If I was a real life Harnian and had a choice of weapons, it would probably be a spear. And for my backup weapon - A spear as well! LOL

I think Robin initially tried to give the spear it's "bite" back, as it had been relegated to status as a weak weapon in many RPG's of the time.

I think it may have been a bit overboard however, as now the "weak" weapon is a broadsword (or short sword for that matter).

Looking at both historical battlefield use as well as modern sparring videos, and throwing in some information in martial arts manuals of the late middle ages, it seems the following is accurate:

1) The most effective way to fight in one-on-one combat with a spear is 2 handed use. However, in a crowded melee with death possibly striking from any direction, archers, etc. the use of a shield is important, probably important enough to lose a bit of melee effectiveness for a bit of safety.
2) Two handed spear usage vs arming sword and shield favors the sword and shield user, but only slightly. One handed spear and shield vs sword and shield somes out worse for the spear user.

It seems from this that a spear may have been a better choice for larger scale combats - though after the initial press going to a sword would have been a better idea (Some Byzantine manuals state basically this).

But it also seems that in one on one combat the sword is more effective than the spear.

I might also add that in mass combat were it is mentioned that a shield is very important for the spear user - good armour such as mail can negate the need for the shield to a point.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Depends on version.

In HM1 and HMG point impact columns were at 5+ 11+ 16+ 21+ and had the least damage at the upper ends of any of the aspect types. (28 yellow, 35 orange, 13 red =) 2.48 injury points per impact
For edge at 5+ 9+ 13+ 17+(25 yellow, 21 orange, 30 red =) 3.68 injury points per impact!

edge did 150% the injury compared to the same impact for point

in HMC all the impact types were homogenized in the chart and all the impact values were kept the same on the weapons.

Plus point weapons penetrate armor much more easily!

A spear in HM1 that did (4/-/7) in HMC effectively does (6/-/11) and gets an extra half die of damage for every damage die achieved! (3 dice instead of 2, 6 dice instead of 4) relative to HMC edge weapons. And effectively halves the value of armor protection.


There is no weapon in HM1 that comes anywhere close to those sort of figures - not even a warflail, battlesword or pike (8 each and only getting normal attack dice).

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Found a spear is a good weapon in the open using 2-hands, and can do lethal damage if the wielder can land body shots; however, it is less effective if the wielder lands blows to the extremities; blows to the arms and legs generally result in fumble and stumble rolls, but few shock and/or blood wounds; meanwhile a sword or axe wounds to the target's extremities will result in not only fumble and stumble checks, but also blood wounds and even amputation, if not Kill rolls.

I have found that characters fighting with a spear (w/2-hands) are dangerous and can land a lot of blows, but primarily to the target's arms and legs (a death of a thousand pin pricks), which while causes wounds, fail to force Shock Roll; however, a sword is much lethargy and when paired with a shield (+20 EML) can offset the spear's offensive bonus (+20 EML); sword or axe blows to the target's body are all lethal, forcing many more Shock Checks.

The only thing about a (6') spear (WQ11) is that if 1' is blade, that leaves 5' of wooden shaft, so if one blocks with one and it is damaged, how much is metal and how much is wood shaft?

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For what it's worth, that's the way I see it

It's probably also true that learning to use a spear with reasonable effectiveness in combat is significantly easier than learning to use a sword. Not a lot of room for error when using most swords. Plus, spears are cheaper and easier to make. Hence, the historical popularity of spears with levies, militia, etc.

Seems to me that the Harn designers overstated the effectiveness of the spear to compensate for the under-representation in other RPGs, when they should have just made spears much cheaper than other weapons.

PaladinSix

Medieval fancing is based on staff and long staff.
Every trained warrior will begin, practically, to learn how to fight with a spear.

It is also true that spear were, generally, mass weapons used for defense formations, until the pike/azza or whatever you call it reached the battlefields, but these weapons starts to appear when full armors are developed.

IMHO, there are distinctions from what used the militia and what used the trained knight and the professional mercenaries, like the highly trained italian infantry of the 1400+

Militia generally were used for workforce (and diggers...) and defense formations equipped with spears and shields, to keep at bay enemy formations and protecting the monuvering professionals (be the mercenaries and/or knights) that will conduct the real offense.
In Italy between (1300~1450) these professional sport very little uniformity in weapons and armors, giving great headaches for handling them as units.

To make a long story short, the spear (intended as the staff with an iron point) is generally a battle weapon, used with great success and in different situations but, aside the fencincg treates, we don't have evidence (at least not I know of) that this weapon was used as a personal one.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum
I Signori della Guerra: http://www.isignoridellaguerra.com

I fully agree, Feanor, that the HM1 system represented the spear and other point based weapons better.

I even feel that HM1 was still modified in favor of the spear. There was a rule I think in HMG as optional, also in Warflail's houserules that give a negative mod to damage for any hand mode penalties. A spear would lose 1 point of impact by this rule if used in one hand.

One reason a shield was a common form of defense is that it was very effective against thursts to the body - so much so that greek hoplites still wore greaves after discarding their bronze back and breast, and for a thousand years or more a shield was considered poor man's "armour" for the body.

I've looked at some houserules to address this, a bit borrowed from TROS. In it's simplest form, a shield gets a +20 in addition to other mods to defend from blows to the body.

In addition, Thrusts are penalized by -10 to the arm or leg locations or the head - swings are not penalized to these locations.

In essence, it gives thrusted weapons a bigger negative mod attacking locations not covered as well by a shield, and also make thrusts or swings to the body on a shielded person tougher.

This applies to ALL thrusts, such as when using the P values of a sword or dagger. But swords and similar also have the ability to swing, whereas a swing with a spear particularily with one hand does little.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Curious, DFA - have you done much sparring with spear and shield vs other combinations? I can't find hardly anything with sparring done with spear and shield - only with a two handed spear.



Don't forget foraging

Many of these militia were not of great use on the Battlefield, but there are of course other such as the Flemish at Courtrai that were very effective.

Unfortunately, militia is a very broad term and applies in the broad sense to fairly good units such as Byzantine Thematics and Swiss Pike/Halberd for that matter, though after some time on campaign they develop into a much better force, and the line between those militia serving obligatory time in the army blurs with that of mercenaries when called up for long periods of time or employment.

Heck, even Longbowmen and Knights fall under the broad definiton of militia (with knights, meaning non-household troops that serve out of obligation for land held - in Harnic terms, manorial knights), though with knights they have a social class and function that counters their classification as militia.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

The potential trouble imho has arisen from the duality of the weapon imho. Quite clearly horrendous damage can be created with it en masse or set to charge for example. However; to me it is also quite a disappointing weapon in hand to hand. (The wars of the roses re-enactors I have spoken to think this is overcome with the addition of any kind of hook/barb. This enables the hook and pull/trip/disarm movement...where one thrusts past opponent and then back to catch on limb/armour/shield etc)

I think the rules to a certain extent reflect this duality with open and closed mode? Maybe not.

The way I play is to allow longer weapons initial strike first round, and then close mode on. But I have not reduced spear damage in close mode...and sometimes it has seemed that very powerful point blows have been landed by spear users in close combat....


(I blame the old old DandD +1d6 set to strike rule

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

I think the idea there is nice but the implementation that you can strike a prefered area just as effectively as anywhere on the whole body seems off.

Not that anyone is using that rule at the moment but taking that idea and leaving the penalty for swings and doubling it for thrusts seems better to me.


I only has 1 character in my HM1 games ever choose spear. One recently got a powerful magic weapon that was a trident. The mechanics of it though seemed like she'd be better off attacking most opponents with a sword in order to inflict more damage.

I suppose spear & trident favor low damage results that get past heavy armor better but seemed, in the recent campaign, to be fairly unimpressive by HM1 rules.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I have a couple of characters who use (4') Javelins instead of (6') short spears, on account of they can use a javelin with 1-hand and also carry a shield.

A spear can be used with 1-hand but suffers a -1 Point Impact and a -10 1-handed penalty; while a javelin suffers neither; albeit it has a -1 WQ and a -1 Point impact. It also can be thrown further than a spear

Javelin: Wt. 3-lbs; WQ 10; A/D (open) +15/+5; HM -10; B2 E- P6; Thrown: Short 8, Medium 16, Long 32, Extreme 64 hexes
Spear: Wt. 5-lbs; WQ 11; A/D (open) +20/+10; HM -20; B4 E- P7; Thrown: Short 6, Medium 12, Long 24, Extreme 48 hexes

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For what it's worth, that's the way I see it

My thoughts here - when you swing a weapon at the body, particularily an edged weapons, you are probably just as likley to hit the arms as the body, depending upon the position of the arms. And arms are closer to the attacker than the body - actually making this an easier strike.

Come to think of it, even different hit location tables would probably be in order depending upon if a weapon was thrust or swung.



Interesting idea - not bad either. I do think though that arms would be as easy to hit with a swing as the body. A leg strike is a bit different. The front leg of an opponent is fairly easy to hit - but you are opening yourself to a strike by the opponent when going after a leg, so maybe the negative mod makes sense.



Yeah, open and closed mode can make a difference, but I'd do away with the rules in some incarnations of HM where thrusting weapons are not impeded as much by close mode.



It probably makes sense to do so, though I have not done it eather due to the complication. This is very much like TROS though. A weapon like the battleaxe would be another that would be impaired some in close mode.

I think part of it though - say we have a two handed spear or axe user. Combat is very fluid, not as stationary as represented by hexes. The Spear/axe user could be in close mode, then quickly push off and be in normal mode. One way to represent this that I have looked at is making TA's more common - a 2D6 agility role is actually a 3d6 roll with my houserules, but if it is failed by 1-3 it is a TA, not a stumble.



Don't get me started on Javelins, George

They are only 1 point less in impact than a spear, and if using the rule for -1 impact for every -10 points of hand mode penalty (or praction of 10 points) the Javelin is then better than a spear used 1 handed with a shield.

And with a P impact of 6, it's better in HM3 and HMG for that matter than almost any slashing weapon when facing opponents with even light armour.

It's only drawback is the 10 WQ.

I treat my javelins different. They were not weapons designed primarily for melee - they were throwing weapons. I give them the same Hand Mode penalty as a spear, and the decreased damage due to hand mode (ignored if they are thrown).

I'm not sure of the best way to represent them, but they were clearly not one of the most effective melee wepaons available, which they are in HM.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

In fact, no. I'm stating the same. One haned or not, we don't have proof of spear used as personal weapons.

Formations with shields and spears were, mostly, static. Shields were used to protect soldiers from bolts and arrows.
Many battles saw communal formations left alone to handle rains of bolts and arrows, when their cavalry routed. These formations were grounded by hours of boltering, since no one dare to approach such a defensive formation. Not very noble... but functional.
These formations, generally, were left to hold the battle fields, leaving room for cavalry manovering and reforming, a wall behind reassemble. This is true until middle 1350, at least in Italian communal warfare, were large bodyes of communal citizens formed the main body of the army, while mercenaries and noblemans taked the assault of the enemy.

Besides, short staff and long staff form the basic of medieval fenching. We don't have much documentations on how battles were fought at a soldier level.
The manuscript that survived are difficult to apply while you are litterally "compressed" on the facing enemy by 10 lines of friendly soldiers behind you. The some for the enemy.

In either case I think that to balance the HM spear damage could be left the same. Perhaps the values HM, A/D could be refactored.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum
I Signori della Guerra: http://www.isignoridellaguerra.com

We should not be TOO critical of these formations abilities on the battlefield. While the aqbove is true to a point, there were certainly instances where they were able to perform in a better fashion. Stirling Bridge is one clear example, the English had mounted heavy cavalry and archerss in additon to foot, the Scots were able to move offensively in formation to good effect. The Flemish foot militia at Courtrai amound other battles is another good example. Of course, the fact that these formations were often static and it was more difficult for them to take the attack to the enemy are illustrated well by Hastings and Falkirk. I think they could take the fight to the enemy, though they had to time things right, and perhaps over cautioness by their generals led to the uses of them as static formations.



Exactly, good point here. It is difficult to say what happened when to formations of spear and shield went against each other. With the forward press from men begind them, it would be difficult to stay at proper range for the use of the spear, at least after the initial clash. With the little we have to go by, I look to the Byzantine manuals that point to the initial use of spears and then drawing side weapons if available when the press brought them to close, the spear possibly being thrown or discarded if other weapons were available. The shield in a compressed melee would become an effective weapon as well, probably many casualties being inflicted be men betting knocked over in the press and then trampled or dispatched while on the ground, more similar to people being trampled at a public event than a sparring match.

Of course, two handed long spears or pikes would function a bit differently, preferring to keep the opponent at the end of their spear length's distance away.



I'm OK with the damage as it is, IF using the -1 damage rule for wepaons with a negative 1H mod. I'm also OK with damage as is, IF using HM1 damage tables, where a "P" valued weapon uses the 5/11/16/21, while edge weapons use 5/9/13/17. If using HM3 damage tables, dropping all P wepaons by a point would make more sense, though I think dagger and shortsword among others should retain their current values. The other thing that really needs to be in play is the lack of effectiveness of P weapons agianst limbs.

For the A/D mods, the idea Feanor has of doubling the penalties for aiming at limbs or head might make the most sense, though again this would have to use the HM1 aiming tables, as all HM3 allows is low/medium/high aiming zones.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Since RPGs tend to be about individual combat instead of the tactical combat of men in formation the examples stated above, while historically accurate, are usually are not faced by the vast majority of gamers in gaming sessions. Since this is the case I would recommend that we limit ourselves to the one-on-one/small-unit combat of the typical gaming group.

Thus is the spear "over-rated" by HM3/HMC/HMG? Perhaps, but how could we correct the problem? I propose that we simply import the stats and rules of HM1 into our preferred HM gaming system. It would be far simpler than re-inventing that particular wheel.

Of course Jeff Freeman and his spear wielding Kath avatar "Tukvar" in our gaming group may be a tad disappointed, but he's a min/maxer anyway. In other words he had already figured out what Turin has just disclosed several years ago and took advantage of the situation. Can't say I blame him though ...

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...and I'm not dead yet...

I use HMA which is HM3 slightly modified. The Impact Thresholds they use is (almost) HM1s but they use HM3 Injury Table. I liked the HMA idea but I like different injury tables for each aspect. So I remade the HM3s injury table so it would have HM1 feeling (but still being lethal as in HM1). It is meant to be used with HMAs special injury rules (based on HM1).

On the back is attack matrices, also slightly changed (based on HMA and a little bit HMG).

Edit: I should also say that I have only (so far) played with HMA for two sessions and not with the above injury tables. Although since I have played HM1 for like a gazillion years (and so have 50% of my players) i think the table will work and also help create a better feeling for the game.

I will have my first session tomorrow (Sunday) with this table. I think I will test out the injury table in an encounter with some garguns or barbarians. Perhaps I should let the garguns/barbarians be less experienced, just in case

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"Corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur" - Tacitus
Fenhorn's Hârnpage

Yes, of course I use damage threshold as HMA: B/P/E

I like Fenhorn tables, but I also think that reasoned "damage thresholds" are enough, at least for my realism needs
The -1 Damage for HM is a good option.

In all honesty, I think that the aiming mod isn't appropriate. Hitting the face is the most simple (and preferred) target during armed combat.
I was thinking of improve the "head" range of the hit tables.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum
I Signori della Guerra: http://www.isignoridellaguerra.com

Fenhorn, do you have the table in HM3 format but using HM1 effects (i.e. E3 B1, S3 E2, etc...)?

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For what it's worth, that's the way I see it

Here are a version of the combat table I made earlier. This injury table are more HM1 than HM3 (but still uses ILs). I apparently made a little readme file that explains it for those that don't have HM1, so thoughtful of me. I didn't test this injury table, we switched game and now when we went back to Hârn, I forgot about it.

PS
I made them in word if anyone wants to modify them but are too lazy to make their own

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"Corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur" - Tacitus
Fenhorn's Hârnpage

I like the tables, Fenhorn!

I'd probably do things just a hair different, the B impacts from HM1 were a bit inflated, at least as far as the damge they did goes. A 1 point impact from a B weapon (think a fist) generally does more damage than an 8E impact from an edged weapon (think a sword or axe of some kind).



I kind of agree as far as the head goes, the head at least with a swing is not that difficult to hit. Part of it IMO is for game balance though, otherwise every attack would be to the head.

Then he also had the mass graves at Wisby, where the most commonly found injuries were to the legs. My guess is the fighters had either torso armour, a shield or both to protect the torso, and perhaps helmets were common, so the easiest area to do some damage was the leg. The were likley killed by soft body wounds that do not show up on skeletons, but the leg injuries point to that often being the first area of attack to down the opponent.

My idea for different aiming rules though was to work in conjunction with the rule that if the torso of a shield user was attacked, they were +20 to defend. THis gives the shield more of it real life application, where it is almost "armour" for the torso. And also makes thrsut only weapons less effective, as swings are more effective at attacking limbs, face and skull.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

There are some comments about historic spears that need some clarification:

Spears are one of the oldest infantry weapons and were the dominate infantry weapon throughout history. Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China and Greeks all used a spear at least 10ft in length and formed large blocks of infantry. The spearman was used as the primary offensive unit, cavalry were skirmishers. Generally battle involved blocks of spearmen "pushing" each other out of the way. Being in the front rank was lethal. The Spartans were experts at this type of combat largely due to the fact that they were physically fit (strength training was mandatory) and heavily armored. The Macedonians and Han Chinese brought the spear to its peak with the development of the pike. Roman's were initially armed as Hoplite spearman, but adopted the Pila in order to open gaps in the spear wall and the tactics worked.

However, spears and pikes did not disappear and were common in Italy, Spain and Germany throughout the Medieval period. However, spearmen need to be drilled as a unit to be effective and most feudal armies did not drill together. In Italy cavalry had prestige but was largely a scouting force that acquired the good ground to set up your well drilled professional infantry. After the infantry broke the enemy the cavalry was used in pursuit; it is important to realize that more troops were killed or captured during the pursuit after the battle than during the battle itself.

On Harn a well drilled bock of a hundred spearmen armed with a long-spear (10-12 ft) would be worth a lot on the battlefield. Of course pikeman (armed with 12-16ft spears) would be even a greater surprise.