Random Questions Thread

Take a Physical Religion whose patron deity is directly represented among its mortal followers by a Jesus-like demigodly avatar, who serves as the supreme authority figure (second to the actual god, of course) in both the religious and secular senses. What role(s) could a pope-like figure play in this religion alongside the aforementioned god-avatar, if the latter is the one who has the divine revelations and lays down the laws?

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 21st 2019 at 6:14:24 PM

Depends on how omnipotent this figure is, and whether they encourage or discourage a formal religious institution around themselves. If they permit this, then it is all but inevitable for a significant bureaucracy to form around the "interpretation" and "dispensation" of this superbeing's words and blessings. This is basic human nature.

In other words, people would try to become "Pope" regardless. The main question is whether this avatar or whatever you call it would permit that.

In a non-divine example, in God Emperor of Dune, Leto II establishes a religion around the worship of himself, but he absolutely forbids anyone to claim to speak on his behalf, making brutal and gory examples of anyone defying that rule. If anyone does not relay his words exactly and precisely, they are punished. If anyone tries to hide information from him, they are punished. He can do these things because he is very nearly omniscient.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 24th 2019 at 2:28:40 PM

On the other hand, if the avatar does permit a church to grow up around him, then a natural division of labor is to assign someone the responsibility of administering the daily affairs of the church organizaiton, while the avatar attends to the spiritual edification of the public. In that case, depending upon exactly how internal church politics plays out, the "Pope" figure could end up with more power and influence than the savior figure.

In most real-world religions, the very last thing their leaders want is a genuine God (or avatar thereof) descending from on high to set the record straight about what their holy scripture actually means. They're perfectly content to be the ones deciding these matters, giving them great secular power as well as spiritual authority. "Zeus told me that people whose last names start with 'T' are evil and must be purged, I swear. (wink, wink)" If the real article shows up to gainsay them, they stand to lose big time, in more ways than one.

An example of this from a work that I particularly like is in the Heralds of Valdemar series. For centuries, the kingdom of Karse had been ruled by corrupt theocrats who claimed to speak for their god but in truth had fallen deep into corruption, performing blood magic, summoning demons, stealing children for the priesthood, waging holy war all over the place, and generally ruling through terror. One day, during their holiest annual ceremony, the actual god that their religion was based on got fed up and blasted the high priest to ashes in full view of everyone. Then he installed a genuinely faithful priest in the role of head of state, with the threat of further retribution for anyone who gainsaid him. This settled the corruption problem quite rapidly.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2019 at 10:18:28 AM

If a feral animal gets stabbed in the eye, will they try to get it out, keep attacking, or run away?

Depends.

If the animal is a normal, feral one, then having its eye poked out basically means instant lethality because it will pierce the brain. If the animal is rabid, then it'll continue thrashing until it drops dead.

That's not even close to true. Poking an eye out does not automatically imply a brain injury. It is, however, terrifically painful and debilitating, and would make most animals flee immediately.

Not fatal immediately, but injuries in the wild have a high chance of becoming infected. This is one reason why even apex predators engage in threat displays, and accept the surrender of submissive rivals, they are very injury shy.

And then there is honey badgers who don’t give a shit.

Is it right to write "would not have" as "wouldn't've"?

What cold weapon works best against heavy armor?

I'm not sure, but I have used that in my own writing from time to time.

Please elaborate. Your question makes no sense. The temperature of a weapon has no relevance to how it interacts with armor, at least within reasonable values.

@Nukeli:

If you're writing an eye dialect of English or colloquial English, then it is acceptable.

@ Andermann:

Maces work pretty well against armored knights. Maces were originally designed to smash through armor and bludgeon armed opponents, however its main drawback was its weight and cumbersomeness.

My question: Is it possible to create a story aimed at kids that mashes up superhero, horror, crime and suspense genres in one setting?

What kind of armor, and what kind of weapon? Knightly plate and RHA have very different defeat strategies, and “cold weapon” is way too vague.

Definitely an interesting genre combination. There’s a couple comics that fit into that category, though the names are eluding me right now.

Noun

cold weapon (plural cold weapons)

• A weapon that does not use fire or explosives.

I'm thinking about spear, sword, halberd, mace, axe, bow, and crossbow against chain mail, plate mail, scale mail, wooden shield and metal shield.

I mean, all of the above. Medieval weapons weren’t like modern weapons where there’s a specific one designed with the intent to defeat armor, they were all effective in their own way.

I’ll add that a lot of them relied on striking at weak points. A favored tactic against knights was to knock them down and then stab with daggers or swords into the joints of the armor, or strike during a fight into the armpit, neck, or face at close range where you could expect gaps in the armor. Some weapons could punch through a plate, but these ones typically weren’t as easy to wield in individual combat.

Really, though, the best weapon against medieval armor is a bullet. “Cold weapon” isn’t a thing.

Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 26th 2019 at 5:13:24 AM

Cold weapon is a thing, the term originate from Russia and China, a cold weapon is something that doesn't "need" fire or explosive to operate like cannon or gun. The opposite of Firearm.

And you basically gave me no information what so ever, everybody knows you need to strike the weak spot, I want to know which weapon can go through that armor and hurt them the most easily.

Edited by Andermann on Apr 26th 2019 at 8:59:58 PM

That's a much more complicated question than can be answered in a simple forum post. Go do some research. There are YouTube channels that discuss this sort of thing a lot — one that I am specifically familiar with is Skallagrim. Some old Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks (1st and 2nd edition in particular) are incredibly dense with weapons-vs-armor rules, and that's not the only game.

To explain as briefly as possible, weapon and armor technology are evolutionary. Weapons evolve to defeat armor, which evolves to defeat those weapons, requiring different weapons, and so on. You also have to consider that your opponents are not standing around waiting for you to hit them: you must also avoid or defeat their attacks. To that end, you can see a natural sort of rock-paper-scissors scenario, or rather a listing of factors.

• A weapon must be heavy/strong enough to defeat armor.
• A weapon must be light and fast enough to parry or block another weapon.
• Armor must be strong enough to defeat weapons but not too bulky or heavy to use.
• It must not be too expensive to equip an army.
• Armor and weapons shouldn't require so much skill to use that the typical soldier will not be able to become proficient.

Historically speaking, armor evolved from simple cloth and leather, to metal rings and scales, to metal plates, and finally to full plate armor. Weapons became heavier and more specialized to be able to defeat these armors. Then firearms became capable of defeating any armor, so people stopped wearing it, and melee weapons went back to being much lighter and faster.

Simple armors like leather and padded cloth are resistant to blunt and slashing weapons, but not great. They're the bare minimum over clothing. Against arrows and piercing weapons, they aren't doing a whole lot. This is why ancient soldiers used shields.

Ring and scale armors offer substantially upgraded protection, and can resist a lot of slashing weapons, but heavier swords and axes go right through. Piercing weapons like arrows can be defeated, depending on the quality and thickness of the materials. They distribute the force of blunt weapons but you can still be knocked down or severely bruised. I've seen several different types of scale armor demonstrated which offer varying levels of protection against arrows and crossbows; it's possible for them to slip right past the metal depending on the design.

Lamellar armor is made of small rectangular plates bound into horizontal rows. This offers better protection than ring or scale but less than full plate. Brigandine is a variant in which larger plates are sewn into a cloth or leather structure. These are both still vulnerable to weapons penetrating between the plates or separating them, and don't usually offer full body protection.

Plate is the business. In videos, I've seen plate armor defeat maces, swords, crossbows, just about everything. Fully-armored medieval knights could only be killed by finding weak spots (groin, armpits, etc.) or by using "can openers" — polearms and axes/maces designed to punch into and peel away their armor. Or by knocking them down, because it's really hard to stand up in that stuff. But a flintlock pistol... pow, right through.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 26th 2019 at 9:50:20 AM

Keep in mind that not all "heavy armour" is created equal. A suit of full plate, as worn by 15th-16th century European men-at-arms, would be around 3 mm thick on the breastplate and helmet and just 1 mm thick on the limbs. There's also a difference in quality between the mass-produced "munitions plate" for infantrymen, which were mainly wrought iron and low-carbon steel, and the high-quality steel plate worn by the elite. It's a formidable defence against most weapons, but even then there are ways to get through it:

• If you're wielding a straight sword, your best bet is to grapple your opponent onto the ground and jam the pointy end into the exposed bits.
• As AdeptGaderius said, maces can do some nasty stuff to soldiers in full plate. Earlier armours like mail and scale were worse at distributing impact energy, so they're even more vulnerable.
• Polearms like halberds and voulges can be used to hook at the gaps in the armour, allowing the user to knock the enemy down and then deliver a killing blow. Richard III was famously killed by a halberd blow that cleaved through his helmet at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
• Cavalry lances, couched underarm at full gallop, can deliver enough energy to punch through a steel breastplate. They do tend to shatter on impact, so you'd switch to your secondary weapon after the initial charge.

Heavy bows like the English longbow and Mongol composite recurves can punch through munition plate at close ranges, but there's no guarantee of the arrow getting through the padding underneath, or delivering enough energy for a lethal blow. Against high-quality plate, they're pretty useless. There's a very good reason why guns displaced bows so quickly on European battlefields.

But on the other hand does this mean if I wear a full plate armor I can just parry a sword with my arms?

Edited by Andermann on Apr 26th 2019 at 9:52:34 PM

While feasible, it's not something you'd do in an ideal situation.

1. The sword will still carry momentum, so your arm is likely to be knocked back, and you could suffer bruising or other injury.
2. Plate isn't immune to damage. The sword blow could dent or deform it, could damage straps or joints, and if you want to fight for the duration of a battle, you'll want to avoid as much of this as possible.

The size/weight of the weapon matters, too. A larger sword, like a greatsword, is going to carry a lot of momentum. Even if it doesn't penetrate the armor, it's going to hurt to get hit by one, and it might even break bones. On the other hand, body hits with a sword might not even be noticed if the armor and padding are good enough.

Of course, combat in/with full plate armor doesn't usually involve people bashing each other over and over with swords until one gives up. That's pretty inefficient. Combat tactics usually involve trying to knock your opponent down (or break their guard) and stab something pointy into the weak spots.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 26th 2019 at 10:32:08 AM

As was gone into more detail above, the tactic used to defeat armor varies greatly depending on the weapon being employed. All the weapons you listed are effective against armor when used correctly. There’s no one best weapon for plate, there’s not an AP ammo equivalent. If you mentioned which weapon your character was using I’m sure there’d be a tactic for it.

Very few tactics for killing knights involved punching straight through the main armor, because as Fighteer mentioned that stuff was damned hard to get through with the weapons available. This is why the most common techniques were to knock down the enemy and then go to work with a dagger, or use a half-sword hold to stab at the armpits and neck. As far as I know the half-sword technique was the primary one for individual combat against armored opponents in the medieval era, most combat manuals at the time recommended it heavily.

Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 26th 2019 at 6:58:45 AM

But to answer your question, historically the three most effective melee weapons* against European knights in full armor were: The Welsh longbow, the Swiss pike, and the horse lance. Numerous exceptions exist given specific circumstances, etc.

• In the West "melee weapon" is the most commonly used term.

Edited by DeMarquis on Apr 26th 2019 at 4:29:54 AM

My two cents: There's a very good reason why it's usually a very bad idea for a cavalry force — no matter how well-armored — to charge a force of pikemen that has rallied into proper defensive formation. Unless the pikemen are too ill-disciplined and/or worn-out, there's little to no chance that the cavalry can survive the attempt to crash through the deadly wall of sharp pointy poles to reach the infantry bearing them; if the pikes don't punch through their armor or at least cause debilitating impact injuries, they'll almost always knock the rider off their mount, possibly into a very painful death under the hooves of their own comrades' horses.

And it is an equally bad idea, of course, for infantry, no matter how heavily armed, to expose their flanks or rear to a hostile force more mobile than they are (ie, horsemen). There is a flavor of rocks, paper, scissors to ancient combat, and no one approach is consistently superior under all circumstances.