RE: (TFT) Guns and Armour Penetration.

["Ty Beard" <tbeard@tyler.net>]

I'm unable to divine from your post whether you feel armor should protect vs
guns, so I'll respond to the 3 salient points that you appear to have made.

1. Given the role of heavy cavalry on the battlefield, it should not
surprise anyone that they would still wear armor well after the point at
which firearms could easily penetrate that armor. Shock cavalry -- even into
the Napoleonic age -- was a melee arm and would wear armor to protect
themselves against melee weapons (bayonets and swords), not firearms. Ditto
for the infantry -- notice that they lost their armor at about the same time
that pikes vanished from the battlefield. I therefore draw a completely
different conclusion than you on this point. And I have been unable to find
historical evidence that guns after (say) 1570 were unable to penetrate
armor.

2. Regarding KE -- while KE is not the only thing that matters, it is by far
the most important measure of a gun's ability to injure an opponent and to
penetrate armor. This is true, by the way, even now -- muzzle energy (KE
possessed by a round as it leaves the muzzle) is by far the most useful
predictor of the penetration of the modern APFSDS round (Armor Piercing Fin
Stabilized Discarding Sabot) used in main battle tanks. Among rounds of
similar muzzle energy, design qualities can improve performance. But more KE
almost always means more penetration, at least with projectiles of similar
technology. I see no reason that the same would not apply to guns and
crossbows. Nor have I been able to find historical evidence that crossbows
had superior penetration to early firearms.

3. Whether to include gunpowder in a fantasy campaign is a subjective matter
and opinions will vary wildly. I blow hot and cold myself. But *if* you want
guns in your campaigns, I think you are poorly served by the existing TFT
rules. In addition, I think that simply cribbing guns from GURPS is a Bad
Idea, since GURPS has a fatal systemic flaw -- it equates KE with
penetration (which is fine IMHO) and penetration with damage (which is not
fine IMHO). The result is that modern GURPS guns do way too much damage (an
average man has no chance of surviving such a hit).

4. I do not think that guns overly stress the TFT combat system. I think
that new rules are appropriate, but I think the system can handle it. An
idea that has some merit IMHO is to assign a penetration factor for modern
guns. This will define how much *modern* armor the bullet will ignore.
Modern armor would also be doubled against shotguns firing shot. I would
allow all guns to ignore primitive physical armor.

5. I have never said that armor has *no* effect on a bullet. I have said
that the armor does not materially increase one's chance of survival when
shot by even late medieval firearms.

--Ty




-----Original Message-----
From: tft-owner@brainiac.com [mailto:tft-owner@brainiac.com]On Behalf Of
Charles Gadda
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 7:41 PM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: (TFT) Guns and Armour Penetration.


Kinetic Energy is not everything - the key that is missing is the
composition
and design of the *projectile*

There is a vast difference between a 3/4" diameter soft lead ball and a
sharp,
narrow, hardened steel bodkin point... trust me, the latter has a
significant
advantage in penetrating. Penetration is dependent on a number of factors,
primarily the K. E. of the projectile, the hardness of the projectile, the
cross section area of the projectile, the angle of attack, and the hardness
and thickness of the target. Note that in the aforementioned example, the
ball
will have an even larger effective cross section owing to the fact that it
will "splatter" and spread out upon hitting the much harder breastplate,
making penetration that much more difficult.

BTW the same principle applies to modern ammo - a hollow point has poor
penetration compared to a full metal jacket, which in turn is inferior to a
dedicated armour piercing round with a steel or tungsten core.

Also, I have witnessed personally the results of a contest of sorts between
a
300 lb. crossbow and a .44 cap and ball revolver. While the former was able
to
penetrate a 16 ga. breastplate, the latter could only dent it. Given that
period breastplates were of higher carbon steel and probably even better
shaped, I think the penetrative powers of many of these weapons are being
grossly overstated. They were powerful, yes - very powerful. But they did
not
simply "ignore" armour...

In any case, were armour as useless as proclaimed here, then it certainly
would not have persisted in use with infantry into the 17th century and
cavalry into the 18th. Heck, I think French Cavalry was wearing breastplates
at Waterloo! Since no (sane) soldier totes something into battle that is of
no
use, one may reasonably conclude that some protection was expected from
these
metal clam shells...

All that said, I would not permit guns in any TFT campaign I ran, save as
unique "artefacts" or if the purpose of the campaign was to mix technology
and
sorcery. Problem is that once the principles are learnt, it does not take
long
before some genius invents a fixed cartridge of some sort, permitting very
fast reloading. At that point, with something like a Martini Henry, we're
blasting out at least one 4 dice damage shot per round. And let's not get
started on lever or bolt actions... Granted that powder unreliability might
prevent machine guns from being deployed, but even this problem may be
overcome (picture a renegade wizard using Cleansing spells to ensure no
"sulphur metabolising micro-organisms" are present and an enterprising
chemist
loading and sealing the rounds with a special compound to keep the
aforementioned organisms out...) At that point, kiss your campaign and game
world good bye... at least in its present form. If one wants it to evolve in
this direction, than fine, but if not, I wouldn't go there.

After all, a file of riflemen or a single gatling gun would obliterate a 14
hex dragon without working up a sweat... kind of takes the challenge out of
the game... unless a prootwaddle blows the head off your 48 attribute point
character with an only slightly lucky shot, which really isn't all that much
fun, either.

Of course, if the dragon has a Reverse Missiles spell up, things will turn
out
rather differently...

Guns push the limits of TFT rules, which were really only intended for
Mediaeval combat. It would take a radical rules redesign to incorporate
firearms properly (and even then, they will unbalance things, just as they
did
in real history)

About me: I used to post here, until I got into a spat with Michael Taylor.
Since that time till now I've only periodically ghosted the List. But I
noticed recently that he stopped posting (ironically in the wake of a spat
wherein he came out on the losing end) so I decided it was finally safe to
resurface. That and I have a little more time these days. Mind you I have
long
ago gotten over the spat I had with Michael (though I am still a bit miffed)
and I think he had a lot of great (and even brilliant) ideas - it was the
way
he expressed them that caused a lot of gnashing of teeth and so forth. I
suspect, though, that he comes across better in person; at least that's what
John Paul Bakshorian (?sp? - the guy who has the Mnoren Librarium) told me
in
an e-mail after meeting him at a Convention out here in LA. Unfortunate, in
a
lot of ways. I sympathise, since I know how easy it is to get carried away
using e-mail style communications (the spat I had with him involved
unpleasentness in both directions; I suspect its still here in the archives
somewhere) but Michael seemed to be a little worse about it then others I've
seen, even including myself. That's really too bad, but not much to be done
for it, I suppose.

Well, there is my 2 solidi of input on early firearms. Bon Appetit!
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