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Khopesh stats


Sumath

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In various places in the RQG rulebook there are images of warriors carrying a khopesh, a one-handed sword with a partly crescent-shaped blade (e.g. on p68 and p402). But looking at the sword stats on p208 and the descriptions on p210, none of the listed weapons seem to cover this - there is a two-handed sickle sword, or a sickle (which is a dagger).

I'm tempted to use the 1H battle axe statistics, as the khopesh has a similar cutting profile, and was historically developed from the axe. Has anyone else come up with anything on this?

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In AiG it was 1d8 Medium Size and reach. Disarm and Bludgeon as the specialties. 4 Armor points and 6 hit points with 1 enc. 

Compared to broadsword

same damage, same size and reach. Broadsword was bleed and impale. Armor 6 points and 10 hitpoints with enc 2.

Battleaxe 1h

Damage 1d6+1, same size and reach. Bleed and sunder. Armor 4 points, 8 hit points, 1 enc. 

Different d100 system but may give you way to compare and decide what you want to do with RQG....

 

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11 hours ago, hkokko said:

In AiG it was 1d8 Medium Size and reach. Disarm and Bludgeon as the specialties. 4 Armor points and 6 hit points with 1 enc. 

Compared to broadsword

same damage, same size and reach. Broadsword was bleed and impale. Armor 6 points and 10 hitpoints with enc 2.

Battleaxe 1h

Damage 1d6+1, same size and reach. Bleed and sunder. Armor 4 points, 8 hit points, 1 enc. 

Different d100 system but may give you way to compare and decide what you want to do with RQG....

 

AiG is a wildly different system. The Khopesh is the sickle-sword. It is normally a two handed weapon but when used 1-handed it does only 1d8+1 damage.

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The tsuba of the katana isn't much bigger, and the bokken almost never has a guard at all, and parries and deflections with the blade in the styles I've studied and seen. Not crossblocks, and often the deflection is angled so the striking blade is sliding towards the point of the defending one. I don't think absence of a crossguard is evidence of absence of weapon parries.

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4 hours ago, styopa said:

@M Helsdon thanks for that.

Curious that none of the examples bear more than a vestigial crossguard, suggesting to me that (considering how trivial it would have been for even primitive sword smiths to add) a blade parry was basically never even considered.

Crossguards were a relatively late development; the earliest, I believe, are apparent in Hunnic swords of the 4-6th century, so you don't find them earlier. It's an example of what I call the Roman Wheelbarrow Syndrome - the Romans had wheels and carts but wheelbarrows didn't appear in Europe until much later (originating in China) - the concept is 'simple' but no one thinks of it. A wheelbarrow is a significant work enhancer in pre-modern societies.

Instead, some ancient swords like the khopesh had a long straight ricasso/forte probably used to parry.

Edited by M Helsdon
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7 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Instead, some ancient swords like the khopesh had a long straight ricasso/forte probably used to parry.

Interesting point about these swords. The geometry of anything but a cross block with the forte is... complicated... As is the geometry of blocking a cut from a radically curved kopesh made with the inside of the curve/axey point (which could reach over and past the top rim of a shield used as you usually do against a straight or backward-curving blade).

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10 hours ago, styopa said:

@M Helsdon thanks for that.

Curious that none of the examples bear more than a vestigial crossguard, suggesting to me that (considering how trivial it would have been for even primitive sword smiths to add) a blade parry was basically never even considered.

Generally people didn't risk damaging their expensive swords  with a parry. That's what shields were for. You don't really start to see swords used to parry on Earth until well after the Viking age. 

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2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Generally people didn't risk damaging their expensive swords  with a parry. That's what shields were for. You don't really start to see swords used to parry on Earth until well after the Viking age. 

While it appears that way from what we see, I'm not sure that assumption is necessarily accurate. We have an extremely large variety of blade lengths and geometry, some which do not seem conducive to shields. Rhomphaia and Falx certainly seem to be two handed weapons. There had to be some part of their art that included parrying, as they couldn't be guaranteed to be behind a shield wall.

SDLeary

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10 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Crossguards were a relatively late development; the earliest, I believe, are apparent in Hunnic swords of the 4-6th century, so you don't find them earlier. It's an example of what I call the Roman Wheelbarrow Syndrome - the Romans had wheels and carts but wheelbarrows didn't appear in Europe until much later (originating in China) - the concept is 'simple' but no one thinks of it. A wheelbarrow is a significant work enhancer in pre-modern societies.

Instead, some ancient swords like the khopesh had a long straight ricasso/forte probably used to parry.

The more I've thought about it I rather suspect (at least part of it is) a variation of the left-handed swordsman problem, written into the distribution of primitive weapons.

In any population, you have an overwhelming number of right-handed swordsmen, and a small few lefties.  Any right-handed swordsman fighting a lefty is at a slight disadvantage, just because they're unfamiliar with them.  But a left-hander facing a lefty is the worst-off; statistically they're vanishingly unlikely to meet and when they do they're BOTH likely perplexed at the dynamic.

Now replace "right handed" with spearmen and left-handed with swordsmen - I rather believe the astonishing majority of weaponusers (particularly in the Bronze Era) were spearmen.  (And if you want to carry the metaphor further, add another tier - that the vast majority of swordsmen used shields for their parries, never would have considered wrecking their weapon to do so.)

In the narrow context of my question, it starts to make sense - a crossguard would be nearly valueless on a sword vs a spearman, and would add no significant value to fighting if you already carried a shield.  Only in the scarce sort of one on one with blades (only) might it have been useful, and who'd be crazy enough to seek THAT out?

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1 hour ago, styopa said:

But a left-hander facing a lefty is the worst-off; statistically they're vanishingly unlikely to meet and when they do they're BOTH likely perplexed at the dynamic.

That's a statistical myth, a left-hander is just as likely to meet a left-hander as a right-hander is. Chance has no memory.

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2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

That's a statistical myth, a left-hander is just as likely to meet a left-hander as a right-hander is. Chance has no memory.

I agree. If, say, 10% of the population is left handed then there is a 10% chance of an opponent being left handed, regardless of what hand you fight with. 

But... one thing here is that most people were trained to use their right hand, so even left handed swordsmen probably fought "rightie". It would have been frowned upon in a lot of older societies. Even unclean. For something like formation fighting or jousting using the left hand would have been unacceptable.  In fact, up to fairly recently they used to try and "correct" left handed people to use their right hand. And there was an incident with a priest a few years back who got into trouble at a new church for passing the collection plate with his left hand. In the country where he was sent to the left hand is used for the dirty tasks, and using it to pass the plate was viewed as being disrespectful.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But... one thing here is that most people were trained to use their right hand, so even left handed swordsmen probably fought "rightie"

The fellow who betrayed the Spartans at Thermopylae was left-handed and wasn't allowed to fight in the phalanx. There is also a castle in Scotland where the spiral staircases go the wrong way, as the people in the Castle were normally left-handed.

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Parrying a spear (in real life) with a sword is vanishingly unlikely to damage the sword (you're engaging wood with metal), and having a crossguard would enable you to engage in more 'tricks' against your spearman opponent, and make traps and guides more positive to allow you to remove the point from being a threat so you can close and win.

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Agreed, you'd want a shield if you were facing a spearman. But interestingly, if you were desperate enough to parry a spear with a blade, then a khopesh or similar would probably be the best thing for the job, as you could reverse it, or parry on the backswing, and catch the shaft of the spear in the concave curve of the blade.

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4 hours ago, Sumath said:

Agreed, you'd want a shield if you were facing a spearman. But interestingly, if you were desperate enough to parry a spear with a blade, then a khopesh or similar would probably be the best thing for the job, as you could reverse it, or parry on the backswing, and catch the shaft of the spear in the concave curve of the blade.

Yeah, and interesting enough, slashing blades like that seem to have better hand protection, than thrusting swords.

Edited by Atgxtg

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7 hours ago, soltakss said:

The fellow who betrayed the Spartans at Thermopylae was left-handed and wasn't allowed to fight in the phalanx.

That works on multiple levels. First off being left handed he would have disrupted the phalanx, because his spear and shield would have been on the wrong sides to link up with the others.

Also, the left hand side was called the Sinister side, which is where that word get associated with evil, misfortune, and something being wrong. So  the left handed one who betrays his fellows fits right in with all of that.

Quote

There is also a castle in Scotland where the spiral staircases go the wrong way, as the people in the Castle were normally left-handed.

Interesting. Not sure how good that would actually be though. While it would help the left handed defenders, it would also help  right handed attackers. Seems like a zero sum thing. Do you know the name of the castle?

Edited by Atgxtg

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4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Interesting. Not sure how good that would actually be though. While it would help the left handed defenders, it would also help  right handed attackers. Seems like a zero sum thing. Do you know the name of the castle?

Ferniehirst Castle. It belonged to Clan Kerr.

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9 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Ferniehirst Castle. It belonged to Clan Kerr.

Thanks!

Looking it up, it seems it dates back to the late 1400s, so late Middle Ages. I usually give the height advantage to someone who is above on a stairwell.  I still have doubts about the reversed staircase being any better though, or if it made enough of a difference to matter in RQ combat.

I wonder if there should be a left handed vs. right handed bonus in RQ? Or, maybe there is one already, and it's been factored into Dragonewt stat, since everyone else appears to be right handed?

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1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

I wonder if there should be a left handed vs. right handed bonus in RQ? Or, maybe there is one already, and it's been factored into Dragonewt stat, since everyone else appears to be right handed?

There's no specific rule but I'd give +/-20 to attacks but no modifier to parry.

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