Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Hand to hand in full plate

Just found this very interesting video that will make me rethink the importance of hand to hand combat in Era. First off it's clear full plate isn't as encumbersome as some rule books would make us think. Take a look at the video and see some aerobics in action while in full plate.

Secondly, weapon damage is very hard to achieve. Notice the sword swing in the beginning. No doubt that a strong bludgeoning blow would still deliver concussion damage, but a sword by itself, specially a light sword has no place in this combat.

Finally the most effective tactics are hand to hand close quarter combat. Grapple, pull, push and bringing down the armored knight is a good strategy. Pinning him down on the floor for a good knife attack is clearly a winning strategy.

So it's time to go back to the drawing board and put more attention into those hand to hand combat rules.




3 comments:

Douglas Cole said...

Have you read Talhoffer? His Fechtbuch is FULL of this stuff.

The upcoming Technical Grappling for GURPS has an entire chapter on armed grapples, for this reason.

Ben said...

Clearly you and I are looking into many of the same things. I just posted about this on my blog a week or two ago. Have you seen this one?

http://youtu.be/H6IL2giKNN8

Peter D said...

Doug mentioned Talhoffer earlier, but there are a lot of places to look. The GURPS Martial Arts bibliography lists a few good ones.

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/MartialArts/bibliography.html

And Anglo's The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe is a great place to start - it pulls a lot of discussion together. It's not cheap, but it's really excellent.