@DJKajuru, I agree with si vis pacem, para bellum. And I believe in the virtue of symbolism. Some pick up the sword, some pick up the pen; theres more than one way of fighting. Caring or not-caring, that's something that comes natural, just like character. You can show the same visual artwork to more than one man, but not all will interpret it the like that.
@DJKajuru, it would be good for all to agree on a few ground morals. Take this for example: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." That's like "meaning of life stuff". If we can agree with that, we can say we all, and here I mean all, follow the same thing, just most ain't doing it right, and it may seem like they think "different"; I say nothing new under the sun. My apologies for going off-topic.
It's a myth that European Christian clerics couldn't use bladed or pointed weapons. They could and did use any weapon. Gary Gygax basically pulled that whole nonsense out of his a** because he thought it would be cool and make his game more fun.
Here's one of many, many links that talk about the issue:
You can find all kinds of articles and research papers from history students posted online that discuss the issue in some depth if you care to look.
The closest real-life historical analogues to the D&D cleric would be the militant clerical orders of the Crusades era, such as the Knights Templar. They used swords, and were probably actually closer to what D&D would call a paladin.
The real reason that there's a "cleric" character class is just so you have a magical healer role in a party. A game with violence in it has to have some way to restore lost hit points, and in D&D, that's the cleric. Gygax thought it would be fun to separate healing magic from the usual wizarding kind of magic. A lot of the kinds of magic he ascribed to clerics were inspired by bible stories - if you read the original AD&D cleric spell list, it had spells like "create food and water", "part water", "walk on water", "sticks to snakes"; and of course the usual "cure blindness", "raise dead", "remove paralysis", and all those kinds of "spells" were performed by Jesus in the gospel stories.
There's a trend now to re-merge healing magic with the rest of the mage class - for example, in Dragon Age:Origins, healing is a school of magic within the mage class, and the actual clerics don't get any special powers at all, and tend to be rogues if they enter the adventuring life (e.g., Liliana).
I remember reading on the AD&D manual that clerics were inspired on Teutonic Knights, medieval priests who were trained to wear heavy armor and fight as crusaders.
@salieri Sorry for the late reply. Had a slight underpant fixation on another thread... Erm. Yes. I agree by the time I got to Robin Hood, I believe I was ranting. Possibly a step away from raving, but at that particular moment ranting.
Hope that clears that up.
Oh... History books from the national curriculum, primary school level. Believe it or not that rant was pretty close to an excerpt from Horrible Histories.
Stories of Robin Hood inspired generations of Bowmen in England, the Bowmen, in turn destroyed the concept of the knight and the noble warrior elite. Why bother with armour and a big horse when a chap with a bow can kill you from 1/2 mile away.
@Moomintroll A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a more abstract compound such as “wound-hoe” (Egill Skallagrímsson: Höfuðlausn 8), or a genitive phrase such as randa íss “ice of shields” (Einarr Skúlason: ‘Øxarflokkr’ 9). The term kenning has been applied by modern scholars to similar figures of speech in other languages too, especially Old English.
I gotta get my kids to learn to use Kennings... They will be talking about holidays next to the whale road in no time!
You are correct I love to wax lyrical, tap the pencil replacer and use the ol' kenning
If you don't like it... using my favourite kenning... shut your cake hole!
@Anduin I think you are overestimating the role of longbowmen in defeating knights. From what I have read it is mostly a myth. I doubt the longbow can penetrate a plate armor except at extremely low distance.
@Gilad No myth. I think the French (the poor french!) would really dislike that comment. 30,000 defeated by 8,000 at agincourt... If it wasn't due to the longbow it would have to be contributed to the French being all wussies.
You can find videos of arrows going through armour.
@moomintroll If I read your Kennings right... The warrior walked the sea bed to find a rest room for his snake... LOL!
No I got it...
The swordsman walked the dark depths in search of the dragon's lair.
@Anduin I have found videos, when the arrow fired from a longbow was not able to penetrate a plate mail. The reasons of French defeat at Agincourt were the lack of discipline, good English (fortified) position on the battlefield, terrain. I have found some documetary on youtube about Agincourt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy7DT_FTms0&feature=related They discuss the reasons of French defeat. They also performed arrow vs plate mail tests. (I have found this video only an hour ago, but it confirms what I know from other sources (books)).
@Moomintroll The words paint a picture! I did get the serpent bed wrong. GOLD! Should have known...
@Gilad ...I teach kids this stuff... Not sure what to tell em... I will just have to tell them the french are wussies... And it took a girl to kick the English out.
@Anduin It's great stuff! I was trying to think of a Baldur's gate one "Arcand's woodsman, dallying in the wind of spears, thatch of his thought's fortress was far blown." silly? yes I am.
Should not this kind of content be avoided until the childrens grew up a bit, then you would teach that in high school so they would have a better conscience to absorb this kind of information? Cos it can be somehow the spread of a hate culture, i mean, you're just praising your country but at the cost of bad adjectives to French for example and based in an old war made when the world moved that way in reason of power hunger and... cultural diferences.
I just fear that maybe 3 or 4 generations hearing how the frenchs people are lazy ,stupid, idiot... can bring a misplaced idea that they don't deserve respect, equal treatment...rights. But maybe this isn't even in your hands and you just follow an school program to teach your students.
@Kamuizin LOL! I am so sorry, I did chuckle at the post. Children love grisly details... But we don't teach them to hate the French! In fact they are taught french! In fact england LOST the 100 year war with france. Joan of Arc whipped our butts, the girls in the class love this and join her side regardless (we were very naughty burning her)
Anyway... RESPECT is always taught. To ALL PEOPLE's and to ALL FAITH's. In the news you see people not showing respect, so we talk about why war happens and why we need prisons but you get the gist.
At present the UK and France armed forces are sharing certain military resources... I really do not think this would be happening if my early statement, that the french were wussies, was true.
Plus, I am pretty sure a frenchman out there can name a few victories against the english!
The problem @Moomintroll is that i get the wrong idea from @Anduin post, i understood it as an patriotic clamor that was based on the diminish of another culture.
From my view at that time i saw "a lie told often enough becomes truth". But @Anduin already stated his point and i understand him clearly now.
If any weapon should be credited as a "bane of knights" it should be the crossbow. Longbows take a whole life to learn how to use correctly, crossbows could be used by your average levied peasant with much less investment than that. Iirc, the Pope actually banned the use of the crossbow against other Christians at one time, probably because of how much nobles feared it. Nobody listened, of course, it was way too effective.
I guess there's also the pike and the war hammer removing the knights two main advantages (dealing with horses and heavy armour respectively) and more importantly, the combination of the two. In fact, I think that's the heart of the issue; no weapon can be the Knight's Bane on it's own, but these three weapons neatly sums up how the changes in the martial economy that led to the downfall - knights were expensive as hell; like longbowmen, they were the result of a whole life's investment, and the cost of the armour and equipment was ridiculous (really, just keeping a war horse would be beyond what most were capable of), but for a long time that investment was worth it. Then development caught up and suddenly they were being outmatched by mere commoners. Why would anyone spend the years and fortunes needed of a knight when just buying a whole lot of pikes, hammers and crossbows was both cheaper and more effective?
Lastly, on the French - last I checked, them Froggers still had the best won-to-lost-wars ratio in recorded history, as well as the biggest baguettes
As a side note. It was made law in england to play archery... but it got so popular that the law was not really needed and the english being dumb tried to mix archery and the pub together.
After, I presume, some very interesting nights down the pub, Darts was invented... and thus the classic game of darts and the pub have been together ever since.
The gun, even easier to learn how to use, with the ability to stick a nasty pike on the end of the musket, finished the knight for good... Kind of miss em.
@Anduin I have found videos, when the arrow fired from a longbow was not able to penetrate a plate mail. The reasons of French defeat at Agincourt were the lack of discipline, good English (fortified) position on the battlefield, terrain.
Don't forget the weather. Agincourt was a quagmire churned up by the french calvary. Many knights simply died due to fatigue from heat and humidity, fell down in the mud too tired to roll themselves over to suffocated.
But the arrows would have had some effect. Probably killing horses or ones lucky enough to find chinks in the armour.
@scriver Yes, the crossbow definitely is what one should use against armor, not a bow. By the way, I think that the crossbow should be made stronger in D&D games. Regarding the crossbow ban by the Church. I think I read somewhere that this ban was not primarily aimed against crossbows, but against mercenaries, who often used crossbows. Church just did not like mercenaries. Don't know if this is true or not.
@Jolanthus Now I'm completely lost... Heat? Humidity? The Battle of Agincourt occured on October 25th... Old calender system so the date would be November 2nd in ours. (Normandy has the same weather as England, okay a little better, but still wet and cold!)
The more I look at the longbow on the internet... The more I realise that no one, NO ONE has actually fired one, and that a lot of people must be talking out of their rear hole. Only 5 broken medieval longbows exist in the world. Worse, only one arrow! Some also claim that the Longbow could not be fired! The best answers I could find was from this site from archery antiqueries. It seemed to cut through the fog by explaining what was known and what wasn't.
I like the bit about the Archers requiring to push their body into the bow, instead of drawing the bowstring back. The phrase to 'bend the bow' is unique to England! But no one fires a bow anymore by bending the bow... so...
The stuff about arrows going through armour is all EYE WITNESS accounts. Any arrows going through modern plate is using modern technology and is not equivalent.
This is a good account I have cut n pasted from wiki as it involves the death of an Englishman, I thought it would balance things out...
Gerald of Wales commented on the power of the longbow in the 12th century:
... [I]n the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuirasses, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal.
So the arrow went through two layers of iron, two layers of leather, flesh (bone?), a leather saddle and through enough horse to drop it dead... Crikey! I call that a critical hit! (He must have rolled two 20s in a row!)
Lots of other eye witness accounts can be found on internet, though mostly about frenchmen losing heads (the arrow it would seem, even if not able to penetrate the armour would have the power to remove the head from the neck...)
So as far as I am concerned. To believe that arrows fired from a Longbow could not go through armour, you have to somehow disprove all the eye witness accounts... That you can't do as we can't make em and we can't fire am anymore.
The other myth that is doing my nut as I am so sure a Caldey Island monk told me what weapons his ancestors could carry on a tour of his island. He said was that they could not use bladed weaponry... Can I find anything on the internet about this! NO! There are lots of rules for each order of monks, but I have not the time to check out every single one! The Knights Hospitallier seems to be the most likely source for the inspiration for the cleric class, but they could use any weapon... oh well. Everyday is a school day.
The Battle of Agincourt had 3 decisive things for the English. In fact they even highlighted these in the Battlefield detectives above, but they're touched on so briefly that I don't believe they received the due diligence they deserved.
1. The French attacked uphill. Depending on exactly where the English decided to meet the initial charge, this would act as a massive force multiplier for the English positions. In particular, Archers would be able to fill the sky with a veritable rain of arrows and cut off reinforcements.
2. Agincourt, like was mentioned, was a cold and rainy place. No one likes slogging through mud and slogging through mud in Steel or other metal armor would likely be even worse. Not only are the French underfire at this point but they're being worn out and down just on the way to their target. This isn't even including possible horse casualties from mis-stepping. The counter to this is that the English archers wore very light armor which means they had an easier time moving when they finally had to.
3. Of particular note is the reload ability that was noted for the English Longbow. You cannot have protection at every point on your body, no matter what kind of armor you're wearing. Furthermore, you cannot protect your cavalry etc from all of the arrows. Add in horses pulling down riders etc and the arrow volleys create a veritable chaos from downed horses, thrown riders, and various injuries suffered from the arrows that find gaps in armor. We cannot underestimate the effect of condensed arrow volleys with a quick reload into an area. Even if they don't penetrate the armor itself, they were definitely still quite influential in the outcome of the battle itself, even if their damage ends up being 100% indirect rather than direct.
Comments
Take this for example: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." That's like "meaning of life stuff". If we can agree with that, we can say we all, and here I mean all, follow the same thing, just most ain't doing it right, and it may seem like they think "different"; I say nothing new under the sun.
My apologies for going off-topic.
Here's one of many, many links that talk about the issue:
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/15358/why-cant-clerics-use-sharp-weapons
You can find all kinds of articles and research papers from history students posted online that discuss the issue in some depth if you care to look.
The closest real-life historical analogues to the D&D cleric would be the militant clerical orders of the Crusades era, such as the Knights Templar. They used swords, and were probably actually closer to what D&D would call a paladin.
The real reason that there's a "cleric" character class is just so you have a magical healer role in a party. A game with violence in it has to have some way to restore lost hit points, and in D&D, that's the cleric. Gygax thought it would be fun to separate healing magic from the usual wizarding kind of magic. A lot of the kinds of magic he ascribed to clerics were inspired by bible stories - if you read the original AD&D cleric spell list, it had spells like "create food and water", "part water", "walk on water", "sticks to snakes"; and of course the usual "cure blindness", "raise dead", "remove paralysis", and all those kinds of "spells" were performed by Jesus in the gospel stories.
There's a trend now to re-merge healing magic with the rest of the mage class - for example, in Dragon Age:Origins, healing is a school of magic within the mage class, and the actual clerics don't get any special powers at all, and tend to be rogues if they enter the adventuring life (e.g., Liliana).
Hope that clears that up.
Oh... History books from the national curriculum, primary school level. Believe it or not that rant was pretty close to an excerpt from Horrible Histories.
Stories of Robin Hood inspired generations of Bowmen in England, the Bowmen, in turn destroyed the concept of the knight and the noble warrior elite. Why bother with armour and a big horse when a chap with a bow can kill you from 1/2 mile away.
@Moomintroll A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a more abstract compound such as “wound-hoe” (Egill Skallagrímsson: Höfuðlausn 8), or a genitive phrase such as randa íss “ice of shields” (Einarr Skúlason: ‘Øxarflokkr’ 9). The term kenning has been applied by modern scholars to similar figures of speech in other languages too, especially Old English.
I gotta get my kids to learn to use Kennings... They will be talking about holidays next to the whale road in no time!
You are correct I love to wax lyrical, tap the pencil replacer and use the ol' kenning
If you don't like it... using my favourite kenning... shut your cake hole!
I think you are overestimating the role of longbowmen in defeating knights. From what I have read it is mostly a myth. I doubt the longbow can penetrate a plate armor except at extremely low distance.
The sword tree walked the lobster's highway in search of the serpent's bed.
You can find videos of arrows going through armour.
@moomintroll If I read your Kennings right... The warrior walked the sea bed to find a rest room for his snake... LOL!
No I got it...
The swordsman walked the dark depths in search of the dragon's lair.
Very good!
I have found videos, when the arrow fired from a longbow was not able to penetrate a plate mail. The reasons of French defeat at Agincourt were the lack of discipline, good English (fortified) position on the battlefield, terrain.
I have found some documetary on youtube about Agincourt:
They discuss the reasons of French defeat. They also performed arrow vs plate mail tests.
(I have found this video only an hour ago, but it confirms what I know from other sources (books)).
@Gilad ...I teach kids this stuff... Not sure what to tell em... I will just have to tell them the french are wussies... And it took a girl to kick the English out.
silly? yes I am.
I just fear that maybe 3 or 4 generations hearing how the frenchs people are lazy ,stupid, idiot... can bring a misplaced idea that they don't deserve respect, equal treatment...rights. But maybe this isn't even in your hands and you just follow an school program to teach your students.
Arcand's ranger, delayed by the fight, lost his wig!
Anyway... RESPECT is always taught. To ALL PEOPLE's and to ALL FAITH's. In the news you see people not showing respect, so we talk about why war happens and why we need prisons but you get the gist.
At present the UK and France armed forces are sharing certain military resources... I really do not think this would be happening if my early statement, that the french were wussies, was true.
Plus, I am pretty sure a frenchman out there can name a few victories against the english!
From my view at that time i saw "a lie told often enough becomes truth". But @Anduin already stated his point and i understand him clearly now.
I guess there's also the pike and the war hammer removing the knights two main advantages (dealing with horses and heavy armour respectively) and more importantly, the combination of the two. In fact, I think that's the heart of the issue; no weapon can be the Knight's Bane on it's own, but these three weapons neatly sums up how the changes in the martial economy that led to the downfall - knights were expensive as hell; like longbowmen, they were the result of a whole life's investment, and the cost of the armour and equipment was ridiculous (really, just keeping a war horse would be beyond what most were capable of), but for a long time that investment was worth it. Then development caught up and suddenly they were being outmatched by mere commoners. Why would anyone spend the years and fortunes needed of a knight when just buying a whole lot of pikes, hammers and crossbows was both cheaper and more effective?
Lastly, on the French - last I checked, them Froggers still had the best won-to-lost-wars ratio in recorded history, as well as the biggest baguettes
As a side note. It was made law in england to play archery... but it got so popular that the law was not really needed and the english being dumb tried to mix archery and the pub together.
After, I presume, some very interesting nights down the pub, Darts was invented... and thus the classic game of darts and the pub have been together ever since.
The gun, even easier to learn how to use, with the ability to stick a nasty pike on the end of the musket, finished the knight for good...
But the arrows would have had some effect. Probably killing horses or ones lucky enough to find chinks in the armour.
Yes, I agree.
@scriver
Yes, the crossbow definitely is what one should use against armor, not a bow. By the way, I think that the crossbow should be made stronger in D&D games.
Regarding the crossbow ban by the Church. I think I read somewhere that this ban was not primarily aimed against crossbows, but against mercenaries, who often used crossbows. Church just did not like mercenaries. Don't know if this is true or not.
The more I look at the longbow on the internet... The more I realise that no one, NO ONE has actually fired one, and that a lot of people must be talking out of their rear hole. Only 5 broken medieval longbows exist in the world. Worse, only one arrow! Some also claim that the Longbow could not be fired! The best answers I could find was from this site from archery antiqueries. It seemed to cut through the fog by explaining what was known and what wasn't.
http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/longbow/longbow.html
I like the bit about the Archers requiring to push their body into the bow, instead of drawing the bowstring back. The phrase to 'bend the bow' is unique to England! But no one fires a bow anymore by bending the bow... so...
The stuff about arrows going through armour is all EYE WITNESS accounts. Any arrows going through modern plate is using modern technology and is not equivalent.
This is a good account I have cut n pasted from wiki as it involves the death of an Englishman, I thought it would balance things out...
Gerald of Wales commented on the power of the longbow in the 12th century:
... [I]n the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuirasses, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal.
So the arrow went through two layers of iron, two layers of leather, flesh (bone?), a leather saddle and through enough horse to drop it dead... Crikey! I call that a critical hit! (He must have rolled two 20s in a row!)
Lots of other eye witness accounts can be found on internet, though mostly about frenchmen losing heads (the arrow it would seem, even if not able to penetrate the armour would have the power to remove the head from the neck...)
So as far as I am concerned. To believe that arrows fired from a Longbow could not go through armour, you have to somehow disprove all the eye witness accounts... That you can't do as we can't make em and we can't fire am anymore.
The other myth that is doing my nut as I am so sure a Caldey Island monk told me what weapons his ancestors could carry on a tour of his island. He said was that they could not use bladed weaponry... Can I find anything on the internet about this! NO! There are lots of rules for each order of monks, but I have not the time to check out every single one! The Knights Hospitallier seems to be the most likely source for the inspiration for the cleric class, but they could use any weapon... oh well. Everyday is a school day.
@Mortianna George Santayana, Spanish-American philosipher. I had to look him up, I remember the quote, but knew nothing about who said it.
1. The French attacked uphill. Depending on exactly where the English decided to meet the initial charge, this would act as a massive force multiplier for the English positions. In particular, Archers would be able to fill the sky with a veritable rain of arrows and cut off reinforcements.
2. Agincourt, like was mentioned, was a cold and rainy place. No one likes slogging through mud and slogging through mud in Steel or other metal armor would likely be even worse. Not only are the French underfire at this point but they're being worn out and down just on the way to their target. This isn't even including possible horse casualties from mis-stepping. The counter to this is that the English archers wore very light armor which means they had an easier time moving when they finally had to.
3. Of particular note is the reload ability that was noted for the English Longbow. You cannot have protection at every point on your body, no matter what kind of armor you're wearing. Furthermore, you cannot protect your cavalry etc from all of the arrows. Add in horses pulling down riders etc and the arrow volleys create a veritable chaos from downed horses, thrown riders, and various injuries suffered from the arrows that find gaps in armor. We cannot underestimate the effect of condensed arrow volleys with a quick reload into an area. Even if they don't penetrate the armor itself, they were definitely still quite influential in the outcome of the battle itself, even if their damage ends up being 100% indirect rather than direct.
What was this thread on about again !?!