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Thread: Pikemen w/ Shield Training?!
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09-02-2006, 07:37 PM #31
What I wanted to emphasize is that the rules generally make a good point by effectively disallowing something like to actually work under standard adventure play; however, the phalanx was very well known for the use of two weapons primarily: any pike (from the Roman pilum to the Macedonian sarissa) and any "short sword" (from the Roman gladius to the Greek xiphos) for close combat, should the pikes prove problematic. For all it's worth, creating a special upgrade (proper training was still needed) that allows a pike formation to bear shields for an extra cost (i.e. an increase in its defence) does not seem that problematic to me...
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09-02-2006, 10:00 PM #32
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For example, the BRCS rules don't let cavalry units move as quickly as a single mounted character could travel- units don't act the same as individual characters. A unit with pikes could pull up their shields when suffering archery fire, and then return to their pikes when a melee unit is about to engage them.
While a character has "rounds" to do this, units have minutes (or more.) It's an abstraction, and, in this case, a legitimate one.
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09-02-2006, 10:24 PM #33
At 10:36 AM 9/2/2006, Cuchulainshound wrote:
>But again, we (if I may be so bold as to include myself) shouldn`t
>over-think this. It`s a mistake to think we are modeling this after
>"Reality". We are (I would hope!) looking for flavour, for
>simplicity, for elegance of the rules, and to make sure nothing is
>badly broken.
I would rank all those considerations at about the same level of
importance. Reality, flavour, simplicity, elegance and balance (to
rephrase "nothing is badly broken" in a nice single word term) are
all just about equally significant or--more accurately, perhaps--a
rule should be able to survive all of those standards before it is
employed. If it breaks any one of them then it should be reconsidered.
>So long as a pike unit with shields is not some heinous min-max
>juggernaut of a unit, the ONLY unit any gamer would want in a combat
>situation, then it`s all to the good to avoid making a special rule
>just to exclude it.
So the question then becomes will that happen if one can alter the
stats of a unit of pikemen to include an increased defense from
shields (or some other influence that one assumes is going to have a
similar effect) going to imbalance the situation? I think it
satisfies the reality issue, it`s flavourful, simple if it`s just a
change to the stat block, and it should balance well. It`s not a
particularly elegant thing, but it works well enough that nobody
would kick it off the dance floor. So, I vote yea.
Gary
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