Re: (TFT) Outdoor Scale - Request for Comments

[lifeisfun@aol.com]

I can see how it is easy to look at the weapons table and determine your own personal strength by seeing which weapon you could manage to use.  But, I don't think that is really an accurate test of your strength.  
 
When I was maybe 16, I used to belong to a couple of midevil fighting groups.  One of them used wooden weapons and real armor.  This group, called Markland, taught technique, but the weapons were always too light.  The other group sounds less realistic, but it was actually much more fun and far more real.  The other group was called Daggorhir, and on a typical monthly meeting there might be up to 600 people all outfitted with foam weapons and real armor.  
 
I know what you're thinking, foam.  Foam is hardly realistic.  But, the techniques for making these weapons was way sophisticated.  The core you used needed to be strong, but it couldn't be too hard because there's no ammount of padding you could use to make it safe if you used an iron rod.  But the weapon also had to meet a weight requirement for it's class.  The things people made were amazingly realistic looking.  Many swords were multiple fiberglass shafts bound together in a line with grooved rubber strips.  The rubber added weight and allowed you to make a thin and wide core like a flat sword.  Over that they would melt or glue ensolite dense foam (the thick stuff used under sleeping bags).  And over that, some local tailor was selling this metallic material that was a nylon based material and had a shiny silver appearance.  Into the handle of such a sword, soft lead strips were usually soldered to add the weight.  The best sword makers could even balance the sword forward of the hilt.  
 
Anyway, long story short, what I learned from this second group was just how freaking hard it is to run around in armor and beat the crap out of people all day with realisitically heavy weapons.  And, what I have to report is that even though a short sword seems small and light when you pick it up and whip it around a little, after a few minutes of trying to wield it in a combat situation, you'd be hurting for technique.  
 
Now, I know that the Mele rules say that you need to have X strength to use Y weapon.  But seriously, a ST 14 person "could" lift and probably TRY to use a pike axe.  It's not as if the pike axe is so much heavier than a halberd that it can't be picked up and swung around.  I think that the point they wanted to make with the minimium strength was that if you wanted to use the weapon effectively, you needed to be stronger.  This example to me is more clear with the medium sized weapons.  Hatchet is 9, Hammer is 10 and Mace is 11.  Honestly, a strength 9 person would be able to pick up a mace and swing it around.  The difference is just the weight and length of the handle.  To me, it is more of a measure that after two minutes, you would no longer be able to swing the mace if you were strength 9.  But by contrast, a strength of 11 would still be able to weild the mace after the two minute flurry of orc smashing.  At least, that's how I justify it in my mind. 
 
In the end, I think that if in a battle a 10 strength character was to break his hammer and there was a mace lying on the ground, I would probably allow him to pick it up and swing it as a weapon every other round. But the mace would only do 1d+1 damage, the same damage as his hammer.  Much of the damage I think is in fact the strength behind the weapon, not the shape.  The penalty of swinging every other round would account for the extra weight.  I would not let him defend with it.  
 
Good Fortune,
Rick Walters
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: pvk@oz.net
To: tft@brainiac.com
Sent: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 1:36 AM
Subject: Re: (TFT) Outdoor Scale - Request for Comments


I think Rick's scale is a bit off the usual interpretation, with lower values than usual. If he's a male in decent shape who does regular activity, then he's above average at least for modern folks, and I think 10 is supposed to be average (albeit medieval average, in TFT). Depending on how large Rick is, it sounds to me like he is more like ST 10-11 rather than 8-9. I guess maybe it depends on what aspect of ST you are measuring, though. I tend to think of TFT ST in terms of weapon minimum ST, and maybe the schism here is at least partly from using ST to represent so many things (muscle, size, power, energy, endurance, condition, psychic energy, damage capacity...). Because thinking about it another way, if 10 is an average medieval male with a daily physical occupation, and we're talking about ST for purposes of endurance and conditioning, maybe I would agree with Rick. However if we're talking about ST for short-term power and minimum ST for weapon-wielding, and an amateur martial artist is an 8, then what are the average modern slobs? 6-7? What about typical non-athletic women? 5-6? Going back to weapon minimum ST, as we all know, a Rapier requires 9, and a shortsword or spear 11. Rick, do you think you'd rate a DX penalty to wield a Rapier? 
 
I think I may have seen one of the greatswords Rick mentions in London when I was 11. Huge alright. At 11 anyway, it seemed like it was made for someone phenomenal. 
 
Back to the topic of marching, though, I think condition and encumbrance have more to do with march rate than strength or sprint speed (MA), though again TFT lacks the distinction. It seems to me though that if anyone in a group is out of physical condition, regardless of muscle or sprinting ability, they will tend to have a very hard time keeping up a good pace for a whole day. When I used The Desert Environment (a nice 3rd party Traveller generic desert adventuring rulebook) in TFT, I actually assigned each character an Endurance score on the Traveller (2-12) scale, which was not necessarily related to their strength - more to my idea of their health and current fitness. In general though I just used the ITL travel rates as a baseline, adjusted by the GM for circumstances, and I and a friend of mine made some pretty enormous TFT worlds mapped using the 12.5 km hex scale. 
 
GURPS BTW has some pretty good travel rules that are not very complex but are more developed than TFT. IIRC it is 50 miles/day on perfect terrain for no encumbrance, 40 for light, 30 for medium (the lightest most typical equipped adventurer parties would usually be), 20 for heavy, 10 for extra-heavy. Adjust down for terrain and circumstances. 
 
PvK 
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