Ah, I see.

Yes, you are quite right - the technical term is called reducing pressure.

I am going to talk more of shields, and armour in my next series of posts. Do post and reply and share with us your experiences!

just thought of this before I head off to work; are you going to discuss shields only as a defensive tool or are you going to talk about the offensive nature of shields as well?

Thanks for those posts about swordfighting, D.Foxy - they were very interesting and informative. I don't tend to write detailed combat scenes in my fics because I know so little about it, but since my main character is a swordswoman, I guess I'd better take note.

Something I would like to add, in reference to your last post on wielding a sword and dagger, is that the Sai is not a weapon traditionally used together with a sword, at least that I have seen. It would be impractical, in my opinion, to wield such a weapon with regular Japanese swords, except perhaps the Wakizashi or Ko-dachi. Sai are weapons normally used alone or in pairs. Though if you've seen someone wield it with an actual sword, I would like to see it.

While there is a famous example in Japanese history of a dual-wielding samurai, he used a Katana and a Wakizashi. If you believe the legend that is. I'm partial to the belief that Musashi wasn't as skilled as he is made out to be, and in particular I find his duel with Sasaki Kojiro rather strange. But anyway, the point is that I've never seen a Sai wielded with a Japanese sword, only a Wakizashi wielded with a larger or comparatively sized sword. Maybe the Tanto as well, as I don't know the history of that weapon very well, but I find it equally as unlikely.

However, all that may simply be because I've never liked the Sai very much, and have never been very interested in learning to use them. I don't fancy wielding a gardening tool as a weapon.

Helena, I am glead you are reading this thread. Perhaps you will now be able to describe sword fighting better than that infamous "I waved my sword about and finally managed to kil those digusting birds (cliff racers)" phrase... :rofl: ... that was a classic!

Ambrose: A very interesting question you have posed. Yes, the Sai are not meant to be used in conjuntion with a long sword...as the classical sai are built, and constructed.

However..

I have designed a duelling dagger and sword set where the dagger has some elements of the Sai. I will describe it later, in the post 'Assassin's weapons and techniques'.

I too tended to be sceptical of Miyamoto Mushashi's exploits, but after deep study - and yes, I have read Go rin No sho - I believe his duels were real.

Bmont: yes, the use of shields in attack will definitely be discussed!

...well, in that particular case the point was rather that she wasn't able to use normal combat techniques. That said, having access to a guide like this earlier in the story would definitely have been a help.

Armour, shields, and especially the buckler.

The construction, the fitting, and the maintenance of various types of armour require not just a thread, but a book in itself. I shall not describe in detail the various combinations of leather, chain mail, and plate armour that is common to both the medieval ages and the Renaissance except to say this:

I think modern day writers are completely forgetting one fact that was evident in those times, and should also, I think, be evident in the world of Morrowind and Oblivion - the social status of armour. The stronger and harder the armour, the more the likelihood that the person wearing it was either of a high social class or was a champion of fighting, and sometimes both.

Plate armour was tremendously expensive: to be wearing it in battle was like, in today's world, driving around in a Ferrari or a Bentley - it was ancient 'bling' as well as a useful tool of battle. It also showed your opponent that you were a person of means and quite possibly trained by experts in how to fight: such a person was to be approached with caution, but was also viewed as a target for ransom. Soldiers and Bandits alike tried their best not to kill any enemy wearing plate armour, for such persons were worth ten to fifty times more alive than dead: the average ransom for a knight was the equivalent of fifteen years or more of wages for the average spearman. And his plate armour was worth another five.

Should a person be wearing well built full plate armour, he would be almost 100% safe against sword strikes. It is impossible for any normal man, no matter how strong, to slash or even chop through plate armour with a sword, even a heavy broadsword. For illustration, take an ordinary tin of sardines, and try to open it up - NOT with a tin opener - but by chopping at it with a kitchen knife. You will find it impossible to make more than a small rent in the tin (if you do manage to do any damage beyond a dent at all! ). A plate of steel armour is five times thicker and twenty times stronger than that tin.

I do not know about how strong Dremora Lords are - but if we take a Dremora Lord to be twice as strong and fast as...let's say...the legendary and still living Russian Superheavyweight wrestler Alexander Karelin, who at 285 lbs (130 kilos) had the strength of a 400 lb weightlifter and the speed and agility of a 200 lb cruiserweight boxer, even then a heavy sword swung by a Dremora lord would not slash or chop through first class plate armour more than an inch or so. The person wearing that armour would be far more in danger of broken bones from the shock of that superstrong Dremora strike than from a sword breaking deep enough through the armour to cut open his body.

This is why medieval fighters used hammers and maces against plate armour. The idea was to send shock waves through the armour into the brain or bones, and thus break or damage them.

And another myth about full plate armour should be dispelled: if built by a craftsman who was sure of his craft, it could weigh very little - a full set of plate armour weighing perhaps as low as 50 lbs. Even if the armour was designed to be highly protective and thick, it would weigh under 100 lbs. Of course, there were weak points in that armour - the armpits, the groin area, the back of the knees - but they were very small in area, and difficult to attack.
This means that for battlefield short distances at least, a well trained soldier could keep up with poorer, more lightly armoured soldiers. .

Having explained that full plate armour was so expensive that only the very rich could afford them, it follows that most soldiers, bandits, and adventurers in the medieval like world of Morrowind and Oblivion logically would be wearing a mixture of leather and chainmail armour. This is about half the weight of plate armour and gives about a quarter the protection.

HOWEVER...even simple leather armour gives quite a lot of protection, at a distance, against low trajectory arrow strikes. Thus if you want to shoot through armour against a soldier armoured with even simple leather armour who is more than 30 yards (27 meters) away, you will have to use a high angle, 40 to 65 degree high angle parabolic shot. This of course is impossible in tunnels. And such high angle shots are notoriously difficult to aim, and even more difficult to hit with small, man-sized targets - not only do we have the difficulty of off-boresight aiming, but also we have to take into account wind drift, which gets worse the higher the arrow flies. The famous English victories through arrow fire at Agincourt and Crecy relied upon volume of fire and the fact that shooting at a target the size of an entire army at 200 yards (180 meters) distance was impossible to miss. I shall explain more about the use, and misuse, of arrow fire when I talk about bows and arrows in a later post.

What's the point for the writer in all this? Well, I would caution writers NOT to write "I charged against an enemy wearing full plate armour and slashed his arm off with a single blow of my sword". Puh-leeze! You wouldn't get through the armour, not even if you were as strong as an Olympic gold medal superheavyweight weightlifter and you were using a claymore that weighed 30 lbs (14 kilos). You might break the enemy's arm, but you definitely would not chop it off! Or even cut his skin.

AND also I would caution writers not to clothe every two-bit bandit and highwayman in their stories with full plate armour. That's about as believable as going out for a drive and seeing that every third car is a Ferrari, a Bentley or a Lamborghini. That doesn't happen IRL, not even on the streets of Kuwait.

Now let's talk about shields.

Large shields are useful only against thrusting spears: against swords, large shields are more hindrance than help. This is why all cultures with primarily swordfighting warriors came up with the small, round shields called various names in various languages. For the purpose of this little treatise, we'll call this type of shield the 'buckler'.

The buckler was enormously popular in the day of the sword in Europe, from about the 10th century to the 16th. It was also found in the armies of Islam and Hindustan, and many other armies and cultures across the globe.

Defensively, it was used more to parry than to block sword strikes, being more efficient that way. The small size and light weight of the buckler meant that you could use it in 'forward defense' where you moved the buckler forward to sweep the enemy's strike out of the way

The buckler could also be used offensively. By extending your shield arm forward, like a boxer throwing a jab, you can use your buckler to either push or sweep your enemy's blade out of the way, opening the way for your own sword strike. You could also use the edge of your shield to punch the enemy, in effect having the equivalent of brass knuckles on your shield arm!

The buckler can also be used to mask your sword hand - thus preventing the enemy from seeing, for that critical one tenth of a second, the type of sword strike you are preparing to throw at him.

Finally - but this is a difficult maneuver, and requires lots of practice under the supervision of an expert - the buckler can also be used to twist and lever open the shield guard of an enemy who is also armed with a shield.

In my next post I shall discuss the spear and the javelin, before I go on to discuss practical sword and shield attack and defense techniques and tactical positioning in melee battles.

Although I agree with most of what you've said, when you were discussin the shield size vs sword, I did wonder, what about the Romans? were their shields there only for spears and arrows? I was preety sure they fought from behind their shields ie Big Gaul comes up with Claymore, slashes at roman. Roman uses the steel edge of shield to block then thrusts his shortsword into the enemy's guts Roman wins!

This is good stuff, but there has always been a huge pet peeve of mine that wasn't adressed here, that is frequently used by writers to try and claim technical combat skill but isn't actually true: direction of the block. You mentioned that in the parry you use the flat of the blade, since you're just aiming the momentum and not absorbing it. However, usually people will say never to block with the edge because you'll chip it, and while the second point is true, taking a full attack on the flat of a sword, with some variation based on quality and type of sword, could bend or even break it. Personally, I'd rathetr a chip on the edge than being short a weapon. You didn't say that you should use the edge, of course, but it's a misconception that bears stamping out.

another good point: that most swordsmen prefer to parry than to block. aside from getting the nemy weapon further away from you, it also means more time neccessary for them to turn the momentum around to an attack or defense of their own, meaning more opportunities to put a hole in them someplace there shouldn't be a hole.

Last but not least, to quote musashi, "always stab at the face."

This is all very useful stuff, and very well-written. I think when you're done this needs either a sticky or needs to be assimilated into the RP guide at the top of the page. Well done, D!

If you look at the early shields of the roman armies - which in the very early years of the roman republic, were mainly pitted against the macedonian phlananx, that was armed with spears - you will see that they had long, oval shields, excellent against spears.

As the later roman armies battled more and more with sword and ax wielding germans and celts, you can see their shields becoming smaller and more rectangular, into the 'roman shield' that we today associate with roman armies.

In a battle line you cannot maneuver to the left or right, so you will need a larger shield anyway whether the enemy uses spears or swords. But in adventurer style melee combat, you can maneuver, so the disadvantage of having a smaller shield is more than compensated for by the lack of cumbersomeness that a buckler brings.

"...This is good stuff, but there has always been a huge pet peeve of mine that wasn't adressed here, that is frequently used by writers to try and claim technical combat skill but isn't actually true: direction of the block. You mentioned that in the parry you use the flat of the blade, since you're just aiming the momentum and not absorbing it. However, usually people will say never to block with the edge because you'll chip it, and while the second point is true, taking a full attack on the flat of a sword, with some variation based on quality and type of sword, could bend or even break it. Personally, I'd rathetr a chip on the edge than being short a weapon. You didn't say that you should use the edge, of course, but it's a misconception that bears stamping out...'

Yes, I should have mentioned that you should block with the EDGE of your sword for the reasons that you have described above, AND...

( 1 ) if you block a powerstrike with the FLAT of your blade your wrist is now at a 90 degree angle to the strike, which means that it will be bent - thus weakening the angle of your block - or (ugh) broken.

( 2 ) Many swords were constructed with a FLAT edge, with a rectangular cross section on the forte, the lowest part of the blade, for this very reason - to avoid getting chipped upon blocking with the edge!

D.Foxy provided a good answer to this but I will elaborate a bit for Roman battle tactics. As D.Foxy pointed out the Roman shield evolved, heck Roman armor evolved?Roman Legions where not fighting in lorica segmentata. Only the Legionaries' wore this armor. The Axillaries wore Lorica hamata (chain amour) but back to the topic. The scutum (roman shield) did evolve from a round shield to the large rectangle we know it today, although the rectangle scutum was larger then the round one. D.Foxy you might be thinking of the Parma (a Calvary shield). The Parma and Round Scutum are different, but look very similar.

This shield was large for two reasons; one the style in which they fought and for siege. This will talk about the fighting first. As you may or may not know a Roman Legion (after the Reform) was divided into Centuries that formed a square. These Centuries would all advance together in a line, but the Centuries did have space between them (contrary to popular belief). The Roman army would reach the battle like they would thrust their scutum forward into the body of the man in front of them. This would cause their enemy to stager back into his line. The Legionary would then THRUST not slash with his gladius and in most cases kill the man in one strike, then rinse and repeat.

Ok now for the siege. Roman armies where great at the siege because their troops could march right up to the gate with a battering ram, under a hail of arrows, and not lose a single man. You must be asking how? Or this is Bull, no they didn't. Well they did it was because of the shield they where able to form a formation called the Testudo or tortoise formation. This was the over lapping of shields to form a very effective "shell". As I stated above Testudo was immune to arrows and oil. One of the problems with the Testudo was slow, but not to many of the people the Romans fought had the equipment to effectively defend against this formation.

I hope that helps to understand why the Roman shield (could be called a tower shield, although I hate that word) was designed the way it was.


Ok second I want to point out that the plate armor disused here was pre-gunpowder. post-gunpowder plate armor weighed close to 150-200 Lbs.

I haven't read all of this yet, Foxy, but from what I have I must say that this is very well put together and it will help a lot of us. Thank you, kind sir! :foodndrink:

I still say the information from D.Foxy should be removed and made into a sticky :icecream:

Why, sirs, thank you Bmont...and also, thank you, all constant readers.

Please keep on reading this thread, for as I am posting I am also talking to my masters, colleagues, and sparring partners, and not only re-discovering old truths but also finding little gems of innovation here and there too. Stay tuned, all my brothers and sisters of the sword - more is to come!

Damn man, you kick [censored]. Quick question, when will you do polearms? I'm (hopefully) not pressuring you, shall it be (somewhat illogically) with spears or by themselves?

Oh and the obligatory STICKYYY!

Well, William, here is the spear part! Others will follow later.
:D

The Spear and Throwing weapons: Spear, Javelin, throwing knife, bolas.

The Spear is, perhaps, the most ancient of all weapons of war. It was not only one of the first weapons used by stone age men, but it holds a place in honour in the weapons of war as the first weapon to be used by a mass of men fighting as a unit - it is the foundation of the army as opposed to a horde of men fighting individual actions.

It is only when you have fought against a group, even a small group, of spearmen standing shoulder to shoulder that you realize just how deadly a united group of spearmen acting in unison are. I have tested this myself, fighting with a katana against two spearmen standing shoulder to shoulder, and I have found that unless you are fast enough to get past the point and sprint in and attack from the side, you cannot win. This is not too much of a problem if you have enough time and space - but not all tactical situations allow you this luxury. And there is a solution to this attack - the third, reserve spearman, about whom I shall explain later.

It is simply impossible to break through from the middle unless you are so fast, and the opposing spearmen so slow and so unarmoured, that you can whack aside both the points, sprint into the gap now opened, kill one spearmen (in my practice, this means touching the padding of the spearman with my practice katana: IRL this is not as easy as that, as we have the problem of armour and human unpredictability to wounding to deal with) with one blow, and his companion with the backslash.

Returning to the solution of whacking aside one point and sprinting in from the side, this becomes more difficult when you have a third, reserve spearman with his spear held up vertically, marching just behind the front two spearmen. When you charge in from the left or the right he can wheel to face you and drop his point, and since you are charging forward you can easily become a human shish kebab!

And should you have three groups of two spearmen each advancing on you from the middle, left, and right, you are - heheh, I can't resist this - skewered! Literally. I would rather take on eight or even ten swordsmen single-handed than a tactical group of six spearmen. With swords, no matter how many enemies you are single handedly facing, you have a chance of defeating them all, since it is difficult to coordinate attack using swords - you have to watch out for the slashing of not only your enemies but your friends. With spears on the other hand, you have a separation distance that allows you to thrust at your enemy without worrying too much about whether a friend's thrust might find you instead.

Bottom line: even a master swordsman facing six second-class spearmen had a good chance of being badly wounded, or even killed, if he tried to fight them all at once.

The spear is the easiest, of all the white arms, to master. Its basic use can be taught in a matter of an hour or so, in contrast to the week or more of training needed for even the most basic use of the sword. This is why historically, the peasant militia have always been armed with spears.

My next post will talk about the javelin, the throwing knife, and the bolas.

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I'm speechless, this is excellent work, this will work into anyone who brings realism into their Posts etc very well. It also is probably teaching people things they never even knew anyway! Just... :clap: Well done.

Non-bow projectile weapons

This post is about weapons you throw.

The throwing spear was one of the first weapons that man used to attack from a distance, and it is possible that its history is even older than the bow and arrow. The advantage of the javelin over the bow and arrow is that the well-constructed javelin has a much higher armour penetration possibility than the simple arrow fired from a vow. Especially if you are throwing that javelin from a galloping horse!

Armour penetration is dependent on four main factors: how fast the projectile is travelling, how heavy the projectile is, how small the initial area of penetration is - or, in simple English, how sharp the projectile point is - and how much friction the projectile generates as it moves through the armour, which again in simple English means how slim the spear or arrowhead is. There are many other factors, of course, but these come into play at higher, gun - level velocities: for the purpose of our medieval combat, we can largely ignore them.

Now although the javelin is about four to six times slower than the arrow as thrown from the ground, it is twenty times heavier. This means that it can penetrate five times more armour than the arrow if it has the same warhead cross section. However, for many reasons the spearhead on the javelin is larger than the bodkin arrowhead point - at least twice, and sometimes three times as much. So practically, this means that the javelin could penetrate between over twice to about one and half times as much armour as the arrow. And if you are throwing the javelin from a galloping horse, you can nearly double the penetration capability.

The problem with the javelin is that it is easy to dodge, being a slow projectile weapon As such it was used mainly against targets that were not capable of maneuver, such as soldiers in a battle line. An army weapon, not an adventurer or assassin weapon. But I suspect the Imperial Legion, particularly its cavalry, would have javelins!

Now let us move to throwing weapons more suitable to our adventurer and assassin characters.

As I have mentioned before, the true throwing knife - by which I mean a knife that is designed for throwing - is a very specialized knife, and it has a special construction. It has a blade that is weighted - according to your style of throw - either toward the tip, or to the handle.

These techniques of knife throwing are so hard to master, and the chances of a mistrike so high, that I for one think adventurer and/or assassin characters should not use this unless they have trained for at least two to five years in its use. The 'spear throw' or 'military throw' especially, is very, very hard to master - it took me over a year to do it, and even then I was not very good! And classic style knife throwers cannot be good spear style throwers, and vice versa, since to train in one is to spoil your reflexes in the other!

If you must have your character be a knife thrower, know that he/she has to say what style he/she is throwing. In the classic style, the knife rotates once to as many as six times on the way to the target - and because of this, its penetration capability is very poor, especially against leather armour or even heavy clothes. And as for chain mail and plate armour, forget it. In fact, most throwing knives thrown in the classic style will not kill an ordinary man at once, which means the classic "the assassin sneaked up behind the sentry and threw a knife at him, and the sentry fell over silently, killed on the spot" is just a load of BS. Yeah, it may happen - about once in twenty times.

This is why the 'military throw' or 'spear throw' was invented. This type of throw is harder to learn, and involves different styles of wrist snap or finger control so that the knife is thrown straight, like a javelin. Now with a heavy throwing knife at short range this could kill a sentry in one throw - just about - but the problem is that this is a close range technique, not suitable for distances above twenty five feet (eight meters) or so. So if your ninja assassin is killing sentries in one knife throw, using the spear technique, don't write that he did it from a hundred feet away!

This is why I think the most suitable of the classic throwing weapons for the assassin is the sling. Yes, it does take some time to learn, but it has many, many advantages over the knife or even the bow and arrow in practical terms.

First, unlike the bow, it is absolutely silent.

Second, if we do not take ammunition into consideration, it takes up almost no weight and space at all! And even if we add the weight of the best type of ammunition, the large six ounce ( 165 gram) lead ball, twenty of them will weigh only seven and a half pounds, or about three kilos. And, of course, if we run out of those we can always use rocks - at close range they are just as accurate and almost as deadly.

And finally, the beauty of the sling is that it can be used from a distance against the head of a sentry from behind, and it doesn't matter at all if he is wearing a good helmet or not - a good hit means that he will go down instantly. This kind of 'behind armour effect' is an advantage that few other weapons possess. Furthermore you can swing that sling while crouching, which again is difficult to do with a longbow.

Even if you only hit his torso, you stand a good chance of breaking the enemy's rib or spine, and while it won't silence him, it will definitely render him incapable of resisting your further attacks.

I really think an Assassin should have the sling and lead balls as part of his/her standard equipment!

And finally...the bolas...

Why do writers neglect the bolas in their combat scenes? Like the sling, it is a dirt cheap piece of equipment, but also like the sling, it is 'the great equalizer' especially against an opponent wearing heavy armour!

Now, a strong and well trained man wearing heavy armour can run for a short distance almost as well as an unarmoured man, but there are two things he cannot do well, no matter how well trained and strong he is: he cannot dodge well, and he cannot jump well. And if he falls, it is much harder for him to scramble up to his feet again.
The bolas, swung and thrown at the feet of a heavily armoured enemy, would be very difficult for that enemy to dodge.

And if the bolas caught his feet while he was charging, down he would go - HARD - and it would not be easy for him to get up again, and while he was scrambling to get up, we would have plenty of time to do nasty things to him. Especially if we were armed with a rondel dagger or an armour piercing spear, of which I shall post more later.

My next post will be on specialized weapons, like the two mentioned above, and poleaxes.

once again very good D.Foxy. Full of information

This is a wonderful thread. I agree with previous comments; this should definitely be stickied.

Quite inspiring, too - I definitely think my character is going to have a sling Speaking of which, do you know if it would be easy to improvise a sling? That is, could somebody learn to cobble one together from miscellaneous materials, provided they had a long time (many years) to experiment with it? Would it be possible for a complete beginner to pick it up despite having no formal training (and perhaps having watched someone else use one a few times)?

Regardless, thank you very much for this thread, D.Foxy! I didn't even know half this stuff. I'm sure it's going to be very useful for a lot of people.

To make a sling you will need:

Two lengths of leather, nice and supple. Old leather, definitely.

A pouch, made of heavy cloth. Or for best results, three leather pieces stitched together to form a pouch.

Good stitching to make the pouch and join the pouch to the two lengths of leather.

To practice, find heavy stone. Put stone in pouch. Hold strings with one string inside fist, another held outside fist between finger and thumb. Swing sling around head, then let go of outside string. Stone will fly.

That's the theory, and can be done by anyone in five minutes.

But to AIM the stone or ball accurately...aha! AHA! That's another matter entirely!!!

It takes YEARS of daily practice to aim the stone with speed and accuracy. Many modern day people start, and after a week or even a month throw up their hands in disgust. It takes years, at least two to five years, of nearly daily practice before you become an experienced slinger.

This was why in ancient times, as for example Alexander the Great's time, Commanders preferred to recruit professional mercenary slingers who already knew the art rather than spend years and years teaching their soldiers how to use slings.

In the bible it is said that David killed a lion and then an armoured giant, Goliath, with a sling. I am not surprised. He was a shepherd, and had years to practice and refine his craft. And as I have mentioned above, without heavy padding under the armour, that armour is not going to protect from the shock effect of a speeding stone - particularly if that stone is a ball of lead!

Special Weapons for Special Enemies

Of all the enemies of the medieval world, the heavily armoured knight was the worst feared...because, until the advent of the crossbow and gunpowder, his armour was almost undefeatable.

Plate armour, as I have explained above, is almost impregnable to both swords and ordinary arrows. It was not just the strength of the armour that defeated swords. There was also the fact that the armour was fluted and angled, and that the man wearing that armour was trained to move so that sword strikes would rarely fall directly on the armour, but would hit at an angle. Thus most sword strikes would glance off, and even when a sword strike hit the armour directly, the strength of the armour would most likely keep out the sword. And, finally, even in the worst case scenario of the armour being breached, there was still the matter of sword friction against the armour - since a sword blade grows wider from the edge to the middle and perhaps even the end of the blade, the deeper the sword blade cut into the armour the more friction it would generate. This meant that even a successful penetration of the armour would still not allow a sword blade to reach inside more than a few inches.

And, of course, we are writing our stories in the magical world of Oblivion, where Dremora in otherworld armour can be summoned. We shall assume that their armour is even stronger than plate armour.

So: how is that armour to be defeated?

It is an axiom that armour cannot be strong everywhere, not even on a modern day tank! On a medieval human or Dremora this is even more true, for a human cannot be armoured completely in all his joints - he would not be able to move, then. The elbows, the armpits, the backs of the knees, these are all areas which must have flexible armour... and another area is the chin and neck area.

Thus the armourbreaker short spear was created. It was designed to attack the chin of the armoured warrior from underneath, penetrating though the chain mail, into the chin and into the brain from underneath.

The spear itself is a hollow tube of steel, built for great rigidity and lightness. It tapers to a sharp point and is round, with no edge. Midway up the spear there is a cross guard that also functions as a hand thrust grip, and at the bottom there is a pommel that can also be used for a handgrip for the other hand to hold for the thrust.

The technique is to wait for the enemy, holding the spear under the cross guard with one hand and with the palm of the other hand cupping the pommel. The plate-armoured enemy will most likely rush directly at you, with sword upraised to deliver a crushing chop that will either split your helmet or give you a brain concussion. As he comes into range you will step into his chop, at the same time kneeling, and from a kneeling position thrust from beneath into the chin of his helmet, where the protection is not plate armour but flexible - and weaker - chain mail.

This has several advantages. Due to the weight of the enemy in his armour, he will not be able to absorb the blow by twisting out of the way - in fact his very weight will help the spear push though the armour. Since you are so close to him the leverage power of his sword will be very low, since he is hitting you with the base of his blade, and thus even if he hits you his power will be only a fraction of that power if he had hit you with the tip or middle of the blade. And if both of you miss, the fact that he has collided with you while you are kneeling and he is standing will most likely make him fall ass over teakettle over you...and a fallen enemy in heavy armour is a very, very vulnerable enemy.

If he is on the ground you can either spear him again with your short spear, or you can drop the spear, take out your rondel dagger and stab his face and eyes through the eyeholes. The rondel dagger is like the armour piercing spear with a handle and a guard. It is a rouded, very sharp spike, and is used for piercing chain mail at close range.

This is the tactic, and the weapons, to use in attacking heavily armoured enemies.

The poleaxe too is similar to this, but it is an even more specialized weapon that is mainly used for hooking heavily armoured knights off horseback. It is a spear with one or two long, strong and sharp pickaxe points near the tip. It is swing at a rider as he passes, and the hope is that the combined speed of your swing and his momentum on the horse will make the point of axe penetrate into the armour and therefore catch him like a fish on a hook, so you can pull him off his horse. This is not easy however - the enemies armour is not flat, but fluted and rounded, so there is a high possibility of the point sliding off his armour. And he could also parry your swing with his sword or his shield!

Bows and (especially) arrows

Hollywood has released more than one sniper movie, and there are too many games with sniper weapon modes and roleplay to count. And guess what can't be found in ALL of them?

What the REAL rifle sniper expert does with his ammunition...to wit: the hand-measuring of the powder in each and every one of the bullets he carries.

You see, the true sniper is a perfectionist: by which is meant he absolutely holds that two bullets, fired from the same gun in exactly identical conditions, must fly in exactly the same trajectory every time. And one of the things that can ruin that condition is the tiny variation of powder in the different cartridge cases of each round, and, to a lesser degree, the tiny variation of weight between one bullet and the next.

Therefore a sniping expert, when given a box of ammunition fresh from the factory, will disassemble all the rounds into their component bullet, cartridge case and powder, and first weigh each bullet on a micro scale. All bullets over or under the manufacturer's stated weight by even 0.1% are rejected. Then the same is done to the powder, only here the sniper is going by his own 'book' of powder weight for each cartridge. None underpower the cartridge, but some add perhaps slightly more powder. No matter what the sniper's personal preference, he always pours exactly the same amount of powder into the cartridges he will use, only here he is more precise - down to 99.99% accuracy.

What has all this got to do with bows and arrows, you may ask?

Well, just as today's expert snipers take painstaking care of their ammunition, so too the master archers of the past took especial pains that their ARROWS were as close to perfection as possible. They tried, as far as was possible with the relatively crude scales of their age, to make their arrows as uniform a weight as possible. Whenever and wherever possible they inspected each and every one of their arrows for straightness, for an arrow with even the tiniest amount of warp would fly off target or fail to penetrate as deeply as it should - and this defect would grow more as the range increased. They tried to make sure that their arrows were as stiff as possible, for an arrow that would flex in flight would have the same defects as an arrow already warped.

This meant that many of the master archers of the past were - like the expert snipers of today - their own fletchers. They preferred to make their own arrows for themselves, choosing only the best, the most seasoned hardwoods, carefully and painstakingly cutting and carving the arrow shafts, sighting along them again and again to ensure their straightness, fitting the warheads on them so that the point would be exactly centered, and feathering them as carefully. Some master archers would even offset the tail feathers to make the arrow rotate slowly in flight, to gain an extra amount of stability and accuracy at the expense of some range and speed.

It was, of course, almost impossible for the archer, no matter how skilled a Fletcher he was, to make ALL his arrows - the requirements of practice alone would defeat that! So what many master archers did was to shop only at reputable Fletcher's workshops, if possible, and even then they would still inspect (if time and conditions permitted) each and every arrow they had bought, and reject those they deemed unacceptable. Thus if you were passing through a town in medieval times which had a lot of good archers, you would probably see quite often an archer sitting down with a bunch of arrows spread out before him, picking up the arrows one at a time and sighting down along them, and separating them into two piles.

If they were supplied arrows in bulk, as for example on the battlefield, or if for various reasons they had to accept arrows of questionable quality, the practice of master archers was to do a quick inspection of the arrows they had been given, or which they had just purchased, and separate the good ones from the poorer quality ones. This was why the master archers of the past frequently could be found with two arrow bags or quivers, to separate the higher quality arrows from the lower quality ones. Depending on the type of shot they had to make, they would use one or the other. For example, they would use lower quality arrows for closer range unarmoured and weak targets in good conditions, and for targets such as large and strong armoured warriors at long ranges in bad, windy weather conditions, they would use their highest quality arrows to make the shot.

Oh...and one more thing...sometimes even GOOD arrows would deteriorate, and warp due to days of wet and damp weather followed by a couple of days of scorching heat! The archer had to re-check his already checked arrows from time to time! (This is why modern archers LOVE today's aluminum or carbon fiber arrows!)

In addition to separating arrows into hand-picked top quality ones and mass-produced junk, the archer would also separate his arrows into at least two types: the quick killing broadhead arrow and the slim, needle-like armour - piercing bodkin arrow. Both were necessary on the battlefield. The broadhead was necessary to create wide, fairly shallow wounds that would kill an enemy quickly: the bodkin was necessary to punch through leather or chain mail armour. (Forget about plate armour - it was not possible for 95% of archers to punch through that, unless you were a phenomenally strong archer with a 200 pound plus draw-weight bow and very special, ironwood shaft arrows tipped with a bodkin point) Note that poisoned arrows were nearly always bodkin arrows, because with poison the objective is to get the poison into the deepest part of the body.

Thus writers writing about archers, in the interests of realism, should write about archers who were always checking and re-checking their arrows, who would go to buy arrows only from their favourite Fletcher shops, and who were frequently pausing before or in the middle of battle to choose between one or another type of arrow.

Now let's talk about bows.

Alas, Morrowind and Oblivion do not allow Mongolian and Turkish style recurve bows. More's the pity, as these bows are more efficient, though far more complex to construct, than the simple longbows that our game does allow. They allow greater speed and power to be imparted to the arrow on a shorter draw length, which is very useful for the archer who is strong but has shorter arms due to his shorter height (read: Asian Archer).

So we are stuck with the longbow. And the longbow has limitations.

First, it cannot be used well from a kneeling position. Yes, you can fire it sideways, but that will degrade your accuracy significantly - so if you are thinking of hitting a long range target from a crouch with a longbow, forget it.

Second, a longbow cannot be kept permanently strung for a long time, or the elasticity of the bow will deteriorate: so if you are not planning to use the bow within the next few days, you should unstring the bow, and string it up again the day before battle.

Third, the longbow demands a long man to use it well. I always chuckle whenever I see a short, slim Bosmer declared to be a 'master archer'. Just the short length of his arms alone would disqualify him on that account. And the size of those Bosmer arms, too...puh-leeze. A warbow has at least 120 lbs of draw weight, and we know from old, preserved English Warbows that top-quality warbows had draws up to 220 lbs! And perhaps more, for the bows of great master archers have not been preserved to be anolysed in this day and age.

Now a 200 lb Warbow is just over six feet in length, and it has a draw of at least 28 to 32 inches. Even for a muscular 200-230 lb six foot tall man with long arms, that will need a draw not to his nose, but beyond his ear. Drawing a 200 lb draw weight bow to your ear, not just once but eight to ten times a minute, for ten minutes at least non-stop, needs TREMENDOUSLY strong arms and back - thus the master longbow archer needed to be a six foot tall man with shoulder deltoid muscles the size of bowling balls and a V-shaped back with bulging muscles... and an appetite to match those muscles. In short, above the waist the master archer would resemble today's bodybuilders or weightlifters more than a slim, willowy Bosmer!

(And now you see why female bowgirl adventurers are not realistic IRL, unless they are using recurve bows. And, of course, unless they have the strength of a 200 lb man in a 120 lb frame!)

(What about today's female archers, you may ask? Well, they're using 30 lb target bows or at most 65lb hunting bows. On the medieval battlefield these would be considered children's toys)

One final point about bows: the bowstrings of medieval times were very sensitive to water and moisture. If they got soaked, they would stretch just a little bit, thus ruining the balance, the accuracy, and the power of the bow. Medieval archers therefore always kept a couple of spare bowstrings in a waterproof pouch, just in case.

My next post will be about my ideas on Assassin, or Ninja, weapons.

As far as I know bowstrings weren't too sensitive to humidity, especially when they were waxed. The sinew-based crossbow strings fared far worse in that regard.