Song of Swords: You faggots didn't make a new thread Edition

Chinese mass-execution drill. They train their MP units in how to efficiently execute large numbers of prisoners.

Not him, but they have to hit both of these targets?

Is that the offcial Party-sanctioned bullet trajectory?

They should've taken quick courses with the Khmer Rouge

...

Dumb question: does grit reduce your total pain, or does it reduce the pain of each wound you recieve?

Like, say i take two wounds that give 5 pain, and i have 2 grit. Am i dealing with 8 pain or 6?

Also, does the pain reduction on your cp take effect immediate or does it apply for the next refresh?

I think it reduces your total pain. Let me check the book.

Total pain. You're dealing with eight pain in that example.

What is SoS supposed to represent in the philosophic sense? Is it representative of class struggle? Dace kind of seems like that. It's not really a clear message though, I don't get it. How do I explain this setting in dialectic terms?

Thanks user. Id thought that was the case but wanted to make sure. Damn combat flows quickly. I love it.

It applies at the next refresh, shock takes effect immediately but does not linger.

>is it representative of class struggle
Top fucking kek, why don't you ask Jimmy.

One of the Visionary Iconic backers here, what kind of culture are Dwarven names based on? I kind of need to know what phonemes I'm working with here when building my character.

So, how sound a tactic would it be to hilt push enemy with an arming sword, and then quickdraw a dagger and stab it into his sword hand or side or face?

The hand stab would seem easier to do than the other two. Imo lesser reach penalty?

Fantasy Realpolitik.

Well in Game Design Philosophy, it's a simulationist response to the rising/dominant school of narrativeist though that only abstract systems where the fiction is dominant can deliver on authentic experiences that don't get lost in the detail. SoS say "No you've just not done it right yet."

Real philosophy? Jimmy endorsed the Realpolitik Fantasy title in one of the interviews and I still like it, the setting is driven by states, nationalities and faiths rubbing against each other and creating friction. So I guess that's it politically.

There's a fair bit of theology mixed with cosmic horror and taken to it's logical conclusion in there as well but it doesn't move the world because it is the world and things just play out upon it. God is real and He is watching but how much he actually cares is up for debate. There's pretty great screen cap where Jimmy talks about the nature of good and evil.

Warning no formal philosophy training, I'm sure you can tell.

It comes back to the old juxtaposition.

Galt
-religious overtones
-violence is meaningless
-utter melancholy

Jimmy
-nihilistic overtones
-violence is natural
-lighthearted and vulgar

They both have a super-Christian background, but Jimmy is much, much more political. A lot of his work seethes with rage, wheres Galt always feels more like a tired old man who has been through too much to feel hatred anymore.

The funny thing is, Old Man Galt just transferred his anger onto another, that being Jimmy.
JImmy is the true inheritor of Galt's Will.

>So what about good and evil?
The only thing funnier about Jimmy's warped perception of morality is the fact that he's still a theist.

Why is our inheritor such a snakelet?

Ironically this sounds a lot like a hegelian dialectic... Jimmy is the answer to Galt. He is the antithesis of his mentor. Galt represents an older, idealistic vision of religious truth. Jimmy is an iconoclast. Their synthesis created Song of Swords. A bizarre synthesis of religious idealism and cold political pragmatism.

Do anything interesting happen in the discord? Cause now I slightly want in.

Depends what you consider interesting. Why not pop in for a few days and see if it's for you?

I like that we have MGS tier lore written around Jimmy's theoretical relationship to Galt, while the other Opaque guys are complete blank slates. Bones and Claymore might as well be Sigint and Paramedic.

Is it as full of memes as the thread was when the kickstarter finished? I need the discord name and number right?

Well, not really.
Odd, I thought the discord link was in the OP.
discord.gg/XFPZV

Thanks, think it got fucked up then that user screwed up the links in op.

Is this picture to scale? Wilhem and Kal'Ceska are supposed to be fucking HUGE but Sark is almost their height.
Why is he so big, he's an elf.

Zells are just superior

I don't think it's to scale.

Zells are fucking huge dude, read the core rulebook. Sark is big by their standards, meaning he's on par with fuckhuge giant humans like Ceska and Wilhelm. There's a reason Drosaico lusts for that BZC.

Now imagine being Ranveig, 5'2 human girl, imprisoned in the cabin of a warship. This giant elf keeps showing up to fuck you, sometimes he brings a basket full of lemons, sometimes he brings a leopard seal. Sometimes he brings another elf who clearly hates you, but he helps you get radishes off of the shelves.

Doujin material desu.

D&D elves are small, no reason for any others to be.

Jimmy, pls

...

Who is the tallest and shortest leaders in Tattered Realms?

>SoS returns to shield favoring rules
Yay

It'd be terrible because how hilt push works outside thevweaoons used in the push is so unclear it's essentially unwritten. Come up with houserules with your GM.

The shortest is Gizka.

Wrong! You forget the loli queen.

who?

Some small duchy in the Kaselreich has a 12 year old as its ruler because of bad inheritance laws.

>bad
Fuck off

>t. Loli queen

Inheritance of royal or aristocratic titles by minors is hardly a rare occurence. 12 is not very young, considering that infants have been crowned and in any case regencies exist in part for this very situation. If you accept blood relation, especially primogeniture as the key qualifier for titles then age is irrelevant from a legal standpoint while regencies and other solutions exist for the practical problems of governance by a child.

Now if by bad inheritance laws you mean "so horribly complicated and arcane that a child must be designated heir for bizzare reasons even when common sense suggests far more suitable candidates with a strong claim under normal conditions" then that is a seperate issue.

There is also the wonderful realm of as yet unborn children inheriting from their father either in utero or at the instance of birth if sex is an issue, although the legend of Shapur II of Persia being crowned still in the womb is probably apocryphal.

I believe the situation is that in that particular realm, the youngest child inherits. On top of all of the other Kaselreich legal bullshit, which can cause nobles to be legally obliged to protect their titles against themselves.

I think it's called Ultimogeniture. The youngest child always inherits.

Did it used to have them?

The ones I've heard sound Finnish.

I suspect this as well, Wilhelm is supposed to be a giant undead war machine, not a manlet.

Yes, back in Flower of Battle. Getting rid of them was a strange move.

put a six foot man next to Andre the Kal'Giant, and he is going to seem smaller than he is

JimJams, what are the heights we're looking at here

It was other game, user

No it wasn't, user

It wasn't SoS

Early parts of SoS were lifted straight from Riddle of Steel. Hell at least 50% of the game still is.

You're thinking of Blade of the Iron Throne.

I envisioned Wilhelm as about as large as Kal'Ceska at 6'8 or so. Sark is supposed to be a couple inches shorter than that, around 6'5.

The question is where Bones learned that before putting them next to each other, I don't think I touched on anyone's height in my original descriptions. Fortuitous I guess. We always knew Kal'Ceska was xbox huge though.

Isn't a genosian pope also a loli?

Pontifatrix? More like Popette am I right?

...

No, she's a 50 year old Polish lady. Maybe younger, but definitely an adult.

Did the fluff change? I vaguely remember her called/joked about as a lendian child elected pope when I first came to SoS threads.
What do I miss here?

She's also anti-fun, doesn't let the Sun bone her.

Popes are not allowed to be cute.

>He says as he posts best grandpa-pope

I liked the combat system in this game, but ran into a few places where I wasn't able to get a decent match to history.

There was a period of full plate, where the poleaxe was the weapon of choice, but I really can't get that to be nearly as effective as a 2H flanged mace.

I also really liked that the half sword joint thrust shows up, but that was so effective at cutting through mail that it made it seem worthless to put mail under your plate (the AP3 vs. mail granted to the half sword). The rondel dagger gets an appropriate benefit from this, but on the longsword, it seems too good (particularly with the full strength).

From a physics standpoint, the energy in a thrust is dramatically lower than that of a swing. This system generally has similar penetration for both (based on similar damage from both).

I also wasn't able to justify wielding the pick, another common anti-plate weapon.

Were picks really that common though? Some sort of an hammer would make more sense against plate to me.

She was elected as a child but now is 50, maybe?

Warhammer were really warpicks user.

Not as common as the sword, but warhammers generally ended up with a pick (also lucerne hammer, bec de corbin). The hammer was good because a good hit to the head was still effective even if it didn't get through the armor. The pick portion was good because it could get through the lighter portions of the plate.

Unfortunately, that spike can also get stuck, and your weapon isn't immediately free, which is inconvenient.

The spike is also very useful for hooking or tripping a foe.

The hussars seem to have used picks a decent amount (when the winged hussars arrived).

What the fuck you talking about.

Alright, so let me clear up some misconceptions about plate and its interaction with blunt weapons and their piercing bits. We already know that you can't cut through plate, that is fucking ludicrous. However, some people think that you can punch through it with a pick?? If the plate is dished in, you have a good two handed swing, and the guy is standing stock still, maybe. Might take a few hits. But plate was generally rounded, which made it really hard to punch through. If you don't believe me, take a pickaxe and try and punch through a simple galvanised steel pipe. Your best case scenario is that you land a solid hit and the pipe deforms. You know what deforms a rounded shape? A hammer! So you hit the plate with the hammer component of your weapon, and then you try and punch through it, if you really want to. The next paragraph covers why you wouldn't want to.

Blunt weapons don't do fuckall to the man in full plate. A solid hit to the head might damage your neck, a hit to your hand will fuck you up, a hit to any of your joints will hurt like a bitch, and also deform the plate around there, making it harder to move. Taking a full blow from a single handed hammer to the chest? You might register it, but with padding I have never. Plate spreads the impact, it does it against swords, so why would it not do it against a mace? So how then would you use a blunt weapon against a plate armoured man? You hit his joints until he can't move then you shank him in the eye. Or take him prisoner if he's rich.

So that covers why blunt weapons hit the joints, but not how you use the piercing bits. This is where I'm no longer going on personal experience, but instead on uneducated guesses. Historical plate armour tended to be thicker towards the center, because they raised rather than dished the plates. I think that the piercing bits would be used to really fuck those thinner bits up. Not necessarily by making holes in them, but by deforming them worse than a flat headed hammer.

Are you talking about one-handed blunt weapons only, or do you think polehammers don't do anything to a plated guy either?

>race of vodka elementals
I need it, comrade

Warhammer and pick are both terms that could easily be applied to the same weapon.

Here's a picture of a "war hammer".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer#/media/File:Lucas_Cranach_the_Younger_-_Prince_Elector_Moritz_of_Saxony_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

You all faggots need to remember that just getting an inch through a plate wont do you any good, except potentially get you stuck. There's all kind of shit under the armor too.
Spikes/picks are just to concentrate force.

A 30-times folded chinese knife can cut through all of your plate, put your picks and hammers aside.

No way fag

A polehammer doesn't have that much more mass to it. Bigger lever, so then you get more energy on the swing, but it wouldn't badly damage you if it hit you on the chest. Polehammer to the face would give you one hell of a lot of whiplash though, while also denting your faceplate making it difficult to breathe/see.

Another thing, we see maces fall out of use once plate starts being the standard armour even for poor people, ~16th century. If maces were anti armour weapons, why wasn't everyone using them? The answer is that maces were anti armour weapons. Anti mail weapons. Mail don't do dick against a mace, especially a flanged one

Why would you even hit anyone in the chest?

Depends on what they are wearing. If they're unarmoured, I'd rather hit the chest than the head even, because it's easier to hit and will make the fight end nearly as quickly. If they're wearing padding+mail it might knock the wind out of them if you hit them lower down, or break a rib if you hit them higher up. If they're wearing plate of any description, no, you aren't hitting them in the chest.

Why not shoulder?

I'm not sure about the mace being so ineffective. The flanged mace is specifically to deal with plate (so it bites into the plate, rather than glancing off). Against mail, those flanges aren't needed. The teeth on the lucerne hammer serve the same purpose.

The spikes depicted are typically a few inches, but I do have a hard time imagining many of the wounds through plate would result in a quick kill.
Not everyone was fully armored in hard armor, so against something like a gambeson, the pick portion would probably be more lethal than the hammer portion.

In any case, I think most deadly strikes on a fully armored opponent were to weak points like the armpit/visor. There's also a significant focus on the grapple, and I think in SoS, this can be pretty lethal through armor.

In SoS, I had a hard time justifying the joint strikes, because if you are using one of the heavy weapons that uses 8 strength, and you lose half those dice, the mail armor of 4 is the same as the plate + mail of 8, except now you have a worse TN and spend more CP to get that hit. I don't know if this particular historical feature needs to be replicated, though. In the game, you can bypass the mail by going for the visor. The longsword works better for that combination than the spear or polearms, though (since you don't need to halve the strength).

It's unclear. I think the original idea was for her to be very young, but when Jimmy got into the subject of her background, her list of accomplishments was too long for a kid, she rose through the ranks of the Genosian equivalent of nuns and was a super-conservative actor in the church for a while before Sulla and the other Paladins conspired to install her as Pontifatrix.

Alternatively that might be retconned now and she's still young, installed as lady-pope by the Paladins because they expect to be able to control her because she's a kid... But this sort of conflicts with her description as a politically savvy imperialist, unless it's the Paladins who are coaching her on what to say and do.

joint strike is for when you're halfswording

>But this sort of conflicts with her description as a politically savvy imperialist,
Oh I wouldn't say that.

So in ballad do regular attacks that are used to shot twice split the MP in to two? does the second shot hit if you score 1 BS? in general how does this double attack resolve?

I don't think you have to split the MP, you just make the attack twice.

You just roll your full value twice, otherwise it would be hot garbage.

Thanks.To follow up, in ballad in the wayof the five can I activate as many ability as I have focus cap for each phase?

I fucking love her, outfit/armor.

You spend focus at the start of the round before anything else happens not during phases, then at the top of the next round your focus refreshes and then you can spend it again.