Re: (TFT) How often did ancient swords break.

[ErolB1@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/22/2004 3:35:18 PM Central Standard Time, 
rsmith@lightspeed.ca writes:

>    I did read that some fine quality Roman short
> swords were guaranteed against breakage for one year.
> But short swords using the point have considerably 
> less impact than a broadsword chopping down on some
> one.  (And how many hours does a typical Roman use his
> sword each year.)

The prosecution would like to point out that 216 turns = 18 minutes. If a 
typical Roman uses his short sword for three hours and doesn't have it break, 
then he's already an order of magnitude past the "break on a roll of 18" rule. 

Or consider the everyday military use & abuse of bayonets, kabar knives, etc. 
Not combat use, but use to dig holes, cut open oil drums, and otherwise use 
as a "sharpened prybar." These will survive hours of such use before breakage, 
which brings us back to an order-of-magnitude plus past "break on a roll of 
18." 

Or consider mining tools. How many hours do those last? If the rule is 
changed from "break on a roll of 18" to "break only on an 18 confirmed by another 
18" - i.e. 1/216th the "official" breakage rate - then they'll last a bit over 
eight working days (assuming 8 hrs work/day), on average. That strikes me as an 
awefully short lifetime, and I don't see mining rock as being easier on tools 
than combat use. 

(And note too: This means that weapons can be 100s of times less likely to 
break than the standard "break on a roll of 18" rule, and *still* leave plenty 
of broken weapon pieces lying around for archeologists to study.)

> This is a long lead in to asking the list, is
> there any hard data on how long various swords lasted.
> Please list alloys, techniques cultures if you know
> them.  The ideal information would be the % chance of 
> breaking per blow, or even the expected # of blows 
> before 50% of the swords would smash.

I don't think this information exists in the direct form. Remember that a 
turn of TFT combat is not a single blow. Also, it will be difficult if not 
impossible to determine how much of a battle was spent actually fighting. 

Weapon breakage is something that has to be deduced via indirect methods, and 
I'm sure we could argue over whether the accurate rate is one in 
ten-thousand, one in one-hundred thousand, or one in one million (or even higher). But a 
little though ought to make it clear that one in 216 is way too low, except for 
"disposable" weapons. 

Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
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