Akhôrahil

I don’t believe this is in the rules. You may be thinking of how Spirit Screen is incompatible with Protection. Shield itself is surprisingly allowing.

I think that would have been a good call. RQ3 really does have a lot of good rules changes.

These would be amazing as Jonstown PDF publications, even if it's just scans.

This decision keeps being a drag on the game, and I honestly doubt how wise it was. But even so, just creating either a system of attributes for weapons (like "Armor-piercing") or giving special abilities to weapon classes (Pendragon-style), would be quite easy and not shatter compatibility. Weapons like warhammers have no reason to exist unless for countering armor. Greg Stafford was an amazing rules designer as well as world-builder, something which is sometimes forgotten. But it's not a strike against him that a design from 1978 is a bit clunky today.

Even in D&D, the loot weighs a lot. It's just that you have Bags of Holding for it.

Four levels deep of of Bladesharped pikes really does go a long way, though... it was the lack of any good combat Rune Magic that was the problem with Yelmalio, not specifically lack of additional offense.

The game also has fantastic weapon differentiation - swords are good but not against armor, axes chop up shields, maces bash up armor, warhammers penetrate armor, spears can repel attackers, daggers strike quickly, two-handed weapons deal out immense damage but lack of shield is really bad until you have great armor, and so on. This is something RQ could really take in, in order to make weapons lists more interesting (Pendragon already does this in excellent way).

I believe there are plenty of strong feelings here, though?

Battle Brothers, an excellent computer game clearly inspired by BRP, does it like this: Attacker has an attack skill in percent. Defender has a (usually quite a lot lower) defence skill, which is subtracted from the attacker's Attack skill. Shield increases the defence skill, but if it’s the shield that matters, you take damage to it (and both the defence and HP value of shields vary). While simple, this works out great in practice.

I have always loved this. Second only to how your feelings towards dragons can be Fear Dragons, Fear Dragons, Fear Dragons, or Hate and Fear Dragons.

Yes, I meant iron historically, but it's also hardly a secret that Gloranthan bronze can frequently behave suspiciously much like iron... Still, I would stay with either just the buckle, or a small all-metal shield.

It's not clear that above-standard Ancestors can be incarnated. Lots and lots of Heortlings have Vingkot and/or Heort among their ancestors, but I would strongly doubt that they're available for incarnation.

If you put metal on a wooden shield (apart from the buckle), it's usually as a rim. A more detailed shield system might differentiate between rimmed and non-rimmed shields.

Don't forget impales vs shields, either - two javelins in a shield makes it useless, which can screw up a shield-wall pretty good. Which was part of the point. In a campaign where we played Balazarings, my bread and butter was Javelin + Atlatl + DB + Multimissile. We shredded sabretooths with that!

I was thinking of that one, yes. 🙂

I'd easily go to 16, maybe even more - a buckler (or what we might probably use, something like an Indian Dhal) is really sturdy, and while it might not stop your arm from getting broken, the shield itself is all but unbreakable (you might want to go with different values for the shield's own sturdiness and how much damage it absorbs). Swords break a lot more easily than a sturdy disc of metal - that fairly small shield weighs over 2 kg! Also, bucklers are used a bit differently than regular shields - used to cut off angles of attack rather than being used for blocking. Also, I wouldn't go the typical RPG way for bucklers, where you're allowed to have a weapon in the same hand - yes, there's that buckler&dirk, but it's really not the default way of fighting. Best of all, bronze is one historical material for Dhals, so it provably works.

Maybe, but my idea would be that you had a skill like "Legionnaire", which would be a fighting skill, the skill for drills, and even involving the non-combat basics of the job (like maintaining your stuff). You would have no need for a separate Battle skill in this case, for instance (although probably still the need for a Command skill).

If you write up rules like these for combat styles, you will probably want some kind of flowchart or mindmap with different skill inheritances. You will also have to decide whether, say, "Legionnaire soldier" includes javelins, or whether that's a separate skill.

Some of a combat style will also involve fighting in the correct formation (unless it's some pure duelling style) and its maneuvers. You can probably re-use fair amounts of the drill itself.

I like it when games have a Cool or Sharpness stat, and use it for firing rather than Dex. But anyway, back to shields...

One of the most interesting modellings of combat I have seen involved a stat called "combat experience", which was super important but could only be raised through experience of being in combat (it started either at zero or just a few points, depending on your background). It included all kinds of things like your stress reactions, reflexes, situational awareness, and so on. If you put someone with sky-high weapon skill but no combat experience up against a theoretically less-skilled but grizzled fighter, it tended to be murder, and a high combat experience meant you could do a lot with most weapons even with little to no formal training. Basically, being an olympic shooter doesn't help you all that much in a firefight...

In that case, "composite shield" might make sense as an option.

Our archer broke her bow in her first fight. I think it was the second shot in her (in-game) career.

One has to wonder why anyone would use a wooden shield when a hide shield is cheaper and lighter and just as good in all other aspects...

I’m not saying it’s trivial, but doing these things are included in the presumably very widespread woodworking skill. Should a large wooden shield really be worth two cows, more than a bronze shortsword (containing a pound or more of expensive bronze) or half a year’s income for a free man? This is super expensive, especially for something that is basically expected to last for just one battle.