Thursday, February 27, 2020

Early Medieval Weaponry and Armor

My pet campaign setting (not one that I've had the chance to actually play in) is very much influenced by Early Medieval Europe, mostly Northern and Western Europe. It's a fascinating period in history - there's not a great deal of concrete information on a lot of things, but what there is really interesting, and it provides a lot of opportunities for RPGs. (How do you deal with the myriad problems to do with adventuring in plate armor? Well, that's easy if plate armor hasn't been invented yet.)

The system I'm making to go along with this setting, which I promise is totally actually a thing and not just a disorganized jumble of thoughts in my head and across several disparate notebooks, uses class damage dice, rather than weapon damage dice, and weapons instead have various attack bonuses. This attack bonus represents a combination of how easy it is to hit someone with that weapon and how good that weapon is at getting through armor.

Weapon Attack Cost Weight Properties
Knife -2 10 p. 1/4 lb. Dex, grapple
Dagger -1 2 d. 1/2 lb. Dex, grapple, thrown -2 10/20/25
Handaxe 0 2 d. 1 lb. Close, thrown -1 10/20/25
Club 0 7 p. 2 lb. Close
Javelin +1 3 d. 4 lb. Close, thrown +2 45/60/90
Sword +1 7 d. 3 lb. Dex, close, horseback
Spear +1 2 d. 7 lb. Close/reach, horseback, versatile +2, thrown +1 20/40/60
Battleaxe +2 2 d. 4 lb. Close, horseback
War Club +2 1 d. 6 lb. Close, horseback
Greataxe* +3 10 d. 6 lb. Close, two-handed, +1 vs shields
Hewing Spear** +3 10 d. 10 lb. Close/reach, two-handed
Lance +3 3 d. 10 lb. Charge, reach, horseback only, shatter
Hunting Bow 0 3 d. 3 lb. Two-handed, ranged 100/200/300
Sling +1 1 d. 1/4 lb. Ranged 100/200/1000
Bow +2 7 d. 5 lb. Two-handed, ranged 200/400/600

*The greataxe, often known as the Dane axe, only came into use around 900 CE, and only became widespread outside of Scandinavia around 1050 CE, towards the end of the Early Medieval Period.
**There is dispute over the actual existence of the hewing spear, also known as the atgeir or the "Viking halberd". No archaeological evidence has been uncovered.

Properties:
- Dex: You can use your Dexterity modifier rather than your Strength modifier for the attack roll.
- Grapple: Only usable at grappling/fistfighting range.
- Thrown: You can throw the weapon, with either Strength or Dexterity, with the noted attack bonus, at the noted normal/medium/long ranges.
- Close: Usable at 5 foot range.
- Horseback: Possible to use from horseback.
- Reach: Usable at 10 foot range.
- Versatile: Has the noted attack bonus rather than the regular attack bonus when used with two hands.
- Two-handed: Only usable with two hands.
- Charge: The wielder must have moved at least 10 feet towards the target before attacking with this weapon.
- Shatter: On a hit, this weapon has a 50% chance of shattering. If it doesn't shatter, it must be dropped.
-Ranged: This weapon is only usable from range, uses only Dexterity for the attack roll, and has the noted normal/medium/long ranges.


Armor AC Cost Weight Other
Leather 12 10 d. 5 lb. -
Cloth 12 9 d. 7 lb. -
Lamellar Leather* 13 200 d. 5 lb. -
Mail Shirt 14 30 d. 10 lb. Stealth problems**
Scale/Lamellar* 15 400 d. 15 lb. Stealth problems**
Full Mail 16 100 d. 20 lb. Stealth problems**

*Both lamellar and scale armor are, with a couple of exceptions, not used in the areas I'm focusing on, so they're extremely expensive if they can be obtained at all.
**I don't know what sort of skill system I've used yet, so mechanics will be made at some point in the future.

A couple of notes on this whole thing: I haven't figured out how I'm doing encumbrance, but I'll probably replace the (speculative) weights with some sort of encumbrance values (and two-handed weapons which are very annoying to carry around will certainly be penalized more). Finally, for coins, 12 pence/denier (p.) = 1 shilling/sous (d.) = 1/20 pound/livre (s.), all of which are silver. To digress, the abbreviations are from the Roman silver denarius (d.) and gold solidus (s.), but confusingly the Frankish penny equivalent, the denier, is also named after denarii. I should write a post about this at some point. Anyways, even the 7 d. that a regular, unadorned sword costs is a very significant amount. The 100 d. for a full suit of mail is prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest nobles.