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Originally Posted by Nightshade
Actually, they're as close to professionals as exist in the modern world, given they were instructors in general martial arts and sojutsu in specific. Given they've actually at least made actual use of the spear (albiet not out for blood) again, I have to consider their information _at least_ as valid as historical interpetation.
I none the less feel its my obligation to explain _why_ I find your counterargument dubious.
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I won't go any farther discussing this, but will point out for clarity that I'm not knocking their goals or what they're doing and have no doubt that they're as close as anyone comes in the modern world to being professionals with those weapons. This isn't a knock on them, but just acknowledgment of the limitations of such attempts, and the fact that most of their knowledge, generally, comes from trial and error and is not developed to the point of a true professional (ie. someone who's putting their life on the line in real battle) with generations of direct experience to fall back on.
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Even bronze swords were, shall we say, not as good as they could be. Bronze isn't brittle but it also doesn't hold an edge worth a damn unless you work it constantly.
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As you note down thread, bronze is actually very good at holding an edge and I'm sure you realize that you don't work bronze. You cast it. In fact, it only fell out of common use due to supply shortages of tin for large areas, so iron (initially untempered) was adapted. It's quite a ways into the Iron Age before steel evolved to the point of actually replacing bronze across the board. Plus, Bronze has the advantage of not rusting away on you! Aside: I always wandered if Glorantha bronze rusted or not...
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The bow is a complex case; decent horse archery is, by all evidence I have, a hard skill to learn, and for self-evident reasons, it pretty much precludes a shield.
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No doubt, it's extremely hard to learn. Becoming a ground based, skilled archer is a very difficult task to learn. I've done both independently (riding and shooting), am pretty natural with both, and still find it nearly incomprehensible how anyone could pull both off at the same time. I can barely imagine hitting a target with a gun while riding at anything faster than a walk on a horse, not to mention all the training it'd take to make a horse not panic in that situation: horses are very skittish. In fact, one of the things about spears/lances in real like that I think many people don't understand is that a horse won't charge into someone (like in the movies). Even at their most advanced, a knight wasn't charging full bore into formed heavy infantry. A horse, no matter it's training, simply won't do that...not to mention that it'd be suicide for the knight.
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That was, in fact, one of the distinctive traits of the Romans, and was followed, at best erratically, even by many medievel armies. Of course part of this turns on what one classes as "professional"; I'm not sure I'd class most medievel armies as professional.
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I'd argue that the Roman army did in fact keep it's organization. In fact, when it lost it was when it was defeated. Armies don't have to be literally shoulder-to-shoulder to be organized, and in most instances the Romans did fight very close to that, even though they used a sword instead of a spear.
I wouldn't classify most medieval armies as professional, at least not until late in the period.
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None the less, the issue still was once things got in close and dirty, anything but extremely short spears (like the late Zulu assegai) was a liability. It was great as long as you could keep a hedgehog intact or the equvilent, but insufficent past that. Given that's almost entirely parallel to the choices presented to a typical RQ PC, its also what's relevant to the discussion at hand.
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It's not a liability. One advantage of a (1 handed) spear is that it can hit at several ranges. In fact, it can be effective at both a shorter and longer range than a typical broad sword. It does not have as much power to damage someone with heavier armor on, which is a problem in later period. You're correct about longer 2 handed spears, such as carried by Hellenistic phalanxes and late medieval pikes. Of course, those are already handled quite nicely in RQ3 (and maybe 2 - don't remember there).
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As I said, its not that tidy; in particular, if you study weapons from Asia, you'll see interim cases where there are weapons that seem to be transitioning from axes to swords, presumeably for the reasons I mentioned in another post. Axes and maces, because of their movement arm, are intrinsically unwieldy. The degree of that unwieldiness varies, but its an issue with almost all use, and the tradeoff against light-to-medium armored opponets are not ideal.
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The term you're looking for there is angular inertia, in case you're interested.
Yes, there are weapons that appear to be a sword that leans towards an axe. As I understand it, these develop from a shorter sword and are actually there to strengthen the blade of longer swords before metallurgy catches up and long straight blades can be produced.
I started to respond to this, just for the first part and then did the rest. I'm ready to let it drop as it's gone well beyond by interest in the discussion. It's very evident that you're far more interested in carrying these discussion than I am!
Weapon damage
October 22nd, 2007
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