From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #10 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Tuesday, 18 July 1995 Volume 02 : Number 010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Aden Steinke Mamlukes and Agincourt Phil Johnson RQ Rules Digest: V2 #9 Cedric Chausson Missile Accuracy Hugh Foster Spell addition Hugh Foster Archery and Fun SPerrin@aol.com Missiles and Agincourt RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Aden Steinke" Date: 18 Jul 1995 15:43:32 +1000 Subject: RE: Mamlukes and Agincourt Hi All Sandy says.. > The Mamelukes were originally pagan children enslaved by >the Sultan of Egypt and raised in his household. They originally >came from some kind of Anatolian Turks, who were presumably >horsemen, but they were enslaved at a young age. > Later they became a warrior class, but as such a class they >didn't really live the life of a nomad, so presumably had to >practice their horse archery. They were tough enough at one point >that they were able to defeat the Mongols decisively and halt their >advance -- the first group to do so this side of the Indus. Good point, to which I add that the Mamlukes (of Egypt, the best known) actually had several types of Mamluke, including 'white Mamlukes' who I think were Circassians, Royal Mamlukes etc from particular types of Turks, and these Mamlukes were from different backgrounds, many of whom were never nomads. While regarding missile accuracy > I, too, have no idea, but I suspect it's less than 40-50, >and even less than 10%. The English longbowmen at Agincourt were >probably as skilled with their bows as any Mongol (and presumably >riding a horse, no matter how skilled they were, degraded the >Mongol's skill by some tiny bit) -- approximately 5000 archers >loosed _at least_ 24 arrows each, and the French suffered around >7000 casualties. If we took Agincourt as a reasonable case, we'd get >a result of about 6% accuracy. Of course, there may have been >"hits" that didn't count as casualties, but there were presumably >casualties that weren't KOed by an arrow, but by other wounds, so we >can pull a figure out of our butt and pretend that 6% is >reasonable. That is 6% impale or critical hit - a lesser hit seems very unlikely to bring down an armoured knight at any distance with a human powered weapon. Given distance and other modifiers the English rolled very well and had high skill levels! The failure of the Ottomans to mow down the French at Nicopolous (?) shows that in favourable conditions the armoured knight can penetrate fire from semi trained archers, while Goliath Springs demonstrated that relatively unarmoured cavalry (in this case Mongols) no matter how superb, have trouble penetrating in the face of missile fire of skilled opponents (Mamlukes), similarly at Tannenberg the crossbowmen of the Teutonic Order drove off the Lithuanian horse IMHO the long range exchanges with plunging fire would be like modern fire at opponents who are not standing in nice lines waiting to be hit, not that productive in terms of casualties per X missiles expended. Of course all of this discussion of mass actions is of limited relevance when a party of 5 is fighting a dozen sling armed trollkin or cuddly Broos :). Aden ------------------------------ From: "Phil Johnson" Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 15:49:09 GMT+800 Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #9 The way I used to calculate trying to plug someone with any sort of missile weapon while riding a moving object was to ask the person their critical value for the weapon they were employing. If ( highly unlikely ) they hit then they rolled again to see how well they hit, weather it was a Crit / Special / Normal Success. However should the second roll be a failure then the arrow did hit the target but did nothing eg: glancing off armour, caught in flapping cloak... Unlike my friend Arron, whose character on both occasions in which he tried to shoot a running man from horses shot his own horse in the back of the head. ------------------------------ From: Cedric Chausson Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 11:09:29 GMT Subject: Missile Accuracy Sandy Petersen's guess on the chance to hit a running man at 200 meters is:: >even less than 10%. The English longbowmen at Agincourt were >probably as skilled with their bows as any Mongol approximately 5000 archers >loosed _at least_ 24 arrows each, and the French suffered around >7000 casualties. If we took Agincourt as a reasonable case, we'd get >a result of about 6% accuracy. As interesting as this case is(thanks for the numbers). it seems to me there is a major difference between the battle and the example we are using as discussion point. According to my limited historic knowledge of this battle, the British archers used a mass volley effect by shooting at a large mass of French cavalry. So the number cited above of 6% while relevant for mass combat might be different for our example where a single archer does a shot at a single target after probably some fine aiming. So I would tend to think the real accuracy number will be higher although by which amount is unclear. Sandy Petersen then gives the relevant examples for more modern wars like the Crimean war and the Franco Prussian war. He concludes that old days archers were actually more accurate then modern shooters. But wasn't there a slight difference in battle orders. I mean did armies still concentrate by big blocks of condensed men on one battlefield and shoot it out. In this case it is obviously easier to hit. You just need to shoot a large quantity of missiles at one big target. The impression I have is that this kind of battles had been rendered obsolete by modern weapons. If British archers at Azincourt had had modern firearms it would have been even more of a massacre. Therefore, IMO, the apparent decrease in accuracy shown by Sandy's Petersen's numbers could be due less to the fact that shooters had gotten less accurate and more to the fact that battles were conducted in a different thus inherently making hitting more difficult. Cedric the Heretic C.P.Chausson@stud.man.ac.uk "Violence is always a possible solution... but it is only rarely the best" ------------------------------ From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 18 Jul 95 14:30:16 EDT Subject: Spell addition >> > Can you cast bladesharp and truesword on the same weapon? > Can you cast bludgeon and crush on the same weapon? Yes. Yes. > Can you cast protection and damage resitance on the same person << Oh! Now, my worlds aren't as magic-rich as Glorantha, so I'd ruled "no", or rather, the highest spell works and the other don't. But I'd always regarded this as a campaign flavour descision. Each to 's own! >> Never tried this type of system in RQ but it was great fun in the other systems. Of course it was also a blast to be able to aim for an opponents brain... << But what a bind for the NPCs, alias GM ! "Aim at the PCs' brains!" "What brains ?" "Ummm...." - ----------------------------------------------------------------- | Hugh Foster [100326,446] | | | | An aetheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. | | (John Buchan) | - ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 18 Jul 95 14:30:11 EDT Subject: Archery and Fun >> Invoking the Petersen Principle, it is much more fun to play in a world where arrows are deadly << I couldn't agree more. Assuming - and this is usually true - - the honours are even on both sides. Players can massacre their foes at longish ranges with missiles; and also, on occasion, get royally creamed with same . For my two penn'orth, as a re-enactor I have been shot with arrows. Admittedly, blunt-rubber headed arrows at non-lethal velocities; but then I'm a thin-blooded 20th Century desk-jobber, not a barbarian hero (tm). And it _hurts_! There's usually a good few seconds after being shot when all you really do is go "ow bugger", not least because, as your're concentrating on your opponent, you almost never see it coming... All this waffle means I back the assertion that, assuming a normal hume being hit by a normal arrow, it's really serious injury time. Magic, of course, skews this in either direction, but that's really irrelevant; we're discussing reproducing mundane effects, rather than magical effects that really render the arrow redundant... - ----------------------------------------------------------------- | Hugh Foster [100326,446] | | | | Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but | | wish we didn't. | - ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 22:37:31 -0400 Subject: Re: Missiles and Agincourt I'm afraid that Sandy's figures for number of arrows compared to number of casualties suffer (at least as presented) from leaving out a necessary part of the equation. Everything I've read on the subject says that the English archery was really not very effective at Agincourt. French armor had gotten too good. Lamentably for the French, their excellent armor was very heavy, and they chose to march across a wet plowed field to confront the English. By the time they got to the English lines, they were exhausted. The English were drawn up in a formation sort of like this: |-|-| Where the "|" were the vees of archers and the "-" were the men at arms. The archer formations stuck out about like that beyond the knights and men-at-arms toward the French. The tired French, ever mindful of their honor, just about unanimously decided to forego attacking the archers, who were just peasants, and jammed themselves into the interval between the vees. This crammed them together so that they were in the same fix the Romans and Adrianople were, they could barely swing their weapons. The fresh British knights and men-at-arms, backed up by maul-wielding archers, slammed themselves into the mass of French and commenced peeling them off the pile from the outside, defeating them in detail. BTW, French books on the subject to this day say that the French were actually outnumbered at Agincourt. Crecy and Poitiers were triumphs of the British archery system against the French. By Agincourt, the French could defeat themselves, and did. Why did the French dismount and march, you ask? Because the British had had such success by dismounting their knights, the French figured that was the way to victory. They completely ignored the fact that the British were fighting defensive battles (and thus not marching in armor) and Heaven forfend that they should take the effect of archery into account. In other words, Olivier and Branagh did great movies of Henry V, but pay no attention to the tactics presented. In the cause of accuracy in comparisons... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #10 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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