat (Im 183 cm and 100 kg).

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## AdAstra

> But that wasnt because smallness was an advantage. It was because smallness was a requirement to operate the machinery. Its not just tanks. I was at the Kyoto Railway Museum the other day, and I dont fit through the door to get into the drivers compartment of the first series Shinkansen, let alone sit in the drivers seat (Im 183 cm and 100 kg).


I mean, I would definitely consider "able to do the job" to be an advantage over the alternative. 

Also, those height requirements are themselves, to an extent, an advantage to the tank. If you believe you can source an adequate number and quality of tank crewmembers of X maximum height, you can build the tank with that in mind. A tank with less internal volume taken up by crew space requires less material to armor, lowering weight and cost, which requires a smaller engine and smaller track area to provide a given speed/terrain crossing ability, again lowering weight and cost. You end up with smaller vehicles that weigh less, cost less, and are somewhat easier to conceal for a given performance level, and the Soviets decided these advantages were sufficient to justify limiting their selection pool for recruitment. So I would definitely say that smaller tankers have the advantage of being able to operate smaller tanks, the same way being able to wield a longer pike or draw a more powerful bow would be an advantage.

----------


## Gnoman

Crew height was rarely a planned factor in tank design. You crammed the engine, gun, and armor you wanted into the chassis and put the crew in whatever was left. The _number_ of crewmen was taken into account, but the amount of space each crewman got was mostly determined by the other design factors.

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## Martin Greywolf

> So I would definitely say that smaller tankers have the advantage of being able to operate smaller tanks, the same way being able to wield a longer pike or draw a more powerful bow would be an advantage.


You're not comparing like with like here.

When someone asks question like this, they mean "if we took two people, scaled their equipment appropriately for their physical dimensions and had them fight it out, would one of them have a meaningful advantage over the other?" Now, with medieval era, this is pretty much what you see out in the field as well, equipment is sourced individually, and there are few regulations about modifying it, and the few we see come at the tail end of the era.

Once we're talking about indistrialized nations, the equipment procurement is standardized, and the question we want to know the asnwer to is no longer the question that is asked in real life. Limiting your pool of recruits by 5 percent because of height will likely not even register to a national army, simply because the individual skill isn't that relevant. A brilliant tank commander (as in, commands a single tank, not a tank batallion) will not be able to tip the scales of a modern war, no matter how good he is. It's just not relevant.

And since you have standardization, because that's how industry works, you arbitrarily pick some size, based on averages (or sometimes, gut feeling) and call it a day. And various nations will have those arbitrarily chosen standards at different levels.

So no, we can't say being smaller is an advantage for a tank crew member, because if you take that too big Soviet guy and move him to UK or USA, he will do just as well in the tank as anyone else. Meanwhile, smaller swordsman will always be at a slight disadvantage no matter where he emigrates.

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## halfeye

I remember, but can't find online references to, mention of Japanese post WW2 tanks being slightly smaller due to their crews being slightly smaller.

I think ship crews and tank crews, are a case where being smaller probably is generally more of an asset than a hindrance, but otherwise the stronger the better.

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## Pauly

> I
> 
> Also, those height requirements are themselves, to an extent, an advantage to the tank..


If you look at fighter pilots. According to theory a smaller individual is better able to operate the controls and is a better candidate than a larger one. However reflexes, positional awareness, keen eyesight, ability to think in 3 dimensions, knowledge of the performance capabilities of your aircraft are more important than physical size.

For example Stan Dallas of the RNS was 62 and weighed 16 Stones, which put him at the limit of being able to fit into a WW1 cockpit, yet he was credited with 47 kills. There are plenty of examples of Successful tall fighter pilots where the supposition that smallness is an advantage is shown to be an irrelevance. Or at the least such a minor advantage that it isnt worth the time and effort to seek it out.

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## KineticDiplomat

The issue, of course, is rendered almost entirely academic by the continuously wide ranges actually employed by the people responsible for manning their armies. Whatever nigh on negligible benefit or draw back there is to size within most of the human adult range is pretty much ignored in favor of yes, we would like to have another soldier, and wed far rather spend our analytical resources on real disqualifying medical, fitness, and social issues and where to set that bar rather than spend effort deliberately sorting, ruling, creating the governance structure for, and actually implementing some system for the virtually non-issue of most  adult human height

----------


## AdAstra

> You're not comparing like with like here.
> 
> When someone asks question like this, they mean "if we took two people, scaled their equipment appropriately for their physical dimensions and had them fight it out, would one of them have a meaningful advantage over the other?" Now, with medieval era, this is pretty much what you see out in the field as well, equipment is sourced individually, and there are few regulations about modifying it, and the few we see come at the tail end of the era.
> 
> Once we're talking about indistrialized nations, the equipment procurement is standardized, and the question we want to know the asnwer to is no longer the question that is asked in real life. Limiting your pool of recruits by 5 percent because of height will likely not even register to a national army, simply because the individual skill isn't that relevant. A brilliant tank commander (as in, commands a single tank, not a tank batallion) will not be able to tip the scales of a modern war, no matter how good he is. It's just not relevant.
> 
> And since you have standardization, because that's how industry works, you arbitrarily pick some size, based on averages (or sometimes, gut feeling) and call it a day. And various nations will have those arbitrarily chosen standards at different levels.
> 
> So no, we can't say being smaller is an advantage for a tank crew member, because if you take that too big Soviet guy and move him to UK or USA, he will do just as well in the tank as anyone else. Meanwhile, smaller swordsman will always be at a slight disadvantage no matter where he emigrates.


These are not arbitrary standards, though. The amount of space allotted to crew in a tank matters a lot. More space offers all kinds of soft factors in terms of ergonomics, readiness, and comfort, while expanding the number of people who can comfortably operate the vehicle. Less space, on the other hand, results in smaller, lighter, cheaper vehicles for a given performance standard (gun, armor thickness, terrain crossing ability and speed). Neither of these are small advantages.

Both sides of the Cold War made an informed decision regarding the crew space they were willing to build around. The US and NATO were willing to accept heavier, bigger tanks, and thus built with more space and people in mind. The Soviets considered the benefits of smaller tanks to be worth the more stringent requirements and worse ergonomics. It was not arbitrary any more than the armor or engine, and countries took the choice seriously. No one was playing eenie meenie miney mo on a height chart.

For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but  with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.

Just because equipment isn't custom tailored to the soldier anymore doesn't mean that individual traits of soldiers don't matter. The way that they matter just changes to a more demographic/design issue.

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## Pauly

> These are not arbitrary standards, though. The amount of space allotted to crew in a tank matters a lot. More space offers all kinds of soft factors in terms of ergonomics, readiness, and comfort, while expanding the number of people who can comfortably operate the vehicle. Less space, on the other hand, results in smaller, lighter, cheaper vehicles for a given performance standard (gun, armor thickness, terrain crossing ability and speed). Neither of these are small advantages.
> 
> Both sides of the Cold War made an informed decision regarding the crew space they were willing to build around. The US and NATO were willing to accept heavier, bigger tanks, and thus built with more space and people in mind. The Soviets considered the benefits of smaller tanks to be worth the more stringent requirements and worse ergonomics. It was not arbitrary any more than the armor or engine, and countries took the choice seriously. No one was playing eenie meenie miney mo on a height chart.
> 
> For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but  with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.
> 
> Just because equipment isn't custom tailored to the soldier anymore doesn't mean that individual traits of soldiers don't matter. The way that they matter just changes to a more demographic/design issue.


But the thing is weve already seen how the compromised crew designed Soviet tanks fared against NATO designs in the various Arab-Israeli wars. The side with the less limited crew selection and the best ergonomics won. Convincingly.

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## Max_Killjoy

> But the thing is weve already seen how the compromised crew designed Soviet tanks fared against NATO designs in the various Arab-Israeli wars. The side with the less limited crew selection and the best ergonomics won. Convincingly.


That... had to do with a lot more than the crew considerations.

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## Vinyadan

I think ISIS stole some NATO tanks. I wonder if there was any engagement against Iranian or Russian tanks.

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## Metastachydium

> That... had to do with a lot more than the crew considerations.


Indeed. To illustrate some of the issues, I'd point out thet the Yemeni civil war saw dozens of Abrams tanks taken out and that is not widely read as proof that Cold War era black market junk is superior to up-to-date NATO ware.

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## Martin Greywolf

> For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but  with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.


Except that it won't. Because while said tank is superior in theory the margins you've gained are so insignificant next to literally any other factor they may as well not be there. Whether or not the crew's favourite football team won a match before they climb into the tank will have more of an impact than the minute advantage in weight, even in a one on one fight.

If that wasn't the case, we would see pretty much everyone selecting their tank crews based on size, because why wouldn't you? When we did see military roles that had a genuine advantage thanks to the size of people in those roles, that's exactly what happened, and we got colonial grenadiers, Napoleon's cuirassiers, Winged Hussars (not sure about the men, but the horses had a size requirement) and so on.

I'm also pretty sure there are several studies on this done by the tank-building nations, and I'm even more sure we will not be able to even know about them for quite a while. We're just now getting to a point where some of the WW2 stuff is getting declassified, after all.

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## Max_Killjoy

On tank crews, I've been told by friends who crewed tanks (including in combat) that having a four-man crew of "full size people" is very nice once things go wrong and you're trying to do something like replace a broken track by brute force.

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## KineticDiplomat

In the (late) NATO vs Soviet tank design argument here, it seems were losing track of the forest for the treesor the twigs of specific branches as it relates to height

Soviet doctrine saw the tank as an operational weapon that had tactical characteristics. The ability to conduct fast, violent, continuous deep operations with an acceptable logistical tail was the purpose of the soviet tank. While there was some tactical rationale about lower profiles and some theoretical declarations that a lot of combat would happen at sub 500m and thereby render a lot of big tank advantages irrelevant, that was more cart than horse. 

First and foremost they wanted tanks that could be employed en masse throughout the operational depths and have operational and strategic mobility requirements minimized in order to facilitate maximum continuous exertion and affect a deep breakthrough followed by exploitation. Being able to cross a river on the lightest bridges (as an example) was more important than being the very best tank. This all created a school of small tank design that would last until the deeply troubled Armata, where the Russian mil-industrial  system had troubles significantly scaling up in AFV size anyhow 

And all of which rather accidentally ended up forcing a preference for smaller men due to cramping, but certainly not based on any primary concept of it making a better fighting platform.

NATOs last modernization rush, driven by the US Big 5 programs, went the other direction. By then there was uneasy acceptance that societies were at about as big an army as they could sustain politically in peace time and that early nuclear offsets were not good for the alliance. Leaders literally went to congress hat in hand and said they needed a tank that could kill 
six soviet tanks for everyone it lost, and that this combined with MLRS, Apache, the Bradley and a set of new aircraft for the USAF would solve the math problem of there being more Soviets by virtue of killing them in great numbers

Doctrinally suspect, but it sold well to the legislature. So the Abrams got designed as a monster. Massive armoring requirements, high maintenance and fuel consuming jet engine, the fuel storage for that engine, crew survivability options, all the latest electronics with ample power options and space for upgrades, room for scads of ammunition, the best and optics and thermals money could buy even if it cranked up turret bulk, a human loader for crew redundancy, expandable breach option for the planned gun upgradeyou name it, if it could make a tank big, it went in to it. 

And as a result it could fit bigger people. But that was kind of a side effect

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## Martin Greywolf

We have a new and very interesting video from Tod of Tod's Stuff, fellow pointy things enthusiasts.

It's interesting to see that medium infantry could be fairly well protected as long as it steered a bit clear of the elite archers even without any plate. They won't be that useful in storming of the front line, but the tactical value of being able to somewhat effectively threaten flanks or deny ground at relatively low cost is not to be underestimated - especially since arrows are a limited resource and the archers may well decide not to shoot at targets that far.

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## Max_Killjoy

> We have a new and very interesting video from Tod of Tod's Stuff, fellow pointy things enthusiasts.
> 
> It's interesting to see that medium infantry could be fairly well protected as long as it steered a bit clear of the elite archers even without any plate. They won't be that useful in storming of the front line, but the tactical value of being able to somewhat effectively threaten flanks or deny ground at relatively low cost is not to be underestimated - especially since arrows are a limited resource and the archers may well decide not to shoot at targets that far.


That's very interesting.  Another example of how the "all or nothing" / "pass-fail" view of armor elides a lot of utility in armor that's situational -- if mail over gambeson works at 75 or 100 meters to save the wearer's life, it's still useful in a battle context that features archers, even if it wouldn't hold up to direct hits at 25 meters or less.  

Also, I have one of the knives like the one he wacks the gambeson sample with in the conclusion, so that was a moment.

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## Martin Greywolf

Another video of note, stealth in armor!

Nothing too surprising to me, and looking at DnD5 disadvantage at stealth:

Padded - how the hell does this one have disadvantage?Leather - fineStudded leather - this should not exist in the first placeHide - fine, and this is what Padded should be, whether you use plants or animal skin for paddingChain shirt - fineScale mail - has disadvantage, is borderline and depends on type of scale fasteningBreastplate - fineHalf-plate - fineRing mail - this should not existChain mail - has disadvantage, and is borderline, depending on what kind of mail, something that has short sleeves or sleeves tied to the arms is pretty silentSplint - lamellar armor is almost entirely silent, but I guess you could say it's the chain mail sleeves that get you disadvantagePlate - fineShield - it should give you disadvantage unless you are dedicating a hand to using it or making sure it doesn't bounce as you wear it

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## Catullus64

Anybody know much of anything about chariotry?

I'm writing something in a setting where horse-breeding has not advanced to the point where horses can be ridden, at least not in war. That's a product of other setting details and elements that don't need getting into. Chariotry is therefore the primary military occupation of the aristocracy in this setting.

I thought about asking a specific question about chariots, but why narrow the field of contributions? I'll ask a bunch of 'em. The period for chariot use is a bit narrower than cavalry (I think?), so hopefully these questions aren't too broad to be useful.

How well can chariots operate in any terrain more difficult than a perfectly flat plain?How do you fight from a chariot (this is a big one)?How would chariots be organized for usage in war? Were they grouped into units? How many chariots can effectively operate in concert?What are some key features which set chariots apart (for good or ill) from cavalry on the battlefield?One horse, two horse, red horse, blue horse I mean, how many horses were typical for war chariots? Similar question about the number of occupants.How might the values of a chariot-based warrior aristocracy differ from those of a cavalry-based system?Is there historical record for what I'll call the "Homeric" style of chariot fighting, where chariots seem to essentially serve as a delivery system for warriors fighting on foot?In societies where chariot fighters were high-status individuals (which I understand to have been mostly the case) what would the status of drivers be? Slightly-lower status? Slaves or commoners? Older, younger?

As usual, links to good primary sources are the greatest gift you can give, but I'm greedy for inspiration. Secondary sources, or even works of fiction that represent it really well are nice.

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## Martin Greywolf

> As usual, links to good primary sources are the greatest gift you can give, but I'm greedy for inspiration. Secondary sources, or even works of fiction that represent it really well are nice.


Unless you can read ancient Egyptian, Greek or some such, you'll definitely want secondary sources.

Osprey:The World of Celtic WarriorNew Kingdom of EgyptBronze Age War ChariotsHittite WarriorAncient Chinese Armies (specifically the chapter on Chou)

For translated primary sources, there is Illiad, but that one has combat by champion almost exclusively, even if they do use chariots.




> How well can chariots operate in any terrain more difficult than a perfectly flat plain?


Very, very poorly. The chariots as taxis, where you dismount before the battle, is somewhat more viable, but in an attacking formation... The issue is that rough terrain forces you to pick your path in a chariot, so it funnels all your formation into predictable, narrow paths they can't turn away from - and if one of them gets mobility-killed in them, you have a crash and a traffic jam on your hands. What's worse, if you are in a climate that looks like most of Europe, you will also have relatively soft soil do deal with - one chariot may make it, but a dozen in the same track will have a problem.

Also remember that you cannot stop in range of the enemy, or their archers will shoot you to pieces.




> How would chariots be organized for usage in war? Were they grouped into units? How many chariots can effectively operate in concert?


The advantage of chariots is speed, so anything that can't keep up is right out. That limits you to chariot only units, or chariot and cavalry mix (Persians come to mind, with using their scythed chariots to break up enemy formation, with cavalry for follow-up). Well, provided there are enough chariots, otherwise you use them as mobile command platform.

As for how many, well, how many do yo have? Ancient Egypt reports armies with about a thousand chariots per side being fairly common, and battle of Kadesh saw as many as 2 000-10 000, depending on who's counting.




> One horse, two horse, red horse, blue horse I mean, how many horses were typical for war chariots? Similar question about the number of occupants.


Horses can number from one to ten, with one or two being the norm - and they were armored as often as not.

Occupants number from one to three, with one handling the reins. If there are two, as is the most typical, then the other person has a bow, a spear or both, if there are three, the third guy usually has a large shield.




> Is there historical record for what I'll call the "Homeric" style of chariot fighting, where chariots seem to essentially serve as a delivery system for warriors fighting on foot?


You kind of answered your own question there: Illiad. Aside from that, there are Celtic war chiefs who fought this way, and frankly, any chariot will do this in bad enough terrain.




> In societies where chariot fighters were high-status individuals (which I understand to have been mostly the case) what would the status of drivers be? Slightly-lower status? Slaves or commoners? Older, younger?


This is pretty much all societies - chariots are even more expensive to use and maintain per unit (and sometimes per man) than cavalry.

As for the actual question, I can't really answer it without doing several hours of crawling through sources. Egyptian charioteers seemed to have been fairly equal in status between driver and fighter, but this will vary depending on time and place - Celtic war chiefs were, well, war chiefs, so all other crew of their chariot were less in statu




> How might the values of a chariot-based warrior aristocracy differ from those of a cavalry-based system?


The only major thing I can think of is more emphasis on cooperation - you have two people per chariot, they need to work together even more than two cavalrymen. Going into fantasy land, wife and husband teams are possible, as well as some sort of shared families, stemming from this only.




> What are some key features which set chariots apart (for good or ill) from cavalry on the battlefield?


It's mostly bad, not gonna lie. Less agile, about as fast, unable to cope with rough terrain, chariot isn't a great vehicle. It's also unbelievably expensive, just about the only cavalry type that can cost more is the superheavy cavalry (thing all-plate armor on horse and rider, or Cataphracts), and even that is probably slightly cheaper than heavy chariots.

The sole advantage of chariots is that the riders are harder to hit - they are in cover, provided by their horses, and even if you shoot the horse, it will not usually fall straight down and crash the thing, it will start to slow down and die.




> How do you fight from a chariot (this is a big one)?


Depends on the chariot. The number one method is archery and throwing spears into the enemy flanks and rear while they engage your infantry. The enemy infantry know this is a death sentence, so they will often simply run from you should you beat their chariots. Failing that, you ride alongside whatever you don't like and poke at it with spear (be prepared to let go of it, lest you be clotheslined if it gets stuck) or use your scythes to damage it.

Running straight into formations is not exaclty recommended. You will trample down most infantry, but are liable to take losses - and something like a phalanx will just chew you up. Running straight into another chariot will kill all of you, running into a cavalryman will maybe not kill all of you, but will definitely damage you enough to take you out of a fight.

Your worst enemy is, aside from other chariots, archers - if they have enough time, they will shoot your horses down and mobility-kill you, if nothing else. On the other hand, you know this and go fast, so you will do your best to eliminate them first thing after dealing with enemy chariots - and archers are unlikely to hold ground against you, so this is one place where you can actually just trample them.

Edit: I really screwed up the formatting on this one.

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## Catullus64

Thanks for the detailed responses, MartinGreywolf.

Will definitely give some of those books a look. If it matters, I can read Attic Greek (albeit slowly and needing to look up every tenth word), so if there are untranslated primary sources in that language I'd love to hear it. I hadn't thought about Celtic peoples as a source of inspiration, my eye was mainly turned eastward, but perhaps that's a very good line to pursue if I want to see chariots dealing with more rugged country.

I think you're right that a chariot-culture might place more emphasis on teams. I can see great houses fostering out their sons and junior relatives to be chariot-drivers, and chariot teams forming a social and political bond that extends beyond the battlefield; it could even be an acceptable context for male-to-male romantic relationships in a society that would otherwise discourage them. There could be political and religious institutions that clearly borrow their structure from the three-man chariot team (Driver, Archer, Shield-bearer).

As to a lot of the limitations mentioned, that's really good for the purposes of the military action of the story. Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot. If chariots tend to be funneled by geography into a small number of viable pathways, it makes it easier for me, an amateur, to figure out the tactics of the battles as I write them.

I'll also probably create differentiation between smaller, lighter chariots with two occupants, and heavier ones with three. I can imagine a lot of interesting sequences that could play out from that.

As for the expense, that's something that's going to have to be added to my ongoing series of tweaks to make the demographics feel historically plausible. Right now I have it such that the focal aristocratic house, who owns a rich but modestly-sized estate and collects tolls from a major river crossing, can maintain and field six two-horse, three-man chariots, with spare horses, and two of the men in full armor ("full" in this context meaning helmet, mail, and greaves). Maybe the sources will give me an idea of whether that's a high or low figure.

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## Brother Oni

> As to a lot of the limitations mentioned, that's really good for the purposes of the military action of the story. Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot. If chariots tend to be funneled by geography into a small number of viable pathways, it makes it easier for me, an amateur, to figure out the tactics of the battles as I write them.


More often than not, mounted infantry were the primary scouting force (ie they use horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight).

For a movie depiction of how chariots were used in battle, the first coliseum battle in Gladiator is a good show case of both the advantages and the disadvantages, particularly the 'drive by' nature of their combat against enemy infantry and how loose formation soldiers really didn't want to be in the middle of a chariot charge (even if you kill the horse, that's still several tons of horses, chariot and riders coming at you).

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## Pauly

For the chariot as a battle taxi delivering elite warriors to weak spots in the enemy lines (roughly akin to helicoptering in special forces in modern warfare) a good source is the Cû Chulainn saga from Irish epics. There is a lot of that tome devoted to chariot operations.

One minor point is that in Celtic sources there is a lot of emphasis on the named warrior doing acrobatics on the chariot pole and yoke. I assume this has a lot to do with lighter arms and armor compared to say Homeric Greeks.

One disadvantage of chariots compared to cavalry is the numbers game. A chariot generally has 2 horses, 1 driver and 1 fighter, and if you out any one out of action the chariot can no longer fight. Cavalry can put in the field 2 horses with 2 fighters for similar resources, and even if you put one element out of action you still have 1 cavalryman still fighting.

Once true cavalry developed (Lindy Beige has a good video explaining why this took such a long time to occur) chariots were almost instantly relegated to either psychological weapons (Persian/Hellenistic scythed chariots) or mobile command post (Chinese Generals chariots with huge parasols).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot.


Sort of - moving from realms of actual history to what would I do, combine chariots with light infantry for an even faster scouting force. Use chariots as helicopters to drop off light infantrymen along the roads, and have those go forth, scout and return.

You could create some Vietnam-like scenes of fighting retreat to the pickup as the enemy draws near.




> Right now I have it such that the focal aristocratic house, who owns a rich but modestly-sized estate and collects tolls from a major river crossing


That major river crossing probably carries the income there, they were insanely profitable to a point where there were few almost-civil-wars over controlling them.




> More often than not, mounted infantry were the primary scouting force (ie they use horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight).


Can't do that if your horses aren't big enough to go cavalry. Even then, you need a fair amount of horse breeding to make them good enough to do long-distance scouting, since they will be outpaced by humans when it comes to speed over several hours.




> One disadvantage of chariots compared to cavalry is the numbers game. A chariot generally has 2 horses, 1 driver and 1 fighter, and if you out any one out of action the chariot can no longer fight. Cavalry can put in the field 2 horses with 2 fighters for similar resources, and even if you put one element out of action you still have 1 cavalryman still fighting.


Not really. If you kill a horse in a chariot, you still have a mobile chariot if the crew can remove the dead horse, albeit a slower one. A kill on a cavalryman's horse is more often than not a kill on the rider as well - the fall is nasty enough, the fall at speed even worse (I was pretty shook after falling off a galloping horse, able to walk away and cognizant, but I don't think I could fight for the next 5 minutes), and you're very likely to end up under other cavalryman's hoofs.

Light chariots are significantly more expensive than light cavalry, you have 2 people and 2 horses in both cases, plus the chariot for the charioteers. Heavy cavalry is only somewhat more expensive, simply because once you start to armor up men and horses, chariot represents a lesser fraction of overall cost.




> Once true cavalry developed (Lindy Beige has a good video explaining why this took such a long time to occur) chariots were almost instantly relegated to either psychological weapons (Persian/Hellenistic scythed chariots) or mobile command post (Chinese Generals chariots with huge parasols).


This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.

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## Catullus64

> Sort of - moving from realms of actual history to what would I do, combine chariots with light infantry for an even faster scouting force. Use chariots as helicopters to drop off light infantrymen along the roads, and have those go forth, scout and return.
> 
> You could create some Vietnam-like scenes of fighting retreat to the pickup as the enemy draws near.


Good idea, will consider; in terms of drama, it's a great way to emphasize both cooperation and tension between the aristocratic and non-aristocratic characters. I can see it as a desperate innovation by the protagonists, which catches the enemy off-guard because they assume the charioteers would never consent to being a ferry for lowborn skirmishers.




> That major river crossing probably carries the income there, they were insanely profitable to a point where there were few almost-civil-wars over controlling them.


That's what I thought, which is why the main action of the story is at the tail-end of that _almost._




> This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.


When I finish this thing and think about writing a sequel, it could be a great threat escalation to suddenly drop an outside invader who _has_ put together the first true cavalry. Sounds terrifying.

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## Clistenes

> This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.


The advantage of chariots was that one guy could focus on driving it while other or two mere focused on fighting... learning how to shoot a bow while riding a horse with a primitive saddle and not stirrups took some time to achieve...

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## Martin Greywolf

> The advantage of chariots was that one guy could focus on driving it while other or two mere focused on fighting... learning how to shoot a bow while riding a horse with a primitive saddle and not stirrups took some time to achieve...


This is something that got way, way overblown. I rode a horse bareback on my second horse riding lesson, and to quote the instructor: "We're doing this so that you know it's not that hard, the saddle is there more to protect the horse rather than make you able to ride it." The whole problem started when historians who were never near the saddle started to make stuff up wholesale, people believed then and it then took forever to quash the misinformation - stirrups being necessary for couched lance charge is a favourite example.

Let's look at archery specifically. The mere act of shooting a bow is pretty much the same on foot, on chariot and on horseback, so no problems there.

The accuracy will suffer if chariot or horse move, because, well, they move. You need to learn to compensat for it no matter what vehicle you use, so the difficulty remains the same - except it doesn't. Because a horse is an animal, it tries to keep itself more or less level, a horse won't suddenly jump if it encounters a rock, it will go over it. That makes it easier to achieve a steady aim from a horse than from a chariot.

Staying on your platform of choice - well, there's nuance. On one hand, you just kind of stand in teh chariot, no skills necessary. On the other hand, you may well need to grab the chariot with one hand to stay in it if it maneuvers too much or if the terrain is rough, a problem which, on a horse, you solve with your thighs.

As for moving and shooting at the same time, yeah, horse archer is at a disadvantage and has to learn it, it takes some getting used to. It especially took a while to figure it out because you need to train your horse to respond to leg commands only, but once you do that, even a schmuck like me, on second horseriding lesson, can control the horse in such a way. That said, said training is enough of a hassle that it wasn't always done.

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## Catullus64

> This is something that got way, way overblown. I rode a horse bareback on my second horse riding lesson, and to quote the instructor: "We're doing this so that you know it's not that hard, the saddle is there more to protect the horse rather than make you able to ride it." The whole problem started when historians who were never near the saddle started to make stuff up wholesale, people believed then and it then took forever to quash the misinformation - stirrups being necessary for couched lance charge is a favourite example.
> 
> Let's look at archery specifically. The mere act of shooting a bow is pretty much the same on foot, on chariot and on horseback, so no problems there.
> 
> The accuracy will suffer if chariot or horse move, because, well, they move. You need to learn to compensat for it no matter what vehicle you use, so the difficulty remains the same - except it doesn't. Because a horse is an animal, it tries to keep itself more or less level, a horse won't suddenly jump if it encounters a rock, it will go over it. That makes it easier to achieve a steady aim from a horse than from a chariot.
> 
> Staying on your platform of choice - well, there's nuance. On one hand, you just kind of stand in teh chariot, no skills necessary. On the other hand, you may well need to grab the chariot with one hand to stay in it if it maneuvers too much or if the terrain is rough, a problem which, on a horse, you solve with your thighs.
> 
> As for moving and shooting at the same time, yeah, horse archer is at a disadvantage and has to learn it, it takes some getting used to. It especially took a while to figure it out because you need to train your horse to respond to leg commands only, but once you do that, even a schmuck like me, on second horseriding lesson, can control the horse in such a way. That said, said training is enough of a hassle that it wasn't always done.


Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.

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## halfeye

> Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.


I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.

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## Max_Killjoy

> I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.


I think the myth of centaurs might be a bit older than the Mongolians...

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## halfeye

> I think the myth of centaurs might be a bit older than the Mongolians...


If that's a quibble about the name of the people who were then living in the region we now call Mongolia, I don't much care. If you are saying there were no people living there at the times of the ancient greeks that's a different matter, and it would be relevant in my eyes/

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## Pauly

> I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.


The Greeks were adjacent to the Scyths, who were the first recorded horse archers in European history.
The CHinese were adjacent to the Hsuing-Nu (spelling?) who were the first recorded horse archers in Chinese history.

Both arose at around the same time

There is some debate as to whether they were the same cultural group or separate groups who developed similar systems due to similar pressures and resources.

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## Brother Oni

> The CHinese were adjacent to the Hsuing-Nu (spelling?) who were the first recorded horse archers in Chinese history.


The Hsiung-nu are now better known as the Xiongnu; the former is the Wade-Giles transliteration and the latter is Pinyin.

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## Max_Killjoy

> If that's a quibble about the name of the people who were then living in the region we now call Mongolia, I don't much care. If you are saying there were no people living there at the times of the ancient greeks that's a different matter, and it would be relevant in my eyes/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols#Definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians

The article on the Mongolians mentions them being linked to the Scythians, but this is a medieval notion that archaeological evidence blows to smithereens AFAIK.  

What I'm not finding is how old the centaur myth actually is, at least not directly, but I know where to ask.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.


Compared to what? The guy with a spear that had 30 minutes of instructions, sure. Compared to a samurai, knight, Landsknecht, charioteer or any other soldierly caste? Not really, especially not if they use horse as well, since horse training can be the real bottleneck. Samurai are actually an interesting case, since they trained as heavy cavalry, heavy infantry and horse archers before the Sengoku Jidai.

This exact argument of "it requires a ton of training and then you are a supersoldier for the time period" has been used time and again for: knightly shock cavalry, English warbows, double-bladed viking swords, bolt-action rifles and many, many more. The only weapon where I've seen it hold moderately true is the sling, which requires stupidly huge amounts of training and then enables you to slightly outmach bows under 150 lbs draw weight.

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## Pauly

> The only weapon where I've seen it hold moderately true is the sling, which requires stupidly huge amounts of training and then enables you to slightly outmach bows under 150 lbs draw weight.


The thing with slingers and the original steppe horse archers is that the stupid amounts of training time were developed in boyhood/young adulthood through hunting. They werent proficient in their weapons as a result of explicit military training, more the military application was an outgrowth of the proficiency needed for survival.

In the Inca Empire for example all boys aged between 8 and 14 were sent into the fields with slings to keep birds off the crops. As a result the Inca army was full of expert slingers. There are Spanish reports of Inca soldiers being able to hit raised swords with sling stones from long distance.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The thing with slingers and the original steppe horse archers is that the stupid amounts of training time were developed in boyhood/young adulthood through hunting. They werent proficient in their weapons as a result of explicit military training, more the military application was an outgrowth of the proficiency needed for survival.
> 
> In the Inca Empire for example all boys aged between 8 and 14 were sent into the fields with slings to keep birds off the crops. As a result the Inca army was full of expert slingers. There are Spanish reports of Inca soldiers being able to hit raised swords with sling stones from long distance.


These are two different issues, though. How much training you need to be skilled at a thing, versus how much a given culture trained in a thing. We can probably see this the best in ancient Greece with Sparta and Athens. Athens put in enough times to have a good phalanx, Spartans went to the extreme of wrapping their entire society around having the best possible phalanx. No one will argue that Spartans weren't better at phalanx on a one on one basis, but no one will claim the Athenians weren't effective phalanxers either.

This nuance is important for comparing the effectiveness of troop types relative to one another. Is horse archer a superior soldier compared to a knight, given the same amount of training and comparable resources put into gearing up (remember, knightly training started just as young as the nomadic one)? And, well, the asnwer is no, they are about on par and the famous horse archer victories are rooted in tactics and logistics, rather than individual martial prowess, as are the famous knight victories.

Looping back to chariots, the training of a single horse and a single man is about on par or slightly under that of a horse archer, resources are somewhat higher (because you need to pay for their share of chariot) and terrain capabilities are much worse for the charioteers. Which means that chariots are actually worse than the horse archers, because they can at best achieve rough parity while being slightly more costly, given the right terrain - and be much worse to unusable in other terrains.

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## Clistenes

People were fighting on chariots before they managed to breed horses big enough to be of use as battle mounts (even more if the rider wore armor) so they got how to fight on chariots figured long before they even thought about riding horses to battle.

So the warrior classes were trained in chariot fighting before horse archery even existed... Somebody had to create it from the scratch, and the warrior class probably were like "why should we learn to do that when we can already fight on chariots?"

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## Max_Killjoy

> People were fighting on chariots before they managed to breed horses big enough to be of use as battle mounts (even more if the rider wore armor) so they got how to fight on chariots figured long before they even thought about riding horses to battle.
> 
> So the warrior classes were trained in chariot fighting before horse archery even existed... Somebody had to create it from the scratch, and the warrior class probably were like "why should we learn to do that when we can already fight on chariots?"


Plus the chariot, having a chariot, being a chariot warrior, was often a sign of prestige and status, so many of them were not going to just give that up.

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## Max_Killjoy

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols#Definition
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians
> 
> The article on the Mongolians mentions them being linked to the Scythians, but this is a medieval notion that archaeological evidence blows to smithereens AFAIK.  
> 
> What I'm not finding is how old the centaur myth actually is, at least not directly, but I know where to ask.


I did some digging and some asking, and it turns out that the "horse nomad" theory is probably one of those "just so story" explanations, with no empirical basis.  For starters, legends of centaurs and similar beings are probably older than widespread use of horses for riding.

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## Clistenes

> I did some digging and some asking, and it turns out that the "horse nomad" theory is probably one of those "just so story" explanations, with no empirical basis.  For starters, legends of centaurs and similar beings are probably older than widespread use of horses for riding.


Centaurs were originally portrayed as having horse ears, tail and two horse hindlegs. The later version with four horse legs may have been inspired by horse riders, but not necessarily by nomad raiders...

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## Vinyadan

Classical centaurs also didn't use arrows. The image of the bow-wielding centaur is due to its association with the Sagittarius constellation; but the image of the Sagittarius was really derived from a different beastman of Mesopotamian origin wielding bow and arrow, whose complex design (a winged horse-man-panther with multiple heads and tails) was streamlined into a centaur with a satyr tail in the West.

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## Clistenes

Centaurs as archers may have been inspired by Chiron, who trained several famous archers like Heracles, Acteon and Odysseus.

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## Vinyadan

> Centaurs as archers may have been inspired by Chiron, who trained several famous archers like Heracles, Acteon and Odysseus.


I don't think it's likely. The iconography of an archer centaur independent from the Zodiac only comes up in the IX century AD and only explodes in the XII. Before that, it's always the Sagittarius, as far as I'm aware.

Some ancient authors did say that Chiron knew how to hunt, because he had been grown up by Apollon and Artemis. But there are no episodes in which he uses an arrow, except for when he picks up one of Herakles's to immediately drop it on his own foot, causing the famous wound. Plus, even where he is mentioned as a teacher of hunting, he works with dogs, javelins, and darts, and there is no mention of a bow. Finally, Hyginus quotes some unspecified authors saying explicitly that "no centaur ever used arrows" while discussing the oddities of the Sagittarius.

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## Lapak

> The sole advantage of chariots is that the riders are harder to hit - they are in cover, provided by their horses, and even if you shoot the horse, it will not usually fall straight down and crash the thing, it will start to slow down and die.


You and others (including the one asking the question) have touched on the other advantage, which is worth calling out explicitly - you can do charioteering with animals that are not functional as cavalry mounts. Early horses which are too small to ride, fantasy animals that are anatomically inappropriate or dangerous to ride, etc. Attaching a vehicle broadens the animal-powered-mobility-in-warfare possibilities by quite a lot. 

(Not to say that the advantage of cover is negligible either - while it's not a chariot, we can take the Hussite war wagons of the 1400s for an example at the other end of the pre-modern tech tree that focuses more on the cover angle you're mentioning.  :Small Wink: )

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## Clistenes

> Some ancient authors did say that Chiron knew how to hunt, because he had been grown up by Apollon and Artemis. But there are no episodes in which he uses an arrow, except for when he picks up one of Herakles's to immediately drop it on his own foot, causing the famous wound. Plus, even where he is mentioned as a teacher of hunting, he works with dogs, javelins, and darts, and there is no mention of a bow. Finally, Hyginus quotes some unspecified authors saying explicitly that "no centaur ever used arrows" while discussing the oddities of the Sagittarius.


But, did the people who started to portray Centaurs as archers during the Middle Ages know that? For many people with basic knowledge of the Classics, if Chiron was taught by Apollo, and taught Herakles and Odysseus in turn, and explicitly taught hunting and warfare, archery must have come to mind very naturally...

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## Vinyadan

> But, did the people who started to portray Centaurs as archers during the Middle Ages know that? For many people with basic knowledge of the Classics, if Chiron was taught by Apollo, and taught Herakles and Odysseus in turn, and explicitly taught hunting and warfare, archery must have come to mind very naturally...


The problem here, from my point of view, is how pervasive the Zodiac is, and how medieval artists didn't generally represent classical centaurs in the environment of the ancient myths. The centaurs were one of those wonderous animals or beasts or people you found in bestiaries and encyclopaedias, which if required could also be seen as religiously meaningful figures or employed as decorations in churches (church decorations themselves could have an encyclopedic or figurative purpose). So, for example, in the XII century AD Otranto mosaic there are two centaurs: one is the Sagittarius, and is part of the representation of the month of December; the other one is a hunting centaur killing a deer with an arrow, represented among other monsters and beasts, and possibly part of a representation of allegories of sins and virtues.

However, it's also true that someone like Dante, who chooses centaurs as the archers who keep watch on tyrants and violent souls, would have been perfectly aware of the the available Latin texts (to the point that his centaurs are the same named centaurs from the myth, Chiron, Nessus, and so on, with the right behaviour for each). At the same time, all his life he had seen a centaur with a bow as the Sagittarius on the floors of the Florence Baptistery and of the Abbey of San Miniato al Monte.

It is also true that there is a very lucky subset of Chiron's iconography that shows him teaching Achilles how to hunt, and, while in ancient works Chiron is empty-handed or holds a javelin, there are two Greek manuscripts from the XI century AD that show him with a bow, while he carries Achilles on his back, also holding a bow. Before Italy took off, Eastern Roman artists undeniably had a huge influence on Western art. So this particular image could have had a certain influence.

By the way, the general idea that centaurs were inspired by Thessalian horsemen is already to be found in Isidore's Origines.

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## PhoenixPhyre

Ok, question for the sages:

Assume you have a pair of fortresses/keeps/fortified structures in a large, completely passive city, separated by ~1/4 mile of water (in a large bay). One keep has most of the armed forces, while the other is effectively a fortified temple with staff but only minimal guards. Both are not at any kind of alert status. Technology level is late-medieval, except that they have the equivalent of radios (so instantaneous communications as long as a hub/transmitter remains in operation). The hub is located in the temple.

Most of the forces are lightly armored (effectively pirate-style raiders operating off of small skiffs in the broad gulf beyond the city), but some are the equivalent of heavy infantry. No flying mounts. The very elite are spell-casters, with many of those being in the temple, but most of the temple staff and guards have other duties they are attending to (ie not on patrol).

What's a reasonable set of times from "enemy detected on approach" for the following events (assuming that an assault force is coming very fast via air at the temple):
* General alarm sounded
* Temple at full readiness
* Fort ready to put to sea
* Fort troops arrive at temple

As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.

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## Pauly

If they are not at alert and are unaware that a flying attack could be imminent, then a solid 2 or 3 hours at a minimum to get an organized force into fighting positions.
- The guards on duty will defend normally but be overwhelmed.
- Assuming a non combat ready environment a large portion of the soldiery will be in barracks resting or training, another large portion will be on furlough, smaller portions will be out on patrol somewhere. So to get a significant force under arms and roughly organized youre probably looking at 1 hour minimum. Arms and armor are usually kept under lick and key so there will be some delays associated with accessing the fighting gear.
- Then you have to need to march around the bay where chaos and confusion will be running free. Once youve marched around the bay you then have to take up positions. 
- While all this is happening the leaders have to get intel on enemy forces, intentions, capabilities and locations.

You may get some parties of first responders running to the temple, but theyll probably end up establishing a perimeter rather than going into the melee.

If the city is completely unaware it may take even longer. If the city is on alert for threats generally, but not this specific threat then the time may come down.

The best analogy I can think of is the response times to Viking raids.

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## Brother Oni

> What's a reasonable set of times from "enemy detected on approach" for the following events (assuming that an assault force is coming very fast via air at the temple):
> 
> As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.


Could you define 'very fast' please? Very fast by the Viking age standard mentioned by Pauly, would be between 15-17 knots for a warship.

Let's say there's a guard on a watchtower overlooking the sea and he's 50 ft above sea level (30 ft wall plus 20 ft above the coast).
That makes the distance to horizon ~8.7 miles*, so under clear conditions, from time of detection to having boots on the ground would be approx 27 minutes. Under your assured detection radius, it would be a little over 6 minutes from detection to boots on the ground; if your fortress can't get a general alarm sounded within a couple minutes of the enemies' detection, then it deserves to fall.

Note that while flying forces would cover the distance faster, they would also be detected from further out unless special evasion methods are taken (flying very high, using night/cloud cover, flying very close to the ocean surface, using the terrain as cover, etc).

*technically it's further as longships sit a far distance above the water, but the maths get complicated.

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## PhoenixPhyre

Note: the people from the other fortress could come by ship (and in fact would have to, since both fortresses are on islands). The entire armed force model is
* Go out and catch ships that are passing by but get caught in the nasty reefs, currents, etc outside. Enslave the crews (with mind magic) and bring them back.
* Keep a minimal guard force on land outside the city to prevent any unconquered locals (which are minimal at this point) from raiding.
* Have forces patrolling in the city proper, but mostly to keep them busy (since the conquered people are controlled by mental conditioning).
* Anyone who uses exotic means of access (such as teleporting/shadow walking) will get detected and the patrols will get vectored to them. But the patrols are confined to land and spread hither and yon in penny packets (basically squad-level).




> Could you define 'very fast' please? Very fast by the Viking age standard mentioned by Pauly, would be between 15-17 knots for a warship.
> 
> Let's say there's a guard on a watchtower overlooking the sea and he's 50 ft above sea level (30 ft wall plus 20 ft above the coast).
> That makes the distance to horizon ~8.7 miles*, so under clear conditions, from time of detection to having boots on the ground would be approx 27 minutes. Under your assured detection radius, it would be a little over 6 minutes from detection to boots on the ground; if your fortress can't get a general alarm sounded within a couple minutes of the enemies' detection, then it deserves to fall.
> 
> Note that while flying forces would cover the distance faster, they would also be detected from further out unless special evasion methods are taken (flying very high, using night/cloud cover, flying very close to the ocean surface, using the terrain as cover, etc).
> 
> *technically it's further as longships sit a far distance above the water, but the maths get complicated.


In this case, they're moving at ~9 mi/hr (80 ft/6 seconds, with bursts up to 160ft/6 seconds) on the backs of griffons, roughly 1.5-2 miles in the air. And the detection radius is entirely telepathic--the chances of detection via other means is minimal, and even if they were seen, the communications has a critical flaw--the hub must contact people, they can't communicate back out of turn except more conventionally. Due to (specifics that shouldn't be relevant and might be spoilers if any of my players read this), the city is entirely reliant on this, with only minimal people actually looking at the sky or land. Their entire threat model is...well...more of a threat to others. They have lookouts quite a bit further out to sea, but the attack isn't coming in over the sea at all (flying over land) and those lookouts are looking for sails, not up at high angles. The attackers will be coming out of the rising sun (as is traditional), which further complicates visual detection.

So that means the fortresses have ~10 minutes between detection and enemy landing (which will be at the top of the temple tower). I'm assuming that a general alarm will be sounded within a minute or so (confirming that these aren't just flying by but are approaching). *The main question is how long will the party have to assault the temple before the other fortress can feasibly respond in force. Minutes? Tens of minutes? Hours?* I will note that there are only 4 attackers, but the attackers are individually and collectively much more powerful than any individual defender[1]. Escape isn't so much of a concern--they can teleport out. They couldn't teleport in, because none of them had seen it or had a good enough description before hand.

[1] as I am the DM, and this is the high(er)-level party attacking an enemy, mind-flayer-controlled temple/citadel.

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## Telwar

In this case, you might have some local forces show up every so often from any local patrols in the "hey, there are explosions from the temple" sense.  Say a guard patrol every 2d6 rounds feels right.

But a fully organized, strong response?  As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning.  Like, divinations.


(Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)

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## PhoenixPhyre

> In this case, you might have some local forces show up every so often from any local patrols in the "hey, there are explosions from the temple" sense.  Say a guard patrol every 2d6 rounds feels right.
> 
> But a fully organized, strong response?  As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning.  Like, divinations.
> 
> 
> (Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)


Yeah, that latter bit is what I'm trying to avoid. I'm thinking that the response time from the patrols will be slower, since they actually have to get across the bay (both temple and fortress are on islands, with only boat access).

Current plan is that if they're not past the ground floor (which is where the non-mindflayer guards can get[0]) before they stop for a short rest, there will be at least one big chunk of extra guards on hand (one large boat worth, which is many). And "soon" (within an hour, possibly very soon), mind flayers will levitate up the sides of the temple to attack the griffons they left behind, unless they order them[1] to leave the area entirely.

[0] Operational secrecy requires that access to the upper and basement floors requires levitation (or ropes)--there are no stairs. While they do have conditioning-based control over most of the zealot guards, that's not absolute, and they'd rather not risk anyone breaking conditioning due to seeing the horrors they're committing and breaking important things.

[1] Due to circumstances, they have a talking cat who stays behind and can command the griffons to move. If they think to leave communications (like a sending stone) with the cat. Otherwise she'll act on her own best judgement once she sees incoming mind flayers. Either way, they're unlikely to have the griffons to get back and will have to teleport...if the mind flayers or the <spoilers> don't take active countermeasures on that side.

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## Martin Greywolf

> As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.


I'm assuming that the X number of creatures is bad enought that the people involved would immediately know something bad is up, and it's not just a lost trader returning to city.




> * General alarm sounded


Seconds. If their magical detection is reliable and the people doing it know it's reliable, there have been enough incidents in WW2 of radar spotting a thing and people in command ignoring it. Even actual medieval cities could start a general alarm in seconds to a few minutes by ringing the town bells - seconds if the rope went all the way down, minutes if you had to run up the stairs.




> * Temple at full readiness


Minutes, if they have some semblance of emergency situation drilled into them. There will be no need to run around to figure out what the orders are, since you have radios, so the limiting factor is what tasks you need to do and how quickly people can run. Frankly, the limiting factor is probably putting on heavy armor for the troops that have it and don't currently wear it, which takes at most 10 minutes for plate (KnyghtErrant on YT, without trying to hurry, did it in just above 10).

Let's put that time to 30 minutes at most, with light and medium infantry being able to deploy at 10 minutes, and some forces being able to go right then.




> * Fort ready to put to sea


Late medieval means pretty much still galley technology. Fortunately, distance is small enough that you don't have to worry about supplies, so assuming you, or anyone you can take it from, has a ship, you're good to go. If the fort is close to the sea, it will take about as long as it took temple to get ready, because again, your main factor is putting on plate armor.




> * Fort troops arrive at temple


A galley has the top speed of 10-20 knots when we're considering short bursts only (the absolute best long-term was ~9 knots sustained for a day), so let's call it 15 knots/27 kmh, needed to cross 400 meters.

That will take 52 seconds at full speed all the way, with galleys being able to reach that in about 30 secons. So, no matter what you do, it will take less than 2 minutes.

The problem is that you need to do that with a lot of ships that can get in each others' way, and then you need to keep some cohesion of forces on landing. An ideally-drilled force where nothing goes wrong will be able to do it with minimal time losses. Realistically? Expect quite some chaos and delays.

Frankly, there is no limit on how long this will take - amphibious assaults are notoriously tricky to do well even today. A good number is 25 minutes, taken from D-day's Gold beach. This is the time between landing craft starting their support fire and the first actual landing of troops.




> But a fully organized, strong response? As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning. Like, divinations.


Not really. Hungarian local troops managed to do this in minutes to hours in real life, with no magic and mountainous terrain, against surprise Ottoman raiding parties. What will take you a few hours is getting all the villagers inside the city walls and mustering conscript forces, but even that was shockingly quick in areas that were used to raids.

If you want to gather a royal army that belongs to a kingdom, well, that will take you days to weeks at least. Months, if it is an offensive campaign you want to stock up for.

One of the fastest actions in this regard was Battle of Domazlice, where the Hussites managed to gather a response force to crusading armies crossing over the border and march and engage the crusaders while they were besieging Domazlice in 16 days, with the actual muster at Beroun taking 8 days, and march lasting another 8.

Compared to response of Hungary against Mongol invasion, which took about a month (12 march to 11 april) and still wasn't done when the battle happened, that is pretty damn quick.

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## snowblizz

> (Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)


Obviously the Hobgoblins slept fully armoured (they are hobgoblins, doesn't seem off) and using the warg as a pillow. And IMO no self-respecting hobgoblin rides anything but bare-backed.

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## fusilier

> A galley has the top speed of 10-20 knots when we're considering short bursts only (the absolute best long-term was ~9 knots sustained for a day), so let's call it 15 knots/27 kmh, needed to cross 400 meters.


10-20 knots?  You might want to double check your source for that.  I think steam powered, purpose-built blockade runners of the Civil War could maybe do 20 knots.  I don't even think the olympic sculling boats get near 20 knots(?).  My recollection is that "dash" speed is reckoned at around 7-9 knots for a galley.  (Perhaps you meant 10-20 kilometers per hour?)

Also, the amount of time spent embarking and disembarking troops is probably going to be another potentially limiting factor.  Combined with the time spent readying the galleys, getting their crews in place (although perhaps the troops can be the rowers).  If I had to deal with this issue, I would be looking to build a bridge (a draw bridge section would still allow navigation of ships in and out of the harbor), and just have the troops march over.

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## Brother Oni

> In this case, they're moving at ~9 mi/hr (80 ft/6 seconds, with bursts up to 160ft/6 seconds) on the backs of griffons, roughly 1.5-2 miles in the air. And the detection radius is entirely telepathic--the chances of detection via other means is minimal, and even if they were seen, the communications has a critical flaw--the hub must contact people, they can't communicate back out of turn except more conventionally. Due to (specifics that shouldn't be relevant and might be spoilers if any of my players read this), the city is entirely reliant on this, with only minimal people actually looking at the sky or land. Their entire threat model is...well...more of a threat to others. They have lookouts quite a bit further out to sea, but the attack isn't coming in over the sea at all (flying over land) and those lookouts are looking for sails, not up at high angles. The attackers will be coming out of the rising sun (as is traditional), which further complicates visual detection.


If they're coming that altitude during a clear day, then a Mk1 eyeball would resolve them as a distance of about 6 miles (assumption of human sized objects are resolvable at ~2 miles and a griffon is ~3 times the size of a human with outstretched wings). That's ~27 minutes of them flying in, hoping that nobody bothers to look up, before they trip the automatic detection zone.

Once they've entered that zone (it's closer to 13 minutes, but I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes for D&D timings), by the time they've landed, lightly armoured troops will be ready to deploy, although they won't know where to deploy. If there are set protocols to get troops across to the temple in case of attack, then probably ~15 minutes to embark them, ship them across, then disembark them. After that they need to make it to the temple.

If they don't know that the troops are needed at the temple, then that 15 minute timer starts from when the distress call comes from the temple.

There'd be another boatload of the heavily armoured troops landing maybe 10 minutes after the first boatload - if your party members are savvy, someone with AOE attacks could intercept the troops while they're landing at the temple, delaying them even further.

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## Martin Greywolf

> 10-20 knots?  You might want to double check your source for that.  I think steam powered, purpose-built blockade runners of the Civil War could maybe do 20 knots.  I don't even think the olympic sculling boats get near 20 knots(?).  My recollection is that "dash" speed is reckoned at around 7-9 knots for a galley.  (Perhaps you meant 10-20 kilometers per hour?)


You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.

I'm not saying you'd be able to maintain those 15 knots over any length of time, it's the ship's equivalent of a sprint, and you'd probably only see it used just before a ram. In this specific situation, where you have only a very narrow channel to get through, though?

As an aside, Olympic rowing reaches about 12 knots, which is weird, but I suspect there is some sort of hydrodynamic effect for larger vessels that isn't present for rowers, meaning you can scale upwards relatively well, especially since we see longships routinely at that top speed. I can't even begin to guess what it is, though.




> Also, the amount of time spent embarking and disembarking troops is probably going to be another potentially limiting factor.  Combined with the time spent readying the galleys, getting their crews in place (although perhaps the troops can be the rowers).  If I had to deal with this issue, I would be looking to build a bridge (a draw bridge section would still allow navigation of ships in and out of the harbor), and just have the troops march over.


With this being an alarm beign sounded, you won't get an entire crew marching up to the ship at once, you'll get rowers arriving first, lightly armored troops second and the heavies last. And the ships are docked, with planks ready to lower, plus no need to load anything but the troops. Those 10 minutes you need to put on plate are still probably the main limiting factor, and while you're doing that, those ~200 crewmen that a trireme has can get on easy enough.

And if you have larger ships than that, well... a few Syracusias could probably serve as an actual bridge?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

I can't find WHY it works this way right now, and I have forgotten... but there's a known positive relationship between length of the waterline, and speed.  

That is, longer boats have a higher max speed.

----------


## fusilier

> You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.


John F. Guilmartin (2003), _Gunpowder and Galleys_, pg 217:

"This brings us back to our starting point: the galley's maximum dash speed of about 7 knots. . . . By driving the _ciurma_ [i.e. rowing crew] very close to the limit, a cruising speed of some 3 to 4 knots could be maintained for about eight hours."

The Olympias achieved a max speed of 9 knots (I see no evidence that it maintained this speed for "hours" at a time), although in his other work on the subject (_Galleons and Galleys_) Guilmartin acknowledges that the design of triremes would allow a higher top speed under oars than early modern galleys.  

Online you can find references to replica longships traveling at around 15-20 knots, but they're under sail (and ideal conditions), not being rowed (something which is not made obvious by the claims floating around the internet).  For rowing, 8 knots is considered the "technical max speed" for this longship:
http://vikingship.se/oldviking/roddE.html

However, it achieves that max speed somewhat quickly, and galleys of all sorts were known for good acceleration.  In the scenario given, the ship will be loaded down with many heavily armed/armored soldiers, and that will affect both top speed and acceleration.

if you have sources that claim such ships could be rowed at up to 20 knots, please share them, I would be interested in reading them.

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## PhoenixPhyre

I'll say that either way, it seems that actual travel time is not the limiting factor in this specific scenario. Getting people out of their bunks (etc), equipped, organized, loaded aboard, and then unloaded are the dominant times.

For ease of play, I'm going to say that these people are on the slower end for various reasons. Such that if they push through to the ground floor (where the "regular" troops can get) without taking a break or major delays (30+ minutes), then only the on-site troops will be there to greet them (there being non-regular troops in the rest of the building). If they take a break or delay a lot, then they'll have swarms of troops and will probably have to retreat. If they decide to deviate from a "drop straight out of the sky" policy and swing by and fireball the boats at the fortress side on their way in, they'll risk getting shot out of the sky by archers but potentially put a major crimp in the response.

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## fusilier

> You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.


A report on the reconstruction of the Sea Stallion (EDIT - a replica viking longship) can be downloaded here:
https://www.saxonship.org/wp-content...onEtcV1.0.docx
[Note this is a link to a word document]

On Page 5, they note that the maximum speed achieved while rowing was 5 knots, and that was only possible for short distance:



> It was discovered during the trial voyages on Roskilde Fjord and the journey to Dublin, that under good conditions, the Sea Stallion is capable of reaching speeds of up to 17 knots under sail, and 5 knots by rowing with a full crew, although it is only possible to row this quickly for short distances (Bill et al 2007:63; Johansen 2009:62). It would appear that the average speed however is roughly 6-8 knots when under sail, and 2-3 knots rowing with the mast lowered (Information Panel 2015).


I believe this may have been in the open ocean, and in a harbor I would expect the conditions would generally be a bit calmer, and probably allow a higher top speed under oars.  But still no where near 15-20 knots.  

While it is fair to assume that the modern rowers aren't as conditioned to rowing (or rowing in this particular style), many also make the assumption that the historical oarsmen weren't as well fed and strong as their modern counterparts -- I don't necessarily think that is a fair assumption (we do know that the modern descendants of the vikings are considerable taller).  Even giving the benefit of the doubt to the historical oarsmen, we're probably talking about another knot or two in top speed, not doubling, or tripling, maximum speed under oars.

------------
In case anybody wants to check it up, the references in the above quote are:



> Bill, J., Nielsen, S., Andersen, E. and Damgård-Sørensen. 2007. Welcome on Board! The Sea Stallion from Glendalough- A Viking Longship Recreated. The Viking Ship Museum: Roskilde.
> 
> Information Panel. 2015. Information Panel next to the berth of the Sea Stallion. Viking Ship Museum: Roskilde
> 
> Johansen, R. 2009. The Viking Ships of Skuldelev. In Bennett, J. (ed.) 2009. Sailing into The Past: Learning From Replica Ships. Naval Institute Press: Maryland. P52-69.

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## DrewID

> I can't find WHY it works this way right now, and I have forgotten... but there's a known positive relationship between length of the waterline, and speed.  
> 
> That is, longer boats have a higher max speed.


ISTR from an article in _Dragon Magazine_ long, long ago that it is Froude's Law.  Based on the fact that when you move over the water, you create waves.  The distance from wave peak to wave peak (wavelength) is proportional to your speed.  The maximum efficient speed is when your bow and your stern are both at a wave peak.  When you exceed that speed, the wavelength exceeds the length of your ship, and your stern slips down into the trough.  At that point, you are effectively sailing uphill.  Something like that.

Looks like it was "The Hull Truth About Speed" from Dragon #70.  Which was in 1983.  Which officially qualifies as "long, long ago".

DrewID

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## Saint-Just

I want to sort of "pre-register" my question given the constraints of this forum.

Should I try to carefully formulate a question pertaining to laws of war, Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868, Hague Conventions and usage of non-solid projectiles or this is impossible task?

(I am not asking for dispensation; I know that if I screw up it's still on me no matter what).

----------


## Brother Oni

> I want to sort of "pre-register" my question given the constraints of this forum.
> 
> Should I try to carefully formulate a question pertaining to laws of war, Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868, Hague Conventions and usage of non-solid projectiles or this is impossible task?
> 
> (I am not asking for dispensation; I know that if I screw up it's still on me no matter what).


If you were asking about the effects of non-solid projectiles, technology and damage potential thereof, that would be fine.

If you were asking about the results of that damage and any appearance of 'undue suffering' that might impact social and political factors resulting in the legality of the munitions usage, that would be off limits. This would include historical comparison to existing or former legislation/laws on similar munitions.

If you're not sure, then I would advise not asking it here - Reddit might be a better place in the right sub-Reddit.

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## KineticDiplomat

Leaving an answer to that question as vague as possible, there was a longitudinal study conducted a few years back about the compliance of warring parties with established codes and laws, and the general conclusion was that the sweet spot for actually following those laws is major and reasonably centralized  powers fighting over issues that are not of existential importance and don't involve large portions of the population. 

So, generally speaking, the further you go away from limited wars on behalf of nation states and the occasional tribal ceremonial war, the less likely the specifics of the legal code itself are going to matter beyond whatever the tacit agreements are within the warring parties. I think Van Creveld points out that on top wars between differing cultures tend to get nasty because it's a rare legal code seen as universally legitimate , and each sides brand of morality/ethics will diverge far enough that the space for implicit "good" behavior shrinks. Cue each side thinking the other is being a savage fighting outside unwritten laws of war, and reacting accordingly...

All of which is a very long way to say that in most RPG settings (big honking war between big nations for big important things OR rebellion and insurrectjon) the details of non solid projectiles are probably going to be honored mostly in the breach, ignored, judged merely as an additional detail by the victor or adhered to largely as a result of existing manufacturing more than an attempt at legal compliance.

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## Saint-Just

I was not going to ask "what ifs".

A question I think is safe to ask here is: is Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868 considered to be in force today? I know it's not the part of the international laws of war and only binding on signatories but those signatories are important states.

And the other non-question would be: I am under impression that interpretation of some international laws of war as embodied in the weapons systems and doctrine has significantly changed between 1900 and 2000, but I cant find any discussion of changing interpretations, only seemingly contradictory facts (in year X Country N thinks it's illegal; In year Y country N thinks it's legal; relevant international laws are the same AFAIK). Where would you recommend me to ask the question about that?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Where would you recommend me to ask the question about that?


This is pretty much modern international law issue, so anywhere where lawyers that deal with it congregate. I suspect there's a reddit for that. Or email a law history professor, if you want to go the extra mile.

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## KineticDiplomat

The Hague conventions of 1899 formally expand on the St Petersburg declaration, but only applies to its signatories.

The Geneva Conventions (1949) and their additional protocols (1977) declare against unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury, but do not specify small caliber munitions.

The ICRC maintains that they are banned by "customary law" even if not specified, but there are large and influential nation states who maintain that a doctrine of military nessecity can authorize special small caliber munitions. Since those same states are the signatories and primary contractors to the Geneva conventions, you roll your law dice and take your chances.

The ICC has ruled things like frangible bullets to be illegal outside of armed conflict (2008), but despite the name the ICCs Rome Statute does not actually extend de jure to 2x permanent members of the UN security council, and de facto lacks the authority and means to enforce means and methods law within the bounds of most sovereign nations.

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## Catullus64

What can people tell me about the practices of looting and scavenging in the ancient and medieval worlds? 

I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.

If such people existed, do you think they're likely to be regarded as criminals, or merely disreputable tradesmen? Would a battlefield even be ripe for looting, or would the actual victorious army mostly pick it clean? Would they need to evade the notice of the armies in question, or could they openly follow them?

I know this is a lot like asking "What color did people wear in the past?", where just about every answer under the sun is true in some time and place. Nevertheless I appreciate any good examples to draw upon, or educated guesses rendered.

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## Berenger

This is only a guess, but I'd think that the best stuff (with either a very favourable weight-to-value ratio or immediate military use, such as money or good weapons) would be looted by the soldiers of the winning side after the battle unless they are prevented from this by direct orders (for example to retreat or pursue the fleeing enemy). I imagine that in more professional armies these spoils would be put on a big pile and distributed by some acknowledged system, to prevent grudges and infighting among the soldiers. 

The next best stuff that the soldiers can't or won't take would be looted by the persons in the baggage train of the army, which may contain traders specialized in such "second hand" stuff. These are often children or spouses of the soldiers and might do this on their behalf. 

If the army buries the dead before moving on, everything not taken would be buried with them. In this case, your hypothetical looters would be graverobbers and not tolerated in most cultures, so they would have to work in secret for scant pickings while risking hefty punishments if caught.

If the army doesn't bury the dead, they (and the leftover loot) will be left to rot unless they are buried (and likely robbed of the last useable things) by the local populace. During this time, I think they could be looted with relatively few repercussions.  

In conclusion, maybe make your people part of the baggage train or (semi-)official camp followers, not independents?

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## Pauly

Looting of the the highest value items was done by soldiers. It was well known for soldiers to stop fighting and loot the enemys baggage train if given the opportunity.

After the soldiers came their camp followers and the local peasants who were more through than the soldiers. 

Any organized and armed looters would have to fight off the camp followers and peasants. I suspect that professional battlefield scavenger would be a highly dangerous occupation as any organized military would mark them for extermination, as there are many accounts of soldiers reacting badly to peasants looting dead soldiers.

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## Vinyadan

Pretty much all references to looting I have read of in the ancient world referred to the fighters or the polity they belonged to. A big example are the Greeks looting the Persian camp after Plataea, or the Germani taking Roman eagles and sacrificing soldiers (people were booty). And there's that famous poem by Archilochus: "A warrior of the Saians now adorns himself with my costly shield..."

In Homeric epic, there is clearly an expectation that all loot will be collected after the battle and then divided among the fighters, based on their worth and power. In Roman times, some loot would be put on display: rostra, the extremely valuable bronze rams found on enemy ships, were salvaged and placed near the stage from which politicians addressed the people.

I think that the presence of many helpers meant that not much would be left for others. For example, a Spartan soldier had 7 Helot servants following him during the campaign. Roman legionaries were more autonomous, so who knows. But I think that locals preferred if an army just plundered the enemy camp and got all the cattle and horses held in there, compared to having to forage on the territory, so there were good reasons not to be

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## KineticDiplomat

As it relates to "follow and loot", Armies in antiquity- and indeed, well in to the black powder era - would often have a trail of camp followers. These could be anything from wives other family (or those offering the service at a price) to merchants, smith's, and other useful artisans, to thieves, conmen, and soothsayers. How many, what degree of discipline, and their role within the army could vary wildly even within forces of the same side and time period. One commander might be fairly permissive, another might decide they slowed the army down or made the men soft and have any he deemed excess or less useful driven off.

For most of the time period you're talking, arms and armor would be sufficiently precious that the idea of some sort of fighter not claiming them seems unlikely. When a chain mail shirt  or a bronze curiassis the mark of a rich man and increases you're likelihood of living greatly, you don't leave it there for a random barber-surgeon to snatch up. Lesser valuables like clothes and boots, you might pick those over - I think there's a Napoleonic account of a field of literally naked bodies after some battle where the soldiers and camp followers had literally picked the corpses (and in some cases the still wounded) clean. 

On top of which, big battles were not the norm for thr period of muscled powered warfare. Lots of marching, disease, bad food, and maybe smaller raids and skirmishes, but big decisive fights leaving enough dead and wounded on the ground indiscriminately enough to loot as a camp followers would be uncommon. 

So, limited opportunities to take second Crack at whatever the warriors left behind. Not great odds for the professional looter.

However, separating soldiers from their pay and loot after the fact  is a time honored tradition...

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## HeadlessMermaid

The late 15th c. English word _riffraff_ (and the Old French _rif et raf_ that it derives from), meaning "persons of disreputable character or low degree", originally referred to scavengers in battlefields, and specifically those who plundered "every little thing". High value loot was normally claimed by the victors, so these people picked the leftovers after all the soldiers had gone. The sources treat these scavengers with great contempt, considering them nothing short of human refuse picking up refuse, and the word was derogatory from the start. 

But they were just trying to scrape (literally!) a living in war-torn lands. Remember that wherever armies passed, they "lived off the land", i.e. plundered the locals for food and resources. For the civilian population, that was often the _worst_ part of war, as it could get very brutal and/or destroy their livelihood. Taking a little something from the dead seems to me less of a transgression in comparison, especially if the scavengers were locals, who were just taking a little something _back_. 

Sometimes they weren't locals, though, they were camp-followers. From what I understand, scavenging was not their primary occupation, it was complementary to doing errands for the army, or whatever else sustained camp-followers normally. [EDIT: as KineticDiplomat describes above.] Another class of scavengers is vagrants, especially after the Black Death. War, disease, famine, and enclosures uprooted many many people, and on the road options were limited: you could beg, do odd jobs, steal, or scavenge, and if you had the opportunity to do any of that, you would. How else would you survive?

I'm not sure we could call any of these people "professional" looters. Usually it was opportunistic. And I don't think anyone put too much energy in stopping them from scavenging: again, they weren't taking valuable loot, they were only picking leftovers, belts and shoes and anything that got overlooked.

If you want to write about a believable band of professional looters, I can think of two suggestions:

*1)* Have them operate in a limited geographic region, which happens to be ravaged by war in a prolonged conflict. This gives them lots of battlefields to plunder, lots of reasons to resort to plundering, and you can choose to make them as sympathetic or unsympathetic as you please.

*2)* Make them almost bandits. Give them arms and horses, and have them raid battlefields immediately post-battle, during the (official) plundering stage. This will allow them to take stuff more valuable than belts and shoes, but also now they're an enemy that the army would keep an eye out for, and fight. This isn't historical, AFAIK, but I wouldn't have any trouble suspending my disbelief for it. Bandits were everywhere, opportunistic raiders were everywhere, official armies operated much like bandits and opportunistic raiders themselves, so you're just mixing the timing here, it's fine.

(My source for the exact origin of the word "riffraff" is _The History of English Podcast_, I can try and find the exact episode if you want.)

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## Pauly

One issue is that soldiers have always taken non-soldiers looting battlefields very badly.
1) If you kill an enemy soldier he us one of them and its OK to take his gear. However a civilian looting a battlefield casualty is looting on of us i.e. another soldier.
2) Looters who came across a wounded soldier would either strip his body bare and leave him to die, or put a knife across his throat. Soldiers seeing that think there but for the grace of god go I and object.
3) The looters don't discriminate between good guys and bad guys, theyre all loot bags waiting to be emptied.
4) It goes against the long held custom of treating the dead with respect, which is a near universal human trait.

Any professional looting bands would attract the attention of the people best equipped and most motivated to do them harm.

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## Catullus64

> This is only a guess, but I'd think that the best stuff (with either a very favourable weight-to-value ratio or immediate military use, such as money or good weapons) would be looted by the soldiers of the winning side after the battle unless they are prevented from this by direct orders (for example to retreat or pursue the fleeing enemy).


I daresay that our scavenging band would probably keep their eyes sharp for circumstances where the army is ordered to move on swiftly without looting; although perhaps rare, that could be a potential goldmine.




> The next best stuff that the soldiers can't or won't take would be looted by the persons in the baggage train of the army, which may contain traders specialized in such "second hand" stuff. These are often children or spouses of the soldiers and might do this on their behalf.


I do like the idea of the scavengers being an acknowledged, if disliked part of the baggage train. People know, but can't prove, that they're mainly there to look the dead, so it's just a matter of picking the right time to move in.




> If the army buries the dead before moving on, everything not taken would be buried with them. In this case, your hypothetical looters would be graverobbers and not tolerated in most cultures, so they would have to work in secret for scant pickings while risking hefty punishments if caught.
> 
> If the army doesn't bury the dead, they (and the leftover loot) will be left to rot unless they are buried (and likely robbed of the last useable things) by the local populace. During this time, I think they could be looted with relatively few repercussions.


Another possibility is that they establish themselves as part of the local populace, who are usually responsible for disposing of the defeated dead. They can use the locals as a "screen" for their own looting (of second-order  loot like clothing, pins, cookware, food), while carrying arms to discourage the locals themselves from protesting. (In case it wasn't clear, my heroes here are not very nice people.)




> Pretty much all references to looting I have read of in the ancient world referred to the fighters or the polity they belonged to. A big example are the Greeks looting the Persian camp after Plataea, or the Germani taking Roman eagles and sacrificing soldiers (people were booty). And there's that famous poem by Archilochus: "A warrior of the Saians now adorns himself with my costly shield..."
> 
> In Homeric epic, there is clearly an expectation that all loot will be collected after the battle and then divided among the fighters, based on their worth and power. In Roman times, some loot would be put on display: rostra, the extremely valuable bronze rams found on enemy ships, were salvaged and placed near the stage from which politicians addressed the people.
> 
> I think that the presence of many helpers meant that not much would be left for others. For example, a Spartan soldier had 7 Helot servants following him during the campaign. Roman legionaries were more autonomous, so who knows. But I think that locals preferred if an army just plundered the enemy camp and got all the cattle and horses held in there, compared to having to forage on the territory, so there were good reasons not to be.


I definitely intend for the story to include a great deal of ironic parallel between the "morally upright" looting of a victorious army (the sort of looting that elites of a society love to put in their literary records), and the the "dishonorable" looting of opportunistic civilians, who in this case have been displaced from their ordinary lives by the war itself. One of the looters is a poet, who is well aware of the idioms and formulas for classical, heroic spoils, and probably takes an ironic delight in applying them to his own disreputable business.




> When a chain mail shirt or a bronze curiassis the mark of a rich man and increases you're likelihood of living greatly, you don't leave it there for a random barber-surgeon to snatch up. Lesser valuables like clothes and boots, you might pick those over - I think there's a Napoleonic account of a field of literally naked bodies after some battle where the soldiers and camp followers had literally picked the corpses (and in some cases the still wounded) clean.
> 
> On top of which, big battles were not the norm for the period of muscled powered warfare. Lots of marching, disease, bad food, and maybe smaller raids and skirmishes, but big decisive fights leaving enough dead and wounded on the ground indiscriminately enough to loot as a camp followers would be uncommon.
> 
> So, limited opportunities to take second Crack at whatever the warriors left behind. Not great odds for the professional looter.
> 
> However, separating soldiers from their pay and loot after the fact is a time honored tradition.


That Napoleonic account, true or not, is good imagery. I'll definitely be thinking about that when writing; an expert, maybe an ex-tailor or something, in quickly stripping the clothes off of corpses without damaging them, sounds like a fun side character.

By funny coincidence, one of my planned main characters is (or was) a literal barber-surgeon.

It's the case as you say, I think, that just battlefield looting by itself probably doesn't have a profit-risk ratio that would entice anyone to do it. I'll definitely portray my protagonists as multi-purpose camp followers; its just that the main action of the story itself takes place in the aftermath of the battle, when they spy a good opportunity for loot.




> The late 15th c. English word riffraff (and the Old French rif et raf that it derives from), meaning "persons of disreputable character or low degree", originally referred to scavengers in battlefields, and specifically those who plundered "every little thing". High value loot was normally claimed by the victors, so these people picked the leftovers after all the soldiers had gone. The sources treat these scavengers with great contempt, considering them nothing short of human refuse picking up refuse, and the word was derogatory from the start.
> 
> But they were just trying to scrape (literally!) a living in war-torn lands. Remember that wherever armies passed, they "lived off the land", i.e. plundered the locals for food and resources. For the civilian population, that was often the worst part of war, as it could get very brutal and/or destroy their livelihood. Taking a little something from the dead seems to me less of a transgression in comparison, especially if the scavengers were locals, who were just taking a little something back.
> 
> Sometimes they weren't locals, though, they were camp-followers. From what I understand, scavenging was not their primary occupation, it was complementary to doing errands for the army, or whatever else sustained camp-followers normally. [EDIT: as KineticDiplomat describes above.] Another class of scavengers is vagrants, especially after the Black Death. War, disease, famine, and enclosures uprooted many many people, and on the road options were limited: you could beg, do odd jobs, steal, or scavenge, and if you had the opportunity to do any of that, you would. How else would you survive?
> 
> I'm not sure we could call any of these people "professional" looters. Usually it was opportunistic. And I don't think anyone put too much energy in stopping them from scavenging: again, they weren't taking valuable loot, they were only picking leftovers, belts and shoes and anything that got overlooked.
> 
> If you want to write about a believable band of professional looters, I can think of two suggestions:
> ...


This is all tremendously useful info/insight, and much of it aligns with my own thinking. My heroes are definitely people displaced by war, though still rather unscrupulous for all that. They're "professional" only in the sense that 1) Camp-following and looting are their main occupation, since their sedentary occupations have been destroyed, and 2) They've gotten really good at it.

As for your numbered suggestions, I think there will be elements of both. There's a particular war that I've thought up in the backdrop, with particular geography and combatants. Even with prolonged warfare, the protagonists have a creeping sense that a big battle is a sign that the war isn't going to last much longer, and this is one of their last chances to actually get their hands on some big spoils, so there's pressure to take risks on this one. While I don't think I'l go so far as to make them a fully armed gang of bandits, there will definitely be some military-like organization in their ranks, with with officers, guards, looting teams, and specialists.




> One issue is that soldiers have always taken non-soldiers looting battlefields very badly.
> 1) If you kill an enemy soldier he us one of them and its OK to take his gear. However a civilian looting a battlefield casualty is looting on of us i.e. another soldier.
> 2) Looters who came across a wounded soldier would either strip his body bare and leave him to die, or put a knife across his throat. Soldiers seeing that think there but for the grace of god go I and object.
> 3) The looters don't discriminate between good guys and bad guys, theyre all loot bags waiting to be emptied.
> 4) It goes against the long held custom of treating the dead with respect, which is a near universal human trait.
> 
> Any professional looting bands would attract the attention of the people best equipped and most motivated to do them harm.


All this, really, is just reasons why I think it makes a good story. Natural antagonism between civilian looters and soldiers means conflict, and a sense of real danger. The danger that the soldiers present, and their advantages over the scavengers, mean that our heroes need to be clever and bold to pull off their plans.

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## Martin Greywolf

> What can people tell me about the practices of looting and scavenging in the ancient and medieval worlds? 
> 
> I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.
> 
> If such people existed, do you think they're likely to be regarded as criminals, or merely disreputable tradesmen? Would a battlefield even be ripe for looting, or would the actual victorious army mostly pick it clean? Would they need to evade the notice of the armies in question, or could they openly follow them?
> 
> I know this is a lot like asking "What color did people wear in the past?", where just about every answer under the sun is true in some time and place. Nevertheless I appreciate any good examples to draw upon, or educated guesses rendered.


*Nature of pre-modern warfare*

I and others have written on this extensively, in this thread as well as in books, so short version is - battles are incredibly rare, large battles even more so. Most of the warfare of the period is conducted by small skirmishes (about a hundred people total, so not unlike what you see in reenactments) between groups looking for supplies, and sieges.

Taking 100 years war as an example, it has maybe a dozen big battles, with three being notably large, for a war that lasted for over a century. As you can imagine, majority of supplies such as food came from scavanging expeditions, and majority of valuable loot came from sieges.

This has a notable consequence that, were someone to make a business model of looting after battles, he would soon starve, and looting after a siege is done by the victorious army.

*Nature of pre-modern war gear*

The gulf between combat capabilities of a civilian and those of a soldier was increased in staggering amount since the industrial revolution. A medieval farmer can put on several shirts, grab a pitfork and go into war as an equivalent of medium infantry. Modern civilian has no hope in hell of matching a mortar team, let alone attack helicopters.

What this means for any looters and pillagers is that the people they are looting from, even if they are simple farmers, are an actual, notable threat. While you don't need overwhelming force to intimidate them, you can't be outnumbered five to one and expect things to go smoothly.

Therefore, even if there is an otherwise open season on loot, you will have to have enough military force to intimidate the locals at a minimum, at which point the two armies may well be looking at you suspiciously, because you posses a level of force that is a concern to them, if not a threat.

*Medieval ethics*

We can't discuss politics and religions here, so let's generalize - if there is any sort of a code of conduct between two sides, whatever it is based on, it may well be upheld by both belligerents.

To put it simply, if the two sides get even marginally along, and you decide to loot from the loosers of a battle, the winners may well arrest you and either punish you or hand you over. This has happened fairly regularly during the Outremer crusades, often enough that Kingdom of Heaven movie actually had a scene about it.

*Customs of looting already in place*

I'm only well-versed in high and late medieval customs, but the general ideas were in place in ancient and renaissance armies as well.

Most of the soldiers in place are there with the understanding of being paid partially in loot. This is a major motivation behind them being there, in fact, since regular pay, if present, isn't all that much, and more winning means more loot. This did cause problems were frequently - mostly of the "soldiers run to loot before the battle is over and get ambushed" kind, but it was so ingrained into the ethos of the times you saw it even in the written contracts.

Those written contracts often mandated that a soldier brings loot back to the people in charge, where it will be amassed and shares will be given out - this is not unlike the pirate charters.

As an example:

*Spoiler: Jan Zizka 1423 charter, excrept*
Show


[this was all one paragraph in the original charter, I separated it for my sanity]
Ale jestlie by kde Pán Buoh dal nepřátely přemoci a porazili, města, tvrze, hradu dobyti, táhnouce polem nebo polem leíce, kterých kořistí dobyti: aby ten vzatek a ty kořisti sneseny, svedeny, svezeny a na hromadu skladeny byly, kde by bylo tomu místo ukázáno a jmenováno od starích, buďto mnoho nebo málo. A k tomu aby byli vydáni a voleni starí ze vech obcí, los panských, rytířských, městčích i robotěncuov, aby věrně způsobili ty věci chudým i bohatým, a spravedlivě, jak na koho sluí, rozdány a rozděleny byly, aby niádný sám sobě nebral, ani co kdo zachoval.

Jestli pak e by co kto vzal neboli zachoval, a to bylo usvědčeno dobrejm, svědomím, k tomu takovému chtěli by popraviti, k jeho hrdlu i k statku, buď kdo buď, ádných osob nevynímajíce, jakoto k zloději Boímu a obecnému, jako se jest stalo Achanovi pro čepici dcer královských a pro pláť, neboli jinou smrtí, buďto kníe, pán, rytíř nebo panoe, mětěnín, řemeslník nebo sedlák, i ádného nevymlouvajíce ani k vosobám hledíce a zříce, s pomocí Boí takovým činiti nad nimi pomstu.


*Spoiler: Translation by me*
Show

And were the Lord to give us victory over an enemy, were it a city, fortress, castle, field battle or field encampment, and should we acquire loot: this taking and this loot is to be taken and put in a pile in a place that was pointed out and named by the commanders[1], were the amount fo this loot great or small. And to this loot will be elected elders from all villages, a random selection[2] from lordly, knightly, citizenry and working class[3], so that they faithfully divide this loot to rich and poor, and fairly by merit divide and distribute; so that not one can take loot by himself or keep it from them.

Were someone to take or keep the loot for himself, and this was proven in good conscience, this one will we want to execute by throat and by property[4] no matter his station[5], without exception to any person; for he is a thief from God and from people, as happened to Achan for the hat of king's daughters and for the cloak; with any death, were it a duke, lord, knight, squire, burgher, craftsman or paesant[6], for no one of any rank will be excused; with the aid of God will we over these persons carry out a vengeance.

[1] the word starsich literally means 'elders', but this charter uses it to denote commanders of various ranks
[2] 'los' means that they were drawing straws or names from a hat or some such
[3] this means hign nobility, ordinary knights, burghers from cities with imperial charters and the rest
[4] this means loss of life and of your property, the translation from archaic Czech doesn't roll well in English
[5] literally 'whoever he happens to be'
[6] the English words for these titles aren't exactly 1:1, but close enough for our purposes


*Spoiler: Translation into normal, modern sentences*
Show

If we win any sort of battle and acquire loot, we will put it in one spot, pre-determined by the commanders, no matter how much loot there is. We will then randomly select from among our commanders a commitee that will see to it that this loot is divided by merit.

If anyone keeps stuff for himself, he dead, no matter how important he is, and we will take his stuff and divide it as well.


You can imagine that people who wrote this into their charters would be... displeased over someone else taking spoils from under them.

*Non-belligeernt looters*

They happened. Sometimes.

As you could see above, the armies of the time had entire systems dedicated to plundering the goodies. Moreover, they often didn't loot a conquered city or a village to the bone, since they wanted to either conquer it, or to loot it the next year, which means said city or village was capable of resisting any subsequent lootings by small forces.

When this happened most often was in cases when the victorious army couldn't take it all, for reasons of time or carrying capacity. Then, the locals happily helped themselves, and remember, these locals are both farmers and local lords and militias, so you can't intimidate them that easily.

*Is your idea possible?*

Unfortunately, the answer is no. It's not economically viable to make a living this way in the first place, and everyone would try to stab you.

*So how do we make your story work?*




> I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.


Good news: it's not impossible. Consider a mercenary company whose leader gains reputation for being very effective at the distribution of loot, and is therefore hired by armies to handle this for them. Basically, take the Zizka charter and replace random distribution by a professional with good reputation.

If you want this guy to work for both sides, have him cleverly negotiate contracts with both of them at the same time, or simply switch sides. This was hardly an uncommon thing among the various mercenaries, were they Swiss, Landsknechts, Condotierri or others - Fiore de'i Liberi, author of a famous fencing manual, was himself an artillery captain who was hired all over Italy and HRE.

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## Catullus64

> *Nature of pre-modern warfare*
> 
> I and others have written on this extensively, in this thread as well as in books, so short version is - battles are incredibly rare, large battles even more so. Most of the warfare of the period is conducted by small skirmishes (about a hundred people total, so not unlike what you see in reenactments) between groups looking for supplies, and sieges.
> 
> Taking 100 years war as an example, it has maybe a dozen big battles, with three being notably large, for a war that lasted for over a century. As you can imagine, majority of supplies such as food came from scavanging expeditions, and majority of valuable loot came from sieges.
> 
> This has a notable consequence that, were someone to make a business model of looting after battles, he would soon starve, and looting after a siege is done by the victorious army.


I used the word "battles" rather loosely. Sacks, raids, and skirmishes were definitely included in my vision, even if the aftermath of a proper battle is the centerpiece of the story.





> The gulf between combat capabilities of a civilian and those of a soldier was increased in staggering amount since the industrial revolution. A medieval farmer can put on several shirts, grab a pitfork and go into war as an equivalent of medium infantry. Modern civilian has no hope in hell of matching a mortar team, let alone attack helicopters.
> 
> What this means for any looters and pillagers is that the people they are looting from, even if they are simple farmers, are an actual, notable threat. While you don't need overwhelming force to intimidate them, you can't be outnumbered five to one and expect things to go smoothly.
> 
> Therefore, even if there is an otherwise open season on loot, you will have to have enough military force to intimidate the locals at a minimum, at which point the two armies may well be looking at you suspiciously, because you posses a level of force that is a concern to them, if not a threat.


Again, I don't necessarily find this discouraging for my writing. If the sweet spot of "strong enough to intimidate farmers, not strong enough to draw the attention of soldiers" is historically non-existent, I'm comfortable using artistic license to stretch it to "existent, but narrow enough that the odds are strongly against the protagonists."

The theme that these scavengers occupy an ultimately unstable and unviable economic niche, one that they know can't last even if it doesn't get them killed, is deeply appealing to me. It shares a lot of thematic territory with the "Twilight of the Old West" tropes that are so popular in modern Westerns. In a way, your explanations of why this sort of occupation wouldn't work have helped me clarify how I want to tell the story, though I may need a few handwaves to do it.

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## Martin Greywolf

> though I may need a few handwaves to do it.


You don't need handwaves, you need something that will cause a paradigm shift in pre-modern warfare. The base facts are that there are two groups already wanting to loot all they can: the winning soldiers and the armed locals. Neither of those wants armed looter organization around, and will need a damn good reason why they would allow it.

You could move the tech to such a place where locals don't have the means to resist (e.g. modern military situation), you could place some sort of cultural taboo on looting to the soldiers or so on. All of those are major changes that will completely change how war is fought when compared to ancient and medieval methods (e.g. with prohibition on looting, you will need supply lines that would shame the Roman empire and so on).

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## Catullus64

> You don't need handwaves, you need something that will cause a paradigm shift in pre-modern warfare. The base facts are that there are two groups already wanting to loot all they can: the winning soldiers and the armed locals. Neither of those wants armed looter organization around, and will need a damn good reason why they would allow it.


I think the answer, which I had partly already come to, and have partly gleaned from people in the thread, is that they _aren't_ tolerated; or rather, they need to pass as something other than corpse-robbers in order to be tolerated. I feel that by using the word "professional" I may have implied something more open and formal than I was imagining; it would certainly be wrong to say that any of them "profess" looting. These are camp followers whose main intention in following the army is to loot, and as such they're always watching for the opportunity, but they can still blend in with and function as the normal sort of camp followers who provide logistical support to the army. They are, functionally, thieves, but they still exist within a recognized, if disreputable, social role.

While your arguments about why both local populace and military forces are incentivized to prevent this sort of activity are convincing, that doesn't mean that there aren't gaps for opportunistic individuals to operate in. As has been pointed out, a commander might actively curtail looting amongst his own troops in order to maintain cohesion in his forces, or to move on quickly for operational reasons. Soldiers and civilian looters alike might just plain miss things. When I talk about hand waves, I'm not talking about ignoring social and logistical factors, but about narrative contrivances which allow these opportunities to line up.

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## Archpaladin Zousha

Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread.  One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, _Guns & Gears_ is the Harmona, described as such:

A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.

The question is, how large a bore are we talking here?  How big of projectiles?  I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.

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## tyckspoon

> Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread.  One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, _Guns & Gears_ is the Harmona, described as such:
> 
> A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.
> 
> The question is, how large a bore are we talking here?  How big of projectiles?  I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.


Not an area of expertise, so I will defer to any such who may frequent the thread, but it sounds like that's probably inspired by/meant to reference real-world 'elephant guns' meant to hunt very large game. The Wiki article about them may be a useful overview for you.

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## Pauly

> Question for the old-firearm-experts in this thread.  One of the guns in the newly released 2e Pathfinder book, _Guns & Gears_ is the Harmona, described as such:
> 
> A favored weapon of monster hunters in Arcadia, the harmona gun is a large-bore long gun that fires a heavy, slow-moving round. The gun got its name due to the eerie similarity between the buzzing sound its oversized projectiles make flying through the air and the flight of a fey bird called a harmona.
> 
> The question is, how large a bore are we talking here?  How big of projectiles?  I'm just having a little trouble envisioning the size and shape of this particular gun.


And lo, Gun Jesus did descend from the mountain carrying 4 bore stopping rifles (4 bore fires a round lead ball of 1/4 of a pound)

https://youtu.be/MDYtxxRU_cY

Then he turned and produced forth a 2 bore hunting rifle. (2 bore guns shoot a half pound round ball)


https://youtu.be/OYlDgwo52tI

There were larger rifles made, but 4 bore was the practical upper limit, with 2 bore being the overkill version. Anything larger would be impracticakmexcept maybe for shooting from the back of an elephant.

Stopping rifles, aka dangerous game rifles, are designed to stop charging animals such as Lions, Cape Buffalo or Rhinos. You can use much smaller rifles to kill such animals, but maybe not before theyve taken you with them. They areoften misnomered as elephant guns.

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## Gnoman

> I daresay that our scavenging band would probably keep their eyes sharp for circumstances where the army is ordered to move on swiftly without looting; although perhaps rare, that could be a potential goldmine.


Such situations wouldn't be "rare". They would be completely nonexistent. The only way combatants are leaving a battlefield (even a tiny one) "swiftly" is if they got crushed and were running for their lives. Sorting out the chaos after the engagement will take much longer than looting would.

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## Archpaladin Zousha

> And lo, Gun Jesus did descend from the mountain carrying 4 bore stopping rifles (4 bore fires a round lead ball of 1/4 of a pound)
> 
> https://youtu.be/MDYtxxRU_cY
> 
> Then he turned and produced forth a 2 bore hunting rifle. (2 bore guns shoot a half pound round ball)
> 
> 
> https://youtu.be/OYlDgwo52tI
> 
> ...


This was really informative, thank you!  :Small Smile:

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## Pauly

> This was really informative, thank you!


One little comment is that by long rifle they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.

Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges. 

The design requirement is for
- bring the rifle on target
- acquire a site picture
- adjust your aim
- fire
- *edit to add* have what youre shooting at drop dead before it reaches you
to be done in the shortest possible time.

By long rifle people may think if something like an Afghani jezail, which is designed to burn the most possible powder for high velocity bullets.

https://youtu.be/B-aEWZrTibE

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## halfeye

> One little comment is that by long rifle they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.
> 
> Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges. 
> 
> The design requirement is for
> - bring the rifle on target
> - acquire a site picture
> - adjust your aim
> - fire
> ...


Another extreme gun was the punt gun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun

They were shotguns firing huge numbers of small shot, but the bores were immense.

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## Archpaladin Zousha

> One little comment is that by long rifle they mean a shoulder fired firearm, the barrels of stopping rifles are proportionally much shorter than other rifles, having the a similar length to normal hunting rifles despite having a much larger bore. The ratio of bore to barrel length is comparable to normal caliber carbines.
> 
> Their practical maximum range was 100 meters or so and were often used at much shorter ranges. 
> 
> The design requirement is for
> - bring the rifle on target
> - acquire a site picture
> - adjust your aim
> - fire
> ...


True, but in-game the harmona is a separate gun type from jezails, which are statted up in _Guns & Gears_ as well.

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## Pauly

> True, but in-game the harmona is a separate gun type from jezails, which are statted up in _Guns & Gears_ as well.


Thats good. The original description was unclear..

For reference this is a video of someone shooting Ernest Hemmingways .577 Nitro Express, which is the smokeless powder equivalent of a 4 bore rifle. This one shows the effect the round has on a target.

https://youtu.be/pZ2tWPKv3GU

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## Martin Greywolf

It probably bears mentioning that stopping rifles weren't firing projectiles that were all that slow for their time period. Sure, they were black powder ammunitions, and they are slow compared to modern ammo, but only some muskets were barely supersonic, and some earlier models had muzzle velocities as low as 150 m/s. The stopping rifles were pretty much in the same boat, usually in the 350-450 m/s muzzle velocity range, same as most of the later muskets.

As for distinctive sound of the projectile, just about the only thing that could realistically cause a noticeable difference is a specific shape, kind of like whistling sling bullets. I'm not sure how much that would impact accuracy, though. That said, different bullet sizes in flight do sound slightly different, but to a point where you'd make a special note of it?

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## AdAstra

The only guns I can remember that were attested to as having a distinctive sound as the projectile flew by were the Whitworth Rifles (mainly the breachloading cannons). They used polygonal rifling where the bore was hexagonal in cross section, with the cannon projectiles in particular having a very interesting shape, as they also had a hexagonal cross section that twisted along their length to match the rifling. They supposedly made a very eerie whistling sound when passing by.

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## Pauly

The distinctive sound that should be associated with a stopping rifle equivalent is the earth shattering kaboom. 
I havent been at a range when someone has shot a stopping rifle, but I have been there when people have fired reproduction rifled muskets. The boom is much lower (larger bore) and longer (black powder burns slower than cordite) than modern rifles.

Theres no way the user will hear the projectile, that is assuming they still have functioning ears after firing one of them without hearing protection. At the receiving end: youre shooting at monsters not people; at the ranges you engage targets the bang will overwhelm and sound the projectile makes.

As for firing a slow projectile, it is slower than smokeless powder rounds. But black powder has a limit on how fast it can push a bullet, which is why 4 bores were invented in the first place. The only way to increase stopping power with black powder is to increase the mass of the projectile. So assuming a black powder world the harmona wouldnt fire a slow round.

The idea of a slower heavier round being desirable seems to come from a misunderstanding of what modern hunters call a brush gun. 
https://lockedback.com/brush-gun-rifle-merit-myth/
Lower velocity heavy rounds with rounded noses stay on target through vegetation much better than higher velocity rounds with pointed noses.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The only guns I can remember that were attested to as having a distinctive sound as the projectile flew by were the Whitworth Rifles (mainly the breachloading cannons). They used polygonal rifling where the bore was hexagonal in cross section, with the cannon projectiles in particular having a very interesting shape, as they also had a hexagonal cross section that twisted along their length to match the rifling. They supposedly made a very eerie whistling sound when passing by.


Artillery is a bit of a different matter, I recall a few accounts from WW1 where veteran soldiers were able to not only tell what caliber of guns was being shot at them, but also if they went long, short or to the side. I think it may also have been in All quiet on Western Front (which is pretty much an eyewitness account), but it's been decades since I read it.

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## halfeye

> Artillery is a bit of a different matter, I recall a few accounts from WW1 where veteran soldiers were able to not only tell what caliber of guns was being shot at them, but also if they went long, short or to the side. I think it may also have been in All quiet on Western Front (which is pretty much an eyewitness account), but it's been decades since I read it.


It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.

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## Khedrac

> It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.


In many ways that added to the "terror" factor of the V1.  If you could hear it you were safe, it was when the engine cut out that you worried - was it about to land on you?
My father lived under the flight-path so for him, as a teenager, there wasn't any terror - they just watched them fly over or watched the air force engage them  Apparently for those who lived in London though the "terror" effect of hearing the engine cut out was very real.

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## Martin Greywolf

> It also depends on the trajectory, in WW2 the "88" was supersonic, so the detonation came before the sounds of the shell through the air, which was just like the V2 rocket, whereas the V1 was noisy while travelling.


A lot of WW1 guns would probably be supersonic at the muzzle, but fall under speed of sound at long enough ranges. IIRC modern artillery shells can loose about half of their muzzle velocity, and assuming this is true for cordite as well... artillery of the time has muzzle velocities of as low as 500 m/s.

This would be a massive problem with small arms, corssing sound barrier destabilizes your projectile to a point where your aim is wrecked, but field artillery of WW1 will likely not care that much.

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## Saint-Just

> A lot of WW1 guns would probably be supersonic at the muzzle, but fall under speed of sound at long enough ranges. IIRC modern artillery shells can loose about half of their muzzle velocity, and assuming this is true for cordite as well... artillery of the time has muzzle velocities of as low as 500 m/s.
> 
> This would be a massive problem with small arms, corssing sound barrier destabilizes your projectile to a point where your aim is wrecked, but field artillery of WW1 will likely not care that much.


Spitzer loadings for 8mm Lebel, 8mm Mauser and .303 Mark VII supposedly stay supersonic for 1000 m. For round-nosed Carcano can only find info about 200m, still, extrapolating it pessimistically would give more than 600 m of supersonic range. Have no idea where to find anything on Russian Imperial 7.62 loadings.

Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.

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## Pauly

> Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.


Early bolt action rifles, essentially WW1 and prior, were sighted out to 1500m or more. The expectation at 600m+ wasnt to engage individual soldiers but to hit battalion sized targets. There are a lot of battles in 1914 where this type of fire was used to serious effect, not just Mons.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Spitzer loadings for 8mm Lebel, 8mm Mauser and .303 Mark VII supposedly stay supersonic for 1000 m. For round-nosed Carcano can only find info about 200m, still, extrapolating it pessimistically would give more than 600 m of supersonic range. Have no idea where to find anything on Russian Imperial 7.62 loadings.
> 
> Seems like it would not be such a big problem for riflemen - hitting stuff at 1000 m with iron sights is pretty much a "no" either way.


Well, yeah, small arms will be safely supersonic, you can go supersonic with black powder and a musket, smokless powder will give you enough speed to not have to worry about it. What I was talking about is artillery, where you don't use speed of projectile to do damage, only to get range - using a large shell and dealing with sound barrier inaccuracy isn't an unreasonable tradeoff in battery fire situation, but would be pretty bad if you added weight to your Carcano ammo to a point where it would drop from supersonic at 200 meters.

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## halfeye

Howitzers (firing at over 45 degrees of elevation (where 0 degrees is flat and 90 degrees is vertical)) vs field guns (firing at less than 45 degrees elevation) is also a significant factor (though Wikipedia seems to have partially adopted a USAian useage that makes howitzer mean what used to be field guns?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_gun




> Since about the start of World War II, the term has been applied to long-range artillery pieces that fire at a relatively low angle, as opposed to howitzers which can fire at higher angles.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howitzer




> A howitzer (/ˈhaʊ.ɪtsər/) is generally a large ranged weapon that stands between an artillery gun (also known as a cannon outside the US)  which has smaller, higher-velocity shells fired at flatter trajectories  and a mortar  which fires at higher angles of ascent and descent.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: sighting. 

This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.

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## fusilier

> Re: sighting. 
> 
> This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.


One officer explained to me that the point of those old "volley sights" wasn't to pick off individual soldiers at extreme ranges (some of those sights go up to over 2km!).  Instead it was for suppression fire -- if, for example, there was a bridge at extreme range that you didn't want the enemy to cross.  An officer would call out the range, and have his men fire on the target.  I believe more modern tactics would call for the use of machine guns, but circa 1900, when many of these rifles were designed, machine gun use was quite limited.*  Similarly, in WW1 you can find examples of anti-aircraft sights for bolt action rifles; they didn't have enough machine guns for AA work, at least at the start of the conflict.

*At the start of WW1, there might be a couple machine guns assigned to each battalion, not platoon, not even company, but battalion(!) -- and many nations were still lacking enough even for that.

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## Martin Greywolf

The real story of long range on rifles circa WW1 is a lot stupider - but only in hindsight, and hindsight is 20/20.

Remember that at the time, technology changed at a somewhat glacial pace, there were admirals in WW1 who were one step removed from Nelson. What most of the brass was thinking in terms of was Napoleonic formation warfare, with cavalry breakthroughs and so on. Every piece of gear was thought of in that context, and that... explains a lot. Sure, there were some more forward-thinking folks out there (French had, IIRC, something of an intermediate cartridge for their rifles), but majority of old generals...

In a battle like that, you absolutely want the long range, because if you can hit the enemy line from further away, you're gonna win. Target acquisition is dead easy, accuracy matters only to a point and so on. This was the primary purpose behind the ludicrous ranges you saw on infantryman's rifles, and why you didn't see scopes on them - scopes would only be needed for specialised skirmishers.

Machineguns were almost a brand new invantion, and, well, many thought they were of use in colonial engagements only. This was... pretty silly even at the time, actually, there were some recent wars that showcased their usefulness, but again - top brass wasn't used to rapid innovation, and many thought cavalry will beat machineguns the same way it could beat artillery.

Then WW1 break out and all goes to hell, and suddenly there is trench warfare (well, on the western front), and you have to make do with what you have. Sure, you can ramp up machinegun production, but in the meantime, you have to press rifles into MG roles, and those long range sights are pretty useful for suppressive fire at long ranges in a pinch. They aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun, but you don't necessarily have a machinegun - in many cases, it takes a while before people in charge even realize you need an LMG (that is, not just a man-portable MG, but one that can be used by one guy on the move) to make advances.

This is all very obvious to us, but again, hindsight.

----------


## Saint-Just

> Then WW1 break out and all goes to hell, and suddenly there is trench warfare (well, on the western front), and you have to make do with what you have. Sure, you can ramp up machinegun production, but in the meantime, you have to press rifles into MG roles, and those long range sights are pretty useful for suppressive fire at long ranges in a pinch. They aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun, but you don't necessarily have a machinegun - in many cases, it takes a while before people in charge even realize you need an LMG (that is, not just a man-portable MG, but one that can be used by one guy on the move) to make advances.


Ok, I really need more info. My current understanding is that not merely they were "aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun", they were so much less effective that it required some extraordinary circumstances for the volley fire to be of any use, especially at ranges of more than 1 mile (which was not a big deal for the heavy machine guns once people developed proper procedures). Obviously better than nothing, still not a reasonable use case (especially if you consider that you need to burn many times more ammo to suppress an area with rifles than you'd need for a machine gun).

Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs? Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fire in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?

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## Mike_G

> Ok, I really need more info. My current understanding is that not merely they were "aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun", they were so much less effective that it required some extraordinary circumstances for the volley fire to be of any use, especially at ranges of more than 1 mile (which was not a big deal for the heavy machine guns once people developed proper procedures). Obviously better than nothing, still not a reasonable use case (especially if you consider that you need to burn many times more ammo to suppress an area with rifles than you'd need for a machine gun).
> 
> Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs? Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fir in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?


The WWI bolt action rifles were all developed in the late 19th Century. Volley sights were used with effect at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898, which was only 16 years before WWI. The firing started with field guns at 2500 yards, then machine guns and rifles at 1500. No enemy soldier got within 50 yards, and the casualties were horrific. The Zulu were engaged at long range in the 1870s with effect, and there are other similar cases. The Boers in South Africa had engaged the British very effectively at long range with pretty much the same rifles that Germany would go to WWI with.

Cavalry had made effective charges in the 1890s, so it wasn't outlandish to think they'd still be able to in WWI. In fact, the Australian Light Horse did successfully charge entrenched Turkish troops who were armed with modern rifles,machine guns and artillery at Beersheba in 1917.

Now, the targets in those colonial battles was a mass of enemy in the open, and at 1500 yards a volley from a company of riflemen should put some rounds into a battalion sized target. Much like a single machine gun firing a burst.

So, yes, the generals of the early war, who had been company officers during the colonial wars of the 19th century, had seen long range volley fire be very effective. I'm sure that played into the planning.

The pace of technology increased rapidly around that time. You look at the lifespan of the Brown Bess musket which was in use for over a century from the 1720s to the 1850s, and then the Martini Henry which was only used from 1871, and saw it's replacement adopted in 1888.

The space between the last of the Colonial wars and the outbreak of WWI is shorter than the gap between the First and Second World Wars. While new weapons were developed and adopted, and tactics and doctrine changed, the lag is understandable.

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## halfeye

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun




> ...
> 
> The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns to deliver sustained fire for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without breakdowns.
> 
> ...
> 
> The Vickers was used for indirect fire against enemy positions at ranges up to 4,500 yards (4,115 m) with Mark VIIIz ammunition.[38] This plunging fire was used to great effect against road junctions, trench systems, forming up points, and other locations that might be observed by a forward observer, or zeroed in at one time for future attacks, or guessed at by men using maps and experience.


Rifles don't come anywhere near that.

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## Mike_G

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun
> 
> 
> 
> Rifles don't come anywhere near that.


And they don't have to and that isn't the point of volley sights.

The 1000 to 1500 yard volley sights on rifles were put there for long range fore at area targets or suspected enemy concentrations. They were used very successfully for that in the period when they were designed and issued. An infantry battalion dropping rounds onto a Zulu impi advancing across open country at half a mile is feasible. Against entrenched or dispersed enemy using cover and drab uniforms, not so much

That's why the overly optimistic sights exist. They seem silly, but nobody expected solider to be making hits on individul enemy at 1000 yards with iron sights

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## Gnoman

Most of the Great Powers were in the process of developing replacement rifles when war were declared. Volley sights were not a requirement for the new trials, and it was becoming common to remove them from existing guns during maintenance or refurbishment.


There was no movement toward an intermediate cartridge - all weapons intended for military use* were full-rifle designs in the 6-8 millimeter range. There is good reason for this, as the conditions of WWI made the range of a full-rifle cartridge very attractive. Guns like the vaunted US shotguns were of strictly limited use no matter how effective they were in the trench itself due to range - they lacked the ability to provide covering fire during trench assaults or to bring the enemy under fire when they were assaulting.

*Due to massive attrition, all combatants procured huge numbers of arms from neutral powers, including those intended for civilian sale. This included weapons that could arguably be called "intermediate cartridge" setups, but this was a result of desperation, not desire.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs?


With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't. Problem is, MGs were a brand new weapon and no one was quite sure what to do with them and how best to integrate them into the army - do you use them as light artillery? Defensive points for infantry support? DO you integrate then into every squad?

Well, it was the latter, obviously, but again, hindsight. WHat's worse, that solution is very expensive compared to others, since you'll need a lot of MGs and a lot of ammo, and ammo was often very scarce when compared to modern supply. If you look up how many rounds a standing army soldier had to train with his rifle per year, you get numbers that are usually well under 50. Using MGs would increase training cost by an order of magnitude.




> Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fire in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?


Personal accounts. This isn't the middle ages, you can actually find journals and direct eyewitness reports floating around. Find a battle you are interested in, find a biography of someone in it and you're set.




> Cavalry had made effective charges in the 1890s, so it wasn't outlandish to think they'd still be able to in WWI.
> [...]
> Now, the targets in those colonial battles was a mass of enemy in the open, and at 1500 yards a volley from a company of riflemen should put some rounds into a battalion sized target. Much like a single machine gun firing a burst.


And there's the word that's the crux of the issue - colonial. The problem was in the assumption that your enemy will give you those concentrated masses of troops to shoot at outside of colonial engagements against technologically inferior opponents (who were using actual muskets and often had pure melee units).

Thing is, this wasn't unforseeable if you compared what the doctrines of various major powers looked like, but even that sort of intelligence analysis was kind of a new thing - this is still a time when British newspapers were giving out critical strategic information.

I think it's fair to criticize the generals for sticking to what they knew too much (especially some, *cough* von Hotzendorf *cough*), but at the same time, it's a bit unreasonable to demand complete foreknowledge. Where top brass erred the most was not listening to their subordinates, many of whom had fairly good ideas about working with these newfangled inventions.




> In fact, the Australian Light Horse did successfully charge entrenched Turkish troops who were armed with modern rifles,machine guns and artillery at Beersheba in 1917.


That had more to do with the... I'll go as far as to say incompetence of their enemy. Why the Turks performed so poorly, I don't know, answering  that would require a long research trip. At any rate, this is sort of a trend, direct cavalry charges tend to succeed only when the opposition screws up, or there are other overwhelming circumstances. I mean, we saw cavalry charge work in the 21st century, but that doesn't mean we should revive light horse as a unit.




> Most of the Great Powers were in the process of developing replacement rifles when war were declared. Volley sights were not a requirement for the new trials, and it was becoming common to remove them from existing guns during maintenance or refurbishment.


Volley sights are one thing, but even WW2 Mausers had sights going up to 2 km.




> There was no movement toward an intermediate cartridge - all weapons intended for military use* were full-rifle designs in the 6-8 millimeter range. There is good reason for this, as the conditions of WWI made the range of a full-rifle cartridge very attractive. Guns like the vaunted US shotguns were of strictly limited use no matter how effective they were in the trench itself due to range - they lacked the ability to provide covering fire during trench assaults or to bring the enemy under fire when they were assaulting.


Okay, so I looked it up. The French Lebel wasn't intermediate, but it was unusually small when compared to its contemporaries (8 mm to 10-11 mm). It was also successful enough that it became the new standard, and sort of what we define full-power cartridge by.

At the same time, there definitely was a movement towards intermediate cartridge. Lever action rifles did prove effective in several battles, and several armies were looking into adopting them in some sort of capacity - again, no one was too sure in what capacity, and integrated MGs weren't yet a thing. Some of the Winchesters especially were adopted pre-war, deliberately for their rapid fire rate, albeit in limited numbers.

If WW1 happened a decade or two later, we probably would have seen military adoption of an intermediate cartridge, since several companies were working on them behind the scenes. But WW1 happened when it did, and after it was over, military spending decreased by a huge amount since everyone was too busy rebuilding their economy, and weapons became less profitable on account of surplus of military guns.

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## Pauly

> That had more to do with the... I'll go as far as to say incompetence of their enemy. Why the Turks performed so poorly, I don't know, answering  that would require a long research trip. At any rate, this is sort of a trend, direct cavalry charges tend to succeed only when the opposition screws up, or there are other overwhelming circumstances. I mean, we saw cavalry charge work in the 21st century, but that doesn't mean we should revive light horse as a unit.
> 
> 
> .


I highly recommend Volume VII The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine by Henry Gullet of the official history of the Australian Armed Forces in WW1. 

The short version of what happened is that the Australian Light Horse deployed at long range and the Turks set their sights for 1,000 meters because they expected the Australians to dismount and move forward in skirmish order.
However in smaller skirmishes the Australians had the experience that in rapid mounted advances the enemy often forgot to adjust their sights. Consequently the most dangerous part of a rapid mounted advance was roughly 800m to 1200m from the enemy and that once you got under 800m the majority of shots went over the troopers. 
The Australians expected that the same would happen in a full scale charge.

The difference between Palestine and France was that in France engagement ranges were often 400m or less, so the cavalry didnt get the opportunity to go under the sights the way ten Australians did in Palestine.

The Turkish army was generally considered to be very competent at an individual soldier level, with the problems occurring at higher command levels and administration.

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## Gnoman

> Okay, so I looked it up. The French Lebel wasn't intermediate, but it was unusually small when compared to its contemporaries (8 mm to 10-11 mm). It was also successful enough that it became the new standard, and sort of what we define full-power cartridge by.
> 
> At the same time, there definitely was a movement towards intermediate cartridge. Lever action rifles did prove effective in several battles, and several armies were looking into adopting them in some sort of capacity - again, no one was too sure in what capacity, and integrated MGs weren't yet a thing. Some of the Winchesters especially were adopted pre-war, deliberately for their rapid fire rate, albeit in limited numbers.
> 
> If WW1 happened a decade or two later, we probably would have seen military adoption of an intermediate cartridge, since several companies were working on them behind the scenes. But WW1 happened when it did, and after it was over, military spending decreased by a huge amount since everyone was too busy rebuilding their economy, and weapons became less profitable on account of surplus of military guns.


You're off by around 30 years. The closest thing to an intermediate cartridge in the 1900s-1910s was things like the .351 Winchester Self-Loading cartridge - civilian rounds for hunting. Stuff like 6.5mm Arisaka is on the low end of a full-rifle loading, but is still a full-rifle caliber that is significantly stouter than 7.62x39 or 8mm Kurz. The big experiments with intermediate cartridges came on the eve of World War _II_, with things like .30 Carbine (a scaled-up pistol round intended to give vehicle crews and such a more potent self-defense weapon, not a replacement for standard rifles) and the .276 Pedersen round that the Garand was initially chambered in. Despite the similar designation, the .276 Enfield from the WWI period was a hotter and longer ranged replacement for .303 British.


EDIT (because Post is not Preview):

The Lebel was smaller than the previous generation of rounds because it was the first smokeless powder cartridge. This meant that it could hurl the bullet much faster (the expansion rate of black powder is fairly slow, which is why really big bullets were a standard - you can't throw the round any faster no matter how much powder you cram in, so you make it heavier) if you make it small bore, creating a much flatter trajectory with a longer effective range. That generation of cartridge was _more powerful_ than the big-bore rounds it replaced. 

There was limited experimentation with lever action rifles, but that mostly just helped prove to the armies of Europe that single-shot rifles weren't good enough, and you should really put a magazine on your bolt actions. After a few early experiments, the only real military use of leverguns was desperation measures during the Great War.

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## chitoryu12

"Intermediate cartridge" is defined by more than just the diameter of the bullet. While 8mm Lebel has a physically smaller bullet than the 11mm Gras it was based on, it's only 1 millimeter shorter in overall length. Intermediate cartridges are physically smaller in overall size even if their caliber is similar to the larger rifle cartridge they're replacing, which is what allows them to have significantly reduced recoil and a lighter weight and smaller size that allow for more ammunition to be carried.

8mm Lebel was a hasty design made pretty much by just necking down 11mm Gras to a smaller bullet. The two have very similar muzzle energy, with the Lebel getting it from the velocity rather than the physical mass of the bullet. This, along with the later spitzer (pointed) bullet shape, gives it a much longer and flatter trajectory that maintains energy at range. It's _more_ powerful than 11mm Gras at 100 yards.

This is also why it turned out to be a very poor cartridge within a few years: the massive taper and thick rim were only really workable with the tubular magazine (the Lebel itself was a hasty redesign of the Kropatschek system, which used a Winchester-style tubular magazine). Machine guns have to pull them out of a belt backwards before they can be chambered and the incredible curvature of a box magazine severely limits capacity and reliability, which is why the Chauchat has a full half-circle mag that can only fit a max of 20 rounds and in practice usually can't even be fully loaded. This slapdash design was because France wanted to capitalize on their invention of smokeless powder before any other nations found out it existed; while they got the first smokeless rifle into service, it was quickly superseded by the end of the decade by other designs and France's attempts at creating a replacement never went anywhere.

And then war were declared.

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## chitoryu12

To further explain the development of the intermediate cartridge, I'll bring up the one weapon that actually _was_ close to an "assault rifle": the Fedorov Avtomat.



As you can see, it's hardly a small rifle. But it's chambered for 6.5x50mm Arisaka. This is right on the bottom edge of what constitutes a "full power" rifle round; it's still a good 50% longer than a 7.62x39mm or 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge, the same overall length as any of its contemporaries, but it has a much smaller and lighter bullet. This allows it to maintain a high velocity and correspondingly good energy at long range while having less recoil than a larger bullet. Russia was looking at adopting an automatic rifle and Fedorov had developed his own 6.5mm rimless cartridge (as I said with the Lebel, rims hang up and cause feeding issues) that would have lighter recoil than their standard 7.62x54mm round. Because they didn't have the budget to produce a whole new cartridge, but they had bought a ton of Arisakas previously when building up their military, they changed the rifle to 6.5mm Arisaka.

What's the difference here? This wasn't an assault rifle. It was a _crew-served_ weapon, with a gunner and a loader/magazine carrier. Despite having invented a potent (on paper) automatic infantry rifle, the doctrine of the time was still focused on long-range suppressing fire. The Fedorov was considered more of a light machine gun, just one that was more portable and accurate.

It was not to be, unfortunately. In addition to the general resource problems Imperial Russia had that precluded mass adoption of this new weapon, it was extremely complex and expensive to manufacture and poor manufacturing tolerances meant that each rifle was essentially hand-fitted to the point where magazines made for another gun might not fit (they continued to have this problem all the way through World War II with the PPSh-41). The Russian Revolution in 1917 finally put a stop to the adoption of the rifle and about 3200 ended up actually being built.

Likewise, all of the rifles firing "intermediate" cartridges, or pistol cartridges like Winchester lever-actions in .44-40, were emergency purchases due to desperation for any kind of weapon. The same phenomenon is why there were so many random designs for .32 ACP handguns in the war, especially the Ruby style based on Browning's design: attrition was so massive for the time that they had to take anything they could get. There's no evidence I know of that anything like the Winchester 1907 in infantry usage was considered doctrinally different than their bolt-action rifles or served so well as to inspire later developments; France already had their own semi-auto rifle project predating 1914 and the RSC 1917 would see frontline service. Othais from C&Rsenal also has not been able to find true evidence of the French converting their Winchesters to full auto despite the common knowledge of that statement, and he believes it to be an untrue "fact" that's simply repeated constantly.

If you want to look at actual doctrinal changes in weaponry during the war, the submachine gun is your answer. Trenches are extremely difficult to fight inside of, especially with such long bolt-action rifles, which led to heavy usage of handguns, grenades, and melee weapons (including improvised ones) for taking them. There was also a desire to give rear echelon troops like artillery crew a more effective weapon than a handgun but smaller and less dedicated to long range than a rifle (the same thinking would later create the M1 Carbine, which basically fires a magnum handgun round to muzzle energies almost on par with assault rifles). Early attempts were giving pistols stocks and extended magazines, as well as converting them to full auto. This proved impractical, as machine pistols always do. The MP 18 was the first dedicated weapon to put a pistol caliber in a full auto carbine configuration.

But in the end, none of these changes actually mattered. War was not decided by the specific details of the small arms. Any attempt to change to a semi-auto carbine would just result in more expensive weapons being lost in artillery barrages, or company-scale rifle fire blasting your trench raiders from a distance. The answer ended up being to mobilize as many men and arms as possible and use more successful tactics.

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## Pauly

The Inrange TV channel on youtube did a series on why intermediate caliber lever action guns werent adopted by militaries, despite them being very popular with non-military combatants, in the post Civil War west. Arguably the 44-40 lever guns could be considered the assault rifle equivalent of their time.

The series runs to 10 episodes of roughly 20-30 minutes each so there is a huge amount of info.
Even if you are to magic away the financial and logistical issues as well as the conservative military desire for full power rifles there are a number of issues that prevent their military adoption. The most significant of which were:
1) the difficulty of operating a lever gun whilst firing prone.
2) for sustained fire a trap door Springfield, or similar, offers the same rate of fire. Once the initial magazine is fired a lever gun has no advantage over a single shot gun.
3) you cannot ameliorate (2) by carrying extra magazines because the size and shape of the tubular magazine is too fragile for military use.
4) single shot guns were much more robust and reliable.

It would take the invention of the box magazine to resolve issues (2) to (4) by which time magazine bolt action rifles were available, and bolt actions trump lever actions because of (1).

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## Saint-Just

> It was not to be, unfortunately. In addition to the general resource problems Imperial Russia had that precluded mass adoption of this new weapon, it was extremely complex and expensive to manufacture and poor manufacturing tolerances meant that each rifle was essentially hand-fitted to the point where magazines made for another gun might not fit (they continued to have this problem all the way through World War II with the PPSh-41). The Russian Revolution in 1917 finally put a stop to the adoption of the rifle and about 3200 ended up actually being built.


I agree with your assessment of Avtomat as a weapon system, but want to add a correction about its' production history:

Russian Revolution delayed its' adoption, not precluded it. The plan was to produce 5000 guns to run the troop trials in 1917; that didn't happen; less than 200 were produced. However during 1920-1924 Soviets resumed its' production, produced more than 3000 and run the troop trials, before concluding in 1928 that they did not need that thing after all and warehousing what was left. Finally during the Winter war they were so strapped for automatic weapons that they re-issued the Avtomats and pretty much either lost or worn out all that remained.

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## Clistenes

Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon? 

I have read that it was actually worse than a simple Qing-long ji (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...RxWOCHjljDJMz6) due to more weight for no real advantages, on top of being a more expensive weapon, hence it was mostly a ceremonial weapon...

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## Martin Greywolf

> Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon? 
> 
> I have read that it was actually worse than a simple Qing-long ji (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...RxWOCHjljDJMz6) due to more weight for no real advantages, on top of being a more expensive weapon, hence it was mostly a ceremonial weapon...


Pretty much straight bunk, all the way.

Let's examine the first point, price difference. There is no standardized pattern to which pre-industrial manufacture weapons are made. Differences in blade shape, thickness and so on vary how much material you need for them. As for how fiddly they are to make, for your specific examples, quing would probably be more expensive because of the wavy blade. Also more of a PITA to sharpen.

In the grand scheme of things, the price point difference between the two weapons is so small you'd not really consider it. If you're outfitting an army and are that concerned about cost, you'll give them spears, or simple ji.

*Spoiler: Like this, but even less fancy*
Show




*Spoiler: Or scale it down even more*
Show


These munitions-grade weapons survive only rarely, and usually in bad condition, that's why you don't see a lot of them


Maybe you could say that fang is, in the broadest of strokes, slightly more expensive statistically, but the specifics will change.

Now, on to no advantage. That is very obviously false - if nothing else, fang has two blades on it, giving you the ability to flip it over if one edge gets dulled or damaged. That same fact can be useful for easier hooking of opponents or their weapons, as well as for blocking downward strikes with head of the weapon and false edge cuts. There is at least one way to follow up a standard strike from above with a staff weapon with a flase edge cut from above.

The question is, is that enough of an advantage? And, well, in unarmored fight, the answer is no, because spear's much greater speed and nimbleness beats any ji. In an armored fight, the additional hooking ability is just about worth it in terms of added weight.

*Spoiler: Besides, it's not unique to China, 15th c Italy*
Show




*Spoiler: Paris, 1550, you can see outer edges have a bevel*
Show





And all of that kind of doesn't matter. Because you need to do _a lot_ of unkindness to a weapon before it becomes ineffective. Even if you took all the weight from a fang and slapped it on top of a quing as a decoration or something, you'd still have what is a pretty dangerous halberd, just with a heftier swing and less nimble. The real reasons you see more of the fangs in ceremonial roles is, I suspect, just the reverse:

You had two weapons, both of them effective, both with pros and cons. When people in charge were deciding which one to make into a ceremonial piece, they went with the one that was symmetrical.

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## halfeye

> Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon?


From your link:




> Spear Description
> 
> This polearm is a spear made of metal with a stainless steel head.


Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History




> In the 1840s, both Sheffield steelmakers and Krupp were producing chromium steel


So no, this as described is entirely a fantasy weapon.

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## Saint-Just

> Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:
> 
> So no, this as described is entirely a fantasy weapon.


I think people routinely link to replicas when discussing historical usage; people do make things out of stainless steel which are reasonably faithful to originals at least in form.

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## Clistenes

> From your link:
> 
> 
> 
> Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History
> 
> 
> ...


The Fangtian and the Qinglong are NOT fantasy weapons, they are very much historical weapons.

I just linked images just in case somebody didn't remember what kind of weapon they are (having hard to remember chinese names), and one of the links shows a modern replica.

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## rrgg

> Re: sighting. 
> 
> This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.


From Ardant du Picq:

"Nothing is more difficult than to estimate range; in nothing is the eye more easily deceived. Practice and the use of instruments cannot make a man infallible. At Sebastopol, for two months, a distance of one thousand to twelve hundred meters could not be determined by the rifle, due to inability to see the shots. For three months it was impossible to measure by ranging shots, although all ranges were followed through, the distance to a certain battery which was only five hundred meters away, but higher and separated from us by a ravine. One day, after three months, two shots at five hundred meters were observed in the target. This distance was estimated by everybody as over one thousand meters; it was only five hundred. The village taken and the point of observation changed, the truth became evident."




> The Fangtian and the Qinglong are NOT fantasy weapons, they are very much historical weapons.




From an illustration of the siege of Boulogne made in the mid 1500s.

I dunno too much about east asian polearms though.

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## Myth27

How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target. How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?
Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot ?

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## Max_Killjoy

> How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target. How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?
> Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot ?


https://www.real-world-physics-probl...t-physics.html ? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAX72Xgf1U

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## Martin Greywolf

> https://www.real-world-physics-probl...t-physics.html ? 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAX72Xgf1U


Huh, I was about to gripe about using barely high school physics again, but the guy in that link actually uses the Siano paper on trebuchets. Kudos for that.




> How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target.
> [...]
> Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot?


That's not how these weapons - let's collectively refer to them as catapults - work.

A catapult has what we call the release angle, i.e. an angle at which the projectile looses the contact with the weapon. If you want maximum range and you are using ballistic equation, that angle should be 45 deg, if you are accounting for air resistance, the angle is ~35 deg, if the projectile is spinning, it may go as low as ~20 deg. More importantly for us, that angle is controlled by adjusting something on the catapult itself - the sling length, adding to the padding that stops the arm, etc.

That means you don't ned any height at all, it's perfectly possible to bury your catapult completely in the ground and have it shoot out of said hole.

The minimum range is similarly adjustable, and in both directions. You can either angle the release downwards to spike the projectile into the ground directly, or upwards so that it goes on a little trip into the sky and falls a few meter in front of you. Both of these can also happen accidentally, and let me tell you, it's a bit of a rush, even if your projectile is a basketball and you are wearing a helmet.

The reason this wasn't done was that, well, these are siege weapons for use against building, they aren't meant for shooting at moving things. Because of that, all you want is the maximum range possible, so the besiegers won't bother with decreasing the range too much. The besieged will want some control, because they want to hit the siege engines with their siege engines, but because the besieging engines are far away, they won't really bother with close range capabilities either.




> How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?


With pure ballistic equation, at 45 degrees for maximum range, height of shot is half of range. Once you want to account for air resistance, it goes a bit lower that that, although how lower depends on the projectile's air resistance and speed, and also on its spin once you start accounting for that. That is all in the ideal scenario, tha actual arc can be both higher and smaller, both at the cost of range.

----------


## Pauly

The effective minimum range is out of bowshot. Which depends on the type of bow being used, the relative height of the bow vis a vis the trebuchet/catapult, the skill of the archer and the arrows being used.

----------


## halfeye

> A catapult has what we call the release angle, i.e. an angle at which the projectile looses the contact with the weapon. If you want maximum range and you are using ballistic equation, that angle should be 45 deg, if you are accounting for air resistance, the angle is ~35 deg, if the projectile is spinning, it may go as low as ~20 deg. More importantly for us, that angle is controlled by adjusting something on the catapult itself - the sling length, adding to the padding that stops the arm, etc.


This 35 degree angle may be correct for guns particularly where the muzzle velocity is considerably supersonic, however for arrows and other deeply subsonic projectiles I believe that 45 degrees is close to the angle that achieves maximum range.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> With pure ballistic equation, at 45 degrees for maximum range, height of shot is half of range.


I was tempted to just say "height of the arc will be roughly half the range to the target on a max-range shot", but... I couldn't leave it at that either.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> The effective minimum range is out of bowshot. Which depends on the type of bow being used, the relative height of the bow vis a vis the trebuchet/catapult, the skill of the archer and the arrows being used.


I don't know where you heard this, but it's wrong. Max range of most catapults is about on par with bows, going from 0.5 to about twice that of a military bowshot. The difference is that the heavy warbow arrow weight tops off at maybe a hundred grams, while trebuchet can do a ton and a half.




> This 35 degree angle may be correct for guns particularly where the muzzle velocity is considerably supersonic, however for arrows and other deeply subsonic projectiles I believe that 45 degrees is close to the angle that achieves maximum range.


The 35 degree figure is for the spherical projectiles, or rather, golf balls, tested experimentally. The reason behind this is... well, kinda simple.

Air drag slows your projectile more if the flight time is longer, so reducing flight time reduces air drag and increases total range. There is a sweet spot for "45 deg optimal ballistic range" and "spike the thing straight to the ground to reduce flight time", obviously, and since less flight time is achieved only if you go under 45 deg, thats where your best angle is.

Now, air drag has a hell of an equation: F = 1/2 * rho * v^2 * C * A, and the lower this resulting force F is, the closer your optimal angle is to 45 deg. You can lower A, area of cross-section (sling bullets do this by being egg shaped rather than round), you can lower the drag coefficient C (again, sling bullets, as well as arrows), you can lower medium density rho by going uphill or waiting for good weather (there's a reason why the record for bow shot range was made by Ottoman bow in fairly high hills), but lowering speed is exponentially effective for reducing air drag.

Unfortunately, reducing speed is also very effective for reducing your maximum range.

tl;dr For ball, use 35 deg, for sling bullet, use 25 deg, for streamlined shapes, use 40-45 deg, regardless of how fast they are going.

----------


## Frozenstep

So, I'm writing a setting where characters have access to a magic that allows them to somewhat manipulate the physical properties of their bodies, and magical armor that's created to be an extension of their body. They can change the strength of the strength, flexibility, and friction of the material to a certain degree, and freely change it.

So first question, would making your armor/flesh more flexible without giving up any material strength be a good thing for absorbing damage? That should increase the toughness of the material, right? 

Second question, if you could manipulate friction on your armor, would decreasing it be the right play? I imagine it would make it harder for anything but a direct hit to do any damage, and I don't think a decrease in material friction would make it noticeably easier for a spear/sword trying to get through the armor, right?

----------


## Mike_G

> So, I'm writing a setting where characters have access to a magic that allows them to somewhat manipulate the physical properties of their bodies, and magical armor that's created to be an extension of their body. They can change the strength of the strength, flexibility, and friction of the material to a certain degree, and freely change it.
> 
> So first question, would making your armor/flesh more flexible without giving up any material strength be a good thing for absorbing damage? That should increase the toughness of the material, right? 
> 
> Second question, if you could manipulate friction on your armor, would decreasing it be the right play? I imagine it would make it harder for anything but a direct hit to do any damage, and I don't think a decrease in material friction would make it noticeably easier for a spear/sword trying to get through the armor, right?


So, there's a lot that goes into this.

More flexible armor would transfer more force from the blow to the body beneath than rigid armor. So that's worse. But it would allow better coverage of joints and more mobility in the armor. Making flesh and bone more flexible might help it absorb damage in a "bend, don't break" fashion. So I guess it depends? 

Now, reducing friction would probably be a good thing in general, as blows would slide off and transfer less of their force/impact/momentum (I'm not a physics major, so I'm not sure which is the most correct term) to the target. This is the reason for sloped armor. Make hits glance off rather than be stopped and transfer all that oomph to the target.

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## Frozenstep

> So, there's a lot that goes into this.
> 
> More flexible armor would transfer more force from the blow to the body beneath than rigid armor. So that's worse. But it would allow better coverage of joints and more mobility in the armor. Making flesh and bone more flexible might help it absorb damage in a "bend, don't break" fashion. So I guess it depends? 
> 
> Now, reducing friction would probably be a good thing in general, as blows would slide off and transfer less of their force/impact/momentum (I'm not a physics major, so I'm not sure which is the most correct term) to the target. This is the reason for sloped armor. Make hits glance off rather than be stopped and transfer all that oomph to the target.


Thanks for the answer! I was imagining more flexibility would lead armor to work more like a car's crumple zone, but thinking on it again, you definitely wouldn't want to make it easier for metal armor to cave in. Not sure about the padding beneath it though?

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## Mr Beer

If you have multiple layers of armour, I suspect a more flexible layer _somewhere_ would be helpful to absorb shock. I'm not convinced it would be a game-changer. 

Maybe you could mix up a non-newtonian fluid with water and cornstarch, change it's properties so it doesn't ooze out or evaporate and then incorporate it into a gambeson, that might be a highly effective shock absorber.

The obvious priority is to take rigid metal armour and make it stronger, harder and probably lighter. You want a certain minimum weight I think for helmets because below a certain mass it might be too easy for your opponents to knock them into your skull.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Plate armor almost requires a flexible padded layer underneath.

----------


## Vinyadan

Even today, I believe pretty much all helmets have some padding or a suspension system, so that the helmet is actually slightly distanced from your head and the force it would transmit when hit is dampened.

----------


## Storm_Of_Snow

> If you have multiple layers of armour, I suspect a more flexible layer _somewhere_ would be helpful to absorb shock. I'm not convinced it would be a game-changer. 
> 
> Maybe you could mix up a non-newtonian fluid with water and cornstarch, change it's properties so it doesn't ooze out or evaporate and then incorporate it into a gambeson, that might be a highly effective shock absorber.
> 
> The obvious priority is to take rigid metal armour and make it stronger, harder and probably lighter. You want a certain minimum weight I think for helmets because below a certain mass it might be too easy for your opponents to knock them into your skull.


Non-newtonian fluids would give you a higher range of movement than solid plate - although not much more, because you'd need to incorporate it into a cellular structure, or it'd wind up sitting at the bottom of your armour.

The sort of biomancy Frozenstep's talking about would be good with melee IMO, especially martial arts and blunt force weapons, to absorb the impact forces before they damage internal organs. Once you're into piercing weapons, and especially projectiles, you really need to limit the distance they can get through tissues, whether that's stopping them in place or deflecting the impact off at an angle. And even then, hits on the head can at least cause concussions, and potentially fatal injuries to blood vessels in the neck or cerebral haemorrages.

----------


## SleepyShadow

Hey everyone, I've got an adventure coming up for my group, and I'd like some advice on how to handle a few things. The players are going to be coordinating an armed revolt in an attempt to liberate a Germanic(ish) port city from the control of an occupying Byzantine(ish) force. Technology is approximately that of the 1450s, so gunpowder weapons such as cannons and harquebuses are available but not in widespread use. Not the most realistic scenario, I know, but I'm already dealing with a wizard and a centaur in the party, so there's that  :Small Tongue: 

My question is twofold: What are some things the Germanic freedom fighters would do when not being given direct orders by the players, and what are some countermeasures the Byzantines would do to maintain control of the city?

Please feel free to ask for more details. Thank you in advance.

----------


## Milodiah

> Hey everyone, I've got an adventure coming up for my group, and I'd like some advice on how to handle a few things. The players are going to be coordinating an armed revolt in an attempt to liberate a Germanic(ish) port city from the control of an occupying Byzantine(ish) force. Technology is approximately that of the 1450s, so gunpowder weapons such as cannons and harquebuses are available but not in widespread use. Not the most realistic scenario, I know, but I'm already dealing with a wizard and a centaur in the party, so there's that 
> 
> My question is twofold: What are some things the Germanic freedom fighters would do when not being given direct orders by the players, and what are some countermeasures the Byzantines would do to maintain control of the city?
> 
> Please feel free to ask for more details. Thank you in advance.


One thing I can say without doing a ton of research (which I kinda wanna do for you, not gonna lie, this sounds fun), is that one of the key things most urban insurrections have done for pretty much as long as there have been cities is the art of the barricade. It's something anybody can throw together, with pretty much random furniture and stuff, and in addition to being an improvised fighting position, it slows the movement of the opposition who is more likely to be coordinating larger groups of regular troops, especially cavalry, compared to the rebels who are moving around with smaller groups of more lightly equipped fighters. In addition, the locals know the city a lot better than the occupiers, they know that if this street is blocked off they can cut through the walled garden two streets over, go down the alley behind the butcher shop, climb over the fence next to the plaza with the water well, and be at their destination only thirty seconds slower. 

Plus, if you have gunpowder at your disposal, you've got the possibility of having a hidden cache of it near said barricade, with someone waiting to set the fuse and run if a large enough group shows up to start tearing it down, on top of the traditional tactic of bringing some skirmishers out of hiding, hitting them in the rear, and breaking off contact.

Also, pretty much anything to erode the occupiers' morale is essential, since that's what is really being fought here, rather than their actual military force. Burn their food stockpiles, assassinate officers, pick off any soldier who's alone. Scrawl graffiti where they can see it. Steal pretty much anything you can from them. Hell, the Swiss published a literal guidebook on how ANY CITIZEN can ruin the day of an occupying soldier called _Total Resistance_ and while its obviously about the period immediately after WW2, the general takeaway from it is timeless; anything you can do to make the common soldier have a bad time increases his anxiety, keeps him from feeling comfortable or safe, and in time might even break his will. Keep him from sleeping by making loud noises outside their barracks at night. Put out any light sources around their positions when they aren't looking. If they ask for directions, give them wrong ones. If they ask for food, give them spoiled things. Be rude to them in public but never quite enough for you to be punished. If they make you build new structures, do it as shoddily as possible. If they make you drive a cart, take the worst, roughest roads you know. 

You can leave the sword fights and sabotage to the small percent of people who are actually taking up arms, but everyone can do these things.

This treatment can be extended to anyone who cooperates with them too, to drive home the message that they are The Enemy and they are Not Welcome.

As for the occupying force, to reference things like Jeffery Record's work _Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win_ or Andrew Mack's _Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: the Politics of Asymmetric Conflict_, the occupying force has two general approaches to uprooting and ending an insurgency, assuming this is an ongoing conflict rather than a powderkeg moment where the insurgents attempt to transition to conventional warfare. The insurgency ends not when every single fighter has been hunted down and exterminated, because that's nearly impossible even today with all the technology in the world (though if there's any sort of thought reading magic, things may be different). Instead, the occupying force needs to convince the overall population that is supporting, hiding, and supplying recruits to the insurgency that its in their best interests to stop doing that. You've got two general routes, hearts and minds or total barbarism. Historically total barbarism has been preferred by empires like Rome or Byzantium; civilian reprisals (every time one of our men die, ten of yours will, even if they're just bakers or carpenters or farmers), extortionate taxation or commandeering of resources to drive the population into poverty, destruction of food supplies, and generally just letting their men sack and pillage at will. Obviously at first the population hates this and support for the insurrection will grow, but as time goes on and the rebels don't make any meaningful, visible gains or victories, and as the occupying force demonstrates that they simply will not stop doing these things until the rebels stop, the population will start to turn on them.

Another key element for the occupiers is infiltration and surveillance of the actual leadership of the rebels; obviously its nice to be able to steal plans, discover identities, and locate supplies, but beyond that it instills a sense of paranoia and mistrust amongst the rebel leadership and forces them to start being more and more secretive which can begin impeding their actual effectiveness. If leadership is too paranoid to send messages except in complex ciphers delivered by their most trusted inner circle, then they're not communicating nearly as well as they were before. If one leader starts suggesting changes in strategy, the others might think he's a double agent or is being coerced. And if every other month a rebel group is ambushed and broken up, then publicly executed based based on spies and insiders, the public isn't going to be sending their young men to join it, nor are the insurgents going to be as accepting of new members that could be plants.

----------


## Frozenstep

> As for the occupying force, to reference things like Jeffery Record's work _Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win_ or Andrew Mack's _Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: the Politics of Asymmetric Conflict_, the occupying force has two general approaches to uprooting and ending an insurgency, assuming this is an ongoing conflict rather than a powderkeg moment where the insurgents attempt to transition to conventional warfare. The insurgency ends not when every single fighter has been hunted down and exterminated, because that's nearly impossible even today with all the technology in the world (though if there's any sort of thought reading magic, things may be different). Instead, the occupying force needs to convince the overall population that is supporting, hiding, and supplying recruits to the insurgency that its in their best interests to stop doing that. You've got two general routes, hearts and minds or total barbarism. Historically total barbarism has been preferred by empires like Rome or Byzantium; civilian reprisals (every time one of our men die, ten of yours will, even if they're just bakers or carpenters or farmers), extortionate taxation or commandeering of resources to drive the population into poverty, destruction of food supplies, and generally just letting their men sack and pillage at will. Obviously at first the population hates this and support for the insurrection will grow, but as time goes on and the rebels don't make any meaningful, visible gains or victories, and as the occupying force demonstrates that they simply will not stop doing these things until the rebels stop, the population will start to turn on them.
> 
> Another key element for the occupiers is infiltration and surveillance of the actual leadership of the rebels; obviously its nice to be able to steal plans, discover identities, and locate supplies, but beyond that it instills a sense of paranoia and mistrust amongst the rebel leadership and forces them to start being more and more secretive which can begin impeding their actual effectiveness. If leadership is too paranoid to send messages except in complex ciphers delivered by their most trusted inner circle, then they're not communicating nearly as well as they were before. If one leader starts suggesting changes in strategy, the others might think he's a double agent or is being coerced. And if every other month a rebel group is ambushed and broken up, then publicly executed based based on spies and insiders, the public isn't going to be sending their young men to join it, nor are the insurgents going to be as accepting of new members that could be plants.


I'm not the one who asked the question, but thank you for giving this answer! This has given me a lot to think about for my own writing. Great stuff!

----------


## Berenger

It's already implied by Milodiahs post, but a good way to annoy an occupying army is to force them to waste resources, such as manpower. If the invaders have to maintain a strong presence of sentries, patrols and bodyguards watching every bridge, road, water supply well, grain silo, storehouse, port facility, supply ship, army officer and important colloborators mansion, this a) stresses the hell out of the individual soldiers, b) hits the empires treasury really hard and c) drains strategic assets the invaders could proably use elsewhere, especially in the case of a large empire that might have to deal with several insurrections, insecure borders or open wars at any given time.

----------


## SleepyShadow

> It's already implied by Milodiahs post, but a good way to annoy an occupying army is to force them to waste resources, such as manpower. If the invaders have to maintain a strong presence of sentries, patrols and bodyguards watching every bridge, road, water supply well, grain silo, storehouse, port facility, supply ship, army officer and important colloborators mansion, this a) stresses the hell out of the individual soldiers, b) hits the empires treasury really hard and c) drains strategic assets the invaders could proably use elsewhere, especially in the case of a large empire that might have to deal with several insurrections, insecure borders or open wars at any given time.





> One thing I can say without doing a ton of research (which I kinda wanna do for you, not gonna lie, this sounds fun), is that one of the key things most urban insurrections have done for pretty much as long as there have been cities is the art of the barricade. It's something anybody can throw together, with pretty much random furniture and stuff, and in addition to being an improvised fighting position, it slows the movement of the opposition who is more likely to be coordinating larger groups of regular troops, especially cavalry, compared to the rebels who are moving around with smaller groups of more lightly equipped fighters. In addition, the locals know the city a lot better than the occupiers, they know that if this street is blocked off they can cut through the walled garden two streets over, go down the alley behind the butcher shop, climb over the fence next to the plaza with the water well, and be at their destination only thirty seconds slower. 
> 
> Plus, if you have gunpowder at your disposal, you've got the possibility of having a hidden cache of it near said barricade, with someone waiting to set the fuse and run if a large enough group shows up to start tearing it down, on top of the traditional tactic of bringing some skirmishers out of hiding, hitting them in the rear, and breaking off contact.
> 
> Also, pretty much anything to erode the occupiers' morale is essential, since that's what is really being fought here, rather than their actual military force. Burn their food stockpiles, assassinate officers, pick off any soldier who's alone. Scrawl graffiti where they can see it. Steal pretty much anything you can from them. Hell, the Swiss published a literal guidebook on how ANY CITIZEN can ruin the day of an occupying soldier called _Total Resistance_ and while its obviously about the period immediately after WW2, the general takeaway from it is timeless; anything you can do to make the common soldier have a bad time increases his anxiety, keeps him from feeling comfortable or safe, and in time might even break his will. Keep him from sleeping by making loud noises outside their barracks at night. Put out any light sources around their positions when they aren't looking. If they ask for directions, give them wrong ones. If they ask for food, give them spoiled things. Be rude to them in public but never quite enough for you to be punished. If they make you build new structures, do it as shoddily as possible. If they make you drive a cart, take the worst, roughest roads you know. 
> 
> You can leave the sword fights and sabotage to the small percent of people who are actually taking up arms, but everyone can do these things.
> 
> This treatment can be extended to anyone who cooperates with them too, to drive home the message that they are The Enemy and they are Not Welcome.
> ...


This is fantastic! Thank you :)

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## Gnoman

Forged documents, or genuine ones you've gotten a hold of but can't use can be useful as well. A pretty solid adventure could be done where you're trying to slip notes on patrol routes or garrison rosters or whatever (such things did exist in the period) into the pockets of occupying officers. So that those documents will be discovered and that guy looks like a Resistance agent.

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## Pauly

> Hey everyone, I've got an adventure coming up for my group, and I'd like some advice on how to handle a few things. The players are going to be coordinating an armed revolt in an attempt to liberate a Germanic(ish) port city from the control of an occupying Byzantine(ish) force. Technology is approximately that of the 1450s, so gunpowder weapons such as cannons and harquebuses are available but not in widespread use. Not the most realistic scenario, I know, but I'm already dealing with a wizard and a centaur in the party, so there's that 
> 
> My question is twofold: What are some things the Germanic freedom fighters would do when not being given direct orders by the players, and what are some countermeasures the Byzantines would do to maintain control of the city?
> 
> Please feel free to ask for more details. Thank you in advance.


Re: The Byzantine response.
The most famous Byzantine way of dealing with enemies was to pay the foes of their enemies to make trouble and force the enemies to retreat and deal with the other foes.
Another method they used was to mix populations that disliked each other, moving a group of ethnicity [A] into ethnicity [B]s region and vice versa. Thus ethnic groups A and B would spend a lot of time fighting each other and less time resisting the Byzantines.
The punishment for rebellion was blinding, and if provoked severely enough they could employ Emperor Boris IIs method of subjugating the Bulgars.

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## VoxRationis

This might be beyond the scope of what knowledgeable people are allowed to tell me, but how do stealth aircraft communicate? If the idea of survivability rests on a bus-sized hunk of electronics reducing its radio signature to the minimum possible extent, how does that coexist with the nature of communicating via bursts of emitted radio waves?

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## Martin Greywolf

> This might be beyond the scope of what knowledgeable people are allowed to tell me, but how do stealth aircraft communicate? If the idea of survivability rests on a bus-sized hunk of electronics reducing its radio signature to the minimum possible extent, how does that coexist with the nature of communicating via bursts of emitted radio waves?


The exact details of this are classified, so the people who know how it's really done can't tell you. What we have are fairly good guesses.

The general idea is that you have two general solutions to this problem.

First one is passive reception. After you go quiet, you don't send out any signals, merely receive the ones sent to you. While that may theoretically reveal that something is going on to the enemy, the signal is encrypted, so all they know is that something is being sent. In practice, the air is filled with all sorts of traffic, and being able to pick out one specific frequency as "this is a stealth jet" isn't really possible. After all, you don't necessarily need to say anything to the mission control, you just need them to send you updates.

Second solution is directed signals. The easiest to get your head around are lasers, they go from point A to point B and are hard to see from the sides. You can do this with all sorts of electromagnetic waves, sending them out in a tighht cone instead of a sphere, the problem is that you need to claibrate your antenna direction fairly precisely. Also, this deosn't mean there will be no signal to detect outside of that cone (you can still see a laser from the side if it has to go through, say, mist), just that there will be a lot less of it and therefore harder to detect.

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## Gnoman

You can also keep the transmission power very low. If you're just sharing data with nearby aircraft, you don't need as strong a signal as it would take to transmit to base. Couple that with burst transmission, where each communication is extremely brief, and you don't make nearly as much noise. 

Playing with frequencies can do a lot as well, but that veers into the "this is really hard to answer because anybody who knows is not telling" area.

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## Berenger

I strongly doubt that this is the correct answer for modern stealth aircraft due to obvious drawbacks, but one hypothetical method to broadcast a message without revealing your exact position would be to eject a disposable transmitter that only activates after a short time (when you are several miles away in an unknown direction), sends a message pre-recorded on launch and then self-destructs.

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## AdAstra

Even modern active radar has ways to pretty significantly reduce the ability of passive sensors to detect it, which is fairly important given that a receiver of equal sensitivity will always be able to detect an emitter/receiver set at a greater distance than the latter can if it knows what to look for. Frequency hopping and transmitting across a range of frequencies at once both serve as a means of reducing the degree of signature on any given frequency, thus making the same total amount of emissions less obvious even if you're looking at the whole spectrum, and more likely to be excluded as background noise. Managing emissions that aren't part of the main beam and messing with your scan pattern and beam width also helps a lot. 

There's certainly a lot of top secret stuff (most militaries are reluctant to even use their most advanced radar sets or algorithms in exercises because it would allow other participants to get a better idea of their quirks), but even publicly available info has a lot of pointers in terms of keeping radio transmissions as sneaky as possible. These same methods, particularly directionality, are applicable to communications, as the F-22's directional communications demonstrate (I was under the impression that they just used directional antennae as opposed to lasers). Hell, you can use a radar as a particularly big and complicated directional communications device if you want.

As mentioned, there is also the brute force way of just emitting signals as little as possible. No matter how clever you are, still good to minimize emissions in the first place.

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## Milodiah

There is also the fact that in order to detect signals, you have to have equipment in place to detect signals, and it has to be functional and networked to have any sort of meaningful impact on triangulation and rangefinding. Which is why militaries have invested so much into electronic warfare options such as jammers, decoys, specialized attack aircraft targeting such equipment, and doctrines designed to minimize the advantages of such equipment. 

Honestly this is, as has been pointed out, one of the cutting edges of arms races, and its moving both so quickly and so secretly that outside observers have pointed out our current assumptions might be all wrong. The core concept of a 'stealth' aircraft is that as far as we know it's impossible to truly 100% cancel out all radar reflection, so the goal is to reduce it so much that its minimal apparent cross section gets dismissed as some birds, or atmospheric interference, or generally anything other than a warplane. But there's a lot of talk going around that some radar systems are being paired with powerful enough computers now that the deception threshold is much lower, and the pattern recognition capabilities of these processors have made the current generation of stealth aircraft obsolete because even the tiny, intermittent radar contacts generated by stealth craft is enough once all the random noise is more or less fully weeded out by a cutting edge system.

But it sounds like the actual experts are conflicted on whether or not that's true, since nobody has the full picture, and even if they were certain that's sure not going to be something they outright say in a press conference. Its no doubt the focus of several multi billion dollars black-budget projects the Pentagon is running right now, of the type that come from the vague slush funds because even having it be a named item in a Congressional line item budget would be giving away too much.

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## Pauly

One method used in radio transmissions is burst transmissions. Basically the message is recorded, encoded, compressed then sent in a very short message. Something that might take 3 seconds of transmission by regular means can be compressed to less than 1/10th of a second.
This also helps make your messages harder to decrypt.

The drawback is that even if it is harder to detect, triangulate and decrypt it is a very distinct type of transmission.

Another method involves bouncing messages off the ionosphere. The message is sent in a focussed beam that is sent to a known location. 
This involves having radio receptors in a wide range of locations that can relay the message securely to the base. I assume with advances in computing that you need less receptors than previously, but there is a limit to the possible pathways that can be used. Countries with a small physical presence will find this method almost impossible for aircraft, countries with a continent wide or global presence will find it easier.

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## Eladrinblade

Is there a consensus on what the 3.5 rules for a poleaxe should be?

----------


## Berenger

> Is there a consensus on what the 3.5 rules for a poleaxe should be?


I don't think so. Personally, I'd just use the values of a halberd, remove the "set against charge" option and add "bludeoning" to the damage options. I guess the developers omitted a weapon that has bludeoning, piercing and slashing damage on purpose so you can't sink all your wealth by level into one badass magic weapon that circumvents the "monster has damage reduction x vs. damage type y" minigame.

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## Storm_Of_Snow

> Second solution is directed signals. The easiest to get your head around are lasers, they go from point A to point B and are hard to see from the sides. You can do this with all sorts of electromagnetic waves, sending them out in a tighht cone instead of a sphere, the problem is that you need to claibrate your antenna direction fairly precisely. Also, this deosn't mean there will be no signal to detect outside of that cone (you can still see a laser from the side if it has to go through, say, mist), just that there will be a lot less of it and therefore harder to detect.


I'd guess at that - up from the aircraft using a dorsal transmitter to satellites and/or a C&C aircraft. And if it's a squadron flying in formation, low powered pulsed laser semaphore generated and interpreted by computer for anything they need to communicate between them.

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## Pauly

> Is there a consensus on what the 3.5 rules for a poleaxe should be?


Considering that any correlation between D&Ds combat system and reality is coincidental and unintended, no.

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## Eladrinblade

> I don't think so. Personally, I'd just use the values of a halberd, remove the "set against charge" option and add "bludeoning" to the damage options. I guess the developers omitted a weapon that has bludeoning, piercing and slashing damage on purpose so you can't sink all your wealth by level into one badass magic weapon that circumvents the "monster has damage reduction x vs. damage type y" minigame.


Sensible.  Personally I don't think any of a poleaxes ...weapons? would go up to 1d10, especially not that rinkydink little spear, but your version is simple and works.

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## SleepyShadow

> Re: The Byzantine response.
> The most famous Byzantine way of dealing with enemies was to pay the foes of their enemies to make trouble and force the enemies to retreat and deal with the other foes.
> Another method they used was to mix populations that disliked each other, moving a group of ethnicity [A] into ethnicity [B]s region and vice versa. Thus ethnic groups A and B would spend a lot of time fighting each other and less time resisting the Byzantines.
> The punishment for rebellion was blinding, and if provoked severely enough they could employ Emperor Boris IIs method of subjugating the Bulgars.


I'll definitely use this one. Thank you  :Small Smile:

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## Pauly

> Sensible.  Personally I don't think any of a poleaxes ...weapons? would go up to 1d10, especially not that rinkydink little spear, but your version is simple and works.


A few things about that rinkydink little spear. Talking broad strokes here and Im sure more expert users in the forum can add more information/correct my errors.

1) It is a purpose built armor penetrator, not a traditional spearhead.
2) traditional spears are used with the front hand providing guidance and the backhand providing power. Poleaxes are built for both hands to deliver full power.
3) the spearhead can do more damage than the axe or hammer. Swings are delivered faster but with only the weight of the head delivering mass, thrusts are delivered with the full weight of the weapon, plus an additional 80+kg of user mass behind them.
4) Other polearms (spears, halberds, bills, glaives etc.) are designed to fight at distance. A lot of their use is prodding and poking to keep the enemy at range. Poleaxes are designed to be used in close (i.e. sword distance) and their use is predicated on using full force blows and relying on your armor to protect you.

Its a long time since I ventured into 3.5 territory but here are a few things.
- it shouldnt have reach like a spear or halberd, you should only attack adjacent.
- it should give the user Power Attack, which is _always_ on and cant be turned off, except for stepping up to Improved Power Attack.

Edit to add
As for a weapon that does slashing, piercing and bludgeoning damage, I present the ubiquitous European longsword (bastard swords and 2 handed swords in D&D naming system)
Regular use = slashing
Half swording = piercing
Murder stroke = bludgeoning

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## Max_Killjoy

Yeah, many sources calling a pollaxe a "polearm" is probably leading to some confusion as to how they were used. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5mqf-GNIXI

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## Brother Oni

> Re: The Byzantine response.
> The most famous Byzantine way of dealing with enemies was to pay the foes of their enemies to make trouble and force the enemies to retreat and deal with the other foes.


Incidentally, this was also the go-to foreign policy of most feudal Chinese kingdoms, yi yi zhi yi (以夷制夷) where they paid the closest set of 'barbarians' to act as a border force against other 'barbarians'.

This policy hasn't worked all that well, with more than one set of paid barbarians overthrowing the Chinese regime and installing their own dynasty (and then they also falling into the same trap, a few emperors down the line).

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## Mr Blobby

> Hey everyone, I've got an adventure coming up for my group, and I'd like some advice on how to handle a few things. The players are going to be coordinating an armed revolt in an attempt to liberate a Germanic(ish) port city from the control of an occupying Byzantine(ish) force. Technology is approximately that of the 1450s, so gunpowder weapons such as cannons and harquebuses are available but not in widespread use. Not the most realistic scenario, I know, but I'm already dealing with a wizard and a centaur in the party, so there's that 
> 
> My question is twofold: What are some things the Germanic freedom fighters would do when not being given direct orders by the players, and what are some countermeasures the Byzantines would do to maintain control of the city?
> 
> Please feel free to ask for more details. Thank you in advance.


In RL examples of this era, 'rebels' won due to one or both of the two things - figurehead(s) to rally around [perhaps in exile or hiding] and things to encourage a feeling of 'Us' [and not Them]. The first could be members of the deposed Royal Family, senior nobles etc, while the latter would often be either nationalism and/or religion.

Therefore, savvy conquerors would try to eliminate one or both of these. And as the second is usually really hard to do, the first one is the best. Make sure the ruling line is as extinct as possible, slaughter the resisting nobles and give out their lands to your partisans, most of which will be loyal subjects from other places [the others being quisling locals]. If possible, find one of the latter to be your puppet ruler/viceroy. 

Then you apply the 'damp course' between our foreign nobles and native peasants - a large cohort of colonists from somewhere else to serve in what passes as the 'middle class' at this time [church, trading groups etc]. Divide and rule - the native peasants may be seething but they're basically unfocused, and they are unable to join up with either the nobles or burghers because they're all different and often these three groups would be at each other's throats anyway.

Therefore, if the conquerors have a 'barbarous' reputation, the city-state might have surrendered and be play-acting compliance as they ready themselves for the 'Great Rebellion' - knowing they only have one shot at this.

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## Grim Portent

One thing about the occupation scenario I haven't seen come up, how long has the port city been occupied?

Is this a very recent thing, or has it been going on for several years?

The longer it's been going on the more likely the city is going to be run by locals loyal to the empire who are actually somewhat legitimate leaders, as opposed to purely by a military governor from the empire who rules by the threat of arms, which makes the situation more complex and potentially more fun.

Subverted nobles, the town council, wealthy merchants and really anyone who's decided they benefit from the occupation and are averse to the city being restored to it's prior state would all have cause to try and thwart rebels to try and prevent the imperial military returning in force to implement harsh crackdowns.

This would make the initial conflict primarily with quislings, the local guards and officials collaborating with the empire, with the return of the empire's actual forces being a looming threat that threatens to escalate the situation if the locals can't keep it under control.

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## Pauly

> Incidentally, this was also the go-to foreign policy of most feudal Chinese kingdoms, yi yi zhi yi (以夷制夷) where they paid the closest set of 'barbarians' to act as a border force against other 'barbarians'.
> 
> This policy hasn't worked all that well, with more than one set of paid barbarians overthrowing the Chinese regime and installing their own dynasty (and then they also falling into the same trap, a few emperors down the line).


The Byzantine response was slightly different. They would pay barbarians from further away to attack the closer barbarian. Which lead to a famous reply to a Byzantine suggestion that the Pechenegs attack the Turks. The Pechenegs reply was that since the Turks were both numerous and fierce that theyd rather not.

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## Mr Blobby

We have to remember that it might not be a two-sided struggle either. Third parties might also be playing a game too, desiring the place for themselves. The pro-Independence forces might also be split; side X going for the last Prince's bastard kid, while side Y has chosen Noble A to start a new line, but side Z wants the old oligarchic republic [which X's great-granddad overthrew] to be restored...

It might be that the occupiers are holding on not because they're popular or powerful, but their enemies are split and half the time, fighting each other.

Another complication might be 'the Empire' may be in decline; that it's suffering from 'Imperial overstrech' and is weakening due to contant fire-fighting and wars on other fronts. A new conquest or not, the knowledge that their overlord's grip is fading might spur La Resistance [for example, the Empire has to pull out much of the garrison to fight elsewhere]

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## Pauly

Another historical thing the Byzantines did to consolidate power was to offer local nobility a promotion, a bigger better richer fiefdom, but in wayovertheristan on the condition they give up their current fiefdom. The Byzantines could do this because their nobility wasnt as tightly tied to the land in feudal Europe.
Refusing the offer marked you as a rebel, or rebel in waiting. Accepting the offer cut off your local power base and made you dependent on the empire to enforce your will on the new fiefdom.
This wasnt used a lot as the condition to do it (a vacant fiefdom) wasnt a common thing. 
The new guy the emperor would appoint to replace the current incumbent could be relied upon to be more loyal than the predecessor.

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## Saint-Just

> Another historical thing the Byzantines did to consolidate power was to offer local nobility a promotion, a bigger better richer fiefdom, but in wayovertheristan on the condition they give up their current fiefdom. The Byzantines could do this because their nobility wasnÂt as tightly tied to the land in feudal Europe.
> Refusing the offer marked you as a rebel, or rebel in waiting. Accepting the offer cut off your local power base and made you dependent on the empire to enforce your will on the new fiefdom.
> This wasnÂt used a lot as the condition to do it (a vacant fiefdom) wasnÂt a common thing. 
> The new guy the emperor would appoint to replace the current incumbent could be relied upon to be more loyal than the predecessor.


Japanese central government (however it was called at the particular point in time) tried to do this regularly with varying degrees of success. Date under Masamune famously defeated two attempts at that (first by taking new lands which were not that far away and turning them into even better power base, and then by persuading Hideyoshi to rescind his demand for resettlement on Shikoku somehow - my only source talks about semi-staged semi-rebellion which semi-delivered semi-demands and Hideyoshi chose to focus his ambitions on Korea instead of making Date fall in line).

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## Martin Greywolf

> Yeah, many sources calling a pollaxe a "polearm" is probably leading to some confusion as to how they were used.


They were used like polearms, because they were polearms, polearms being weapons on a pole that you need two hands to use. It's about as broad a category of use as swords, and if you take your two examples from both of those, there will be fairly small crossover in use, whether it is spear vs pollaxe or dussack versus a longsword.

Still, in both cases there is a significant crossover in techniques. Lichtenauer tradition mixes up messer and dussack terminology, and Fiore's axe (azza is what he calls what we refer to as pollaxe) in armor and spear in armor sections are fairly incomplete without each other (axe section dealing with crossings initiating from strikes, spear with crossings from thrusts).

What confuses most people at a casual glance is how different spear sparring looks to pollaxe sparring, but that's because of armor. Take that same spear and spar in armor (well, as if you were fighting in armor), and you will look very similar to pollaxe spars. I mean, yeah, pollaxe is much better at striking (but only with one end!), but parries and general approach to the fight stay the same.

*Spoiler: And pollaxes are capable of long range hits, if they have an opening*
Show

Fiore MS Latin pollaxe strike parry

carrying one to persumably brace it against charge, shield and all:

long range thrust alongside spears, in formation:




Pollaxe is a polearm, and has most of the traits a polearm should have, it's just very specialized towards one specific polearm use: against armor in two hands. But that doesn't make it not a polearm, that would be kinda like looking at someone halfswording a longsword, compare it to Highland broadsword and promptly declare longsword not a sword.

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## Milodiah

I think the confusion is that in tabletop terms "polearm" and "reach" are fairly synonymous. You could classify it as a polearm if you wanted, since it is in fact a fairly long haft with a head, but that's rather missing the point. The actual manuals of arms from the (later) periods like those of George Silver didn't consider it one in terms of use, since the haft is more an item of leverage than of range.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I think the confusion is that in tabletop terms "polearm" and "reach" are fairly synonymous. You could classify it as a polearm if you wanted, since it is in fact a fairly long haft with a head, but that's rather missing the point. The actual manuals of arms from the (later) periods like those of George Silver didn't consider it one in terms of use, since the haft is more an item of leverage than of range.


Yeah, but Silver deals with pikes and halberds. In the context of the 5 or 10 foot discrete squares, i.e. 1.5 m to 3 m...

Your standard footman's spear that is about or a bit under 2 m will not be able to reach a square over consistently. Taking my spear as a case study, my reach is about 2 meters when delivering a proper stab, and tops up at about 2.5 meters when I slide my lead hand. Any more than that, and you get into a dangerous territory where a parry will knock your point off line long enough for you to be rushed with ease. Sure, if I decide to lance with it, I can get a bit over 3 meters, but that's feat territory.

Assuming that the spear is the prototypical polearm, we can deduce the definition of a polearm to be this: provided you are standing on the edge of your square, you must be able to reach into the suqare one over with one of your standard-issue attacks. Can a pollaxe do that? The answer is yeah, it can, but not if you hold it in 2/3 "halfswording" way, you need to either thrust with it or swing it, and then it can just about reach the far square.

Another way to look at it is by asking yourself, how do you use it? And from that point of view, it is definitely a polearm, because the way you use a spear or a staff against armor is almost identical to pollaxe.

Another another way is to look at a pollaxe and declare that it is a hurty thing on a pole that you need two hands to use, and therefore a polearm. Which is perhaps not the most practical way of looking at it, because then two handed maces also qualify.

The real problem is that 5 ft square is an arbitrary measurement, and with those, you will always get weapons that are exactly borderline on the reach spectrum. It's just that this particular one hits pollaxes, but add a foot and you replace them with spears, remove a foot and you get longswords.

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## Thane of Fife

I read recently that crossbowmen would put honey on the tips of their bolts in order to aid with armor penetration (I think it said something about the honey gripping the armor and helping to guide the bolt in). It sounds plausible, I suppose, but I've never heard anything like that before. Anybody know if there's any truth to it?

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## Eladrinblade

> I read recently that crossbowmen would put honey on the tips of their bolts in order to aid with armor penetration (I think it said something about the honey gripping the armor and helping to guide the bolt in). It sounds plausible, I suppose, but I've never heard anything like that before. Anybody know if there's any truth to it?


I don't know about honey, but some people did grease their arrow/bolt tips which does make them penetrate better.  Tod's Workshop on youtube did a video about it.

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## SleepyShadow

> In RL examples of this era, 'rebels' won due to one or both of the two things - figurehead(s) to rally around [perhaps in exile or hiding] and things to encourage a feeling of 'Us' [and not Them]. The first could be members of the deposed Royal Family, senior nobles etc, while the latter would often be either nationalism and/or religion.
> 
> Therefore, savvy conquerors would try to eliminate one or both of these. And as the second is usually really hard to do, the first one is the best. Make sure the ruling line is as extinct as possible, slaughter the resisting nobles and give out their lands to your partisans, most of which will be loyal subjects from other places [the others being quisling locals]. If possible, find one of the latter to be your puppet ruler/viceroy. 
> 
> Then you apply the 'damp course' between our foreign nobles and native peasants - a large cohort of colonists from somewhere else to serve in what passes as the 'middle class' at this time [church, trading groups etc]. Divide and rule - the native peasants may be seething but they're basically unfocused, and they are unable to join up with either the nobles or burghers because they're all different and often these three groups would be at each other's throats anyway.
> 
> Therefore, if the conquerors have a 'barbarous' reputation, the city-state might have surrendered and be play-acting compliance as they ready themselves for the 'Great Rebellion' - knowing they only have one shot at this.


That's good to know. There is a figurehead the rebels are rallying behind. He's not a noble per say, but he is a well-regarded veteran from the last war.




> One thing about the occupation scenario I haven't seen come up, how long has the port city been occupied?
> 
> Is this a very recent thing, or has it been going on for several years?
> 
> The longer it's been going on the more likely the city is going to be run by locals loyal to the empire who are actually somewhat legitimate leaders, as opposed to purely by a military governor from the empire who rules by the threat of arms, which makes the situation more complex and potentially more fun.
> 
> Subverted nobles, the town council, wealthy merchants and really anyone who's decided they benefit from the occupation and are averse to the city being restored to it's prior state would all have cause to try and thwart rebels to try and prevent the imperial military returning in force to implement harsh crackdowns.
> 
> This would make the initial conflict primarily with quislings, the local guards and officials collaborating with the empire, with the return of the empire's actual forces being a looming threat that threatens to escalate the situation if the locals can't keep it under control.


The occupation has officially been going on for two decades, but it's really just an extension of an occupation that's been going on much longer. The flag has changed, but the occupying army is functionally the same as the last one.




> We have to remember that it might not be a two-sided struggle either. Third parties might also be playing a game too, desiring the place for themselves. The pro-Independence forces might also be split; side X going for the last Prince's bastard kid, while side Y has chosen Noble A to start a new line, but side Z wants the old oligarchic republic [which X's great-granddad overthrew] to be restored...
> 
> It might be that the occupiers are holding on not because they're popular or powerful, but their enemies are split and half the time, fighting each other.
> 
> Another complication might be 'the Empire' may be in decline; that it's suffering from 'Imperial overstrech' and is weakening due to contant fire-fighting and wars on other fronts. A new conquest or not, the knowledge that their overlord's grip is fading might spur La Resistance [for example, the Empire has to pull out much of the garrison to fight elsewhere]


There are multiple factions with interest in the outcome of this conflict, but only the Byzantine and the Germans have soldiers in the area right now. A neighboring country is supporting the Germans, because they want to use them as a buffer against the Byzantine. A more distant but more influential nation supports the Byzantine because they have a lot of economic investments there, and it's much easier to conduct trade with an organized country than with a loose coalition of tribes.

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## Storm_Of_Snow

> There are multiple factions with interest in the outcome of this conflict, but only the Byzantine and the Germans have soldiers in the area right now. A neighboring country is supporting the Germans, because they want to use them as a buffer against the Byzantine. A more distant but more influential nation supports the Byzantine because they have a lot of economic investments there, and it's much easier to conduct trade with an organized country than with a loose coalition of tribes.


You could also have other countries(*) who are acting as spoilers to keep one side or the other's attention this area rather than somewhere else, bleed their treasuries dry through having to fund the occupation or force them to keep troops involved in the occupation and bring newly raised units in rather than defending other locations, promote dischord in the country to provoke a revolution and put a new leader in who's more amenable to them and so on.


(*) Countries, different religious faiths, mercantile groups - pick whoever and as many as you feel like.

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## Mr Blobby

There's also the possibility that 'the Empire' is currently unstable and/or weakened. 'Byzantine-style' empires are autocratic in form, yet the technological level makes central control difficult. Any half-decent 'Emperor' is one who's able to perform the political 'herding of cats' to keep the show on the road. Sometimes the worst Emperor is the 'not utterly terrible' one; skilled enough to hang on to power, but too incompetent to actually to much more than that.

In situations like this, it's quite possible the Empire is running mainly on inertia and the edges are fraying. In this case, it might be possible to persuade the 'occupiers' to actually help them strike out on their own [or they might think of it themselves]. Therefore, fraternisation might be the name of the game, not hostility - to hope that when push came to shove, enough would have 'gone native' that they ignored the orders of the 'Loyalists'.

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## SleepyShadow

> There's also the possibility that 'the Empire' is currently unstable and/or weakened. 'Byzantine-style' empires are autocratic in form, yet the technological level makes central control difficult. Any half-decent 'Emperor' is one who's able to perform the political 'herding of cats' to keep the show on the road. Sometimes the worst Emperor is the 'not utterly terrible' one; skilled enough to hang on to power, but too incompetent to actually to much more than that.
> 
> In situations like this, it's quite possible the Empire is running mainly on inertia and the edges are fraying. In this case, it might be possible to persuade the 'occupiers' to actually help them strike out on their own [or they might think of it themselves]. Therefore, fraternisation might be the name of the game, not hostility - to hope that when push came to shove, enough would have 'gone native' that they ignored the orders of the 'Loyalists'.


Right now, the "Byzantines" are doing pretty well for themselves. They've got a small but strong army, a leader experienced as a wartime general and peacetime senator, and trade agreements with more powerful nations, one of which is willing to wage war on behalf of the Byzantines if open conflict breaks out. The Byzantines are a very young nation and haven't had any major setbacks yet, so the first and only generation of Byzantine natives are riding high on a history of success. The older and more experienced Byzantines originate either from "Old Rome" or allied "Germanic" tribes. If the PCs plan to persuade the occupiers, they'd have an easier time with the older soldiers.

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## Duff

> I don't know about honey, but some people did grease their arrow/bolt tips which does make them penetrate better.  Tod's Workshop on youtube did a video about it.


And here's te link

https://youtu.be/PKrbXurFrHw

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## Martin Greywolf

> And here's te link
> 
> https://youtu.be/PKrbXurFrHw


That's a Raid: Shadow legends ad. Even on this forum, there is no escape. Here's an actual link.

It definitely helps, especially with shields, allowing you to especially punish people who brace the damn things against their body - which we are explicitly advised against in some period sources. Outside of shields, however, the effect isn't as significant.

What really defeats arrows in mail + gambeson combo is the blunting of the arrowhead by the mail, making the gambeson under it a lot more effective. Greasing your arrow shaft will make the wound deeper, but we're talking half a liver vs all of the liver penetrated - kinda inconsequential, really. The real way to defeat mail is by either having hardened edges on arrowheads, or arrowheads shaped such that they won't get blunted (bodkins), carrying the disadvantages of much greater cost and being considerably worse at penetrating gambeson, respectively.

Against plate, greased shafts help a bit more, since a lot of the plate components sit on the body with a sizeable gap, but we're now in the realms of arrows maybe not being able to penetrate that armor at all.

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## Milodiah

It's an entirely understandable thing to do, and I imagine it's something that one archer would say and it would kinda pass around the camp with some people saying "that's preposterous" and some saying "huh I might try that". Ideas like that have survived into the modern era, with stuff like rumors of "teflon coated cop killer bullets" causing some criminals to try coating their bullets in all sorts of nonsense to try to get through Kevlar. I feel like at the end of the day it comes down to the fact that it's really simple to do, it really is like those One Weird Trick(tm) ads on clickbait websites. You might not be able to afford proper tempered steel bodkin arrowheads, but if you can't afford to get your hands on some simple cooking grease or lard, I'd have to wonder how you can even afford a bow or some arrows. And I figure if it did get tried, a good bit of the people doing it probably recognized that even if it didn't work, there wouldn't be all that much harm in trying. After all, it IS just grease, and it's not like it's going to ruin the ballistics of the arrow.

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## Pauly

The obvious reason to grease arrowheads is to protect them against rust. From there it makes sense that someone may perceive that greased arrowheads penetrate better than non-greased arrowheads. NB it doesnt matter if the perception is true, just that it becomes an accepted belief amongst a significant enough group of people. But as Tods Workshops video shows there is enough to it that people may have greased their arrows for their effect as well as protection. 

An alternative to using grease to protect against rust is using wax. Generally speaking grease would be cheaper, but someone of higher status might want to use the premium product, or because of local conditions wax might be more readily available than grease. From there its a small step to assume waxing has a similar effect as grease on the performance of an arrow. Then in the game of telephone of texts being translated and rewritten, usually by non experts, over the centuries at some point someone mistranslated coated with bees wax into coated with honey.

You have to remember that (a) Honey wasnt cheap and (b) people were often short on food which makes using good food as a coating for your arrows very unlikely.

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## halfeye

Bees' wax was sometimes used on bowstrings.

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## Brother Oni

> Bees' wax was sometimes used on bowstrings.


Wax still is used on bow strings as you don't want the individual strands to rub against each other too much (which causes fraying), protect them from moisture (particularly important if they're some sort of natural fibre, like linen or hemp) and helps them retain the number of twists (sets the bracing height).

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## Mr Blobby

I think some of the confusion might be also down to the fact _tallow_ candles were more common than beeswax. And tallow can be quite greasy. You see a bit of this confusion when you read old reports of people eating candles [such as the siege of Colchester in 1648, soap too].

Also; 'grease'/'wax' slippage might be down to the use of dubbin - a product which was around then. I've never used it on metals, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't help protect from rust.

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## Catullus64

I'm interested in the military education of medieval European aristocrats, and the extent to which they received anything that we might call formal instruction in military science.

The sources I've read seem to put a lot of emphasis on training in the actual use of arms, particularly horsemanship, but not much mention is given to training in tactics or logistics. The closest thing to tactical instruction seems to have been melees (in the sense of a tournament combat), and even the accounts of those seem to emphasize them as tests of personal prowess and courage.

The picture I form, therefore, is that actual skills of command and military organization were not taught as theory, but simply learned "on the job": as soon as you're old enough to wear armor and not fall off your horse, you're on campaign and witnessing your senior relatives and overlords engaged in the process of command. This forms an obvious contrast with modern military academies and officer training programs, but also a contrast with the ancient world, where there seems to have been a robust tradition of military manuals intended to instruct young men.

But my knowledge is of course sharply limited, so if anyone is aware of instances where there were formal traditions of military science in the medieval period, please share!

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## Martin Greywolf

> I'm interested in the military education of medieval European aristocrats, and the extent to which they received anything that we might call formal instruction in military science.
> 
> The sources I've read seem to put a lot of emphasis on training in the actual use of arms, particularly horsemanship, but not much mention is given to training in tactics or logistics. The closest thing to tactical instruction seems to have been melees (in the sense of a tournament combat), and even the accounts of those seem to emphasize them as tests of personal prowess and courage.
> 
> The picture I form, therefore, is that actual skills of command and military organization were not taught as theory, but simply learned "on the job": as soon as you're old enough to wear armor and not fall off your horse, you're on campaign and witnessing your senior relatives and overlords engaged in the process of command. This forms an obvious contrast with modern military academies and officer training programs, but also a contrast with the ancient world, where there seems to have been a robust tradition of military manuals intended to instruct young men.
> 
> But my knowledge is of course sharply limited, so if anyone is aware of instances where there were formal traditions of military science in the medieval period, please share!


Well, the first problem you will have is that the concepts of learning as such don't apply. And also the old issue of medieval also including Migration period about which we know very little. Going forward, assume I'm talking about high to late medieval periods, so about 1000-1500.

First topic we will tackle is education in general. There was very nearly no such thing, since the entire system of learning things for your livelihood was organized around apprenticeship. This doesn't quite mean you're learning things on the job the way you are sometimes forced today, there was a fairly rigid system to it with about three general tiers.

When you were young (and remember, there is no such a thing as teenagers when it comes to middle ages), just about to go from a child to an adult (so, anywhere from 12-20, often depending on how adult the people perceived you), you got yourself an apprenticeship. This was sometimes very formal, as was the case with squires or burgher craftsmen, involving agreements, verbal or written, and often informal, such as starting to work properly on your father's farm.

This apprenticeship meant doing the low-skilled labor associated with the job. You carried the coal to the forge, you carried messages between knights (sometimes on the battlefield) and so on, things you don't have to know anything to do. The learning happened partly on the job, but partly deliberately, by your master (or one of his journeymen) teaching you how and what to do when he had spare time. Some times, you see this tier split in two, one for menial labor phase, and then the second, where you know how to do parts of the job, or can work on some smaller parts of it independently.

Over time as an apprentice, you'd learn your craft, and graduate to second tier, the journeyman, called such because at this point, you know how to do a job and can travel around and earn your pay that way. A landless knight is a good analogue, as is a freshly independent blacksmith travelling to a newly-established town. Sometimes, you'd see these folks operating independently, sometimes they'd stay with their master and work with him as more valued and paid assistants.

Final tier is the master, and there is often no formal delineation fo who is and who is not a master. At first, you had to own your business proper, a house with tools and such. That meant you could very well skip phase two in some cases.

This quickly changed when guilds came around, and you had to register with them and be acknowledged as a master in them. This was, of course, politicized.

Parallel to this secular education, you had clerical institutions, and those resembled academia a lot more. The general idea was that you had access to libraries and to lecturers, and could learn from both of them, which meant one master/lecturer could handle a lot more apprentices. This is why you see first fencing treatise in the world (I.33 from 1300) being written by a monastery - they were the places with the necessary culture and skill to do so. There is more discussion to be had here, but going into it is against forum rules, so suffice to say that this form of education started to spread to secular sector starting roughly in 1200.

This is extremely important, because you saw a whole lot of nobles going to these newfangled universities, many of whom started to be entirely secular, and earn their titles there. If you see someone referred to as Magister such-and-such in period documents, it means he graduated from one of those and earned his title. By about 1400, most of the wealthier nobles have some sort of formal education they participated in this way, and they get cushy positions as royal scribes and whatnot thanks to them.

A rise in not just literacy (most nobles could probably at least passingly read and write by 1100), but intellectualism as well meant that personal libraries were very popular, and the topics of choosing were particular to each noble. That said, since every noble was a soldier, military treatises were at about the top of the popularity, alongside Aristotle and Galen. De Re Militari in particular has a flood of medieval copies made of it.

*On to military-ish education specifically*

First thing to remember is that nobles weren't just military arm of the kingdom, they served as judicial and administrative branch as well. This immediately means a noble will (well, should) be able to appreciate the logistical side of things a lot more than your random private trying to get to NCO rank. They already have an idea about how supplies are made and procured in general terms because they need it for their peacetime day job.

With this in mind, a young noble would serve in that assistant role a lot sooner than you might think. Even a relatively small child could help his parents around the house, managing servants and running messages, and being taught about how taxes worked and help out counting eggs levied from a village. This role would often be formalized in the form of a page, and pretty often, such pages would be exchanged between families.

The resons for the exchange could be two: first of all, plain political hostage. Even then, however, the hostage taker would be expected to educate this young noble in how to doo things. The second reason is a bit more complicated: imagine you are a knight who has sum total of one village, and everyone there knows your kid. Sure, you could keep him home, but he wouldn't learn much, but the lord you serve has a massive castle over there, so why not sned him to be a page there? He will meet more people of note, learn more skills and so on. If you are said lord of a massive castle, more hands is more good and if this young lad is partly raised by you, he's more likely to stay loyal, and you have a cousin who will need to marry off his daughters in a decade or so.

The importnat thing about pages is that they stay in relative safety, because they are, almost or entirely, children. They can accompany you too some campaigns, but will most definitely not participate in battles. You will be training them to do so, so they will be theoretically able to in desperate situations, but still.

Second phase is squires. These are analogous to apprentices from above, and while pages don't go into battles, squires often do. They most often run messages or carry spare lances for their master, not fight, but since they are on or near the front lines, that fighting often finds them, even if they themselves aren't looking for it. Much like apprentice learns by observation and instruction, so does a squire, his master will tell him what they are doing and why, and what the overall army commander is going for with his strategies and tactics. In peacetime, this will be supplemented by the master's library texts - he may even assign our squire a homework: "Go read Vegetius and come ask me when you have questions."

A squire graduates at 21, age that was most likely picked because 3*7=21 and middle ages were big on numerology, but this is also about an age where men stop growing - which means that the armor you get now won't have to be replaced in a year.

A noble who graduates from being a squire to being a knight is already a veteran of a few battles, and may have commanded men in such abttles if his master permitted it. Abovementioned formal education was usually handled just before or just after being knighted/becoming an adult (this is often synonymous with nobles), so by the time our fresh knight goes into battle as a knight, he will be pretty good at it.

*So why were some commanders idiots?*

Because a lot of this process fell prey to nepotism and skipping over rungs on the ladder. Some managed to deal with it with more grace than others, as can be seem with Charles Robert and Louis II, both kings of Hungary. Charles Robert fought in the first battle he led in person at 24, and managed to barely win it. From what we know, he recognized he was a much better strategist (I'd say a prodigy at it, or he had some advisor that was one) and left the leading of subsequent battles to his nobles.

Louis II. led his first battle at 20, refused to listen to any of his advisors when they told him to get a horse more suited to terrain and promptly drowned in a swamp when he tried to retreat. The battle (Mohacs 1526) he commanded was fought with some intelligence in spite of that and came down to the wire, and was ultimately lost.

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## Mr Blobby

On the 'why were so many commanders idiots?', I'd argue it's less nepotism and more the perils of rank/status. Often, the most senior noble would command, or failing that the person who brought the most troops. This is parodied in Discworld's _Jingo_, where Lord Rust ends up in command due to a) seniority in noble rank and b) 'his ability to afford several thousand funny hats' even though anyone with a iota of military experience or even common sense knows he's completely terrible a choice.

It's why kings/princes took to the field more often than their actual skill level dictated. They had the rank to shut up the most peevish and haughty noble (usually). The wiser ones (who knew their lack of military skill) would often take a decent commander with them and defer to their 'advice'.

Charles Robert and Louis _had_ to go on campaign because it's a fair chance half of the Hungarian nobles would have refused to follow with their forces some able but lowly-ranked commander.

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## Brother Oni

Further to Martin's excellent post, the medieval period covers a very long time frame and there were significant changes throughout this.

As an example, Henry I of England (1068-1135) had the nickname "Beauclerc", meaning 'fine scholar', supposedly for the unusual ability for a King of that period to able to read and write in Latin (sources may vary).

It should also be remembered that cultural and technological development throughout Europe was very uneven, with central Europe being the leaders and England being very much a backwater until about the Renaissance period (between the 14th and 17th Century, depending on country).

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## Mr Blobby

That might have been partly a desire to find a 'distinguishing feature' in Henry, as his two elder brothers [Robert and William] were much more of the devil-may-care, fighting/hunting/looting/drinking stamp which was the House of Normandy. The fact he was fourth in line on birth and third on the death of his father also suggests Henry may have been slated for the Church [which would have required knowledge of Latin].

Speaking of which, high-ranking boys seemed to often be given an personal instructor than the normal apprentice system. Henry, for example appeared to have a 'Robert Achard' as his. However, it might be quite possible that this Achard was not just his teacher, but also bodyguard and general minder. 

Anyway, one thing Martin didn't mention was that as Europe entered the early Renaissance [14th Cen] nobles/royalty would get more access to Greco-Roman military history. To study 'the Ancients' and how they campaigned; this would be of more utility than you'd think because the basics of European warfare only changed in the rudiments with the advent of gunpowder. This, coupled with the low technical level, smallish size of forces, general inability for sustained campaigns and relatively poor quality of forces meant that often a simple application of a few maxims and a good dollop of common sense would usually suffice for anything not a siege.

Lastly, we need to remember that in this period, there was _always_ conflict. Bandits, border raids, rebellions and such like. It was not uncommon for a feuding noble to settle dispute with a fellow with the point of a sword, sometimes to the point of siegeing each other - so most would be at least familiar with the bare rudiments of fighting. There's also hunting, which encouraged decent horsemanship and physical fitness.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> Speaking of which, high-ranking boys seemed to often be given an personal instructor than the normal apprentice system. Henry, for example appeared to have a 'Robert Achard' as his. However, it might be quite possible that this Achard was not just his teacher, but also bodyguard and general minder.


It's an attractive alternative particularly if there is no friendly court with a perceived standing higher than your own to which to send your son as a page and/or squire. We can't have the prince growing up thinking of someone lesser than himself as his superior and an authority figure after all. By taking a teacher into your own court you can appoint someone wise and respectable, maybe an old family friend, a wandering priest/scholar/poet of good reputation or a knight from one of the religious military orders, while waving the requirement that he is of higher standing (and has a big ass luxurious palace to house the kid in).

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## Martin Greywolf

> On the 'why were so many commanders idiots?', I'd argue it's less nepotism and more the perils of rank/status.


I mean, it gets a bit murky - nepotism is picking someone based on connections rather than ability, but this is a period where one of those connections (family) determines your rank. Bottom line is, you usually see this happen when someone is put into position of leadership before completeing the knight journeyman... journey.

As for Louis and Charles Robert, details are more complicated. Charles Robert did compete knight journeyman thingy, and in his case, commanding Rozhanovce was most likely to prove to nobles he can do it - but his supporters weer perfectly fine with following him before in some numbers, he was fighting for Hungarian crown since he was 13. The salient point is that he waited until he knew what he was doing.

Louis on the other hand was begged by his advisors - who were nobles - to not command the army at Mohacs at all, he just refused to listen to all advice, being all gung-ho about chivalrous victory where he would lead the charge. The contrast with a more thoughtful, strategic approach of Charles Robert is apparent.




> As an example, Henry I of England (1068-1135) had the nickname "Beauclerc", meaning 'fine scholar', supposedly for the unusual ability for a King of that period to able to read and write in Latin (sources may vary).





> That might have been partly a desire to find a 'distinguishing feature' in Henry, as his two elder brothers [Robert and William] were much more of the devil-may-care, fighting/hunting/looting/drinking stamp which was the House of Normandy. The fact he was fourth in line on birth and third on the death of his father also suggests Henry may have been slated for the Church [which would have required knowledge of Latin].


This is just my opinion, but I'm guessing that all higher ranking nobles from about 900 onwards could read somewhat competently - but reading and writing is one thing, being able to compose fromal letters in latin with all the proper titles and phrases (which were incredibly specific in church correspondence) is quite another feat. Most of these nobles would therefore employ some kind of church-latin-educated guy to handle their correspondence, and tell them that the next noble over had, in fact, insulted them when he addressed them as "your noble grace" instead of "your most noble grace".

Being able to handle this formal correspondence on your own would be pretty unusual throughout the middle ages, getting you monikers like "the Scholar" or "the Learned".




> Speaking of which, high-ranking boys seemed to often be given an personal instructor than the normal apprentice system. Henry, for example appeared to have a 'Robert Achard' as his. However, it might be quite possible that this Achard was not just his teacher, but also bodyguard and general minder.


This was extremely rare and only reserved for the highest of ranks, at least for permanent teachers. What you saaw fairly commonly for the less excessively rich was hiring of people for short lessons. Fiore mentions teaching people like this in his treatise, and we know from tax records that his fencing school business boomed.




> Anyway, one thing Martin didn't mention was that as Europe entered the early Renaissance [14th Cen] nobles/royalty would get more access to Greco-Roman military history. To study 'the Ancients' and how they campaigned; this would be of more utility than you'd think because the basics of European warfare only changed in the rudiments with the advent of gunpowder. This, coupled with the low technical level, smallish size of forces, general inability for sustained campaigns and relatively poor quality of forces meant that often a simple application of a few maxims and a good dollop of common sense would usually suffice for anything not a siege.


I've seen this argument, and I don't buy it. Some areas of Europe in Migration period maybe had this issue, but by high medieval period, not soo much. You had enough libraries spread around to access those military treatises, and in the East, many nobles went and studied in Byzantium, where you not only had access to them, but had new ones written even during the Migration period itself.

Even the army size wasn't as small. Sure, loosing Roman logistics network knocked down your reasonable army size from 100k max to 30k max, but that's still a lot of men. The major reason why you couldn't straight up apply De Re Militari to most high medieval armies was organization, they were simply built and trained very differently - and Vegetius is pretty damn fanciful in his treatise as well, we have no reason to believe that armies of any Roman period packed quite that amount of siege weaponry or had everyone proficient in slinging.




> Lastly, we need to remember that in this period, there was _always_ conflict.


Not quite true locally, but as far as Europe as a whole goes, yeah. There was always some civil war going down somewhere, and nobles weren't above venturing to the other countries to win fame is their home was too stable for their liking. One example I saw quite a lot was a great number of both English and Hungarian nobles serving together as mercenaries, and often founding joint Anglo-Hungarian companies, in Italy in 1300-1350 period.

Oh, and Crusades were a thing, some of which were permanent. Again, forum rules say we can't go too in-depth on how they were organized and why nobles joined in.

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## Mr Blobby

> This is just my opinion, but I'm guessing that all higher ranking nobles from about 900 onwards could read somewhat competently - but reading and writing is one thing, being able to compose fromal letters in latin with all the proper titles and phrases (which were incredibly specific in church correspondence) is quite another feat. Most of these nobles would therefore employ some kind of church-latin-educated guy to handle their correspondence, and tell them that the next noble over had, in fact, insulted them when he addressed them as "your noble grace" instead of "your most noble grace".
> 
> Being able to handle this formal correspondence on your own would be pretty unusual throughout the middle ages, getting you monikers like "the Scholar" or "the Learned".


We also need to remember that Henry was the first of the cohort raised as a Prince of England rather than a mere son of a Duke. The family's standing had risen, and it's quite likely he got a better-quality education to fit this.




> I've seen this argument, and I don't buy it. Some areas of Europe in Migration period maybe had this issue, but by high medieval period, not soo much. You had enough libraries spread around to access those military treatises, and in the East, many nobles went and studied in Byzantium, where you not only had access to them, but had new ones written even during the Migration period itself.
> 
> Even the army size wasn't as small. Sure, loosing Roman logistics network knocked down your reasonable army size from 100k max to 30k max, but that's still a lot of men. The major reason why you couldn't straight up apply De Re Militari to most high medieval armies was organization, they were simply built and trained very differently - and Vegetius is pretty damn fanciful in his treatise as well, we have no reason to believe that armies of any Roman period packed quite that amount of siege weaponry or had everyone proficient in slinging.


What 'don't you buy', exactly? The only thing I'm going to dispute here is '30k armies'; most European 'states' could not afford this, the logistics would have been difficult in most regions and/or for long and the primitive staff officer system would have required a commander of exceptional skill to get to function well [or even at all]. Case in point; Crécy. The large size of the French army [perhaps the 30k mentioned] may have led to it's defeat because it was simply too large to command.

Though let us remember that chroniclers at this time seemed to suck at large numbers. I think it was - for example - utterly physically impossible for William the Bastard to raise ~750 ships and ~150k troops for his 'English expedition' in 1066.




> Oh, and Crusades were a thing, some of which were permanent. Again, forum rules say we can't go too in-depth on how they were organized and why nobles joined in.


In the most general of terms, I think we'd say in modern parlance that nobles had a 'toxic culture'. That a 'good King' was one who managed to direct their malign attributes outwards rather than poisoning inwards, and a 'great King' one who also managed to get a benefit from it too.

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## snowblizz

> Oh, and Crusades were a thing, some of which were permanent. Again, forum rules say we can't go too in-depth on how they were organized and why nobles joined in.


The Baltic crusades run by the Teutonic knights practised literal battlefield tourism. Nobles would come for a campaign season providing money and materiel and then go home again after their trip.

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## Sapphire Guard

Are there any good sources on being a shepherd in the pre-industrial era?  As in, types of work that could be done alone, types that needed help, how big a herd one person with dogs could reasonably control, problems that could arise, and so on. It's a broad question I know, I'm just trying to fact check myself.

Any particular location or era is fine, but North Europe/Scandinavia for preference, I'm just trying to get an understanding of the kind of things that can be accomplished with one person and dogs without modern tools, assuming they're up on a mountain relatively alone with their flock, they can get seasonal labour as needed but day to day care and predator watch is done alone, with (a few) fences, paddocks and dogs. Is this a thing that happens or was it more likely to be groups rather than the unwanted younger son? Subsistence farming, all sheep products are consumed locally.

May be an impossible question, but y'all usually know a lot. I want my fantasy protagonist to actually get to do some farming before his life gets hijacked by mages.

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## Martin Greywolf

This is a question so incredibly specific I have to say, buy this book. There is little else you can do. One caveat I will give you is that if the original texts say "you should not do this", it usually does so because a significant amount of people did do the thing, and the author is trying to correct them. Kinda like Vegetius and "everyone should be a slinger".




> Is this a thing that happens or was it more likely to be groups rather than the unwanted younger son? Subsistence farming, all sheep products are consumed locally.


Historically, this was always doen with groups. The way it works is you have a group with head shepherd, plus at least half a dozen people, and they gather the animals to be shepherded to pasture from all the locals, then eff off to the hills. They will send (usually) a pair of their number to the nearest village with some regularity (weekly, bi-weekly) to get supplies.

This is for a simple reason - doing this alone is pretty much a death sentence, and no one will give you their animals if you try, because they don't want you to die in a ditch because you caught dysentery, leaving all the animals quite literally to the wolves. Shepherding is also a semi-respected profession among the locals, not the least because shepherds know a lot about helping ainimals, and were, together with blacksmiths (for reasons I'd rather not digress into), the veterinarians of the day.

If you're looking for a job for an unpopular child that is liable to get him ostracized, and potentially killed, two come to mind. The first is a lookout on a watchtower or a watch hill - these were also done in groups, but considerably smaller ones, think two or three in really small villages. A position like this will only apply if there is some kind of danger to watch out for, but then it is respected again. A good solution is that there was, once upon a time, danger, and the local lord mandated that someone has to man the watchtowers. BUt the danger was soundly trounced and the edict was forgotten about, so now they man those watchtowers out of obligation they think is pointless.

Second job is a hunter. They also worked in teams, in case of proper professional hunters, but your guy can just supplement his family income with some small game, like birds, rabbits or squirrels. That means he spends the entire day out, sometimes maybe has to stay out a night. This is less of an outright murder simply because, should he not return in two days, you can go begrudgingly looking for him.

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## KineticDiplomat

Wow, lot of good topics.

Re:stealth communications. This generally breaks down into two categories in the public eye.

1.  Lo Probability Intercept/Detect.  As the name implies, this is focused on making communications that are hard to notice. The methods are various - wave form manipulation, wave length choices, or Line of Sight communications. Each sub tech has its own peculiar uses and limits, but generally speaking you need two out of three things for it to work: positions that are either fixed or have known relative positions, a large network of similar devices, and/or some pretty extensive work gone into making sure everyone and device is on the same page for technical details of execution.  Suffice to say, if you're working with a large and regular organization with funding, this works just fine (ish). Drone swarm, plane to plane, a radio network on its own waveform for soldiers. Sure.

2. Burst transmission. Because the above is technically difficult, often has range/position constraints  expensive, and requires lots of intra device and inter device (and by extension, organization) coordination, the other alternative is burst transmission. Generally speaking, the burst IS going to be detected if sent and the other side is playing competent nation state level EW defense. That's not the point. The point is you loaded all the information you needed ahead of time on the thing, and aren't there when it gets found.  And because you know it's going to be found, you can broadcast over wide areas and in methods that require less technical excellence and coordination. 

Of course, it is by definition a depleteable resource. You wouldn't use it if you thought you could stick around where you were sending it from. And of course it requires someone else be listening when you press send, so to speak. Which opens its own can of worms, since obviously anything using RF can be triangulated with active searches in the right mkde even if it's only in receive...

But. That should be enough for RPG rule sets

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## halfeye

> Are there any good sources on being a shepherd in the pre-industrial era?  As in, types of work that could be done alone, types that needed help, how big a herd one person with dogs could reasonably control, problems that could arise, and so on. It's a broad question I know, I'm just trying to fact check myself.
> 
> Any particular location or era is fine, but North Europe/Scandinavia for preference, I'm just trying to get an understanding of the kind of things that can be accomplished with one person and dogs without modern tools, assuming they're up on a mountain relatively alone with their flock, they can get seasonal labour as needed but day to day care and predator watch is done alone, with (a few) fences, paddocks and dogs. Is this a thing that happens or was it more likely to be groups rather than the unwanted younger son? Subsistence farming, all sheep products are consumed locally.
> 
> May be an impossible question, but y'all usually know a lot. I want my fantasy protagonist to actually get to do some farming before his life gets hijacked by mages.


Depends where, in Britain wolves were extinct fairly early, and bears earlier, so sheppard was a relatively cushy job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._British_Isles

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## HeadlessMermaid

> Are there any good sources on being a shepherd in the pre-industrial era?


Depending on location and era, pastoralism (herding sheep, goats, cattle etc) can be nomadic, sedentary, or transhumant. 

*Nomadic pastoralism* is where you take your herd to a pasture, deplete it, move on to the next one, deplete that, and so on. This can be a peaceful procedure, or an extremely violent one. It's somewhat unpredictable where you'll end up from year to year, you rely on sedentary people for some kinds of provisions that you can't produce yourself on the road, and in turn can sell and trade your own products, dairy and so on. There are entire cultures based on nomadic pastoralism.

*Sedentary pastoralism* is where your herd stays permanently on the same place. To do that, you need to have either very few animals (so you're probably a farmer with a handful of animals to complement your subsistance/income), or huge amounts of land (so typically a rich landlord owns it, and the shepherds are the people who do work for hire/by force; think England around ~1500 when, for the profit of wool and at the expense of the tenants, arable land was turned to pastures: this dramatically reduced the need for labour, and proportionally increased the number of destitute vagrants).

*Transhumant pastoralism*, or transhumance, is a middle ground, extremely common with sheep and goats though less ubiquitous with cattle. This is where you have a fixed summer pasture (generally on the highlands) and a fixed winter pasture (on the lowlands), and you migrate between them twice per year. You very rarely own both of them, and often you own none of them, though you could temporarily rent them. The peculiarities of transhumant pastoralism make the whole thing inextricably tied with a lot of things:

rural banditry (you can read here about the Roman example; the gist of it applies for thousands of years before and after: shepherd equals bandit)rustling, blood feuds, and assorted displays of honour culturethe custom of shepherds having a ton of kids, and the enduring myth/practice that if you abandon a baby in the wilderness it will surely be picked up by shepherds: this type of herding takes a lot of manhours, but most of the labour can be easily done by adolescents and even prepubescent children; so for shepherds, having many children is considered an asset rather than a "too many mouths to feed" burden
*The nature of the labour:* transhumant pastoralism needs permanent labour in a way that farming does not. Every single day, someone needs to gather the sheep, lead them to the pasture, stay with them all day long and keep them from getting lost, potentially protect them from rustlers/wolves/etc, and then, before nightfall, take them back behind a fence and lock them up. More intense and skilled labour is needed when it's time to slaughter animals, shear them, make cheese and yoghurt etc: these tasks take expertise, but straight herding can be done by children. How many workers you need depends entirely on the size of the herd. Is it 20 animals? 200? 2000? None of these is inconceivable. 

*Temporary work* is less pronounced, and it may not be a thing at all. With farming, harvest is an "all hands on deck" situation, including hands that were doing nothing all year, or hands that weren't there at all but migrated specifically for harvest. With transhumant pastoralism, the day when sheep are sheared is a day when sheep are NOT led to the pasture, so you don't need more people, per se.

*Family:* When the family lives on the highlands, the migration down to the winter pastures often involves only the shepherds themselves, who live in makeshift huts or something, while their families (typically, wives and small children) stay back. It's a separation not unlike sailors going away for months. In other cases, everyone packs ups and moves, and makes a new home near the new pasture. In a few cases, you can even have an unofficial (but more or less silently accepted) bigamy, while in other societies polygamy is the norm anyway, and it's natural to have two permanent bases of operation, and even more children. But on the other hand, shepherd girls are far from unheard of, not just in the sense of making dairy products but also guarding the sheep and moving around as needed. Basically, the family arrangements vary _wildly_, and we can't make generalisations. We can only note how each arrangement works in the specific context of pastoralism.

For every case, you need to figure out *who owns the pastures* (if anyone does, because it's not a given). In pre-modern agriculture, fields need to stay fallow every second year (or thereabouts) to remain fertile. So an arrangement between farmers and shepherds can be made. On year 1, field A gets farmed, sowed and tended and harvested, field B lays fallow, and shepherds take their herds to field B which functions as a pasture. On year 2, field A lays fallow, field B gets farmed, and shepherds take their herds to field A. Quite a lot of people need to agree on terms here, and stick to them. Ye olde hostility between shepherds and farmers often begins in conflicts about such agreements, or lack thereof. The balance is very delicate and a single bad crop or month of bad weather can unmake it. Historically, transhumant pastoralism declines when (and where) modern agricultural methods come into play, and fields can yield crops every year, almost all year long. That leaves only the wilderness for the shepherds.

And of course, you need to figure out *who owns the herds*. Those who own the sheep and those who tend them might be the same people, or they might not. In transhumant pastoralism, both options are on the table.

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## DrewID

> Are there any good sources on being a shepherd in the pre-industrial era?  As in, types of work that could be done alone, types that needed help, how big a herd one person with dogs could reasonably control, problems that could arise, and so on. It's a broad question I know, I'm just trying to fact check myself.
> 
> Any particular location or era is fine, but North Europe/Scandinavia for preference, I'm just trying to get an understanding of the kind of things that can be accomplished with one person and dogs without modern tools, assuming they're up on a mountain relatively alone with their flock, they can get seasonal labour as needed but day to day care and predator watch is done alone, with (a few) fences, paddocks and dogs. Is this a thing that happens or was it more likely to be groups rather than the unwanted younger son? Subsistence farming, all sheep products are consumed locally.
> 
> May be an impossible question, but y'all usually know a lot. I want my fantasy protagonist to actually get to do some farming before his life gets hijacked by mages.


Bret Devereaux's _A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry_ had a series on historical textile production, and the first essay in the series covered the source fibers (flax, linen and wool) and gives more of a macro look at historical shepherding and wool production that you might find interesting.  Not too much sadly on the lives of the shepherds themselves.

Anyone on this thread will in general probably find Bret's blog interesting.  He is an assistant professor of history, and writes primarily on the intersection of historical studies and pop culture.  From a four-part series on how textiles were produced in the pre-modern world, to an eight-part series on a military historian's look at The Battle of Helm's Deep (both the movie and book versions).  It's fascinating stuff! I highly recommend giving it a look.

DrewID

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## Kraynic

> As in, types of work that could be done alone, types that needed help, how big a herd one person with dogs could reasonably control, problems that could arise, and so on. It's a broad question I know, I'm just trying to fact check myself.


A couple things that may or may not be of use to you that haven't been brought up (or I didn't notice).

1. The dogs will be different based on environment and threats.  There may even be different breeds in use at the same time.  You can check out the Great Pyrenees (flock guard dog) and the Pyrenean Sheep Dog (flock herding dog) as an example of 2 breeds used at the same time in the same region for 2 different tasks.  

2. A shepherd will most likely be running on much reduced sleep during lambing season.  Not only is this is the time that predators will be have access to the most vulnerable prey, but a shepherd will also be checking on (at the very least) first year ewes every few hours through the night.  This is something that is obviously made much easier with more people.  If it is late winter or early spring, feel free to have grouchy shepherds...   :Small Tongue:

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## Brother Oni

> The Baltic crusades run by the Teutonic knights practised literal battlefield tourism. Nobles would come for a campaign season providing money and materiel and then go home again after their trip.


In true Germanic style, these crusading journeys or Reisen, even had an itinerary worthy of a package holiday - meet up in Marienberg or Konigsberg, from where the knights would organise your travel to Lithuania. From there, you had the options of outdoor feasts, hunting, jousting, killing some pagans, etc, before the knights arranged to get you back to your starting town when you were finished.

You even had had the choice of winter campaigns (faster travel as the ground was frozen, but winter in northern Europe is no joke) or summer campaigns (warmer, but you had to hope the sun dried out the marshes a bit).


Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV of England) liked crusading, with his first 1390 trip out to Baltics listing an entourage of 13 knights, 18 squires, 3 heralds, 10 miners, 6 minstrels, 60 servants and others.

On his second trip out in 1392, he combined crusading with some pilgrimage and sightseeing:

Started out at Gdansk and go to Konigsberg and backHeaded southwards to Frankfurt an der OderTravel to Bohemia to see Prague and the great castle at KarlstejnOnwards to Vienna followed by KlagenfurtCrossed the Alps (apparently not too difficult)Aim for Venice, spending a few days on the Lido as well as in the city itself.From Venice, take a ship to the Holy Land and make a pilgrimage to JerusalemHead back to Italy, making stops at Cyprus, Rhodes and the Greek mainland.

This trip took Henry a whole year to complete and among the souvenirs he brought back were a leopard and a parrot.

----------


## Clistenes

> In true Germanic style, these crusading journeys or Reisen, even had an itinerary worthy of a package holiday - meet up in Marienberg or Konigsberg, from where the knights would organise your travel to Lithuania. From there, you had the options of outdoor feasts, hunting, jousting, killing some pagans, etc, before the knights arranged to get you back to your starting town when you were finished.
> 
> You even had had the choice of winter campaigns (faster travel as the ground was frozen, but winter in northern Europe is no joke) or summer campaigns (warmer, but you had to hope the sun dried out the marshes a bit).
> 
> 
> Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV of England) liked crusading, with his first 1390 trip out to Baltics listing an entourage of 13 knights, 18 squires, 3 heralds, 10 miners, 6 minstrels, 60 servants and others.
> 
> On his second trip out in 1392, he combined crusading with some pilgrimage and sightseeing:
> 
> ...


King Alfonso VIII of Castile, king Pedro II of Aragon and king Sancho VII of Navarre had trouble with these kind of crusaders in 1212. These came to help against the Almohads, but they got bored during the trip and tended to kill, rape and loot a lot on the way, their logic apparently being "hey, these guys dress and speak funny! how was I supposed to know they were on our side?"

Besides the fact that many of these people were Christian subjects of the kingdom of Castile, king Alfonso was actually trying to have Muslim castles, towns and villages to surrender without a fight by offering them good terms, but the foreign crusaders kept ruining it by going in a rape-loot-murder-arson spree every time. Worse than that, king Alfonso was secretly negotiating with the local Andalusian nobility for them to desert the Almohads, and having Muslim settlements ravaged didn't help at all... in the end, they sent all the foreign crusaders back home and fought the war with Iberian troops alone.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Bret Devereaux's _A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry_ had a series on historical textile production, and the first essay in the series covered the source fibers (flax, linen and wool) and gives more of a macro look at historical shepherding and wool production that you might find interesting.  Not too much sadly on the lives of the shepherds themselves.
> 
> Anyone on this thread will in general probably find Bret's blog interesting.  He is an assistant professor of history, and writes primarily on the intersection of historical studies and pop culture.  From a four-part series on how textiles were produced in the pre-modern world, to an eight-part series on a military historian's look at The Battle of Helm's Deep (both the movie and book versions).  It's fascinating stuff! I highly recommend giving it a look.
> 
> DrewID


I'd highly recommend both the takedown of the myth of Sparta, and his "Fremen Mirage" series.

----------


## Sapphire Guard

I just want to commend you all on not only having a detailed replies but somehow having to hand a contemporary manual to to do with my completely random specific question. This thread's incredible, thank you all.

----------


## Milodiah

> I just want to commend you all on not only having a detailed replies but somehow having to hand a contemporary manual to to do with my completely random specific question. This thread's incredible, thank you all.


This forum's rather a confluence of unusual hobbies, and by virtue of this being such a visible thread a lot of people with said interests wander in here. 

I do feel validated sometimes, seeing how many other people are Fountains of Random Facts like myself.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> I just want to commend you all on not only having a detailed replies but somehow having to hand a contemporary manual to to do with my completely random specific question. This thread's incredible, thank you all.


This is, quite possibly, the nicest way someone called me a weird little gremlin.

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## Brother Oni

Here's something that some people might find interesting: shinai vs epee sparring.

Scoring has been adjusted (limited lateral movement as they're fighting on the piste, kendoka isn't allowed to strike the torso or thrust for the throat), but some interesting exchanges between the fighters.

----------


## Vinyadan

Is using a scope on a rifle while wearing night vision goggles possible? Or would you need to take the goggles off and use a night vision rifle scope?

----------


## Kriegspiel

> Is using a scope on a rifle while wearing night vision goggles possible? Or would you need to take the goggles off and use a night vision rifle scope?


Sorry for not answering sooner, but this thread was locked when I first saw your question.

When you say scope, do you mean a magnified optic or a non-magnified reflex sight (ie a 'red dot' sight)?

If the former then it is effectively no using currently available NVDs. 

If it is the later, then it is more 'it depends'. 

Red dot sights are useable with monocular NVDs like the PVS-14. The NVD is over your non-dominant eye which allows you to achieve a typical cheek weld/sight picture with your dominant eye. Keeping both eyes open will combine the images from both eyes and you'll see the red dot super-imposed normally. 

If you are wearing a binocular style NVD it is much more difficult as you cannot easily maintain a normal sight picture behind the optic. It is technically possible if you mount the weapon optic far forward on a rail but even then it's a hassle. An IR laser is the primary method of sighting in a low light situation.

----------


## Vinyadan

Hi, thanks for the answer! I was mostly thinking about magnified optical scopes (like the PSO-1), but the information about reflex sights is also interesting.

Are there scope attachments to add NV to a magnified optic?

Also, how free to move are you while wearing NV? Can you run, or does the NVD jump around if you aren't careful? Does the added weight in the front feel bad on your neck after a while?

----------


## Palanan

I have a fairly broad-scale question for the history folks in these parts.

Im looking for primary sources that give information on the linkages between land area, agricultural efficiency, population size, and how these help determine the sizes of armies in different historical periods.

I know thats a tall order, and Im aware of the difficulties involved with even the most basic estimates.  There are any number of threads on Reddit and elsewhere that touch on this issue in one way or anotherbut unfortunately, those threads tend not to cite any published sources, which is what Im really looking for.

This may be too broad a question for this thread, but Im hoping that the folks who often contribute here may be familiar with the kind of sources Im looking for, and may be able to point me in the right direction.  Ill appreciate any examples in any region or period, from ancient to early modern.

----------


## Vinyadan

I think the problem here would be a definition of agricultural efficiency. I think it wouldn't be too hard to look for the population of a well-studied city like Florence, the population of its countryside, and the size and composition of its armies in different battles across the centuries. However, Florence was a city of business (traders, bankers, and artisans), so that would need to factor in somehow, as foodstock could be imported from other polities (Venice for example imported massive amounts of food from the Turks during the famine of the early XVII century).

EDIT: about primary sources, the Book of Montaperti is a collection of unusually detailed records held by the Florentine state during the months of preparation before the battle of Montaperti (1260). The book detailed the name and origin of the various men in the army, as well as where the resources originated, and provisions by the autorities concerning the war. It was with the army when it was defeated, and taken as part of the spoils by Siena, which preserved it as a trophy. It's in Latin, and it's a LOT of info; when it was published, it was considered unique, as far as the Middle Ages are concerned. Now more than a century has passed, and maybe there are more documents like this available. https://archive.org/details/illibrod...ge/n5/mode/2up

----------


## Gnoman

That's kind of a "doctorate in history" level question, where the primary sources would be stuff mouldering in some Italian or French Archive that nobody's looked through in a century or two.

----------


## Brother Oni

> I have a fairly broad-scale question for the history folks in these parts.
> 
> Im looking for primary sources that give information on the linkages between land area, agricultural efficiency, population size, and how these help determine the sizes of armies in different historical periods.
> 
> I know thats a tall order, and Im aware of the difficulties involved with even the most basic estimates.  There are any number of threads on Reddit and elsewhere that touch on this issue in one way or anotherbut unfortunately, those threads tend not to cite any published sources, which is what Im really looking for.
> 
> This may be too broad a question for this thread, but Im hoping that the folks who often contribute here may be familiar with the kind of sources Im looking for, and may be able to point me in the right direction.  Ill appreciate any examples in any region or period, from ancient to early modern.


You might want to look at muster lists then look at the comparative wealth of the lords and what they brought.


The simplest measurement I know of is a knight's fee in Anglo-Saxon and Norman times, which is the smallest amount of land that is capable of supporting a single knight, his family and any folks tied to the land.

There's not a set acreage as it depends on the fertility of the land, mines, fish stocks, bee hives, etc, etc, but a knight's fee with a manor (ie a fortified home, which supported the knight, their family and their tenants) would be between 1000 - 5000 acres as around 45% of the land was still undeveloped (not arable or pasture/meadow) during the late 11th Century. Circa 1200, a knight's fee was approximately 20 pounds.

According to the Assize of Arms 1181, a single knight's fee got you 40 days a year of military service from:
the knight himself, who must be equipped with mail hauberk, helmet, shield and lance.Richer fiefs require the knight to have at least one set of this equipment per knight's fee (so a 60 knight's fee fief, would require the knight to be able to support 60 armed men of this standard).Freemen who had at least 16 marks in chattels and/or rents were also required to be similarly equipped, while those who had 10 marks are required to have a mail shirt, iron cap and lance.All burgesses and the remaining freemen shall have a gambeson, an iron cap and a lance.

If you're after a list of fiefs from around this period, you're going to have to go digging around in the Domesday Book, which can be accessed for free through the Open Domesday project.

To help with your guide, English money from back then:
1 pound = 20 shillings
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence
1 penny = 4 farthings
1 mark = 13 shillings and 4 pence.


Going half way around the world and a few hundred years later, the 16th Century Sengoku Era Japanese also ran a similar system, but with different base measurements of 1 koku = the amount of rice required to feed a man for a year. Akechi Mitsuhide's orders/guide to his retainers, dated 1581 required:

Bring 6 men to muster for every 100 koku. Gather men at that ratio.Between 100 and 150 koku: 1 armour, 1 horse, 1 sashimono, 1 yariBetween 150 koku and 200 koku: 1 armour, 1 horse, 1 sashimono, 2 yariBetween 200 koku and 300 koku: 1 armour, 1 horse, 2 sashimono, 2 yariBetween 300 koku and 400 koku: 1 armour, 1 horse, 3 sashimono, 3 yari, 1 flag, 1 gunBetween 400 koku and 500 koku: 1 armour, 1 horse, 4 sashimono, 4 yari, 1 flag, 1 gunBetween 500 koku and 600 koku: 2 armours, 2 horses, 5 sashimono, 5 yari, 1 flag, 2 gunsBetween 600 koku and 700 koku: 2 armours, 2 horses, 6 sashimono, 6 yari, 1 flag, 3 gunsBetween 700 koku and 800 koku: 3 armours, 3 horses, 7 sashimono, 7 yari, 1 flag, 3 gunsBetween 800 koku and 900 koku: 4 armours, 4 horses, 8 sashimono, 8 yari, 1 flag, 4 gunsThose with 1000 koku: 5 armour, 5 horse, 10 sashimono, 10 yari, 1 flag, 5 gun. One mounted man can count for two.

Much later on, there is the 1694 Edo era standardisation by the Tokugawa. The _Tokugawa Kinreiko_ (徳川禁令考) is a list of many of the laws passed by the Tokugawa, first compiled in Meiji 12 (1879) records the following numbers for a hatamoto (personal guard).
200 Koku: 1 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 1 Porter, 5 men in total250 Koku: 1 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 1 Porter, 6 men in total300 Koku: 1 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 1 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 7 men in total400 Koku: 2 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 9 men in total500 Koku: 2 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Bow, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 11 men in total600 Koku: 3 Samurai, 1 Yari, 1 Bow, 1 Gun, 1 Armour carrier, 1 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 13 men in total700 Koku: 4 Samurai, 2 Yari, 1 Bow, 1 Gun, 1 Armour carrier, 2 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 15 men in total800 Koku: 4 Samurai, 2 Yari, 1 Bow, 1 Gun, 1 Armour carrier, 2 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 17 men in total900 Koku: 5 Samurai, 2 Yari, 1 Bow, 1 Gun, 2 Armour carrier, 2 Groom, 2 Porter, 1 Sandal bearer, 1 Large chest, 1 Small chest, 19 men in total

Sources:
"The Knight and the Knight's Fee in England", Sally Harvey, Past and Present, No. 49. (Nov., 1970), pp. 343. JSTOR 650206
Assize of Arms, 1181
"English Weapons & Warfare", 449-1660, A. V. B. Norman and Don Pottinger, Barnes & Noble, 1992 (orig. 1966) 
Domesday Book, 1086
Tokugawa Kinreiko, Meiji 27 (1894)

*Spoiler: First three items of the Assize of Arms 1181*
Show

Quicunque habet feodum unius militis habeat loricam, et cassidem, clypeum et lanceam: et omnis miles habeat tot loricas et cassides, et clypeos et lanceas quot habuerit feoda militum in dominico suo.Quicunque vero liber laicus habuerit in catallo vel in redditu ad valentiam de xvi. marcis, habeat loricam et cassidem et clypeum et lanceam: quicunque vero liber laicus habuerit in catallo vel redditu x. marcas, habeat aubergel, et capellet ferri et lanceam.III. Item omnes burgenses et tota communa liberorum hominum habeant wambais, et capellet ferri et lanceam.

*Spoiler: Tokugawa Kinreiko, p32-33*
Show

----------


## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Vinyadan*
> _about primary sources, the Book of Montaperti is a collection of unusually detailed records held by the Florentine state during the months of preparation before the battle of Montaperti (1260)._


Great suggestion to look into, thanks.  




> Originally Posted by *Brother Oni*
> _You might want to look at muster lists then look at the comparative wealth of the lords and what they brought._


Thanks for the excellent numbers, and for listing your sources. 

When I wrote primary sources, I was thinking in terms of primary academic literatureeither journal articles, book chapters, full books or dissertations.  Im assuming theres been a lot of research on this topic already, and those publications are what Im trying to find.

----------


## Brother Oni

> When I wrote primary sources, I was thinking in terms of primary academic literatureeither journal articles, book chapters, full books or dissertations.  Im assuming theres been a lot of research on this topic already, and those publications are what Im trying to find.


I'd count those as secondary sources - the Domesday Book and the original Latin text of the 1181 Assize of Arms are primary sources, while academic literature drawing on those primary sources and things like the Tokugawa Kinreiko are secondary sources.

----------


## Palanan

However you describe it, what Im looking for is published historical research on the topicwhether journal articles, full books, edited volumes, etc.

There are endless discussions on Reddit about this issue, but no one ever cites anything, apart from a very few web pages or blog posts.  Those in turn only cite works which barely touch on the topic, or often enough dont cite anything at all.  

Hope this clarifies what Im looking for.

----------


## Clistenes

I have a question:

In all TV shows, when they test a sword on a dead animal, be it a pig, a goat, a deer or whatever, they use a carcass without any of the internal organs or blood...

Do you know if anybody has ever tried to test a sword on a whole dead animal, blood and lungs and guts and all? I suspect the result of the test would be FAR less impressive than when using a clean carcass...

----------


## tomandtish

> I have a question:
> 
> In all TV shows, when they test a sword on a dead animal, be it a pig, a goat, a deer or whatever, they use a carcass without any of the internal organs or blood...
> 
> Do you know if anybody has ever tried to test a sword on a whole dead animal, blood and lungs and guts and all? I suspect the result of the test would be FAR less impressive than when using a clean carcass...


Depends on what you mean by impressive. The blade MIGHT not go as far, but you'd have much more of a visual image as blood and intestines flowed out. 

Which is probably why most shows won't do it. The blood/gore could bump up the rating.

----------


## fusilier

> I have a fairly broad-scale question for the history folks in these parts.
> 
> IÂm looking for primary sources that give information on the linkages between land area, agricultural efficiency, population size, and how these help determine the sizes of armies in different historical periods.
> 
> I know thatÂs a tall order, and IÂm aware of the difficulties involved with even the most basic estimates.  There are any number of threads on Reddit and elsewhere that touch on this issue in one way or anotherÂbut unfortunately, those threads tend not to cite any published sources, which is what IÂm really looking for.
> 
> This may be too broad a question for this thread, but IÂm hoping that the folks who often contribute here may be familiar with the kind of sources IÂm looking for, and may be able to point me in the right direction.  IÂll appreciate any examples in any region or period, from ancient to early modern.





> However you describe it, what Im looking for is published historical research on the topicwhether journal articles, full books, edited volumes, etc.


Mercenaries and their Masters, Michael Mallett, pp. 115-120, lists the strengths of armies of the Italian states at various points in the 15th century.  The examples consist of reports of troops actually in the field, and estimates for how many troops could be called up in wartime.  He doesn't give the size of the corresponding populations, but he does give dates, and it may be possible to find out the relevant information.  

 "At the beginning of the century Giangaleazzo Visconti was reputed to have 20,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry under arms.  It is not an impossible figure as Milan was often fighting on two fronts, and the surprisingly large proportion of infantry clearly includes auxiliaries." While the condotte are more reliable for assessing army strength than many assume, the difficulty in getting good estimates of the total force are further explained: "One always has to bear in mind that total numbers and actual fighting strength have to be distinguished in the figure available, and that many of the non-combatants, who accompanied armies and often had to be paid, never appear in most official records.  This confuses the issue particularly when one tries to asses the size of armies in the field when the numbers of auxiliaries, pioneers, and even lightly armed militia, are rarely given more than approximately."  To find out the number of soldiers engaged in a particular battle, it's usually necessary to compare a variety of sources to get a reasonable picture.  So even getting the basic information to perform the analysis is not that straightforward.

Works like _Mercenaries and their Masters_ have useful information, because they aren't focused on a battle/campaign, but instead on the organization, structure, effectiveness, tactics, etc. (and their development). But there's a lot to search through to find the relevant information.  Even then, in this case, it's going to be limited to various Italian states at different points in the 15th century.  And state organization is probably going to be another factor (the Italian states were fielding a lot of troops for their size).

Maybe some of those keywords would be useful?  Perhaps there are works about the "organization of medieval armies", that will cover troop strength? 

I don't know of a work that's tackled this question across history, but would be interested in one.  Maybe there's some journal article, or thesis/dissertation paper, on this topic?

This seems like the kind of thing that may have been partially addressed by one of the articles on https://acoup.blog

The author, Dr. Bret Devereaux, is usually good about providing sources.  But off the top of my head I can't remember a source covering this subject.

----------


## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *fusilier*
> _Mercenaries and their Masters, Michael Mallett, pp. 115-120, lists the strengths of armies of the Italian states at various points in the 15th century. The examples consist of reports of troops actually in the field, and estimates for how many troops could be called up in wartime. He doesn't give the size of the corresponding populations, but he does give dates, and it may be possible to find out the relevant information._


Looks like an excellent resource, thanks.  




> Originally Posted by *fusilier*
> _I don't know of a work that's tackled this question across history, but would be interested in one. Maybe there's some journal article, or thesis/dissertation paper, on this topic?_


Im hoping there is, since it seems like it would be a fundamental question.

----------


## Clistenes

> Depends on what you mean by impressive. The blade MIGHT not go as far, but you'd have much more of a visual image as blood and intestines flowed out. 
> 
> Which is probably why most shows won't do it. The blood/gore could bump up the rating.


What I mean is, the soft guts and liquid probably would soak a lot of the force, so you would end with a blade stuck inside a dead pig instead of a pig carcass cleanly cut in two...

So these shows make the cuts more impressive than they really are because they are making you believe you could cut somebody in two with that sword, which isn't true (well, maybe somebody with a lot of strength and training could really do it, like these samurai who tested swords on dead bodies during the Edo period and before, but not the guys testing the swords in the modern shows...).

That's the reason I as if you know of somebody who has ever tested the swords on dead animals with all their innnards. I am not speaking of just TV shows, but about serious scientific studies, or even about sword fanatics trying it on their own...

----------


## Grim Portent

Does anyone know what kind of armouring was used on war elephants in late medieval India, as in the materials and weight and how long they were expected to wear it?

I've seen images of elephants covered with what looks to be steel lamellar barding, but I'm having a bit of a hard time finding information about the way such armoured elephants were actually used or what weapons they were needing protected from.

----------


## DrewID

> What I mean is, the soft guts and liquid probably would soak a lot of the force, so you would end with a blade stuck inside a dead pig instead of a pig carcass cleanly cut in two...
> 
> So these shows make the cuts more impressive than they really are because they are making you believe you could cut somebody in two with that sword, which isn't true (well, maybe somebody with a lot of strength and training could really do it, like these samurai who tested swords on dead bodies during the Edo period and before, but not the guys testing the swords in the modern shows...).
> 
> That's the reason I as if you know of somebody who has ever tested the swords on dead animals with all their innnards. I am not speaking of just TV shows, but about serious scientific studies, or even about sword fanatics trying it on their own...


Search for information on deer hunting sites.  

DrewID

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## DrewID

> Does anyone know what kind of armouring was used on war elephants in late medieval India, as in the materials and weight and how long they were expected to wear it?
> 
> I've seen images of elephants covered with what looks to be steel lamellar barding, but I'm having a bit of a hard time finding information about the way such armoured elephants were actually used or what weapons they were needing protected from.


Not to harp on Prof. Devereaux's acoup.blog, but he did do a three-part series on war elephants starting here.  I don't remember how much detail he went into on their armoring, but I know there was scholarly discussion on their expense, which would have at least touched on how much was spent to armor them, I would think.

DrewID

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Grim Portent*
> _Does anyone know what kind of armouring was used on war elephants in late medieval India, as in the materials and weight and how long they were expected to wear it?
> 
> I've seen images of elephants covered with what looks to be steel lamellar barding, but I'm having a bit of a hard time finding information about the way such armoured elephants were actually used or what weapons they were needing protected from._





> Originally Posted by *DrewID*
> _Not to harp on Prof. Devereaux's acoup.blog, but he did do a three-part series on war elephants starting here._


From glancing over the blog posts, it looks like the discussion is focused primarily on Greek and Roman use of elephants.  The third post touches on India, but superficially, and theres no mention of armor on their elephants.

Your best bet is to look at _Elephants and Kings_ (cited by the blog) which mentions elephants wearing armor, and looks like a really interesting read on the use of war elephants throughout Indias history.

----------


## Kriegspiel

> Are there scope attachments to add NV to a magnified optic?


Yes absolutely. Not counting dedicated sights, the PVS-14 itself is capable of being rail mounted 




> Also, how free to move are you while wearing NV? Can you run, or does the NVD jump around if you aren't careful? Does the added weight in the front feel bad on your neck after a while?


If everything is properly attached/tightened the NVD will stay in place even when running. 

I'd course like anything mounts can loosen up over time when used enough.

Adding another pound or so to an already 3-4 lb helmet isn't fun but you get used to it.

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## Sapphire Guard

_Le Bon Berger_ arrived today, thanks again everyone.

----------


## Gnoman

> What I mean is, the soft guts and liquid probably would soak a lot of the force, so you would end with a blade stuck inside a dead pig instead of a pig carcass cleanly cut in two...
> 
> So these shows make the cuts more impressive than they really are because they are making you believe you could cut somebody in two with that sword, which isn't true (well, maybe somebody with a lot of strength and training could really do it, like these samurai who tested swords on dead bodies during the Edo period and before, but not the guys testing the swords in the modern shows...).
> 
> That's the reason I as if you know of somebody who has ever tested the swords on dead animals with all their innnards. I am not speaking of just TV shows, but about serious scientific studies, or even about sword fanatics trying it on their own...


I don't know so much about blades, but what I know of bullets suggets that the difference you envision isn't necessarily a thing. Penetration data in living tissue is very similar to that from carcasses.

----------


## Vinyadan

> Yes absolutely. Not counting dedicated sights, the PVS-14 itself is capable of being rail mounted 
> 
> 
> 
> If everything is properly attached/tightened the NVD will still in place even when running. 
> 
> I'd course like anything mounts can loosen up over time when used enough.
> 
> Adding another pound or so to an already 3-4 lb helmet isn't fun but you get used to it.


Thanks a lot! There's something else I wondered about, do NVDs usually have magnification?

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> I don't know so much about blades, but what I know of bullets suggets that the difference you envision isn't necessarily a thing. Penetration data in living tissue is very similar to that from carcasses.


So. I have experience in using live blades on living animals, since I did hang around on a farm. I'll spoiler my take on this since it involves killing of animals that didn't exactly happen safely in the past. It's not going to be graphic, but if you are twelve and like sheep...

*Spoiler: You have been warned*
Show

Okay, so for the most part, carcasses are more resistant to blades than the living animals. That is mostly due to bones, but we'll take it by the numbers.

Fur and skin are about the same, living or dead. If you take time to turn it into rawhide or tan it, that's a different story, but that's outside of this discussion. It probably bears mentioning that some animal skins are tougher than others, with boars being particularly infamous.

Meat/muscles are also about the same, unless your carcass was left alone in specific conditions to start to cure itself and get that leathery quality to its meat, then it is significantly tougher.

Organs don't accomplish much, except for splattering, living or dead.

The real culprit is the bones. The longer a bone is dead, the harder to cut it gets. Even bones in your average meat sold by butchers and supermarkets are already harder to cut through than living ones. Living bones have a (usually) pinkish color and have blood going through them, and are just a bit soft and squishy.



All of that means dead carcasses are much harder to cut.

As for why shows use them, rating is one thing, working with living animals is another. Any living animal is, in general, a massive pain to work with if you're shooting any kind of movie/show, and that's a hassle that you may well eschew if you're on a budget.

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## Gnoman

I'm not sure how long it takes for bones to get that effect, but this otherwise matches my expectations from reading ballistic tests. Only ,eat and bone really make much of a difference.

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## Catullus64

What are people's opinions about the occurrence of single combats in historical warfare (as distinct from judicial or civilian single combats)? My primary source base gives me a mixed impression. On the one hand you have poetic sources like the Cattle Raid of Cooley or the Iliad, that are at best dubious in terms of representing things that actually happened. In the Nordic world, most of the descriptions of single combats from sagas are in the context of civilian feuds and legal disputes, though the line between those arenas and open warfare often seems very thin indeed. Livy is probably the most reliable source I know of who frequently describes military single combats as an actual historical event, but even he's writing centuries after an already-mythologized past. One frequent thread seems to be that single combats are rarely used as a means of _resolving_ a conflict, and more often are simply preludes to a wider-scale engagement.

More broadly, how do you think the idea of single combat can be handled intelligently in fiction? I feel like a great deal of modern historical and historical-fantasy fiction (A Song of Ice and Fire being probably the most widely-read example) treats the concept of resolving conflict by single combat with a certain amount of contempt, and a proposal of single combat is often used to display that a character is rash, naive, or has no other cards left to play. If a single combat is agreed to, one or both sides usually treats it cynically or seeks to cheat the outcome, such that a more conventional siege or battle has to be resorted to. The all-around-ok Netflix film _Outlaw King_ also contains a prominent example of this, as does the not-so-good film _Troy_; it even happens in Narnia of all places. 

In short, how would you envision single combat as a plausible military event, somewhere between the empty ceremony that modern authors seem to view it as, and the over-romanticized practice of the sagas?

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## Sapphire Guard

I can't throw up examples from history like some of our posters can, but I expect it could be useful as a way to avoid a wider war that has potential to be mutually destructive. They don't want to escalate, because a proper total war destroys both.

The way fiction sometimes handles it where a character has the brilliant idea to not play fair as though it's a revelation never sits well with me. Professional fighters have encountered the concept of cheating before, it's not some great revelation. Cheating in a formal contest has consequences.

Many of the rules of war are basically pragmatic. 'Don't fake surrenders'. If you fake a surrender, and then betray it, then the time you actually need to surrender the enemy thinks 'this is another trick' and massacres you.

'Don't poison wells' After the war, you'll need that well.

By the same principle, if you poison your weapons, and its discovered, then everyone poisons their weapons and all single combats end with both combatants dead. And so on.

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## Kriegspiel

> Thanks a lot! There's something else I wondered about, do NVDs usually have magnification?


Devices meant to be worn don't, but magnified monoculars & binoculars with night vision capability are available.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Catullus64*
> _What are people's opinions about the occurrence of single combats in historical warfare (as distinct from judicial or civilian single combats)?_


Im no expert, but I seem to recall reading that wars in medieval Japan often involved one-on-one duels with samurai from opposing sidesnot simply one fight, but a whole series of individual duels.  

Clearly this had changed by the time of Sekigahara, if not much earlier.  But I'll rely on Brother Oni and others better-versed in Japanese history to follow up on this.

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## Mechalich

> In short, how would you envision single combat as a plausible military event, somewhere between the empty ceremony that modern authors seem to view it as, and the over-romanticized practice of the sagas?


The viability of single combat has a lot to do with the cost-benefit analysis of war versus battle. If the cost of war - meaning all the logistical costs associating with mustering, fielding, and deploying an army among others - is high but the cost of battle is low - because the weapons systems involve result in low casualties, or because you have conscripts to spare, or because your warriors represent excess population your homeland can't sustain if you lose, among others - then there's a huge pressure to engage in battle so long as you appear to have any chance at all. By contrast if the cost of war is low - for example if all 'going to war' entails is having the men of the tribe grab their spears and walk a day over to the neighboring tribe's village - and the cost of battle is high - because you don't have any armor and a melee will kill tons of people even on the winning side - then there's a strong incentive to end a 'war' without battle. 

In such situations single combat serves as a potential escape valve. Therefore single combat makes most sense in which war is frequent, localized, and highly deadly. This is particularly likely when you have lots of closely neighboring competing polities that can easily field forces against each other but lack the means to achieve a decisive victory (the balance of weaponry versus fortification technology also plays a role here).

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## Martin Greywolf

> More broadly, how do you think the idea of single combat can be handled intelligently in fiction?


By doing actual research, something many, many authors seem to be pathologically opposed to.




> I feel like a great deal of modern historical and historical-fantasy fiction (A Song of Ice and Fire being probably the most widely-read example)


Well, ASoIaF treats the concept of not exterminating your own farmers with contempt. It has more to do with what mood you're going for in the story than any semblance of reality.




> If a single combat is agreed to, one or both sides usually treats it cynically or seeks to cheat the outcome, such that a more conventional siege or battle has to be resorted to. The all-around-ok Netflix film _Outlaw King_ also contains a prominent example of this, as does the not-so-good film _Troy_; it even happens in Narnia of all places.


To be fair, this is usually what happened. We'll get to it.




> What are people's opinions about the occurrence of single combats in historical warfare (as distinct from judicial or civilian single combats)?
> [...]
> In short, how would you envision single combat as a plausible military event, somewhere between the empty ceremony that modern authors seem to view it as, and the over-romanticized practice of the sagas?


Okay. So. First of all, medieval warfare is mostly not about battles, but rather about sieges and skirmishes while looking for supplies. Most of the fighting is therefore done between small bands of soldiers, about 12-50 per side (see Chevauchee of 100-years war as an example), because sieges are mostly resolved by one side giving up rather than storming of the walls.

This is... pretty damn important, because it shifts the most common engagement from 'regiments of soldiers fighting decisive battle' to 'small bands squabbling over some resources'. That means two commanders on the opposing sides may well decide to have a joust to decide their clash if they are so inclined, because the gain in prestige is great, loosing isn't that big a deal strategically and winning will be less costly than the alternative.

The obvious problem for your epic fantasy story is that, well, it isn't all that epic and can't be used as a climatic fight.

Second area of interest is seeking out specific people in a battle. This isn't all that hard with all the heraldry and it seems it happened very often. Mallory's Death of Arthur has too many examples to count of one knight spotting another and then riding to attack him, then defeating him and being stopped from finishing his opponent off by another. This isn't exactly single combat, but you can get a chain of one on one clashes this way if the fight isn't too cramped.

Finally, single combat before battles. Well, Illiad is kinda right. Probably.

If the battle you're in isn't in its 'main bodies advancing to engage' phase, and you're sitting in a shield wall and lobbing stones, a challenge may well be issued. If you're sitting in a castle being besieged, even more so.

When this happens and both sides accept (note that it doesn't have to be leaders of the sides doing it), then yeah, everyone can stop shooting at each other for a bit and look at two people fight it out. The result of this duel isn't going to decide the battle, but will get the participants quite some prestige and will impact the morale quite a bit. Sometimes these fights even evolve into tournaments of small groups, and they could get fancy, even erecting specific barriers to discourage one side from rushing into the open castle:

*Spoiler: Fighting at the barriers, various sources*
Show




As you can see, sometimes things... didn't go according to plan.

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## snowblizz

> As for why shows use them, rating is one thing, working with living animals is another.


Frankly shows use carcasses because they are available. When the Mythbusters tried to get hold of whole pigs for a Jimmy Hoffa experiment, oh and dead body in car one, it was near impossible as you can't actually sell them like that, it's a biohazard. Same is true for other parts of intestines. Like sourcing the complete digestive tract of a pig was also very very tricky. The way factory farming and wholesale is set up is specifically to only get the right parts tot he market and keep the "other stuff" away from it. So you are kinda at the mercy of what a local meat-wholesaler can provide you with.

Oh and live animals... you get PETA or the Animal Human society or some thing like that on you so fast your production shuts down at a snap. Check the credits of any movie featuring an animal and you'll see the watch group listed...

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## Vinyadan

> In short, how would you envision single combat as a plausible military event, somewhere between the empty ceremony that modern authors seem to view it as, and the over-romanticized practice of the sagas?


Machiavelli wrote something along these lines: if you have much to lose, you shouldn't put it all on balance on something small that won't let you bring your power to bear.

Champions fighting each other is something that happened. "Champion" as a word is related to "kampfen" -- to fight. However, I believe that those were mostly judicial duels; I saw the equivalent word on law codes from the high middle ages.

The Iliad is a very complex text (various historical eras were collapsed into it), but, as a narrative, it's quite coherent and offers an explanation for most of its events. There are two big duels that come to my mind as examples: Menelaus vs Paris and Achilles vs Hector. The first one is possible because it proposes to end the war there and then, as the war was due to Paris offending Menelaus. It's a set duel complete with a prize (Helen). The two characters aren't really champions, they are the primary parties in the dispute that devolved into the war.
The second one isn't a set duel, but becomes similar to one; Hector was left outside the walls when the Trojans retreated and Achilles ordered the Greeks not to kill him, because he wanted to do it himself (and the Greeks have learnt not to cross Achilles).
There also are cases where an exceptionally strong warrior challenges the heroes of the other army, like Hector challenging all of the Greeks to fight him in a duel. The prize in this case is the loser's armour, not the victory of the war.
About seeking people out, that certainly happened*, and glory and booty can explain why the heavily armed heroes of epos had a tendency to fight each other. However, I think that there could also have been a practical reason for that: a metal-clad noble warrior on a chariot was an extremely difficult target for anyone who wasn't similarly armed. When off his chariot, the hero was too heavily armored for lesser people to fight, and, if enough enemies joined forces against him, the hero could jump back on the chariot and get away. Someone with a similar armour had a better fighting chance, and the chariot helped get a hold of him.
That's how I understand the many nameless warriors that perish at the hands of named heroes: common folk that just weren't in the same league, as far as equipment was concerned.
Another aspect is that of leadership. The noble hero often was a chief or king; I don't know if his warriors would have remained, had he been killed (the choice would likely have gone to his heir or second in command).

In classical Greece, when push came to shove, personal duel wasn't seen in a positive light. We have a dialogue of Demaratus with Xerxes, where Demaratus (an exiled Spartan king) observes that he wouldn't fight one-on-one against some exceptionally skilled Persian warriors who would fight multiple opponents at once. Herodotus talks about a battle where Argos and Sparta chose their champions, but they were 300 for each side: in classical Greece, the citizen body and the community are the ones that matter, and one-on-one duels among nobles and kings just don't make sense (the battle still ended inconclusively).

The one personal duel among soldiers I can recall is one between a Macedonian soldier or mercenary and some Athenians. But it wasn't about war, it was about personal esteem. I think someone here mentioned it, and could give more precise info about it.

If you can access it, you can take a look at this article: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books...A8EE9D7A83EA4#

I don't have access to it, but it mentions the riepto. If I understand correctly, the riepto was a judgment that could contain a mix between the judicial duel and the duel between chiefs: two feuding nobles would fight each other before the king to determine who was right. https://www.academia.edu/2533245/El_..._Derecho_regio In a way, I guess, all judiciary duels among leaders could be seen as a substitute to a war inside the kingdom (law as a way to limit the conflict among families is something already present in Greece, and described in the Iliad as handled through weregild in one of the depictions on the shield of Achilles; the city must make it clear that the men aren't just the leaders of their house, but also part of the wider polity, so peace must be kept).

*at the battle of Cunaxa (401 BC), Cyrus the Younger died while leading the attack targeting his own brother, in the middle of the enemy army. An event in the same battle gives us an idea of the glory from killing in combat an enemy of renown: Cyrus reportedly was killed by a man called Mithridates, and the Great King later had Mithridates killed, because _he_ wanted to be known as the man who had killed Cyrus. 
There is one Roman example I can think of that isn't in Livy: in 29 BC  the commander Licinius Crassus demanded spolia opima for having  personally defeated the king of the Bastarnae. He was  refused his request, because Augustus claimed to be the real commander  of all military action, and instead he was given a triumph. However, his fight didn't decide the battle, which was won by the Roman army as a whole.




> Devices meant to be worn don't, but magnified  monoculars & binoculars with night vision capability are  available.


OK, thanks a lot!

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## Brother Oni

> Im no expert, but I seem to recall reading that wars in medieval Japan often involved one-on-one duels with samurai from opposing sidesnot simply one fight, but a whole series of individual duels.  
> 
> Clearly this had changed by the time of Sekigahara, if not much earlier.


Kind of for both points.

Reputedly, samurai had a habit of riding out in front of the army lines and boasting of their name/lineage/achievement, as both psychological warfare against the enemy and to boost friendly morale. Sometimes they might pick up a duel as a bit prestige earning, much like Martin Greywolf mentioned, but these were uncommon. This habit had disappeared by the time of the first Mongol Invasion (late 13th Century) although whether it was because the samurai didn't feel the need for it, or the Mongols broke them of that habit, isn't clear.

Battle lines devolving into duels after the initial clash was not ideal and actively discouraged, but plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy and there's a couple of factors that influenced this: the way samurai were rewarded for their prowess in battle, how the samurai specifically (ie not ashigaru) were organised and the tactics that these two factors both led to.

Samurai were rewarded for their prowess in battle - the easiest way of proving this was to display the heads of all your famous and important opponents you had taken after the battle in a head viewing ceremony. So samurai were encouraged to go out hunting for important leaders, despite maintaining formation being the best way of staying alive in combat.The next factor that lead to this was the way samurai were organised, as opposed to ashigaru. Taking the basic yari (spear) squad, they were 14 samurai strong, with each samurai having 1 or 2 ashigaru supporters or 'men at arms' not armed with spears. Each samurai/ashigaru team would fight together as close knit unit, but the whole samurai squad would be a much looser formation than an equivalent ashigaru spear squad.
These men at arms would be responsible for collecting the head after the samurai had taken it from its former owner.These two factors often lead to samurai tactics and warfare focusing on decapitation strikes (pun intended), that is going after high value targets and leaders almost exclusively, sometimes to the exclusion of actually winning the battle.*

This hadn't changed by the time of Sekigahara - what had changed was the increased predominance of ashigaru, who weren't as well rewarded for head hunting, plus they weren't as well trained, equipped or organised to go after a samurai's head (in comparison to the elite, semi-independent samurai spear squads, an ashigaru spear squad was 25 ashigaru shoulder to shoulder in a line, one man deep with a squad commander right behind them).
*The daimyo, Imagawa Yoshimoto, took time out after conquering two Oda castles in 1560 for headviewing ceremonies and a celebration of their victories. This delay in his march allowed his forces to be ambushed by another Oda army, resulting in his death.


Moving away from Japanese combat, I found mentioned of the Combat of the Thirty in an earlier version of this thread, so it appears that organising such ritual combat might be an option to stalemated siege warfare throughout the rest of war.


Edit: On a separate note, i found this reference to a Shimadzu clan mobilisation order from 1578

    Holders of 1 cho: 2 men, master and follower; the master's service shall be personal;    holders of 2 cho: 3 men, master and followers;    holders of 3 cho: 4 men, master and followers;    holders of 4 cho: 5 men, master and followers;    holders of 5 cho: 6 men, master and followers;    holders of 6 cho: 7 men, master and followers;    holders of 7 cho: 8 men, master and followers;    holders of 8 cho: 9 men, master and followers;    holders of 9 cho: 10 men, master and followers;    holders of 10 cho: 11 men, master and followers; 

1 cho was ~2.94 acres back in 1578.

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## Pauly

As for the individual combat, there does appear to be a strong cultural element to it.
Cultures that had a strong history of boasting of individual prowess (Celts, Viking era Scandinavians, Japanese for example) had higher reported instances. Some of the reports come from epic poems/myths/sagas so there is a chance that it was seen more as an ideal than an actual practice. More organized/pragmatic cultures (eg Romans, Mongols) discouraged the practice. 

Probably the most famous example of an individual combat of single combat is David and Goliath. Leaving aside whether or not it is a true account or not, the situation described leading up to the duel is fairly common. Both armies had taken up defensive positions and neither was prepared to come out and attack. The offer of single combat was part of the psychological warfare to get the other sides morale to break. So as a way of breaking a stalemate, a duel of champions was useds. This seems to have been reasonably common at least in literature.

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## Mechalich

> Probably the most famous example of an individual combat of single combat is David and Goliath. Leaving aside whether or not it is a true account or not, the situation described leading up to the duel is fairly common. Both armies had taken up defensive positions and neither was prepared to come out and attack. The offer of single combat was part of the psychological warfare to get the other sides morale to break. So as a way of breaking a stalemate, a duel of champions was useds. This seems to have been reasonably common at least in literature.


Single combat as a psychological weapon of this nature also shows up extensively in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and there seems to be a fair amount of historical backing as the accounts reveal that many of the generals of the time were horrible jerks who couldn't lead an army out of a paper bag but whose personal combat prowess was exceedingly important, such as Lu Bu. 

This seems to have a lot to do with the nature of the armies and the weapons systems available to them. The average Three Kingdoms army was comprised almost entirely of conscripted peasants with minimal training, only simple polearms as weapons and no armor to speak of. At the same time, however, those armies were huge, regularly throwing mid-five figure forces at each other. Additionally, due to the nature of the Chinese central plains and its heavy cultivation (of wheat, not rice), they often drew up against each other more or less in the open. Even further, because of environmental considerations and ongoing hostilities with the steppe tribes to the north, the Chinese state at the time had proportionally very few cavalry to break up infantry formations.

The result was a military situation that prioritized any method whatsoever to 'break the line' and cause infantry to scatter before assaults. A huge portion of Three Kingdoms involves seemingly endless stratagems to take the enemy unawares so as to avoid letting them draw up their formations, but when that failed, it seems the practice was to send out your champion to fight the other guys champion in the hopes that a decisive victory would break enemy morale and allow a massed infantry attack to succeed. 

So this sort of duel-to-break-morale situation can exist, but it will only happen if the right military conditions emerge to support it. Large conscript armies seem to be a key part - because that's the kind of army that depends on this sort of morale-boost.

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## Brother Oni

> Single combat as a psychological weapon of this nature also shows up extensively in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and there seems to be a fair amount of historical backing as the accounts reveal that many of the generals of the time were horrible jerks who couldn't lead an army out of a paper bag but whose personal combat prowess was exceedingly important, such as Lu Bu.


While true that a significant number of generals did end up being betrayed by their subordinates (Zhang Fei is mentioned multiple times to be a giant, drunken [redacted] bag which led to his assassination by two defecting subordinates and he's the sworn brother of the patron saint of loyalty and righteousness himself), take anything from Romance with a great pinch of salt as it's essentially historical fanfiction that was collated and written down by a Liu Bei fanboy, centuries after the Three Kingdoms era.

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## Thane of Fife

> So this sort of duel-to-break-morale situation can exist, but it will only happen if the right military conditions emerge to support it. Large conscript armies seem to be a key part - because that's the kind of army that depends on this sort of morale-boost.


I suspect that these sorts of single combats were more common than that. I'm going mostly off secondary (or worse) sources here, but I can find references to similar single combats at (I'm just looking in Europe):

The Battle of Kulikovo (Russians vs Mongols). Both champions purportedly killed each other.
Battles of the Arab Conquests, even going so far as to claim that the Arab Mubarizun were a special unit devoted primarily to these kinds of single combats against the Byzantines.
At the Battle of Nineveh, Byzantine Emperor Heraclius purportedly fought a single combat before the battle.
Geoffrey le Baker apparently records a combat between an English and Scottish champion before the Battle of Halidon Hill, and other combats between the English and French before Poitiers.
At the Siege of Melun in 1429, the commander of the French garrison, Arnaud Guillaume, purportedly jousted with King Henry V underground during a counter-mining operation.

Likewise, we know that people fought duels and such outside of battles - there's the Combat of the Thirty mentioned just a few posts ago, for example. I also saw an interesting reference to a challenge made in 1398-ish by seven French knights against the English, with the losers giving diamonds or golden rods to the winners' ladies. These sorts of challenges seem to have been highly lauded at the time, win or lose.

---

My understanding of the current conception of pre-modern combat is that it was brief spasms of action between when lines met and when they broke apart again to regroup. These lulls, or the moments before the battle actually started, would seem like ideal moments for single or small group combats.

If people from these sorts of warrior cultures were willing to fight deadly duels for honor during comparative peacetime, I would think they would have been even more willing to do it during battle, when their blood was up and they were in front of all their peers, unless they had it sufficiently beaten into them that they were not supposed to do that.

That's all speculation on my part, though.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Thane of Fife*
> _The Battle of Kulikovo (Russians vs Mongols). Both champions purportedly killed each other._


This is mentioned in Ospreys book on Kulikovo:

Although it is entirely possible this is simply a colourful apocryphal tale, the convention is that, in a clash evocative of older times, champions from each side met and duelled in the no mans land between armies before the battle.  (p. 57)

The book adds the detail that after the first pass with spears, the Mongol champions body was knocked clean off his horse," while the Russian champions body stayed in the saddle, which the Russians considered a good omen.

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## Clistenes

Speaking about duels during a war, I would like to mention the Challenge of Barletta (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_of_Barletta).

It seems such duels were quite common during sieged in the Italian Wars.

About duels between samurai, it's important to remember that they originally weren't soldiers serving in the armies of independent countries, but bodyguards and enforcers of imperial governors. At the beginning, samurai wars looked more like small scale vendettas between aristocratic families... like, you killed the servant of my cousin, so I send some guys to burn one of your villages.

Samurai were mounted archers at that time. Their armies were small and fast, and their main goal was to kill other samurai.

Afterwards, fiefdoms became more and more like independent countries that conquered each other, and they created true armies.

At the beginning, ashigaru were seen as a poor man's weapon, a poor replacement for samurai that you resorted to when you lacked them. 

But later they raised large armies of ashigaru  footmen, with samurai being officers and cavalry.




> So. I have experience in using live blades on living animals, since I did hang around on a farm. I'll spoiler my take on this since it involves killing of animals that didn't exactly happen safely in the past. It's not going to be graphic, but if you are twelve and like sheep...
> 
> *Spoiler: You have been warned*
> Show
> 
> Okay, so for the most part, carcasses are more resistant to blades than the living animals. That is mostly due to bones, but we'll take it by the numbers.
> 
> Fur and skin are about the same, living or dead. If you take time to turn it into rawhide or tan it, that's a different story, but that's outside of this discussion. It probably bears mentioning that some animal skins are tougher than others, with boars being particularly infamous.
> 
> ...


Thank you. I wasn't speaking of living animals, but of dead animals whose blood and organs haven't been removed, but your post answers my question.

I understand why carcasses are used in shows instead of whole dead bodies , of course. It would be too gruesome for TV. Scientific tests done in lab conditions are another matter...

As for living animals, it probably is illegal in most countries (and honestly, I wouldn't want to watch that show myself).

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## fusilier

> Speaking about duels during a war, I would like to mention the Challenge of Barletta (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_of_Barletta).
> 
> It seems such duels were quite common during sieged in the Italian Wars.


Ah the Challenge of Barletta, that's a fascinating event.  I was thinking about it recently.  I didn't realize such duels were common, although it makes sense as a good way to pass the time during sieges.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Samurai were mounted archers at that time. Their armies were small and fast, and their main goal was to kill other samurai.
> 
> Afterwards, fiefdoms became more and more like independent countries that conquered each other, and they created true armies.
> 
> At the beginning, ashigaru were seen as a poor man's weapon, a poor replacement for samurai that you resorted to when you lacked them. 
> 
> But later they raised large armies of ashigaru  footmen, with samurai being officers and cavalry.


It's a pretty fascinating thing - Japan basically had middle ages on fast forward during the Sengoku Jidai. At the end of Muromachi period and start of Sengoku Jidai, the samurai armies were not unlike those of early medieval Hungary: centered around well-armored horse archer aristocracy. And then, during sengoku jidai, they discovered heavy cavalry massed charges and subsequently countered them with pike and shot formations, with all the organizational innovation you need to have those.

And then they stagnated for a few centuries, only to repeat the blisteringly quick modernization during the Meiji restoration.

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## Catullus64

Here's a thing on which I would be keen to gather people's speculations: why does the sword, in so many times and places, achieve its status as a poetic and cultural symbol of martial values, as opposed to other weapons.

There are, I am aware, countless exceptions to this rule, many times and places where spears, bows, shields, and battle rifles receive this romantic treatment as a metonym for warriors and warfare. But it seems fair to say that the sword receives this treatment more persistently, even in cultures that differ vastly in terms of how swords fit into their fighting practices. It's a sufficiently powerful cultural motif that every arms enthusiast or professional seems to feel the need to push back and emphasize the importance of other weapons.

As for my own speculations about the matter, they are always baffled by the diversity of the periods. The claim that swords represent specifically elite fighting has never rung true for me in the face of the Romans, whose most successful infantry system revolved around a sword in conjunction with a large shield, and who used the sword as a martial motif with aplomb. Curious to hear what people's takes are based on their own sources and periods of interest.

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## Sapphire Guard

Because they're more expensive and therefore worn by rich people. Either that or because they were used in formal duels. 

You hear about duelling with pistols more than rifles or shotguns, even though they are not better combat weapons overall.

(All of this is guesswork)

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## Vinyadan

> Here's a thing on which I would be keen to gather people's speculations: why does the sword, in so many times and places, achieve its status as a poetic and cultural symbol of martial values, as opposed to other weapons.
> 
> There are, I am aware, countless exceptions to this rule, many times and places where spears, bows, shields, and battle rifles receive this romantic treatment as a metonym for warriors and warfare. But it seems fair to say that the sword receives this treatment more persistently, even in cultures that differ vastly in terms of how swords fit into their fighting practices. It's a sufficiently powerful cultural motif that every arms enthusiast or professional seems to feel the need to push back and emphasize the importance of other weapons.
> 
> As for my own speculations about the matter, they are always baffled by the diversity of the periods. The claim that swords represent specifically elite fighting has never rung true for me in the face of the Romans, whose most successful infantry system revolved around a sword in conjunction with a large shield, and who used the sword as a martial motif with aplomb. Curious to hear what people's takes are based on their own sources and periods of interest.


I think the Greeks didn't really care about swords. For them, the symbolic weapon was the spear. Homer's heroes used a spear, poets describing military service mentioned it through the spear, Greece vs Persia was described as spear vs bow, and the land conquered by the Hellenistic kings was "conquered by the spear" (doryktetos).

About the Romans, I am not sure that the sword was that important for them. I haven't really searched, but, off the top of my head, I can't really recall any use of it as a symbolic, particularly meaningful weapon. Spears instead were used as a symbol of autority for commanders and emperors, and were themselves a symbol of war (an emperor pointing a spear downwards represented peace). Rome itself, personfied as the goddess Roma, bore a spear.
The one special use of the gladius I can think of is in episodes of violence (sometimes involving soldiers) outside the field of battle, like when Gaius Luscius was killed, or when the Emperors were done with someone, or someone was done with the Emperor (and, now that I think about it, the tyrannicides in Athens were also represented with swords).

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## halfeye

> I think the Greeks didn't really care about swords. For them, the symbolic weapon was the spear. Homer's heroes used a spear, poets describing military service mentioned it through the spear, Greece vs Persia was described as spear vs bow, and the land conquered by the Hellenistic kings was "conquered by the spear" (doryktetos).
> 
> About the Romans, I am not sure that the sword was that important for them. I haven't really searched, but, off the top of my head, I can't really recall any use of it as a symbolic, particularly meaningful weapon. Spears instead were used as a symbol of autority for commanders and emperors, and were themselves a symbol of war (an emperor pointing a spear downwards represented peace). Rome itself, personfied as the goddess Roma, bore a spear.
> The one special use of the gladius I can think of is in episodes of violence (sometimes involving soldiers) outside the field of battle, like when Gaius Luscius was killed, or when the Emperors were done with someone, or someone was done with the Emperor (and, now that I think about it, the tyrannicides in Athens were also represented with swords).


The way I heard it, the legions avanced with a shield wall and stuck their swords forward through gaps, while the celts were coming at them looking for single combat with longer swords and not getting it. This could easily be wrong, but I'd need citations before accepting another account.

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## Mechalich

> Here's a thing on which I would be keen to gather people's speculations: why does the sword, in so many times and places, achieve its status as a poetic and cultural symbol of martial values, as opposed to other weapons.


Because 'martial values' are not necessarily the values of the battlefield, and may in fact be rather idealized or even opposed to them. 

The sword was, until the development of pistols (and even for some time after that, depending on location) the predominant _sidearm_ and the dominant weapon in non-battlefield combat such as urban brawls, duels, sporting contests, and indoor fighting. In times of relative limited open battle by high rates of commonplace violence - a common state in many eras of history when battles were rare but raiding and sieging were more frequent - the sword acquired prominence. Additionally, battlefield combat techniques tend to be simple and emphasize collective action - for example, phalanx fighting stresses unit cohesion over individual thrust technique - while dueling or sport techniques may be extremely complex and involved. The latter makes them much better for _literary_ purposes which means they tended to get immortalized in art form at a comparatively higher rate. There was also an economic incentive behind this - a swordmaster has every reason to make his school as complex as possible in order to milk young nobles out of fees for _years_, even though the marginal utility of such teachings is rather low. 

Consider The Book of Five Rings, possibly the most famous manual on swordsmanship ever written. Miyamoto Musashi wrote it for his students as a compilation of the teachings of his school. He had served in battle and briefly discusses the utility of the other major battlefield weapons of the time (bows, spears, slashing polearms, and guns), even conceding situational superiority in some cases - such as guns being unrivaled until melee commences - but he focuses overwhelming on the sword and uses swordsmanship as his central metaphor for tactics, strategy, and the philosophy of life as a whole. Musashi wasn't trying to teach ideal battlefield combat methods, he was trying to convey his idea of the warrior ideal, and he did so in a artistically compelling fashion. Actual military combat manuals, by contrast, simply can't compare in terms of cultural penetration.

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## AdAstra

I think it's less that swords are specifically a rich person's weapon (if anything, heavy armor for the period tends to be more associated with status) and more that swords are typically a weapon that is easy to carry, either in one's day to day life or on the battlefield, particularly when you have other weapons to lug around. In addition, unlike axes and knives, swords are almost solely martial implements (hunting swords being one of the few exceptions), while spears are a bit more subject to wear and tear even when used carefully while being more cumbersome outside of battle (and have more associations with hunting). For someone who wants to commission a fancy/custom/really excellent weapon, a martial badge of office, a weapon that's kinda akin to jewelry, a sword makes sense since it's feasible to take just about anywhere while still being impressive. So while swords were more than a status symbol, a lot of status symbols are going to end up being swords (though not all, you see dolled-up versions of just about anything). 

As for Roman use of swords as symbols, you do see them in the form of wooden swords/Rudis given to retiring gladiators. Not a military association, but a martial one at least.

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## Lacco

I'd go for a baseless speculation: swords are weapons made for war. Other weapons were either hunting tools (e.g. bows, spears) or tools (axes, hammers) that were later turned into weapons.

But swords... they were made with only one purpose in mind. So if you owned one... you were a warrior. Not a hunter that also goes to war. Or lumberjack that goes to war.

Still: it's a baseless speculation on my side.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Here's a thing on which I would be keen to gather people's speculations: why does the sword, in so many times and places, achieve its status as a poetic and cultural symbol of martial values, as opposed to other weapons.


Let's address some of the myths floating around.

Swords aren't significantly more expensive than other weapons. The good ones can be, but buying a basic sword was within the abilities of a common soldier in most of medieval era. They were sometimes prohibitively expensive in migration period Europe, but that's an exception that got blown out of proportion. You need about as much metal for one as you need for a helmet, so if swords are rare, helmets should be as well. Which is true for the more tribal areas of migration period Europe, but not for, say, ancient Egypt, Rome or Chinese dynasties.

Secondly, sword isn't necessarily a sidearm, albeit for most of the pre-gunpowder era, this is the case. Roman legions used heavy pilum as a spear, and fought much in the same way Greek phalanxes did - spear and shield, chuck spear once tight press is about to happen and switch to sword and shield. You can argue about which weapon was the primary one, and you'd be wrong with either, the primary 'weapon' in this case is clearly the shield. Once gunpowder era hits, some of the heavy cavalry has swords as primary weapons, and officers with pistol and sword have... two sidearms? It gets a bit wonky.

Third issue is that of hunting weapon. There is quite a lot of hunting swords around, for anything from stiucking the boars through to slitting the throat of incapacitated prey. They were worn and often used at hunts. You could argue they are associated with hunts less than bows, crossbows and spears - albeit I don't know how successfully and for what period - but that's about it.

*Spoiler: Swords at hunt*
Show





So, why the mythologizing? You can wear them at all times. That's pretty much it. It has... a lot of effects.

First of all, if you are a random commoner, you will see your local aristocrat a lot, since he has administrative duties. At those times you see him, he will not be in heavy armor and with a pollaxe/ji/naginata, because why the hell would he, he's there to make sure the taxes are paid. But, what he will have is, and this will build an association between swords and people in charge.

*Spoiler: Sword at court, still in scabbard*
Show




*Spoiler: Felician Zah attempts to kill the king at mealtime*
Show




Moreover, and this applies to societies without military aristocracy (e.g. China), if you have a heroic story, people in it will be doing a lot of plot things other than being in major battles. While they will definitely have their heavy fighting gear in battle, once they go to have a dinner or hold court and get jumped by ninjas, all they have left is a sword. Combine this with using a sword once their weapon breaks (and sometimes subsequently breaking the sword as well), and you have a sword that is at the side of your heroic characters at all times. I'm currently reading through Morte de Arthur, and this sort fo things happens quite a lot.

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## VonKaiserstein

> As for the individual combat, there does appear to be a strong cultural element to it.
> Cultures that had a strong history of boasting of individual prowess (Celts, Viking era Scandinavians, Japanese for example) had higher reported instances. Some of the reports come from epic poems/myths/sagas so there is a chance that it was seen more as an ideal than an actual practice. More organized/pragmatic cultures (eg Romans, Mongols) discouraged the practice. 
> 
> Probably the most famous example of an individual combat of single combat is David and Goliath. Leaving aside whether or not it is a true account or not, the situation described leading up to the duel is fairly common. Both armies had taken up defensive positions and neither was prepared to come out and attack. The offer of single combat was part of the psychological warfare to get the other sides morale to break. So as a way of breaking a stalemate, a duel of champions was useds. This seems to have been reasonably common at least in literature.


Absolutely this.  You see individual duels in warrior societies, typically in routine warfare.  The Cattle Raid of Cooley is an excellent example because you have many warlike political entities (Ireland was known as having a king on every hill) and very low stakes warfare.  The loss of a duel might mean the loss of a cow, or a few sheep, or the village beauty- a very survivable experience for the tribe that lost.  On the other hand, as you're surrounded by equally warlike warrior groups, if you throw all your warriors into battle against the raiding party even if you win the casualties might cause the end of your tiny kingdom.

It doesn't make sense if someone is trying to wipe you out.  If they're trying to force you into some treaty, or steal a few resources, then it definitely does.  It's one of the main differences between warrior culture, and a culture with a standing army. Ironically, a standing army or professional soldiery will fight harder because that's what they're for. Somebody already paid you to get very good at fighting- they want their money's worth!  The warriors of a village will fight when required, sure... but typically they've got farms, fishing, or other regular jobs to tend to, so let's wrap this up and get back to the business of living.

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## Vinyadan

> The way I heard it, the legions avanced with a shield wall and stuck their swords forward through gaps, while the celts were coming at them looking for single combat with longer swords and not getting it. This could easily be wrong, but I'd need citations before accepting another account.


What I meant was importance on a symbolic level: spears clearly were used as symbols by the various ancient incarnations of the Roman state, swords, however, not so much.

I think it's because spears were a symbol of war, and, therefore, of military might. In Herodotus there is a line by Leonidas who tells a subject of Xerxes, "If you knew freedom, you would fight for it not just with spears, but even with axes". Spears here are the military weapon of choice, while axes are civilian items used as improvised weapons in an imaginary desperate and underequipped revolt. Swords would have been less interesting to name, because they were somewhere in between the extremes: military weapons that weren't as apt or as important as spears. Spears vs swords is like rifle vs pistols, a state will more likely exalt a soldier's rifle than a pistol.

I would add another detail, which is the severe arms control in the republics of the ancient era: even when you were allowed to own weapons, you generally couldn't carry them in public places. What these places were varies by time and place; Rome had the pomerium, other places had the temple, the market, and the agora, or the whole of the city within its walls. So a sword couldn't become a status symbol like in later eras, because you didn't wear one when performing your public duties.

Instead, two civilian weapons gained special regard in Rome: sticks and axes, that represented the power of the magistrate to punish citizens with beatings and decapitations and were bundled in the fasces. The lictors carrying them weren't there just for show, but actual jailors, torturers, and executioners that accompanied the magistrate to enforce his decisions. 

In medieval times, the Doge of Venice occasionally carried a bare sword for similar reasons while parading someone sentenced to death. Swords represented the might to punish evil deeds. For similar reasons, we see as Justice carrying a sword. In Greece, however, the goddess of justice (Dike) had many aspects and identifications, and so she could show a number of implements, among which the cornucopia and lighting (as Astraea), parts of a mouse trap or a mallet (to beat up Injustice), a sword (as an infernal deity), a box full of books and more.




> Secondly, sword isn't necessarily a sidearm, albeit for most of the  pre-gunpowder era, this is the case. Roman legions used heavy pilum as a  spear, and fought much in the same way Greek phalanxes did - spear and  shield, chuck spear once tight press is about to happen and switch to  sword and shield. You can argue about which weapon was the primary one,  and you'd be wrong with either, the primary 'weapon' in this case is  clearly the shield.


Just for clarity, not knowing if your "chuck" meant "cast aside" or  "throw", I don't believe the Greeks in this age threw their spears  before clashing with the enemy. There is a description in Herodotus where the Spartans have turned to swords because they have to, as they have been fighting for so long that most of their spears had been broken.




> As for Roman use of swords as symbols, you do see them in the form of  wooden swords/Rudis given to retiring gladiators. Not a military  association, but a martial one at least.


Interesting; legionaries could be rewarded instead with the hasta pura, a spear without the iron tip (different authors give different occasions when it was bestowed; one was the retiring of centurions holding a particularly important position). 

This sort of purely symbolic rewards (not much worth to them) was to be found in the panellenic games, too: a laurel wreath or branch in Olympia and Delphi, a celery one at the Nemean games, and a pine one at the Isthmic games.

Gladiatory games, suspended between battle and civilian life, do look like one of those places where a sword could gain a very special meaning.

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## Martin Greywolf

> In medieval times, the Doge of Venice occasionally carried a bare sword for similar reasons while parading someone sentenced to death. Swords represented the might to punish evil deeds. For similar reasons, we see as Justice carrying a sword. In Greece, however, the goddess of justice (Dike) had many aspects and identifications, and so she could show a number of implements, among which the cornucopia and lighting (as Astraea), parts of a mouse trap or a mallet (to beat up Injustice), a sword (as an infernal deity), a box full of books and more.


This is where we need to be really, really careful not to put cart in front of the horse. Why did the Doge use the sword as a symbol of authority? Was it because it was associated with the judiciary duties, or was it because sword as such was associated with authority in the first place?

With most of the post-migration period medieval rituals, it's probably the latter. There is a wealth of sources from 900-1200 that have swords in positions symbolizing knighthood or some other sort of authority, and it holds fairly uiversally across Europe. Hungarian chronicles have kings being knighted by being belted with swords in rivers (probably a Slavic ritual), Arthurian myth prominently features sword as the object that chooses the king (French or Welsh in origin? there is no consensus) and so on.

But all of that is kind of... not applicable to the topic, in a way. There are different resons why sword became so entrenched with knights that to those for Samurai and katanas, but they do share common traits: both are swords, and both are considered to be the coolest melee weapon in their culture. With cultures that disparate arriving to a convergent mythology of weapons... the reason has to be somewhere other than mythology and region-specific developments.




> Just for clarity, not knowing if your "chuck" meant "cast aside" or  "throw", I don't believe the Greeks in this age threw their spears  before clashing with the enemy. There is a description in Herodotus where the Spartans have turned to swords because they have to, as they have been fighting for so long that most of their spears had been broken.


Homer describes spears being thrown by heavy infantry, and even later hoplites did throw them, occassionally. It wasn't the Roman-style pre-charge pilum throw, Greeks seemed to prefer to charge in a phalanx with spears, what I was referring to was being in a situation where you know you will have to use your sword, so you opt to do something useful with the spear and throw it. There are definitely situations where it would be devastatingly effective - the one that comes to mind immediately is flanking. If you are about to clash into side of enemy formation already in a melee, the people on their sides will turn to face you, but people behind them will not.

The macedonian phalanxes with what were effectively pikes would only throw them very rarely. I don't know about Greeks specifically, but:

*Spoiler: Alfieri on throwing pikes, emphasis mine*
Show


On sliding the pike, and on the sword

Chapter XII

In this design we see the method for sliding the pike back, until it rests on your left hand near the head. The soldier finds his left flank forward, and wishing to avail himself of his arms, and not abandon them, flips over his left hand, which he must use to pass the pike over his head. With this motion he returns to his natural posture, holding the pike, and after can easily put his hand to his sword, without disordering himself by drawing it over his left arm, without moving his feet.

In this way he can easily employ both of them together, to better resist, and fight with the advantage of two weapons, which is obvious to those who know how important this is, and who dedicate themselves to the military arts. However, the prudent never have their fill of practising and learning: *demonstrating their strength and agility by throwing the pike in different ways*, letting it slide from the point down to the butt, and extracting a thousand new discoveries, all contributing to the completeness of this art.


It's the first rule of pragmatic polearms: if you can't use it any more, throw it at someone.




> Gladiatory games, suspended between battle and civilian life, do look like one of those places where a sword could gain a very special meaning.


This may once again be putting things backwards. Gladiatorial games had very specific rulesets, and allowed weapons, and whether or not the prizes were associated iwth them more than any militarily significant weapons is... well, a pretty good topic for a thesis.

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## Berenger

> Gladiatory games, suspended between battle and civilian life, do look like one of those places where a sword could gain a very special meaning.


Swords seem to have held some special meaning in this context because the symbol of a successful gladiator's manumission was shaped in the form of a rudis, a wooden training sword.

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## Vinyadan

About the meaning of swords in the gladiatory games, it just came to my mind a text by Artemidorus, a Greek diviner, who offered an interpretation of the meaning of different gladiators. The gladiators represented the kind of woman you were going to marry, based on his technique and equipment. For example, if you dreamt of a gladiator with two blades, well, tough luck: it meant that your wife was going to be duplicitous, ugly, or an outright poisoner.

It isn't strictly related, but it's something I find funny and interesting.




> This is where we need to be really, really careful not to put cart in front of the horse. Why did the Doge use the sword as a symbol of authority? Was it because it was associated with the judiciary duties, or was it because sword as such was associated with authority in the first place?


There are multiple swords in the history of Venice, and the symbols of the Doge varied with time. The original ones came from  Constantinople and where a sword, a sceptre, and a throne. The sword  represented the dignity of spatharios, while the sceptre and the throne  were probably derived by the late ancient-early medieval custom of  bestowing them to Constantinople's consuls (other Italian dukes, like the duke of Naples, also used  them). In a couple of centuries, both sword and throne disappeared from  the ceremony of the doge's ascension, and he would only get a sceptre.  
During the times of the comuni, the sceptre (that had become a judiciary symbol) also disappeared, and the  doge would instead get a standard, possibly because it was closer to  what had been happening in other cities (with roles such as  "gonfaloniere", the city's standard-bearer, and, sometimes, its highest  office). The standard is also visible on the sigils and the coins  showing the doge (Enrico Dandolo receives the standard from St. Mark). 
As the power of the doge lessens, the number of his regalia increases, until they comprise the 7 "triumphs". Among these there is a sword given by the Pope to the doge in 1177 as a defender of Christianity (= defender of of the Pope against the Emperor). This sword will become known as the "sword of justice"; Jacopo Bertaldo (a jurist, d. 1315) connects it to the power of vengeance (for the state) of the doge. It normally wasn't carried by the doge, but by some magistrates or judges who accompanied him. Its connection to the power to punish is generally attested in all secondary sources I read about it. 

It's a pity that I cannot find the description of the parade I mentioned earlier; I read it years ago, and my memory is a bit hazy. The procession proceded by boat, and the doge was on the ducal barge; the sentenced man, whose hand was cut and hanged at his neck, also was on a barge. I don't remember if the doge exceptionally carried the sword personally in this case, or whether it was naked or sheated, and when exactly the hand was cut (before or after leaving the barge).




> Homer describes spears being thrown by heavy infantry, and even later hoplites did throw them, occassionally. It wasn't the Roman-style pre-charge pilum throw, Greeks seemed to prefer to charge in a phalanx with spears, what I was referring to was being in a situation where you know you will have to use your sword, so you opt to do something useful with the spear and throw it. There are definitely situations where it would be devastatingly effective - the one that comes to mind immediately is flanking. If you are about to clash into side of enemy formation already in a melee, the people on their sides will turn to face you, but people behind them will not.


If you have some references on hoplites throwing their spears, I'd like to take a look. It's the sort of thing that gets barely mentioned. The one case I have in mind is a vase where hoplites carry two spears, one noticeably shorter than the other and probably meant to be thrown (although this is different from throwing the main spear).

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## Martin Greywolf

> The original ones came from  Constantinople and where a sword, a sceptre, and a throne. The sword  represented the dignity of spatharios


So, in this specific case, the sowrd is there because it was the weapon of choice of imperial bodyguards whose name/title got used in political plays in the sense of "the emperor trusts you", and it's a sword because a sword and a shield are a really good weapon choice for a bodyguard. Kind of how we associate semiauto pistols and black suits with single headphone with modern bodyguards.




> If you have some references on hoplites throwing their spears, I'd like to take a look. It's the sort of thing that gets barely mentioned. The one case I have in mind is a vase where hoplites carry two spears, one noticeably shorter than the other and probably meant to be thrown (although this is different from throwing the main spear).


For literary references,, I don't have a lot of Greek ones, being a medieval guy, but, there is all of Iliad, spears get thrown there quite a lot at targets of opportunity, or in duels where some opt to throw all the spears and go into sword and board fight rather than throw all but one spears.

For depictions, the situation is both simple and complicated. Complicated because overhand spear thrust is the same position as the one used to throw a spear (not that you can't throw underhand if pressed), but simple because of amentum. It's a rope thingy that functions as an atl atl.

*Spoiler: It looks like this*
Show




And amentum is seen used on hoplite spears, even if they are only holding one.

*Spoiler: Heavy hoplites with amentum*
Show





You could argue artistic license, but I don't like that argument much, especially since there are depictions of hoplites with two spears. It's equally, if not more, likely that we see some hoplites putting a light piece of string on their spears to be able to throw them better if they have the reason to. It's not like that string weights much or gets in the way.

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## Vinyadan

> So, in this specific case, the sowrd is there because it was the weapon of choice of imperial bodyguards whose name/title got used in political plays in the sense of "the emperor trusts you", and it's a sword because a sword and a shield are a really good weapon choice for a bodyguard. Kind of how we associate semiauto pistols and black suits with single headphone with modern bodyguards.


In the very first instances, yep, that's the case. Then the sword seems to disappear from descriptions of the elevation of new Dogi. The sword that appears after 1177 is symbolically the one given that year by the Pope with the meaning of a defender (although an ideologically charged one, as the Doge isn't the defender of any lord, but of the Pope himself, and therefore fighting a just fight sanctioned by the highest moral authority). It then is closely associated to the judiciary; Justice itself, in Venice, bears the scales and a sword, but wears no blindfold. The phisical sword of the doge is then clearly associated to judiciary functions by the XIV century, as I mentioned in the previous post,as it must be carried by a judge or magistrate. Much later (1600s), we see coins showing on one side the Doge receiving the standard from St. Mark, and, on the other, receiving the sword from Justice herself. 

Now, on one hand, I admit that it's a mistake to rely too much on contemporary allegorical understandings of the meaning of items, because the medieval man loved that stuff and would make up his own allegory, if one wasn't already available from the start (I say this in particular about the aforementioned Jacopo, a contemporary of Dante "Allegory" Alighieri himself). On the other hand, I wonder whether "I got this sword because I have iustitia" (the personal virtue) was separated from "I have this sword because I wield iustitia" (the justice of Venice).

It's notable however that, by the time of Jacopo, the Doge didn't judge or execute anyone. He was be present at judgement and execution, and the judge explicitly told him "I speak in your name" when pronouncing verdict, but he wasn't allowed to exercise such powers in person. Which is different from Roman magistrates, and might explain why judges would carry the sword instead of him.




> For literary references,, I don't have a lot of Greek ones, being a  medieval guy, but, there is all of Iliad, spears get thrown there quite a  lot at targets of opportunity, or in duels where some opt to throw all  the spears and go into sword and board fight rather than throw all but  one spears.
> 
> For depictions, the situation is both simple and complicated.  Complicated because overhand spear thrust is the same position as the  one used to throw a spear (not that you can't throw underhand if  pressed), but simple because of amentum. It's a rope thingy that  functions as an atl atl.
> 
> *Spoiler: It looks like this*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The problem with that image in particular is that it doesn't represent an hoplite: instead, it represents Achilles fighting Memnon (n. 25). So it's possible that the artist depicted Achilles with a throwing spear or javelin, instead of a common melee spear, because Homeric heroes frequently threw their spear (the duel between Achilles and Hector being probably the best known case). To better explain what I mean, vases representing Achilles & Co. often show chariots, but we don't assume hoplites used them (although I admit that a detail on a spear is different from a whole chariot). On the other side of the vase, Memnon is dying, his own spear is broken (possibly a memory from the death of Patroclus in the Iliad) and he has another spear deep in his neck, suggesting that that wasn't Achilles' only spear.

You mentioned that you aren't an expert of ancient Greece. Homeric battles don't have much in common with those of the hoplitical age; they represent a different era (arguably, many different ages represented in fragments compiled in a coherent narrative, but not classical Greece). The Iliad has many kings, a focus on kings and nobles fighting in duels, the spear is frequently thrown, and horseriding is almost absent, while chariots are frequently described.
In the hoplitical era, there are almost no kings in Greek cities; they were substituted by nobles, who were then often joined by non-noble citizens in the government of the city (generally the rich ones, although how power was distributed varied from city to city). The spear is generally described as the prime melee weapon. The focus during the battles is on the community of citizen soldiers, united because they belong to the same city. They are only subjected to laws, and the rare kings are, too (e.g. the two Spartan kings were supervised by the ephors). Horses are frequently ridden (Athens even has horse archers) and chariots have left the battlefield.

There are some points of contact at the edges of these two eras. Homer once describes the Greeks orderly advancing together in a way that recalls the phalanx. The Lelantine war, assuming it even happened, apparently had chariots in it, and featured a great celebration for a slain hero.

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## Brother Oni

The world of weapons tech is still progressing slowly but surely; meet the ArcFlash Labs' GR-1 Anvil, the world's first commercially available gauss rifle.

While on paper, the specs aren't amazing (you've essentially got a 20lb weapon that has the same damage output as .22L), I'd argue we're essentially at the handgonne stage of the weapon's existence.
The video's also raised some interesting questions like sound and viability as a sniper system - theoretically speaking, the only emitted sound would be the bullet going supersonic.

The EMP pulse could also be a potential issue (if sensors were developed to detect it) or a defense mechanism (unhardened electronics get fried if they get too close, which could put paid to smaller drones or listening devices if they lack sufficient capacity to fit enough shielding).

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## halfeye

> The world of weapons tech is still progressing slowly but surely; meet the ArcFlash Labs' GR-1 Anvil, the world's first commercially available gauss rifle.
> 
> While on paper, the specs aren't amazing (you've essentially got a 20lb weapon that has the same damage output as .22LR), I'd argue we're essentially at the handgonne stage of the weapon's existence.
> The video's also raised some interesting questions like sound and viability as a sniper system - theoretically speaking, the only emitted sound would be the bullet going supersonic.
> 
> The EMP pulse could also be a potential issue (if sensors were developed to detect it) or a defense mechanism (unhardened electronics get fried if they get too close, which could put paid to smaller drones or listening devices if they lack sufficient capacity to fit enough shielding).


Interesting, even if it is very early days.

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## KorvinStarmast

Just ran into this Armour Versus Arrows test. 
Interesting, Agincourt being the test case.

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## Eladrinblade

> A few things about that rinkydink little spear. Talking broad strokes here and Im sure more expert users in the forum can add more information/correct my errors.
> 
> 1) It is a purpose built armor penetrator, not a traditional spearhead.
> 2) traditional spears are used with the front hand providing guidance and the backhand providing power. Poleaxes are built for both hands to deliver full power.
> 3) the spearhead can do more damage than the axe or hammer. Swings are delivered faster but with only the weight of the head delivering mass, thrusts are delivered with the full weight of the weapon, plus an additional 80+kg of user mass behind them.
> 4) Other polearms (spears, halberds, bills, glaives etc.) are designed to fight at distance. A lot of their use is prodding and poking to keep the enemy at range. Poleaxes are designed to be used in close (i.e. sword distance) and their use is predicated on using full force blows and relying on your armor to protect you.
> 
> Its a long time since I ventured into 3.5 territory but here are a few things.
> - it shouldnt have reach like a spear or halberd, you should only attack adjacent.
> - it should give the user Power Attack, which is _always_ on and cant be turned off, except for stepping up to Improved Power Attack.


Was going through the thread again and realized I never responded to this.  This was very helpful.

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## Pauly

> Was going through the thread again and realized I never responded to this.  This was very helpful.


Well my first response was a little snarky and unhelpful, so Im glad I made up for it.

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## SleepyShadow

I have a question I'm hoping you lovely geniuses can help me with. In a setting with technology roughly on par with the 1950's, what would be the best way to locate an enemy sniper?

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## Khedrac

> I have a question I'm hoping you lovely geniuses can help me with. In a setting with technology roughly on par with the 1950's, what would be the best way to locate an enemy sniper?


That would depend on a lot of factors, for example:

1. What is the terrain? - some of the techniques for the city don't work in the jungle or the open plain etc.  Different spaces call for different techniques.

2. Are you needing to react to a sniper, or can you pre-position knowing that if a sniper makes an attack it is likely to be in this location?

3. How populous the area is likely to be?  (Dogs trained to find people are great where there are no people, less good in a crowded area.)

If you can pre-position then listening cones (as used in WW2 to detect incoming aircraft) could be used to greatly refine the area to be searched.

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## Pauly

> I have a question I'm hoping you lovely geniuses can help me with. In a setting with technology roughly on par with the 1950's, what would be the best way to locate an enemy sniper?


Since the technology is essentially unchanged from WW2 you can access WW2 Field Manuals for the according to the book answer.

Some comments based on my research into WW2 and WW1 sniping. Sniper rifle technology didnt really improve much until the late 70s or early 80s, although improved practical range finding did commence in the mid 60s.

1) Maximum effective range for a sniper is 300m. This is based on the limits of scopes and range finding in the era, and the ability to acquire a camouflaged target that is actively hiding. On a range with well marked targets much longer ranges were possible
2) the FMs recommended a maximum of 3 shots from any one position, in practice sniper teams changed position after every shot if possible, and the only accounts Ive read of snipers taking more than 2 shots from a position involve either sniper being unable to move or firing from an emplaced position such as an armored loophole. So snipers of the era considered that 2 shots from a position was sufficient for an enemy to locate a sniper.
3) High value targets like officers and specialists were targeted. A sniper might spend days in a position waiting for the right target. They didnt waste rounds on regular soldiers. A designated marksman might, but not a proper sniper.
4) Snipers operated from safe areas. i.e. areas where no random enemy was going to stumble into them. 
5) Regular troops hated snipers operating from in or near their positions. The return hate from the enemy would often fall on the line soldiers holding a position, and generally snipers avoided taking up positions too close to other friendly troops.

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## SleepyShadow

> That would depend on a lot of factors, for example:
> 
> 1. What is the terrain? - some of the techniques for the city don't work in the jungle or the open plain etc.  Different spaces call for different techniques.
> 
> 2. Are you needing to react to a sniper, or can you pre-position knowing that if a sniper makes an attack it is likely to be in this location?
> 
> 3. How populous the area is likely to be?  (Dogs trained to find people are great where there are no people, less good in a crowded area.)
> 
> If you can pre-position then listening cones (as used in WW2 to detect incoming aircraft) could be used to greatly refine the area to be searched.


1) The terrain is a farming community. Lots of trees nearby, a small river runs through town, and most buildings are only one or two stories tall.

2) Somewhat reactionary. The players will know that they're going into hostile territory, but not necessarily know about the sniper.

3) Low population, but there are civilians in the combat zone.




> Since the technology is essentially unchanged from WW2 you can access WW2 Field Manuals for the according to the book answer.
> 
> Some comments based on my research into WW2 and WW1 sniping. Sniper rifle technology didnt really improve much until the late 70s or early 80s, although improved practical range finding did commence in the mid 60s.
> 
> 1) Maximum effective range for a sniper is 300m. This is based on the limits of scopes and range finding in the era, and the ability to acquire a camouflaged target that is actively hiding. On a range with well marked targets much longer ranges were possible
> 2) the FMs recommended a maximum of 3 shots from any one position, in practice sniper teams changed position after every shot if possible, and the only accounts Ive read of snipers taking more than 2 shots from a position involve either sniper being unable to move or firing from an emplaced position such as an armored loophole. So snipers of the era considered that 2 shots from a position was sufficient for an enemy to locate a sniper.
> 3) High value targets like officers and specialists were targeted. A sniper might spend days in a position waiting for the right target. They didnt waste rounds on regular soldiers. A designated marksman might, but not a proper sniper.
> 4) Snipers operated from safe areas. i.e. areas where no random enemy was going to stumble into them. 
> 5) Regular troops hated snipers operating from in or near their positions. The return hate from the enemy would often fall on the line soldiers holding a position, and generally snipers avoided taking up positions too close to other friendly troops.


This is great information. Thank you so much  :Small Smile:

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## Gnoman

One standby was to blanket the direction the sniper was firing from with artillery. Don't have to find the sniper if there is no sniper.



One of the biggest giveaways, traditionally, was light glinting off the scope - some of the most famous snipers in history used iron sights specifically to avoid that. 


If you've got a significant number of low buildings, the possible firing angles are going to be a lot narrower than they'd be in an open field - 1950s-era cartridges are very flat-shooting within the limits of 1950s-era scopes. So if a round comes in, there's going to be a lot of masking that would make it clear what directions the round can be firing from. Especially if you can pick a rough direction via hearing the shot or observing the impact. This means your sniper is probably going to be sticking to single-shot shoot-and-scoot tactics, because he knows his position is revealed. That would give your players an opportunity to catch him moving, or advance in before he gets set up again.

Once they know he's around, there's also various baiting techniques that a clever player might come up with - the helmet on a stick is a classic. Make your sniper dumb enough to fall for them.

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## Pauly

Some more points.

- Sound, masking and observation of impact will give a rough idea of where the shot came from, and reasonably competent soldiers would then narrow down possible hiding spots from there. 
- My reading is that muzzle flash was the big give away, which was why sniper would either relocate or wait for cover of darkness after their first shot if possible. Although glints from optics was another source of identifying the sniper teams position.
 [edit to add]
_A lot of the advice the FMs give on choosing a position seems to be directly related to reducing perceived muzzle flash - dont shoot from closed rooms, always extend the barrel of the rifle out of cover, shoot with the sun behind you if shooting at dawn/dusk, shooting from sunlight is better than shooting from shadow and so on_.
- Snipers operated in 2 man teams, a spotter and a sniper, so it's not just reflection from the guns optics, but also binoculars or telescope of the spotter. 2 men are also much easier to spot than one man.
- Snipers can be given away by nature. Theres an example from an Australian FM where an enemy sniper was spotted because he set his position too close to a birds nest and the Australian sniper observing the birds strange behavior protecting its nest was able to deduce that something must be close to the bird, and through closer inspection of was able to locate the enemy sniper.
[edit to add]
It was *not* doctrine to use smoke to blind a sniper. In that era smoke rounds were expensive and uncommon, and using your precious smoke to take care of a single rifle was not allowed. Smoke was not fired speculatively on where the enemy might be, it was only used on acquired targets, and if you had acquired a snipers location then HE was the solution. Making smoke freely available and capable of firing at any place anytime is a very common mistake WW2/immediately post WW2 rulebooks make.

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## Brother Oni

> Once they know he's around, there's also various baiting techniques that a clever player might come up with - the helmet on a stick is a classic. Make your sniper dumb enough to fall for them.


Or you can wind up the snipers to take shots by laughing at them: link.

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## Incanur

> Here's a thing on which I would be keen to gather people's speculations: why does the sword, in so many times and places, achieve its status as a poetic and cultural symbol of martial values, as opposed to other weapons.


In his 1590 manual, Sir John Smythe indicated that people valued swords _because_ they were sidearms:




> Swords of conuenient length, forme and substance, haue been in all ages esteemed by all warlike Nations, of al other sorts of weapons the last weapon of refuge both for horsemen, and footmen, by reason that when al their other weapons in fight haue failed them, either by breaking, losse, or otherwise, they then haue presentlie betaken themselues to their short arming Swords and Daggers, as to the last weapons, of great effect & execution for all Martiall actions


In a hard-fought battle, a man-at-arms would likely finish the fight with sword in hand rather than the heavy lance he started out with. Similarly, cavalry typically used swords to cut down fleeing foes. In this fashion, the sword can be seen as the weapon of victory: what many soldiers (particularly those who fought the hardest) had in their hands when they won the field.

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## Pauly

> Or you can wind up the snipers to take shots by laughing at them: link.


In the Gallipoli campaign some ANZACs drew a target on a bed sheet, hoisted it over the parapet, then posted the Turkish snipers scores. That was until the brass spoiled their fun and made them stop.
On one hand youre helping the enemy zero their equipment, but on the other it  can help your snipers licate the enemy snipers.

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## Vinyadan

> In the Gallipoli campaign some ANZACs drew a target on a bed sheet, hoisted it over the parapet, then posted the Turkish snipers scores. That was until the brass spoiled their fun and made them stop.
> On one hand youre helping the enemy zero their equipment, but on the other it  can help your snipers licate the enemy snipers.


I guess that the officers were worried this could display the skill of the enemy and demoralise the men, or even lead them to fraternize with the enemy through the game.

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## Eladrinblade

Is padded armor a gambeson or is it more than that?  Regardless, how warm is padded armor?  Could it count as a "cold weather outfit"?

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## Mike_G

> Is padded armor a gambeson or is it more than that?  Regardless, how warm is padded armor?  Could it count as a "cold weather outfit"?


Pretty sure it's a gambeson. People did wear gambeson as stand alone armor  and it is somewhat protective.

And it's very warm. It would keep you as warm as a winter jacket. Not sure is a "cold weather outfit" is like "Find the South Pole" stuff, or "Go outside and shovel snow" stuff, but a gambeson is easily warm enough to be outside in the winter. Like normal "cold enough to snow, go skiing, play ice hockey, go sledding" winter. Not "top of Everest" cold.

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## Eladrinblade

> Pretty sure it's a gambeson. People did wear gambeson as stand alone armor  and it is somewhat protective.
> 
> And it's very warm. It would keep you as warm as a winter jacket. Not sure is a "cold weather outfit" is like "Find the South Pole" stuff, or "Go outside and shovel snow" stuff, but a gambeson is easily warm enough to be outside in the winter. Like normal "cold enough to snow, go skiing, play ice hockey, go sledding" winter. Not "top of Everest" cold.


"A wool coat, linen shirt, wool cap, heavy cloak, thick pants or skirt, and boots".  So normal winter gear, sounds to me.  Anyway, thank you, got the answers I wanted.

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## Pauly

> Pretty sure it's a gambeson. People did wear gambeson as stand alone armor  and it is somewhat protective.
> 
> And it's very warm. It would keep you as warm as a winter jacket. Not sure is a "cold weather outfit" is like "Find the South Pole" stuff, or "Go outside and shovel snow" stuff, but a gambeson is easily warm enough to be outside in the winter. Like normal "cold enough to snow, go skiing, play ice hockey, go sledding" winter. Not "top of Everest" cold.


Slightly different, but Ive read of a modern attempt to re-create George Mallorys attempted ascents of Everest using 1930s climbing equipment. The feedback from the climbers was that the wool clothing was just as warm as and less bulky than modern climbing clothes. It is heavier and harder to dry if it gets wet. 

So maybe not, South pole expedition level of warm, but plenty warm enough for inhabited parts of Russia in Winter.

As an additional note when the conquistadors were doing their stuff in Mexico they went to gambesons and reduced their metal armor to breastplate and helmet, or helmet only. Being a natural fabric it breathes and is much less hot than metal in the tropics. They also reduced their armor in the Inca campaign. The altaplano isnt as hot and humid as Mexico because of the altitude, but its still gets tropical sun thats very strong.

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## Thane of Fife

> Pretty sure it's a gambeson. People did wear gambeson as stand alone armor  and it is somewhat protective.


My understanding is that a gambeson designed to be worn standalone is thicker than one intended to be worn under other armor. They're not the same thing.

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## Mike_G

> My understanding is that a gambeson designed to be worn standalone is thicker than one intended to be worn under other armor. They're not the same thing.


Everything pre-modern varied a ton. There's no "standard" gambeson. Any gambeson would offer some protection. Probably it was common to wear a lighter padded garment under mail, but I'm sure that gambesons of all weights were worn as standalone armor at times. 

And the OP question of "is a gambeson padded armor?" I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes."

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## Martin Greywolf

Repeat after me: *medieval terminology was not prescriptive.*

We can argue ourselves silly in circles about what gambeson or aketon or whateverton is supposed to be like, period sources use terms like these descriptively and interchangably. For some, gambeson may be a standalone padded armor, for others just a relatively thin layer under armor, and so can aketon. There is no consistency.

Modern usage, in some circles, uses gambeson to mean standalone thick padded armor, at least 15 layers and up to 30, while aketon is the thinner version for wearing under armor of 5-15 layers. Where the hell arming doublet, which is usually 5-10 at most, falls exactly is... not clear. Some use it to specifically denote padded garment meant to be used under _plate_ armor, others use it as a subset of aketons to denote stylistic shape of it.

Most people use gambeson to mean any padded armor in existence, no matter where or when it is from. By that usage, gambeson is padded armor, because the definition of gambeson is padded armor.

If historical gambesons are meant to be DnD padded armor... probably? Who the hell knows, people making DnD consistently refuse to let anyone who knows what armor looks like near their rules.

As for warmth... it's an extremely thick coat. If you have a gambeson on you in winter, your biggest problem is going to be sweating into it and cold wind getting under it through the gaps in the armpits, if you have those. I didn't feel strong winds in -20 C in it, the issue you'd have is the bits not covered in it, like legs and face. You do have padded legs, but those are kinda rare, and probably not a part of your DnD standard issue padded armor.

If I'd let it work for cold resistance, no. Not unless it was specifically described beforehand as having padded coif, padded mittens and padded legs as well. The issue is twofold. First of all, the bits not covered by normal gambesons include neck, head and legs, and that's a lot of important bodyparts left out there for the elements. It's very possible to get frostbite on your hands if you don't have gloves.

Second problem is water. Cloaks are made the way they are for a reason, and that reason is to be able to redirect a lot of water should it rain, absorb most of it and be easy to take off and switch while one of them is drying. A cloak soaked in water clocks in at about 5-10 kilos, a gambeson soaked in water can be over 30, to say nothing of the hypothermia. You wear your cloak when travelling over armor, you just don't see it often in illuminations because the thing is meant to be discarded once the hostilities start for ease of movement.

*Spoiler: Soldiers in armor wearing cloaks*
Show

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> Swords seem to have held some special meaning in this context because the symbol of a successful gladiator's manumission was shaped in the form of a rudis, a wooden training sword.


Late to the party, but replying to this discussion.

I think one of the reasons swords were important to gladiators might be the same as one of the reasons swords were important to knights: a sword is apparently a pretty hard weapon to master. When you have something to prove or want to show off but still want to end up being a good fighter, pick a sword.

I don't really know why swords in particular would be heard to learn to handle, but it may not even be entirely about the weapon, but about the context it's most suited for. Spears and pikes and pole arms and shields and such are excel on the battlefield. And when you're shoulder to shoulder with the next guy there's only so much you can do to fight super well. You could also end up getting stabbed at by several opponents at ones, and there's only so much you can do about that too. So a relative novice of a fighter can do pretty well in these circumstances, and there's only limited added value in a master of the weapon. Swords are good for when there's lots of open space and you can maneuver better. In this situation, having more options, mastery pays off. So if you want to practice to be good at fighting, a sword is a good choice of weapon. To gladiators it would not matter that a sword is an easy weapon to always bring along hanging at your side, which is probably what put it over the top compared to pole arms, which are good weapons for this more complex style of fighting in addition to being good battlefield weapons, for someone like a knight. But just the association of the weapon with skill might be enough?

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## Martin Greywolf

> a sword is apparently a pretty hard weapon to master


No it isn't. Or rather, it is, but so is every other weapon, hence why mastering anything is a notable achievement.

Sword and shield are the most demanding on your physical conditioning, the hardest weaon technically is the spear. You need to use it like a spear, in one hand with a shield, overarm and underarm, then in two hands against lightly armored people and in two hands against heavy armor (like  apollaxe, basically). That last bit means you also need to be good at grappling to really master it, and be able to switch to dagger, so add those two to the list.




> I think one of the reasons swords were important to gladiators might be the same as one of the reasons swords were important to knights: a sword is apparently a pretty hard weapon to master. When you have something to prove or want to show off but still want to end up being a good fighter, pick a sword.


If you are a part of a social group that has to go into actual fights, this sort of thinking will get you killed. You use what is effective, or you die, simple as that.

Gladiators are a bit different, because the goal there was to make interesting but fair matches, but they still wanted to kind of stay close to what the actual soldiers were using because of the whole social context (i.e. they were warriors, and therefore should have something to do with wars at least a little bit, unlike e.g. modern MMA) surrounding them.




> And when you're shoulder to shoulder with the next guy there's only so much you can do to fight super well. You could also end up getting stabbed at by several opponents at ones, and there's only so much you can do about that too. So a relative novice of a fighter can do pretty well in these circumstances, and there's only limited added value in a master of the weapon.


Not really. Skill in fighting duels, skill in fighting skirmishes and skill in fighting in a battle line are three different skills, so theoretically, a master of duelling may be absolute pants at formation fighting. And that is often true, I've seen very good HEMA fighters struggle at LARPs because they just didn't have the necessary observation skills to not get flanked and spanked. That said, there is overlap, and some of the basics are the same, so a good duellist will be able to train himself to be a good line fighter very quickly.

You stick poorly trained people in lines because it is the only place where they will not get immediately destroyed by anyone else, simple as that. There is still great value in having well trained soldiers in  apike wall (see: Swiss pikemen), but if you have fresh recurits, that is where they will go.

Or, to put it another way, line fighting doesn't have lower skill ceiling than duelling, it has lower skill floor to be effective in.




> Swords are good for when there's lots of open space and you can maneuver better. In this situation, having more options, mastery pays off.


Nah, take a spear every time someone grabs a sword and destroy them in open spaces. Only once you get into cramped conditions do the swords get an advantage. 




> So if you want to practice to be good at fighting, a sword is a good choice of weapon.


The only good choice of weapon is the weapon that will be effective. There is no weapon that will somehow magically make you be better at fighting with other weapons, there are just weapon types and the bare basics and skills in those overlap. You can use a longsword like a katana and be fine, you can't use a halberd like a longsword and except good things.

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## Brother Oni

> No it isn't. Or rather, it is, but so is every other weapon, hence why mastering anything is a notable achievement.


Kind of. There's a Chinese proverb of uncertain origin that says "it takes 100 days to master the spear, 1,000 days to master the dao and 10,000 days to master the jian".

The days aren't literal - in Chinese, hundred/thousand/ten thousand are single word counters (百, 千, 萬) with increasing comparative size - 'hard, harder and hardest' would be a comparative translation.

10,000 also shows up a lot in Chinese literature when they're being poetic in describing a large number, in which case it means 'lots and lots of' rather than the literal value 10,000.

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## Lemmy

I'd say the main reason swords were so romanticized is simply because they were sidearms that civilians could use... So they were the ones that writers and readers would be most familiar with and most likely to imagine using in combat, if the need ever arised, including duels... 

So texts and plays featuring swords would likely grow more popular more often than those focusing on other weapons... Unless there was another weapon that was equally or more familiar to yout average reader and writers... e.g.: bows in England or, mostly everywhere in later times, pistols.

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## Tobtor

> I'd say the main reason swords were so romanticized is simply because they were sidearms that civilians could use... So they were the ones that writers and readers would be most familiar with and most likely to imagine using in combat, if the need ever arised, including duels... 
> 
> So texts and plays featuring swords would likely grow more popular more often than those focusing on other weapons... Unless there was another weapon that was equally or more familiar to yout average reader and writers... e.g.: bows in England or, mostly everywhere in later times, pistols.


That is looking at it from our modern perspective and back to medieval times. We should instead start of the beginning and go forward. Swords were used way before "texts" and notions of "civilian" versus "soldier". As soon as Bronze swords appear (around 1800 BC) they quickly replaces spears and axes as the grave goods of high status graves. This is before texts (at least written ones). You could argue that oral histories have the same effect, but bronze swords were also the status weapon way out of cities and civilizations, - in tribal lands across Europe.

So when the sword is a symbol in a text from the 14-16th century, it built on a 3.000 years of history of usage, and not only the context of the time.

The question is then: how come swords were one of the most prevalent weapon of choice as status marker for thousand of years (and across many cultures). 

There are different explanations, but they all have drawbacks and counter arguments, and we should likely see them together. 

The price argument: While a sword could be expensive early on, and indeed for a long time, it begs the question: if swords were expensive and not better than lets say axe or spear, why were they developed and spread across cultures? I really don't buy that a weapon which is more expensive spreads as widely as they did, if they didn't offer something better. 

Civilian use: most of the time swords were used, they where used in cultures where there is no such distinction. Thus this argument cannot fully explain the issue.

I think the point is that sword ARE really good. Both in duels, skirmishes and battles. The point is that they offer something extra. They can be used in combination with shields. And a warrior can be equipped with both a spear and a sword. They offer something extra, whether it be bow and sword, javelin and sword, spear and sword etc. They are also very solid and will not break as easily as a spear. So a battle might start with the use of spear, but end with the sword. So many 'good fighters' will be ending with a sword in hand, whether they can raise their sword in victory or die with the sword in their hand.

My point is: don't look at how swords are used in a very narrow context of late medieval text, but rather a larger part of their history which pre-dates  the medieval period, and Arthurian legend etc. have their root in earlier times.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Kind of. There's a Chinese proverb of uncertain origin that says "it takes 100 days to master the spear, 1,000 days to master the dao and 10,000 days to master the jian".
> 
> The days aren't literal - in Chinese, hundred/thousand/ten thousand are single word counters (百, 千, 萬) with increasing comparative size - 'hard, harder and hardest' would be a comparative translation.
> 
> 10,000 also shows up a lot in Chinese literature when they're being poetic in describing a large number, in which case it means 'lots and lots of' rather than the literal value 10,000.


I'm not saying there isn't a proverb, I'm saying it's wrong. First of all, where does it come from? Is it something someone actually skilled in weapon use and training thereof wrote as an advice, or is it one of the quotes from the period where Chinese martial arts started to be all the rage and people were making up an unbelievable amount of BS? Considering that no one else agrees with this quote in any other culture using weapons, I'm quite comfortable calling this one BS.




> The price argument: While a sword could be expensive early on, and indeed for a long time, it begs the question: if swords were expensive and not better than lets say axe or spear, why were they developed and spread across cultures? I really don't buy that a weapon which is more expensive spreads as widely as they did, if they didn't offer something better.


Counterexample: Smallswords. They are inferior to pretty much every other sword of the time (except cane swords, hich are flimsier smallswords, so...), and yet they were widespread as a cultural thing.




> Civilian use: most of the time swords were used, they where used in cultures where there is no such distinction. Thus this argument cannot fully explain the issue.


Okay, so we have to go into full pedantry for this one. While we didn't have modern "civilian" as a concept, there very much were distinct social groups based on how stab happy you were.

Firstly, we have fighting elites, be they knights or Egyptian charioteers, someone whose social role was to fight, as opposed to farmers, merchants and all the others. Mercenaries were often a sort of half-acknowledged social group as well, so you have a distinction of people whose job is to fight and other people, and those other people are usually colloquially called civilians.

Second distinction is more of a moment-to-moment thing, and doesn't apply to all cultures, but medieval era did see it - if you are in armor, you are dressed for war, and different social norms apply to you. Carrying around a spear in "civilian" clothes will be looked at weird, carrying a spear in armor won't. Whether you parading around in armor will be looked at weirdly is another question. This is important for us because showing up to a fellow noble's house dressed in full plate with a pollaxe sends a very different message from being dressed in brocade tunic and having a sword and a buckler.

What is usually menat when someone is talking about civilian use of weapons is the latter, you're not in armor, walking around the town shopping, and still want a weapon with you, but without the social stigma of being ready to start a war. In this, you are drastically distinct from someone in, as the period sources usually call it, "full panoply of war", and so we talk about use of weapons in civilian life.




> I think the point is that sword ARE really good. Both in duels, skirmishes and battles.


In this you are already wrong, because you decided to use swords as a category and use it for argument for specific usage. Sure, I can find you a sword for a battle, a skirmish and a duel, but they won't be the same sword. Some will be absolutely terrible based on what armor the opposition or you are wearing, some will be awful to use with shields, other will be bad from horseback.

I can say the same about axes and use a carpentry axe, ice axe, one handed horseman's axe and a pollaxe as my example.




> They can be used in combination with shields. And a warrior can be equipped with both a spear and a sword. They offer something extra, whether it be bow and sword, javelin and sword, spear and sword etc.


The same applies to axes (you need a blade sheat for that one, but it's doable), maces and pretty much any one handed melee weapon.




> They are also very solid and will not break as easily as a spear.


Not true. Modern swords from modern steel are less likely to break, historical ones not so much. Spears break in battles more because spears are used more, and even then, we have numerous cases of swords breaking in historic record.

Even in our modern times, I've see about the equal amount of swords and polearms break in battles and duels - granted, the polearms have the slight advantage of not going against sharp blades, but so do the swords for not being sharp and more prone to chipping.

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## Lemmy

> That is looking at it from our modern perspective and back to medieval times. We should instead start of the beginning and go forward. Swords were used way before "texts" and notions of "civilian" versus "soldier". As soon as Bronze swords appear (around 1800 BC) they quickly replaces spears and axes as the grave goods of high status graves. This is before texts (at least written ones). You could argue that oral histories have the same effect, but bronze swords were also the status weapon way out of cities and civilizations, - in tribal lands across Europe.


Sorry, English isn't my native language, so I'm not all that good into putting my meaning in "historical wording", so I used words like "writers" and "readers" even though I know they felt out of place in this context...

But my main point is that most stories will be told with things the story-teller and/or its audience are familiar about. So sidearms in general should have a pretty big advantage there in getting popular or wide-spread.

There's probably also the fact that swords are generally more expensive than, say, a spear or ax, and therefore a little bit more of a status symbol. And well... They look cool. hahaha

But of course, that's just my theory based on my personal observation of human nature and my limited knowledge of history. I'm an engineer, not a historian, so... Well... Not exactly the most reliable source. Heh

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## Mr Blobby

> ...Second distinction is more of a moment-to-moment thing, and doesn't apply to all cultures, but medieval era did see it - if you are in armor, you are dressed for war, and different social norms apply to you. Carrying around a spear in "civilian" clothes will be looked at weird, carrying a spear in armor won't. Whether you parading around in armor will be looked at weirdly is another question. This is important for us because showing up to a fellow noble's house dressed in full plate with a pollaxe sends a very different message from being dressed in brocade tunic and having a sword and a buckler...


I think that's the best answer so far. I'd also argue 'bulk' also played their part. Maces, axes etc were pretty hefty and rather obvious too [though it's quite possible to have a culture which an axe on the back was considered 'normal']. A sword, relatively speaking is discreet and easy to carry; changes are it would be able to be under my cloak etc.

I'd also cite 'ease of use' too. A good double-bladed sword can stab _and_ slash, and relatively speaking requires less space to use. I've not done any proper weapons training, but I _have_ used in my time machetes, hammers, axes, billhooks and a sythe [well, once] in occupational settings and you need a _lot_ more space to wield them right. Now think where this would be an advantage. Not just fighting in formation, but also urban areas, indoors and crowded places. Alleyways, staircases, a bedroom, a busy market-place and so on. You frankly would prefer to be able to use one weapon in many situations rather needing to bring along extras for particular circumstances.

Next, size. If an 'average' male is say 5'7, effectively a sword with more than 33in blade shall threaten to drag on the floor if being worn from the waist. Say an inch less if using a good scabbard. Even a six-footer would be effectively limited to 36in. Now, if I wanted to sit down while still wearing it [without it poking out etc], I'd guestimate you're limited to the hip-knee length, which I guestimate is 60% of the previous length. So, for a 5'7 it would be ~20in and at 6'0 ~22in.

I think the types of Roman Gladius would fit these criteria best. The shortest ones would do for 'dress', the longer ones for 'war'. Many blades around the world would fall towards these general designs because we're dealing with mainly human bodies and basics, which shall be the same. Similar can be said for the various types of 'cavalry blade' which came about.

With the 'dress swords', I'd personally think of a variant of the 'side-sword' for levels of simple practicality. A Gladius-style with an ~18in blade; large enough to be a credible threat, small enough to be worn under a cloak, to be able to sit down etc. We have to remember these stemmed from the time where everyone carried a form of utility knife [eating, cutting, sharpening] and personal safety was not assured in cities etc. Now, a single 'gentleman' with one wouldn't be able to fight off a whole band of outlaws, but it wasn't intended to. It was more to allow them do defend themselves against a cutpurse, deal with a rabid dog or fend off an angry pleb who's trying to bury their skinning dagger in your spleen.

----------


## halfeye

> The price argument: While a sword could be expensive early on, and indeed for a long time, it begs the question: if swords were expensive and not better than lets say axe or spear, why were they developed and spread across cultures? I really don't buy that a weapon which is more expensive spreads as widely as they did, if they didn't offer something better.


That argument really does not work when you are talking about the personal possessions of the rich. Ask a rich (enough) man if he wants a £20, 000 car or a £2, 000, 000 car, and it'll be the £2, 000, 000 one every time.

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## Martin Greywolf

> But my main point is that most stories will be told with things the story-teller and/or its audience are familiar about. So sidearms in general should have a pretty big advantage there in getting popular or wide-spread.


I stand by what I said, swords have gotten so popular because the people in charge of other people wore them. All the time. In civilian contexts. When shopping, serving as judges and so on.

Familiarity by itself isn't a strong argument, pre-modern world didn't put such a distance between its civilian population and war - modern wars see civilians just... sitting around in contested territory, not fighting, medieval siege of a city saw them on the walls, chucking rocks at the besiegers. The people were much more familiar with the military gear of their time than most people are with ours.




> I think that's the best answer so far. I'd also argue 'bulk' also played their part. Maces, axes etc were pretty hefty and rather obvious too [though it's quite possible to have a culture which an axe on the back was considered 'normal']. A sword, relatively speaking is discreet and easy to carry; changes are it would be able to be under my cloak etc.


Wrong. Here are some maces:

*Spoiler: Bulava, in use for most of history*
Show




*Spoiler: Fairly typical flanged mace*
Show





*Spoiler: Things like this morningstar have hollow heads*
Show




Every decen replica of these I've ever held have been lighter than a sword to very slightly heavier. A bulava is about half to a third of the sword's weight, flanged maces can be on the heavier side.

As for obvious:

*Spoiler: A bunch of Slavic chieftains with maces*
Show


The guy on the far right has a mace, look closely


*Spoiler: Me, armed with a mace*
Show


No, I'm the second guy, the one in brocade, look closely at the walking stick





> I'd also cite 'ease of use' too. A good double-bladed sword can stab _and_ slash, and relatively speaking requires less space to use. I've not done any proper weapons training, but I _have_ used in my time machetes, hammers, axes, billhooks and a sythe [well, once] in occupational settings and you need a _lot_ more space to wield them right. Now think where this would be an advantage. Not just fighting in formation, but also urban areas, indoors and crowded places. Alleyways, staircases, a bedroom, a busy market-place and so on. You frankly would prefer to be able to use one weapon in many situations rather needing to bring along extras for particular circumstances.


Look, realistically speaking, as someone who has swung a sword and an axe or mace in all of those places, at the point where it's too cramped to hit someone with an axe, you're better off using dagger rather than a sword. It's another one of those reasons that sounds good, but doesn't pan out in practice.




> Next, size. If an 'average' male is say 5'7, effectively a sword with more than 33in blade shall threaten to drag on the floor if being worn from the waist. Say an inch less if using a good scabbard. Even a six-footer would be effectively limited to 36in. Now, if I wanted to sit down while still wearing it [without it poking out etc], I'd guestimate you're limited to the hip-knee length, which I guestimate is 60% of the previous length. So, for a 5'7 it would be ~20in and at 6'0 ~22in.


I mean this in the kindest way possible, but... research how swords were worn before you comment on it. I have a 105 cm total length arming sword and can sit down with it just fine. On the ground. Let alone on a chair.




> I think the types of Roman Gladius would fit these criteria best. The shortest ones would do for 'dress', the longer ones for 'war'.


Except that the short gladius was for infantry and long for cavalry, and late Roman switched to the long gladius. Which is called a spatha. And all of them were for war.




> Many blades around the world would fall towards these general designs because we're dealing with mainly human bodies and basics, which shall be the same. Similar can be said for the various types of 'cavalry blade' which came about.


Longsword is a cavalry sword. So are several types of saber. Most of thet ime, you can't tell apart a cavalry sword from an infantry sword by the photo, only by the balance of weight.





> With the 'dress swords', I'd personally think of a variant of the 'side-sword' for levels of simple practicality. A Gladius-style with an ~18in blade; large enough to be a credible threat, small enough to be worn under a cloak, to be able to sit down etc.


And yet, we see nothing of the sort in actual history. Jian isn't 18 inches, and a longsword most definitely isn't. Hell, even smallswords and spadroons are significantly longer than that, at about 25+ in.




> That argument really does not work when you are talking about the personal possessions of the rich. Ask a rich (enough) man if he wants a £20, 000 car or a £2, 000, 000 car, and it'll be the £2, 000, 000 one every time.


When we get to people that rich, it's no longer about sword vs an axe, it's about "how much gold and ivory do you want on your weapon of choice".

*Spoiler: These were... pretty expensive*
Show

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## Mr Blobby

> Wrong. Here are some maces...


Eh, was thinking of metal maces. But as a _gentleman_ I think I'd refuse to walk about with what could be mistaken for say, a table-leg taken during a tavern brawl or something. Which was the question I was considering; your point of why knights etc didn't go around fully armed 24/7. Thinking about it, I would be more inclined to go with carrying a heavy/sturdy walking-stick [plus weighted head] for 'self defence' than a wooden mace.




> Look, realistically speaking, as someone who has swung a sword and an axe or mace in all of those places, at the point where it's too cramped to hit someone with an axe, you're better off using dagger rather than a sword. It's another one of those reasons that sounds good, but doesn't pan out in practice.


I considered that. But I reasoned a) I would already have my knife and b) a side-sword would offer the advantage of extra length. After all, it's quite possible for that rabid dog to bite your forearm or the assailiant to grab it _before_ the dagger hits flesh...




> I mean this in the kindest way possible, but... research how swords were worn before you comment on it. I have a 105 cm total length arming sword and can sit down with it just fine. On the ground. Let alone on a chair.


a) I did. b) I was considering, again 'dress wear'. If you're going around the city, changes are you'd prefer a weapon which didn't keep on getting in the way of stuff and c) if your hilt is about 15cm, that makes the blade itself around 90cm / 36in and so is 'close enough' to the size I mentioned before.




> Except that the short gladius was for infantry and long for cavalry, and late Roman switched to the long gladius. Which is called a spatha. And all of them were for war.


You don't _know_ that for sure. The four blades found in Pompeii were short enough for my 'dress' definition. And it appears they didn't host any military forces at the time, so those blades may have belonged to bodyguards, watchmen or gladiators.  Plus, 'Roman' covers several hundred years, there would be little standardisation and not much hard evidence of it survived either.




> And yet, we see nothing of the sort in actual history. Jian isn't 18 inches, and a longsword most definitely isn't. Hell, even smallswords and spadroons are significantly longer than that, at about 25+ in.


You're overfitting my point, here. I was considering the most discreet 'dress' blade which was still functional as a one. Smaller jians, side-swords etc *do* to some extent follow the leg-length point I made.

Lastly, we both know 'Jian' is a general type/style, and thus doesn't _have_ a fixed length. Like all blades before mass production.

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## Tobtor

To Martin Greywolf: first of I would like to say that I respect your knowledge in many ways, but also need to to tell you that many of your answers and post tend to come of as condescending (at least in my eyes). Both when directed to me, but also when directed at other posters.
Your tone and replies meant that I was about to make a fairly long post, but ended up deleting quite a bit of it, not to spur further arguments (since  I got a bit sarcastic). Below is a condensed post, and I hope i have gotten rid of any unwanted sarcasm or irony. I there is any left, I apologise in advance.




> Counterexample: Smallswords. They are inferior to pretty much every other sword of the time (except cane swords, hich are flimsier smallswords, so...), and yet they were widespread as a cultural thing.


"of the time" is the point. I agree fully, thhat at the very end of sword use period (that is the last lets say 300 years from around 1600-1900AD), things are different.




> Okay, so we have to go into full pedantry for this one. While we didn't have modern "civilian" as a concept, there very much were distinct social groups based on how stab happy you were.


Lets not get full peantry on this. 




> Firstly, we have fighting elites, be they knights or Egyptian charioteers, someone whose social role was to fight, as opposed to farmers, merchants and all the others. Mercenaries were often a sort of half-acknowledged social group as well, so you have a distinction of people whose job is to fight and other people, and those other people are usually colloquially called civilians.


That is not true for lets say, 1800BC bronze age people in the black sea region, germanic tribes of the 200 AD northern Europe, nor of mane, many other cultures. Yes, you do have warrior elites (which have swords), but there isn't anything like "civilian" weapons.




> Second distinction is more of a moment-to-moment thing, and doesn't apply to all cultures, but medieval era did see it - if you are in armor, you are dressed for war, and different social norms apply to you. Carrying around a spear in "civilian" clothes will be looked at weird, carrying a spear in armor won't. Whether you parading around in armor will be looked at weirdly is another question. This is important for us because showing up to a fellow noble's house dressed in full plate with a pollaxe sends a very different message from being dressed in brocade tunic and having a sword and a buckler.
> 
> What is usually menat when someone is talking about civilian use of weapons is the latter, you're not in armor, walking around the town shopping, and still want a weapon with you, but without the social stigma of being ready to start a war. In this, you are drastically distinct from someone in, as the period sources usually call it, "full panoply of war", and so we talk about use of weapons in civilian life.


Yes, that is true. And if you go back and read my post, I mentioned that we should start from before the medieval period. As I said: swords as as markers of status weapons PRE-dates those social norms - so therefore said social norms CANNOT be the (main) reason for the status of swords. In let us say 600 AD Anglo-Saxon England there is no such differentiation. Either you are armed or not.

Your argument is solely based on your great knowledge of  the high-late medieval period.




> In this you are already wrong, because you decided to use swords as a category and use it for argument for specific usage. Sure, I can find you a sword for a battle, a skirmish and a duel, but they won't be the same sword. Some will be absolutely terrible based on what armor the opposition or you are wearing, some will be awful to use with shields, other will be bad from horseback.


Here I had to cut quite a lot of text (see introduction). My main point is: no, I am NOT wrong. Most sword-users throughout history had one sword they used for all the purposes mentioned above. 




> Not true. Modern swords from modern steel are less likely to break, historical ones not so much. Spears break in battles more because spears are used more, and even then, we have numerous cases of swords breaking in historic record.


In general the spear points where made of same (or inferior) quality steel/iron/bronze tips.

Sure, we have examples of swords breaking (and most mentions refer it as an odd or very unlucky thing, or as a claim of superiority, for instance Romans mentioning the Gauls sword bending etc), but not actually that many. 

Spears broke much more often in battles. Your argument is its mainly because they where used more, but I thing its fault logic. We see many accounts of people "using up" their spears during a battle, and very few examples of mass-breakage for instance Roman swords. 




> I stand by what I said, swords have gotten so popular because the people in charge of other people wore them. All the time. In civilian contexts. When shopping, serving as judges and so on.


But why did a tribal warrior in 100 BC in Northern Germany where his sword? He did go shopping at the mall? In the Viking age Scandinavia (700-1100) any one could bring a spear or other weapon to the thing (often been expected to) - no "civilian" use there. In most sword using cultures for most of the sword using period swords where a a weapon like any other. 

Your answer bring on a question. That question is: why did the people in charge wore swords? They did so well before they where judges, and well outside cultures who regulated weapon carrying .


To Lemmy: I am not discounting the story perspective. It is notewothy though, that most people in let us sar 1200 BC, had seen and likely used spears. Thus they would be more familiar with spears than swords.




> But my main point is that most stories will be told with things the story-teller and/or its audience are familiar about. So sidearms in general should have a pretty big advantage there in getting popular or wide-spread.
> 
> There's probably also the fact that swords are generally more expensive than, say, a spear or ax, and therefore a little bit more of a status symbol. And well... They look cool. hahaha


Swords where not "sidearms" as we understand it. It was an addition to a complete weapon system (often spear, sword an shield, but could be javelin, sword and shield, or bow, sword and shield).

Why do sword look cool? Here I agree on the story part. Swords have 'grown' into the culture (of Europe, Japan and many other cultures), and that is why they, to us, look cool. My point is; we need to go back in time and figure out WHY they got into our culture in the first place.

What was the culture that embraced them like.

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## Vinyadan

> I think the types of Roman Gladius would fit these criteria best. The shortest ones would do for 'dress', the longer ones for 'war'. Many blades around the world would fall towards these general designs because we're dealing with mainly human bodies and basics, which shall be the same. Similar can be said for the various types of 'cavalry blade' which came about.


Things of course change across the centuries, but I don't think a dress sword could be around in the final days of Pompeii. Cities back then were very restrictive when it came to wearing weapons. The most common reading of some parts in Tacitus is that even the pretorian guard did not openly bear arms in Rome, except in exceptional circumstances (the cohors togata of the praetorians was the one which operated in the city, and wore togae instead of armour, usually concealing their swords beneath them). 

Once in a while, you do read of private citizens wearing a hidden blade (people plotting a targeted killing, but also just some guy with such a habit to protect himself), but that's a different story -- a dress sword sounds like the swords commonly worn as symbol of their status by military officers before WW2, and it certainly wasn't hidden.

Concerning the swords found in Pompeii, there seems to be a divide between the one-edged Campanian shortswords and the gladii, which are understood to be of military origin and typical of soldiers. One proposal has been that of veterans working as bodyguards for rich families. Others underscore that gladii in a civilian setting don't need their owner to be an active soldier, and instead the presence of a specialised military belt would be the signal. 

From that point of view, you have a sure example of a soldier in a man from the fleet at Misenum who died at Herculanum while helping during its evacuation. He wore a pugio (dagger) and a gladius, as well as the cingulum (the belt) and some more paraphernalia. The gladius is now a single piece with its sheath, 72 cm long. This soldier has recently been identified as a rather high-ranking or elite one, and some details suggest he might have been a praetorian (the coins he had with him are the salary of a pretorian). To make a comparison, one of the gladii found in Pompeii with its shield has lost most of its handle (3 cm left) and is 54 cm long. Another one (shield+gladius, missing part of the handle) is 60 cm long. A last one is 69 cm long and was found in a shop.

*Spoiler: refs*
Show

https://www.academia.edu/19868011/Cohortes_praetoriae_e_cohors_togata_a_proposito_di  _tesi_vecchie_e_nuove
https://www.na-verlag.de/wp-content/...bensgefahr.pdf
https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.d...ad/61789/54216
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/2...uvius-n1267056

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## Mr Blobby

My thought was more that ultimately of what designs we know of the gladius would fit my criteria, not that I believed that they were used like that at the time [though we have deficient data to show either way]. And I was under the impression that the famed weapons ban was only for Rome herself, not other settlements.

Perhaps I phrased it incorrectly; when I meant 'dress' I meant not ceremonial wear, more a semi-everyday affair. The original discussion was about what kind of weapon would a gentleman wear in a non-war situation in a late Mediaeval/Renaissance before they became primarily status symbols.

'Veterans working as bodyguards' was one of my theories for the Pompeii blades; that or watchmen or perhaps gladiators [as it had no garrison]. The sizes cited are a good mix of a 'concealed carry' blade which is still long enough to be of real use.

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## Mike_G

> Perhaps I phrased it incorrectly; when I meant 'dress' I meant not ceremonial wear, more a semi-everyday affair. The original discussion was about what kind of weapon would a gentleman wear in a non-war situation in a late Mediaeval/Renaissance before they became primarily status symbols.


It was fairly common (depending on time and place, "late Medieval/early Renaissance" covers a lot of ground) for "gentlemen" to carry swords openly. Arming swords, sideswords, rapiers, smallswords, there are even illustrations showing men in civilian dress with longswords at their belts. Broad, heavy blades tended to be for war and narrow, lighter ones for civilian wear/self defense but there is a huge overlap. The idea of concealed carry for swords doesn't really come up. Daggers, absolutely, but swords were pretty much openly worn by those people in society who were expected to have swords. And even a relatively short sword like a gladius is hard to conceal under clothing.

I'm sure the smallsword developed partly as an easier to wear sword than a broadsword or rapier while still being a sword you could fight with. Up through the 19th century, military officers "dress swords" were still real weapons that could be used for combat, even if that was becoming less and less likely as firearms got better and better. Modern military dress swords are pretty much just ceremonial and probably wouldn't stand up to the abuse of cut and parry, but functional swords for day to day wear are very common in the late medieval and early renaissance, and often would have been very similar to battlefield weapons

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## Vinyadan

> My thought was more that ultimately of what designs we know of the gladius would fit my criteria, not that I believed that they were used like that at the time [though we have deficient data to show either way]. And I was under the impression that the famed weapons ban was only for Rome herself, not other settlements.


It's a common trait among ancient cities. Ownership of weapons is a different deal, but wearing them was strongly restricted, be it by law or custom. This is true for both Sparta and Athens, as weapons were seen as a way to make the laws of the city ineffective; and then, of course, in Rome. Pompeii was a Roman colony, and I am not certain about laws that applied there, but it did have a pomerium, which normally wasn't to be passed by people in arms. Of course, most cities weren't policed as well as Rome, so that probably gave some leeway in carrying weapons for self-defense; how openly, that's a different matter.

EDIT: About the early XVII century, there was an episode that shows how normal it was to carry weapons: the new Bishop of Milan was almost crushed by the exulting crowd and was saved by some gentlemen who drew their swords inside the church to keep the people away from him. It's something on which Manzoni insists quite a bit in The Betrothed: a respectable man, even of humble birth, had at least to carry a large knife on his person, and, apparently, would wear a better-looking dagger for special days, even if he was just visiting the local curate.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> That argument really does not work when you are talking about the personal possessions of the rich. Ask a rich (enough) man if he wants a £20, 000 car or a £2, 000, 000 car, and it'll be the £2, 000, 000 one every time.


Up to a point. A bus is quite a bit more expensive than a regular car, yet very few people drive a bus. Presumably this is because most of the extra cost of a bus goes towards features that a private user doesn't have much use for (high torque at low revs, extra gears, space for all your friends, extra roomy ceilings, double automatic doors in the front and the back) or that even actively hinder the experience the rich person is looking to have (low top speed, sluggish in corners, difficulty in parking, gets stuck in allyways, the driver can't easily hear you when you're giving instructions from the back seat). Same with tanks, amphibious vehicles, aircraft tows etc. An expensive thing still needs to be thing someone would want independent of cost for lots of people to buy it. It doesn't have to make a lot of direct practical sense, diamonds have been popular for a while now and they just kind of look pretty, but if a thing sticks around as popular for more than a few years there's usually some sort of reason to like it.

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## halfeye

> That argument really does not work when you are talking about the personal possessions of the rich. Ask a rich (enough) man if he wants a £20, 000 car or a £2, 000, 000 car, and it'll be the £2, 000, 000 one every time.





> When we get to people that rich, it's no longer about sword vs an axe, it's about "how much gold and ivory do you want on your weapon of choice".
> 
> *Spoiler: These were... pretty expensive*
> Show


Well, yeah, but then the typical expensive weapon is a sword.




> An expensive thing still needs to be thing someone would want independent of cost for lots of people to buy it. It doesn't have to make a lot of direct practical sense, diamonds have been popular for a while now and they just kind of look pretty,


They are also very hard. Gems on shields might be expensive, but if the shield they are on is actually otherwise strong, they might also be practical for a very righ person who valued their own life.




> but if a thing sticks around as popular for more than a few years there's usually some sort of reason to like it.


Two people quibbling with me from opposite sides of the "swords are better" argument, I think perhaps I got something nearly right.

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## Vinyadan

> They are also very hard. Gems on shields might be expensive, but if the shield they are on is actually otherwise strong, they might also be practical for a very righ person who valued their own life.


About precious shields, I remember a Seleucid king holding a parade of his army in front of Hannibal, showing off his riches; a large group of soldiers had silver shields (or just shields with silver decorations). When the king asked him what he thought about them, Hannibal answered, "I think that the Romans are going to be very happy when they loot them".
However, if I recall correctly, in the same parade there were soldiers deliberately armed in Roman style. In practice, the king had gone with whatever looked prestigious at the time: soldiers armed to show off his riches, and others to look like the best fighting force of the time. Hence Hannibal's comment, as he worried about performance, and instead saw an army meant for showing off.

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## fusilier

I'm a little late to the conversation, but I would like to made a few observations about swords as status symbols.

A sidearm is, I believe, a weapon which is carried or worn "at the side."  As such it doesn't need to be actively held to be carried, and therefore sidearms usually make good secondary or backup weapons, and often times this is what is meant when a weapon is described as a "sidearm."  But, as others have noted, swords aren't necessarily secondary or backup weapons, and in its most generic sense "sidearm" doesn't have to connote a secondary weapon.  (Again that's my opinion on the term).

Many different things can be status symbols, and some can be "symbols of authority" (and some may be both).  A fancy spear or mace can be a status symbol (or a symbol of authority), but they have to be actively held, which will limit them either to a static display, or to be carried during special functions and parades.  A sidearm, however, can be carried on the person while leaving the hands free, and can be used to show off the wearers status, wherever the person should be, and whatever function the person may be performing.  Of course it's not the only form of status symbol that can be worn, clothing, colors (e.g. imperial purple), etc., and cultural/societal norms clearly play into the choices.  A feudal society (and those descended/influenced by them), where ostensibly those with status are supposed to have martial role, a sword makes sense as an "everyday" status symbol.

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## Yora

Does anyone know of any surviving examples or decent reconstructions of castles from the very early middle ages? So 6th to 8th century?
What would castles at the time have looked like?

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## Gnoman

"Castles" as you think of them probably didn't exist in that era. _Forts_ and _fortresses_ existed, but the integration of them with administration and the personal residence of an individual ruler is an artifact of the feudal system that cropped up in the 9th and 10th centuries. In the time period you're talking about, the primary examples in Europe would be Roman-style forts, which were good enough until the great revolutions in fortress technology during the misnamed Dark Ages. A good example of these is the Sallburg

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## Tobtor

I agree with Gnoman. At least for "Northern Europe" (England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia) direct parallels to "castles" were not common. Nobles lived in "villas" or further north in longhouses with associated "halls". 

There are fortified settlements (the largest were old roman towns in France, England and southern Germany), but also extended roman forts grown into towns, but also german and anglo-saxon forts with enclosed settlements.

I think there might be a few villas or "germanic halls" that where where fortified enough to maybe count as a castle. But they would look like a fort enclosing a villa/hall (but with only the noble farm enclosed, in contrary to fortified towns/villages with commoners as well as chieftains/kings etc inside).

The Byzantine continued to use fortresses, but I believe they where mainly sate controlled and I do not know if they qualify to your definition.

The Lombards in Italy mainly had their chieftains reside in Italian towns, but I guess they used the Roman town fortresses as castles? I am somewhat unceartain about the precise organisation of their social model (how much was Roman and how much were Germanic). Similar I don't know enough to comment on the situation in Iberia, but I suspect that they also relied heavily on old Roman towns and any fortification associated with them, but I think they where renewed and repaired somewhat more than in northern Europe where many roman towns quickly fell into disrepair.

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## Yora

My definition is "fortification to protect a group of soldiers against attackers".  :Small Big Grin:

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## Martin Greywolf

> My definition is "fortification to protect a group of soldiers against attackers".


This esentially didn't exist in early medieval era at all. To figure out why, we need to look at three general topics.

*1) What is a castle good for?*




> to protect a group of soldiers against attackers


right?

Well, yes, but how does that actually protect your kingdom from being ransacked? The roles of castles in strategic roles can be roughly divided into two types, fortress castles and refuge castles, with many castles being both, and which role a given castle had could shift.

Castle's primary characteristics are that is is horrendously expensive per square meter and extremely hard to successfully besiege. The two different castle kinds used that to defend the area they were responsible for in different ways. A refuge castle was used as just that, a refuge for the people. Once an enemy army was spotted, the local population put all their valuables in pots and buried them, took all they could and booked into the local refuge castles. They could only hold out there for a liimted amount of time, but if they managed to last a week to a month, the reinforcements would usually come.

Fortress castles are a different matter. They themselves couldn't take in very many refugees, but could, as a result, hold out much longer. They were often built in very inaccessible spots (there's one of these near me that is in the middle of hills on a big stone spur, some 50 meters above the mountain pass), without many people around in the first place. The role of these was to serve as strong points from which you could sally forth to take out small enemy foraging parties and generally be a pain in their literal rear. A proper army on a campaign could take these out fairly easily, sure, but that took time and casualties, and by high to late medieval era, you had so many of these it often wasn't feasible.

So, you have twin strategies of protecting your taxpayers and denying the enemy supplies.

*2) What about the Romans?*

When it comes to early medieval era, you always have to divide what you're talking about to Roman and not Roman. In this case, we're really talking about cities, many of which were built and fortified by Romans, and still in use at this time. That means a large metropolis with big walls, pretty much universally, even a Marcoman wars era Carnuntum had more people in it than most medieval cities, and it was a small town in its time.

*Spoiler: Roman city with walls, from far out and close in*
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These cities and towns declined quite a bit, and some of them fell apart, but with declining population, you could use what once was a large city to serve as a refuge for pretty much anyone within walking distance. Still, even then, the Roman areas did have places where there weren't enough cities, in which case they had to use what the rest of Europe was using. Which brings us to...

*3) Early medieval defensive strategy*

The first hurdle here is not enough resources. Early medieval era doesn't have a lot of centralization or stability, and that means large projects aren't possible. That rules out castles as we know them from later eras right out, since they require a lot of materials and labor to build, and it rules out Roman-style extensive city walls as well. You have to go down in scale, and here we see what are more or less direct predecessors of refuge and fortress castles.

The first is the nobleman's fortified villa/stone house/motte and bailey. All it is is a house of the guy who rules over local three villages, and is usually a central stone building with wooden pallisades and sometimes ditches.

*Spoiler: Roman villa rustica, the concept pre-dates medieval era*
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*Spoiler: Knight's tower... you'd expect this sort of thing from wizards, but no*
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*Spoiler: Motte and bailey "castle"*
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It usually can't take in all that many refugees or stand up to armies, but there is a lot of them, making them a decent analogies to fortress castles. The analogy isn't perfect, you don't find these standing on hard to get to places for one, but it roughly checks out.

Second structure of interest is oppidum.

*Spoiler: Like this one*
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The key feature of them is their large size - not perhaps when compared to Roman cities, but they were bigger than almost all hgih and late medieval castles, being often hundreds of meters long. This almost universally meant that their walls were pallisades, with only the innermost ring being stone, but their sheer size meant that they could serve as refuge castles did in later times.

There are significant disagreements on how exactly they worked, whether living in them was a reflection of the society getting more social layers and so on. We do know some of them weren't really inhabited, serving as ritual sites, or perhaps as refuges to run to in times of danger. Some of them could potentially be build in places where the people ran to in times of danger anyway, e.g. hard to get to mountain meadows, Dunharrow-style. We have several of those confirmed in high to late medieval eras, and castles were often built on them at some point. But we also have a lot of sites that clearly had a permanent population and day-to-day hustle and bustle, so... Like I said, there are disagreements.

*Why not even small outposts?*

Right? A small fortified camp for fifty soldiers sounds like a good idea. And it is, but to do that, you need a military that is organized along the lines that let you do that, and that's the problem. Even a powerful local ruler in ealry medieval era will only really control a fairly small area directly, let alone be able to give orders to soldiers hundreds of miles away (Romans had an entire, very expensive, postal system for that). You may see some wooden lookout towers in some places, but that's about the extent of it.

The bulk of your fighting forces are either a part of your personal retinue and around you all the time, or part of some other nobleman's forces. In the latter case, they will be around said nobleman, in his fortified villa rustica/motte and bailey, not out in the middle of nowhere, guarding your borders.

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## Berenger

> A good example of these is the Sallburg


The original Saalburg didn't survive into the 6th century, though. The modern Saalburg was reconstructed on behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm II. I can offer three pictures from _Meyer, Werner: Deutsche Burgen, Schlösser und Festungen, Frankfurt am Main 1979_. There is also a nice beginner's guide on the general use and principles of fortifications over at ACOUP. 


*Spoiler*
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_Ostrogoth castle Golemanovo Kale, modern Bulgaria, 6th century._


_Royal holdings near Dorestad, modern Netherlands, 8th century._ 


_Saxon ringwall near Bremen, modern Germany, 8th century._

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## Pauly

> Does anyone know of any surviving examples or decent reconstructions of castles from the very early middle ages? So 6th to 8th century?
> What would castles at the time have looked like?


Youre looking for Viking ring fortresses.

https://youtu.be/8Iz0Sy0L7Ys

https://youtu.be/fBZHjUzhD1g

https://youtu.be/ARVpLMhmPmU

https://youtu.be/OY1T9UPvBuU

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## Yora

Something I've been taking away from what I found about early Bizantine fortification is that it looks very much like "curtain walls + fat towers". They can get quite big, but still really plain. I've not seen stuff like massive keeps, multiple nested courtyards, and clusters of differently shaped towers, as they are common in later west European castles.

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## Berenger

> My definition is "fortification to protect a group of soldiers against attackers".


What I forgot, 'typical' medieval castles had multiple purposes. This does not apply to all types of castles (especially not refuge castles), but I feel it bears mentioning.
..
Their military role, in which the defensive structures serve as a force multiplier for defenders, is the most visible and obvious one. But they also served as a safe and prestigious residence (for whole noble families and a large "civilian" staff, including children), centers of rulership and noble representation, centers of the local economy and centers of law and administration - at the very least for the surrounding villages supporting the castle. Which of these roles was the most important could shift from castle to castle and from time to time. Places which lack the facilities for one or more of these functions might be better described as a fortress, a manor or a palace.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Youre looking for Viking ring fortresses.


I'd hesitate to call them early medieval. Thechnically they are, most being built in late 900s, but they aren't really typical of the era, being more of a transitional step to high medieval castles.




> Something I've been taking away from what I found about early Bizantine fortification is that it looks very much like "curtain walls + fat towers". They can get quite big, but still really plain. I've not seen stuff like massive keeps, multiple nested courtyards, and clusters of differently shaped towers, as they are common in later west European castles.


Yeah, pretty much. You don't tend to see specialized military-only, or rather military-mostly buildings as standalone structures. The closest you can get to multiple layers is city walls with a citadel, or maybe central citadel with a town around it.

*Spoiler: Ksar Lemsa, 6th c.*
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Note the houses standing outside of the fort, they would have a pallisade around them at best, giving you what is technically a two-level fortified complex, but still not quite a castle.


It seems that when Romans wanted to make fortifications harder to get, their answer wasn't to make multiple levels of them, but rather to make one level and build the hell out of it.

*Spoiler: Constantinople's walls*
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*Spoiler: Nicaea walls map, 5th c.*
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Or, there are the really, really big oppidums, there are almost no good reconstructions or maps of them, but if you got to this link and scroll down a few pages, you'll see a picture of one such example.

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## Vinyadan

There are a few early Lombard castles still standing in Italy. How heavily they were modified over the centuries, however, is a different story. There is a square castle in Sant'Agata di Puglia (you can probably easily google some images), but, for example, we know that it used to have towers. Were they part of the original project, or added in the following centuries? Hard to tell. Some academic studies probably deal with that.

As far as the Visigoths in Spain were concerned, there isn't an actual break from previous Roman architecture on a stylistic level (as the Lombards, they kept using local workers), although we do know that the population contracted and roads fell in disrepair after the Roman state and trade system collapsed. Sometimes the villas still held a rich Roman family inside - people capable of arming thousands of slaves and senting them as military help to the king - but other times they were left without an owner and the rurals reused them as they saw fit, sometimes even as a graveyard.

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## Gnoman

> Something I've been taking away from what I found about early Bizantine fortification is that it looks very much like "curtain walls + fat towers". They can get quite big, but still really plain. I've not seen stuff like massive keeps, multiple nested courtyards, and clusters of differently shaped towers, as they are common in later west European castles.


Part of this is that fortification is an arms race like any other. Even if you could build a late-era super castle in, say, the year 900, it would cost you massive amounts of resources and labor. Meanwhile a much simpler fortress would do just fine against the ability of somebody to attack your castle. To use an analogy, a pre-gunpowder breastplate won't stop a bullet, but there were no bullets then, so building one that _could_ give that level of protection was probably a waste.

The other factor is technology. It can be hard to really see this looking back from a thousand years later, but you _couldn't_ build that super-castle in 900. Architecture, tools, building materials, and underlying theory just were not advanced enough to do it.

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## Thane of Fife

Something not mentioned yet is that in Britain, at least (I imagine similarly elsewhere, but I'm less familiar), people built lots of dykes (see Wansdyke, Offa's Dyke, Devil's Dyke, etc) in the Post-Roman period. I believe that there isn't really any consensus as to what the primary purpose of these was, or how they worked, but there is at least some thought that they were a form of defensive fortification.

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## Khedrac

> Part of this is that fortification is an arms race like any other. Even if you could build a late-era super castle in, say, the year 900, it would cost you massive amounts of resources and labor. Meanwhile a much simpler fortress would do just fine against the ability of somebody to attack your castle. To use an analogy, a pre-gunpowder breastplate won't stop a bullet, but there were no bullets then, so building one that _could_ give that level of protection was probably a waste.
> 
> The other factor is technology. It can be hard to really see this looking back from a thousand years later, but you _couldn't_ build that super-castle in 900. Architecture, tools, building materials, and underlying theory just were not advanced enough to do it.


Related to this, is that once cannon were invented and came into common-enough use to be a factor, you needed a different type of castle.  A strong hard wall capable of resisting all but the largest trebuchet serves pretty well against any pre-gunpowder army, cannon will shatter the wall, so you need the big earth or rubble berms to absorb the cannon shot.  Similarly pre-gunpowder attackers who reach the base of a wall cannot do much without scaling ladders or similar, once they have gunpowder they could be emplacing a blasting charge, so the ability to shoot them first becomes a lot more important.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Part of this is that fortification is an arms race like any other. Even if you could build a late-era super castle in, say, the year 900, it would cost you massive amounts of resources and labor. Meanwhile a much simpler fortress would do just fine against the ability of somebody to attack your castle.
> [...]
> The other factor is technology. It can be hard to really see this looking back from a thousand years later, but you _couldn't_ build that super-castle in 900. Architecture, tools, building materials, and underlying theory just were not advanced enough to do it.


Not really - we do have structures that are supercastle-like in the level of architectural complexity and necessary resources and labor built usually in pre-medieval times, sometimes even in early medieval. We don't see castles in Roman era not because of insufficient technology, but simply because they didn't fit into their defensive strategy or their army organization. It's only once those go away after Rome wanes that you see castle slowly evolve from oppidum and villa rustica, along the lines of very un-Roman defense.




> Related to this, is that once cannon were invented and came into common-enough use to be a factor, you needed a different type of castle.  A strong hard wall capable of resisting all but the largest trebuchet serves pretty well against any pre-gunpowder army, cannon will shatter the wall, so you need the big earth or rubble berms to absorb the cannon shot.  Similarly pre-gunpowder attackers who reach the base of a wall cannot do much without scaling ladders or similar, once they have gunpowder they could be emplacing a blasting charge, so the ability to shoot them first becomes a lot more important.


Okay, this is a hell of a tangent, but what the hell. Gunpowder gets introduced to Europe around 1300, star forts only really appear in 1550 - sure, technological progress takes long, but not that long.

Thing is, early gunpowder weapons kinda sucked. There's a post on Czech forums regarding Hussite wars about where Hussite siege camps were located, and it turns out closest were something like 200 meters away from the castle, which gives us a range estimate for their heavy cannon. That's... not great, it's well inside bowshot, and well inside trebuchet range, so early gunpowder had same offensive capabilities that the trebuchet had, it was just a lot more portable, and had better density (i.e. more shooty things per meter of frontline).

*Spoiler: Hussite guns*
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Even the biggest examples had max range of about 500 meters, and those had very low rate of fire, these are the ones around the 200-300 meters mark


*Spoiler: Dardanels gun, 1450s*
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Looks impressive and will eventually take a wall down, but it has rate of fire of 15 shots. Per day.


*Spoiler: Siege of Orleans, not to scale, obviously, but archers, crossbowmen, gunners and cannon stand at the same range*
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Blasting charges aren't all that great either, you need to get close to place them, and if you have some sort of method to do that safely, why not deliver a battering ram? As for blasting charges that could make a hole in the stone wall... it's probably not happening. Even the charges used against the gate were enclosed in something that would redirect the explosion towards the door, rather than away (often a bell from nearby church), stone would be even worse.

When you do see gunpowder explode a wall, it's usually done by sapping - dig a tunnell under the wall, make the underwall section deep and then collapse it. But for that, you can use non-gunpowder methods too, just set the beams on fire. Gunpowder was faster and you didn't need to dig such a large cavity (the explosion did that for you, it has nowhere to go but the narrow access tunnel), but it was still just an incremental upgrade.

That said, this is not quite so much a myth as gunpowder vs plate armor, Machiavelli states in ~1500 that no walls can resist cannon over several ady's worth of bombardment, and once you get to late 1500s, you do need star forts to resist the big cannons at all.

*Spoiler: Like this one, from 1588*
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## fusilier

> Okay, this is a hell of a tangent, but what the hell. Gunpowder gets introduced to Europe around 1300, star forts only really appear in 1550 - sure, technological progress takes long, but not that long.


Early 14th century cannons were too small to do much to walls (earliest depiction of cannons in Europe date to 1326 and show small "vase" like weapons), not until around the second-half of the 14th century do they start to make their presence felt.  The War of Chioggia (1380) used a good number of cannons to take down walls.  While the _trace italianne_ may not have evolved into it's final form by the mid 1500s, there was a considerable amount of development between the late 14th century and the mid-16th.

By the mid 15th century, new "artillery" forts were being constructed.  While the walls were still tall, they were much thicker.  The towers were also being made thicker and cut down to the height of the walls (or just a little taller).  Although constructed in the late 15th century, the Sarzanello Fortress in Italy is a good example of this early response to artillery (also it has a very early example of a ravelin):
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortezza_di_Sarzanello

The Fortress at Salses (on the border between Spain and France), is even more impressive.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_de_Salses

One source I have describes it as being built in the "reinforced castle" style.  Thick walls, deep, wide ditch, it also had built-in countermines and vents(? need to confirm that) -- countermines allow the defenders to detect, and hopefully disrupt enemy mining attempts, and (if that fails) vents redirect the force of an exploding mine away from the base of the walls.  Completed in 1503, Henri de Campion, writing in 1639(!), over one-hundred years later, considered it the best all-masonry fortress in Europe!

The problem with this style of fortress should be clear -- thick AND tall walls made them very expensive!  By shortening the walls, you were able to get just as good (if not better) protection from artillery fire, and spare both time and expense.

See Siege Warfare, The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494-1660, by Christopher Duffy.  The first chapter briefly covers the developments beginning around 1470 in Italy.





> When you do see gunpowder explode a wall, it's usually done by sapping - dig a tunnell under the wall, make the underwall section deep and then collapse it. But for that, you can use non-gunpowder methods too, just set the beams on fire.


A comment upon sapping, and just to be clear this is not directed at anything said here.  My complaint is that many military historians seem to conflate mining and sapping, and not make clear the distinction.  It's a bit of pet peeve of mine, so I'm going to take the opportunity to make the distinction clear.  I suspect the confusion arises from the Medieval (and earlier) periods where sapping and mining (during a siege) had the same goals -- i.e. to undermine the walls of the castle, and collapsing them to create a breach.  The difference is in how they approached that goal.

- Miners dig mines, i.e. tunnels, from their own lines to some point under the foundation of the walls.

- Sappers, as their name implies, dig "saps" up to the walls.  What is a sap?  It's a kind of trench (not tunnel).  This would be done in the full view of the enemy.  Only after reaching the wall would the sappers then dig down to undermine it. 

While it might sound crazy to let the enemy know precisely where you were trying to undermine their walls, not only does sapping require less skill and resources, a lot of siegecraft was about convincing the enemy to surrender before trying to storm their fortifications.  So if the defenders can't stop the saps from reaching their walls, it might encourage them to surrender. 

This distinction was well understood in the 19th century, sappers and miners were separate specializations, by which time, mining was still used in the traditional way, whereas saps were used primarily to advance the trenches closer to the enemy work, to allow cannons to be placed closer, and give a better "jumping" off point for attacking infantry.

Recently somebody finally returned my copy of a 19th century Engineering manual so I've been thinking about this lately.  So thanks in advance for tolerating the digression. :-)

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## Vinyadan

About the Dardanelles guns shooting only fifteen shots a day, I can't help but be reminded of the German supercannons during WW2, although I am not sure they ever had such a strategic importance. 14 rounds a day, a range of 40 km, 7,000 kg ammo, and a crew in the hundreds.

I guess that our ICBMs could be seen as the final stage of this form of thinking: extremely costly, destructive, and capable of extreme range, but they only get one shot each.

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## Martin Greywolf

> I suspect the confusion arises from the Medieval (and earlier) periods where sapping and mining (during a siege) had the same goals -- i.e. to undermine the walls of the castle, and collapsing them to create a breach.


It's less of a confusion and more of a we often don't know what it was, exactly. From what we do know, there were three principal ways to get to the base of the wall:dig a straight up tunnel over several hundred metersdig a trench with some sort of cover overhead, then dig understraight up walk to the base of the wall under a cover not unlike a battering ram

There are even illuminations of people in full armor digging directly into the walls themselves, as opposed to under them, which could work with some types of walls - but it would be even more hideously dangerous. That wall will come down suddenly, and right next to you.

And the problem we have is that the chronicles rarely make clear which method was used. Sometimes you can glean things from context (if a tunnel collapse killed 100 soldiers, it was probably pretty long), but more often you find things like "and they dug under the walls and conquered the castle".

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## Yora

And explosives in the ground are called mines, because the first underground explosives were placed in mines that had been dug under enemy fortifications or positions.
Somehow the name stuck, even once hidden explosives could be planted on the surface with no mine digging required.

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## Gnoman

It gets stranger, because explosive traps in the ground or water were not originally called "mines". They were called "torpedoes" in the American Civil War (the first conflict where recognizable mines were both technicality practical and tactically useful) - this is what Admiral Farragut was referring to in his famous quote. Somehow the invention of the self-propelled torpedo pushed the terminology to the older "mine".

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## fusilier

> It's less of a confusion and more of a we often don't know what it was, exactly. From what we do know, there were three principal ways to get to the base of the wall:dig a straight up tunnel over several hundred metersdig a trench with some sort of cover overhead, then dig understraight up walk to the base of the wall under a cover not unlike a battering ram
> 
> There are even illuminations of people in full armor digging directly into the walls themselves, as opposed to under them, which could work with some types of walls - but it would be even more hideously dangerous. That wall will come down suddenly, and right next to you.
> 
> And the problem we have is that the chronicles rarely make clear which method was used. Sometimes you can glean things from context (if a tunnel collapse killed 100 soldiers, it was probably pretty long), but more often you find things like "and they dug under the walls and conquered the castle".


Ah. So often the exact method used to collapse the walls isn't clear in the records.  That makes sense.  From what I can find the terms -- "sap" and "sapper" -- in English, evolved around 1600. So the terms may be anachronistic anyway?  However, some modern definitions define a "sapper" as someone who digs mines -- which is where my complaint comes from. In the 19th century combat engineers were usually divided by specialization:  sappers, miners, and pontoniers.  By the 20th century many countries had just started calling all their combat engineers "sappers" -- which probably further confuses the issue (especially if the terms are being used anachronistically).  But historically there was a distinction.

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## fusilier

> It gets stranger, because explosive traps in the ground or water were not originally called "mines". They were called "torpedoes" in the American Civil War (the first conflict where recognizable mines were both technicality practical and tactically useful) - this is what Admiral Farragut was referring to in his famous quote. Somehow the invention of the self-propelled torpedo pushed the terminology to the older "mine".


I believe "torpedo" comes from the "torpedo fish", which was a fish that gave off an electric shock.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_torpedo

As a shallow water fish, sometimes people swimming would brush up against them, fishermen would bring them up in their nets, even people walking along the beach might step on one, all receiving an unexpected shock.  So the word was understandably applied to what now is called a "water mine", then was ported to the land based version (i.e. a land torpedo).  Then when the "self-propelled torpedo" was developed, that took over the term "torpedo" and the older trap like devices became mines.

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## Saint-Just

For a time though it was in other direction - instead of underwater mines being called mines anti-fortification shells on land (sort of semi-armor-pierecing shell which penetrates deep into the ground or concrete and then explodes) were called torpedo shells.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> Two people quibbling with me from opposite sides of the "swords are better" argument, I think perhaps I got something nearly right.


I'm rereading this, and I still don't get what you meant by this in this context. People are helpfully pointing out several ways your argument doesn't make complete sense, so you must be right?

The weird part is that Martin and me were basically pointing out the same way in which it doesn't make sense: being expensive can't be the only reason swords were popular. There has to be at least some other reason. You quote us both on saying that. That's not its own opposite. So I'm afraid I don't really understand what you mean.

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## snowblizz

> I believe "torpedo" comes from the "torpedo fish", which was a fish that gave off an electric shock.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_torpedo
> 
> As a shallow water fish, sometimes people swimming would brush up against them, fishermen would bring them up in their nets, even people walking along the beach might step on one, all receiving an unexpected shock.  So the word was understandably applied to what now is called a "water mine", then was ported to the land based version (i.e. a land torpedo).  Then when the "self-propelled torpedo" was developed, that took over the term "torpedo" and the older trap like devices became mines.


Ha! I recently saw/heard this use of torpedo and I couldn't parse it at all. I knew they couldn't be talking about what I thought they were.

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## Incanur

As far as smallswords go, I used to underestimate them but have come around to respecting the weapon as the pinnacle of sidearm efficiency. I still consider the smallsword inferior to the outrageously large & heavy sidearms worn in Renaissance Europe, from long rapiers to "short swords" with 37-40in blades & full basket hilts to hand-&-a-half swords with complex hilts, but those get diminishing returns on their greater weight & length & thus a lower efficiency in that sense. A good smallsword gives surprising odds in an unarmored one-on-one fight at very low weight & moderate length. A person wearing a smallsword is getting a lot of martial potential in a minimal package. Many period sources, from Donald McBane on, raved about the smallsword. I read these claims critically, but it's hard to say smallswords were that bad when various experienced fencers gave them the advantage over heavier cut-&-thrust swords of similar length. Period opinions varied, but based on that record & modern sparring, I suspect a reasonably robust smallsword can hold its own against broadsword or sabre with about the same reach. The lack of cutting ability seems bad in theory, as skillful & powerful cuts are the most reliable way to immediate stop an unarmored opponent, but in practice such cuts are difficult to pull off against competent fencers & thrusting alone seems to have been sufficient for one-on-one unarmored dueling. A fencer who lands a thrust can withdraw & defend themself while the wounded opponent bleeds out, or they can close & grapple. 

I'm still not a big fan of the smallsword or anything, but I have to give the weapon its due & I appreciate how learning about the smallsword has made further recognize the importance of nimbleness.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Ah. So often the exact method used to collapse the walls isn't clear in the records.  That makes sense.  From what I can find the terms -- "sap" and "sapper" -- in English, evolved around 1600. So the terms may be anachronistic anyway?  However, some modern definitions define a "sapper" as someone who digs mines -- which is where my complaint comes from. In the 19th century combat engineers were usually divided by specialization:  sappers, miners, and pontoniers.  By the 20th century many countries had just started calling all their combat engineers "sappers" -- which probably further confuses the issue (especially if the terms are being used anachronistically).  But historically there was a distinction.


We are once again in the pedantry country for this, I think.

If we're talking about discussing this in modern English, well, most people hear sapper and they imagine someone who digs as part of military operation, and don't go further than that. So, for colloquial use, there's not much point in making a distinction. For a more sophisticated debate, there is a good cause to be made for making a distinction between sappers and miners - but there's also a good cause against it, even sappers will dig some shallow tunnels, and miners will have to dig trenches, if only to start digging out the mine.

Now, if we're talking about sappers in organized military where a unit had the official designation of sappers, then the distinction we have to make is what that specific army had as part of sapper's duties at that time - which, as fusilier said, is digging trenches most of the time, for most countries.

But not only is English not the language most of earlier history is written in, the meaning of words can shift as well, especially in translation. The easiest words to see this with are those that English loaned from other languages, the example I choose being the hussar. Because hussar means pirate. It got there from Roman corsaro, then to greek khosarios and then to Balkan gusar/husar, which got twisted into a name for any brigand, rather than just the one on sea, and from there to Hungarian huszar (which at the time meant light border cavalryman that used very brigand-like tactics against Ottomans) and English hussar (which managed to shift from light cavalry to heavy shock cavalry over time there).

So, your average medieval chronicle is going to use a latin word, and since there is no formal military structure, that latin word will be descriptive and mean something like "the guy who digs" or "guy who digs a mine (mine as in the one for gold etc)". The former could be pretty much anyone, digging anything, the latter is probably there because when you have to dig a lot of things, you go to the people who, in peacetime, have the profession of miner and get them to do the digging. But what they dig is still up in the air, unless the source specifies with latin word for trench or tunnel - because you could well have a sentence that says "diggers dug under the wall", and that could mean pretty much anything.

And the final nail in the coffin are translations. Because while the actual source text may say  "diggers dug under the wall", a translation that everyone uses and was made by one British guy in 1800s translated that bit of text into "wall was sapped", and the original nuance (or rather lack of thereof) was lost.

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## fusilier

> We are once again in the pedantry country for this, I think.
> 
> If we're talking about discussing this in modern English, well, most people hear sapper and they imagine someone who digs as part of military operation, and don't go further than that. So, for colloquial use, there's not much point in making a distinction. For a more sophisticated debate, there is a good cause to be made for making a distinction between sappers and miners - but there's also a good cause against it, even sappers will dig some shallow tunnels, and miners will have to dig trenches, if only to start digging out the mine.
> 
> Now, if we're talking about sappers in organized military where a unit had the official designation of sappers, then the distinction we have to make is what that specific army had as part of sapper's duties at that time - which, as fusilier said, is digging trenches most of the time, for most countries.
> 
> But not only is English not the language most of earlier history is written in, the meaning of words can shift as well, especially in translation. The easiest words to see this with are those that English loaned from other languages, the example I choose being the hussar. Because hussar means pirate. It got there from Roman corsaro, then to greek khosarios and then to Balkan gusar/husar, which got twisted into a name for any brigand, rather than just the one on sea, and from there to Hungarian huszar (which at the time meant light border cavalryman that used very brigand-like tactics against Ottomans) and English hussar (which managed to shift from light cavalry to heavy shock cavalry over time there).
> 
> So, your average medieval chronicle is going to use a latin word, and since there is no formal military structure, that latin word will be descriptive and mean something like "the guy who digs" or "guy who digs a mine (mine as in the one for gold etc)". The former could be pretty much anyone, digging anything, the latter is probably there because when you have to dig a lot of things, you go to the people who, in peacetime, have the profession of miner and get them to do the digging. But what they dig is still up in the air, unless the source specifies with latin word for trench or tunnel - because you could well have a sentence that says "diggers dug under the wall", and that could mean pretty much anything.
> ...


Given that the etymology of "sap" and "sapper" ultimately derives from a latin word "sappa" which refers to the tools used to dig (spade, mattock), I can envision a historian noting the similarity between the words, and translating to "sapper" when, as you noted the word is probably better translated as "digger."  Speculation, of course, but seems likely.

----------


## Mike_G

"Sapper" has continued into modern usage for a lot of combat engineer units. So, as usual in English, words evolve and meanings shift.

----------


## fusilier

> "Sapper" has continued into modern usage for a lot of combat engineer units. So, as usual in English, words evolve and meanings shift.


Yup.  But _sap_ and _sapping_ still have their "technical" definitions.  

Just in case things aren't muddled enough, in the 19th century it became common in many armies to designate one man per company as a "sapeur-pionnier" (French term).  This person was usually equipped with a large felling axe, and they would be deployed to clear obstacles or cut trails through forests, etc.  (Typically the several sapper-pioneers from a battalion would be combined into a squad).  In American practice the term was usually shortened to "pioneer" (during the American Civil War for instance) -- but in other nations it may be shortened to just "sapper."  Providing yet another definition of the term "sapper".  :-)

Thanks everybody for the digression!

----------


## Pauly

> As far as smallswords go, I used to underestimate them but have come around to respecting the weapon as the pinnacle of sidearm efficiency.
> [snip]
> .


Another factor in favor of small sword over rapier and dagger or backsword and buckler in a civilian setting is that is less offensive socially. 

Carrying a rapier and dagger or backsword and buckler is carrying a weapon set that has military capacity and carries with it the connotation that it is intended for offensive use. The English word swashbuckler derives from someone noisily (swash) using a shield (buckler) and was originally perjorative. 

Small swords being smaller, and with much less conspicuous hills make them more socially acceptable. Certainly not the weapon of choice for a ruffian trying to intimidate an ale house in the dockyard slums.

----------


## Brother Oni

> Another factor in favor of small sword over rapier and dagger or backsword and buckler in a civilian setting is that is less offensive socially. 
> 
> Carrying a rapier and dagger or backsword and buckler is carrying a weapon set that has military capacity and carries with it the connotation that it is intended for offensive use. The English word swashbuckler derives from someone noisily (swash) using a shield (buckler) and was originally perjorative. 
> 
> Small swords being smaller, and with much less conspicuous hills make them more socially acceptable. Certainly not the weapon of choice for a ruffian trying to intimidate an ale house in the dockyard slums.


Conversely, it also makes them more acceptable to wear in polite company. In the UK, there's still a standing law that a sitting member of Parliament cannot enter Parliament in armour (Statute forbidding Bearing of Armour 1313), but they can still be armed, since wearing a sword was the mark of a gentleman (and up until the 18th-19th Century, basically necessary for self defence purposes).

----------


## Berenger

Are there any sources on how viking ship crews divided loot among themselves? Would there be a single large pool of loot with shares of equal or different size for the captain, the ship owner, "officers" (?) and common crewmen? Would everything go to the captain to be distributed according to need, merit or social standing of the participants? I guess that 'everyone keeps exactly the stuff he personally found and carried away' would be highly impractical and prone to promoting strife amongst the raiders.

----------


## Vykryl

Didn't see anything in a quick web search unfortunately. In the book The Long Ships, during one voyage it mentions the party's leader, helmsman, and a few others (probably chieftains of the party's three ships) getting triple shares of the booty. Another voyage of the story mentions helmsman share being greater than that of the rest of the crew, but not the same as the chieftains on the voyage.

----------


## Pauly

> Are there any sources on how viking ship crews divided loot among themselves? Would there be a single large pool of loot with shares of equal or different size for the captain, the ship owner, "officers" (?) and common crewmen? Would everything go to the captain to be distributed according to need, merit or social standing of the participants? I guess that 'everyone keeps exactly the stuff he personally found and carried away' would be highly impractical and prone to promoting strife amongst the raiders.


I read about it a long time ago, some things that stick in my mind.
Some ships were built by a village and then manned by some of the men from the village. In that case every household in the village got a share and then the surviving crew would get additional shares. Captain and navigator got extra shares although I can't recall the proportions. You could recruit renowned warriors by offering them an additional share. 

Other ships were owned by an individual and crewed by warriors he recruited. In which case shares were divvied up more like a pirate ship with your rank on the ship deciding how many shares you got.

You also had ships built and crewed by order of kings. These werent strictly speaking vikings as vikings were for profit raiders. I cant recall if they had a formal system for distributing loot.

Shares of loot were distributed after costs. So if your voyage got 200 gold pieces, but it cost you 100 gold to buy materials and supplies then the share of loot comes from the 100 profit, not the 200 income.

As a general rule of thumb with pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy is that at most the captain would receive triple an ordinary sailors share, and a double share was the most common split.

----------


## Vinyadan

> Yup.  But _sap_ and _sapping_ still have their "technical" definitions.  
> 
> Just in case things aren't muddled enough, in the 19th century it became common in many armies to designate one man per company as a "sapeur-pionnier" (French term).  This person was usually equipped with a large felling axe, and they would be deployed to clear obstacles or cut trails through forests, etc.  (Typically the several sapper-pioneers from a battalion would be combined into a squad).  In American practice the term was usually shortened to "pioneer" (during the American Civil War for instance) -- but in other nations it may be shortened to just "sapper."  Providing yet another definition of the term "sapper".  :-)
> 
> Thanks everybody for the digression!


Another fun fact: a pionnier was originally an infantryman (literally, a footman: pes (Lat. for foot) > pedo (late Lat. for footman) > Fr. pion > Fr. pionnier), but, somehow, already in the middle ages the name got the additional meaning of someone who excavates the ground.

It's got something to do with chess pawns: Lat. pedonem > It. pedone, Fr. pion, En. pawn, Pt. peão, Gr. pioni, Sp. péon, Dutch Pion, Turkish piyon, Polish pion... I find it interesting that the Turks got the name from the French form, as the game is supposed to have originated in Asia. Then again, they are fairly late comers in Anatolia and Thrace, and the game probably had already dispersed to Europe when they got there. Still, they got the name of the Bishop from Arabic, and that of the Queen from Persian or Arabic...

----------


## AllHailthed4

Long time reader, first time poster.

Our table is starting a new game in a couple weeks. My character is a military-trained sniper who will be palling around with an eclectic group of spies/criminals/Lovecraft investigators. The specific era is a little wibbly-wobbly, but generally the setting incorporates elements of the 1920's-50's. 

From a mechanical standpoint, the character will mostly be providing battlefield control in combat (I'm under no delusion that 5e's mechnics will allow me to one-shot a shoggoth). However, I would like to incoporate some real world tactics into my roleplay and combat decisions. To that end, I'm wondering if the experts on this thread have any suggested reading on the topic? I'm particularily interested in the role a sniper should play on a team, general combat tactics, and countersniper tactics (in case the baddies decide to recruit one too).

----------


## Mike_G

> Long time reader, first time poster.
> 
> Our table is starting a new game in a couple weeks. My character is a military-trained sniper who will be palling around with an eclectic group of spies/criminals/Lovecraft investigators. The specific era is a little wibbly-wobbly, but generally the setting incorporates elements of the 1920's-50's. 
> 
> From a mechanical standpoint, the character will mostly be providing battlefield control in combat (I'm under no delusion that 5e's mechnics will allow me to one-shot a shoggoth). However, I would like to incoporate some real world tactics into my roleplay and combat decisions. To that end, I'm wondering if the experts on this thread have any suggested reading on the topic? I'm particularily interested in the role a sniper should play on a team, general combat tactics, and countersniper tactics (in case the baddies decide to recruit one too).


A Rifleman Went to War by Herbert McBride is a great autobiography of one of the men who pioneered sniping in WWI which would be appropriate for your era.

Or if you just want a manual, it's hard to beat the Marine Corps Scout Sniper Manual

----------


## Pauly

> Long time reader, first time poster.
> 
> Our table is starting a new game in a couple weeks. My character is a military-trained sniper who will be palling around with an eclectic group of spies/criminals/Lovecraft investigators. The specific era is a little wibbly-wobbly, but generally the setting incorporates elements of the 1920's-50's. 
> 
> From a mechanical standpoint, the character will mostly be providing battlefield control in combat (I'm under no delusion that 5e's mechnics will allow me to one-shot a shoggoth). However, I would like to incoporate some real world tactics into my roleplay and combat decisions. To that end, I'm wondering if the experts on this thread have any suggested reading on the topic? I'm particularily interested in the role a sniper should play on a team, general combat tactics, and countersniper tactics (in case the baddies decide to recruit one too).


Enemy at the Gates by William Craig has some fery good sections on Soviet sniping and encompasses a biography of Vasily Zaytzev who was the most famous Soviet sniper of WW2. The movie on the other hand bears little resemblance to true history, especially the personality/character of the snipers. There is a lot in the book about the seige of Stalingrad which you can skip over.

Another book Id recommend isMan Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett. While this book is about hunting man eating tigers, and differs from sniping in that he stalked the tigers to much closer distances than those snipers engage at, its a very good source on how to observe nature and to make logical deductions on how to find your prey.

Most Hollywood films would have you believe marksmanship and weapons handling are the prime requisites for sniping. In reality the mental side of being able to kill in cold blood and patience along with ability to observe nature are more important.

Some Field Manuals from the era that may be of use
US Scouting manual from 1944
https://archive.org/details/FM21-75

USMC Sniping Manual from 1981 (a little past your timeframe but most of it should still br relavent
https://archive.org/details/milmanua...ge/n1/mode/2up

British Sniping and Fieldcraft manual from 1942
https://www.compasslibrary.com/produ...elligence-1942

Australian Army Sniper Manual.
http://afd-gaming.com/training/manua...per_Manual.pdf

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## Tobtor

> Are there any sources on how viking ship crews divided loot among themselves? Would there be a single large pool of loot with shares of equal or different size for the captain, the ship owner, "officers" (?) and common crewmen? Would everything go to the captain to be distributed according to need, merit or social standing of the participants? I guess that 'everyone keeps exactly the stuff he personally found and carried away' would be highly impractical and prone to promoting strife amongst the raiders.


The most accurate thing to say is: we do not know.

The other answers in this thread is likely good interpretations, but not based directly on sources. I assume the book "The Long Ships" is the one by Frans G. Bengtsson, which is a historical novel. And while the author does knows alot, and I is pretty accurate as fiction goes, it is not a source.

To make a guess/estimate we can look at three groups of sources. 

1. Contemporary or near Contemporary sources from outside Scandinavia (aka Frankish, German and Anglo Saxon chronicles, as well as a very few Arab texts). Unfortunately they do not delve into any details about internal organisation. We can only learn that loot was divided among the participants.

2. Law texts. These are typical later (the earliest text are from the period 1100-1250). And they only describe the more organised country wide mobilisation called "leding". I know the danish ones best so I will take my description from that, but also the works of Rikke Malmros who did two books on late viking age and early military organisation ("Vikingernes syn på militær og samfund. Belyst gennem skjaldenes fyrstedigtning" and "Bønder og leding i valdemartidens Danmark" - unfortunately I do not think the are translated into English?

Anyway: it system is built around the village/area and each have to provide 1 ship and crew, who needs to bring their own weapons (shield and spear), they also need to equip the steersman (the one who steers the ship, but is also the captain on land) with a mail-armour. That is: the village needs to fund the ship and armour in the first place, by paying the steersman - likely some of the earliest taxation. They do get a share of loot bu it is very uncertain how much.

The system is described for text about the 12th century, but seem older. Rikke Malmros suggest (and at least some other scholars agree) that it have its roots in the 10th century reforms and more centralised government (during the reign of Harold Bluetooth and Swein Forkbeard in Denmark). Thus late Viking age. 

However, more private "raids" are not covered.

3. Iceland sagas and poems. They are written in the 12-14th century, and how accurately they portray the actual Viking ages is debated. I believe they (at least some of the early ones) is pretty good. BUT Iceland is a special case, and might not represent for instance Swedish way of organise it.

Anyway: I have read all the existing sagas (some of them multiple times).  First of: some vikings where "full time" Vikings, eg. pirates. But most of the time "going viking", it is a part time job. This can have two forms: A. Something done by young men. B. seasonal/periodic raids organised by an "chieftain"

A. 
Young men where expected to go out in the world before settling. They need to gain wealth, reputation and connections. Sort of going to university, but with much more sailing and plundering and trading.
How to start: If your father was wealthy they could equip a ship for you (and your brothers). If your father was not as rich but still wealthy, he could buy a "a part" in a ship. How this worked is not described in details. If he a normal farmer, he could buy "a seat" in a ship. Sometimes it is a seat in a ship of a local chieftain's ship, but there is many Sagas of buying a seat in Norwegian and even Danish ships for Icelanders.

Some ships where mainly doing raiding some mainly trading, but even a ship mainly focusing on trading could supplement with raiding if need be. Any raiding-crew also conducted trading, as whatever plunder you got was not likely exactly what you wanted/needed, so you would go to trading centres an an sell/trade the loot. 

Some of the sons of chieftains joined a king/earl to be "their man" and conduct their work. There are tales of putting down revolt but also missions to collect taxes of the Sami-tribes or tributes from distant earls. Most are working for the Norwegian King (as the closest king), but there are examples of Icelanders joining Danish and Swedish kings as well, and even Norse kings in England as well as at least one example of joining a Anglo-Saxon king.

Some also worked as Scalds for kings, this could be done even if you did not have your own ship, but was a way to move up in the world.

Others seem to work completely freelance.

The end goal was to go home and settle, using whatever loot you got to get a place in society. Going out was a way to secure you place in society or even rise on the social ladder. Most seem to been away 3-8 years, though some stayed longer and some settled other countries, and some just like being a Viking so much that they went at it full time. Especially younger sons might be tempted to gain their fortune somewhere elsewhere (all sones inherited, but at least in soem Sagas the older son got the farm, the younger the ship, the last the swords and some wealth/money and so on). 

B. seasonal/periodic raids organised by an "chieftain"
Some of the more important people, presumably the ones already owning a ship, organised seasonal or periodic raids or other trips (including trading, joining a king in wars etc). Good thing there where young men around who needed to join a crew (see A above). This seem to be they way most people imagine it, but it does seem to be somewhat rare, unless the chieftain had sons who needed to gain a reputation and acquire new wealth.

So; about loot: if you have a "share" in a ship and you or your father have organised the trip, you likely get a larger share, whiles others get to divide the rest at equal shares. Note however that as some of them seem to have paid to get a seat, and thus some of the cost of the expedition was already covered. How much? We have no clue, as we do not know how much they paid and how much it cost to organise.

Hope it helps.

----------


## Khedrac

> Long time reader, first time poster.
> 
> Our table is starting a new game in a couple weeks. My character is a military-trained sniper who will be palling around with an eclectic group of spies/criminals/Lovecraft investigators. The specific era is a little wibbly-wobbly, but generally the setting incorporates elements of the 1920's-50's. 
> 
> From a mechanical standpoint, the character will mostly be providing battlefield control in combat (I'm under no delusion that 5e's mechnics will allow me to one-shot a shoggoth). However, I would like to incoporate some real world tactics into my roleplay and combat decisions. To that end, I'm wondering if the experts on this thread have any suggested reading on the topic? I'm particularily interested in the role a sniper should play on a team, general combat tactics, and countersniper tactics (in case the baddies decide to recruit one too).


Before you do anything else, have a chat with your DM about your intentions.  The chances are good that they will know about as much as you do about how snipers work, or, once you have read some of the suggestions, less than you do.  At this point trying to apply some of the theory you have learned will just make things worse!

If you and the DM agree about what sort of thing your character is trained in and what it can do (with humans) then the DM won't mind you spouting more technical information (which adds useful colour if you are able to keep it brief) and you will know that the DM has a fair idea of what you are trying to do and is applying the circumstances fairly (i.e. if it doesn't work on these opponents there's probably a good reason other than the DM didn't understand what you were trying to achieve).
Also, if you and the DM agree on what you are trying to do, it doesn't matter if the methods ascribed to your character are completely wrong in real life - they are what works (normally) in the game world.

----------


## Pauly

> Before you do anything else, have a chat with your DM about your intentions.  The chances are good that they will know about as much as you do about how snipers work, or, once you have read some of the suggestions, less than you do.  At this point trying to apply some of the theory you have learned will just make things worse!
> 
> If you and the DM agree abot what sort of thing your character is trained in and what it can do (with humans) then the DM won't mind you spouting more technical information (which adds useful colour if you are able to keep it brief) and you will know that the DM has a fair idea of what you are trying to do and is applying the circumstances fairly (i.e. if it doesn't work on these opponents there's probably a good reason other than the DM didn't understand what you were trying to achieve).
> Also, if you and the DM agree on what you are trying to do, it doesn't matter if the methods ascribed to your character are completely wrong in real life - they are what works (normally) in the game world.


Having read this, Might I suggest considering to change your character to Dangerous Game Hunter rather than military sniper?

Sniping involves a lot of technical issues and involves hiding and waiting and taking a shot at 200~300m with a military rifle. Dangerous game hunting involves stalking a target to 5 or 10 meters and then using a much more powerful stopping rifle.
Also socially big game hunters are generally drawn from the upper middle class whereas the typical sniper is more commonly drawn from the backswood peasant class.

From a RPG perspective a dangerous game hunter might be a better fit on the tactical battlefield and in social situations.

----------


## snowblizz

> Having read this, Might I suggest considering to change your character to Dangerous Game Hunter rather than military sniper?
> 
> Sniping involves a lot of technical issues and involves hiding and waiting and taking a shot at 200~300m with a military rifle. Dangerous game hunting involves stalking a target to 5 or 10 meters and then using a much more powerful stopping rifle.
> Also socially big game hunters are generally drawn from the upper middle class whereas the typical sniper is more commonly drawn from the backswood peasant class.
> 
> From a RPG perspective a dangerous game hunter might be a better fit on the tactical battlefield and in social situations.


The two are not necessarily separate categories though. Simo Häyhä, the most famous sniper on youtube (at least fees like it sometimes), learnt his craft as a hunter. Which is quite common really. 
For a less technical sniper, I would go for the squad marksman. That is the guy in a squad that was good at marksmanship, but not extensively trained as a sniper team member. Would usually get a marksman oriented rifle (if such exists), sometimes an older bolt-action, or an assault rifle with a scope all depending a bit on time and place.

Obviously it's less than trivial to combined these. The character starts out as someone who was a hunter in civilian life and as a natural marksman was designated to that position in a squad without necessarily going through sniperschool.

----------


## Martin Greywolf

> However, I would like to incoporate some real world tactics into my roleplay and combat decisions. To that end, I'm wondering if the experts on this thread have any suggested reading on the topic? I'm particularily interested in the role a sniper should play on a team, general combat tactics, and countersniper tactics (in case the baddies decide to recruit one too).


Unfortunately for all of us, DnD is notoriously bad at that sort of thing, it has its own set of simulationist rules that largely override what would happen in real life (whether or not shoggoths would be involved).

The best thing I can think of to do is to base your gameplan on manipulating concealement and cover - turning over tables (it gets you a concealment, even against a machinegun), leaning from behind corners, using the hell out of prone condition, that sort of thing. For tactics against enemies, destroy their cover (alchemical fire, maybe? many tables let fire destroy objects far faster than it would) and... that's about it. DnD doesn't really model covering fire, unless there is some rule about making ranged AoOs I'm unaware of.

Just... talk to your DM about this first, I've seen some DMs get incredibly salty at players for using cover rules.

----------


## SleepyShadow

> Before you do anything else, have a chat with your DM about your intentions.  The chances are good that they will know about as much as you do about how snipers work, or, once you have read some of the suggestions, less than you do.  At this point trying to apply some of the theory you have learned will just make things worse!
> 
> If you and the DM agree about what sort of thing your character is trained in and what it can do (with humans) then the DM won't mind you spouting more technical information (which adds useful colour if you are able to keep it brief) and you will know that the DM has a fair idea of what you are trying to do and is applying the circumstances fairly (i.e. if it doesn't work on these opponents there's probably a good reason other than the DM didn't understand what you were trying to achieve).
> Also, if you and the DM agree on what you are trying to do, it doesn't matter if the methods ascribed to your character are completely wrong in real life - they are what works (normally) in the game world.


Hi, I'm the GM in question. Have no fear, I know quite a bit on the subject of sniping, and on the military in general. I'm not worried about D4 knowing more than I do on the subject.




> Unfortunately for all of us, DnD is notoriously bad at that sort of thing, it has its own set of simulationist rules that largely override what would happen in real life (whether or not shoggoths would be involved).
> 
> The best thing I can think of to do is to base your gameplan on manipulating concealement and cover - turning over tables (it gets you a concealment, even against a machinegun), leaning from behind corners, using the hell out of prone condition, that sort of thing. For tactics against enemies, destroy their cover (alchemical fire, maybe? many tables let fire destroy objects far faster than it would) and... that's about it. DnD doesn't really model covering fire, unless there is some rule about making ranged AoOs I'm unaware of.
> 
> Just... talk to your DM about this first, I've seen some DMs get incredibly salty at players for using cover rules.


I don't have a problem with cover/concealment, especially since the enemy will be using it as well. On the subject of covering fire, D20 Modern has decent rules for it which I'm adapting for the game.

----------


## Vinyadan

> Young men where expected to go out in the world before settling. They need to gain wealth, reputation and connections. Sort of going to university, but with much more sailing and plundering and trading.
> How to start: If your father was wealthy they could equip a ship for you (and your brothers). If your father was not as rich but still wealthy, he could buy a "a part" in a ship. How this worked is not described in details. If he a normal farmer, he could buy "a seat" in a ship. Sometimes it is a seat in a ship of a local chieftain's ship, but there is many Sagas of buying a seat in Norwegian and even Danish ships for Icelanders.
> 
> Some ships where mainly doing raiding some mainly trading, but even a ship mainly focusing on trading could supplement with raiding if need be. Any raiding-crew also conducted trading, as whatever plunder you got was not likely exactly what you wanted/needed, so you would go to trading centres an an sell/trade the loot. 
> 
> Some of the sons of chieftains joined a king/earl to be "their man" and conduct their work. There are tales of putting down revolt but also missions to collect taxes of the Sami-tribes or tributes from distant earls. Most are working for the Norwegian King (as the closest king), but there are examples of Icelanders joining Danish and Swedish kings as well, and even Norse kings in England as well as at least one example of joining a Anglo-Saxon king.
> 
> Some also worked as Scalds for kings, this could be done even if you did not have your own ship, but was a way to move up in the world.
> 
> ...


Would serving the Eastern Roman Emperor factor in as one of these options?

----------


## AllHailthed4

> A Rifleman Went to War by Herbert McBride is a great autobiography of one of the men who pioneered sniping in WWI which would be appropriate for your era.
> 
> Or if you just want a manual, it's hard to beat the Marine Corps Scout Sniper Manual





> Enemy at the Gates by William Craig has some fery good sections on Soviet sniping and encompasses a biography of Vasily Zaytzev who was the most famous Soviet sniper of WW2. The movie on the other hand bears little resemblance to true history, especially the personality/character of the snipers. There is a lot in the book about the seige of Stalingrad which you can skip over.
> 
> Another book Id recommend isMan Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett. While this book is about hunting man eating tigers, and differs from sniping in that he stalked the tigers to much closer distances than those snipers engage at, its a very good source on how to observe nature and to make logical deductions on how to find your prey.
> 
> Most Hollywood films would have you believe marksmanship and weapons handling are the prime requisites for sniping. In reality the mental side of being able to kill in cold blood and patience along with ability to observe nature are more important.
> 
> Some Field Manuals from the era that may be of use
> US Scouting manual from 1944
> https://archive.org/details/FM21-75
> ...


I'll definitely give these a look! I don't suppose there are any manuals from the Eastern Bloc (that have been translated)?




> Having read this, Might I suggest considering to change your character to Dangerous Game Hunter rather than military sniper?
> 
> Sniping involves a lot of technical issues and involves hiding and waiting and taking a shot at 200~300m with a military rifle. Dangerous game hunting involves stalking a target to 5 or 10 meters and then using a much more powerful stopping rifle.
> Also socially big game hunters are generally drawn from the upper middle class whereas the typical sniper is more commonly drawn from the backswood peasant class.
> 
> From a RPG perspective a dangerous game hunter might be a better fit on the tactical battlefield and in social situations.


The character _is_ a backwoods peasant, lol. The party has plenty of charismatic faces, so I figured I'd introduce a little earthy common sense.




> The two are not necessarily separate categories though. Simo Häyhä, the most famous sniper on youtube (at least fees like it sometimes), learnt his craft as a hunter. Which is quite common really. 
> For a less technical sniper, I would go for the squad marksman. That is the guy in a squad that was good at marksmanship, but not extensively trained as a sniper team member. Would usually get a marksman oriented rifle (if such exists), sometimes an older bolt-action, or an assault rifle with a scope all depending a bit on time and place.
> 
> Obviously it's less than trivial to combined these. The character starts out as someone who was a hunter in civilian life and as a natural marksman was designated to that position in a squad without necessarily going through sniperschool.


Simo Haya was definitely an inspiration, along with Lyudmilla Pavlichenko  :Small Smile: 

The squad marksman idea might be good as a starting point. It's definitely in line with the character's backstory, and gives them plenty of room to grow as the campaign progresses.




> Unfortunately for all of us, DnD is notoriously bad at that sort of thing, it has its own set of simulationist rules that largely override what would happen in real life (whether or not shoggoths would be involved).
> 
> The best thing I can think of to do is to base your gameplan on manipulating concealement and cover - turning over tables (it gets you a concealment, even against a machinegun), leaning from behind corners, using the hell out of prone condition, that sort of thing. For tactics against enemies, destroy their cover (alchemical fire, maybe? many tables let fire destroy objects far faster than it would) and... that's about it. DnD doesn't really model covering fire, unless there is some rule about making ranged AoOs I'm unaware of.


That's very true. To clarify, I plan to use what I learn as a background from which to draw inspiration rather than rigid manual. If a combat scenario gives me time to set up a concealed position, then I'll take the opportunity to show off a bit. If not, then that's what a sidearm and hitpoints are for  :Small Wink: 

I will definitely use your suggestions about creating cover and using the prone condition, and may invest in some alchemical fire (or use radio contact to direct the wizard's fireballs?) 

Thanks for the help!

----------


## Berenger

Thanks for the answers regarding vikings.  :Small Smile: 

I'm asking because I'm going to GM a viking RPG, so while I'm generally interested in historical facts, educated guesses are good enough for my purposes when there are no applicable sources.

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## Tobtor

> Would serving the Eastern Roman Emperor factor in as one of these options?


Yes. This would be the "Some of the sons of chieftains joined a king/earl to be "their man"", category. The emperor just being a very powerfull "king". Harald Hardrada was serving the Bysantine emperor, and at least to his mind this was that sort of arrengement. When he left he used the earned loot to get power back home (he gave half the loot to his brother King Magnus to be appointed co-King of Norway).

----------


## Pauly

> I'll definitely give these a look! I don't suppose there are any manuals from the Eastern Bloc (that have been translated)?
> 
> The character _is_ a backwoods peasant, lol. The party has plenty of charismatic faces, so I figured I'd introduce a little earthy common sense.
> 
> Simo Haya was definitely an inspiration, along with Lyudmilla Pavlichenko 
> 
> The squad marksman idea might be good as a starting point. It's definitely in line with the character's backstory, and gives them plenty of room to grow as the campaign progresses.
> 
> That's very true. To clarify, I plan to use what I learn as a background from which to draw inspiration rather than rigid manual. If a combat scenario gives me time to set up a concealed position, then I'll take the opportunity to show off a bit. If not, then that's what a sidearm and hitpoints are for 
> ...


Im unaware of any Eastern bloc sniping manuals that have been translated, but I think youd have better luck in a shooting/sniping forum than here. However as I understand it there is little difference in the technical sniping side of the training, although deployment may have been different between East and West.
Enemy at the Gates does cover Lyudmilla Pavlichenko, but more as a side character to Zaytzev.

A very informative youtube video on Simo Hayha https://youtu.be/3XzmCQUPyTM

This other channel has a lot of videos about rifles from the era and sniping tactics, and is run by a (claimed) modern sniper. I havent found anything he said or claims to be egregiously wrong and his shooting appears to be consistent with what he says his training is so Im inclined to believe his claims. This video in particular has a really good breakdown of the limits of sniping in your target era.
https://youtu.be/YqK6CMqGuMs

Edit to add.
As for counter-sniping there are 2 things. 
Firstly on a battlefield there are a whole lot of eyeballs observing a whole lot of areas from a whole lot of directions. Most snipers were spotted by a random dude on the other side who happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, hence the practice of relocating after one or two shots from a position.
Secondly in the rare instance of sniper duels fieldcraft was king. Being able to hide better than the other guy and being able to observe better than the other guy usually determined the matter. The other less common way was to induce the other sniper into making a shot and thus revealing his position, either by providing a suitably realistic dummy target (helmet on a stick) or through a volunteer providing a live target. This second method depended on having a good idea as to the enemy snipers position. Marksmanship almost never came into it because both shooters were already at a very high level.

As for roleplaying, I think that Clint Eastwoods character in Gran Torino is a very good representation of the mentality of most snipers* I have read about _. Yeah? Ill blow a hole in your face and then go in the house... and sleep like a baby. You can count on that. We used to stack ****s like you five feet high in Korea... use ya for sandbags._ . They dont talk much not because they are shy or anti-social, but more because they dont see the point of small talk. They tend to be see problem -> fix problem people, not inclined to discuss what everybody else thinks or seek validation of their plans from others. 
* I know his character isnt meant to be a sniper, but it is more consistent with how real snipers thought and acted than say Jude Laws character in Enemy at the Gates.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Im unaware of any Eastern bloc sniping manuals that have been translated, but I think youd have better luck in a shooting/sniping forum than here. However as I understand it there is little difference in the technical sniping side of the training, although deployment may have been different between East and West.
> Enemy at the Gates does cover Lyudmilla Pavlichenko, but more as a side character to Zaytzev.


Unless you find those translated manuals, assume everything about Eastern Front is not true. We really, really can't go into why this is because of forum rules, so that's where I'll end my advice.

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## NRSASD

So Im thinking of running a short campaign set in the French Revolution, circa 1780-ish. What kinds of weapons would a particularly ambitious band of revolutionaries plausibly have access to if they looted a royal armory? 

Heres what I have so far. Let me know what other broad classes of weapons should exist/what categories should be subdivided because significant differences exist. Im aiming for verisimilitude, not strict accuracy (I would prefer to use assault rifle rather than M-16; I want generic classes of weapon rather than specific models.)

Guns: Musket, rifle, pistol, blunderbuss
Swords: Sabre, rapier, small sword (like artillery-crew utility blades)
Polearms: improvised, halberd, pike
Daggers: knife, dagger, (fencing dagger?)
Other melee: axe, club, great axe, great club
Explosives: grenade, incendiary cocktail

As always, thanks for your help in advance!

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

I'll see what I can come up with.




> Guns: Musket, rifle, pistol, blunderbuss


You could split pistol in a smaller and more covert infantry/dueling type of pistol and a larger cavalry type of pistol, sometimes with more of a blunderbuss style barrel for reloading on horseback. Although I'm honestly not sure if those were still a thing by this time. Also possibly too detailed.



> Swords: Sabre, rapier, small sword (like artillery-crew utility blades)


The small sword I know was a lighter version of the rapier, used as a civilian and fencing weapon, although I'm sure that if you found they were used by artillery crews that's the case. Maybe, if you're looking in the utility blade direction, add some cutlass/machete like blade too. There's probably a more period appropriate French word for it, but the cheap durable weapon of commoners, adventurers and sailors alike, basically.



> Polearms: improvised, halberd, pike


Go as nuts here as you like. There were a lot of polearms. Although category wise the important one to keep separated is probably the pike. They were a big deal. As a cross between this category and the sword you could consider some sort of a greatsword/zweihander.



> Daggers: knife, dagger, (fencing dagger?)


A main gauche/trident dagger/sword breaker/left hand dagger would be a kind of cool addition if you can make it distinct. More for fencing than for military use though. Common alternatives as a left hand weapon are a buckler and a cape. Although this general style of fencing was rapidly being replaced with the modern one handed style.



> Other melee: axe, club, great axe, great club
> Explosives: grenade, incendiary cocktail


Actually, the most important addition I can do is probably this: just from a military point of view we're pretty solidly inside the age of the gun here. I know I just said pikes were a big deal, but that mostly kind of ended 100 years before this point. Most infantrymen would have a musket or some other form of gun with a bayonet, and as a backup probably often a rapier, or maybe a messer or something. Maybe a smallsword plus a pistol for an officer. For cavalry there's pistols, sabers and lances (which made a return ones bayonets had replaced pikes).

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## Pauly

> So Im thinking of running a short campaign set in the French Revolution, circa 1780-ish. What kinds of weapons would a particularly ambitious band of revolutionaries plausibly have access to if they looted a royal armory? 
> 
> Heres what I have so far. Let me know what other broad classes of weapons should exist/what categories should be subdivided because significant differences exist. Im aiming for verisimilitude, not strict accuracy (I would prefer to use assault rifle rather than M-16; I want generic classes of weapon rather than specific models.)
> 
> Guns: Musket, rifle, pistol, blunderbuss
> Swords: Sabre, rapier, small sword (like artillery-crew utility blades)
> Polearms: improvised, halberd, pike
> Daggers: knife, dagger, (fencing dagger?)
> Other melee: axe, club, great axe, great club
> ...


Just to clarify they are looting a French arsenal, not any other countrys?
.

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## NRSASD

> Just to clarify they are looting a French arsenal, not any other countrys?
> .


Correct. Theyre going to be heroes of the revolution, so urban citizens who got their hands on an arsenal. As far as training/proficiency goes, some of them might be NCO deserters. French colonials would be allowed, but otherwise everyone will be French.

@Level2 Expert- having done a bit more digging, Im going to replace rapier with epee (the classy French small sword), and small swords with short swords to cover the whole gamut of artillery swords, swords bayonets, and militarized machetes.

Regarding pikes, I know theyre very out of date given the era from a battlefield perspective, but Im pretty sure they were still a pretty common weapon for revolutionaries when they couldnt find a gun. Something long and sharp is always useful in these circumstances. Did the French royal forces use polearms for crowd control in this era?

Regarding lances, youre right, those should totally exist. Im not sure if the players will ever find a horse though Im not expecting the players to leave the urban area.

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## Gnoman

If looting a government arsenal, there's a real chance they'd have some oddball guns available. Karkhoff repeaters saw very limited adoption, for example, but most countries bought at least a few of them for trials. I can't find any evidence that the French used the Giradoni Air Rifle, but the time period fits and it wouldn't be impossible to justify.

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## Saint-Just

Do you mean "royal" as in something that king's family and guests use or just more appropriate way to say "government"? If the second then the army arsenals shouldn't really have rifles - they definitely weren't a mass-issued weapon at that time.

Also you definitely wouldn't find "incendiary cocktails" pre-packaged. I am under impression that liquid incendiaries in general became widespread only later, in that period it was mostly rockets and shells, not infantry weapons.

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## Vinyadan

About polearms, there are some images of the King's Guard holding them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guards the one on the left is an officer however, so it could have had a non-fighting function. Also, that's an image from 30 years before the Revolution. In representations of fights between the king's forces and the revolutionaries, the pikes are generally held by the sans-culottes, because it was one of their symbols. It was so important, that it started popping up in topography (stuff like "Place des Piques"), and even as person name (a child was given the name "Marat-Couthon-Pique"), so it could have been a matter of emphasis, but pikes were certainly seen as antiquated in the king's military, and hadn't been used in the field for something like a century.

The guards closest to the king, the gardes de la manche (those who "touched his sleeve" because of how close they were to him) also are represented with a polearm in reconstructions of their dress in revolutionary times https://www.authentic-costumes.com/p...-manche-du-roy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...Patas06120.jpg Of course, there was a ceremonial function, but they were supposed to act if things went wrong, and were drawn from the soldiers of the Scottish Guard, not from the rather unskilled nobles of the Life Guards.

I didn't find much about how policing was dealt with in those times, however (I saw that there is a book about it, but I haven't read it). From the images, a policeman (a member of the marèchaussée) carried a stick, a gun, and a sword, and often was mounted.

I also couldn't find what would probably have been the best answer: an inventory of some weapon depot in the days of Louis XVI. On a more general level, the looting of the Hospital of the Invalids got 3,000 rifles and a few cannons (or, according the 1842 Britannica, "upwards of 30,000 stands of arms and 20 pieces of cannon"; I don't know why there are such massive discrepancies between sources), and the Bastille contained large quantities of powder; cannons were also taken from both the Hotel de Ville and the Bastille. J. Humbert, one of the attackers of the Bastille, recorded that, before he got there, he was given a rifle at the Invalides and powder at the Hotel de Ville, but no shot, and he had to buy some small nails to load his gun; before these places were taken, he and other citizens patrolled their districts armed only with swords, because the districts had no firearms. They also looted the shops of armorers and cutlers (a representation).

There is a funny thing (and related to odd pieces), Humbert describes some previously dismantled small cannons being used against the Bastille, one of them with silver inlays. This one has been identified with a Siamese cannon gifted to Louis XIV by the King of Siam in 1684. https://royalartillerymuseum.com/new...month-february It was held in the palace currently known as Hotel de la Marine and considered forniture, until it was looted and put to use again. During the same event, the crowd got some parade swords and pikes, which I guess are the ones on which two heads were paraded after the Bastille was taken, unless they came from soldiers who helped conduct the assault (the man then in charge of the building deliberately led the people directly to the weapon hall, to keep them away from the really valuable stuff like the jewels, which were stolen a few years later).

Another funny detail, the keys of the Bastille had a great symbolic meaning, so they were paraded around after the victory: people forgot that they were necessary to free the prisoners, so their cell doors had to be smashed open.

Contemporary sources also describe the carriages of aristocrats being searched before the attack and finding weapons in them; this would have been part of some conspiracy, which involved hoarding both weapons and grain to increase its price during an already bad year. I don't know how reliable this is (hearsay...), but it could be interesting for a game.

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## Mr Beer

They might get some armour: cuirass were still used by cavalry and I guess some simple helmets.

Also barrels of gunpowder, slow match and small cannon - or large cannon if you want.

EDIT

Looks like this musket was a standard French infantry weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleville_musket

And this link seems to be a primer on the kind of artillery the French would have used at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gribeauval_system

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## AdAstra

Depending on how much granularity you want, it may be good to separate out hatchets, particularly more utility-oriented ones, and larger axes. Similarly, carbines/musketoons might be a useful subdivision of muskets.

There might be some hand mortars,capable of firing the hand grenades of the time, but they were not a very popular weapon (if they misfired, you still had a lit grenade in the gun). But bad ideas are fine to have sometimes.

In terms of artillery the heroes are likely to be able to use personally, Coehorn mortars, swivel guns, and wall pieces are reasonable options for the period. They're relatively portable as artillery goes, the wall piece especially being essentially a giant musket, though one you'd want to brace thoroughly before firing. If the players have any wagons they should be able to transport them without much difficulty, and it gives them some extra firepower to break out should they need it.

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## fusilier

> So I'm thinking of running a short campaign set in the French Revolution, circa 1780-ish. What kinds of weapons would a particularly ambitious band of revolutionaries plausibly have access to if they looted a royal armory? 
> 
> Here's what I have so far. Let me know what other broad classes of weapons should exist/what categories should be subdivided because significant differences exist. I'm aiming for verisimilitude, not strict accuracy (I would prefer to use assault rifle rather than M-16; I want generic classes of weapon rather than specific models.)





> Guns: Musket, rifle, pistol, blunderbuss


Musket (and bayonet!) of course.  The French don't seem to have adopted any military rifles during this period, instead preferring smoothbore muskets for their light infantry.  A Dragoon musket (a shorter version of the standard musket) was used for a while.  

Military blunderbusses existed, but I think they were more of a naval item.  You might want to consider a carbine/musketoon instead, both cavalry and sappers carried them.




> Swords: Sabre, rapier, small sword (like artillery-crew utility blades)





> having done a bit more digging, IÂm going to replace rapier with epee (the classy French small sword), and small swords with short swords to cover the whole gamut of artillery swords, swords bayonets, and militarized machetes.


For short sword, what you are looking for is a "sabre-briquet", a short, curved sword with a fairly wide blade.  The British might call something similar a "hanger."  Intended for foot troops (infantry and foot artillery), they were usually simple, NCOs and elite units would carry them.  The later "artillery short sword" wasn't adopted until 1816.




> Polearms: improvised, halberd, pike


In the 18th century halberds were carried by Sergeants, and partisans (spontoons?) were sometimes carried by junior officers.  It's basically a spear or half-pike.  I think this practice may have already fallen out of fashion by the time of the revolution, but I suspect a bunch of them were in arsenals in either case.




> Daggers: knife, dagger, (fencing dagger?)


Not sure how many of these would have been common in an arsenal (maybe some ancient plug bayonets were still lying around), but knives and daggers were usually a personal purchase item, and not hard to find.  Socket bayonets should be in abundance, of course.  




> Other melee: axe, club, great axe, great club


Felling axes (for pioneers), and hatchets for various work I think were common in military stores.  Artillery trail-spikes make good improvised clubs.  And the various other artillery implements (rammer, sponges, worm), are effectively staff weapons.




> Explosives: grenade, incendiary cocktail


Grenades yes.  They are often made from small artillery shells.  Not sure about incendiary cocktails -- a good artillery store might have the stuff needed for making something like a carcass (a kind of flare like projectile), but it would be the materials to make one, rather than have it made it up ahead of time and stored.

Perhaps rockets?  I don't know much about the history of French military rockets, I believe they fielded some later in the Napoleonic wars.

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## Pauly

British and Austro-Hunfarians are my bag in thus period. I have a bit if a smattering about the French though.

Pre-revolutionary officers were expected to pay for and provide their personal side arms, so officers pistols, spadroons (military small swords), cavalry sabers and so on would not be found in the arsenal,

The French never adopted a rifle. The loss of rate of fire was held to be a bigger drawback than benefit of accuracy. The Girondi air rifle was a state secret of the Austro-Hungarians and there is zero chance of the French having acquired any.

Carbines (short muskets) were used by the dragoons, pioneers and artillery. Possibly different patterns for each service. 
Speaking of pioneers they carried felling axes and puck axes and so on, which were 100% tools and 0% weapons.

Cavalry swords were basically curved sabers for the light cavalry and long straight sabers for the heavy cavalry. The heavy cavalry full cuirass and helmet would also be found in the arsenals. Cavalry also carried cavalry pistols which werent as finely made as the officers weapons. I cant recall if pre-revolutionary France had lance equipped regiments, but they did have lances by 1800.

NCOs were issued with a cutlass type sword, often called a hanger in British sources. Half pikes and halberds were issued to junior officers and senior NCOs, but my reading is that they were a parade duty item only in this era.

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## ShurikVch

Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:
Before the iron (steel) armor, armor material was bronze. OK. But - *what* kinds of armor were made of it?Before the gunpowder artillery - what was the armament of warships? Were they armed at all? Where I can read/watch about it?

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## Catullus64

> Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:
> Before the iron (steel) armor, armor material was bronze. OK. But - *what* kinds of armor were made of it?


To cite a more well-documented example of bronze defensive armaments, take a look at Greek hoplites. Since they were citizen-soldiers whose kit had to be provided out of their own property, I think that the places which they prioritized armoring in bronze are revealing. Generally, if nothing else on the body is armored in bronze, the head will be. The shield usually also has a thin facing of bronze. Wealthier hoplites would go in for either bronze reinforcements to their primarily textile body armor, or the fully bronze cuirass. Bronze greaves were not unheard of, since the lower legs are one of the body parts least protected by the shield.

Bronze scale armor has also been found; I'm not aware of any examples of bronze mail.

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## Thane of Fife

> Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:
> Before the gunpowder artillery - what was the armament of warships? Were they armed at all? Where I can read/watch about it?


The Eastern Roman Empire was famous for using flamethrowers on their ships (see Greek Fire), but I believe the most common forms of fighting done from ships would have been arrow fire, boarding, and (on some ships) rams.

The idea of a forecastle or aftercastle on a ship comes from this period, with the "castle" providing a strong defensive position from which to repel boarders and which would provide a high vantage point to shoot from.

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## fusilier

> Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:
> . . .
> Before the gunpowder artillery - what was the armament of warships? Were they armed at all? Where I can read/watch about it?


Underwater rams were used in the classical period, but fell out of favor in the middle ages.  Boarding was the main way of fighting another ship.  Grappling hooks were common to lash the ships together for a boarding fight.  Rocks and javelins would be thrown from the fighting tops (like a crow's nest).  Other than that most fighting would be with the expected personal weapons: swords, spears, bows, crossbows, etc.  Some heavy weapons were used, like large crew served crossbows, but they don't seem to have been intended for destroying the enemy ship at range.  

Oh, and fire!  Fire could be dangerous though if the ships were grappled and couldn't be freed.  Famously, at the battle of Zonchio (1499), when two Venetian sailing ships had fought an inconclusive boarding action with the Ottoman flagship, the Venetians turned to using fire.  But it turned against them and all three ships burned and sank.

Note: "arming" a ship, often included putting soldiers on it for fighting, and not, necessarily, fitting it with heavy weapons.

I haven't read many works that focus on the pre-gunpowder era.  If you can find a copy of John F. Guilmartin's _Galleons and Galleys_, I would take a look at it.  While focused on the development of gunpowder weapons at sea, it covers the transition from pre-gunpowder to gunpowder, and gives a good introduction to the late pre-gunpowder form of naval combat.  A fairly easy read, and well illustrated.

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## Mechalich

> Before the iron (steel) armor, armor material was bronze. OK. But - *what* kinds of armor were made of it?


So this is a bit tricky. There has been relatively little metal armor uncovered from the Bronze Age. A few examples, such as the Dendra panoply exist, but they are rare, and it is difficult if not impossible to tell if artistic depictions imply metal versus textile armors (especially with scale/lamellar). Most of the examples of bronze armor we actually possess, whether its Greek Hoplite cuirasses, Chinese lamellar coats, or Roman scale armor are from the Iron Age and existed alongside armor made of iron, often exactly the same pieces. For example, there are iron hoplite cuirasses as well as bronze ones.

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## Satinavian

> Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:[*]Before the iron (steel) armor, armor material was bronze. OK. But - *what* kinds of armor were made of it?


The really important benefit iron brought to the table was being way cheaper and available in larger quantities.

Among other things that means that before iron, it was less the case that bronce was used for armor in place of iron and more that metal armor as such was far more rare/prestigious and people generally used the bronce for weapons only and other materials for armor.
It also means that even when people made bronce armor pieces, they often were unique and there is little in widespread bronce armor styles and types. Bronce scale armor might have existed to some extend, mostly because it is easy to get there from the non-metal version by just changing the material of the scales.

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## Gnoman

The most concrete description I've seen of bronze armor in the literature is the equipment assigned to Goliath.




> A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weavers rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels

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## Martin Greywolf

For bronze age Homeric armor, see this article. It's pretty well-supported, cites sources and so on. I'm not sure I agree with horned helmet as non-ceremonial piece, but then and again, sengoku jidai kabuto are a thing that exists, so...

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## Spamotron

> Have two questions for which I have some problems to find answers:
> Before the iron (steel) armor, armor material was bronze. OK. But - *what* kinds of armor were made of it?Before the gunpowder artillery - what was the armament of warships? Were they armed at all? Where I can read/watch about it?


The most thorough layman's overview of ancient naval artillery I know of is this interview on Drachinfel's channel. Drach basically pioneered naval history on YouTube and he vets his sources and guests quite well.

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## Pauly

As for bronze armor, the usual caveats about when/where apply. Also important is that this is the start of metal armor making and design in human history, so techniques and designs had to be developed from scratch.

The earliest bronze armors seem to have been bronze plates curved to fit around the body, like a very crude lorica segmentata. Whatever protection it gave would have come to cost of serious impairment to mobility.
Later scale armor seems to have been the preferred method utilizing bronze in armor. 
Greaves to protect the shins appear to have been common, and bracers to protect the forearms are known to exist.
Finally the bronze cuirass was developed, although these appear to have been contemporaneous with the iron age.
From what I have read there was no bronze mail, or at the very least no widespread adoption of mail.

Regarding ship armament. Again the usual caveats about when/where apply.
Rams were important in galley warfare, although they werent universally adopted across time and space.
Marines were the most common armament carried. Along with the marines came various methods to aid boarding and fighting. The Romans developed the corvus boarding ramp. It was common for ships to be lashed together to provide stable fighting platforms, and some naval battles were more like land battles on floating platforms.
Archers were carried, and were considered as separate and different category to marines. Archers being unarmored and not expected to contribute much in hand to hand fighting where marines were seen as boarding experts. 
Artillery such as ballistae (aka bolt throwers) could be carried. It is important to note these were considered long range anti-personnel devices, not anti-ship devices. There are some suggestions catapults could have been used, but considering range and accuracy makes me think this is more wishful thinking than anything else. Finally on rare occasions trebuchets were fitted for sieges. This was rare and definitely not for fighting other ships.
The use of fire as a weapon was a huge problem, because all ships were highly flammable and you didnt want that fire to get loose on your own ships. The Byzantines developed Greek fire, which is something of a mystery to this day, but appears to have been an early flamethrower. Gunpowder grenades were developed and in the naval context were an incendiary device, if nit a particularly effective one. Fire ships were a tried and tested method, their use was predominantly against ships moored together in harbor.

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## Myth27

How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?

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## Pauly

> How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?


Thickness wasnt uniform, the low stress areas were made thinner and high stress areas made thicker. 
Generally speaking 1.5mm to 2mm thick was the usual thickness of large plates, but there is be a lot of variation to thicker or thinner than that. You also have to remember that the full harness included mail and an arming doublet (or equivalent) underneath the plates. 

Here is a link to a site that sells historical pieces of armor with thickness measurements.
https://european-armour.com/allenIndex.html

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## Martin Greywolf

> How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?





> Thickness wasnt uniform, the low stress areas were made thinner and high stress areas made thicker. 
> Generally speaking 1.5mm to 2mm thick was the usual thickness of large plates, but there is be a lot of variation to thicker or thinner than that. You also have to remember that the full harness included mail and an arming doublet (or equivalent) underneath the plates. 
> 
> Here is a link to a site that sells historical pieces of armor with thickness measurements.
> https://european-armour.com/allenIndex.html


Depends on what you mean by "very heavy armor". Pauly is spot on in all things, but his numbers are those of field plate, i.e. armor you took with yourself to war. There were many specialized tournament armors, and their weight was significantly higher. The ballpark for field plate is 20-25 kg, tournament armor was usually around 40 kg mark, jousting armor was around 60 kg. That gets you 1-2 mm peak thickness for field, 1.5-2.5 for foot tourney and 2-3 mm for jousting.

*Spoiler: Henry VIII jousting armor, ~50 kg*
Show


Note that this one is vaguely shaped like the 30 kg tourney plate, has a giant crotch cutout, is missing gloves and is still almost double the weight


*Spoiler: Henry VIII, tournament plate, 42 kg*
Show





*Spoiler: Henry VIII other tournament plate, 30 kg*
Show




*Spoiler: Henry VIII field plate, 23 kg*
Show




So... take your pick which one counts as "very heavy".

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## Catullus64

I have a somewhat strange question regarding the weight of weapons, particularly shields. It's not too difficult to go online and find numerical ranges for the weight of objects like this, but I often find these numbers to be not very helpful, for two reasons:

1) I'm bad with mentally associating numerical weights with everyday objects.
2) Even an accurate weight doesn't tell the whole story about a weapon's handling; shape and distribution of weight make a big difference in how two objects of similar weight will handle.

Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek _aspis_ and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman _scutum_ and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.

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## Vinyadan

> I have a somewhat strange question regarding the weight of weapons, particularly shields. It's not too difficult to go online and find numerical ranges for the weight of objects like this, but I often find these numbers to be not very helpful, for two reasons:
> 
> 1) I'm bad with mentally associating numerical weights with everyday objects.
> 2) Even an accurate weight doesn't tell the whole story about a weapon's handling; shape and distribution of weight make a big difference in how two objects of similar weight will handle.
> 
> Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek _aspis_ and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman _scutum_ and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.


I have not, but I have some frequently heard information. The hoplon/aspis was used in formation and only about half of it covered the bearer, the other half covered the man on his side. Which side, that's a different matter (I have seen depictions of shields on the right or the left). The hoplon had an arm-ring (porpax) close to the centre and a thread to the side  (antilabe) to hold with your hand, and sometimes the ring is even depicted closer to  the side with the thread. Another often read observation on it is that it partially rested its weight on the shoulder of the bearer.

So I'd expect it to feel and be handled in a rather different way than many other shields.

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## Palanan

I have a question thats a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed?  Im interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.

Im open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship.  Im aware theres a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so Im open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this.

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## Vinyadan

> I have a question thats a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed?  Im interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.
> 
> Im open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship.  Im aware theres a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so Im open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this.


Depending on which languages you speak, you can try with the bibliography from this article: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia...rcheologia%29/

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## Martin Greywolf

> Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek _aspis_ and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman _scutum_ and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.


This is another of the how long is a piece of string questions. It cannot be answered, except maybe in a very, very long book.

To make some attempt at it... well. Your first mistake is assuming there is such a thing as aspis that handles a certain way. There isn't. Sure, there is a type of shield called aspis, definet by its shape, but two different examples of aspis will handle very differently, have different thickness and so on, and this is for a fairly rigidly defined shield. Something like a kite shield has a few hundred variations, some can be handled easily, some are essentially tower shields etc.

Weight alone is easy - you start at half a kilo (for some wicker shields) and go up to ten (heavy kite shields and roman scutums).

Very generally, you have two categories of shields, passive and active. Passive shields are so big and heavy you hold them in front of you and fight around them - Roman scutum, kite shields, large pavaises and the like. These are surprisingly easy to use, because you don't move them around much and frequently let them rest on the ground, but it is still a big, heavy object and marching with them is... an experience.

The active shields, you have to move around - bucklers, targes, rotellas and so on. They are small and light enough to do that, but at the higher end of weight range (~5 kg)... Let me put it like this, fighting sword and heater shield, provided you use that heater shield properly and don't let it rest against your body, is the second most physically demanding melee weapon combo. The first is using spear in two hands and a shield.

And then there are the really small shields that really shouldn't be counted as such, your bucklers and small targes. They don't protect against projectiles and aren't expected to stop a pole weapon - they are more like a parrying dagger in many respects, rather than a shield.

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## Yora

How long would it have taken in the 1910s for troop ships to carry soldiers from New Zealand to Turkey?

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## Vinyadan

> How long would it have taken in the 1910s for troop ships to carry soldiers from New Zealand to Turkey?


Seven weeks to reach Egypt. You can check how long it took them from Egypt to Turkey.

https://ww100.govt.nz/masseys-touris...force-in-egypt

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## Yora

That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.

I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.

I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.

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## Pauly

> That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.
> 
> I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.
> 
> I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.


The troop ships were in convoys, because of raiders like the _SMS Emden_, which restricted their speed to the slowest ship in the convoy. Generally this was around 7 knots in WW1. Even after the Emden was sunk there was always fear of Q-ships or the possibility of other raiders being sent.

Fast ocean liners were used as troop transports in the North Atlantic, but they were sent unescorted and relied on their speed to keep out of trouble. 

Also the convoys consisted of coal burning ships which needed more frequent refueling than oil burning ships and the refueling took much longer.

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## fusilier

> That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.
> 
> I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.
> 
> I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.


They didn't always travel in convoys.  Also, they may have made a lot of stops on the way which would have slowed them down.  While not giving much in the way of times, this webpage gets in details of how the WW1 troopships from Australia operated.  Although most of the information is about ships heading to Britain.

https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-...tion/transport

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## Martin Greywolf

Also keep in mind that the ship speed may not be the bottleneck that is slowing the whole thing down. If there aren't enough guns to send with the troops, if there is some sort of political agreement that needs to be hashed out, if the place the troops are heading for (or any stops along the way) is short on water/food/coal... It's why you tend to see admirals travel around extremely quickly compared to soldiers - they hitch a ride with whatever ship leaves the soonest, and *are* actually travelling more or less at ship speed. Ordinary troops, on the other hand, well, you better hope that the port you get stuck at for two weeks because of supply issues is Mallorca rather than Murmansk.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Palanan*
> _I have a question thats a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed? Im interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.
> 
> Im open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship. Im aware theres a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so Im open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this._





> Originally Posted by *Vinyadan*
> _Depending on which languages you speak, you can try with the bibliography from this article._


Ive been meaning to follow up on this.  I appreciate the linked article, but most of the bibliography seems to be focused on ancient architecture and urban designwhich is very interesting, but not what I was going for.

Any other suggestions on books describing how the Roman provinces were governed, and how that interacted with the governance of individual settlements within those provinces?

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## Gnoman

> That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.
> 
> I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.


Traveling 1000km a day requires a sustained speed of 22 knots. 350km a day is 8 knots.

Getting speed on a ship is not a trivial task, and increases are not linear. The _Olympic_-class ocean liners (_Titanic_ being the most famous of these), massed 52000 tons, made 23 knots, and carried 6000 troops during wartime service - somewhere around 10 tons per passenger. SS _Justicia_, a different converted liner, massed 32000 tons, made 18 knots, and was able to carry 4000 troops - 8 tons per passenger. USS _Henry R. Mallory_, (one of the ships used to transport the American Expeditionary Force) on the other hand, massed 11000 tons, moved at only 15 knots, and carried 2200 troops - 5 tons per passenger. Perhaps a more telling example is the _Edward Luckenbach_, a pure cargo design (albeit much more modern than the rest, having been launched in 1916 with the latest and greatest engine tech) grossing 8000 tons at 15 knots, carrying up to 2200 troops - 4 tons per passenger. 

Or, in other words, you could get seven _Edward Luckenbach_ with the tonange of an _Olympic_, while an Olympic carries less than three times as many troops. This is partially because the latter is geared more toward luxury, but a larger part is that they have to spend a ginormous amount of their mass on generating the enormous amount of power they need to generate that speed.

Note that these are _flank_ speeds - what the ship can do if it is going all-out. Note also that _Titanic_ was considered an extremely fast ship and was going for a crossing-time record on her maiden voyage. That level of speed is not an expected standard - running steam boilers at maximum pressure for long periods of time tended to make them explode. Fuel consumption also goes way, way up. For extended voyages, you aren't going flat-out.


The other issue is that ships in wartime don't often sail in a straight line. They zig-zag so that a raider or U-boat has a harder time intercepting them from a given sighting - a straight projection of their course won't lead you to them. That adds a lot of travel time. 

Really, 350km a day is awful generous and would have required either excessive risk of interception or putting heavy strain on the engines.

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## Yora

My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government, not so much ship speeds.
Shipping the ANZAC troops to Turkey was the longest distance I can think of for movement of combat troops in the middle of a war.

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## Gnoman

Fair. I was mostly trying to demonstrate why the times were what they were, and why the listed example was a fairly fast crossing.

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## Mechalich

> My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government, not so much ship speeds.
> Shipping the ANZAC troops to Turkey was the longest distance I can think of for movement of combat troops in the middle of a war.


The amount of time could be quite long. Many of the large European colonial empires were spread out enough that, should something like a major rebellion occur, it would take _years_ for a response to occur. A useful non-political example, is the case of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Bounty departed England in Dec 23 1787; the mutiny occurred on Apr 28, 1789; some of the mutineers settled on Tahiti and were apprehended in Mar 1791 by the _HMS Pandora_; those mutineers were returned to England, court martialed, and hanged in Oct 1792. This case demonstrates that even over a seemingly minor matter the empire was able to maintain control at a distance of many months communication and travel.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Yora*
> _My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government._


You might look at some of C.J. Cherryhs Alliance/Union novels, which feature trade routes among nearby stars which take months or years to travel via FTL.  Shes meticulously mapped out the ramifications to governments, colonies, and stations over a number of books, and how governments maintain or dont maintain control over those timescales is one of her underlying themes.

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## Martin Greywolf

> You might look at some of C.J. Cherryhs Alliance/Union novels, which feature trade routes among nearby stars which take months or years to travel via FTL.  Shes meticulously mapped out the ramifications to governments, colonies, and stations over a number of books, and how governments maintain or dont maintain control over those timescales is one of her underlying themes.


We had that thing in real life, we called it pre-industrial era. Looking at pretty much any large state before steam power and telegram were a thing will give you a good idea, whether it is how Roman empire dealt with region borders and its postal systems, how Mongols handled this (and their postals system), China and it's don't make me come over there tributary system, and probably the best for research if you aren't willing to go looking for obscure dissertations, British Empire with its colonies, always at least months away from London.

The gist of it is that you don't really transport troops - you have various colonial forces on the spot, and only large conflicts force you to dip into core of your army, which does take months to get to where the trouble is, relying on the colonial forces to hold on until then.

Looking at WW1 in this context is not a good idea, no one was expecting a conflict of that size to happen, and everyone had zero experience with logistics of it. A better place to go would be WW2 and take a couple of knots of speed away from ships, by then, people more or less knew what the hell they were doing.

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## NRSASD

Im running a 1830s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, Im talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. Im trying to figure out how to rule how much damage it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I dont know enough to compare.

If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princeps FN Model 1910.

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## halfeye

> Im running a 1830s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, Im talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. Im trying to figure out how to rule how much damage it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I dont know enough to compare.
> 
> If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princeps FN Model 1910.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Model_1910

That's ridiculous. The clue is in the name.

The damage on a hit might be slightly down, but the rate of fire would be up from five minutes to reload a single shot to firing a magazine (six shots) as fast as the trigger can be pulled, the ease of use would be better and the accuracy at short to medium ranges might improve considerably.

On the other hand, where is the player getting cartridges from? They shouldn't be available at that time, nobody makes them because they don't know how, and there are no guns to fire them.

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## Gnoman

> Im running a 1830s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, Im talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. Im trying to figure out how to rule how much damage it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I dont know enough to compare.
> 
> If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princeps FN Model 1910.


I'm going to assume this is some sort of time-travel or dimension-hopping thing, because -as halfeye alludes to- the FN 1910 was invented 80 years after your time period.


That said, comparing the two isn't that difficult.


The specific 1910 you're using is chambered in .380 ACP. This round is small and weak enough that the usual comparisons between black powder and smokeless don't matter that much - the round is light, but not faster than you'd get with black powder. Compared to the sort of big-bore pistol you'd see in that period, half damage is probably Good Enough! if you're going very abstract. For a more detailed comparison, the easiest thing to do would be to check the derived stats used in GURPS.

There, you have a typical military-grade flintlock pistol at 2D6 with the Large Piercing damage type (1.5x multiplier to damage that gets past Damage Reduction), and the .380 at 2d6-1 with a Piercing damage type (no modifier to damage). Which makes them almost identical at punching through armor (.380 is not a fast round and thus lacks a lot of the advantages you normally see in modern guns), with the more modern weapon doing about 2/3s the damage. This works if whatever system you're using is a bit less abstract.


That said, every other factor favors the M1910. The flintlock is a single shot, extremely large (there were very few small pistols in that era, and most were along the size of a Desert Eagle or similar), has rudimentary sights, and takes a long time to reload. You might be able to outdo the two shots a minute that a period longarm would do, but not by that much.

Meanwhile, the 1910 is very small (which not only makes concealment easier, but makes it much handier to use, and thus more accurate), has better sights, carries six rounds, and reloads so much faster that the difference in fire rate is effectively incomparable. In the time it takes to fire the flintlock twice, you can probably have fired as many magazines as you can carry.

Replacing the ammunition, however, would be effectively impossible. Even if you have a mold to make replacement bullets, and save all your casings, neither nitro propellants or percussion primers exist in 1830. Unless you have a supply link back to wherever you got the pistol from, you have all the ammo you started with and that's it.

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## NRSASD

Thank you! And yeah, dimension hopping is a thing. More specifically, a player wished for "a pistol to kill royalty" and that seemed like too good a fit not to pass up.

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## Martin Greywolf

> You might be able to outdo the two shots a minute that a period longarm would do, but not by that much.


I don't think so. Long arms being larger often makes them easier to reload, not harder. You can let your musket rest on the ground and most of the motions you need to make are nice and large. A pistol is a small, fiddly thing that you have to brace against weird things, best reloaded at a table.




> Even if you have a mold to make replacement bullets, and save all your casings, neither nitro propellants or percussion primers exist in 1830.


Percussion primers are just about becoming a thing (invention is 1807-1820-ish, depending on what you count as percussion), but the real problem is gunpowder. Unless you have some sort of smokeless powder, it will make your gun jam within about 50-100 rounds. That's with modern black powder mixes, whatever gunpowder you have in your world may be worse in the fouling department and make it jam sooner.

To solve this jamming problem, you'd have to take the whole gun apart and thoroughly clean it, which takes time and requires konwledge (or a lot of figuring out) on how to do it, or you won't be able to put that gun back together.

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## Gnoman

> I don't think so. Long arms being larger often makes them easier to reload, not harder. You can let your musket rest on the ground and most of the motions you need to make are nice and large. A pistol is a small, fiddly thing that you have to brace against weird things, best reloaded at a table.


I'm not really familiar with pistol drill of the period, about all I know is that it was possible but cumbersome to reload on horseback (such as in a caracole). 




> Percussion primers are just about becoming a thing (invention is 1807-1820-ish, depending on what you count as percussion), but the real problem is gunpowder. Unless you have some sort of smokeless powder, it will make your gun jam within about 50-100 rounds. That's with modern black powder mixes, whatever gunpowder you have in your world may be worse in the fouling department and make it jam sooner.
> 
> To solve this jamming problem, you'd have to take the whole gun apart and thoroughly clean it, which takes time and requires konwledge (or a lot of figuring out) on how to do it, or you won't be able to put that gun back together.


[/quote]

Black powder will also have severe issues in a package that small - without compressed powder (not introduced until the late 1880s) the amount of BP you can fit in a .380 case is going to be extremely anemic. 

Meanwhile a primer isn't just a percussion cap shoved into the base of the cartridge. The formulation's different, which changes the way it reacts. In any case, it took until the 1840s for caps to really start becoming common - ten years earlier they were an expensive and dangerous novelty.

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## Catullus64

I'm developing a fictional culture, and want to lavish plenty of detail on their material possessions. In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry. While I'm not exclusively concerned with weapons, that is the focus of this thread. So I thought I'd come here to learn something. Tell me about what you consider some of the most beautifully decorated historical weapons and armor; tell me interesting examples from history or archaeology of how fighters decorated and beautified themselves, or how they otherwise personalized their tools of war. Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.

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## Pauly

> I'm developing a fictional culture, and want to lavish plenty of detail on their material possessions. In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry. While I'm not exclusively concerned with weapons, that is the focus of this thread. So I thought I'd come here to learn something. Tell me about what you consider some of the most beautifully decorated historical weapons and armor; tell me interesting examples from history or archaeology of how fighters decorated and beautified themselves, or how they otherwise personalized their tools of war. Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.


In any culture the rich dudes had the beautiful richly decorated weapons. Just for clarification are you talking about regular soldiers/tribesmen with highly ornamented weapons?

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## Martin Greywolf

> In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry.


Usually, it doesn't. If you are on the edge of starvation, one of three things is liable to happen in the next 5 years: your people move to somewhere nicer, the situation drastically improves, or some of the many possible disasters strikes and finally wipes you out.

Second thing I take issue is violent cultures as such. If you take a good look at any cultures that were claimed to be violent, you will find that there was little difference between them and most of their contemporaries. This goes for vikings, Roman empire, assorted nomadic tribes and several others we aren't allowed to discuss here - hell, even modern culture, the least violent one there ever was, maintains massive armed forces. There aren't any non-violent cultures either, since those tend to get absorbed into the violent ones pretty much immediately, and the level of violence tends to be kept at a nice, sustainable level.

This is pretty important for you, because no culture will have "violence" as its trait, even if it is militant, or warrior-like, or have raiders as an established part of it, there will be more to it, and that informs your material culture quite a lot. A raiding culture, like vikings or nomads, will value items from far away lands, since they show that you are good at their preferred method of warfare. A militant state approximating Romans will put more value on state trophies earned in war. An individualistic warrior-oriented culture (e.g. knights, Landsknechts) will demand its warriors to put a significant chunk of their income into sprucing up their equipment and making it stand out.

It will also determine what is depicted on the decorations, nomads will try to mimic far away styles, Romans will be more focused on showing officers commanding armies in great victories, knights will be more into depictions of individual feats of prowess. This won't affect all of these (there are scenes of kings commanding armies in illuminations of chronicles), but they will dictate what the majority of them shows.




> Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.


I mean... google "<culture descriptor or name> decorated weapons" and you will find what you want, especially for high status pieces.

In general, you will see four principal means of decoration: paint, plating, covering and carving.

Paint is clear enough, slap some paint on it, maybe put some pictures on instead of simple patterns. What the paint uses as its base will determine how long it lasts, and how water resistant it is, but we have solid evidence of this being done pretty much as long as there was paint. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust.

*Spoiler: Painted helmets in theory and practice*
Show





Plating is the same as paint, but with metal! Methods of attaching this vary, but the idea is to put some other metal on your steel weapon and the more expensive the metal, the more rich you are. You can start with iron on steel for slight contrast and end up with gold damascening. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust. (well, some of it does)

*Spoiler: Plating in practice*
Show






Covering is using some sort of fabric-like material and gluing or otherwise attaching it on the object in question.This is a nice middle ground in expenditure between painting armor and plating armor with gold, so you are pretty likely to see a lot of it. Unfortunately, it being the armor of the working knight also means there are very little examples of it left, and ti isn't popular enough to spawn many replicas. You're likely to see it done with leather (because leather is cool, apparently), historically, linen and velvet were the most common. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust.

*Spoiler: What little there is*
Show






Carving is, well, carving some pattern into the weapon of your choice, and while this can be done with steel, it is popular with wood - especially since you can do this while on capaign to stave off boredom. Shaping the object itself is a subcategory, and since that counts (in my head, at least), putting in bits of metal to put gems into also does. As an added bonus, it protects the item from ru... wait, no, it doesn't. For once.

*Spoiler: WW1 rifle, carved by solider on campaign*
Show




*Spoiler: Some premediated carving*
Show

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## Gnoman

The other thing is that "beauty" is often a secondary effect. A lot of "decorations" on hunting weapons from animistic cultures, for example, are intended to draw the spirit of the depicted animal. On more martial weapons, you might see invocations to the goddess of victory, or inscriptions exhorting the blood god, or curses on particular foes. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the practice of writing insults on ammunition - which has been seen on everything from ancient Greek sling bullets to ballistic missiles in Europe today. 

You could also look at the way modern soldiers have decorated their vehicles for inspiration - WWII aircraft nose art, fierce features on tanks, etc. Not to mention more traditional examples like figureheads on ships or painted crests. Some of that is from boredom, others from an attempt to maintain morale, build unit cohesion, anthropomorphication of the vehicle (there's a reason so many cultures call ships "she" or "he" instead of "it"), defiance at the foe, etc.

Propaganda is also a common source, even if it isn't explicitly recognizable as such. Depictions of great deeds, heroic last stands, the perfidy of the foe, and other such events are incredibly common in art and literature. The works of Homer are a pretty good literary example of that.

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## fusilier

> I don't think so. Long arms being larger often makes them easier to reload, not harder. You can let your musket rest on the ground and most of the motions you need to make are nice and large. A pistol is a small, fiddly thing that you have to brace against weird things, best reloaded at a table.


My personal experience would indicate that they do reload a little easier than a musket.  That said, I'm more familiar with military pistols, which have locks that are similar in size, and robustness, to a musket's lock (a civilian example, especially something small like a Philadelphia Deringer, I could see being very fiddly to reload on the go).  I think it's important to understand that the situations that they were used in (very close range), meant they were typically fired just once in a combat.  Usually there wasn't going to be time to reload it, if that first shot wasn't sufficient.

A military pistol (compared to a musket) is short, light, and easily held firmly by the barrel/forestock.  The short barrel means less time spent ramming, less time spent drawing/returning the rammer.  Also it's more trivial to go from the muzzle to the lock for loading and priming.  The steps are all the same, and the speed ups are all kind of marginal in my opinion, but it is a little faster.  If it needs to be braced to drive home the ball, it's short enough it can be braced against the body, without making ramming awkward.  But I'm not sure how common it would be to need to brace it.  If mounted, very easy to reload while seated in the saddle.  (With the caveat that moving makes reloading any weapon difficult while mounted, although certainly not impossible).

But in practice, it's just not going to happen very often that it needs to be reloaded in the heat of combat.  And many sources note that careful loading usually leads to a better, more reliable shot than hurried reloading.  I suspect few people would have practiced reloading a pistol quickly, compared to the repeated musket drills.

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## fusilier

> Im running a 1830s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, Im talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. Im trying to figure out how to rule how much damage it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I dont know enough to compare.
> 
> If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princeps FN Model 1910.


So the time frame is about the time the earliest metallic cartridges were being developed, the pinfire cartridge.  So the basic technological development has occurred, although smokeless powder, which makes automatic weapons more practical is still some ways away.  

Other repeating weapons (proto-revolvers and pepperboxes) exist at that time too (although they are pretty new).  

I think Gnoman answered this question pretty well already -- GURPS is great for these types of situations.  A flintlock will do more damage per shot, but the FN 1910 will be able to fire more shots.  Depending upon which system you are using, you may have to abstract out the effect.

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## Raunchel

If you're looking for decorated weapons and the like without showing wealth (which is to say, expensive ornaments), you could have a lot of personally done things. Things like wood carvings on shafts, bone handles, their clothes being embroidered in other (cheap) colours, and other such things that a normal person can do in the long evenings. That way, you can also show these things as part of personal pride and the like.

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## halfeye

> Im running a 1830s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, Im talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. Im trying to figure out how to rule how much damage it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I dont know enough to compare.
> 
> If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princeps FN Model 1910.





> Thank you! And yeah, dimension hopping is a thing. More specifically, a player wished for "a pistol to kill royalty" and that seemed like too good a fit not to pass up.


Well, it's nothing like a pistol, but this seems to be more the period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infernal_machine_(weapon)

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## Pauly

> Thank you! And yeah, dimension hopping is a thing. More specifically, a player wished for "a pistol to kill royalty" and that seemed like too good a fit not to pass up.


How about a Girandoni system air pistol?
https://www.rockislandauction.com/de...iner-of-vienna

Period accurate, little bit weird and mostly silent. Im not sure on the exact lethality of the pistols but the Girandoni air rifles were lethal out to maybe 150 meters, which isnt as lethal as black powder rifles, as Baker Rifles were known to be lethal out to 500 meters.

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## fusilier

> How about a Girandoni system air pistol?
> https://www.rockislandauction.com/de...iner-of-vienna
> 
> Period accurate, little bit weird and mostly silent. Im not sure on the exact lethality of the pistols but the Girandoni air rifles were lethal out to maybe 150 meters, which isnt as lethal as black powder rifles, as Baker Rifles were known to be lethal out to 500 meters.


Oooh.  I did not realize there was a pistol version of the Girandoni.  Very cool!

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## Pauly

> Oooh.  I did not realize there was a pistol version of the Girandoni.  Very cool!


Not many were made and all the examples I have found have elaborate engraving and decorations. I think its reasonable to assume thet were weapons for the very rich.
Im pretty sure the bullet was pretty anaemic compared to regular gunpowder pistols.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Im pretty sure the bullet was pretty anaemic compared to regular gunpowder pistols.


At ten grams at 150 m/s, let's consult Fragment hazard criteria on that...

It has about 50/50 odds of penetrating soft tissue (abdomen, limbs), or cracking a bone. This is against unarmored target, so... yeah, pretty anemic for a firearm.

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## Martin Greywolf

Fellow weapon nerds, in a recent video, Matt Easton made the claim that pollaxe was regulated by sumptuary laws, i.e. if you weren't a knight/nobleman/whatever you weren't allowed to have one.

This is the first time I've heard of this - do any of you either have a source for this, or have heard the same thing? I've asked the same thing in the comments of that video, but there was no response yet.

Note that I mean sumptuary laws specifically. Weapons were regulated in cities, restricting carry to nobles only or no one at all, and loot on the battlefield was pretty much always handed over to the brass to be redistributed later. Also, it's not a good idea to grab a weapon specifically optimized for armor on armor combat with you if you don't have armor yourself, but that means poorer soldiers wouldn't use pollaxe by choice, rather than being prohibited by law from using it.

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## snowblizz

> Fellow weapon nerds, in a recent video, Matt Easton made the claim that pollaxe was regulated by sumptuary laws, i.e. if you weren't a knight/nobleman/whatever you weren't allowed to have one.
> 
> This is the first time I've heard of this - do any of you either have a source for this, or have heard the same thing? I've asked the same thing in the comments of that video, but there was no response yet.
> 
> Note that I mean sumptuary laws specifically. Weapons were regulated in cities, restricting carry to nobles only or no one at all, and loot on the battlefield was pretty much always handed over to the brass to be redistributed later. Also, it's not a good idea to grab a weapon specifically optimized for armor on armor combat with you if you don't have armor yourself, but that means poorer soldiers wouldn't use pollaxe by choice, rather than being prohibited by law from using it.


Never seen such a thing noted before.

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## Pauly

> Fellow weapon nerds, in a recent video, Matt Easton made the claim that pollaxe was regulated by sumptuary laws, i.e. if you weren't a knight/nobleman/whatever you weren't allowed to have one.
> 
> This is the first time I've heard of this - do any of you either have a source for this, or have heard the same thing? I've asked the same thing in the comments of that video, but there was no response yet.
> 
> Note that I mean sumptuary laws specifically. Weapons were regulated in cities, restricting carry to nobles only or no one at all, and loot on the battlefield was pretty much always handed over to the brass to be redistributed later. Also, it's not a good idea to grab a weapon specifically optimized for armor on armor combat with you if you don't have armor yourself, but that means poorer soldiers wouldn't use pollaxe by choice, rather than being prohibited by law from using it.


Poleaxes were used, at least in later times, as a tool to kill cattle by butchers. Hence why we have the phrase fell as if he had been poleaxed which is sometimes shortened to just poleaxed in English. NB in use as a butchers tool the accepted spelling is poleaxe where the medieval weapon can be spelled pollaxe or poleaxe.

I really cant see an item regulated by sumptuary laws, and thus prohibited to the working classes, evolving into a worker's tool.

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## Gnoman

I asked some people who have a good bit of archive access, and they failed to find any mention of sumptuary laws on this subject. Local level restrictions about lending them to other people "except in support of the mayor and the good people of the town", but that fairy refutes the notion of them being a high-class weapon.

More to the point, there are a lot of references to the exact scenario referenced, though not with poleaxes. Several references to peasants slowly scavenging complete sets of armor and weapons to become higher-status men at arms.

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## Martin Greywolf

I have stumbled on a neat thing that may interest you, a very early accounting record of a firearms inspection of a city - the claim is that this one is _the_ oldest one of its kind, and it may well be actually true.

The record is about an inspection of firearms used on the walls of city of Bratislava (aka Presporok, aka Pressburg, aka Posszony, aka...) in 1443. Bratislava is in modern Slovakia, and was and still is on the banks of Danube and was for most of its time a border city - the exception being during the existence of Austria-Hungary.

What this record doesn't mention: anything that doesn't use a gunpowder e.g. melee weapons and crossbows (we'll get to those later), fireamrs in private hands, firearms in hands of city watch that wasn't assigned to the wall (there were at least 4 fortresses outside of the city walls), so the total amount of weapons would have been much higher. Still, it gives us a good lower margin.

Final thing to note is population of Bratislava, it was howering somewhere in 5 000 - 10 000 range, fairly small for French standards, pretty big for eastern Europe.

Now, the actual numbers: 125 barrels (not necessarily total firearms), a lot of gunpowder, 870 arrows (it just says arrows - were they for bows, crossbows or ballistae? we don't know), 3 incendiary arrows, 13 copper cannonballs, 52 lead cannonballs, 22 pounds of lead balls (i.e. for shotgun loads for cannons or for individual handguns)

62 hookguns and handguns45 artillery pieces (tarasnica[1], howitzer, mortar, large cannon for stone cannonballs)18 others, two of which were multi-barrell organ guns, with the possibility that they were counting by the barrel and these 18 are, in fact, just two 9-barrell organ guns

For a breakdown of how many where where:

Otter gate - 19 handguns, 8 cannonsEnemy of Hungarians Tower - 12 firearmsSaint Michael's Gate - 1 hanguns on gate proper, with 4 hanguns and 3 cannons on its barbican[2]

Total arms can be sort of extrapolated from Hussite wars wagon crews - these were flexible by their nature, bud Dudik gives us some average numbers. A warwagon had 2 handgunners, 6 crossbowmen and 10 melee fighters. Assuming the same distribution for walls - and what are war wagons if not wars on wheels - we get total numbers for Bratislava's permanent defensive forces as:

47 - 63 gunnery crews, (141 to 315 people, when accounting for a crew fo 3 to 5 per cannon), with enough ammunition to shoot each of them... once? really?62 handgunners186 crossbowmen (4.6 arrows per crossbowman, 0.02 incendiary arrows per crossbowman), which is a wealth of ammunition compared to artillery310 melee infantry

For a total of 558 soldiers plus artillery crews, which gets us to 699 - 873 men. For a city of, let's split the difference and call it 7 500 people.

*What does this tell us?*

A full tenth of city's total population, so every fifth male, was in the militia. This isn't that surprising, cities having a very martially-oriented public life is well documented, but this gives us some perspective - pretty much everyone would have a relative in the city's defensive forces, if not the actual patrolling militia proper.

The ammunition stores are extremely low. The city would have to rely on either 1) hearing of enemy army approaching and stocking up, or 2) requisitioning ammunition from local fletchers and powdermakers. This also means that any surprise attack, hard as it would be to achieve, would be incredibly effective. Nota that this is a comparatively very defensively successful city, it was rarely taken in a siege.

Surprise inspections were a done thing in year of our lord 1443, don't hesitate to hit your players with one.
*Spoiler: A 1735 map of Bratislava*
Show


This one is fairly useful, the city walls didn't move from ~1200 to this point in time, the only difference is slightly more towers on said walls.
I do have better maps, but all of them are in physical books, and I am far too lazy to scan them

A - St. Martin's Church (Cathedral at the time of drawing of map, church in 1443), two towers above it, next to plot 24, is the Enemy of Hungarians tower
L - St Michael's gate
K - Otter gate

Danube is below the bottom edge of the map.


[1] there is no proper translation for this one, French word is Fauconneau, it is a stationary gun for direct fire into people with a long barrell, kinda like an oversized musket
*Spoiler: Tarasnice*
Show



*Spoiler: Much improved swivel gun, this one is 17th century*
Show



[2] The defensive setup was: inside city -> Gate proper -> drawbridge over moat -> barbican (i.e. a small courtyard ringed by walls) -> barbican gate -> drawbridge over moat -> outside of city

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## Gnoman

Is this buried in some archive, or is it available online? I know people who would be very interested in reading this source.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Is this buried in some archive, or is it available online? I know people who would be very interested in reading this source.


Okay, so, here is what you do. Prepare yourself mentally to do this in Slovak or German, because English versions of the relevant sites don't exist.

Next step is, go to this site. Click on the magnifying glass on top, write 1443 to the search bar, press enter. THe results are on the left, you want to click on the tiny icons of magnifying glass next to "AMB Archiv mesta Bratislavy", becasue intuitive UI design is for losers.

That will get you to three Kammerbuch (accounting books) results from year 1443 for Bratislava. It is at this point I can no longer help you, because I can't actually read them. Well, I kinda can, but it is painfully slow and those things are 200 pages a piece. The entry you'd be looking for is from 2. august 1443, so probably in the middle book - medieval Bratislava had fiscal years that started in IIRC may.

If that fails, you'll need to contact Doc. PhDr. Vladimír Sege, PhD. from Slovakia (you'll know you have the right guy if he has a ton of titles next to his name) - I think he still works for our Institute of Military History, their webpage even has, wonder of wonders, an english translation. Ask about the source of survey from his book "Kriminalita a justícia v stredovekom Preporku" (Criminality and justice in medieval Bratislava), page 88, "Dávne delá a puky" (Old cannons and handguns).

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## Pauly

> I have 
> The ammunition stores are extremely low. The city would have to rely on either 1) hearing of enemy army approaching and stocking up, or 2) requisitioning ammunition from local fletchers and powdermakers. This also means that any surprise attack, hard as it would be to achieve, would be incredibly effective. Nota that this is a comparatively very defensively successful city, it was rarely taken in a siege.
> y


Not so surprising. Ammunition was very expensive relatively speaking. I dont have my references with me but I remember reading that at the time of the Spanish Armada some British captains became stupendously wealthy because the value of the powder captured was worth more than the value of the ship carrying it.

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## Gnoman

The people I wanted the source for say the same thing. Large stocks of ammunition were laid in only when siege was expected.

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## Grim Portent

Can anyone reccommend a source for the armaments and tactics preferred in Eastern Europe in the late 1400s? Specifically interested in Hungary, Romania (Wallachia and Transylvania primarily) and the Ottoman Empire.

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## Pauly

> Can anyone reccommend a source for the armaments and tactics preferred in Eastern Europe in the late 1400s? Specifically interested in Hungary, Romania (Wallachia and Transylvania primarily) and the Ottoman Empire.


Have you tried the Osprey catalogue? Im sure theyll have some books that suit.

Theyre nor super in-depth but give a good overview and often have very interesting bibliographies for further research.

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## Telok

> 13 copper cannonballs


This is the first I've heard if copper cannonballs. Alas I can't have time to do decent searches and quick ones aren't turning up anything decent. Is there somewhere with more/better info on the use & reasoning behind using copper for cannonballs?

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## Gnoman

Stone takes a lot of work to shape, iron thakes a lot of work (in the form of heat) to cast. Copper melts quite easily, is reasonably common, and is thus rather cost-effective in that narrow time period.

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## PhoenixPhyre

> Stone takes a lot of work to shape, iron thakes a lot of work (in the form of heat) to cast. Copper melts quite easily, is reasonably common, and is thus rather cost-effective in that narrow time period.


Similarly, this is why we use lead bullets (usually jacketed in copper to retain their shape). So in some sense, we still fire copper "cannon balls". It's just the copper is an outer shell around an even easier-to-work, easier-to-deform (which is useful in rifled applications) lead core. Except depleted uranium ones...that's a whole different "ball" game. Pun intended.

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## Pauly

> This is the first I've heard if copper cannonballs. Alas I can't have time to do decent searches and quick ones aren't turning up anything decent. Is there somewhere with more/better info on the use & reasoning behind using copper for cannonballs?


My assumption was that they were for firestarting. Copper is an excellent conductor and it would transfer heat from the cannonball to a wooden target faster than an iron or lead ball.

I have nothing other than my assumption to back this up.

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## halfeye

> My assumption was that they were for firestarting. Copper is an excellent conductor and it would transfer heat from the cannonball to a wooden target faster than an iron or lead ball.
> 
> I have nothing other than my assumption to back this up.


It was a long, long time ago, but if I remember correctly, copper _is_ an excellent conductor, but it has a very low thermal capacity.

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## Pauly

> It was a long, long time ago, but if I remember correctly, copper _is_ an excellent conductor, but it has a very low thermal capacity.


I use copper saucepans at work. The great thing about using copper is heat goes on, heat goes off very quickly, which makes it great for things like delicate sauces and fish. Cast iron holds heat which makes wonderful for grilling meat, but its a bitch to bring it up to temperature or change temperature.

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## Telok

> Stone takes a lot of work to shape, iron thakes a lot of work (in the form of heat) to cast. Copper melts quite easily, is reasonably common, and is thus rather cost-effective in that narrow time period.


My only issue with that is I don't think lead has every been significantly rarer or more expensive. This sort of thing is where I really love references. My own guesses would involve the balls having different flight or barrel wear characteristics, but they're just guesses.

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## Martin Greywolf

> The people I wanted the source for say the same thing. Large stocks of ammunition were laid in only when siege was expected.


Well, yeah, but I was still surprised by how low the stores actually were, I was expecting something like 5-10 shots per cannon, not one. Especially since it's the ginpowder that is a pain to store, not the shot.




> Can anyone reccommend a source for the armaments and tactics preferred in Eastern Europe in the late 1400s? Specifically interested in Hungary, Romania (Wallachia and Transylvania primarily) and the Ottoman Empire.


In English... pretty much Osprey. Also look up works on Sigismund, he was emperor of HRE, but also a King of Hungary, and one of the main players in Hussite wars. It would be better if you found a work on his main Hungarian man, Ctibor of Beckov, but only significant work on him I know of is a 400 page monster of a book in Slovak. Frankly, anything Hussites used got widely adopted, because they empirically proved how effective it was - so reading up on those wars will get you places.

Ottomans... I'm afraid you're on your own reading specific papers and trying to get a picture of what they did. Probably the best thing to do is look at specific battles and get sense from those - Nicopolis, Belgrade, Nove Zamky/Ujvar, Mohacs...




> My assumption was that they were for firestarting. Copper is an excellent conductor and it would transfer heat from the cannonball to a wooden target faster than an iron or lead ball.
> 
> I have nothing other than my assumption to back this up.





> It was a long, long time ago, but if I remember correctly, copper _is_ an excellent conductor, but it has a very low thermal capacity.





> My only issue with that is I don't think lead has every been significantly rarer or more expensive. This sort of thing is where I really love references. My own guesses would involve the balls having different flight or barrel wear characteristics, but they're just guesses.


First possible reason, they were indeed incendiaries - Bratislava of the time sat ~50 meters off the banks of Danube (or sometimes in the middle of Danube come flooding season)
 and it was besieged by ships several times in its history. As for sources, this paper has a direct reference to copper cannon balls being explicitly incendiary on page 223.

*Spoiler: Bratislava's combat divers*
Show


This is Henry III after some people from Bratislava swam up to his ships at anchor and drilled holes in them
Pucture is from Chronica Picta, written 300 years after this supposedly happened, so take it with a grain of salt
THe structure on the illumination is Bratislava castle, the town is just to the right of it
the castle and the city were, very atypically, two independent administrative/government structures


Second possibility? The one really hard to catch? It's surplus copper. Bratislava lies on one of several trade routes from Banska Bystrica, a mining city that was a major source of copper for half of Europe, some 150 km away. It's not impossible that these copper balls were made at a time when buying copper became a lot cheaper for reasons of surplus.

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## Pauly

> Well, 
> First possible reason, they were indeed incendiaries - Bratislava of the time sat ~50 meters off the banks of Danube (or sometimes in the middle of Danube come flooding season)
>  and it was besieged by ships several times in its history. As for sources, this paper has a direct reference to copper cannon balls being explicitly incendiary on page 223.
> .


Again I have nothing to support this apart from supposition.

In the time of Nelson shot furnaces in fortifications took ~30 minutes to heat an iron ball to temperature. Given the time frame its reasonable to assume furnaces from 250 years earlier were both smaller and less efficient. A copper ball would be much much faster to bring to heat and thus be better suited to sustained fire than iron ball.

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## fusilier

> This is the first I've heard if copper cannonballs. Alas I can't have time to do decent searches and quick ones aren't turning up anything decent. Is there somewhere with more/better info on the use & reasoning behind using copper for cannonballs?


Reports from the Mexican-American War (and Texas Revolution) reference the Mexican artillery using copper cannonballs, and sometimes copper musket balls.  The assumption seems to be that Mexico had lots of copper, and used it when supplies of other metals were hard to come by.

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## Mike_G

> Again I have nothing to support this apart from supposition.
> 
> In the time of Nelson shot furnaces in fortifications took ~30 minutes to heat an iron ball to temperature. Given the time frame its reasonable to assume furnaces from 250 years earlier were both smaller and less efficient. A copper ball would be much much faster to bring to heat and thus be better suited to sustained fire than iron ball.


I have a related question.

When firing "red hot shot" how did they keep the hot projectile from igniting the powder when loading? Was there just enough wadding between them or was a hot cannonball toll cool to ignite powder or what?

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## Gnoman

The wadding was damp, IIRC. The shot was very much hot enough to ignite powder.

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## Pauly

> I have a related question.
> 
> When firing "red hot shot" how did they keep the hot projectile from igniting the powder when loading? Was there just enough wadding between them or was a hot cannonball toll cool to ignite powder or what?


The ball was heated to cherry red ~800-900 degrees C.

Thorough swabbing was the first step.
Then load the powder charge in bags and regular wadding, being very careful not to leave any powder in the barrel
The ball was carried from the furnace tomthe gun in a cracle.
Ball is loaded with wet wadding front and back in addition to the regular wadding.
Then the gunner fired as quickly as possible.

The idea was to have as little time as possible between the ball leaving the furnace and the shot being fired.

If the shot required the barrel being angled downwards some additional steps were done to fight gravity.

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## Martin Greywolf

The Tudor copper shot mentioned in article I linked wasn't meant for heated shot use, it was filled with "fireworks". If I had to guess, it was done because copper is easier to cast and work into a hollow sphere, but I don't exactly have any translations of period gunnery manuals on hand, so...

The Mexican copper balls are allegedly made because of copper surplus. I really don't know enough about that late of a history to tell whether that's true or one of the historian's theories.

Bratislava's copper balls... who knows. As you may have notice, the inspection didn't really thoroughly list every variation - no mention of ball weight or diameter for one - so there could well be several variations of copper shot in that category.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Can anyone reccommend a source for the armaments and tactics preferred in Eastern Europe in the late 1400s? Specifically interested in Hungary, Romania (Wallachia and Transylvania primarily) and the Ottoman Empire.


Okay, so, this arrived into my mailbox just now. I haven't read it, and it will be some time before I can get to it, so I can't say how good or accurate it is. Use with caution.

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## Telok

This sort of isn't a real world stuff question, but it sort of could be and I can't really figure a better place to ask.

I converted a 10 meter long monster from a fantasy game to a space opera game after coming up with the absurd idea of using them as a "boarding party" in space navy combat. I even managed to write a little program for how many people shooting for how long it would take to kill a big monster, so I could find out what sort of "space navy boarding combat party" the monster is equal to. That all works out OK, in the game system math at least.

Thing is, I can't really account for the environment. The ship crews are basically normal soldiers with normal RL like battle rifles and normal RL like morale & intellect & stuff. The ships are functionally WWII to late 1980s battleships & aircraft carriers (I found deckplans online and use them for maps). The monster... is capable of tearing a hole big enough to fit through, in any bulkhead, in about 45 seconds. It is, however, basically a giant rabid animal. Although it is immune to a bunch of stuff, so vaccuum or poison gas won't kill it and it'll wreck it's way out if a meltdown nuke reactor before the heat and rads kill it.

All in all and without accounting for the "in a ship" environment, over 15 minutes it will kill about 150 people (and it can move fast enough to make that happen). If 50 soldiers at a time can full-auto pretty much the whole time it they have about a 2% chance of killing it every 15 minutes. If 250 soldiers can full-auto it they have about a 10% chance to kill it every 15 min. Crews range from 150 to 1500 (yes its a death sentence for a small ship, that's fine).

My queston then is; how would the fight being in the confines of a ship change things? Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around? Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it? Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around?


Not really, their anti-vehicle weapons are the primary or secondary guns. The most you'd see is a handful of mortars. You didn't have a lot of personal firearms on these sorts of ship in the first place, and most of them were in armories and not carried around by sailors, at most you'd see some people guarding classified stuff with pistols.

That said, this is the case because weapons like these weren't needed. If there was a reason for them...




> Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it?


GAH! No!

Seriously, words can't describe how bad an idea it is. A magazine explosion will sink the ship in minutes - if it is a secondary magazine, a primary magazine going off is pretty much a guarantee of loss of ship with damn near all hands. Magazines on these ships had a system where they could be flooded by seawater if a fire was going in their direction, but a direct hit would still blow the entire ship up. Just ask HMS Hood.




> Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?


You'll get a fire at the very least that way, and if it hits a fuel line (a necessary thing on an aircraft carrier)... No. No one would be willing to do it.

*What a critter like this would do?*

On a water ship, a breach like this is likely to get seawater to boilers. Once that happens, you loose a hefty chunk of the ship's interior (hot boilers + cold water = explosion) and a lot of power to a ship. It's about as bad as being hit by a torpedo, if not worse. With space and vacuum, you have massive atmospheric breach that spreads further and further, loss of power... It's much more of a problem than you think it is, and it pretty much doesn't matter how many people this monster kills.

What's worse is that the ship isn't designed to resist explosives from the inside, so any weapon that is capable of hurting it is not usable.

The best option? Look at real life WW2 era torpedo protection. Have an outer hull that the monster tears through and then a hollow space, followed by actual armor. Once your monster is in there, you can maybe use some sort of bait or something, to keep it there for long enough to employ those high power weapons - hopefully, your inner-main armor can shrug off a rocket that kills the critter.

If it actually gets inside, you either need to kill it really quickly, or abandon ship. Also, if this sort of an attack is a thing, forget about assault rifles, you'll need machineguns and anti-materiel rifles. Something like early WW2 era Lahti AT rifle with a non-explosive projectile could work fairly well.

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## Telok

> GAH! No!
> 
> Seriously, words can't describe how bad an idea it is.


Thats why I asked. Thank you.

Hmm. Its space opera so air loss to boarding parties is handwaved. It only matters on a few ship critical hits. I guess there's already a self-sealing double hull set up then. So from the crew's pov its: "crunch" -> prep for boarding party -> surprise 30 foot hell-world monster in your face.

Now, nobody in their right mind would go to the hell-world and try to farm the bloody thing, this will be a complete surprise. But thinking, there is personal armor in the APC/light tank range and would be commonly used in military boarding actions (piracy probably not but I'm assuming civvie ships don't matter here). That means some anti-armor weapons will be on hand.

I'll try running the numbers again with the assumption that the regulars shave off the hit point buffer & regeneration, then the heavy weapons at... 1/10? 1/20? will do the breaking through the "won't die" special abilities. Probably the lower end heavy weapons without big explosion radii.

----------


## tyckspoon

If the space-navy in question is aware these creatures are a threat, they're going to need to change doctrine and equipment to deal with them, and may go to the extreme of changing their ship design entirely if they expect to fight them in multiple conflicts. Normal personal weaponry isn't going to cut it with those estimated times to kill, not least because there won't be anywhere in the ship big enough for 50-plus crew to even focus fire on a single target (aside from possibly the main deck, and if they see the creature coming there they should be trying to bring it down with ship's weaponry.) If they don't have bigger guns to apply to the problem, either the ship is a loss because the monster unstoppably rampages until (too much crew is dead/it rips enough holes in the hull/it hits a critical ship system) or it's a loss because somebody decides to suicide the ship rather than let the creature eat them and possibly launch into another ship to do the same.

So your crew needs something with a lot more punch available to them, and you have to be willing to suffer further damage to the ship's structure in employing it unless you are able to come up with some kind of weapon system that deals massively disproportionate damage to the creature compared to the ship structure. If the creature is resistant mostly by bulk and doesn't have ship-plating grade natural armor, for example, you might be able to use something like high-caliber lower-velocity expanding bullet rounds that will do a lot of flesh damage but not very much risk of punching through structural elements of the ship. 

If the crew doesn't have that kind of weapon option, feasible reactions I can think of basically come down to A: Dramatically self-destructing the ship (exploding ship's ordinance, power core meltdown, etc) or B: Abandon ship, evacuate all reasonable crew, and have another ship hit the thing with its own main or secondary armaments.

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## halfeye

> I converted a 10 meter long monster from a fantasy game to a space opera game after coming up with the absurd idea of using them as a "boarding party" in space navy combat. I even managed to write a little program for how many people shooting for how long it would take to kill a big monster, so I could find out what sort of "space navy boarding combat party" the monster is equal to. That all works out OK, in the game system math at least.
> 
> ...
> 
> The monster... is capable of tearing a hole big enough to fit through, in any bulkhead, in about 45 seconds.
> 
> ...
> 
> My queston then is; how would the fight being in the confines of a ship change things? Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around? Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it? Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?


How did this monster become this strong? A 33.3 ft long monster is not huge, it's about the size of a T. Rex, twice the size of an elephant, and people hunted those.

Steel bulkheads on military ships are sometimes armoured, you wouldn't get through that without oxy-acetylene gear or something equivalent.

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## Lemmy

How  long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)? 

I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

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## Rynjin

> How  long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)? 
> 
> I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any and all replies.


The point of a leaf shape is to add more mass to the right areas (near the tip) to maximize cutting power on a shorter blade. It's the same reason why a machete has a more bulbous tip as compared to the relatively slim bladed portion near the handle.

Longer blades already have more mass, so don't need their balance thrown off by making the blade more top-heavy. Instead, tapering results in better balance and the ability to thrust, which is important.

I'd say your best bet for a longer leaf-shaped blade would be a polearm, not a sword. You could get away with a wide "leafed" guandao type weapon I think.

Edit: I found a video of someone testing a bastard sword with a leaf shape, from a fantasy blade manufacturer.

It kinda works, but as you can see from the video it has some issues. All of the cutting power is concentrated on the "leafed" portion, with the taper being largely vestigial and the back end of the blade lacking enough mass to properly cut.

Which...basically just makes the sword a weird shaped axe but without the advantages of an axe.

That said, in a fantasy setting the relative impracticality doesn't matter so much as "is this conceivably plausible", and the answer appears to be yes. Though I still think a polearm works better.

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## Telok

> How did this monster become this strong? A 33.3 ft long monster is not huge, it's about the size of a T. Rex, twice the size of an elephant, and people hunted those.
> 
> Steel bulkheads on military ships are sometimes armoured, you wouldn't get through that without oxy-acetylene gear or something equivalent.


My mistake. Went back & checked numbers. Monster takes 2-3 minutes to hole an interior bulkhead. About 6 minutes to gnaw through the exterior armor of the smaller ships, up to 12-15 getting into battleships.

Did I mention its a bit silly high end space opera?

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## Mr Beer

> If 50 soldiers at a time can full-auto pretty much the whole time it they have about a 2% chance of killing it every 15 minutes. If 250 soldiers can full-auto it they have about a 10% chance to kill it every 15 min.


So this is like 1000s of rounds per soldier hitting it? If this thing can soak 10s of Ks of rifle rounds, it's functionally immune to such an attack, like it's a main battle tank or something. What is the mechanism of the kill exactly? If we know what takes it down when hosed with rifle fire, that informs the type of weapon one should use to reliably kill.

I agree with others that say if this thing is a known threat, they will have specific counter measures on board, like special weapons or armoured kill rooms that it can be lured into and then electrocuted, fried or crushed to death remotely.

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## GeoffWatson

> Thats why I asked. Thank you.
> 
> Hmm. Its space opera so air loss to boarding parties is handwaved. It only matters on a few ship critical hits. I guess there's already a self-sealing double hull set up then. So from the crew's pov its: "crunch" -> prep for boarding party -> surprise 30 foot hell-world monster in your face.
> 
> Now, nobody in their right mind would go to the hell-world and try to farm the bloody thing, this will be a complete surprise.


If it's a surprise, they're doomed. 
It's not going to sit still for the hours needed for full-autofire to kill it, and anything stronger risks destroying important ship components.
The misses from full-auto will probably do serious damage to the ship interior anyway (armouring everything would take nearly-useless weight which you don't want on a spaceship).

Abandon ship - call in the Super Space Marines, and hope they kill it before their missed shots destroy anything important.

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## Martin Greywolf

> How  long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)? 
> 
> I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any and all replies.


I agree with others who have said a longer sword with the xiphos-style leaf shape would be a very bad idea, but that's where we can... extrapolate.

Let's assume that the leaf shape is, for some reason, deeply cultural for these folks, and they want a functional blade about the length of a bastard sword that calls back to it. That? Now that is very possible.

What you need to do is take the same steel ingot you make a sword out of and reshape it differently, same total mass and mass distribution, different shape. Make the first part of the blade thicker in cross-section and narrower, make the leafy bit flatter and wider. And you're very much in luck, because something like this has been done historically.

*Spoiler: Behold the bastard sabre, National Museum, Budapest, 15th century*
Show




The handle on that on is 20cm long, and they were used from ~1300, based on pictorial evidence. It was most likely a case of "hey, we're using sabers because we consider ourselves Attila's descendants but longswords are becoming a thing, let's make a longsword sabre".

For your leaf shaped blade, you'll want to do something similar, make the curves gentler and the overall look of the blade more slender. You'll end up with a perfectly functional sword that will be a tad better in cutting while being a bit worse at precision thrusts.

Also make sure that you can still grab the wide leaf part to half-sword it and that the point itself is slender and thick enough to go through mail, that is pretty important for a sword that wants to compete with standard longsword in the age of plate armor.




> If the space-navy in question is aware these creatures are a threat, they're going to need to change doctrine and equipment to deal with them[...]


If we're changing doctrine, then there will be no boarding, just have the equivalent of fighter patrols take the critter out.

I mean, if this wasn't a space opera thing, then we'd have to ask ourselves how was this space navy so incompetent in sensor tech that something the size of a bus managed to sneak up on them. I mean, late WW2 radar could detect single-seat fighters and post-war can see missiles, never mind something this big, and that's in atmosphere with all sorts of interference.




> My mistake. Went back & checked numbers. Monster takes 2-3 minutes to hole an interior bulkhead. About 6 minutes to gnaw through the exterior armor of the smaller ships, up to 12-15 getting into battleships.
> 
> Did I mention its a bit silly high end space opera?


If you want it to be a boarding fight, and players are content not to ask pesky questions like "where is our fighter screen", "why don't we electrify the outer hull" or "why don't we use our secondaries to blast it apart before it gets close"...

Actually, if they are asking the pesky questions, I'd advise you to give this thing some sort of phasing, stealth or teleport ability that can get it at least over several hundred kilometers without being detected or hit. Possibly put it on a long cooldown while the sacks of phlebotinum goop replenish, making it essentially a space ambush predator.

Okay, that aside for boarding itself. This weaker version is much more stoppable. The biggest issue, once it gets inside the ship proper, is to not use weapons that will wreck your ship as well, so no high-power cannons and rockets. If we ignore ricochets, machineguns and AM rifles will work fairly well, especially if you cut what is more or less and arrow slit in your bulkheads and fire through that while the critter munches.

Another weapon that would work pretty well is manually-triggered shaped charge petards. Use a grenade launcher or robot/drone or some such to attach those to the critter, and trigger those that stuck well remotely.

*Spoiler: Truly a space age tech*
Show

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## Telok

> If it's a surprise, they're doomed. 
> It's not going to sit still for the hours needed for full-autofire to kill it, and anything stronger risks destroying important ship components.
> The misses from full-auto will probably do serious damage to the ship interior anyway (armouring everything would take nearly-useless weight which you don't want on a spaceship).
> 
> Abandon ship - call in the Super Space Marines, and hope they kill it before their missed shots destroy anything important.


Well, checked with other heavier weapons, did sims of blasting through barriers, recalculated kill rates.

And dang it. Found an error in the crit check in the sim. Redoing some percentages.

Any ways, the actual space combat boarding system is fine. Works. Not worried about PCs, they'll drop out of the 10 to 15 min per turn space combat to hero the monster to death at 5-6 rounds per minute. This whole thing is because the previous campaign started some doom clocks. One of those involves a powerful & insane person trying to bring art & culture to the galaxy. To that end they piracy up to a small fleet, farm a hell-world for giant monsters, stuff the monsters (stunned/restrained) into modified boarding shuttles, then shoot the shuttles at other ships like they were torpedoes.

As its a doom clock the PCs may be half way across the galaxy when stuff happens and I'd like to figure npc ship survival & news stories. More "by the numbers" than just some ass pulling bs. I've had that bite DMs where the "epic city destroyer" monsters could be two round ganked by a party that knows their damage output is less than 30ish archers. Much sarcasm ensued. And, its possible, I guess, for the PCs to try to ignore this if one does hit their ship, meaning I do need the body count & collateral damage rates.

Speaking of collateral damage, checking the math, the lighter weapons and stray rounds aren't a danger to bulkheads (although stuff in the rooms is trashed by missed shots but big monster is easy to hit). The anti-armor stuff is 40%-80% likely to damage interior bulkheads (small holes, spalling), actual anti-vehicle man-portable rockets at 95%, but still takes about 20-50 hits to put a hole big enough for a person to duck through.

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## Pauly

In the Viet Nam war allied soldiers came across man eating tigers, rogue elephants and salt water crocodiles. The basic military approach was to leave them the hell alone and bring in specialist hunters if they caused too much trouble.

It isnt just a matter of having the tech and the people. Its
- having the right gun (a dangerous game rifle or equivalent)
- knowing the habits of the critter
- knowing the critters vulnerable spots.
- being able to stalk the critter
- having the nerve to take a well aimed close range shot, not randomly shooting rounds into the general vicinity of the critter.
Militaries have a long history of being incredibly unsuccessful in critter hunts. Examples include the Beast of Gevudan and the French army, the man eating tigress of Champawat and the Nepalese army, the great emu war and the Australian Army, Gustav and the Burundi army. 

For a navy Id echo the abandon ship and call for reinforcements as the most viable way for a navy to deal with such a critter if it successfully gets on board a ship.

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## Telok

Ok. I've worked stuff out to the point where I'm happy with it. Thanks all.

It turns out that hunting/sniper rifles, and even more so laser sniper rifles, are pretty much the best bet for anything past the most basic troops. After that its the anti-armor weapons (ap grenades, ap rockets, short range plasma blasters). Even with enough good weapons the monsters will still kill 200 to 500 regular troops, half that in veterans with heavy armor, and half again elites in power armor. But I have my numbers and they work on both the narrative & mechanical levels now.

One issue I hit was that the system in use is set up so once a critter runs out of hit points/plot points it gets into critical damage, which is what does the actual killing with bleeding, KO, stuns, dismemberment, eviceration, etc. There are abilities creatures can have to mitigate or be immune to some of this stuff (eg: robots don't bleed or suffer fatigue), or there's one tag that says "ignore critical hits that wouldn't outright kill the creature unless <spacial conditions>". Playing with the simulator that ultra no-crit tag makes it super hard to kill the monster if it has otherwise lore appropriate stats. Without that tag, but with _all_ the other immunities turned on, ten regular soldiers with gyrojet pistols they aren't proficient in can kill the monster in about 5 rounds. It got better as I upped the monster's stats but to make it sufficently resistant in order to get even closr to the correct narrative results would take boosting its stats to insane levels.

Obviously I could hand wave & butt pull or just make up a new monster ability. But that affects playability. If every big monster has unique & totally different defense abilities then players have no rules consistency or planning ability aside from "do big damage" (boring). If the monster is under statted relative to the narrative effects players get nasty cognitive dissonance when they mow it down using less damage abilities than a couple squads of mook npcs. If its over statted the players basically can't engage with it, having to give up & abandon ship every time it shows up or it's super tough but has weenie nerf claws that can't do the required damage to be a real threat.

Again, thanks for the help. And now I know they won't try something like the powder magazine idea.

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## KineticDiplomat

To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?

 It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury. 

Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing,  it is actually a host of other things that make a projectile wound a really bad day. Usually they have to do with some variety of kinetic energy transfer, expansion, fragmentation, yaw, or tumbling effects...the exact manner isn't terribly relevant here. The point is when for some reason the bullet just zips through without that mechanism acting you get the ice pick effect where all you've really made is a smallish hole. The US/NATO 5.56mm round had some controversy about this, leading to a new tranche of engineering the round...

So, why doesn't your creature let mechanisms of injury actually perform? It's not just a groggy bleh, it has game fun: once you can point out the science of why it takes so much killing, then you can have players figure out the answer. Ask the Australians about the Emu war and why full metal jacket rifle rounds were not a great answer for killing puffy birds with thick coats of feathers, tiny and few critical organs, etc., and where they went in response

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## GeoffWatson

> Speaking of collateral damage, checking the math, the lighter weapons and stray rounds aren't a danger to bulkheads (although stuff in the rooms is trashed by missed shots but big monster is easy to hit). The anti-armor stuff is 40%-80% likely to damage interior bulkheads (small holes, spalling), actual anti-vehicle man-portable rockets at 95%, but still takes about 20-50 hits to put a hole big enough for a person to duck through.


There would be a lot more vulnerable stuff than bulkheads - pipes, electronics, wiring, supplies, fuel, crew, etc.

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## Telok

> There would be a lot more vulnerable stuff than bulkheads - pipes, electronics, wiring, supplies, fuel, crew, etc.


Yes! And that's great. Fits my gaming mantra of "no empty rooms" perfectly. Never ever give the players a fight somewhere they can treat like an empty room. That's how you get dull boffer larp static hp-to-zero "fights". Blow up the scenery! Exploding barrels & computers! Illogical steam pipes! Bottomless pits! Giant trash compactors! No empty rooms!

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## Pauly

> To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?
> 
>  It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury. 
> 
> Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing,  it is actually a host of other things that make a projectile wound a really bad day. Usually they have to do with some variety of kinetic energy transfer, expansion, fragmentation, yaw, or tumbling effects...the exact manner isn't terribly relevant here. The point is when for some reason the bullet just zips through without that mechanism acting you get the ice pick effect where all you've really made is a smallish hole. The US/NATO 5.56mm round had some controversy about this, leading to a new tranche of engineering the round...
> 
> So, why doesn't your creature let mechanisms of injury actually perform? It's not just a groggy bleh, it has game fun: once you can point out the science of why it takes so much killing, then you can have players figure out the answer. Ask the Australians about the Emu war and why full metal jacket rifle rounds were not a great answer for killing puffy birds with thick coats of feathers, tiny and few critical organs, etc., and where they went in response


To build on this a little. Animals like tigers, who nature expects to fight for their meals, are much more resistant to injury and heal faster than humans. Animals like crocodiles and elephants are resistant to injury due to thick hides. In both cases successful hunting requires knowing where the few vulnerable spots are, and this knowledge is far more important than the weapon being used. 

In gaming terms this would mean making a successful lore check to being able to get access to critical hits. You could also apply needing to be at close range or for the critter to be immobilized/asleep due to the small size if the critical hit area.

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## Telok

> To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?
> 
>  It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury. 
> 
> Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing,


The critter is... yeah, pretty much a T.Rex crossed with a ankylosaur, up muscled, and with the typical ultra-soft sf regeneration. The simulations helped tweak the stats. Anti-armor weapons worked well, but the surprise was how well the sniper rifle type weapons worked. So it looks all right I think.

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## Pauly

> The critter is... yeah, pretty much a T.Rex crossed with a ankylosaur, up muscled, and with the typical ultra-soft sf regeneration. The simulations helped tweak the stats. Anti-armor weapons worked well, but the surprise was how well the sniper rifle type weapons worked. So it looks all right I think.


The reason why IRL sniper type rifles werent the go to for killing dangerous game is that the travel time between trigger pull and bullet impact made a serious difference in whether you got the crit or just poked a hole in the critter. You had to get close, like 10 meters or closer kind of close, to get the guaranteed one hit one kill shots.

In close quarters there shouldnt be any effective difference between a sub MOA target rifle and a mass produced service rifle. The benefit of the sniper rifle is ability to hit small things at long range, and in ship board engagements you wont get the range to justify the benefit.

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## halfeye

> The reason why IRL sniper type rifles werent the go to for killing dangerous game is that the travel time between trigger pull and bullet impact made a serious difference in whether you got the crit or just poked a hole in the critter. You had to get close, like 10 meters or closer kind of close, to get the guaranteed one hit one kill shots.
> 
> In close quarters there shouldnt be any effective difference between a sub MOA target rifle and a mass produced service rifle. The benefit of the sniper rifle is ability to hit small things at long range, and in ship board engagements you wont get the range to justify the benefit.


The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.

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## Gnoman

> The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.


.50 BMG rifles aren't dedicated sniper weapons - they're intended for use against light vehicles, light fortifications, and other hard point targets. They work just fine as an anti-personnel weapon (all claims that international convention or policy prohibit this are myth), but are not an ideal weapon. They offer little advantage over a more conventional rifle in that role except range (rarely relevant), are much more effort to tote around, and have a much stronger visual signature.

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## Pauly

> The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.


Good luck carrying a Barrett or equivalent into the jungle and moving into a position where the tiger is. Tigers arent well known for standing about in open fields with long lines of sight.

Besides a 5.56 is just as potent an elephant killer, assuming you have an actual sniper handling the rifle, for all but the most extreme ranges.

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## Gnoman

> Besides a 5.56 is just as potent an elephant killer, assuming you have an actual sniper handling the rifle, for all but the most extreme ranges.


No, it is not. Taking down a large animal requires a great deal of penetration that 5.56 simply does not have. More importantly, taking down a large animal quickly and humanely requires a great deal of energy transfer that 5.56 simply does not have. There's a reason that "elephant gun" or "big game stopping rifle" is an entire classification of weapon.

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## Vinyadan

> No, it is not. Taking down a large animal requires a great deal of penetration that 5.56 simply does not have. More importantly, taking down a large animal quickly and humanely requires a great deal of energy transfer that 5.56 simply does not have. There's a reason that "elephant gun" or "big game stopping rifle" is an entire classification of weapon.


Would cavitation make up for that?

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## Gnoman

That's one of the mechanisms of energy transfer, but it doesn't do you much good if it happens shallowly. Intermediate rounds like 5.56 can be marginal for reaching vitals on larger deer (if shot frontally), let alone big game. Full-rifle rounds can reach the vitals on big game if you hit it right, but they'll spend so much energy getting there that the kill is probably going to be slow.  That's pretty relevant to this question, because the proposed megabeast has regeneration - so even a vitals shot won't kill it if it isn't done fast.

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## Martin Greywolf

Okay, hunting animals with military gear.

*Killing humanely*

We do not care about this. It's not what the question is about.

*Calibers are meaningless*

If someone categorically states something like "5.56 is not good for hunting", you know that they don't know what they are talking about. There is a massive range of ammunition with very different properties that are 1) all the same caliber and 2) able to be used in the same rifle. 5.56 specifically is perfectly legal for use in a lot of countries (USA varies by state), and there are specialized deer loads for it.

Even more importantly, *penetration is not dictated by caliber* in the slightest, saying that "5.56 does not have enough penetration" is categorically wrong. Penetration within reasonable range (not, like, ten meters into solid steel) depends on bullet velocity and bullet not fragmenting. And with modern bullets, most of them are designed specifically to fragment. If you have a bullet that was meant to fragment inside a human chest and you shoot a bear, it doesn't matter if it was a .50 cal (and yes, there are some weird 50 ammo types that do this) or 5.56, it's not gonna do that much damage.

*Stopping power*

This is the ability to neutralize (not necessarily kill) a thing in as few shots as you can. It matters a great deal in civilian hunting, because of humane killing considerations, and in situations where you need to drop something within a second (e.g. self defense, hostages being involved etc).

Here's the thing, it doesn't matter much if you have fully automatic weapons and nothing to stop you from just hosing the animal. A hunter will not want to take a machinegun or an assault rifle and dump two hundred rounds into a tiger, a squad of soldiers will not care. The animal will look like a bunch of bloody shreds by the time they stop, but it's not like they want to eat it.

So, unless the animal can manage to either not give them enough time to do that (e.g. by being an ambush predator, like tigers are), the animal is dead if the soldiers can aim properly. Which is why you always see animals evading death in places where they are hard to see (jungle, muddy water), and usually with less that stellar armed forces going after them.

*Anti-materiel rifles*

They aren't really needed on Earth animals. Sure, they will work, but why waste your time on faffing about with them when you can get a fireteam to dump a few magazines into the unfortunate elephant.

*Beast of Gevaudan*

It's been some time since I've looked into it seriously, but the most reasonable theory I've heard about it is that it was several wolves, not just one beast. Combine that with mass hysteria, and you're sending you soldiers to tramp around in the woods looking for demons every time someone sees a large dog.

*Emu war*

Look, I like this meme as much as the next guy, but if you use this as an example, at least go read about it.

First round was a bunch of soldiers trying to get cute with herding emus into ambushes, which may well have worked if the machinegun didn't jam. They then tried to mount the MG on a truck, and the ride was so rough the gunner couldn't even start shooting, let alone hit something. Note that they still did kill ~200 emus for 2500 rounds fired.

Once people started to use braincells, there were about a thousand emu kills for 10 000 rounds, with another 2500 emus estimated to die from wounds, one emu killed per three bullets. For comparison, WW2 saw some 50 billion rounds fired, if they were as efficient at killing people as they were emus, they would kill all the people alive today twice over.

So no, the emus didn't win the Emu war.

*But hey, don't take my word for it*

Because there was one incident from Vietnam war of tiger vs soldiers that is from a reliable source that I dug up.

*Spoiler: Northern Marine Magazine article*
Show




So, six soldiers on a recon patrol, ambushed by a tiger at night while they were sleeping, one of them was literally in tiger's jaws and couldn't defend himself because he was asleep moments prior. The tiger still died and only managed to hurt a soldier who was asleep.

*Military hunting parties*

[warning, dead animals are discussed and show in the links, nothing graphic, but still]

Are organized when they have to be, usually to precision-kill a single troublesome animal, and for that job, the soldiers tend to pick DMRs.

----------


## Inevitability

To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?


If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)? 

What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)? 

What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?

If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?

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## tyckspoon

> To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?
> 
> 
> If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)? 
> 
> What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)? 
> 
> What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?
> 
> If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?


If armor is not in play, having bad iron weapons is not an advantage over stone. Flesh is not significantly easier to damage with metal than stone. That will come down to which side is better organized, usually; if the militia actually practices as a militia they should be able to repel a less-organized attacker. If it's just 'somebody rang the alarm bell, show up with whatever you have nearby' and they don't drill or practice combat with whatever their options are, they'll probably get pretty badly mauled in one-on-one fights with enemies that are much better suited to doing that.

Once armor starts showing up the advantage swings heavily to the militia, and once you're looking at metal armor the primitive weaponry is effectively not a threat any more. You will still see injuries and the occasional deaths, of course, because combat is combat and stuff happens, but I do not believe there is any real chance that the side wearing chainmail  actually loses to the side without in a direct engagement.

Horses would offer a mobility advantage, but without a number of other technological innovations it's actually quite hard to fight effectively from horseback, so actual combat would still be as dismounted foot; mounts would probably see the humanoids adopting a hit-and-run raiding style where they try use the horses to strike at areas the organized defence cannot easily cover, grab whatever they can easily move/have their horses carry, then remount and vacate once an an organized response shows up.

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## Pauly

> To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?
> 
> 
> If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)? 
> 
> What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)? 
> 
> What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?
> 
> If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?


Ask Hernan Cortez

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## Gnoman

> To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?
> 
> 
> If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)? 
> 
> What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)? 
> 
> What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?
> 
> If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?


Absent armor (note that the Spanish Conquistadors often went without armor against the Aztecs and others, due to the heat of local conditions), the primary disadvantage of stone and bone weapons is availability. Stone and bone that's suitable for weaponmaking is of limited quantity, and stone takes a great deal of time to work into shape. Metal is metal in general, and is faster to work in a comparable piece. Once armor comes into play, things change significantly - any armor at all greatly hinders the functionality of a stone or bone weapon, and it is physically impossible to penetrate metal armor with one - the weapon will break at a much lower level of force than you would need to force the armor out of shape. So, to compare your three scenarios:

1. Unarmored militia 

The militia's use of metal won't aid them all that much. The enemy weapons will kill them just fine, and rapidly improvised weapons made of a better material are probably worse than purpose-built weapons made of an inferior one. Depending on what you mean by "monstrous humanoid", they're likely to be at a great disadvantage simply because the guys using stone and bone weapons against them are probably going to be stronger and tougher than they are. This is pretty clear cut that the edge goes to the monsters.

2. Armored militia with real weapons.

Here, the militia has a real edge in equipment. Leather armor is not immune to the crude weapons, but it is highly resistant. Meanwhile, their weapons are straight up better than the primitive ones being used against them, which makes a big difference. Countering this, the monstrous humanoids are probably more experienced in fighting, and are probably strong and tough enough to offset the edge in equipment. I'd call this an even match.

3. Real armored soldiers

This is simple and straightforward. Their armor will be effectively invulnerable to the primitive weapons barring extreme bad luck, they have better weapons, and are probably trained for fighting. In a straight-up fight, the soldiers will win. The only way for the monstrous humanoids to defeat this enemy would be to use harassment and ambush tactics to pick off vulnerable solders that are out of armor, or to use traps that don't care about armor such as pits and deadfalls.

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## Martin Greywolf

> To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?


I don't feel like writing several books...  :Small Wink: 




> If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)?


This is a lot more specific.

Since we have no armor in play, which in itself can be odd (more on that later), only thing that matters is reach of your attacks. Since both sides have access to sharpened sticks, the weaponry is pretty much equal no matter what it is made of. George Silver states outright that in a fight of rapier and staff, staff wins, and he was referring to unsharpened staff to boot.

I have to object to the term "savage humanoids" - not necessarily on PC grounds, but rather on grounds of it doesn't tell us anything about this other group. Are they hunter-gatherers, primitive farmers, do they have martial culture? All of those things matter.

Still, village farmers would be just about the least suitable people to fight short of office workers, so our savages do have the edge here.




> What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)?


You will not find it in a village. You are unlikely to find any sort of militia in a village, but one with armor and solid weapons isn't a thing - the Hussites had significant trouble arming their hastily assembled commoners, to a point where they invented several new, easy to manufacture weapons. Maybe if this is a frontier town or some such, but that needs to be specified - we can potentially be talking about something like the Ranger towns of Hungary, where a small tribe got a village in exchange for their military service of scouting and guarding the border.

*Spoiler: For an anti-crusader on a budget, Hussite weaponry*
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These dussacks became incredibly famous by appearing in Lichtenauer tradition treatises, but keep in mind they were a last-ditch sidearm for the hussites, the polearms above were much often used


What's more, boiled leather armor isn't a cheap thing. It was used only rarely, and usually by higher income folks, your armor for people on a budget is gambeson. If you are really on a budget, there are records (from Hussite wars) of smolnice, which I'd translate as tarmor (tar+armor), which are bits of straw soaked in tar strapped over yourself, combined with rope helmets (take a rope and curl it over a ball/head, then sew it together).

Iron-tipped spear doesn't really give you any advantage against unarmored people over a sharp stick other than durability and messers are a terrible idea (unless you have shields, but those were not specified), so the only advantage is the longbow.

Here's the thing, a 60 lbs bow will send an arrow straight through a deer, anything heavier than that is an overkill against armor, so you don't really need longbows. A simple hunting self bow that a teenager can use (~40-50 lbs) will cause wounds that are pretty much as lethal as the ones from a 160 lbs longbow against unarmored humanoid.

So in this case, the villagers have advantage of some armor, and that's pretty much it. I'd still bet on the savages.




> What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?


Well, a dedicated two-handed thrust with a spear you put your weight behind may get through a good mail shirt, but it will definitely knock the wind out of you - with more people on the field, ot means one spearman will knock the wond out of you and the other will use that to stab your face.

Thing is, if the swords are all the soldiers have, they will be javelined to death even before that happens, but an actual combined arms force will have the advantage.




> If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?


Not a single thing, because this is essentially a siege. Only things this will affect is what happens before and after the fight.

*What you forgot*

There are factors in play that matter a lot more than weapon quality.

The most important one is morale, how willing are the savages to press the attack? How determined are the villagers to hold? What is at stake?

Morale aside, if the savages are attacking a village and the village knows that this might happen, it will fortify itself. Stone walls are not happening and even proper pallisades may be out of reach, but a sturdy wooden fence will go a long way.

*Spoiler: Proper pallisade, repro of  9th c. Great Moravian chieftain compound at Ducove*
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*Spoiler: Plank wall and tower at Lozorno, looking at gate from the inside, simpler solution*
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It took us two days to build the tower, and half of that was putting the roof on

While the plank walls can't stop a battering ram, they can stop you from kicking them down, especially if someone is stabbing you from above - unfortunately, I can't find any photos of that particular event


These sorts of fortifications are a hell of a force multiplier, and will give the villagers the win here - unless the attackers use incendiaries on the very likely straw roofs. They you have a fight that will be as much about putting out fires as it is about fighting.

Villagers may have some skilled slingers among them, as could the savages.

Finally the savages. They have armor. Even if they managed to loot nothing usable by them, even stone age cultures had some sort of armor - several layers of whatever clothing they had on hand, be it linen or hide, sometimes reinforced with wood and bone. They won't wear this for hunting (it's either useless for rabbits or doesn't work for bears), but if they set out on a raid, they will have at least some people being their heavy infantry.

*Spoiler: Some pre-columbian sets could get pretty fancy*
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*Spoiler: Seyma-Turbine culture, 18-15th c. BC*
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*Spoiler: Tibetan leather lamellar, it was in use in central Eurasia since forever, possibly stone age*
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*Spoiler: Nakoaktok rope armor*
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In absence of organized large scale military response on behalf of the villagers, what you have on hand is a siege with more or less equal fighting potential man-to-man. The conventional rule of thumb is that the attackers need a 5 to 1 numerical advantage to successfully storm the fort.

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## Vinyadan

Martin, how did you make sure the structures were stable? How deep down in the terrain do they go? Did you have a method to choose what to place in the hole with the beam?

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## Martin Greywolf

> Martin, how did you make sure the structures were stable? How deep down in the terrain do they go? Did you have a method to choose what to place in the hole with the 
> beam?


Bear in mind it's been almost a decade.




> Martin, how did you make sure the structures were stable?


Hustle.

More seriously, you don't need a lot for these structures, use heavy tree logs for the frame, put them into holes and secure them in place with rocks. As long as the structure isn't too airy, its own weight will stabilize it. The important bit is to use some sort of treatment for the wood to prevent it from rotting - historically, you'd use tar, beeswax or oil, we probably used some sort of commercial paint-on thing, but I honestly can't remember - it's the black "paint" at the bottom meter and a half of the pillar.

*Spoiler: A different building that has photos of building process*
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And yeah, we cheated on the roof, because annually replacing straw is not fun


You may well question our methodology, but the thing is still standing a decade later, so...

*Spoiler: More recent photo, building on the left*
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> How deep down in the terrain do they go?


As you could see from the photo of building it, about knee deep for 2 stories for the big building, IIRC the tower is 1.5x to twice as deep because it is taller and lighter, but I wasn't there for building of that one.




> Did you have a method to choose what to place in the hole with the beam?


The arcane method of "different sizes of rocks that are readily available".

*Spoiler: Riveting footage of rocks, 2011, colorized*
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We only had to cheat with one pillar, because we hit a spring from the side, we poured concrete into that one.

*Important note*

If you live in an area with hurricanes or earthquakes, building like this will get you or someone else killed.

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## Thane of Fife

> Not a single thing, because this is essentially a siege. Only things this will affect is what happens before and after the fight.
> 
> *What you forgot*
> 
> There are factors in play that matter a lot more than weapon quality.
> 
> The most important one is morale, how willing are the savages to press the attack? How determined are the villagers to hold? What is at stake?
> 
> Morale aside, if the savages are attacking a village and the village knows that this might happen, it will fortify itself. Stone walls are not happening and even proper pallisades may be out of reach, but a sturdy wooden fence will go a long way.


Why do you think this is the most likely turn of events? Raiding - for cattle, brides, slaves, etc. - is probably the most ubiquitous form of warfare in history, and I have never heard anything that suggests that raids typically devolved into sieges.

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## Mike_G

> Why do you think this is the most likely turn of events? Raiding - for cattle, brides, slaves, etc. - is probably the most ubiquitous form of warfare in history, and I have never heard anything that suggests that raids typically devolved into sieges.


Fortifications for even small villages are really common. In the case of a raid, if people had enough warning to get into the fort/tower/blockhouse/whatever, then the raiders had to decide to just leave, take the place by assault or conduct a siege. So yeah, it did happen a lot. 

Successful raids usually caught the defenders by surprise and either took the village or grabbed what they wanted and escaped. Often, a raid destroyed a village or carried off loot or prisoners but many of the people survived if they holed up in a stronghold. They may have a lot of rebuilding to do after, but it's better than being dead.

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## gbaji

I think it's important to remember that unless a village is somewhere really really far from potential raiders, it's almost always going to have at least some sort of wall somewhere around at least some of the buildings, and at least one building somewhat designated as the "fallback/defense" position that specifically has strong walls and is usually taller than the surrounding buildings as well. That will give the defenders an advantage.

Are the people in the village aware of even the potential for being attacked? They should have something available to at least slow down attackers and to hide behind. Even in the absence of a direct serious concern about raiding, villages tended to have walls/fences if for no other reason than to keep domesticated animals *in* and wild animals *out*. Even a somewhat open fence can act as a decent defensive position if both sides are fighting with basically sharp sticks. The guy who's trying to get across it is at a disadvantage to the guy already on the other side who's just standing there defending. Always.

And, as a couple of people pointed out, where do ranged weapons come in? Even in relatively primitive weapon scenarios, the advantage of range has always been significant. Simple bows, slings, or just thrown rocks, can be major factors in a fight like this and are extremely easy to make and should be readily available to both sides. And yeah, once again the advantage goes to the defenders (even moreso IMO).

The obvious counter to the defenders advantages would be the attackers having some element of surprise on their side. The fight will be significantly different if they are detected outside the wall/fenceline/whatever, versus if they get inside before an alarm is sounded and the locals come out to see what's going on. That will also dramatically change how you may want to run the encounter as well. Is it a desperate scramble to man the walls and hold off an overwhelming number? Or is it a smaller number but they're already running around inside the village square, lighting things on fire, killing anyone who gets near, and grabbing and running off with anything of value.

Oh. And I suppose the most important thing: What is the actual objective of the attackers? Is this a raiding party? Are they trying to just kill their enemies? Capture specific people? Rescue someone of theirs who is held captive? Steal something specific? What they're trying to accomplish is going to completely change how they attack and what they do during the attack. Just saying "I want a fight that goes like this" may work, but without a motivation for the attackers it's going to be less "OMG! They're trying to destroy the omicron power source!" and "they're just enemies for us to kill, cause they're there and attacking our side, and we're here to attack them". Latter is less satisfying (and frankly wont make much sense).

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## Satinavian

> And, as a couple of people pointed out, where do ranged weapons come in? Even in relatively primitive weapon scenarios, the advantage of range has always been significant. Simple bows, slings, or just thrown rocks, can be major factors in a fight like this and are extremely easy to make and should be readily available to both sides. And yeah, once again the advantage goes to the defenders (even moreso IMO).


Improvised ranged weapons without training are pretty much abysmal, even if you have metal. We should assume that the attackers do have shields as was extremely common even in metal deprived tribal warfare.
And while the attackers might have them, whether they play a big role depends on their strategy.

Also no, useful bows and useful arrows in relevant numbers are not that trivial and fast to make. You should count those only from the "militia has proper weapons" stage onward. Slings are simple but would need practice.


And don't overestimate the effective range of primitive ranged weapons. It is shorter than one might think, especcially with subpar equippment and without training. Certain feats of legendary elite troops of the past were the praiseworthy exception, not the norm.

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## VonKaiserstein

> To what extend can pre-metallurgy equipment stack up to medieval-era iron and steel?
> 
> 
> If I have a group of savage humanoids, somewhat bigger and stronger than humans, armed with stone bludgeons and simple knives/spearheads/arrowheads made out of flint and bone, would they be able to stand up to a ramshackle village militia (unarmored, weapons are repurposed iron tools like pitchforks and kitchen knives)? 
> 
> What about a better-equipped militia (boiled leather armor, with messer-like blades, iron-tipped spears, and longbows)? 
> 
> What about a squad of soldiers in chainmail, armed with 'normal' swords?
> 
> If the savage humanoids have horses and the humans do not, does that change anything?


The sources are quite biased, as they're being told by the technologically advanced civilization, but look up Indian massacres as historical examples.  A common pattern is that a group of preindustrials seems to win against industrial militia regularly, even when they're equipped with firearms.  Against soldiers, much less so.  

Though the tales emphasize the treachery and subterfuge of the Native Americans, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_massacre_of_1622 Indian Massacre of 1662 shows militia being able to just fall back to strongpoints, while the preindustrial society destroyed massive amounts of infrastructure, leading to starvation. 

Mostly when soldiers get involved it goes exactly the other way- Native American tribal militia did no better than their colonial counterparts when soldiers attacked their villages.

That's a great period of time to research for your question, because you have many incidents of non metallurgical societies fighting both trained soldiers, and untrained pioneer/militia.  

The only examples I can think of of effective militia are those who have so much training that they'd more reasonably be considered soldiers than militia.  As previously mentioned in this thread, the Hussites were peasants before being rigorously trained by Jan Zizka.  The Swiss pikemen during the Canton wars set the precedent for Switzerlands train everyone, so there is no civilian population to conquer approach.  Essentially, there milita was ex-military, and had been trained to a soldier level.

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## Thane of Fife

> Fortifications for even small villages are really common. In the case of a raid, if people had enough warning to get into the fort/tower/blockhouse/whatever, then the raiders had to decide to just leave, take the place by assault or conduct a siege. So yeah, it did happen a lot. 
> 
> Successful raids usually caught the defenders by surprise and either took the village or grabbed what they wanted and escaped. Often, a raid destroyed a village or carried off loot or prisoners but many of the people survived if they holed up in a stronghold. They may have a lot of rebuilding to do after, but it's better than being dead.


I have no doubt that it did happen, only that it was the most common result. There have probably been many raids in history, perhaps even the majority, that have occurred because some guys in one village got drunk and decided to go raid the neighbors, steal some stuff, and run before serious resistance is organized. There have no doubt been other raids where the vikings sail in and everyone runs for the fortified house and/or the woods. I could not tell you what the historical ratio is of one to the other, but I would tend to guess that it was not overwhelmingly slanted towards the latter.

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## halfeye

> I have no doubt that it did happen, only that it was the most common result. There have probably been many raids in history, perhaps even the majority, that have occurred because some guys in one village got drunk and decided to go raid the neighbors, steal some stuff, and run before serious resistance is organized.


Really? That's a heck of a way to start a vendeta. If there is an ongoing feud that it's a part of, maybe, but a lot of people don't like living like that. Neighbours are neighbours usually.




> There have no doubt been other raids where the vikings sail in and everyone runs for the fortified house and/or the woods. I could not tell you what the historical ratio is of one to the other, but I would tend to guess that it was not overwhelmingly slanted towards the latter.


Nobody liked the Vikings, even in Sweden they died out.

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## Grim Portent

> Really? That's a heck of a way to start a vendeta. If there is an ongoing feud that it's a part of, maybe, but a lot of people don't like living like that. Neighbours are neighbours usually.


It feels pretty plausible to me, plenty of towns and villages hated their nearest neighbours to the point of long term low level violence that occasionally broke out into actual conflict. Feuds start somewhere after all, and are often attributed to someone drunk or young and stupid stealing something, kidnapping someone or killing someone. Sometimes all three.

Pretty sure a lot of the clan based conflicts up here in Scotland boiled down to someone's great-great-uncle stealing some cows*, eloping with someone else's daughter without permission, or getting drunk and stabbing someone, and 'justice' never being satisfied afterwards.


*Serious business, that. Cows are valuable to a pre-industrial society, and well worth killing over.

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## halfeye

> It feels pretty plausible to me, plenty of towns and villages hated their nearest neighbours to the point of long term low level violence that occasionally broke out into actual conflict. Feuds start somewhere after all, and are often attributed to someone drunk or young and stupid stealing something, kidnapping someone or killing someone. Sometimes all three.
> 
> Pretty sure a lot of the clan based conflicts up here in Scotland boiled down to someone's great-great-uncle stealing some cows*, eloping with someone else's daughter without permission, or getting drunk and stabbing someone, and 'justice' never being satisfied afterwards.
> 
> 
> *Serious business, that. Cows are valuable to a pre-industrial society, and well worth killing over.


If there's already a feud running, it might work that way, but around here there are iron age forts on some of the hilltops, and you probably didn't go messing with them over a drunken revel. There were still feuds in the previous century, but I think in real life most people prefer to steer clear of them. They may be fun in a game, but there's little real risk in that.

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## Pauly

> It feels pretty plausible to me, plenty of towns and villages hated their nearest neighbours to the point of long term low level violence that occasionally broke out into actual conflict. Feuds start somewhere after all, and are often attributed to someone drunk or young and stupid stealing something, kidnapping someone or killing someone. Sometimes all three.
> 
> Pretty sure a lot of the clan based conflicts up here in Scotland boiled down to someone's great-great-uncle stealing some cows*, eloping with someone else's daughter without permission, or getting drunk and stabbing someone, and 'justice' never being satisfied afterwards.
> 
> 
> *Serious business, that. Cows are valuable to a pre-industrial society, and well worth killing over.


Raiding was a serious business, not undertaken by drunken yahoos. _The Steel Bonnets_ by George Macdonald Fraser is a great read about the Anglo-Scottish border reivers, which I highly recommend. 
The existence of a non defensible border that prevented a central authority from exerting control was a key feature of why the raiding lasted so long in the area.

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## Grim Portent

_Proper_ viking style raiding was serious business, but opportunistic theft or brawls that are also called raids didn't have to be well thought out or even planned in advance to work. Outlying homesteads, farms and pastures were not hard to ransack before anyone could rally a response, and made up a pretty big chunk of inter-village/town conflicts. It's also not unheard of for a guest to turn into an enemy because of a spur of the moment change in situation.

A raid could be something as simple as beating the snot out of (or stabbing) a shepherd and legging it with some sheep that were out to pasture after all, it's not all razing villages to the ground and running off with sacks of silver. A few drunk idiots were fully capable of that sort of thing.

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## HeadlessMermaid

> A raid could be something as simple as beating the snot out of (or stabbing) a shepherd and legging it with some sheep that were out to pasture after all, it's not all razing villages to the ground and running off with sacks of silver. A few drunk idiots were fully capable of that sort of thing.


I wouldn't describe that as raiding, I would describe it as rustling. Very common (within AND without blood feuds), and almost obligatory if we're talking about semi-nomadic shepherds as opposed to settled farmers. Razing villages and running off with the loot also happened, but at that point we got brigandage (or war; when soldiers "forage" in enemy territory, their actions are indistinguishable from banditry).

Bandits are a favourite topic of mine and I've looked it up in many different contexts and places and eras. And I gotta say, village 1 randomly attacking nearby village 2 is NOT a normal thing.

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## Thane of Fife

> I wouldn't describe that as raiding, I would describe it as rustling.


If you look up the Wikipedia page on cattle raiding, it describes rustling as being the North American (especially cowboy) term for cattle raiding.

Certainly, when I described some people getting drunk and going on a raid, I was imagining something more along the lines of "Let's go steal/break some stuff" then "Let's go kill everyone and burn their village down."

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## HeadlessMermaid

> If you look up the Wikipedia page on cattle raiding, it describes rustling as being the North American (especially cowboy) term for cattle raiding.


Huh. Well thanks for that TIL moment, I didn't know that. English is not my native language and I often lose track of American/British English differences. That said, I used the term "rustling" because I've read it in a bunch of papers and books that talk about animal theft in decidedly not North American contexts (the Mediterranean, the antiquity, the Ottomans etc), and it doesn't have to be cattle specifically, it's often sheep. I mean, I didn't make it up. :)

tl,dr; That was just a terminology mixup, no real disagreements here.

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## Martin Greywolf

*Raiding*

If this is a raid, then there won't be a siege, your grace. Or a fight.

The raid has a simple objective: hit the soft targets, loot everything you can and then retreat before any resistance is organized. If this is a fortified frontier village and it gets raided, then the raiders will chase off the people outside of it, abscond with the cattle and whatever there is out there, take one look at the fortified village and leave. This is the modus operandi of: vikings, mongols, other nomads, pre-Shaka Zulu Zulu warfare, ...

The point of it is not to get into a pitched battle, so unless the militia manages to ambush them, which is another very different fight, they won't see that much fighting.

Basically, a raid is a specific type of engagement, and since it wasn't specified in the opening question, I just ignored it, like so many other possibilities. Especially since this is a TTRPG forum and fighting back against a raid isn't very interesting in most TTRPGs - it's 99% scouting and prevention.

*How common are fortifications*

Anything from every village has them to practically non-existent. It depends on how the people perceive safety, if there are enemies nearby, if they have common cultural background... Wihtout knowing more about the context this fight takes place in, it's impossible to tell.

This gets really specific is you don't want to make assumptions, so I'll focus on area where I've read enough on the topic: 1250s Hungary. The details will vary greatly.

There is an... event of sorts that flipped the script in this period, that being the Mongol invasion, so you have pre-Mongol situation and post-Mongol situation. Pre-Mongol, villages have wicker fences and that's about it, it is only towns and larger that have most often earthworks fortifications. On the Panonian plain, those earthworks are a dug ditch material from which was used to raise a small hill, on top of which you have wooden pallisades - sometimes wood-packed dirt - wood, often just one row of wood.

*Spoiler: This is a neolithic Panonian plain town, but medieval ones looked very similar*
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*Spoiler: Remains of such a hill*
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The actual small villages were expected to use those towns/large villages (there was no formal distinction between the two) to hide if there was trouble.

On more hilly terrain, you saw less fortifications. As weird as it sounds, there was a sound logic behind that: if the enemy comes, bury your valuables, grab what you need and run for the hills. You still have some places in hills above those villages that have local names that suggest this was how they were used. The idea was that the enemy force wouldn't have the time or the inclination to chase you around the forests and you can go back down once they leave.

*Spoiler: Finding pictures is hard, but it looked something like this*
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This worked fairly well if there was a brief nomad raid, and if the attack was from the people of the same culture (Germans, Italians, Poles), people sometimes didn't even bother to run if the attacker had a decent reputation, they just buried their stuff to pretend they were poorer than they really were. This was frequent enough that there are references to this in some writings, usually in the form of "a paesant is a deceitful creature, shake them down good because they hid their stuff".

Then the Mongols came. They raided the country for two years non-stop, were organized enough to defeat earthworks and the only things that stopped them were very rough hills and Danube. Once Danube froze, only hills helped, but the villages still got raided and burned down, and since farmers were hiding, no one was making food. The population went from 3 million to 2.

The response to this was significant, but perhaps not in the way you think. Villages remained unfortified, and the fortifications of towns changed. Royal charters were made and the number of cities and towns with stone walls increased tenfold at least. The most significant response, however, was the lift of moratorium on building of stone castles - you had to have an explicit royal permission which was rarely given before, now those stone castles started to crop up everywhere.

And those refuge places in the hills were now used as good locations for castles a lot of the time.

The ordinary villages defended themselves by the means of lookout towers, that gave you enough time to seek that refuge with enough of your stuff. The consistent occupation for a prolonged time Mongol-style would still starve you, but it was much, much harder to do when maybe a hundred stone castles became about a thousand.

*Spoiler: Some of those towers were multi-function, and yeah, sometimes a church tower was used*
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This is a klopacka, a "knocking tower", from which the change of a miner's shift was announced by knocking. You can hear it here, it was done this way to make it clearly distinct from church bells.


*Spoiler: Vartovka, a dedicated lookout tower from Habsburg-Ottoman wars*
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In conclusion, Hungary went as far as village fortifications went, from "we aren't in enough danger to use these" straight to "if we try to hold something we can actually reasonably make we're dead anyway, so we won't bother". There's a lot more nuance here rather than danger==walls, no danger==no walls.

What the USA frontier tactical reasoning looked like as far as fortified villages went... I could take a guess, but I haven't done enough research to say anything with confidence.

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## Grim Portent

> Huh. Well thanks for that TIL moment, I didn't know that. English is not my native language and I often lose track of American/British English differences. That said, I used the term "rustling" because I've read it in a bunch of papers and books that talk about animal theft in decidedly not North American contexts (the Mediterranean, the antiquity, the Ottomans etc), and it doesn't have to be cattle specifically, it's often sheep. I mean, I didn't make it up. :)
> 
> tl,dr; That was just a terminology mixup, no real disagreements here.


In a medieval context raids/raiding cover a surprisingly broad set of things. Border skirmishes, banditry, murder, kidnapping, nighttime assaults in general (Vlad the Impaler was known to have led several nighttime raids against Ottoman military camps for example.) Basically all clan vs clan violence in the Scottish Highlands was done through the medium of raids, with a few proper battles being the exception.

These being violent affairs meant that one raid was usually responded to with another raid, which could then bounce back and forth for generations and cover all manner of skirmishes, thefts, murders and so on. It's basically informal warfare when you get down to the basics, and common to tribal/clan based societies across a lot of the world.

It could get pretty nasty up here. Or North of here technically, me being a lowlander. A few raids were launched with the specific purpose of genocide, the goal being to murder an entire clan in their beds in a nighttime assault. Actual raze the place to the ground and stab the babies sort of stuff.

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## Saint-Just

> The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.


Unless you are joking "so powerful they are outside the Geneva conventions" is a myth. There is no limitation on power/caliber of anti-personnel weapons, and while there has been some controversy about usage of explosive ammunition against humans I think most if not all RoE allowed it even if sometimes writers felt the need to jump through the weird hoops to justify it.

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## halfeye

> Unless you are joking "so powerful they are outside the Geneva conventions" is a myth. There is no limitation on power/caliber of anti-personnel weapons, and while there has been some controversy about usage of explosive ammunition against humans I think most if not all RoE allowed it even if sometimes writers felt the need to jump through the weird hoops to justify it.


It's a myth I heard in the context of an alleged sniper auto-biography saying "we weren't allowed to shoot them, so we shot the wall and killed them with the shrapnel". Maybe it is a myth. *shrugs*

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## Pauly

> Unless you are joking "so powerful they are outside the Geneva conventions" is a myth. There is no limitation on power/caliber of anti-personnel weapons, and while there has been some controversy about usage of explosive ammunition against humans I think most if not all RoE allowed it even if sometimes writers felt the need to jump through the weird hoops to justify it.


Besides the Geneva Convention(s) are about how to treat combatants, POWs, non-combatants and generally how to wage war humanely.

The Hague Convention(s) are about regulating weapons of war. 

If a weapon is so terrible as to be banned, most recently blinding lasers, then it will be banned under the Hague convention.

Biologial and chemical weapons are banned under the Geneca *Protocol*, not the Geneva Concention.

Any time someone says [a particular conventional weapon] is banned under the Geneva Convention its usually a pretty good clue they dont know what theyre talking about, or quoting someone who didnt know what they were talking about.

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## Gnoman

> It's a myth I heard in the context of an alleged sniper auto-biography saying "we weren't allowed to shoot them, so we shot the wall and killed them with the shrapnel". Maybe it is a myth. *shrugs*


It is, but it is one that originated within the military itself - I've heard more than a few veterans relating it as a tale told in basic training.


The most likely origin is the M8C Spotting Rifle that is integrated into the M40 Recoilless Rifle. This is a .50 caliber weapon that is specially loaded with a very bright tracer. Said tracer is carefully rigged to have identical ballistics to the 106mm round, and to be highly visible. This is so you can fire off that, see where it hits, and very quickly fire the main round and run away. When this weapon was in service, soldiers issued it were instructed in very strict terms to never, ever try using the spotting rifle as an antipersonnel weapon - not for any concerns about treaty or convention, but because a very bright slow-moving projectile from a single-shot rifle is not a very good weapon for hitting people, and it gives away the position of the guy with the heavy weapon - not a problem for the intended use, because there's no hiding a recolless rifle firing anyway, but bad if your squad is up against another squad. Over time "the rules say never use this specific .50 caliber weapon against personnel" turned into "the rules say never use any .50 caliber weapon against personnel". Everything you hear about "shoot them in the belt buckle, because that's equipment and not a person" or "shoot the wall" or whatever is bunk.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Everything you hear about "shoot them in the belt buckle, because that's equipment and not a person" or "shoot the wall" or whatever is bunk.


Especially because lawyers writing these agreements aren't towering morons. A cursory read of any of these treaties reveals that the weapons that are banned are banned "for use in war" (Geneva Protocol has it in its official name), because all parties are well aware what kind of loophole abuse would result if something was banned for use "against people".

If a country breaks a prohibition, though, _then_ we see all kinds of sophistry to make it better in public perception (as opposed to legally), but we're skirting dangerously close to forum rules as is, so that's where I'll leave it.

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## Lvl 2 Expert

> *Beast of Gevaudan*
> 
> It's been some time since I've looked into it seriously, but the most reasonable theory I've heard about it is that it was several wolves, not just one beast. Combine that with mass hysteria, and you're sending you soldiers to tramp around in the woods looking for demons every time someone sees a large dog.


I personally like the idea that there were dog/wolf hybrids (or just plain feral dogs) involved. Something large. Maybe a mastiff producing a full litter with a wolf. The offspring is big and strong and scary (maybe a bit of "hybrid vigor" bringing the size up even a bit further), not as instinctually scared of humans as regular wolves yet as fully grown adults not too well equipped to hunt the regular fast prey animals.

I do agree though that the more reasonable we can make the explanation the more likely it is to be true, wolves plus mass hysteria is a combination for which the ingredients were definitely there. With the amount of wolves and the amount of cases of mass hysteria it should have happened at least a few times in history, so why wouldn't this be one of them?

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## Sapphire Guard

You know how mills can explode from all the dust in the air if someone strikes a spark in the wrong place? Does that still apply if they're derelict, abandoned with all the equipment and stores intact?

Like, an operational mill is abandoned mid workday, years later monsters occupy it, is there still an explosion risk if a party tries to clear out the monsters, assuming they stir up enough dust, or would it be too damp by then?

Thanks.

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## Martin Greywolf

> You know how mills can explode from all the dust in the air if someone strikes a spark in the wrong place? Does that still apply if they're derelict, abandoned with all the equipment and stores intact?
> 
> Like, an operational mill is abandoned mid workday, years later monsters occupy it, is there still an explosion risk if a party tries to clear out the monsters, assuming they stir up enough dust, or would it be too damp by then?
> 
> Thanks.


This is what is called, IIRC, a fuel-air explosive, and works with anything that can burn. You take your burny substance, reduce it to a powder and spread it in the air, and once it reaches the right mix, it burns very, very quickly, i.e. it explodes. There's a whole headache with how big the grains need to be of what material to be optimal, but we don't really need to touch that here.

The important bit is that the flour needs to be spread around in the air, and that will dictate if your derelict mill explodes. If it is in a damp place and was left alone for a few days, all the flour is now dried or slightly moist paste. If it was in a desert or otherwise kept dry, however... it still will not explode, because all the flour is on the ground. However, were some ill-advised (N)PCs to disturb it and distribute it into the air again...

Boom.

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## Lapak

> This is what is called, IIRC, a fuel-air explosive, and works with anything that can burn. You take your burny substance, reduce it to a powder and spread it in the air, and once it reaches the right mix, it burns very, very quickly, i.e. it explodes. There's a whole headache with how big the grains need to be of what material to be optimal, but we don't really need to touch that here.
> 
> The important bit is that the flour needs to be spread around in the air, and that will dictate if your derelict mill explodes. If it is in a damp place and was left alone for a few days, all the flour is now dried or slightly moist paste. If it was in a desert or otherwise kept dry, however... it still will not explode, because all the flour is on the ground. However, were some ill-advised (N)PCs to disturb it and distribute it into the air again...
> 
> Boom.


You'd need not just dry but actively preserved somehow. An abandoned building full of edible flour will be infested by bugs, rodents, etc. promptly. 'Years later' there won't be much left unless the flour was being magically protected or something.

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## halfeye

> You know how mills can explode from all the dust in the air if someone strikes a spark in the wrong place? Does that still apply if they're derelict, abandoned with all the equipment and stores intact?
> 
> Like, an operational mill is abandoned mid workday, years later monsters occupy it, is there still an explosion risk if a party tries to clear out the monsters, assuming they stir up enough dust, or would it be too damp by then?
> 
> Thanks.


Stirring up enough dust would be a problem, it's not enough to have just a bit. It also has to be burnable, sand wouldn't do, no matter how fine.

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## Pauly

> This is what is called, IIRC, a fuel-air explosive, and works with anything that can burn. You take your burny substance, reduce it to a powder and spread it in the air, and once it reaches the right mix, it burns very, very quickly, i.e. it explodes. There's a whole headache with how big the grains need to be of what material to be optimal, but we don't really need to touch that here.
> 
> The important bit is that the flour needs to be spread around in the air, and that will dictate if your derelict mill explodes. If it is in a damp place and was left alone for a few days, all the flour is now dried or slightly moist paste. If it was in a desert or otherwise kept dry, however... it still will not explode, because all the flour is on the ground. However, were some ill-advised (N)PCs to disturb it and distribute it into the air again...
> 
> Boom.


For the boom to happen (a) the flour needs to be very fine and (b) well circulated in the air and (c) there needs to be a source of ignition.

Leaving aside the issues of damp, rot and rodents as already discussed, the finest and lightest flour will be the first to be blown away by the wind. So unless the mill is somehow hermetically sealed there isnt going to be fuel for the boom.
However if the mill is hermetically sealed the flour will be sitting safely on the floor. Just walking through isnt going to stir up enough flour and have it circulate enough in the air for it to go boom. Mills go boom because there is a large amount of flour being circulated in the air by heavy machinery. Bakeries dont go boom even though they probably have more flour per cubic foot than a mill because the flour isnt being circulated through the air by heavy machinery. You cant get a boom just by throwing a ack of flour into the air. 
Ignition source is the easiest problem to resolve.

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## Martin Greywolf

> You cant get a boom just by throwing a ack of flour into the air.


A closed sack? Probably no.

But it's not as hard as you make it sound. An overturned sack that spills it onto a lit lamp from one floor up will give you a decent fireball.

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## D&D_Fan

> You know how mills can explode from all the dust in the air if someone strikes a spark in the wrong place? Does that still apply if they're derelict, abandoned with all the equipment and stores intact?
> 
> Like, an operational mill is abandoned mid workday, years later monsters occupy it, is there still an explosion risk if a party tries to clear out the monsters, assuming they stir up enough dust, or would it be too damp by then?
> 
> Thanks.


Flour explodes in what's called a 'dust explosion' and it's because of fine, combustible particles floating in the air. In an oxygen medium, of course.  For example, if air and flour get into a lightbulb, when activated, it will explode. Do not purposely do this ever. Another example? Thermobaric weapons.

So if there is enough flour in the air, and the air is oxygen, then lighting a torch, creating any friction, sparks, electrical discharge, all of that would be a very bad idea for the party. I don't think the flour would go bad in the right environment though. If in a cool, dark place, it could last a solid year. Say the monster stir up a bunch of flour, and fire is started, I say go ahead. Burn the place up. You're the DM, it will be cool.

But other people have pointed out that wind rodents* might ruin the flour. I say, monsters need to eat too. What if the monsters begin operating the mill again, albeit with less safety precaution. That gives a reason for fresh, fine flour to be in the air.

*I meant 'wind and rodents' but imagining a rat made out of wind is funnier.

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## Mr Beer

If the flour is intact, the next step is to stir it up. I suggest an air elemental...in fact if you have an elementalist, air followed by fire should guarantee ignition.

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## Xervous

Some cursory reading suggests that a small detonation of airborne flour particles leads to a combination of a shockwave and a slower curtain of flame. The shockwave stirs up flour on the floor (apparently a layer as thin as a piece of paper is enough) and the flame ignites the secondary explosion. Chain reactions are a possibility to consider.

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## Pauly

> A closed sack? Probably no.
> 
> But it's not as hard as you make it sound. An overturned sack that spills it onto a lit lamp from one floor up will give you a decent fireball.


Theres a reason why bakeries are allowed to exist in shopping malls and crowded dense inner city streets.

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## PhoenixPhyre

Somewhat random and apropos of nothing--

Is there as wide a variety of weapon carrying harnesses (not sheaths, but how you attach sheaths etc to your person) as there is of swords? I assume the fastening for a wooden sheath (like katanas, which traditionally(?) have a place for cordage to attach) was different than a leather sheath that might fasten to/be part of a leather belt? Maybe?

And what about non-sword weapons? I assume that polearms were just carried or stuck on a cart if available; hard(er?) to strap a pike or halberd to your back than a sword to your side, which is why swords were "sidearms". What about poleaxes, war axes, maces, etc? Thrown spears? Did those have any kind of "quiver"?

I'm mostly interested in getting a sense of aesthetics and practicalities.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Is there as wide a variety of weapon carrying harnesses (not sheaths, but how you attach sheaths etc to your person) as there is of swords? I assume the fastening for a wooden sheath (like katanas, which traditionally(?) have a place for cordage to attach) was different than a leather sheath that might fasten to/be part of a leather belt? Maybe?


There is quite a range of them, but slightly less so that those for swords - if a given region uses a given system, then it will likely be used on all the swords in it, while the differentiation between the sword types often gets... pointlessly nitpicky from practical standpoint.

Standard sword belts you know about, with varieties that have swords point behind you or straight down as well as several systems of how precisely the scabbard is attached to it, but there are also:

*Spoiler: Baldrics*
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*Spoiler: Belt clips*
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*Spoiler: Belt loops*
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*Spoiler: Shoulder loops*
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You put it on the shoulder as is, I couldn't find actual photo of it being worn.


There are likely others I'm not aware of, and all of them have slight variations.




> And what about non-sword weapons? I assume that polearms were just carried or stuck on a cart if available; hard(er?) to strap a pike or halberd to your back than a sword to your side, which is why swords were "sidearms".


You had some systems to make them easier to carry on horseback, at least.

*Spoiler: Winged hussar lance in its... bucket*
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That said, the most common lance carrier is called "squire".  :Small Big Grin: 




> What about poleaxes


Is a polearm and was treated as such, no carrying device.




> war axes, maces, etc?


Well axes first. They are sharp, so you want to either cover the edge with a bit of leather, or make sure you are only wearing it on your hip/saddle when in armor and in a way where it can't snag and cut apart your clothes. Maces and one handed warhammers are far easier to wear.

That said, you can either straight up tuck them behind your belt, or there is a neat system I'm using which is two interlocked iron rings - one goes into your belt, the second one is for sliding the shaft of your weapon through. Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures of it, and there's only so much time I want to give it.

Or, you had a belt clip on the weapon itself, which was more rare.

*Spoiler: Belt clip*
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## Incanur

In a recent video, Matt Easton claims that the pike is "awful" for single combat. Period sources directly contest this notion.

I'm curious if y'all are aware of any additional historical texts that address the pike (in the broad sense, any long spear) in single combat.

Antonio Manciolino recommended the 12-14+ft lancia over the 8ft(ish) spiedo:

"Longer weapons are to be preferred to shorter ones: therefore, the spear is to be preferred to the spiedo, holding it against the latter not by the butt (dangerous because of the weapons length) but at mid-haft and with good advantage. Similarly, it is better to take a partisan rather than a two-handed sword."

A longer pike-type weapon would presumably be worse than Manciolino's lancia, but probably not dramatically so.

For unarmored single combat, George Silver gave the advantage to lighter 8-9ft hafted weapons like his short staff over anything longer but still gave pikes & other long staff weapons odds over anything shorter (including the halberd & sword & target).

Pikes also saw widespread use fighting in loose formation in 16th-century European warfare; extraordinary pikers often defended the shot (arquebusiers, etc.) & in that role might have to face multiple foes in melee combat with some room to move around. In 16th-century China, soldiers likewise used pikes in small teams as well as in large formations. Qi Jiguang seems to have thought that a soldier armed with sword & shield was at a disadvantage against the long spear & needed to throw a javelin to create an opportunity to rush in. None of this evidence from fencing manuals as well as military treatises makes much sense if pikes were awful in single combat.

People are only beginning to spar with pike simulators against other weapons, & the existing simulators may not sufficiently match historical pikes. As with other staff weapons, full-force sparring with pikes is difficult to do safely. Without robust evidence from accurate modern sparring by people experienced with historical techniques, dismissing period sources strikes me as very reckless & misguided.

Historical sources often clash with our common-sense preconceptions.

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## Gnoman

I talked to somebody who's a serious reenactor that does a lot of pike sparring, and his response is 




> a pike on its own is verry difficult--when i've been against someone on my own there are a few options as i see it: drop it and grab your sword; keep backing up; or half-hand it with the butt on the ground and you choking up on it right behind the head





> where they really shine is in combination with any other arm

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## Pauly

The only period illustrations I am aware of that show pikes being used in one on one situations are in dueling manuals. I have read many accounts of single combatant sword fights, or fights involving polearms, but I cannot recall any account involving at least one party having a pike. Which suggests that pikes werent used very much in one on one fights

Some of that may be be to do with the pike being a weapon of war, not something you carry around with you on a day to day basis to see off bandits, or muggers in a dark alley.

Some of it may be down to the pike being a low status weapon, not a weapon carried by the significant and interesting classes who have the coin to pay for fancy paintings or books.

Another issue is that pikes need to be made of thicker wood than spears, which means their weight goes up faster than just the length, making them less wieldy than spears. So longer pikes can be in the 5 to 6kg range, where shorter pole-arms are in the 2 to 3kg range, spears being lighter still. So maybe a shorter pike/long spear may be useful in a duel but the longest pikes not so much.

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## Martin Greywolf

> In a recent video, Matt Easton claims that the pike is "awful" for single combat. Period sources directly contest this notion.


Not even slightly. Whenever anyone says something like "period sources" say this or that on a topic this large, it means there wasn't enough research done. What historic sources are we even talking about? Fencing treatises are the best for this topic, but few of them even mention pikes, and for things like chronicles or strategical treatises, context is important - they could very well mean that the pike is the best for formation fighting only.

Even with all that said, there are sources that pre-date pikes. If we're using the word pike in the sense of the modern definitions, e.g. the weapon used for pike-and-shot warfare, you can put their origins at about Burgundian wars era of 1470s, and manuscript illuminations support this. Before this time, you see lances/long spears that top out at about twice the height of the user, usually a bit less, after this date you get well over that.

*Spoiler: Is not a pike*
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*Spoiler: Is a pike*
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That means that pike is over 4 meters/13 feet long at the least, and is usually at something like 6 meters/19 feet. Any treatise or source before this point cannot talk about pikes by definition, unless it happens to be one of the few sources from area where pikes were used earlier (e.g. Swiss cantons) - well, unless you define pike as anything longer than 3 meters, but then we're talking about a category of weapons as varied in how you can use them as single-edged sword. A 3-meter spear, you can use with one hand, a 5 meter pike, not so much.




> Antonio Manciolino recommended the 12-14+ft lancia over the 8ft(ish) spiedo:


When Manciolino uses the word pike, he isn't necessarily talking about the same as pike as the one in modern sense (which is how Matt Easton used the word). This is not the first time it happened, we have the same problem with the rapier terminology, where many period sources use the word rapier to describe a weapon that is an arming sword, sometimes without any additional bits on the crossguard.

*Spoiler: Both of these are "rappir" apparently*
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Now, let's examine what Opera Nova says.




> "Longer weapons are to be preferred to shorter ones: therefore, the spear is to be preferred to the spiedo, holding it against the latter not by the butt (dangerous because of the weapons length) but at mid-haft and with good advantage. Similarly, it is better to take a partisan rather than a two-handed sword."


First thing that should jump out here is that this is a very general advice. Longer weapon is better weapon in general, that is true enough.

Second thing is that the pike is on the short side, and wouldn't be considered pike by many modern classifications. But let's dig deeper.

Because Manciolino actually agrees with Matt Easton - even his short pike is an awful weapon to use in one on one combat, and you need to take steps to make it shorter.

But the real nail in the coffin? Tom Leoni's translation is straight up wrong. Because I looked up the relevant passage in Opera Nova in Italian and it says:




> Larme piu longhe sono dantiporre a le piu corte, & percio la Lancia è piu tosto da sceglier chel spiedo tenendola contra il spiedo non nel pedale per il periglio de la sua longhezza, ma nel mezzo con qualche uantaggio. Et medesimamente la partigiana piu tosto si deue torre che la spada de due mani.


A much more precise Swanger translation:




> The longer weapons are opposed to the shorter ones, and therefore the lance is sooner chosen than the spiedo, holding it against the spiedo not by the base owing to the peril of its length, but in the middle with such advantage. And similarly the partisan is taken sooner than the two handed sword.


Opera Nova isn't even talking about pikes in this section! It's just general "longer is better" advice, and gives you a tip on how to handle a weapon that is arguably too long.




> For unarmored single combat, George Silver gave the advantage to lighter 8-9ft hafted weapons like his short staff over anything longer but still gave pikes & other long staff weapons odds over anything shorter (including the halberd & sword & target).


Silver directly contradicts experience of everyone else, and it is hardly the first time - see his entire "rapiers are terrible dueling weapons" thing.




> Pikes also saw widespread use fighting in loose formation in 16th-century European warfare; extraordinary pikers often defended the shot (arquebusiers, etc.) & in that role might have to face multiple foes in melee combat with some room to move around. In 16th-century China, soldiers likewise used pikes in small teams as well as in large formations. Qi Jiguang seems to have thought that a soldier armed with sword & shield was at a disadvantage against the long spear & needed to throw a javelin to create an opportunity to rush in. None of this evidence from fencing manuals as well as military treatises makes much sense if pikes were awful in single combat.


Well, yeah, that's what pike is specifically designed to do - work well in formation. There was never any doubt about that particular bit.




> People are only beginning to spar with pike simulators against other weapons, & the existing simulators may not sufficiently match historical pikes. As with other staff weapons, full-force sparring with pikes is difficult to do safely. Without robust evidence from accurate modern sparring by people experienced with historical techniques, dismissing period sources strikes me as very reckless & misguided.
> 
> Historical sources often clash with our common-sense preconceptions.


The whole "it would work with real weapons" argument has been used again and again, and has been found lacking again and again. People like Matt Easton do have the necessary experience with period techniques to be able to tell pretty damn well whether something didn't work because simulators were used, or because of how the weapon is. If anything, sparring polearms are easier to use than their real counterparts on account of having to be much lighter, so pikes should be better at fighting in simulations, not worse.

As for how the historical sources clash with this, they don't. I've gone through all of the ones on Wiktenauer, and the ones that even talk about pikes are:

Schermkunst - a Dutch treatise, has a single pike vs pike play with instructions and no commentary other than that.

Andre Paurenfeyndt - tells you that staff techniques form the basis of many others, including pikes (zuberstangen), then talks about staff vs staff, the longest staff in pictures is about 3 meters

Meyer - has the long staff and actually a pretty lengthy section on it, but only does pike on pike as far as I can tell. He also directly contradicts Opera Nova advice and holds the pike at the end.

Manciolino - already discussed him.

Mair - has a pike section, but only one mixed play and no comment on advantages of it. He does, however, show a few techniques with pike held in the middle.

di Grassi - actually has a full chapter on polearms, and does talk about the pikes at length, there is even a translation on Wiktenauer. He pretty much agrees with Matt Easton, saying it sucks and you need to train super hard to do it:




> Therefore among renowned knights and great Lords this weapon is highly esteemed, because it is as well void of deceit, as also, for that in well handling thereof, there is required great strength of body, accompanied with great value and deep judgment: for there is required in the use thereof a most subtle delicate knowledge and consideration of times, and motions, and a ready resolution to strike.


Colombani - says he knows how to fight with it, proceeds to not tell us how

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## Incanur

> The only period illustrations I am aware of that show pikes being used in one on one situations are in dueling manuals. I have read many accounts of single combatant sword fights, or fights involving polearms, but I cannot recall any account involving at least one party having a pike.


Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography includes a number of small-scale encounters with pikes. In one case, he fought alone on foot with a "good pike" against a foe wielding a "lance." (There were others nearby on both sides but they held back out of fear.) Cellini described being "otherwise well armed" at the time, so I assume he was wearing some form of armor. (Mail appears elsewhere in the text.) The person he fought may also have been wearing armor, because Cellini wrote that he would have run his target through if the man had not fallen backward.

The text also describes arming relatively small numbers of guards or henchmen with pikes at various points. & there's at least one other fight involving a weapon called in pike in one version. However, translations do vary; one says the people opposed to Cellini in the above encounter had "pikes" while he had a "spear." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the original to see what words are used.

Jean Chandler does analyze three examples from Cellini's autobiography as involving pikes, relating them to how George Silver thought pikes & similar long staff weapons were pretty good for single combat in the open.




> Some of that may be be to do with the pike being a weapon of war, not something you carry around with you on a day to day basis to see off bandits, or muggers in a dark alley.


William Harrison's description of England says that people sometimes traveled outdoors with 13-14ft pikes on their shoulders, prompting riders to wear pistols.




> Some of it may be down to the pike being a low status weapon, not a weapon carried by the significant and interesting classes who have the coin to pay for fancy paintings or books.


This is not the case. Nobles & even kings fought with pikes in the 16th century. James IV of Scotland was in the front ranks at Flodden Field 1513 & perished there. I don't know for sure that he was wielding a pike, but he probably was. In any case, military manuals from the later 16th century stress how the pike was an honorable weapon fit for the best men. 




> Another issue is that pikes need to be made of thicker wood than spears, which means their weight goes up faster than just the length, making them less wieldy than spears. So longer pikes can be in the 5 to 6kg range, where shorter pole-arms are in the 2 to 3kg range, spears being lighter still. So maybe a shorter pike/long spear may be useful in a duel but the longest pikes not so much.


The weight does seem like an issue. However, pikes probably weren't more than 4.5kg. Sancho de LondoÃ±o gave a detailed dimensions of the kind of pike he recommended, & it would weigh about 3.88kg from the wood alone. & he described it as a rather long & heavy pike soldiers might complain about, so some pikes were presumably lighter. Very similarly, Cheng Zong You wrote that a 16.8ft pike for martial use would weigh 9.1lbs, but that somewhat shorter (& presumably lighter) pikes were also fine.

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## Incanur

> Because Manciolino actually agrees with Matt Easton - even his short pike is an awful weapon to use in one on one combat, and you need to take steps to make it shorter.


Manciolino recommended choosing the longer lancia over the shorter spiedo: that means he thought it was a better weapon (presumably in the context of an unarmored duel in the open). There's no way to square that with the notion that he thought the lancia was a terrible weapon. He elaborated on the technique later on:




> But if you had the lancia and was attacked by someone who had the partigiana, ronca or spiedo or other weapon, you will take the lancia in the middle and it will be enough to satisfy you that you have an arms length of lancia of advantage and more than the enemyÂs weapon length and so youÂll be sure that if you wanted to fight with all your lancia length against a short weapon he more easily could parry it and run you over


This passage also indicates that the lancia was quite long, as it still has an arm's length or more of reach advantage over other staff weapon while _held in the middle_. Modifying one's technique based on the opponent's weapon is basic martial arts & doesn't mean the weapon in question is bad or disadvantage. Jospeh Swetnam similarly recommended different techniques for using the staff (with a spike, so basically a spear) against the rapier & dagger versus against another staff. But he thought the staff had the advantage.




> Well, yeah, that's what pike is specifically designed to do - work well in formation. There was never any doubt about that particular bit.


You consider a team of five or ten soldiers to be in formation? Or soldiers explicitly not keeping ranks while defending the shot to be in formation?




> Meyer - has the long staff and actually a pretty lengthy section on it, but only does pike on pike as far as I can tell. He also directly contradicts Opera Nova advice and holds the pike at the end.


Manciolino doesn't mention holding the lancia at the end when fighting against another lancia that I see, only when facing a shorter weapon. Also, Meyer did mention holding the pike in the middle for earnest combat the field, at least according to the Jeffrey L. Forgeng translation.




> di Grassi - actually has a full chapter on polearms, and does talk about the pikes at length, there is even a translation on Wiktenauer. He pretty much agrees with Matt Easton, saying it sucks and you need to train super hard to do it:


Di Grassi didn't say anything about how the pike compares with other weapons, except that it has a powerful thrust (because circles) & it's honorable like the sword alone because of being void of deceit. The comments about how it takes strength, skill, & dexterity to use well presumably refer to pike against pike, which he is what di Grassi covered. This does not imply that he thought it was disadvantaged against other weapons.

This reminds of di Grassi's magnificent articulation of how fencing sucks in general: "And there want not also men in our time, who to the intent they be not wearied, beare [the round target] leaning on their thigh as though that in this exercise (in which only trauaile and paines are auaileable,) a man should onelie care for rest and quietnesse." 

Regarding Silver, it's misguided to interpret his system as so different from others. I recommend separating his bluster from his precise claims & instructions. The "short sword" he presented as superior to the rapier had a blade firmly within what people imagine as rapier length today (37-40 inches) & he instructed using it rather like a rapier when facing a long rapier. His written hierarchy of weapons technically gives a 48+in rapier odds over a 36in sword. (This may not have been his intention.) Other historical & contemporary fencers also favor single-handed sword blades shorter than the 43-46+in ones Silver criticized. 

Critically, what Silver spilled ink arguing for gives us a window into what he thought would be controversial at the time. He went on & on about rapier vs. short sword, & justified his preference for buckler over dagger, etc. He apparently didn't believe many readers would take issue with the idea that long staves & pikes have the odds over shorter weapons like halberds. In fact, in felt it necessary to argue that staff weapons of his perfect length of 8-9ft have the advantage over long staves & pikes. This implies that some of his contemporaries believe these longer staff weapons had the advantage.

Regarding historical manuals that address the pike, Luis Pacheco de NarvÃ¡ez's final work has a long section on how the single sword (rapier) can defeat the pike or any other staff weapon. I'm still trying to make sense of it, but he engages with what various other fencing masters wrote, such as di Grassi.

If the pike really is an "awful" weapon for single combat & so different from other staff weapons, it's curious that Pacheco would have a long section on rapier against pike & that he would lump together techniques against the pike & other staff weapons.

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## fusilier

One of my sources has a quote from the late 1500s or early 1600s that goes something like -- the Spanish still skirmish with halberds because they haven't yet learned how to skirmish with pikes (like the Dutch).  Now skirmishing isn't one-on-one, although it could, possibly, devolve into a collection of one-on-one fights.  Further the claim isn't that the pike is better than the halberd, but that you can skirmish with it.  But if pikemen could effectively skirmish then they could switch from large formations in close order, to smaller numbers defending skirmishers, which would be more efficient than having some set of soldiers armed with halberds just to protect skirmishers.  

If anybody cares I'll try to look up the actual quote, I'm pretty sure I know which source has it, I just don't have the time to dig through it at the moment.

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## Gnoman

> Some of it may be down to the pike being a low status weapon, not a weapon carried by the significant and interesting classes who have the coin to pay for fancy paintings or books.


What little I know of the heyday of the pike suggests that this is absolutely not the case. Pikemen were so key to success that they tended to be upper-echelon troops. They had nearly the highest status and pay among mercenary bands (artillery and the heaviest of cavalry outpaced them, largely due to the immense cost of the equipment), and formed the most valuable core of the growing national armies. The Spanish Tercios in particular dominated on the strength of their pikemen, until the bayonet (which allowed each musketeer to be his own pikeman, even if they were much worse at the role) and improved firearm design allowed linear musket tactics to replace them.

We _do_ have copious accounts of mercenaries, including from pike units, fighting duels and bar fights and other forms of single combat. They used knives and swords.

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## Vinyadan

About rapiers, the name comes from espada ropera, "robe sword" (in English probably more correctly "dress sword"). The Spanish name then referred to a function more than a shape, and I wouldn't be too surprised if this had happened in other languages that adopted it (plus the matter of translation of illustrated texts).

Then again, this is the usual deal, academic use of a historical name for the purpose of classification by shape will generally end up leaving it with a far more restrictive meaning than it had in historical sources.




> Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography includes a number of small-scale encounters with pikes. In one case, he fought alone on foot with a "good pike" against a foe wielding a "lance." (There were others nearby on both sides but they held back out of fear.) Cellini described being "otherwise well armed" at the time, so I assume he was wearing some form of armor. (Mail appears elsewhere in the text.) The person he fought may also have been wearing armor, because Cellini wrote that he would have run his target through if the man had not fallen backward.
> 
> The text also describes arming relatively small numbers of guards or henchmen with pikes at various points. & there's at least one other fight involving a weapon called in pike in one version. However, translations do vary; one says the people opposed to Cellini in the above encounter had "pikes" while he had a "spear." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the original to see what words are used.


http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/p...ume_5/t115.pdf The original text

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## Vinyadan

I took a look at the text. Cellini in general is pretty hard to understand. Italian has an  interesting history, spending its first few centuries as an art language  that mostly imitated XIII-XIV century Florentine. Cellini however used a XVI century Florentine, except when he tried to imitate greater  authors. As far as literature is concerned, his grammar and forms are  very unusual, but he was simply using the language of the common folk,  which changes very quickly and leaves very few traces in "official"  literature. He actually explains that he dictated the Life as a pastime  while working; a boy from his workshop wrote it down, and the work  remained unpublished for centuries after it was complete.

Now, as  for the terms: Cellini uses a "giannettone", which, according to the  old dictionaries, was a large "giannetta". The giannetta was a thrown  polearm. A Florentine contemporary to Cellini actually writes about  someone who threw a giannettone through a young man's chest. 
I am uncertain as to what happens in this scene. Cellini is on a  boat, a man on the shore comes forward to attack him, Cellini strikes at  him but the other man survives because he falls to the ground. Cellini then spares the man as he lies helpless.
There are two main things that are left open: does Cellini throw his weapon, or not? The verb he uses can mean both (throw a rock, strike with a sword). After the man had fallen, Cellini was still holding a weapon and he still had the enemy at reach, so maybe he didn't throw the giannettone and used it as a spear, but it's also possible that he did throw it and he had a sword with him.
The other question is the meaning of the fall. The man might have been armored and fell as he was pushed by the polearm, which hints to it not being thrown, or he could have been missed by the giannettone, thrown or otherwise, because he randomly fell by stumbling or slipping (he was close to the water). I find this option more likely.
Unsurprisingly, giannettone, being  a bigger spear than normal, was used by Aretino to refer to his penis.
There  are some museum items catalogued as "giannettone":  http://www.archiviodellacomunicazion...9/?WEB=MuseiVE  If I read correctly, the pole is 220 cm long. Some other reaches 260 cm.

The other men wield "dua pezzi di arme in asta". Those are about as undetermined as it gets: they are two polearms, and, unless there was some "arma in asta" by antonomasia in the times of Cellini, I think it's impossible to have a specific answer.

The text is at the link I posted earlier, pp. 157-159.

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## HeadlessMermaid

> There  are some museum items catalogued as "giannettone":  http://www.archiviodellacomunicazion...9/?WEB=MuseiVE


Oooh, since you shared that link, a language question. I like researching knives and daggers, and the words I know to look for in Italian sources/museums are _daga_, _pugnale_, _coltello_, and the more specific _sfondagiaco_, _stiletto_. And folding knives/clasp knives are usually called _coltelli a serramanico_, so searching for "coltello" covers them. Am I missing something?

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## Vinyadan

> Oooh, since you shared that link, a language question. I like researching knives and daggers, and the words I know to look for in Italian sources/museums are _daga_, _pugnale_, _coltello_, and the more specific _sfondagiaco_, _stiletto_. And folding knives/clasp knives are usually called _coltelli a serramanico_, so searching for "coltello" covers them. Am I missing something?


Some more words: quadrello, trafiere, misericordia. I'm not sure about the Italian academic classification, however. But yes, given how the website works, coltello/coltelli should cover everything (fermo, a serramanico, a scatto, da tasca); maybe you can add temperino, although it's a small utility knife. 

I once found a historical dictionary of military terminology, but I didn't think of bookmarking it.  :Small Sigh: 

EDIT: Some more words from the Italian Wikipedia: costoliere, fusetto/regola/centoventi, manosinistra/mancina, pistolese, balestra (di Avigliano or aviglianese, a kind of folding knife; normally, balestra means crossbow).

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## gbaji

> In a recent video, Matt Easton claims that the pike is "awful" for single combat. Period sources directly contest this notion.


Yeah. I'd take his assessment with a massive grain of salt. He seems almost obsessed with the idea that "closer is better" for one on one combat, which is not really the case. A lot of this is dependent on terrain and conditions, but the advantage of being able to threaten an opponent 6-8 feet further away than he can threaten you is massive in any arms comparison. I think there's a lot of arm chair quarterbacking that goes along with this sort of assessment, where it's just assumed to be super easy to "slip past the tip of his weapon, get inside his reach, and I've got him!", which I've seen favored by a number of folks who seem eternally to be the ones who get picked to make videos like this (seen him do his spiel on poleaxe use on a segment of some show at one point as well IIRC).

This often leads to what I've perceived as basically modern martial artists assessing older weapons based on how *they* would prefer to use them, with their existing, close in, rapid shifts in direction, style of fighting. Which naturally leans towards shorter, balanced weapons, with multiple attack methods (thrust, slash, hook), not because those were actually more likely to be useful in real combat historically, but because those are the weapons that fit most with how they would want to fight if put in that situation today.

These assessments just miss the most basic of all combat concepts. If I poke a hole if you 10-15+ feet away from me, or even just threaten to do so, your ability to close with me is massively limited. All those fancy close-in fighting techniques you may want to use, if only you could close that distance, can't actually be used until/unless you get past the tip of that pike. And guess what? As much as you may think "I'll just quickly slip by", the reality is that an even semi-skilled pikeman can pull back that tip, and re-thrust it right into you far far faster than you can perform a slip-by maneuver. Even held in a more center/balanced position (especially so, given a one on one situation), that pikeman is going to be able to quickly re-position his weapon to any direction of attack from a single opponent. Where the pike may fail most is in a one on many situation, where the pikeman can't block directional access from multiple angles at the same time. A single person trying to attack? Barring some sort of terrain that allows one to close, or the pikeman losing his footing/balance or something, it's almost impossible to actually get close enough to threaten him seriously.

While I would agree that some weapons may be "better" in one on one situations, giving it a 1 out of 10 is, frankly, absurd. And maybe reflects a significant bias on his own part. Or a massive lack of imagination, maybe.

I also kinda took issue with his assessment of flails in formation fighting. Again, I think he's missing some of the points of formation fighting techniques. The advantage of the longer military flail was that the swinging end could bypass defenses more easily than a rigidly mounted "head on a shaft" that most pole arms used. The real advantage of the flail was against the very formation weapon combo he ranked highest (spear and shield). And while I generally agree with his assessment of spear and shield, the point of the flail was that the swinging weight was designed specifically to move "over and around" a shield. Weapons that could only thrust or were swung directly can effectively be blocked by a shield by re-positioning the shield slightly. The flail will strike the shield with the haft of the weapon when parried, but the swinging end will then strike the opponent on the head and shoulders anyway, where a halberd or axe would be just blocked.

As someone who has some experience with heavy armor recreation fighting, I've seen a lot of fights end, not because someone received a single blow sufficient to "take them out", but due to repeated blows on the helmet, which will produce a ringing in the ears that will eventually result in one just not being able to continue fighting effectively anymore (used to do fighting in heavy armor where the rules were "person falls and is helpless, or taps out", not "points scored", or "assume injured location from every hit", which are in common use in most organizations, but doesn't really accurately simulate armor). What is often forgotten in the modern assumption of "killing blows matter", especially when we are looking at heavy armor situations, it was more about the effect over time of continual non-lethal blows that just plain wore down the opposing line. Modern combat sequences love to show dramatic scenes with blood spurting everywhere, but the reality is that formation fighting was more of a scrum, with folks pushing back and forth, bashing/hacking at each other, often to little immediate effect, for a significant period of time, with one side gradually wearing down the other, until they were able to break through their lines. That's when effective fighting and killing blows often started. But it could take hours of sustained wearing down of the line first.

And yeah. In that sort of situation, long hafted flails were an incredibly effective weapon. And guess what? Shorter flails were effective as well, in single combat, for the exact same reason. To be fair, they are somewhat specialized, but they are specialized against the shield. It's literally why you use a flail in combat. So to the degree that shields + <some other weapon> are ranked, you have to consider flails as well, as a sort of paper to their rock or something.





> People are only beginning to spar with pike simulators against other weapons, & the existing simulators may not sufficiently match historical pikes. As with other staff weapons, full-force sparring with pikes is difficult to do safely. Without robust evidence from accurate modern sparring by people experienced with historical techniques, dismissing period sources strikes me as very reckless & misguided.
> 
> Historical sources often clash with our common-sense preconceptions.


Yup. The fact that most recreation fighting organizations place rules specifically against thrust attacks with hafted weapons (for very real safety reasons) might just suggest why they were more effective in actual combat than many people think. So yeah, it does tend to create a false perception that they aren't as effective as they really were when they were in active use. Most organizations basically only allow for halberd style polearms, and usually only allow downward or slightly angled from downward swings to be used (again, for safety reasons).

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## PhoenixPhyre

> Yeah. I'd take his assessment with a massive grain of salt. He seems almost obsessed with the idea that "closer is better" for one on one combat, which is not really the case. A lot of this is dependent on terrain and conditions, but the advantage of being able to threaten an opponent 6-8 feet further away than he can threaten you is massive in any arms comparison. I think there's a lot of arm chair quarterbacking that goes along with this sort of assessment, where it's just assumed to be super easy to "slip past the tip of his weapon, get inside his reach, and I've got him!", which I've seen favored by a number of folks who seem eternally to be the ones who get picked to make videos like this (seen him do his spiel on poleaxe use on a segment of some show at one point as well IIRC).
> 
> This often leads to what I've perceived as basically modern martial artists assessing older weapons based on how *they* would prefer to use them, with their existing, close in, rapid shifts in direction, style of fighting. Which naturally leans towards shorter, balanced weapons, with multiple attack methods (thrust, slash, hook), not because those were actually more likely to be useful in real combat historically, but because those are the weapons that fit most with how they would want to fight if put in that situation today.
> 
> These assessments just miss the most basic of all combat concepts. If I poke a hole if you 10-15+ feet away from me, or even just threaten to do so, your ability to close with me is massively limited. All those fancy close-in fighting techniques you may want to use, if only you could close that distance, can't actually be used until/unless you get past the tip of that pike. And guess what? As much as you may think "I'll just quickly slip by", the reality is that an even semi-skilled pikeman can pull back that tip, and re-thrust it right into you far far faster than you can perform a slip-by maneuver. Even held in a more center/balanced position (especially so, given a one on one situation), that pikeman is going to be able to quickly re-position his weapon to any direction of attack from a single opponent. Where the pike may fail most is in a one on many situation, where the pikeman can't block directional access from multiple angles at the same time. A single person trying to attack? Barring some sort of terrain that allows one to close, or the pikeman losing his footing/balance or something, it's almost impossible to actually get close enough to threaten him seriously.
> 
> While I would agree that some weapons may be "better" in one on one situations, giving it a 1 out of 10 is, frankly, absurd. And maybe reflects a significant bias on his own part. Or a massive lack of imagination, maybe.
> 
> I also kinda took issue with his assessment of flails in formation fighting. Again, I think he's missing some of the points of formation fighting techniques. The advantage of the longer military flail was that the swinging end could bypass defenses more easily than a rigidly mounted "head on a shaft" that most pole arms used. The real advantage of the flail was against the very formation weapon combo he ranked highest (spear and shield). And while I generally agree with his assessment of spear and shield, the point of the flail was that the swinging weight was designed specifically to move "over and around" a shield. Weapons that could only thrust or were swung directly can effectively be blocked by a shield by re-positioning the shield slightly. The flail will strike the shield with the haft of the weapon when parried, but the swinging end will then strike the opponent on the head and shoulders anyway, where a halberd or axe would be just blocked.
> ...


All of this discussion makes me wonder more about something I've always wondered--muscle-powered[1] weapons in the real world and their martial disciplines/techniques have evolved over centuries based on fairly specific threat envelopes. Especially the military ones. The threat model seems to be "dudes with roughly similar shapes and sizes and equipment, plus maybe horses." So things evolved around, say, fighting heavily armored people. But they're all roughly the same size, shape, and have the same rough capabilities (strength, stamina, etc). And mostly either in formation or at least in company of a bunch of other people. Or in formalized one-on-one-ish duels, with slightly less emphasis on "I get mugged on the highroad". And even then, the enemies are basically people-shaped and people-equipped.

In a typical fantasy setting, weapons would have evolved in very different contexts. Especially when it comes to those that adventurers[2] would specialize in. Sure, you do fight bandits, evil knights, etc. But even they may have drastically different capabilities--some of them can cast spells. Some of them can make their weapons strike with holy/unholy fire. Etc. And then there are the huge variance in monster types. Everything from flying stuff (small and large) to oozes to dragons to giants and giant-kin (and giant animals) and fiends. Few of which wear conventional armor or wield conventional weapons with conventional, human-like capabilities. Parrying the giant's club doesn't get you very much benefit (assuming realistic-ish physics). Etc.

This seems to suggest that the amount we can directly assume about fantasy weapons, armor, and techniques from real-world historical records is, well, limited. And becomes even more limited the less we focus on men-at-arms (humanoid soldiers fighting other humanoid soldiers on battlefields) and the more we focus on monster-hunting/dungeon-delving/etc adventurers.

No, I don't have any answers. But it's something to consider, I think.

[1] leaving things like artillery and other crew-served or vehicle mounted stuff out of here, mainly focusing on the medieval-ish and before weapons
[2] assuming the world is such that such a thing exists, as it seems to do in most D&D-like settings (informally or formally). Even though it didn't exist as such (very much) in the real world.

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## Mechalich

> This seems to suggest that the amount we can directly assume about fantasy weapons, armor, and techniques from real-world historical records is, well, limited. And becomes even more limited the less we focus on men-at-arms (humanoid soldiers fighting other humanoid soldiers on battlefields) and the more we focus on monster-hunting/dungeon-delving/etc adventurers.


Most military-oriented fantasy that takes itself even remotely seriously focuses heavily on humanoid soldiers fighting other humanoid soldiers on battlefields - and actually the modern trend is strongly towards 'humans only' - for exactly this reason.

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## HeadlessMermaid

> Some more words: quadrello, trafiere, misericordia. I'm not sure about the Italian academic classification, however. But yes, given how the website works, coltello/coltelli should cover everything (fermo, a serramanico, a scatto, da tasca); maybe you can add temperino, although it's a small utility knife. 
> 
> I once found a historical dictionary of military terminology, but I didn't think of bookmarking it. 
> 
> EDIT: Some more words from the Italian Wikipedia: costoliere, fusetto/regola/centoventi, manosinistra/mancina, pistolese, balestra (di Avigliano or aviglianese, a kind of folding knife; normally, balestra means crossbow).


A million thanks, that's super helpful!

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## PhoenixPhyre

> Most military-oriented fantasy that takes itself even remotely seriously focuses heavily on humanoid soldiers fighting other humanoid soldiers on battlefields - and actually the modern trend is strongly towards 'humans only' - for exactly this reason.


This seems circular -- let "takes itself seriously" equal "things well approximated by real life"...

More importantly, it seems to miss the entire point (for me at least) of having fantasy worlda. The ability to deviate from the real, to ask "what if things were different?"

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## Pauly

> Most military-oriented fantasy that takes itself even remotely seriously focuses heavily on humanoid soldiers fighting other humanoid soldiers on battlefields - and actually the modern trend is strongly towards 'humans only' - for exactly this reason.


Or if they do fight monsters they fight A monster or monster type. None of the trawling through the bestiary from days of yore.

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## Gnoman

In most fantasy settings I'm aware of, the most common foes to fight are humans or at least humanoid, even if they're often bigger and stronger than baseline humans, they're not absurdly so - orcs, goblins, Trollocs, zombies, draconians, etc. More exotic monsters are more rarely encountered, and are treated as a specialist threat. This would likely push weapons into the same channels that they went historically.

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## Mechalich

> In most fantasy settings I'm aware of, the most common foes to fight are humans or at least humanoid, even if they're often bigger and stronger than baseline humans, they're not absurdly so - orcs, goblins, Trollocs, zombies, draconians, etc. More exotic monsters are more rarely encountered, and are treated as a specialist threat. This would likely push weapons into the same channels that they went historically.


I could see changes in muscle and organ structure even in humanoids leading to shifts in weapon design/choice, but it would be similar to the way shifts in armor composition did the same. For example, Trollocs are larger and stronger than humans, but are marginally less agile and, due to both their size and the high variability in their physique, have limited access to armor. Consequently, anti-trolloc weapon designs might emphasize broader points than those intended for use against humans to maximize flesh-cutting power as opposed to armor penetration.

I imagine this would lead to duplicate arsenals in groups that face most trolloc-type opponents and armored humans with some regularity, similar to how an archer would carry different arrow types. The Witcher, in which Geralt has one sword for fighting people and another for killing monsters, gestures in this direction, albeit in a limited way.

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## Mr Beer

Significantly > man-sized opponents = spears or variants thereof.

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## gbaji

> Significantly > man-sized opponents = spears or variants thereof.


As a general rule, yes. But that can often assume we're talking about larger humanoid shaped opponents. What about a giant serpent? Where a thrusting weapon against a curved armored surface may not be the best approach and arguably becomes _less effective_ the longer the shaft and farther away you are. Thrusting with a sword up close may penetrate just fine, with a spear from 15 feet away? Not as much. Just too hard to get a "straight in" line of attack without glancing off. What about tactics against draconic foes? Even setting aside breath weapons and flying, creatures that shape (and with some variable combinations of limbs/claws/bite) may have multiple attack angles, and may require some special tactics to approach and attack successfully (though I still might see spears being pretty useful in that case as well).

And that's before we consider more "exotic" creatures, like Ropers, or Shoggoths, or slime variants. Or *really big* things. I came up with some custom rules for running a Purple Worm in my game (I wasn't playing D&D). We're talking about something with about a 20' diameter, and some 200' long. Super thick hide. Piercing weapons were great for penetrating, but did literally nothing to its total structure  (You're literally poking it with a toothpick and doing no significant tissue/muscle damage underneath the skin). Crushing weapons? Mostly bounced off. Only slashing weapons could do much (you're cutting muscle that it needs to move, and tearing gashes in its side, which may let the blood/ichor out), but even then, what's the total length of your swing relative to the size of the creature? Pretty small. So even the most powerful "can cut through anything" type weapons could only basically cut a good sized gash in one segment of the creature.

It was a fun exercise in creature design. And was absolutely about the players figuring out the best tactics and weapons to use, and basically cutting enough gashes in the thing that it eventually just couldn't move anymore and collapsed. It didn't even attack in the usual way. Basically it flexed as it moved through/by them, so merely attempting to stand next to it within weapons range as it steamrolled by had a chance of being caught up in a flex and shoved away violently (possibly before even getting in a good swing). And, of course, those who weren't able to get out of the way of its massive maw, could get swallowed (which presented a whole new set of problems).

One of the most difficult things to do in any game is come up with a consistent set of combat rules and weapon system that can handle the "normal" range of human vs human combat (and hopefully do that well), while also scaling up (and down) to larger/smaller creatures, exotic creature types/shapes, and still do so in a manner that respects the "traditional" uses and pros/cons of historical weapons. And a lot of that is going to be based on an understanding of *why* some weapons were historically used in different situations, since that can tell you about how effective they may be (or may not be) in more exotic gaming situations.

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## Lapak

> As a general rule, yes. But that can often assume we're talking about larger humanoid shaped opponents. What about a giant serpent? Where a thrusting weapon against a curved armored surface may not be the best approach and arguably becomes _less effective_ the longer the shaft and farther away you are. Thrusting with a sword up close may penetrate just fine, with a spear from 15 feet away? Not as much. Just too hard to get a "straight in" line of attack without glancing off. What about tactics against draconic foes? Even setting aside breath weapons and flying, creatures that shape (and with some variable combinations of limbs/claws/bite) may have multiple attack angles, and may require some special tactics to approach and attack successfully (though I still might see spears being pretty useful in that case as well).


Thinking of the Runelords series of books here, where the primary non-human threat in the first series was giant evil bug/crustacean type things, too heavily armored for spears to be useful most of the time. The (superhuman) characters fighting them in that series mostly relied on all-metal long-hafted warhammer-type pole arms, IIRC - increased the reach enough to survive but had enough force to crack a shell rather than skidding off. It really does depend on what you're fighting once you leave the 'basically humanoid' realm, but gets muddy in fantasy because we're already talking about things that don't quite work given normal physics (body shapes don't scale up readily, superhuman warriors can use weapons regular people can't, etc.)

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## Rynjin

From what I remember the superhuman characters primarily killed them by attacking their weakpoints for massive damage; a maneuver mostly too dangerous for people who didn't have endowments.

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## Grim Portent

Spears and pikes work fine against elephants, rhinos and other large animals, especially in groups. Unless something breaks the laws of physics I see no reason to assume any creature would be able to resist them.

Scales, chitin, osteoderms and so on can only realistically be so thick before they stop scaling well, especially chitin what with it being an invertebrate thing and all. After a certain point spears become the best weapons for killing things because they can pierce through thick hide, part scales and so on and penetrate deep into organs. People don't hunt crocodiles with swords after all.


If you toss realism out the window them what weapons would be effective is also completely out the window because the laws of physics are working differently. If you scaled a crab up to the size of an elephant and didn't have to care that it would suffocate or crush itself under it's own weight then it would probably be more or less immune to any man scale attack that isn't on exposed flesh. Something like a pickaxe or warhammer might be able to pierce or crush them in a small area, but chitin isn't like stone or metal, it's organic and doesn't crack or crumple quite the same way.

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## halfeye

> If you toss realism out the window them what weapons would be effective is also completely out the window because the laws of physics are working differently. If you scaled a crab up to the size of an elephant and didn't have to care that it would suffocate or crush itself under it's own weight then it would probably be more or less immune to any man scale attack that isn't on exposed flesh. Something like a pickaxe or warhammer might be able to pierce or crush them in a small area, but chitin isn't like stone or metal, it's organic and doesn't crack or crumple quite the same way.


Chitin is strange stuff alright, but there's a reason larger crustaceans typically have calcium based backing for it. I'm not sure that there isn't another limit on the size of arthropods, the lungs on spiders are really inefficient as sizes get larger, but coconut crabs have better lungs and they're still limited in size. Lobsters that have gills, but they also don't grow much beyond a certain size.

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## Grim Portent

> Chitin is strange stuff alright, but there's a reason larger crustaceans typically have calcium based backing for it. I'm not sure that there isn't another limit on the size of arthropods, the lungs on spiders are really inefficient as sizes get larger, but coconut crabs have better lungs and they're still limited in size. Lobsters that have gills, but they also don't grow much beyond a certain size.


My understanding is that weight is the biggest problem rather than their lungs/gills per se, though their circulation isn't great as I understand it.

The big issue with growing big is that exoskeletons are heavy compared to bones and have to be shed rather than growing with the animal. Shedding is dangerous for multiple reasons and gets harder the bigger the exoskeleton is. There's a theory that some lobsters die as a result of growing too large to moult rather than any directly aging related diseases (telomerase FTW,) but given their habitat it's hard to prove their maximum size or cause of death in the wild.

Really big invertebrates are all boneless for a reason.

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## halfeye

> My understanding is that weight is the biggest problem rather than their lungs/gills per se, though their circulation isn't great as I understand it.
> 
> The big issue with growing big is that exoskeletons are heavy compared to bones and have to be shed rather than growing with the animal. Shedding is dangerous for multiple reasons and gets harder the bigger the exoskeleton is. There's a theory that some lobsters die as a result of growing too large to moult rather than any directly aging related diseases (telomerase FTW,) but given their habitat it's hard to prove their maximum size or cause of death in the wild.
> 
> Really big invertebrates are all boneless for a reason.


Shedding is a problem all right, but it's mainly due to chitin being dead stuff that can't grow. There's no reason that a non-chitinous exoskeleton couldn't grow, all the exoskeletons we know of are chitinous though. Lignin is similar, and has similar conequences.

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## Mechalich

Arthropod size is limited by a combination of factors, including respiration, molting, and locomotion. The two largest lineages of arthropods known, the giant millipede _Arthropleura_ and the giant sea scorpion_ Jaekelopterus_, appear to have had very thin exoskeletons. The circulation issue isn't the lungs, but rather the nature of the open circulatory system. Arthropods don't have arteries and veins, their hemolymph if pumped by the heart into direct contact with the organs and then drawn back through a series of pores. This system loses efficacy at larger sizes. Still, under the right environmental conditions arthropods can get quite large. _Jaekelopterus_ holds the aquatic record at 2.6 meters of length, and _Arthropleura_ hits 2.5 on land. 

An interesting possibility, in fantasy, is an animal with a jointed exoskeleton and an closed circulatory system like that of vertebrates. This would, potentially all for larger animals, or a higher activity level among very large exoskeletal animals.

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## gbaji

> If you toss realism out the window them what weapons would be effective is also completely out the window because the laws of physics are working differently. If you scaled a crab up to the size of an elephant and didn't have to care that it would suffocate or crush itself under it's own weight then it would probably be more or less immune to any man scale attack that isn't on exposed flesh. Something like a pickaxe or warhammer might be able to pierce or crush them in a small area, but chitin isn't like stone or metal, it's organic and doesn't crack or crumple quite the same way.


I do think you can have consistent sets of rules even in alternative worlds/whatever in which  things that are impossible happen. You can have giant spiders, crabs, serpents, dragons (even ones that fly!), while still coming up with some reasonable and consistent ways of handling such things. You don't have to just toss all the rules out just because some of the rules are broken.

And yeah, things like "Ok. If we imagine some magic allows for creatures with 8 inch thick chitin to exist, what weapons would be effective against them" do tend to still work as a basic thought experiment. So you can create rules that model such things. You just have to spend a bit more time thinking about them.

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## Mechalich

> I do think you can have consistent sets of rules even in alternative worlds/whatever in which  things that are impossible happen. You can have giant spiders, crabs, serpents, dragons (even ones that fly!), while still coming up with some reasonable and consistent ways of handling such things. You don't have to just toss all the rules out just because some of the rules are broken.


The way evolution works, a lot of things are 'impossible' now, because of events that happened in the Cambrian or even earlier. For example, you can't have a six-limbed tetrapod because there's no way for that developmentally to occur without, you know, killing the embryo, but there's absolutely no intrinsic reason why large animals can't have six limbs. It's actually quite difficult to tease out biological options, especially in the region of overall organismal design or 'bauplan,' that aren't available because of evolutionary history from those that aren't available because some aspect of chemistry or physics says 'doesn't work, sorry' in part because we can't (yet) design organisms from scratch outside the bounds of said evolutionary history and find out.

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## halfeye

> The way evolution works, a lot of things are 'impossible' now, because of events that happened in the Cambrian or even earlier. For example, you can't have a six-limbed tetrapod because there's no way for that developmentally to occur without, you know, killing the embryo, but there's absolutely no intrinsic reason why large animals can't have six limbs. It's actually quite difficult to tease out biological options, especially in the region of overall organismal design or 'bauplan,' that aren't available because of evolutionary history from those that aren't available because some aspect of chemistry or physics says 'doesn't work, sorry' in part because we can't (yet) design organisms from scratch outside the bounds of said evolutionary history and find out.


Absolutely. We do seem to be heading in the direction of being able to design organisms quite quickly at the moment though.

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## Grim Portent

> I do think you can have consistent sets of rules even in alternative worlds/whatever in which  things that are impossible happen. You can have giant spiders, crabs, serpents, dragons (even ones that fly!), while still coming up with some reasonable and consistent ways of handling such things. You don't have to just toss all the rules out just because some of the rules are broken.
> 
> And yeah, things like "Ok. If we imagine some magic allows for creatures with 8 inch thick chitin to exist, what weapons would be effective against them" do tend to still work as a basic thought experiment. So you can create rules that model such things. You just have to spend a bit more time thinking about them.


Consistent parhaps, but it's largely going to fall down to stylistic choices and retroactive justifications than any real logic. I'm not sure we can even predict what properties shells, be they chitin, calcium, ferric or otherwise, would have once you get outside the thicknesses and structures we know of, it's not unusual for materials to exhibit divergent properties when arranged differently or in different quantities.

What weapons would kill a giant crab? In the real world it would be spears and even arrows, like every other large animal, because a crab past a certain size can't be heavily armoured.

In fantasy though it's usually going to be hammers or picks, because they work on metal armour and that's basically the same thing isn't it?

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## Vinyadan

> The big issue with growing big is that exoskeletons are heavy compared to bones and have to be shed rather than growing with the animal. Shedding is dangerous for multiple reasons and gets harder the bigger the exoskeleton is. There's a theory that some lobsters die as a result of growing too large to moult rather than any directly aging related diseases (telomerase FTW,) but given their habitat it's hard to prove their maximum size or cause of death in the wild.
> 
> Really big invertebrates are all boneless for a reason.


You might want to google the Holy Order of the Claw as a way to have an answer in the future  :Small Wink:

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## halfeye

> Really big invertebrates are all boneless for a reason.





> B. latro is the largest terrestrial arthropod, and indeed terrestrial invertebrate, in the world;


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab#Description

On land they're not.

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## Grim Portent

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab#Description
> 
> On land they're not.


9 pounds is not a big animal by any definition. You can pick up a coconut crab in one hand with some effort.

It's the biggest terrestrial invertebrate, but it's still tiny as animals go, and miniscule compared to the size of the larger soft bodied invertebrates. Even the giant octopus, not even close to the biggest invertebrate in terms of mass, outweighs it several times over.

The coconut crab is an impressive animal in many ways, but it's not exactly a standout in terms of size.

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## Vinyadan

> Even the giant octopus, not even close to the biggest invertebrate in terms of mass, outweighs it several times over.


About this specific example: water in general increases sizes, though. Bears and elephants are pretty small, compared to water mammals, and an ocean turtle can be twice as heavy as the heaviest land tortoise.

Anyway, if we use the megafauna 100-pound indicator, the coconut crab is certainly below it.

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## Mr Beer

I think teams fighting heavily armoured giant monsters would still have people wielding long spears in order to fight at a distance and target vulnerable points. I suspect an exoskeleton that utterly nullifies any use of 18 foot pikes with hardened steel tips designed to pierce armour, would be too strong to damage with warhammers or mauls. Remember a pike can be set into the ground and if the creature advances, it uses it's own bulk to pierce itself - surely applying force that a human can't match. So I think a heavily armoured foe that can still be injured with difficulty might be best tackled with a mix of pikes, polearms that can be swung and employ a spike or hammer head and maybe sharpshooters targeting eyes or other such vulnerable points.

D&D-style oozes tend to have a wide range of immunities and a small list of specific attacks that can be employed successfully. A more realistic protoplasmic monster would be probably vulnerable to fire and caustic or corrosive liquids. So any weapon which allows liquids to be sprayed onto the beast would be the key "melee" weapon and then for distance attacks, ceramic or glass vials with liquid inside, thrown pitch torches, fire arrows and catapaults with larger containers of liquids or buckets of live coals.

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## KineticDiplomat

Re: Weapons and Humanoids in Fantasy

The issue here is that "realistic" means understanding arms and armor as an intersection of production capability and need. This does not tend to produce cool results, and at some point as a fantasy environment you're going to start fibbing...at which point you run into trying to produce "realistic" results for something based well outside the bounds of reality. 

Take the spear. Comparatively easy to make - examples go well back into pre-history, literally hundreds of thousands of years. And pretty much any beast without true armor is threatened by a  man with spear. Elephant, tiger, crocodile, gorilla, giant snake...a man with long spear has a pretty good chance to kill it. So here we have something easy to use and easy to make that could reliably kill most "realistic" fantasy beasts. 

It also is pretty good at killing humans, and by extension, other humanoids. There's really only a narrow portion of muscle powered warfare where the spear or pike aren't the dominant melee weapon...and even that is up to debate by how you frame dominant. 

The bow falls in a similar niche. Turns out shooting someone or something from a safe distance is popular. Turns out that if you're not armored, it has a pretty good chance to kill or maim anything short of the truly huge (think elephant). 

So the "realistic" fantasy answer is usually to either armor up, remove the lethal mechanism (aka poking a hole in, crushing, or cutting through flesh and organs somehow isn't fatal - usually because magic), or just make the thing so big that things Ike spears would be like poking you with a thumb tac.

But that causes its own issues. How exactly do your primitive orcs go about wearing plates of heavy iron - they have the muscles, but do they have the agrarian society pumping out their presumably higher caloric needs to the point where there is enough excess productivity to both mine iron in the right quantities and smith it? If so, are they really orcs any more, in the style the common fantasy wants to use them? 

f the dragon is naturally covered in plate and several thousand pounds, then chances are very little you have in the way of personal weaponry is going to matter.  "The PC" doesn't kill the dragon with basic chopping and stabbing, barring something like stabbing it in the eye while it sleeps. There's still plenty of realistic ways to kill it, but not the kind that most fantasy game systems envision. Definitely not the kind where someone is making "and this is the cool dragon slaying sword."

We could go on, but you get the point. Realistic weapon looks are often uncool (you killed thraaka dum the ogre master by...stabbing him once in his belly with a common spear? Yes) or not winnable in the core game play loop sense (you roll to hit, and it's irrelevant. Anyhow, you die). And tracing weapons dev off it becomes irrelevant either because "I have an answer...it's a spear" or "we aren't killing that one on one, shoot it with a siege engine" are going to be main directions you go.

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## gbaji

> The way evolution works, a lot of things are 'impossible' now, because of events that happened in the Cambrian or even earlier. For example, you can't have a six-limbed tetrapod because there's no way for that developmentally to occur without, you know, killing the embryo, but there's absolutely no intrinsic reason why large animals can't have six limbs. It's actually quite difficult to tease out biological options, especially in the region of overall organismal design or 'bauplan,' that aren't available because of evolutionary history from those that aren't available because some aspect of chemistry or physics says 'doesn't work, sorry' in part because we can't (yet) design organisms from scratch outside the bounds of said evolutionary history and find out.


I think we were more talking about "violates the laws of physics" sorts of things rather than "that's not how evolution progressed on planet Earth" sorts of things. And yeah, once you get to "20 ft crabs with 6" thick shells", you're getting into the "how the heck can this thing move/breathe/whatever" questions. But handwaving that away as "a wizard did it", doesn't mean you also have to handwave away other logical concepts of combat. You can still go through the thought experiment of "Ok. Let's assume that 20ft crabs with 6" shells exist, and can walk around, and attack folks with their claws and whatnot. What weapons would work against them?".

Now you could also have "rules" in your fantasy world in which 6' humanoids can stride around wielding 20' long flaming swords of adamant, cutting through solid rock or something. And yeah... You have to take that sort of thing into account as well. Didn't say that the thought experiments were always going to be easy.




> Consistent parhaps, but it's largely going to fall down to stylistic choices and retroactive justifications than any real logic. I'm not sure we can even predict what properties shells, be they chitin, calcium, ferric or otherwise, would have once you get outside the thicknesses and structures we know of, it's not unusual for materials to exhibit divergent properties when arranged differently or in different quantities.


Sure. But fortunately, most game systems abstract and simplify such things already. We don't have to know the precise tensile/ductile/whatever properties of every material in every type of armor option available in a game to do basic things like "it weighs X lbs/encumbrance/whatever , and has Y armor class/points/whatever". We can then abstract rules for slashing/crushing/thrusting weapons, with slightly different damage/reach/whatever effects based on weapon type (and perhaps specific properties of each weapon within each type). We can make that as simple or complex as we want, while still making the game system "usable". That's always going to be a balance between how much detail and realism you want versus how playable you want your system to be, but those rules are always going to be at least to some degree a simplified abstraction of "real life" (or whatever passes as "real life" in the game world you are simulating).

And yes, we can then go further and create specific creatures, with yet more special rules to handle their odd/unusual shapes or defenses. And already having the existing weapons system rules, most game systems should allow for insertion of these sorts of things. Are they ever going to perfectly match the "real world"? No. Can't. However, you can still consider "real world" weapons capabilities when creating those abstracted rules (and creature specific sub-rules).

As I did in my purple worm example earlier. I considered not just how thick its hide was (armor points in this case), but how different weapons would work against both the hide *and* how effective at damaging the tissues/muscle beneath. And in that case, I came up with a sort of "segmented HPs" model, where hitting one section just couldn't do much to the whole (unless someone actually was wielding a 20' flaming adamant sword, I suppose). And pointy weapons were less useful as a logical result of examining the body type.




> What weapons would kill a giant crab? In the real world it would be spears and even arrows, like every other large animal, because a crab past a certain size can't be heavily armoured.
> 
> In fantasy though it's usually going to be hammers or picks, because they work on metal armour and that's basically the same thing isn't it?


Kinda depends on  how you scale up that crab's armor, and how that interacts with some combination of weapon damage and armor piercing potentials. Hammers and picks may be great at smashing parts of the thick armor, but may not penetrate very far into the crab to hit its vulnerable bits. Maybe spears will more readily poke a hole in the armor (or just bounce off?), but do even less damage unless you just happen to target the right spot (deeper penetration, but narrow hole, which could miss vital bits entirely).

I could certainly see hammers being pretty useful against the legs/claws of the crab. Spears almost certainly less so, but maybe a wash against the body, with the distinct advantage that you could probably poke it with a spear without getting as far into claw range doing so.

To be honest, long before I'd insert rules in my game to distinguish different types of weapon damage, I'd put in rules for reach effects for different weapons. So the biggest advantage to using a spear in a hypothetical (perhaps more simple) game where all weapons just have "damage", and all damage works equally against all "armor", spears would allow one to attack from farther away. So even if we added more rules to model weapon types against different armor (and creature) types, I'd still maybe want to be the spear guy fighting the giant crab, while someone else goes up and stands right under it with their sword and shield.

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## Mechalich

> I think we were more talking about "violates the laws of physics" sorts of things rather than "that's not how evolution progressed on planet Earth" sorts of things. And yeah, once you get to "20 ft crabs with 6" thick shells", you're getting into the "how the heck can this thing move/breathe/whatever" questions.


Well, it depends how wedded you are to the 'crab' aspect of 'giant crab' as opposed to 'thing that looks extremely crab-like but has the appropriate adaptations to actually be 20' tall.' Because a decapod with big claws that's 20' tall with segmented appendages is not necessarily something that violates the laws of physics, it just won't operate 'under the chitin' anything like a crab does on Earth. In many ways this depends on how you think about fantastical creatures, do you treat them via fantasy handwaving, or do you try to think about them as designed organism that should, as much as possible, actually work.

Now, the 6" thick shell bit is a little different, since nothing of such size is likely to have such massive armor. Triceratops, for instance, was a 25' long animal with a massive defensive frill, but it was nothing like 6" thick (more like 1-2"). This is one of the problems of fantasy creatures, attempts to 'scale up' linearly, when that is not how biology actually works. 

Of course, even 1" thick mineralized chitin would be some pretty formidable armor, probably equivalent to plate and many of the strategies useful against a human being in plate, ie. knock them down and stick a dagger in the joints, aren't going to be useful on something like a gigantic crab or even a completely non-fictional ankylosaur. And this is definitely a thing game systems have trouble with. There's a comparable problem of anti-personnel weapons versus vehicles that shows up a lot in modern games, such as the rather common situation of someone unloading an entire assault rifle clip at a target in an SUV. 

I'd imagine, in a fantasy setting where large, armored, and extremely tough animals were common - especially if they were domesticated or semi-intelligent, such as the troll-powered army of Mordor in Peter Jackson's LotR films - specialized anti-big-animal weapons would exist just in the same fashion as modern militaries carry anti-armor weapons to take out vehicles. History is clear that specialized anti-elephant tactics were devised in the places and periods where elephants were common enough in warfare for armies to need to think about this, so fantasy civilizations would to the same.

One other important thing to note, with regard to biology, is that big animals have big appetites, which means they have low population densities overall - herd animals may form huge, localized aggregations, but those herds have to _move_ to survive - so the actual number of these things is going to be fairly small. Also, because big animals generally start out as much smaller animals, the solution to say, the local T-Rex problem, is generally 'smash all the eggs' and then wait for the adults to die off.

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## Vinyadan

I suspect that some particularly large placoderms might have had 15-cm thick armour, but they were fish, and it only covered the forward part of their body. Among land animals, I'm not sure that even the armour of ankylosaurus reached such thickness.

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## Mechalich

> I suspect that some particularly large placoderms might have had 15-cm thick armour, but they were fish, and it only covered the forward part of their body. Among land animals, I'm not sure that even the armour of ankylosaurus reached such thickness.


Dunkleosteus, among the largest placoderms (certainly that's well-studied), had armor that maxed out at 5-cm thick, so not much thicker than the largest armored land animals. Or course, in evolutionary terms there are considerations beyond pure physics. Armor is energetically expensive to produce, so there's no reason to evolve overprotective defenses. Nothing's going to evolve armor beyond whatever's necessary to protect from the local apex predator. Triceratops evolved that sturdy frill in environment containing T-Rex, who had a bite force for the ages. 

Predator size, however, is sensitive to energetic constraints, specifically, a predator can only get as big as the energy they are able to pull out of the environment (this is why a lot of the biggest predators are giant crocodile relatives that had the metabolic advantage of being cold-blooded). In a fantasy scenario it's possible to produce hyper-productive environments - for instance a tidally locked planet where it's constantly sunny on one side - beyond anything ever seen on Earth which would allow for super-sized animals and the development of incredible levels of armor and weaponry as a result.

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## halfeye

> In a fantasy scenario it's possible to produce hyper-productive environments - for instance a tidally locked planet where it's constantly sunny on one side - beyond anything ever seen on Earth which would allow for super-sized animals and the development of incredible levels of armor and weaponry as a result.


There's a possibility that on a tidally locked planet, all the air would freeze out at the back, making the whole thing effectively airless.

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## VoxRationis

> There's a possibility that on a tidally locked planet, all the air would freeze out at the back, making the whole thing effectively airless.


Not to mention the fact that the only part of the planet that wasn't scorching or frozen would have sunlight at an oblique angle, minimizing photosynthetic productivity.

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## D&D_Fan

> In a fantasy scenario it's possible to produce hyper-productive environments - for instance a tidally locked planet where it's constantly sunny on one side - beyond anything ever seen on Earth which would allow for super-sized animals and the development of incredible levels of armor and weaponry as a result.





> There's a possibility that on a tidally locked planet, all the air would freeze out at the back, making the whole thing effectively airless.


And the whole thing of that the front of the planet is constantly exposed to the sunlight and doesn't have at atmosphere to block harmful radiation.

It would be inhospitable to most life that needs to breathe and is vulnerable to radiation and needs to eat food that also doesn't need to breathe and isn't harmed by radiation.

I could see some radiotrophic fungi and some water bear, but even that environment could be too intense for them, since they still need some water I suspect.

So no, if there was life, it wouldn't be bigger, it would probably be quite small little things or it wouldn't exist at all.

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## Satinavian

I do think fantasy worlds should develop different kinds of weapons than the real world.

But no because real-world weapons are best at killing humans and other targets should produce other weapons, but because real-world weapons are best at being _wielded_ by humans.

Now, some of the more basic primitive concepts like a spear or club would probably work for anything that can grab things, but the more sophisticated the weapon is, the more likely it would be not a good fit for inhuman physiology. And then there is also the thing that humans tend to be naturally talented at throwing things and how that influences all the ranges weaponry.

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## gbaji

> I do think fantasy worlds should develop different kinds of weapons than the real world.
> 
> But no because real-world weapons are best at killing humans and other targets should produce other weapons, but because real-world weapons are best at being _wielded_ by humans.
> 
> Now, some of the more basic primitive concepts like a spear or club would probably work for anything that can grab things, but the more sophisticated the weapon is, the more likely it would be not a good fit for inhuman physiology. And then there is also the thing that humans tend to be naturally talented at throwing things and how that influences all the ranges weaponry.


Hah. Go read the Niven/Pournelle book Footfall. It's an excellent story, but also spends quite a bit of time dealing with not only the physiological differences between the aliens and the humans, but also some significant psychological ones as well (well, and technological ones too).

When you mentioned the bit about humans being incredibly good at throwing things, it literally flashed me back to a specific scene in the book, where this exact point is highlighted.

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## Mr Beer

> When you mentioned the bit about humans being incredibly good at throwing things, it literally flashed me back to a specific scene in the book, where this exact point is highlighted.


African guy demonstrates how to use the weapon by skewering one of the elephant-aliens. Good scene.

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## Spamotron

Just a head's up to everyone that Tod Cutler's sequel/expansion to Arrow vs. Armour is up on YouTube.

There are four set up videos laying out the fine specifics and explaining why they made the choices they did: Mail Tests, Arrowhead Material Tests, Armour Plate Tests and Arrows Vs. Armour 2.

They're very well made.

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## halfeye

There was probably a particular automatic pistol that I don't know about. I remember seeing it as a toy a long time ago, it had a visible barrel (like a Luger, but I think shorter) a handle that came straight down from the body, the back of which was convex, the handle was less than twice as long (top to bottom) as it was wide (front to back) the magazine was in the handle, and apart from that I'm not sure of anything. Does anyone know what this might have been? I'd guess it was from between the wars, but I'm only sure that if it existed it wasn't modern.

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## Martin Greywolf

> There was probably a particular automatic pistol that I don't know about. I remember seeing it as a toy a long time ago, it had a visible barrel (like a Luger, but I think shorter) a handle that came straight down from the body, the back of which was convex, the handle was less than twice as long (top to bottom) as it was wide (front to back) the magazine was in the handle, and apart from that I'm not sure of anything. Does anyone know what this might have been? I'd guess it was from between the wars, but I'm only sure that if it existed it wasn't modern.


If it is kinda weird looking, there are good odds it's Czechoslovak.

*Spoiler: CZ 24*
Show



But maybe not.

*Spoiler: Walther P38*
Show



*Spoiler: Mauser 1910*
Show



*Spoiler: Savage arms 1907*
Show




But with toy pistols, who the hell knows - they may well have just cobbled together 1911 and a luger to make it look more interesting.

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## halfeye

> If it is kinda weird looking, there are good odds it's Czechoslovak.
> 
> *Spoiler: CZ 24*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> But maybe not.
> 
> ...


Thanks, it was the P38, I was thinking it's nothing like the PPK, it can't be a Walther, but it was.

Funny thing is, with toys they often _don't_ make them up. I remember having a "Man From Uncle" toy gun, it wasn't the gun from the TV series at all, it was a sort of model of the Mauser C96.

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## Pauly

> If it is kinda weird looking, there are good odds it's Czechoslovak.
> 
> *Spoiler: CZ 24*
> Show
> 
> 
> 
> But maybe not.
> 
> ...


The other source of weird looking automatic oistols is pre WW1 Austro-Hungarian pistols.

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## Talakeal

Is there a name for a weapon that is a warhammer on one side and a battle axe on the reverse face? Something like a lucerne hammer.

The rest of my gaming group insists that it is called a "hamaxe", but AFAICT that is a fictional weapon from Terraria or a regional name for a splitting maul, which is a tool and not the same thing.

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## Pauly

> Is there a name for a weapon that is a warhammer on one side and a battle axe on the reverse face? Something like a lucerne hammer.
> 
> The rest of my gaming group insists that it is called a "hamaxe", but AFAICT that is a fictional weapon from Terraria or a regional name for a splitting maul, which is a tool and not the same thing.


Poleaxe aka pollaxe.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Is there a name for a weapon that is a warhammer on one side and a battle axe on the reverse face? Something like a lucerne hammer.
> 
> The rest of my gaming group insists that it is called a "hamaxe", but AFAICT that is a fictional weapon from Terraria or a regional name for a splitting maul, which is a tool and not the same thing.


This link may come in handy. It has pictures and is from as official an authority as you can get.

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## Saint-Just

Wasn't pollaxe sometimes used for hammer head + beak as well as hammer head + axe?

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## snowblizz

> Wasn't pollaxe sometimes used for hammer head + beak as well as hammer head + axe?


Literally one of those pictured in the link M. Greywolf posted.

Just something to keep in mind is that the people who actually used these weapons were not really that particularly bothered by specific classifications of what kind of spike or not was present at what end. That's more a concern for people sitting in warm armchairs who don't have to use them in anger.

That is to say, it's hard to draw a line between halberds, Lucern hammers, Bec de Corbins, pollaxes, war hammers, billhooks etc etc etc and other such items (not tat they are identical but there is enough overlapping to make specific categorisation hit and miss). Anyone trying to argue an item can and must be one specific thing is usually arguing from ignorance and having read too many D&D or other rpg manuals.

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## Pauly

> Wasn't pollaxe sometimes used for hammer head + beak as well as hammer head + axe?


Aside from the modern classification issues, Poleaxe can mean a knightly weapon typically from the 14th and 15th centuries and it can mean a butchers tool for slaughtering cattle. Very recently people have started referring to the weapon as pollaxe and the butchers tool as poleaxe, but historically both spellings have been acceptable for both items.

Poleaxe, the butchers tool, is typically hammer + blunt spike on the reverse. 
Pollaxe the weapon is typically hammer + axe blade on the reverse + pointed spike on the top.

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## Talakeal

Thank you!

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## Martin Greywolf

Well, there is terminology and there is function.

In terms of terminology, pollaxe is an entirely English invention. Historical sources refer to what we call a pollaxe as just axe, e.g. in Fiore as azza (IT) and there is a French pollaxe manual that is called Le jeu de la hache (The play of the axe). Most slavic languages (I can only confirm Slovak and Czech with full certainty) would call it two-handed axe, or knightly axe (obojrucna sekera, rytierska sekera) or possibly two handed/knightly hammer - or again, simply axe (sekera).

As far as function goes, there are two distinct kinds of polearms of this era. The first is where the pollaxe and shortspear live, a weapon meant for fighting duels or skirmishes. These tend to be about as tall as the one using them.

The second type is your halberd category, they are about a meter longer than the user and meant for formation fighting primarily, hence the length.

The problem is that modern classification usually distinguishes by form, i.e. if it has a specific kind of hook, it is a billhook, even if it is short and heavy because someone wanted to use a billhook in an armored duel. And even if you wanted to divide them by length, where do you put your arbitrary separation point?

We have a lot of terminological problems because while some weapons are defined by form only (e.g. you can have a short halberd or spear, and then use it like a pollaxe), others are also tied to their function (a long pollaxe wouldn't make sense).

*Spoiler: These are both halberds from the same time and place*
Show





One of those halberds reaches to the user's chin, the other's blade doesn't even start until it is past the ridiculously fancy hat. Those two weapons would handle very differently in use, even is everyone calls them by the same name.

This isn't limited to polearms, by the by, I've seen some examples of Magyar sabers that looked the exact same while having a difference in weight of half a kilo and a completely different point of balance.

*So what is a modern definition of pollaxe?*

It is a poleram, about as long as the user at most, meant for fighting in armor against armor. It can have a spear-like spike on the front and back of its shaft (it almost always has the front one, and the front one is sometimes just a spear blade), and its front side has two impact heads, oriented kinda like long and short edge of a sword. These heads can be any combination (including two of the same type) of:
axe (curved, straight or reverse curved blade)hammerspikecrow's beak (i.e. a curved spike)multiple spikesmaybe a flat, dagger-like blade, but I can't remember if I saw one on pollaxe or if it is a halberd thing

They may or may not have a rondel guard on the shaft and two spikes coming off of the shaft in the right angle to the heads.

*Spoiler: Some examples*
Show







But wait, Greywolf, some of you say. Are you saying that you can have a pollaxe that is just spikes all over?

*Spoiler: Yes, yes you can, sort of*
Show




We just call them goedendags, or two-handed morningstars.

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## InvisibleBison

If historical people didn't have distinct terminology for these various sorts of similar weapons, how did they distinguish between them when they had cause to do so?

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## Telok

> If historical people didn't have distinct terminology for these various sorts of similar weapons, how did they distinguish between them when they had cause to do so?


I would suspect in a similar way that we currently distinguish between 9mm pistols. By maker/region/user, part specification (short, long, heavy, etc.), and not relying on one single word to fully describe the exact item from a bunch of similar items.

Like a Toyota Corolla car is a Toyota Corolla car, right? But we use additional words to describe 2-door vs 4-door and the 1980s models from the 2020s models.

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## Pauly

> If historical people didn't have distinct terminology for these various sorts of similar weapons, how did they distinguish between them when they had cause to do so?


Generally speaking weapons were names for their function not their form

A modern example is the Chefs Knife. The 3 main schools of design are Japanese, German, and French. Each broad category has distinct blade geometry and handle design. Each design category handles differently and have different strengths and weaknesses. Within each category there are significant variations. The size can vary from 6 inches/15cm to 12inches/30cm. There are differences in preferred steel types. 

However all of them are large general purpose kitchen knives, so they are all Chefs knives.  If you want to differentiate them you tack on the appropriate descriptor(s) you want to use to distinguish at the time you need it.

In 5000 years time when knives are forgotten and obsolete technology a bunch of nerds might come along and start giving different names to different forms of Chefs knife, but currently we just use the name that describes the function.

Edit to add.
If there were 3 knives on a bench, a 8 German style, a 10 Japanese style and a 12 French style, here are some of the ways I might differentiate them to a co-worker:
Ownership - my knife, your knife, Steves knife
Size - the big one, the small one, the middle sized one.
Handle type - the plastic handled one, the steel handled one, the wooden handled one.
Handle color - black handle, silver handle, brown handle.
Manufacturer - the Wusthof, the Shun, the Sabatier.

What I would never do is differentiate them by classification as German style, Japanese style or French style. Classification would only come up in a knife nerd conversation, and surprisingly few chefs are knife nerds. Most chefs choose knives based on can I afford it, is it comfortable to use and does it look cool, the nerdly fine points of design just arent considered for a tool of daily use

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## Martin Greywolf

> If historical people didn't have distinct terminology for these various sorts of similar weapons, how did they distinguish between them when they had cause to do so?


The salient point here is:




> when they had cause to do so


And the number one thing you need to realize is that this came up... almost never.

If you go looking for a kitchen knife today, you will find thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different types, from hundreds of countries and dozens schools of thought, because Google and internet (and catalogs in mail before that) are like that. But in pre-industrial era? If you want a kitchen knife, you have maybe two or three local knife-makers, all of whom make knives roughly the same way, simply because they are trying to compete with each other and if something becomes popular, they all switch to it.

Imports did happen, but that was for very famous items only - say, Solingen and Toledo get a very good reputation for swords, so they export their swords all over, and they are known as Solingen sword. Most of those exports are what swords look like locally at Solingen/Toledo, or customs made to specification, so in terms of form, you have three types of sword in any one place, Solingen-form, Toledo-form and local-form (this is obviously a simplified example, but you get the point).

Next factor in this is that not many of these items (let's focus on weapons) existed in the same time. A soldier in 1600 AD Germany has zero need to distinguish between a gladius and a katzbalger, he will simply say "sword" and everyone around him will know what he means. Well, not really, because our soldier sees use of three distinct types of swords, a katzbalger, a rapier (well, arming sword with complex hilt) and a massive two-hander. Most of the time, it will be clear what he is talking about from context, much like we know that "a cop carrying a gun" means a semiautomatic pistol of some kind (maybe a revolver in parts of USA) and not a 50cal anti-materiel rifle.

*Spoiler: A picture of soldier holding what is, indeed, a gun*
Show




If such a soldier needs to describe the sword more precisely, there is either jargon (see katzbalger) or there are descriptive words, like long sword. Those descriptives need to be examined in context, a Roman will say "long sword" and mean a 90cm spatha, a 1400 German will mean two-handed weapon and an 1800 gentleman will probably mean anything longer than a smallsword (backsword, maybe?).

*Spoiler: All the weapons you need to know about, according to Codex Wallerstein*
Show




So, taking our French pollaxe manual, it is called Le Jeu de la Hache, the Play of the Axe. Well, it uses the word "play" in the title, in the sense of martial arts kata which we can use to infer the axe has to be a military one. In the time it was written, there were three weapons describable as axe: one handed horseman's axe, pollaxe and halberd. We have no additional descriptives from title alone, so we must ask ourselves, what was THE axe in the mind of the noble soldier (since treatises weren't written for commoners at this time)? And the answer to that is pollaxe - it may not be the right answer from that alone, maybe the author was writing that treatise in different context than we assume, but lucky us, we can open the book. Sure enough, it *is* a pollaxe.

There is another factor to this as well - English, as much as many like to pretend otherwise, isn't the only language, and that causes problems. You know the English word for sabre, it is... well, sabre. The word comes from, most likely, Magyar/Hungarian word szablya, which got transported into Slavic languages. In Slovak, the word sabla, meaning "sabre" is also used colloquially as the word for any kind of long bladed weapon, so in some contexts it translates to "sword". (sidenote, hungarian doesn't even use the word szablya for the Olympic discipline)

This is all fine and good before a specific model of a sword is attached to word that sounded foreign and exotic to Victorian scholars and now we call the entire sword type by the word that, when translated, means "sword". The usual suspects are here: shamshir (sword), talwar (single edged sword), katana (single-edged sword) and so on. The crowning achievement here is the sword that is called firangi, which means "European" in translation. Because it was  European blade mounted on local hilt.

*Spoiler: Gaze upon it, and despair*
Show




Remember when I mentioned Victorian scholars? Well, that is where the mess really started. The peak of British Empire coincided with ancient Greek philosophers and intellectualism being the new cool thing, and if there is one thing Aristotle loved, it was categories. Which means that the people who created, if not modern science then its direct predecessor, wanted to put things in neat categories and started to make jargon and terminology for them. This is why there are a dozen words for different swords that British empire was near, but many varieties of Persian blades get rolled into shamshir. They started the categories from what they knew and only created a new one when a sword didn't easily fit into those - katana was called Japanese saber in Europe for a long time. And when these new categories were created, they were often named by the foreign language word.

Over time, we tried to solve that problem, but once a word is in widespread use, it is a lost fight, and most classification systems robust enough (e.g. Oakeshott or Petersen typologies for swords) are too clunky for everyday use. Hell, even most people doing HEMA - the people who know the most about how a sword works - don't use that system unless they really, really have to.

*Spoiler: This is simplified Oakeshott typology... yeah...*
Show




The gist of it is this: if you decided to pick a single time and place for DnD from history, two thirds of weapon list would be gone and you could use generic words. If you try to encompass a solid chunk of time and space (and appease the fanboys who will not accept that katana is a sabre), well, you will run into some problems.

*Spoiler: Is this a katana? Hungary, 15th c.*
Show

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## gbaji

> The peak of British Empire coincided with ancient Greek philosophers and intellectualism being the new cool thing, and if there is one thing Aristotle loved, it was categories. Which means that the people who created, if not modern science then its direct predecessor, wanted to put things in neat categories and started to make jargon and terminology for them.


Made worse by the tendency of the Aristotle mindset (inherited from Plato), in which the "scientific" (quotes used intentionally here) approach was basically "if you don't know something about something, fill it in with <something descriptive>". The thought was that it was more important to be "complete" with a description of something than "accurate". There's a whole lot of descriptive nonsense that you basically have to toss out the window that came from that approach. Sadly, I suspect the Victorians just ate it up, which in turn lead to a whole new round of "fanciful" thinking during that era. Add in the telephone game process when dealing with historical accounts/descriptions, and it could get pretty ridiculous.

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## Pauly

> If you go looking for a kitchen knife today, you will find thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different types, from hundreds of countries and dozens schools of thought, because Google and internet (and catalogs in mail before that) are like that. But in pre-industrial era? If you want a kitchen knife, you have maybe two or three local knife-makers, all of whom make knives roughly the same way, simply because they are trying to compete with each other and if something becomes popular, they all switch to it.
> ]


But when youre searching for a kitchen knife you just get a simple breakdown into broad functional categories - e.g. paring knife, boning knife, salmon slicer, chefs knife, filleting knife, or yanagiba (sashimi knife).
If you want to differentiate any further in detail you need to start applying descriptors, not categories. If I want a chefs knife with a French style blade, a German style handle made from Japanese style high hardness steel, google doesnt help me because its search algorithms dont use categories, only descriptors. 

Coming back to poleaxes if you were a 15th century noble looking to buy a new poleaxe youd say to the merchant or weaponsmith  I want a poleaxe with these features not I want [category type] poleaxe.

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## Pauly

> Made worse by the tendency of the Aristotle mindset (inherited from Plato), in which the "scientific" (quotes used intentionally here) approach was basically "if you don't know something about something, fill it in with <something descriptive>". The thought was that it was more important to be "complete" with a description of something than "accurate". There's a whole lot of descriptive nonsense that you basically have to toss out the window that came from that approach. Sadly, I suspect the Victorians just ate it up, which in turn lead to a whole new round of "fanciful" thinking during that era. Add in the telephone game process when dealing with historical accounts/descriptions, and it could get pretty ridiculous.


The Greek mindset was to find the most succinct unambiguous expression. Which makes sense when the major method of transferring information was oral and the major method of storing information was memory.

Hence the chreia of Plato arriving at a definition of a man as a featherless biped and being greatly praised for such clever definition. Diogenes then came to Platos academy whilst Plato was instructing his students, threw in a plucked rooster saying behold, Platos man. After which Plato amended his definition of a man to a featherless biped with broad nails.

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## Khedrac

A thought occurred to me - how easy is/was it to store a strung bow?

I believe some historical groups had scabbard-type containers for recurved composite bows, but I think they were horse-scabbards not person ones (if they existed at all)?
The relatively common fantasy picture of carrying a strung bow by putting one's head and arm through so it sits diagonally across the torso - bow on the back, string on the front - doesn't seem practical when I think about it.

So, were strung bows carried around (except for in hand when they are directly ready for use)?

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## Vinyadan

I suspect it depends on culture, place, and time. Many weapons were carried in hand without a sheath, and a Duehrer print of Irish soldiers hints that this was the case with bows, too. https://www.wikiart.org/en/albrecht-...s-and-peasants

There also is a Greek vase showing a Scythian carrying his bow in a sheath. https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/ne...hoto/543542594 And photos of Mongolian archers with a sheath and a strung bow https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578005 How much it was for pose, that's a different matter.

One with more time or experience could give you a more complete answer. I've never really got how a bow can be carried like in fantasy movies, however. I would expect it to get too low for comfort, unless it squeezes the bearer really well.

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## Khedrac

> I suspect it depends on culture, place, and time. Many weapons were carried in hand without a sheath, and a Duehrer print of Irish soldiers hints that this was the case with bows, too. https://www.wikiart.org/en/albrecht-...s-and-peasants
> 
> There also is a Greek vase showing a Scythian carrying his bow in a sheath. https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/ne...hoto/543542594 And photos of Mongolian archers with a sheath and a strung bow https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578005 How much it was for pose, that's a different matter.
> 
> One with more time or experience could give you a more complete answer. I've never really got how a bow can be carried like in fantasy movies, however. I would expect it to get too low for comfort, unless it squeezes the bearer really well.


Thank-you - I think the first picture you showed supports our general position that you cannot carry a bow in the fantasy over the shoulder/body method.
The second picture shows nicely that recurve bows can be compact enough to fit in sheathes of various sorts whilst the third gives an excellent way to store a bow for a long walk/march, but not one that woud be practical in enclosed spaces.

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## Grim Portent

Been a while since I did any archery, but I'm pretty sure slinging the bow over yourself with the bowstring would negatively impact the bow. You aren't really supposed to keep them stretched beyond their normal resting but strung position, it stretches the string and can make it more slack, and can warp the bow itself in a way that proper use doesn't. Hunters do it for convenience sometimes to my knowledge, but target shooters frown on the practice.

It's not going to cause catastrophic damage in a short time or anything, but a good bow isn't cheap, so unnecessary wear and tear isn't something you want to happen. It's the sort of behaviour a professional military bowman would probably give his son a slap around the head for doing.

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## Pauly

> A thought occurred to me - how easy is/was it to store a strung bow?
> 
> I believe some historical groups had scabbard-type containers for recurved composite bows, but I think they were horse-scabbards not person ones (if they existed at all)?
> The relatively common fantasy picture of carrying a strung bow by putting one's head and arm through so it sits diagonally across the torso - bow on the back, string on the front - doesn't seem practical when I think about it.
> 
> So, were strung bows carried around (except for in hand when they are directly ready for use)?


Archery isnt my speciality, but all I have read is that historical bows were kept unstrung until needed
A number of reasons have been cited including.
- stress on the bow is bad for it, so you want to limit the amount of stress it sees.
- bowstrings becoming stretched.
- danger of getting wet, which was generally considered catastrophic for the bow string and bad for the bow.

I remember sources specifically mentioning English Longbowmen stringing their bows just before action during the 100 Years War and the War of the Roses.

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## VoxRationis

> The second picture shows nicely that recurve bows can be compact enough to fit in sheathes of various sorts whilst the third gives an excellent way to store a bow for a long walk/march, but not one that woud be practical in enclosed spaces.


Although really, when was the last time one needed to conveniently carry a composite bow indoors? Check it at the door. If a bow-carrying method works on a hike and not at a dance party, it's of only negligibly less usefulness than some hypothetical method that works for both.

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## Martin Greywolf

> A thought occurred to me - how easy is/was it to store a strung bow?


Pretty damn easy, it's just a stick with some string. Put it on a scabbard, hang it from wherever. That's not he problem.

The problem is that the stick is relatively thin, and if you keep it like that for weeks on end, it's going to steadily loose power. That's a bit of a problem if you want to arm your army with a weapon that will last them a few years, and doubly so if you want to stock your armory with some reserve gear.




> I believe some historical groups had scabbard-type containers for recurved composite bows, but I think they were horse-scabbards not person ones (if they existed at all)?


This is a pretty easy to answer question - every culture that used a short bow put it in a scabbard at their hip, sometimes switching it to the saddle when on horseback. It's a result of the bow's shortness rather than anything related to horses or nomads.

This is why you sometimes see plains Indians in America using scabbards as well, their bows were not composite, but relatively short, and relatively weak.




> The relatively common fantasy picture of carrying a strung bow by putting one's head and arm through so it sits diagonally across the torso - bow on the back, string on the front - doesn't seem practical when I think about it.


Not only is it hard to get the bow out from there, but it also interferes with your hood, possibly shield straps and to top it off, a long bow will get caught on ground and/or shrubs. Which I know, because I tried it.

Another issue is that the bow is your main weapon, kind of like a spear or a pollaxe, so there is no reason to have it sheated, really. You are going out there to shoot something/someone, may as well just keep it in your hand. It's a bit like asking why does modern infantry not have a holster for their assault rifles.




> So, were strung bows carried around (except for in hand when they are directly ready for use)?


Well, there was the ever popular in the hand and strung, even used by nomads sometimes

*Spoiler: Chronica Picta, 1340*
Show


You can see it is clearly strung from the shape, and I can see the actual string drawn on the picture in my facisimile


*Spoiler: Ab Urbe Conditia, 1400*
Show




If you had a short enough bow, you could have it strung and in a sheat:

*Spoiler: 1907 photo*
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*Spoiler: Darjiu church fresco, 1400*
Show




*Spoiler: Giovanni Boccacio, 1450*
Show




If you were expecting no trouble, or had it stored, you could just have it unstrung and carry it that way:

*Spoiler: Eadwine psalter, 1150*
Show




*Spoiler: Queen Mary psalter, 1320*
Show




And if you had a bow that was long, and expected no trouble, and were travelling by horse, you could always just tie it to the saddle or the quiver.

*Spoiler: Facta et dicta memorabilia, 1320*
Show

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Khedrac*
> _A thought occurred to me - how easy is/was it to store a strung bow?_


I just now came here to ask a remarkably similar question, but expanded to other kinds of weapons as well:

In general, how were weapons like swords, axes, spears, etc. physically stored?  Im mainly thinking of weapons that would be stockpiled for the defense of a fortification, but Im open to other cases of weapon storage as well.  What kinds of spaces were they kept in, and under what conditions?  

And as a second part to this questionhow long could these weapons remain combat-viable when stored in these spaces and under these conditions?  Were there any approaches taken to try to extend their lifespans when stored?  How effective were those efforts to prolong the weapons storage lives, and can we estimate what their maximum shelf life might have been?

Obviously this varies widely depending on culture, climate, period in history and many other factors, so Im open to whatever answers anyone can provide.

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## Vinyadan

*Spoiler: Giovanni Boccacio, 1450*
Show




I spent some time looking for info about this image, because I didn't recognise the scene (there is a radiant knight, but the Decameron doesn't leave much room for the supernatural, although it does rarely come up -- see Botticelli's cycle about Nastagio degli Onesti). As it turns out, it's from a lesser-known work by Boccaccio, the Filocolo, the first prose novel of Italian literature. I really like the miniatures, there is something opulent about the scenes, with all the details on hats and fabrics and armour, but without taking away from the action. Apparently, the manuscript was made in Northern Italy.

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## snowblizz

> I just now came here to ask a remarkably similar question, but expanded to other kinds of weapons as well:
> 
> In general, how were weapons like swords, axes, spears, etc. physically stored?  Im mainly thinking of weapons that would be stockpiled for the defense of a fortification, but Im open to other cases of weapon storage as well.  What kinds of spaces were they kept in, and under what conditions?  
> 
> And as a second part to this questionhow long could these weapons remain combat-viable when stored in these spaces and under these conditions?  Were there any approaches taken to try to extend their lifespans when stored?  How effective were those efforts to prolong the weapons storage lives, and can we estimate what their maximum shelf life might have been?
> 
> Obviously this varies widely depending on culture, climate, period in history and many other factors, so Im open to whatever answers anyone can provide.


Well the obvious answer to how long can you store stuff in good conditions is of course literally centuries. Because we have extant medieval weaponry that was kept in armouries from when they were actually relevant to modern days.

There are also plenty of old agricultural tools like scythes and such that remain store in barns and outhouses.

There are plenty of stories of generational weapons. When the peasantry fought the battle of Visby in 1361 their gear was old fashioned. At least a generation out of date compared to the Danish enemies. These would have been stored in attics and outhouses, not museum quality housing.
Steel weapons and armour doesn't just rot away by themselves. They do rust, but that is a surface problem which in fact helps preserve them as long as it's not constantly rubbed away. In some cases you used controlled oxidation as rustproofing on armours. So you can easily take grandpa's pollaxe or spear from your attic and polish it up and it's probably fine enough.

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## Martin Greywolf

> In general, how were weapons like swords, axes, spears, etc. physically stored?  Im mainly thinking of weapons that would be stockpiled for the defense of a fortification, but Im open to other cases of weapon storage as well.  What kinds of spaces were they kept in, and under what conditions?  
> 
> Obviously this varies widely depending on culture, climate, period in history and many other factors, so Im open to whatever answers anyone can provide.


You'd be surprised how uniform that was. There aren't that many ways to make steel/iron no rust, and we figured them out pretty quickly.

The answer is, put it in as dry a room you can manage, put some sand (or salt if feeling real fancy) on the floor to suck out the moisture and cover the metal bits with a fairly thick layer of lard. There were some slight variations, usually involving cloth soaked in oil or lard to serve as additional layer of protection.




> And as a second part to this questionhow long could these weapons remain combat-viable when stored in these spaces and under these conditions?  Were there any approaches taken to try to extend their lifespans when stored?  How effective were those efforts to prolong the weapons storage lives, and can we estimate what their maximum shelf life might have been?


The shelf life for metal is ludicrously massive, to a point where talking about it is pointless. Well, unless it rusts, but if you did you lard thing and didn't let any dogs in to lick it off...

That is actually the number one issue, keeping animals out of the storage, not just to not lick the lard off, but to protect the wooden and leather bits from termites and vermin.

Protecting wood is probably going to be your greatest challenge otherwise. The wooden bits should already be cured in some way to help with this (soaked in boiling wax or oil, usually), but if enough moisture gets in over time, they will weaken. The way this was usually solved was by regular inspection (once a year, if that) and replacement of damaged parts.

You don't see a lot of pictures of this, because it is hardly a sexy thing to draw, what few images we have are usually from workshops rather than storage, but the storage was probably built in a similar way.

*Spoiler: Some woodcuts I'm too lazy to source*
Show

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## Vinyadan

Some years ago, I asked what would happen if a soldier was shot with a granade: would the grenade blow up, or would it perforate the soldier and keep flying? According to the BBC, recent events show that there's a chance that a VOG grenade will simply get lodged inside the soldier and not blow up, something that is also portayed in the movie Black Hawk Down as happening to a soldier hit by an RPG.




> *Spoiler*
> Show


I feel that this isn't a safe working environment by modern standards  :Small Tongue:

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## Vinyadan

> I just now came here to ask a remarkably similar question, but expanded to other kinds of weapons as well:
> 
> In general, how were weapons like swords, axes, spears, etc. physically stored?  Im mainly thinking of weapons that would be stockpiled for the defense of a fortification, but Im open to other cases of weapon storage as well.  What kinds of spaces were they kept in, and under what conditions?  
> 
> And as a second part to this questionhow long could these weapons remain combat-viable when stored in these spaces and under these conditions?  Were there any approaches taken to try to extend their lifespans when stored?  How effective were those efforts to prolong the weapons storage lives, and can we estimate what their maximum shelf life might have been?
> 
> Obviously this varies widely depending on culture, climate, period in history and many other factors, so Im open to whatever answers anyone can provide.


A good place to start looking for detailed info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrian_Armoury

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## Khedrac

> Some years ago, I asked what would happen if a soldier was shot with a granade: would the grenade blow up, or would it perforate the soldier and keep flying? According to the BBC, recent events show that there's a chance that a VOG grenade will simply get lodged inside the soldier and not blow up, something that is also portayed in the movie Black Hawk Down as happening to a soldier hit by an RPG.
> 
> I feel that this isn't a safe working environment by modern standards


I read the BBC News article - who thought that surgery and bomb disposal were overlapping fields?  I notice that the military had personnel in the operating theatre - presumably to intervene or advise depending on the condition of the grenade.

PS Posting at work so unable to see anything inside your spoiler.

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## Martin Greywolf

> Some years ago, I asked what would happen if a soldier was shot with a granade: would the grenade blow up, or would it perforate the soldier and keep flying? According to the BBC, recent events show that there's a chance that a VOG grenade will simply get lodged inside the soldier and not blow up, something that is also portayed in the movie Black Hawk Down as happening to a soldier hit by an RPG.


Well, yeah, there is always a chance. The question is if that was a result of the human body being too soft to trigger the grenade, or whether it just had a bad fuse/was inside the arming distance.

I suspect that one was the bad fuse case, because VOG grenades are supposed to self-destruct after 20 seconds.

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## Vinyadan

> I read the BBC News article - who thought that surgery and bomb disposal were overlapping fields?


That's actually an interesting thing: I believe that one of the reasons that that brought to the Declaration of St Petersburg, which in 1868 forbade the use of explosive projectiles below 400g by troops, was that, when lodged in a soldier without exploding, they represented a serious danger for medical personell, which isn't supposed to get harmed while performing humanitarian activities.

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