Usually when people don't get all up in arms about changes it means they find them acceptable or reasonable. Historically there where the famous Zulu warriors who carried a short spear and shield, and making crossbows more rare and martial seems ok. Though crossbows did not require the hours of training a day that were required to stay proficient with, like the longbow, as a mechanical devise they had higher construction requirements, i.e. better technological prowess was required to construct them. Thus the rarity factor, but later once mass production came in they were all over the place, and steadily they supplanted other bows, since any dolt could use them and they packed quite a punch and could also piece plate armor, as could the long bow.
So the demise of plate resulted from the piercing power that eventually drove plate armor from the battlefield.
For instance Agincourt. So it's all about time and place. At one time piercing weapons were inferior against plate and then plate was gone because of it. Most people surmise, incorrectly, that gun powder was the end of plate, but it was already on the way out, but that development, gunpowder/muskets sped it's dissapearance from the field. Though the fully armored knight was gone plate still lingered, but mostly just as a breast piece, like the conquistidors. Though in modern times soldiers still wear helmets, flack jackets , vestiges of the past. And now we have kevlar, and ceramic armors, which could be viewed as the resurgence of plate.
I like the 2d damage changes on say the flails, since it offers a higher based damage, while the quarterstaff was a much more versatile weapon as you suggest.
I think the focus on the scythe is due to the fact that it is such an outlandish and unusual weapon with much less mass adaptation in actual warfare, and combat in general.
In a fantasy setting the idea that all types of armors and weapons, which were developed over the centuries and went in and out of favor as armor became better and tactics changed, are somehow to reasonably coexist at the same time and same place, is quite a stretch. So if your setting is France around the time of the musketeers, you are not going to see many people walking around in plate mail.
You treatment of plate is reasonable: slash/pierce do less damage than blunt, but maybe when they do critical, at least the piercing, they do more damage, as above regarding xbows vrs.plate. I think the blunt extra damage is fine though as the counterbalance to the fact that blunt cannot be keened. Except remember plate is not real plate as it was. It does not slow you down for instance, and most worlds don't have fatigue systems, though no one is going to run around in plate armor for any length of time. Heck they even had to put knights on their horses with wenches, and not the kind that serve beer. It is really an insoluable problem, so all you can do is something like you have done. Come up with an approximation of how things might have worked. I'm no expert but your approach seems accurate.
Fanatasy is just that, derived from fantastic, as in unusual or unbelievable, not our current take as something wonderful, though that is part of it too. So you just have to construct your fantastic world, with a tad of verisimilitude, which is what you are trying to do.
Modifié par ffbj, 25 août 2012 - 03:20 .
