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I agree. Weapons and armor names should be simple and correct.
Ditch Longsword and just call it Sword.
Ditch Plate Mail and just call it Plate.
Ditch Falchion, that one just makes no sense.
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I'm not convinced most RPG players are big enough history buffs to even realize it's incorrect.
I fall under this.
I'd never heard of brigandine before this thread, If you asked me what it was I wouldn't have known. However ask me what Studded Leather was and I could tell you.
I've played years of RPG games which use historically incorrect names so for me and my players to start a system where we had to learn new names for what mostly has standardised ones in the gaming world would be confusing.
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I noticed the thread on armour and weapons and just couldn't resist joining in.......
A lot of the armour and weapon classifications in RPGs are simplified versions that take into account game balance and statistics. Even though they don't necessarily reflect what they're like IRL. (Bearing in mind we are talking about a game based on an imaginary setting with flying hexapodal lizard-horses and people who can fire ice out of their fingertips.... You get the idea.....)
There are a number of mistakes in the old D&D weapon and armour descriptions. Most players are none the wiser, especially if the system still kinda works.
From a historical point of view....
The term longsword usually referred in the 15th Century to the "Hand and a half" sword. Otherwise known as a Bastard Sword.
Single handed swords were known as Arming Swords.
Brigandines often get mistaken for studded leather.
A Brigandine is comprised of interlocking metal plates riveted behind a covering of felt - Sometimes leather.
The earlier version is known as a "Coat of Plates" The metal plates were larger and fewer in number. The later version became a "Jack of Plates" consisting of much smaller metal sections.
The Persian version is known as a "Coat of 1000 Nails".
Studded leather is just leather with small metal studs either sewn or attached to it. To my knowledge, an archeological example of studded leather jerkin or jack has never been found. Though there are historical examples of smaller sections of studded leather armour. Such as vambraces, greaves, pteurges and gauntlets.
However, studded leather as a classification works quite well for an RPG. It also looks pretty damn cool.
The historical definition of a falchion is a blade with a flat edge and a sharp edge which came to a asymmetrical curve at the tip. However, that definition is fairly loose and you get a whole bunch of variations on the theme - All categorised as a "Falchion". (Not to be confused with cutlass or katana)
Most of the classification we see in RPGs has been based upon 19th Century scholarly attempts to categorise the wide variety of medieval weaponry found in museums.
Pole arms were the main reason. In the middle ages, anything (That wasn't a spear) with a metal bit on the end of a big stick was referred to as a "pole arm". However a pole arm could consist of an axe head with a spike (Halberd) or a single curved cutting edge edge with a hook (Guisarme) Referring to them all as Pole arms confused the heck out of the scholars , hence the names and classifications we see now.
Though for some reason they didn't seem to categorise falchions.
Those scholars have a lot to answer for....
Maille became known as "Chainmail". Which is a tautology. Maille being the old French word for "Chain". Mail is now used to describe armour made from separate links.
Scale mail was just referred to as Scale. Ring mail, banded mail and splint mail are all RPG terminologies.
My preference would be to generalize names and to ditch the old naming system. The in setting names could be localized. Plus a customization system. A great sword could refer to things various things like a claymore, flammbard, ect. An area could even use the same name for multiple types of weapons, like actually happens.
I doubt either will happen, but that would be my preference.
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I find the level of detail in armor descriptions hamper the game world. Especially so considering that of all armors, only 4 or so are actually ever used past level 3 or so (masterwork studded leather, chain shirt, half plate, full plate).
I'd prefer broader categories that can cover different armors in different settings, as outlined above.
And my pet peeve, cuirboili or hardened leather. Per the armor descriptions, this is what leather armor is, but hardened leather is really about as flexible as plate mail. No rogue would ever want to sneak around in this! Perhaps the best way to represent hardened leather leather is to use the stats of plate with a penalty and slight weight reduction.
Here is a video on shields of hardened leather https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1OTiMm4Pqc
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I agree. Weapons and armor names should be simple and correct.
Ditch Longsword and just call it Sword.
Ditch Plate Mail and just call it Plate.
Ditch Falchion, that one just makes no sense.
Why stop there?
Ditch Sword and just call it Weapon.
Ditch Plate and just call it Armor.
Ditch all other items, nothing matters anymore.
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Part of the problem is that D&D's inaccurate naming conventions perfused the fantasy genre in general, and have become common misconceptions among the general public. So as a result you're not just confronting common misconceptions, but also upsetting sacred cows. A lot of people would be really upset if leather armor was replaced by more historically accurate gambeson and studded leather by brigandine (leather armor wasn't anything like what you think it is). Or how about the fact that the longsword is actually primarily intended as a two-handed weapon, and the bastard sword was actually a half-grade between the two-handed longsword and one-handed arming sword.
And that's just stuff off the top of the head of a guy who has done some cursory reading on the subject. I'm by no means an expert. If someone wanted to go whole hog and really get some historical accuracy in there, I'm sure there would be a lot of weird surprises.
Especially so considering that of all armors, only 4 or so are actually ever used past level 3 or so (masterwork studded leather, chain shirt, half plate, full plate).
Breastplate and the Haramaki also get used. Leather armor also has the slight niche of being useful for characters with 22 or 23 dexterity. But in principle I agree that a lot of the current armor table is basically clutter. Some, like the Padded Armor, are completely and utterly outclassed by options from splatbooks. Too many of the types of armor that currently exist are minor variations whose only purpose is being a slightly lower-cost version of a better armor. Either change their stats so there's some interesting choices to be made there, or aggregate them together.
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I will point out that in BECMI, there was short sword, sword, bastard sword, and two-handed sword. Longsword was a 1E invention, so anyone arguing for longsword on the grounds of “tradition” is on to a losing proposition.
Why stop there?Ditch Sword and just call it Weapon.
Ditch Plate and just call it Armor.
Ditch all other items, nothing matters anymore.
I think the idea is that weapons and armor that are just grades of the same mechanical base should be aggregated together. For instance, scale mail, chainmail, and breastplate are all just different variations on the same armor at slightly different cost points. There's an argument to be made that they should be aggregated together into a single variety of armor which could be fluffed appropriately.
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Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, fluff as necessary. Minor cost differences that become meaningless after level 2 do not justify a large table of pointless bloat.
Or scrap medium armor entirely.
And please remove redundant weapons. The gladius is not sufficiently distinct from the short sword, for example. Better yet, have weapons defined by their properties and give some examples of real world types for use as fluff descriptions.
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I'd like to see a little more, if not accuracy, then adherence to historograhical norms in the naming of arms and armor.
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Is it worth having different rules for the whole great family of polearms? Like is it worth mechanically differntiating between a Bill, a Bill Hook, a Glaive, a Guisarme, a Glaive-Guisarme, a Fauchard, a Fauchard-Fork, a Lochaber Axe, a Halberd, a Voulge, a Military Fork, a Voulge-Guisarme, a Bec de Corbin, etc.
Like it seems like you could instead just have one stat block for polearm and let people describe them how they like. In Pathfinder people mostly just picked the one with good mechanics anyway.
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The existing combat system is insufficiently granular to make the subtle distinctions between types of weapons and armor function in a way that reflects actual use. See possible Cabbage's list of polearms above.
I suppose you could have massive tables of bonuses for each weapon verses every type of weapon and armor, but that would be cumbersome. Old school, but not in anything like a good way.
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Point of order, Studded Leather isn't actually brigandine and is instead its own thing, it was just created because of an incorrect visual interpretation of some brigandines.
To be pedantic, studded leather doesn't exist and there's no evidence for something like that ever having existed. It is believed that a fantasy author misinterpreted an illustration of brigandine and created the idea of studded leather armor. In this sense, studded leather is just a misidentified brigandine.
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Not all armour is really armour. Or more to the point, not everything that provides useful protection is armour and named as such. For example, my motorbike leathers aren't armour and won't stop a sword (though they'd help against a slash), but they'd make me pretty much invulnerable against something like a dog or a whip.
And likewise, not all armour that could have existed did exist. I could augment that leather with some steel strips down the forearms (for parrying?), add metal greaves and couple of metal plates on the chest. Is that now "Studded leather"? No, but it's better (+1 AC), heavier and perfectly achievable. So the Studded stats work, even if the description is bad. "Banded" never existed (it's reminiscent of Lorica Segmentata, but isn't it) but could have done. And so it goes.
Even a thick coat is some help. Even a stout pair of jeans is better than bare skin.
True that many types of armour are never used or badly misrepresented (gambeson=padded should be something like Hide stats). "Breastplate" clearly isn't a breastplate. So work is needed.
OTOH, remember that PCs aren't the only ones in armour.
Of course there are far too many weapons with essentially the same characteristics, and they're all stupidly heavy.
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Oh, if we're taking requests, I'd like warhammers to be warhammers (ie, a precision weapon for piercing armor) and not concrete blocks on sticks.
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I'd rather keep the names even though I know their not right because most people don't know and won't care. If they come from other fantasy games it also gives them an idea of what the item is, even if that idea is not correct.
Splint mail shouldn't even exist. The term is a Victorian era invention, and the armor was only briefly used a couple times, and then only on limbs. It was never a primary form of torso protection.
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Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, fluff as necessary. Minor cost differences that become meaningless after level 2 do not justify a large table of pointless bloat.
Or scrap medium armor entirely.
And please remove redundant weapons. The gladius is not sufficiently distinct from the short sword, for example. Better yet, have weapons defined by their properties and give some examples of real world types for use as fluff descriptions.
And merge the monk weapons into the regular weapons, so we don't have to have all these weapons for monks to hunt down.
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I noticed the thread on armour and weapons and just couldn't resist joining in.......
A lot of the armour and weapon classifications in RPGs are simplified versions that take into account game balance and statistics. Even though they don't necessarily reflect what they're like IRL. (Bearing in mind we are talking about a game based on an imaginary setting with flying hexapodal lizard-horses and people who can fire ice out of their fingertips.... You get the idea.....)
There are a number of mistakes in the old D&D weapon and armour descriptions. Most players are none the wiser, especially if the system still kinda works.
Indeed, as you say. And your solid knowledge of the technical/historical side of all of this shows in your art. Bearing in mind the imaginary hexapodal lizard-horses and ice-shooting fingertips and scary orc-axes and giant-hammers and whatnot...
Yeah, this an overall RPG issue, not just in Pathfinder. And a lot of the silliness that we're discussing really was introduced in 3E -- that "breastplate" is a distinct armor category, that it's super simple for your wizard to handle a crank-loaded heavy crossbow but impossible to use a common shortbow, that swinging a heavy mace is simple but using a hatchet or hammer requires special martial training, that using your bastard sword in one hand requires a special feat rather than just having a really strong sword-arm, etc., etc.
I would like to see some rationalization of this in Pathfinder 2E, especially the removal of bloat and overlapping versions of the same things. But there's always going to be some abstraction involved. Unless we want a super-detailed historical simulation and tables showing the effects of specific weapons vs. specific armors (remember those from D&D 1E?) and whatnot. Which we probably don't.
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My favorite weapon system in a d20 RPG was from Rule of Cool's Legend system. Each weapon was either melee or ranged and had three properties (improvised weapons had less if I recall). So a dagger could have the properties to be thrown (making it ranged and melee) easily concealed, and quick draw. (I haven't looked at it in some time, so my details may be off). You can have a weapon that is brutal x3, getting a scaling damage bonus; doesn't matter if you describe it as a greatsword, a big axe, or even two scimitars. Want a shield? guardian property. It was flexible and did not try to inject mechanical distinctions for fluff differences that the game didn't need. Armor was even simpler.
I don't expect anything of the sort, but I can at least hope for some streamlining.
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As for weapons, name them whatever you like, just base the damage off of category. Something like this.
Close: 1d4
Light: 1d6
One Handed: 1d8
Polearm: 1d10
Two Handed: 1d12 (not 2d6, the d12 needs more love!
Then have Piercing, Bludgeoning, or Slashing. Whatever the weapons are is flavor. Something similar can be done with armor.
Is it worth having different rules for the whole great family of polearms? Like is it worth mechanically differntiating between a Bill, a Bill Hook, a Glaive, a Guisarme, a Glaive-Guisarme, a Fauchard, a Fauchard-Fork, a Lochaber Axe, a Halberd, a Voulge, a Military Fork, a Voulge-Guisarme, a Bec de Corbin, etc.
Like it seems like you could instead just have one stat block for polearm and let people describe them how they like. In Pathfinder people mostly just picked the one with good mechanics anyway.
Now I am having warm fuzzy memories of the Unearthed Arcana polearm appendix - pages and pages of detail showing variations between the different versions of pointy-thing-on-a-stick, and the mighty Bohemian Ear-spoon.
I suspect they've more tried to find mechanical distinctions to make in order to justify new weapons. I'd personally rather see less mechanical granularity and let you pick the weapon fluff out of a group or something, but I tend towards less crunchy systems anyway.
This reminds me of the fantastic approach taken by the Hong Kong Action Theatre RPG. Their weapons section (guns based given the genre) had a tiny table of about 6 rows with one line each for "small handgun", "big handgun", "rifle" and then pages and pages that were just pictures and names giving examples from each category. The idea being to just pick something that looked cool for you character.
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This amuses me as near as I can tell even the experts can't agree on half the naming conventions for weapons and armour.
I'm OK with all the different weapons and armor and their names drawn from the depths of gaming time.
However, I would like to see the end to all 18-20 crit range weapons, as I'm tired of seeing everyone with a ndochi, katana, falchion, wakizashi, kukri, etc. As far as I know there is no historical or contemporary evidence that these weapons are more effective at inflicting grievous (ie "critical") than weapons such as daggers, longswords, short swords, etc.
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Studded leather doesn't exist! Whoever heard of splint mail? Keep my armour Real World™ authentic!
...Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to throw fireballs, ride around on my pet hippogriff, and muzzle-load and fire these two dragon pistols seven times in one round.
This is one change I would like to see. Sure, it's not a big change, but it would be nice. Besides the names arent really enshrined, since OD&D & AD&D had different names.
The armor names are the worst:
No such thing as studded leather. Make it hardened leather.
Scale was mostly gone, it should be brigantine.
There was really a Half-plate, it was the upper half of full plate. Rather light and easy to move in, comparitively. Expensibe.
It should be Plate-mail aka plate & mail,
Full Plate
3/4 plate
Half Plate.
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It's a game. As a big time history buff myself, I get your point, but nomenclature for arms and armor is by no means locked down in the real world, so we'd just be picking our favorites out of a list of choices anyway.
Also, considering 5e brought back Ring mail, don't expect too much. (Although, armors that never actually existed could still exist in a fantasy world, even if they're stupid.)
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I agree. Weapons and armor names should be simple and correct.
Ditch Longsword and just call it Sword.
Ditch Plate Mail and just call it Plate.
Ditch Falchion, that one just makes no sense.
Why stop there?
Ditch Sword and just call it Weapon.
Ditch Plate and just call it Armor.
Ditch all other items, nothing matters anymore.
Most weapons and armor in the game are named correctly, from the Glaive-Guisarme to the O-Yoroi. There's no reason the outliers should remain outliers and continue to use incorrect names.
Studded leather doesn't exist! Whoever heard of splint mail? Keep my armour Real World™ authentic!
Splint armor did exist, it was used for leg and arm protection by both Europeans and the Japanese, and the earliest examples are from 4th century BC Scythia.
...Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to throw fireballs, ride around on my pet hippogriff, and muzzle-load and fire these two dragon pistols seven times in one round.
Your point? What's that have to do with the names of a few weapons and armors being victorian misconceptions leftover from 1st edition D&D?
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I'm totally on board with ditching 'mail' from all those armors that aren't actually mail, and replacing 'longsword' with 'arming sword'.
I don't think it will happen, but at least two people in my gaming circle would be very happy if it did, and I doubt anyone else would care.
Replacing studded leather with some armor type that actually existed would also be a solid choice.
On a tangential note, how about accounting for the evolution of armor into forms that would be effective in a world where six-plus-limbed flying critters vomit vast swaths of fire, people shooting lighting bolts from their arse and fireballs from their eyes are a thing? ;) :P
Mundane stuff, not "all of the goodies are magical enchantments", somewhat represented by darkleaf cloth, dragonhide - which is horrific if you think about it, maybe other critters can be farmed for energy resistant materials? - and other materials.
I wouldn't mind them cleaning up the specific items by the OP by Sword is a generic term referring to an entire group of weapons to many and having a single type of item named that would be confusing... isn't a short sword also a sword or a great sword. I know Longsword is technically incorrect but not only is there tradition at this point, tradition that's been copied by many other games so as to cause confusion if it changes now but also pretty much any new player understands short, long, and great when describing a sword... even if the name IS historically incorrect. I'm not convinced most RPG players are big enough history buffs to even realize it's incorrect.
As for Plate Mail where did you get that from? That's already been fixed as Pathfinder's Equipment chart has no "Mail" in the name of plate armor. There is Breastplate, Half-Plate, and Full=Plate; no Plate Mail. Only Chainmail, Scale, Splint, and Banded have "Mail" in the name.
The longsword should be swapped with bastard sword, as it was actually primarily used two handed and it is suppose to be longer then a bastard sword. What is called a longsword in D&D is really an arming sword.
Plate Mail comes from Plate and Mail which was an armor once used. Basically chain mail with a breast plate (maybe) and plates covering the most vulnerable places. Also coat of plates over chain mail wasn’t uncommon.
Anyway cleaning up the names might be nice but also confusing for some.
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Don't forget the sex factor.
I don't know if you can make a character look very sexy in a gambeson, and studded leather evokes sex appeal more than brigandine.
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I do agree that some weapon and armor names should be changed, so as to better differentiate itself from other versions of this game, as well as to give it a breath of fresh air, but some weapon and armor names should stay the same, since in a lot of cases, there's no proper need to change them.
Longsword named into Arming Sword would be pretty nice, but Bastard Sword (and maybe Short Sword too?) should remain the same, since they are still technically accurate.
A Greatsword can be switch to something like a Claymore, and a Greataxe into a Tabar; historically accurate weapons that better represent what those weapons are actually supposed to be. They do this with other weapons, like Cestus, Kukri, etc., so maybe if they did it more with these weapons, it'd be pretty nice.
As for armors, I'm less versed on those. (Maybe because I enjoy swinging weapons than I do wearing armor, which is god-awfully uncomfortable a lot of the time you wear it, even if it is appropriately sized for you?) However, I will say that Brigandine is certainly not the same as Studded Leather, especially with Mr. Reynolds' description of what Brigandine is. If anything, Brigandine more closely resembles Scale Mail (except it's mostly just covered with cloth or leather) than Studded Leather, and to be honest, I'd rather see other items be called things like Splint Mail, Mesh Armor, etc. Which I believe did have more historical accuracy, and if the game wants to say that the armors function as such, then maybe they should actually be called as such?