Topic: Shield Skill

[Marc R]

Yeah, I suspect your mates wouldn't appreciate you scoring a point that sent them to the Hospital.

With a wood or thin metal shield, a 2HD or battleaxe might actually cleave it completely. . .big risk would be getting stuck, One on one, annoying, but if fighting two foes, having your blade lodged in the shield of one of them would likely be lethal.

[Fidoric]

OTOH, having your weapon stuck is not necessarily as bad as it seems. I can easily imagine throwing or thrusting a long and heavy spear at an opponent's shield wishing that it WILL stick. That way, with a 10-foot spear hanging from it, the opponent shield would be useless.

[Marc R]

The Plumbata (sp?)

Roman javalins, weighted near the head, with a soft iron blade/point.. .thrown with the specific goal of lodging in shields, soft tips bending to make them harder to remove. Making the shield impossible to use. . . .only thing better than meeting an open horde of barbarians with a shield wall was to take their shields away first.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

So i plunged in my books...

The plumbata was a dart and, as far as i could find, were fired in a "bell" curve in order to hit the heads and shoulders of the enemy instead of their shields. Quite an efficient way to deal with the wall shield problem.
But the pilum is indeed fitting the description you give.


The franks had two weapons specially made for disposing of shields at a distance.
First the francisca, whose shock and penetrating power proved lethal to many foes. It would just shatter any shield, armor or helmet it would strike.
Then there is the angon. Agathias says that it was a 2 metres long hooked spear (like a lily flower like spearhead) with a long iron part (1 meter). Basically, it is a battle harpoon (the franks were first sailors and rivermen of great skill). According to Agathias, it was fired at shields from which it could not be removed because ot the hooks. Its long metal setting (french: "douille", i lack the word in english and my dictionnary does not know it) would prevent the enemy to cut the shaft and its weight would make the shield unwieldy. The frank warrior would step on the shaft to pull the shield off its bearer grasp and strike him from behind his. Or the angon would be tied to a rope and pulled back with the shield it was embeded in.

I'll try to find pictures of these weapons. (edit : found, but i have to scan them, later).

I also thought about shield grappling and it came to my mind that an axe head can grab a shield and its wielder can pull the top or side of the sield. Depending on how it is held, it may violently swing and hit its bearer.

[Marc R]

heh, sorry LIGO (Latin in, Garbage out) my brain, it failed me.

I'm vaguely recalling references to axes used the way you're saying, and my brain is dredging up some references to 2nd rank hooked pole arms used to pull shields out of the way for 1st rank swordsmen in Tercios during the 100 years war. (What a way to fight, squares grinding on each other, reminds me of phalanxes from thousands of years before)

I'm also thinking khopesh. . .I wonder, all those hooked or end spiked weapons would actually work quite nicely for a shield hook-and-pull you describe.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

Tercios did not see action during the hundred years war, but that might have been in Italy. Or maybe i am wrong. I'll check when i have the time.

What you describe look like the bill hooks our "beloved neighbours from beyond the Channel" used during the hundred years wars.
I saw pictures and drawings of recurved shields, like a saucer, the upwards part facing the enemy. This  prevented the shield from being hooked but i can't say if it was used for battle or for tournaments and duels.

I'll ask my armmaster about hooking and pulling a shield. Sounds like you are right about spiked and hooked weapons.

[Marc R]

Gustavus A crushed Tercios at Brettenfield, which was the beginning of the end of slow square formations in favor of smaller more mobile combat formations and more use of field Artilliary. . .(I think Napoleon was the one who actually gets credit for the final coup de gras on the concept though)

My tercio ref is definitely off on the bills though. The reference I was thinking of is a swiss tactic.

I saw a piece on dueling shields. . .they look like a Cello. . .sort of a large hourglass shape giving two hook like projections on either side of top and bottom. . .used only in ritualized combat, solo, without weapons. Well, the shield is the weapon. A 2hd shield, gripped in the center of each "hourglass" end. . . .seems we humans have created loads of odd ways to kill each other.

But the more we discuss it, the more I wonder if you couldn't develop a technique to use against a sword-n-shield. . .using a small hooked weapon of some sort to grab onto their shield, then use their shield both as a barrier and a lever to pull them around, and beat on them over the shield with a flail in your other hand.

[Balhirath]

But the more we discuss it, the more I wonder if you couldn't develop a technique to use against a sword-n-shield. . .using a small hooked weapon of some sort to grab onto their shield, then use their shield both as a barrier and a lever to pull them around, and beat on them over the shield with a flail in your other hand.

Since shields are the most basic of protection, I think that if such a technique was practical, it would have been invented

[Marc R]

Nobody but PCs use a wall shield in one-on-one combat, heheh.

Flail was to a degree kept in use as a weapon almost as long as the sword due to the fact it went over and around a shield. (Or a parry)

[vroomfogle]

Flail was to a degree kept in use as a weapon almost as long as the sword due to the fact it went over and around a shield. (Or a parry)

That's the one thing that could be enhanced in RM combat, is to add specific abilities to each weapon to better represent them.   I'm not entirely sure what those things would be, but in the case of a flail there could be a chance to reduce shield or parry bonus for instance.   That's be a good house rule.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

That's a work in progress Vroom, and you can't imagine the mess it is to balance.

I got answers from my arms master and i made some reseraches.

Shields are either meant for fighting in formation or for melee / duel fighting.

The former type is usually firmly strapped tothe arm or even the body of the fighter and it is useless to try and disarm them. But you can use it to have a wrestling hold on your foe. You can also use your own shield to use as a lever and pull the opponents shield in such a way that the fighter ext to you might have a strike at him. Hooking weapons like axes, spiked maces, hooked spears, boar spears, most pole weapons and many etc.. could be used to violently pull the shield and harm its wearer. Simply hacking at the shield can be a solution if the it is in plain wood. Plywood will resist to nearly anything you send at it (save siege weapon ammunition and several axe blows, i believe one may actually stop a bullet fired from a handgun but i may be wrong). Metal shields will bend or just "ring" (actually vibrate to evacuate the energy of the blow). Wooden shields with a metal rim will prove hard to hack, and those with a soft wood rim will trap weapons trying to do so.
Spears can be used like levers to force their way under a shield and strike the elbow or arm pit.

In melee or duel fighting, the shield is actively used by its wearer to parry incoming blows. Those shields are lighter and usually more maneuverable than the ones used in formation. According to my arms master (and i think he is right) there is no point in losing time to remove a shield because if you are able to do so, you'd better do it to the main hand weapon. Worst of all, some dueling shields had sharp rims, or spiked ones. You don't want to come too close from them. Last, disarming a shield involves using your weapon to take an hold on it. If you can do this, you also can plunge it in your foe's body.

If you don't have any weapon, you may want to disarm your foe bare handed (he showed us hos to do on several occasions). If the shield is simply hand held, it is possible to remove it. If the shield is strapped to the arm or body, you can use it has a wrestling hold.
However, it is very unlikely your foe will let you do this. If he has a weapon you are dead meat. Better to disarm the weapon or use it as a wrestling hold, or grab it through a locking hold (this has also been demonstrated in today's lesson).

Don't know yet how to represent it in the rules, but i think rolemaster already has everything necessary to represent accurately shield maneuvers, disarms or wrestling. We just have to adapt it.

[vroomfogle]

Fenrhyl, you obviously are interested in medieval weaponry.  You keep mentioning your "Armsmaster", excuse me if you explained before but you could you give us some background info?  Sounds pretty interesting!

If you've the time I'd be very interested in seeing a description for each of the RM weapons and what their advantages and disadvantages were, historically.   Perhaps given that we can can work together here on the forums on some weapon specific rules.   It sounds like you may have gotten started on doing such a thing yourself, I'd love to see it.   

[Marc R]

Same here. . .I'll ditto both requests. Been an interesting conversation.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

Well, i'll ask for a bit of patience on this matter. I've already written a glossary of ancient weaponry (english to french, french to english) but the descriptions are in french and i have to add the RM rules for each weapon type. That's part of the work i have to do for my website and i was planning a translation to english for TGC. I must play test some things too.

For the arm master : every saturday 3 modern fencing teachers hold a "salle d'armes" (training grounds) for teaching ancient fencing using knowledge from manuscripts, residual knowledge taught from mouth to hear, teachings from the french staff & sticks discipline (given the staff - and thus the spear - was the primary weapon in western europe, this discipline is really old) and practical knowledge learned either in modern day tournament (there is championship but only swords are authorized) or through other disciplines. One of them, the "arm master", has been studying ways of fighting in Western Europe, Russia, India, and southeastern Asia : he is very knowledeable about fighting, uses mostly locks and holds and is a kind of wizard when it comes to disarming a foe with his bare hands..
Bad point for you, it takes place in Paris. Try to travel in the subway with a two hander, that's funny.

Nowadays, french staff and sticks is just a "sport", at the beginning of the 19th century it was a "self-defense" fighting discipline. Here is a video about it :http://www.batoncanne.com/Canne-et-baton-ASCA-by-TWI.html
Remove the fancy moves, allow to strike anywhere, stop calling the blows and you get back the ancient way of fighting with this discipline.

[yammahoper]

I always thought melee scuffle and weapon brawl, skills from RM2's Arms Companion, covered types of attacks a shield could commit very well.

For melee scuffle, instead of just doing unbalance crits, grapple crits or crush crits or even disarm attempts could be done.

Weapon brawl is kind of obvious, and the brawl attack table has some very neat crit results that would fit well into fighting with a shield.  Attack sizes could also be figured by shield type, except I always thought getting bashed in the face by a shield of ANY size was gonna really hurt, so restrictions might not be necessary.

lynn

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

I was thinking about a Martial Arts companion Weapon styles rather than using a brawling skill.

[Marc R]

I doubt those skills will ever come back, but the concepts are worth noting. . . The Arms Companion had great ideas, but often poor execution or costs.