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Re: (TFT) Attribute ratings for real people



Thanks for the explanation on the rapier!  I was sure it wasn't a "real"
banging around weapon, but I was sure messed up on the details I guess.

Longbow versus armor or not?:  I'm surprised there are no contemporary
accounts!  I'd've thunk this could be settled easily by any competent
metallurgist in minutes with a reference book and calculator.  Most of the
standard tests of ductility, hardness and so on involve slamming a little
pointed weight into a chunk of metal, and the quality of metal back then is
easy to determine now, as the metal has often survived and the aging process
is well understood.  How come nobody has settled that question?   Wow.  (Maybe
you should dig up a metallurgist and write a paper.)

Regarding the longbow not destroying the armored knight type warfare, wouldn't
that be a function of the fact that most futile feudal lords dared not emulate
the English practice of giving the peasants a weapon capable of punching
through armor?  Come to think of it, the Middle Eastern composite bows were a
better weapon than the long bow even.  Maybe you could try and settle it this
way: did Saladin and the boys run to a lot of armor?  If they did, then maybe
even the composite bow wasn't good enough, if they didn't use plate maybe it
was enough to punch through armor.  But then you'd have to find OTHER factors
that could explain differences, groan, and discount them somehow.

I remember another problem with the time we tried to fit ourselves into the
TFT system:  I had about "BOW" skill and one guy had "WRESTLING" and "RIDING"
(Colorado here) and one guy had "RUNNING" (track team) and nobody else had
anything whatsoever useful.  Not one spell, not one combat talent.  We had
useful stuff like "PRECALCULUS" and "TYPING" and "AMERICAN HISTORY" and
"FOOTBALL".  The first prootwaddle along would've wiped us.

See ya' in Cidri
Craig



  ----- Original Message -----
  From: raito@raito.com
  To: tft@brainiac.com
  Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 3:23 PM
  Subject: Re: (TFT) Attribute ratings for real people


  Quoting pvk@oz.net:

  > I think the rapier was a response to people wearing less armor because of
  > gunpowder weapons.

  I kinda disagree. See my previous message. It wasn't a military weapon,
  really.

  > I agree the English Longbow seems to have typically required far more
than
  > an above-average ST, at least in the bow arm. And it seems to have been
  > better at getting through plate than 1d+2 is at getting through 5-8
points
  > of TFT armor (plate through fine plate plus shield). I'm not sure that
  > translated to more overall ST for other purposes. Also the English used
  > bodkin arrowheads, which were narrow and designed to pierce armor, though
  > they didn't make as big a wound as a broader arrowhead (assuming full
  > penetration in both cases).

  Well, it certainly requires practice. There seems to be quite a bit of
  academic
  disagreement on how effective it was against armour. By the time it's being
  used widely in warfare, the armies had expanded from just fully-armoured
  knights and retainers to include the less-armoured levies. One researcher
  claims that he has never seen a period account of an arrow killing a
  fully-armoured person outright, except by striking them in their unarmoured
  face. Most everyone agrees that being hit by an arrow was quite unpleasant,
  though, regardless of armour.

  Look at it this way: if guns punch through armour, armour becomes
ineffective,
  and people stop using it, regardless of the fact that it protects against
hand
  weapons. Now substitute archery for guns and see how that plays. (Yes,
  the rise
  of the national army changes this equation.)

  Neil Gilmore
  raito@raito.com
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