These rules make non-magical damage types matter, unlike 5e, where they exist without any distinct function.
Try to remember that these tend to work both ways. Wearing the wrong armor to a battle can give the advantage to the adversary before knowing what weapon they wield.
These rules assume an abstract attrition system for health/damage status. Some fettling may be required to adapt to a hit location specific system.
What armour you wear indeed becomes important too! And yes for hit location specific systems you’d need to do some more hacking, particularly if you use piece-wise armour where type depends on location!
Oh nice! Although, wouldn't it make more sense to have armor reduce the effectiveness of one specific type of weapon? Sure, it complicates the math a bit, but it makes things like wearing plate on top of gambeson (which is very historic) feasible and easy to manage.
Also, how do you work helmets and shields into this? I get it's a minimalist system, but to me, that bit of character customization matters a lot.
You could definitely look into adding those! I'm quite concerned with speed and simplicity of resolution, hence why I'm not thinking much about armour layering and piece-wise armour. But you can definitely work those in!
Also, second question: why is Bludgeoning good against Plate and not Chain? Seems to like like those two should be inverted. By which I mean, a lot of the weapons meant to be explicitly anti-armor (eg. the rondel dagger) were made to get in between the armor plates with a stabbing/piercing motion. Also, solid plate distributes blunt force very well, much like the bullet-resistant ceramic vests of today, while floppy chainmail does not.
I'd have written it such that Piercing was effective against Plate, Slashing was effective against Cloth and Bludgeoning was effective against Chain.
I guess it depends on what era of weaponry you look at! Equally I’ve seen material that suggests bludgeoning weapons in some medieval periods were a bit more effective against plate than slashing/piercing weapons. Especially if you are using damage reductive armour, bludgeoning will still do about the same damage against mail as plate, it’s the other two types that get reduced in practice.
That said it sounds like you maybe want to get more into the specifics of weapons beyond the three basic categories! There’s cases of armour piercing longswords and other nuances you can get into. But this hack is supposed to be pretty simple, and is mainly there to make weapon choices interesting but simple to manage, rather than aiming for simulation.
My rule in a nutshell: there is one roll only. This is to determine the hit: the attacker action resolution check against the defender one. In this contest, the attacker subtract the weapon level (it is a value from 1 - i.e. a dagger - up to 4 - i.e. an halberd); the same does the defender (in case he defends with a weapon). If the attacker hits the target, there is no need to roll for damage: this is the difference between the two previous results where the attacker weapon level is now added (it contributes to the damage) and the level of the target's armor is subtracted (it smooth the damage). That is the normal rule (which you can better read in the online core rules here: https://viviiix.substack.com/p/core-rules-chapter-vi). The additional rule I mentioned before is that for the damage calculation, the armor varies according to the type of attacker's weapon and therefore the damage can be different according to the weapon used and the armor worn... similar to yours but definitely more complex! Thanks and ciaooo
Your "vs. Armor" suggestions has some issues. Bludgeoning weapons like maces and war hammers were actually fairly poor against plate, which was specifically developed (in Europe) as a counter to them. In practice, Piercing weapons would be good against all forms of armor, but especially good against plate, able to slip into the gaps between individual pieces. Maces and war hammers would be good against mail but not have any particular advantage against textile and would tend to be especially poor against plate.
If you want to emulate the role of large bludgeons like the pollaxe or 2-Handed morningstar as anti-armor weapons, you could consider giving bludgeons a de-buffing special attack that leaves an enemy staggered and vulnerable to follow up with takedowns or dagger strikes. Basically, bludgeons would be focused on less lethal utility while piercing and slashing attacks would be much more about actually dealing damage. Slashing weapons would come with higher raw damage scores, but struggle to deal that damage through armor; in turn piercing weapons would more easily deal their damage, but smaller wound channels would translate to lower damage numbers...
This is a really good demonstration of how accurate simulation could lead to very complex implementation! This hack more than anything is designed to be simple and give some easy to understand choices for players.
As you’d expect, when doing some reading for this article I saw a number of different opinions about weapon effectiveness, and I definitely cannot claim to be a HEMA person or medieval warfare expert!
You might already be aware of it, but someone with your level of knowledge might really enjoy the game Riddle of Steel. It’s very focused on simulation of medieval combat by all accounts.
Interesting suggestion; full discloser but I actually found this page through google search for more complex RPG weapon mechanics, so your "Riddle of Steel" suggestion is almost exactly what I was looking for, so thank you for that.
As for my comment, though, I understand that not everyone wants an ultra-complex rebuild for any given system. I was mainly responding to the specific relationships suggested in the article; the minutiae are a bit add odds with the historical narrative, and more than likely derives from hyper-specific examples (2-handed Pollaxe, war bows, etc.) rather than broad strokes. Adding that meta-narrative would realistically require much more granular rule building.
These rules make non-magical damage types matter, unlike 5e, where they exist without any distinct function.
Try to remember that these tend to work both ways. Wearing the wrong armor to a battle can give the advantage to the adversary before knowing what weapon they wield.
These rules assume an abstract attrition system for health/damage status. Some fettling may be required to adapt to a hit location specific system.
What armour you wear indeed becomes important too! And yes for hit location specific systems you’d need to do some more hacking, particularly if you use piece-wise armour where type depends on location!
Oh nice! Although, wouldn't it make more sense to have armor reduce the effectiveness of one specific type of weapon? Sure, it complicates the math a bit, but it makes things like wearing plate on top of gambeson (which is very historic) feasible and easy to manage.
Also, how do you work helmets and shields into this? I get it's a minimalist system, but to me, that bit of character customization matters a lot.
You could definitely look into adding those! I'm quite concerned with speed and simplicity of resolution, hence why I'm not thinking much about armour layering and piece-wise armour. But you can definitely work those in!
Also, second question: why is Bludgeoning good against Plate and not Chain? Seems to like like those two should be inverted. By which I mean, a lot of the weapons meant to be explicitly anti-armor (eg. the rondel dagger) were made to get in between the armor plates with a stabbing/piercing motion. Also, solid plate distributes blunt force very well, much like the bullet-resistant ceramic vests of today, while floppy chainmail does not.
I'd have written it such that Piercing was effective against Plate, Slashing was effective against Cloth and Bludgeoning was effective against Chain.
I guess it depends on what era of weaponry you look at! Equally I’ve seen material that suggests bludgeoning weapons in some medieval periods were a bit more effective against plate than slashing/piercing weapons. Especially if you are using damage reductive armour, bludgeoning will still do about the same damage against mail as plate, it’s the other two types that get reduced in practice.
That said it sounds like you maybe want to get more into the specifics of weapons beyond the three basic categories! There’s cases of armour piercing longswords and other nuances you can get into. But this hack is supposed to be pretty simple, and is mainly there to make weapon choices interesting but simple to manage, rather than aiming for simulation.
Love this. It's a simple way to fill an obvious gap and turn armor skinz into meaningful choices.
Bringing this one to my own Cairn game - thanks!
Amazing to hear that! I would definitely use this with Cairn in the future myself.
Nice rule! I have done smtg similar but it is more complex... i will publish this rule in the expanded rulebook of my game in the next week!
Awesome!
My rule in a nutshell: there is one roll only. This is to determine the hit: the attacker action resolution check against the defender one. In this contest, the attacker subtract the weapon level (it is a value from 1 - i.e. a dagger - up to 4 - i.e. an halberd); the same does the defender (in case he defends with a weapon). If the attacker hits the target, there is no need to roll for damage: this is the difference between the two previous results where the attacker weapon level is now added (it contributes to the damage) and the level of the target's armor is subtracted (it smooth the damage). That is the normal rule (which you can better read in the online core rules here: https://viviiix.substack.com/p/core-rules-chapter-vi). The additional rule I mentioned before is that for the damage calculation, the armor varies according to the type of attacker's weapon and therefore the damage can be different according to the weapon used and the armor worn... similar to yours but definitely more complex! Thanks and ciaooo
Your "vs. Armor" suggestions has some issues. Bludgeoning weapons like maces and war hammers were actually fairly poor against plate, which was specifically developed (in Europe) as a counter to them. In practice, Piercing weapons would be good against all forms of armor, but especially good against plate, able to slip into the gaps between individual pieces. Maces and war hammers would be good against mail but not have any particular advantage against textile and would tend to be especially poor against plate.
If you want to emulate the role of large bludgeons like the pollaxe or 2-Handed morningstar as anti-armor weapons, you could consider giving bludgeons a de-buffing special attack that leaves an enemy staggered and vulnerable to follow up with takedowns or dagger strikes. Basically, bludgeons would be focused on less lethal utility while piercing and slashing attacks would be much more about actually dealing damage. Slashing weapons would come with higher raw damage scores, but struggle to deal that damage through armor; in turn piercing weapons would more easily deal their damage, but smaller wound channels would translate to lower damage numbers...
This is a really good demonstration of how accurate simulation could lead to very complex implementation! This hack more than anything is designed to be simple and give some easy to understand choices for players.
As you’d expect, when doing some reading for this article I saw a number of different opinions about weapon effectiveness, and I definitely cannot claim to be a HEMA person or medieval warfare expert!
You might already be aware of it, but someone with your level of knowledge might really enjoy the game Riddle of Steel. It’s very focused on simulation of medieval combat by all accounts.
Interesting suggestion; full discloser but I actually found this page through google search for more complex RPG weapon mechanics, so your "Riddle of Steel" suggestion is almost exactly what I was looking for, so thank you for that.
As for my comment, though, I understand that not everyone wants an ultra-complex rebuild for any given system. I was mainly responding to the specific relationships suggested in the article; the minutiae are a bit add odds with the historical narrative, and more than likely derives from hyper-specific examples (2-handed Pollaxe, war bows, etc.) rather than broad strokes. Adding that meta-narrative would realistically require much more granular rule building.