Eric Treasure at The Dragon's Flagon discusses the lightly armed adventurer and the perceived need to make the maille-clad warrior and the swashbuckler 'equal' under the combat rules of many roleplaying games.
Indirectly, the question posed by the knight and the swashbuckler is, should characters in a roleplaying game be balanced to one another, and if so, to what degree? It's a question which generates a strong opinions, in my experience, regardless of the answer.
This whole issue is a really only a problem if a certain level of "realism" is insisted upon. If one wants a game of lightly armored barbarians are a match for plate armored warriors that's easy enough to do--though it's in D&D and its variants its not the default assumption and takes a bit of overhauling.
ReplyDeleteThat was really the point of my own post on the lightly armored fighter recently, that there are ways of handling it which work well with D&D's core assumptions and ways that don't.
DeleteAnd thus is the spike in my traffic explained. Thanks for the mention!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. It's a well-done post.
DeleteI'm no historian but it seems the "heavily armored warrior" is not all that common thru the ages. Although I guess "heavily" is subjective.
ReplyDeleteGood point - D&D tends to build its core assumptions around a period when armor was exceptionally, by historical reckoning, complex and extensive.
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