Friday, July 13, 2012

Mythic Greece: Weapons and Armor

I'm using various published game sources, such as Aaron Allston's excellent Mythic Greece, as shortcuts to get this game up and running. It was originally published as a supplement for Hero Games' Fantasy Hero system, as well as ICE's Rolemaster. As such, it has hit locations (though not necessarily the same as RQ6), so it gives me a place to start with the armor. I trust Aaron's research here, at least for game purposes, but I'll probably have to do some thinking about how this all fits together for RQ purposes; for instances, IIRC, there are no rules in RQ6 for overlapping armor. All metal is bronze, BTW.

Wealthy or Powerful Achaeans:
A helmet, either leather with bronze knobs, leather with a layer of boar-tusks, or a bronze helm.
Coat of mail
Leather codpiece (like an athletic cup, I suppose)
Breastplate and greaves (greaves might be linen, to help protect the shins from bruising when carrying a tower shield)
Belt, leather, may be worn over the coat of mail
Buckler or Tower shield
Sword and long spear.

Good Achaean Troops:
Helm
Breastplate
Linen greaves
Tower shield
Spear.

Lesser Achaean Troops:
Helm or leather skullcap
Buckler with either a boar spear or sword

"Peon" Achaean Troops:
No armor
Sling or bow, usually a short bow.

Miscellaneous:
Charioteers sometimes wore a suit of articulated bronze plate, known to us as the Dendra Panoply.
Clubs were often used; Heracles had a massive, bronze-headed one.
Short spears were often used as javelins. Really strong heroes might use long spears as javelins.
It was not uncommon for great heroes to rip up a boulder and use it as a missile, or to pummel somebody with.
Boxing gloves were strips of rawhide wrapped around the boxer's fist. The cestus was a variation of this, with something like brass knuckles with spikes thrown in.


Amazons:
Helmet, usually reinforced leather.
Body armor, made of tanned beast hide (lion, boar, etc. for wealthy amazons, goat for poor ones).
Girdle: leather, which may be worn over the body armor
Amazon Shield, a small, crescent-shaped shield, equivalent to a target shield.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Your post is very informative.Greek weapons which are used during war were great specially specially Greek swords.