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Hello everyone,

I have been reading this subforum for the past few weeks, because after playing Rangers of Shadow Deep and loving the narrative approach to wargaming Joseph McCollough took with it, it had me thinking about a campaign I wanted to play out.

I took his game to create a core concept of what I wanted to play. Then I completely re-wrote it. And re-wrote it again.
There is pretty much no resemblance to RoSD any more, and I think I'm on a good path for a stand-alone game, but one thing still has my head spinning:
Full plate armour in wargames.

I wanted to take a (more or less) realistic approach to it, meaning it had to be impervious to slashing, piercing it had to be difficult and using blunt weapons should be the way to go.

For inspiration, I looked up a lot of different wargames and their approach to armour, but really didn't like any of them. If you know of a system that handles this aspect really well, let me know!

My solution right now for the damage roll, is to have the weapons assigned a number of D6 depending on the weapon class.
Depending on the target armour, you need to roll a number of successes (4+) equalling their armour rating against this kind of attack (Slash, Thrust, Blunt).

For example: a sword swing would give you 2D6 for slashing damage. Each 4+ is a success. I need 1 success to slash through light armour, 2 successes against medium armour, and 3 for heavy, 5 for full plate; meaning heavy and plate are invincible against a slash.

Another example: a mace swing gives you 3D6 for blunt damage. Again, you need to roll successes with these dice. But against blunt damage, protection for heavy armour drops down to 1 and plate down to 2.

Every weapon therefore has characteristics for Slash, Thrust, Blunt and, if you score enough successes, damage.
Every armour has characteristics for protection against Slash, Thrust, and Blunt.

I'm still tinkering around with these stats, but wanted to check here what you think of this idea or have any help to point me in a better direction.

I think RPGs might have more promise for you AND can work well with a small skirmish game.

I see many have different stats against Piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning type damage and weapons are listed as either piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning.

You are probably right, that this is crossing a lot into RPG territory.
Still I wonder how this could be handled semi-realistic in a wargame.

Perhaps you could still differentiate weapon damage, and just provide different saving throws or weapon save mods? That is a bit more wargamey.

It also depends what the "default" attack mode is. Most of us assume slashing, because swords, even though swords were seldom the primary weapon for any warrior at any point in history.

I think that while plate mail would provide virtually complete protection against swords, it has weaknesses to spears, axes, maces, etc. How many warriors will really be using longswords as their only weapon? I'd guess not very many.

Instead, maybe give platemail as a base basically immunity against anything other than a critical hit (however your system defines that, much like how 40k treates terminator armor), and then give unusually good weapons at breaking armor the AP ability.

So, lets say you use your system of successes outlined above. Give most weapons three dice, and they score a hit for the following:
unarmored: one
Light armor: two
Heavy amour: three
Platemail: four

So how do you get four successes? Maybe you get an extra dice for charging. or for flank attacks. Or extra dice if you outnumber your target.

In a skirmish game, one guy in platemail that's surround by four goblins with scimitors doesn't need to worry about being slashed, he needs to worry about being tripped and dragged down.

A very good idea Polonius!

Thanks for the feedback, I'll play around some more with different variations to try and get away from too much of a RPG feel.