Melee weapons and their clichés

[Hellis]

Roran: They DO slow you down. Not by as great of a deal as some may think. But I have worn a set of 1600's knight armor. Made entirely after the teutonic tradition. Those things are heavy and cumbersome. You are bound to be slowever evn with muscle and training. However, you were still suprisingly agile as armor have free joints and were made to be suprisingly ergonomical. A knight in full armour could litereally wade trough peasentry and kill countless due to the sheer protection and overall effectiveness of their armor. The weakness is the weight vs terrain factor. Thats a big reason to why the frrench had trouble fighting the English. Chavalry got bogged down with bad terrain and a knight who loose his footing will have a hard time getting back up.

As for weapons versus armor:
The war picks and battle hammers were great for that. The pick could easily be slammed into armor and used to drag the knight down, provided you didnt get chopped down first. A well aimed hit to the head rendered all that armor useless with these weapons. Crossbows? They were fantastic when the Flemmish and the Swiss used them. They had massive shields that also worked like a tripod. Together with spears (Like the Flemmish pikeneers) it was a foe that Knights very much disliked going up against.¨¨

Edit: Also Armor+Momentum+Shield was a valid tactic that a knight on foot applied to many a poor infantryman, A full body tackle is like getting hit by a small truck, your head whip around and slam into things. I've see guys literally be flung aside from a shieldbash. Hell, when we tried out the armor they had me charge full body into a a guy with shield. The guy was bigger and stronger. But my 119.5 ki (90without armor) kilos+forward moment totalled his footing. This of course has the drawback of you being able to fall aswell, but you cannot have everything in the life.

[Lord Magroth]

Really on that armour part?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMuNXWFPewg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg

Even our modern 21st century soldier is still heavier than strapping tin foil on your chest. But yeah, there were bloody expensive.

@Hellis: I assume you meant the Battle of Agincourt where the French knights went Leeroy Jenkines through their own Crossbowmen (Not like they could actually fire anyway due to the rain) and got bogged down by the fields of mud before getting slaughtered by what is the 15th century's equivalent of a Barret M82.

[Roran Hawkins]

Actualy the longbows couldn't penetrate their armours. But so many arrows would cause a lot of pain and bruises, kills and wounds in weak spots of the armour, panick and kill horses, which would make their riders drown in the mud. Anyone who while flinching would stumble had areal chance of drowning in the mud, walked over by the men behind him.

[Hellis]

That would be the one yeah. Said crossbowmen got stuck without their shields aswell due to logistics, becoming very exposed to the longbows.

[Foster]

Now, let's talk about Plate Armor. Plate Armor is GREAT. Oh, my god, you have no idea how great this stuff is. Not only are well-designed suits of plate armor designed to glance blows away from impact zones, in addition to providing stellar resistance against most blows attempted on it, but later examples even had the capability of surviving gun fire without harm.

SN-42 for life.


The two dents are from an MP40. The guy shrugged it off and continued his great patriotic duties.

More:

[PrimalConundrum]

In regards to why you'd have an axe that's sharp on both sides, I'd say probably the reason why we have wood splitting axes like that: so that when one side gets dull, you can just flip it an have another sharp side. Effectively doubles the amount of time you can use it before needing to sharpen it.

As much as armour isn't an excuse to be LOLinvincible, at the same time it bugs me to no end when the person playing the rogue / assassin pulls out a dagger and decides that the plate armour isn't going to do anything against it. Going against someone wearing a suit of plate with anything from a dagger to a longsword is going to be an incredibly unpleasant experience, the only way you could really do much damage would be to adapt your attacks to first unbalance the target and then slide the blade in through a chink in the armour. It's not just going to cut though, you'd be more likely to bend the sword in most cases.

Plate armour is why hammers saw use on the battlefield, along with pick-style weapons. Yeah, those are dirty and will cave in or punch through armour pretty good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRYM6B7CTs8 This is a clip from Game of Thrones that I honestly think is a fairly accurate rendition of how a fight between a guy in almost full plate armour against some 'barbarian' style character would go.

[Holeypaladin]

That clip brings up another good point to consider.

Notice how the guy in armor is NOT wearing a helmet. That's more or less the most stupid thing you could do on a real battlefield. The helmet is by far the MOST important piece of armor, and the piece that no one in their right mind would ever go without. It was also generally the thickest, most durable piece of armor a soldier would wear... take the typical Knight Templar, clad in full chainmail, but wearing a greathelm.

The greathelm is a pretty impressive piece of armor. It is designed to be worn on top of a chain coif and a skullcap, applying three layers of protection, the outermost being thick plate armor. Compared to the rest of the Templar's armor, the helmet is by far the most protective part.

Look at the soldiers of the 20th century (before body armor). They always wear helmets, even if they don't have any other kind of armor. This ranged from a metal helmet in WW1 and WW2 to a lighter Kevlar helmet towards the end of the century. Now, they wear both a helmet and a heavy protective vest, which is the second most important piece of armor.

[Brovo]

Another melee weapon myth to bust, primarily with armies.

Most medieval armies did not arm entire battalions with swords. It was far too expensive. (Especially for peasants, you'd have to be insane to try.) The same applies to armour, even leather armour to a certain extent. Peasants at the best of times were often handed wooden spears with iron/steel tips and axes. A few would get cheap, small wooden shields and the especially lucky would get proper leather armour, some chain mail here and there.

At the worst of times?

IMPROVISATION GONE BERSERK!