Medieval Fantasy REALISTIC WEAPON LOADOUTS - Roleplaying, Writing, Gaming, Movies

let's look at weapons armor and equipment loadout for a medieval or fantasy adventurer hey folks i'm matt eason of scholar gladiatoria now what we're going to look at today is imagine that we are in the medieval or medieval fantasy arms and armor an equipment merchant store and we're looking at a loadout for going on an adventure a typical kind of role-playing game adventure or video game adventure we're maybe going to some mystical fortress to rescue someone or we're going in search of treasure or we're going to deal with some large monster that's troubling the realm this kind of thing and now this is inspired by the fact that i'm uh soon going to be doing a uh i'm not going to talk about it too much but i'm going to be doing a role-playing game um and uh you're going to get to to see this but i'm looking at loadout so i'm making obviously my character i'm looking at the equipment that i'm going to have and it kind of reminded me of the fact that when we look at uh medieval sort of world in terms of the technology or fantasy kind of role-playing games or video games or indeed if we look at movies and tv shows there is a tendency for people to over-encumber themselves so we're going to look at here at what the equipment that a typical person in a role-playing game or a video game might encumber themselves with we're actually going to physically put it on i'm going to put on some bits of armor i'm going to put on some weapons i'm going to wear them we're going to try and carry them and then we're going to see how sensible that is but before i go on i want to talk to you a little bit about the sponsor for this video and that is rage shadow legends raid is a turn-based combat game where you can use strategies and tactics that you come up with yourself and you can exhibit your own particular fighting style so stop and ask yourself for a minute when was the last time that you felt like the most powerful being in the universe well perhaps never but now you get your 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there is a difference between those two things and you have to bear in mind the context of what your character is doing so if you're literally just about to go into conflict or you're just about to go to battle clearly what you put on yourself is different than if you are traveling somewhere and there might be trouble but you're not necessarily expecting it so there's a difference between preparing for for a certain type of combat or preparing for a different type of combat trial by combat or a duel would obviously be very different to going into battle or going on campaign for some amount of time but equally that is very different to what you would choose to if you were not necessarily or you were hoping not to get into trouble and not not gonna go straight into a fight but you're gonna have to travel for maybe a long period of time maybe for days maybe for weeks through all sorts of terrain all sorts of weather you're gonna have to sleep you're gonna have to maybe camp you might stay in inns this kind of stuff but nevertheless you're traveling and so you're clearly going to have to think about your encumbrance and how you carry those objects you take with you but here we're going to look at the kind of the average of those settings so we're going on an adventure and we don't really know fully what that holds in store but we know it's going to be dangerous now the first thing i'm going to put on is some armor okay now for the purposes of this uh what i'm going to pick is a brigandine and a helmet which i think is relatively light armor obviously a lot of characters in tv shows and novels and stuff like this won't necessarily wear any armor or they might wear like padded armor now i am wearing a form of accurton or gambeson type thing so there's a little bit of protection to this certainly i'm better protected against certainly against cuts a little bit against blows and less so against thrusts and and piercing shot weapons or thrown weapons in this but nevertheless it's better than just simple clothes so this is this has got layers of fabric inside it and does provide some amount of protection now it has to be said there are forms of gambeson and jack as they were sometimes known that actually offer a huge amount of protection and many many layers of linen laid at different angles to each other and they can actually provide quite a bit of stab resistance as well as very good cut resistance but for now i'm just going to put on the trusty brigandine so here's here's a brilliantly and i've uh prepared earlier um and i'm gonna throw this on now this is as you can see it's not a light object but equally it's not terribly heavy i'm not gonna wear full plate harness even though i own some because that would really interfere with my general ability to do traveling and day-to-day kind of adventuring so full plate harness might be great if you've got servants if you've got at least two horses and a baggage train and someone to help you put it on and take it off and maintain it and if you're definitely going into combat but if you're just going on an adventure i think full plate harness is an incredibly unwise thing to take with you especially if you don't have someone to help you put it on and off because you really need that with most plate harness now obviously with this i could put a male shirt on instead of a brigandine i could put a male shirt with the burgundy or indeed i could put something else like lamellar armor or coater plates or something but the fact is i've just fixed on the brigandine for the purposes of this video because it's easy so there we go i've got my brigand now that is actually very mobile relatively light for very protective armor anyway and offers a fantastic level of protection against all sorts of weapons this is good protection against cutting and piercing uh even biting if we're talking about large creatures um but it's sort of almost as good as a plate cure ass but with more flexibility lighter easier to take on and off this kind of stuff so there we go that's my armor for the adventure i'm not going to go with armor on my arms or armor or my legs obviously you could choose to do that but remember that's more and more encumbrance and even if we look at actual historical examples from the 15th century or 16th century we often find that people wear armor on their upper halves but often neglect it on their legs for a range of reasons but one of those is undoubtedly mobility and comfort and and just the ease of moving around and fatigue and stuff like this so there we go that's all the armor i'm going with except for one very important thing now regular views of this channel will know how much i rant about the lack of this thing in movies and tv shows can you remember what that thing is yup that's right it's one of these it's a helmet so there we go i absolutely would want to take a helmet with me wouldn't mean that i keep the helmet on the whole time and i would personally choose an open-faced helmet that can be worn basically like a hat and easily taken on and off it doesn't limit your breathing your sight it affects your hearing slightly but not too badly and it does cut out a little bit of your peripheral vision depending on the type of helmet obviously something more like a an iron hat chapel the fur type thing would give you greater visibility and greater hearing um but then you're less protected the size of the head so anyway this is the type of helmet that i've got available and so this is what i have gone with now i'm not going to keep this helmet on for the whole video because it makes putting things and off on and off a little bit more difficult so remember if you're writing a novel or you're doing playing a role-playing game remember your helmet doesn't always live on your head all of the time and we know this was the case historically because there are lots of people who had helmets who in medieval history are recorded as being wounded in the face of the head because they'd either taken the helmet off or opened it or whatever so helmets come on and off your head pretty much like hats do so whilst it might spend a lot of time on your head certainly if you're expecting trouble a lot of the time when you're just doing general things it might not be on your head so think about that if you're suddenly attacked is your helmet on or off and if your helmet's on there are certain you know there are certain um certain a certain price you have to pay for that there's certain deficiencies in your hearing and perhaps your site and things like that and so bear that in mind now onto weapons so we've dealt so far we're assuming that all of my kind of camping equipment traveling stuff my toiletries anything i need to do with just general living that's all dealt with maybe it's on a mule or whatever now i've got my armor do i wear this all the time i could do i can sleep in this it's it's not super comfortable bear in mind if i take the brigandine off i've still got i've still got this um padded garment underneath and you can still wear that and that gives you a little bit of extra protection it's certainly better than just a normal doublet um but you can spend quite a fair amount of time in this type of armor but depending on what type of armor you're wearing a male shirt fine you can wear a mouse shirt all the time it's one of the great things about mail very comfortable and it breathes well and all this kind of stuff but depending on on the type of army you've got think about whether your character would actually be wearing that all the time you'd probably take it off to sleep usually unless you were really uh worried and expecting trouble certainly if you having to do something like cross the river you'd probably take your armor off just in case just in case you come off your your horse or you if you're wading through you lose your footing you don't really want to be dragged underwater wearing armor if you can avoid it so always think about the fact that these things don't live on you all the time it's not like a video game where that's what your character looks like or even frankly uh comic books graphic novels as well that's what your character looks like you know thor always wears his armor or whoever they take it on and off and you take it on off depending on the situation um and you might take it on and off several times in a day right so next thing is weapons so the first thing i really really want is a decent sidearm and i've decided on a one-handed sword now bearing in mind that we're talking about a possible fantasy scenario here we're just talking about in general terms the historical correctness of some of these objects i'm going to put with each other might not necessarily go with each other but i've fixed on um an arming sword and that is because it's easy to wear relatively light relatively short you could take a long sword if that's your preference but i quite like the idea of having the ability to use bucklers and shields with this and also just being easier to wear so one hand is sword it's got a shorter hilt this one's got a shorter blade it's lighter overall and also i don't want to be without a dagger or a knife of some kind now i'd probably have an eating knife but we're going to include that in the equipment for general living i want to have a specialized military knife as well so in this case i've got a rondelle dagger and i'm going to partner that up with the arming swords that i've got here so a uh a sort of medium length cut and thrust arming sword and a rondelle dagger those are going to be my primary or my kind of wear all the time sidearms so there we go i've now got my um i've now got my armor i've got my arming sword i've got my rondle dagger those are my kind of primaries and remember the helmet as well uh which is off shot but imagine it's it's there at hand so this is my kind of base level i think for what most kind of adventurers or at least if you're if you're consider yourself in the kind of fighter class rather than being just some kind of you know merchant or wizard or thief or whatever if you're expecting combat then this is i think kind of close to the minimum level that most people in uh whether it's role-playing games or video games or even tv shows kind of go for where you've got your your main side arm you've got a dagger as a backup and some degree of armor now we're going to look at what things get added to this now this is where it becomes a little bit more uh divergent in terms of what you choose now in many games that i've been involved with people make the mistake of wanting a missile weapon and a pole weapon now the first thing also to say is that a lot of people doing role-playing games i think don't appreciate the value and the importance and the the uh the power the potency of pole weapons so if i was going for a pole weapon i would go for something along the lines of this winged spear or partisan because it's very versatile it can be used with the shield if you happen to have a shield it can be if you mount up and go on horseback it can be used on horseback like a lance and it can be used as a very effective weapon on foot as well to cut and thrust it's also i like pole weapons which have lateral projections on them because you can use them for a lot of things pushing and hooking shields and bits of people as well blocking com incoming attacks manipulating an opposing pole arm all of these sorts of stuff and you can hang stuff off them so in terms of pole weapons you've got a vast choice obviously glaives bills halberds spears of various kinds um but this is kind of probably for most situations in a medieval period this is the kind of thing that i would probably predominantly go for also something that can be used one hand or two because as i say on horseback having something that you can if you do want to use something um one-handed on horseback is quite versatile or if you want to use it with a shield or on foot or indeed if you want to throw it if you need to throw it to push i can just about throw this bit on the heavy side or if you want to use it as a two-handed weapon then that's absolutely fine as well okay so absolutely if you're expecting hand hand combat or that's what you want specialize in i think you should have you should have your sword you should have your dagger you should have a pole arm of some kind and certainly in medieval history this is a pretty common kind of uh weapon set that we go with but a lot of people um because of the scenarios that come up in role-playing games they want the ability to shoot at things from further away you know if you're if you're physically prevented from getting close to an opponent to wound them or attack them then you you know missile weapons can achieve that for you if you're the other side of a river or if you're if there's a chasm between you or even if you just want to take someone out without arousing attention all this kind of stuff then obviously bows and crossbows are very very useful things but let's just consider for a moment the logistical problems of having a pole arm and a missile weapon so i've gone for the good old uh longbow here the so-called english longbow but of course longbows will be used over a long long period of time in many many different places but this is a sort of uh generic um longboat of a type that would have been used in period and indeed this equipment that i'm now wearing and i'll talk about arrows in a second because that's the kind of elephant in the room here but the equipment that i'm wearing is pretty much normal actually for a 15th century archer okay i've got some degree of armor and obviously remember the helmet um but i've got um relatively i won't say light armor because it's not really licensed it's kind of medium armor um arming swords dagger and a bow and of course i would in various ways be wearing arrows we'll talk about that in a second and this is a fairly standard gear set this is a fairly standard level of encumbrance now if we do talk about those arrows now these uh can be worn in numerous different ways so in period medieval art we sometimes see the um quiver worn in various places on the belt okay depending whether you're left or right-handed but in various places on the belt or indeed we see it in a a bag essentially an arrow bag kind of worn a show here kind of worn on the back like there or again depending whether you're left or right handed can be pointing out either direction okay and that's quite a good place it gets them out of the way keeps them out of the way of the other weapons that you're wearing and other stuff you might be carrying back quivers are a problematic thing backwards are shown actually in in old art but they are not very common in uh medieval europe okay so they mostly backwards are shown occasionally in asia um and side quivers that can contain both the arrows and the um the actual bow if it's a composite um short recurve bow like a turkish bow or a persian bow or whatever can be worn in the same kind of holster as the as the arrows but that wasn't really done uh certainly in western europe so with the longbow obviously that can't be done you can't really wear the longbow now in terms of wearing the longbow so this is this is an important thing to get across i guess and this is where what i was trying to hint at before about having a pole arm and a longbow both of these are stick-like objects and really there is no easy way to carry both of these things you can't really easily carry a pole arm and a longbow and how do you carry a longbow well really the only obvious way to carry a longbow and the only way that i've really seen it represented in medieval art is in your hand much like a pole arm yeah you can lean it across your shoulder and all this kind of stuff but and obviously it could be strong or unstrung but fundamentally you can't very easily wear most bows now i i understand that in fantasy art and in uh perhaps comic books and stuff like this let's see i can even do that all right you can just about kind of get into a bow and where but ah it doesn't wow clap myself in the side of that doesn't really work very well especially if you're wearing other stuff and that's the point is that a lot of people go i can sling this over my shoulder or i can do it yeah you can maybe sling it over one shoulder just about but not even then very easily but not when you've got all of these other things on you not if you've got armor on not if you've got a sword in the way and a dagger or an arrow sticking out all this kind of stuff so certainly with the longbow with the traditional simple u or whatever wood it's made of bow this is not something you can really easily wear without damaging the string or damaging the bow damaging yourself as i just did there clouded myself in the air with the with the bow stave um so it's not something you can really wear okay that's to cut a long story short unless it's a really short recurve bow which in this particular scenario it's not okay so you've got arrows to think about you've got a bow to think about and i don't think that anybody in their right mind would want to be carrying a pole alarm at the same time so fundamentally you've got to make a choice are you going to go with a pole arm or you're going to go with a missile weapon now yes absolutely if you have a baggage cut if you have servants if you have even just a mule or pack horse to put things on you can have both of those things but you can't have them both at the same time and if they're packed away or someone else is looking after them you need to be able to access them so when you're thinking about game or a novel or anything else think about that situation think about that scenario what am i actually holding what am i able to hold what am i able to carry if i'm not carrying that thing right now if i don't have my helmet on and we're suddenly attacked how do i get to my helmet do i call for my servant or is it lying on the grass over there is it on the mule is it packed up inside bags how do i get to it to put it on and is it worth the time me doing that or should i just rush into combat without my helmet on or not to use my bow because i can't get to it and i can't find the arrows quickly enough or i can't use my pole weapon i can mount up on my horse but i don't have time to go and get my spear from the mule so i just have to pull my sword out and i have to charge after whoever i'm going after on horseback with my sword only not with my lance or my spear because i can't get to it in time so you've got to think about these things and these practicalities now the final major object i want to look at are shields okay so very commonly um particularly in role-playing games less so in movies and graphic novels and stuff because people often don't like shields there's a grabber shield here i've randomly got a norman shield and the only reason why it's not random actually is because it has a strap on the back because we're going to look at wearing shields but they're not often represented actually in uh movie movies and um tv shows and graphic novels and some of this because they get in the way of seeing the the characters and they get in the line of sight and this kind of stuff so one of my big criticisms of lord of the rings for example was that we see shields but with some exceptions aside like boromir we often see shields there but they're not being used and so famously you know the the riders of rohan have shields hanging off their horses where they're completely useless um instead of actually you know holding their reins in their left hand with the shield so they're actually protected from the incoming arrows and all that kind of stuff or pikes or whatever it is they're facing so that unfortunately on screen on the silver screen shields get of a bit of a rough time i think but in role-playing games and in video games as well um shields are pretty popular for the one very important reason that they give you a degree of immunity from missile weapons very importantly and not just an active defense but a passive defense as well if you just happen to be walking around wearing a shield if something flies at you from over that direction there's a large chance it will hit the shield and it won't hit you because the shield already covers you without you even knowing that you're being attacked okay so shields are very very effective if you do see something incoming if you suddenly see someone over there lobby spirit you you can just stick the shield in the way and you're protected okay um if you're fighting multiple opponents as well to pull the sword out if you're fighting multiple opponents it gives you the ability to cover to cover one line while uh going and attacking in the other line and in one to one combat a shield is a huge advantage as well of course um used in all the typical ways that shields normally are but the problem with shields comes to carrying them now we know that at various points in history shields were sometimes packed onto backpacks onto baggage cuts palaces roman shields various examples from history large shields they've had to find creative ways of transporting them because they are large relatively heavy objects and this is actually lighter probably than the original would be shields are multi-layered they're made of thick planks of wood usually sometimes laminates and with layers of leather on the front canvas as well sometimes and sometimes with a metal boss as well so they are not light objects to carry they are quite heavy dead weights and anyone who does any form of sparring or fighting or you know react or anything like that with shields will attest to this that they are tiring objects to use especially big roman scutums very very tiring objects so the question comes what do we do with this if we want to transport it well quite simply um medieval shields for the most part have a strap on them called a gige uh french word and there are various ways of that you can kind of wear this you can just sling it over your shoulder like that okay and that would be the most casual kind of quick to access way of doing it but if i um undo this strap a little bit while we're here then if you loosen that out and put it in a further down hull you can see it's not a particularly quick action to do but i figured that this might be somewhat interesting for those of you to see now if i try and avoid the microphone i can actually put the whole shield on my back so this is what you see on the bayer tapestry for example when people are using big two-handed axes the so-called danax probably more correctly known as a great act and indeed if you're in a game and you're using this type of weapon um you've chosen that this is your your primary weapon yeah you've got a sword and you've got a dagger as backup your primary weapon is a big two-handed weapon you can still have a shield and you can sling it on your back now that has several benefits first of all it has a passive defense on your back both from blows and thrusts also arrows or anything else thrown or shot at you it doesn't really encumber you it's it's weight but it doesn't restrict your movements very much if you move your arms right back then you hit the shield but certainly you've got the ability now to use your two-handed axe with your shield out of the way but it does mean that not only have you got that passive defense on your back and we see in the bay of tapestry one with lots of arrows stuck in it but it does mean that if you now for some reason either lose or decide not to use the axe say for example you're going into a building you don't have enough space to swing the axe you can go for the sword get the shield off your back and you've now got a sword and shield or indeed if archers are shooting at you say there's some archers over there and you want to advance on them you could throw the axe down get the shield off your back and see how quickly i can do that relatively easily get the shield up get the sword out and you can now advance on those arches and charge them down so having the shield there is really really valuable but there is it comes at a drawback let's just put this sword back away again it comes a drawback um unless you've got a pole arm if you've got pole arm it's fine so you've got a pole arm shield sword dagger that's absolutely fine an absolutely usual weapon set and you can manage that but if you have a bow again if we go back to bows and arrows you can't really sling this on your back or even on your shoulder if you've got a quiver of arrows at your side or on your back or at your waist or whatever so this will really interfere with arrows and it will really i mean technically i can carry all these things but i'm not going to travel around doing that and i'm completely like i've completely disabled myself my ability to be quick and nimble and versatile in a fighting situation by holding too many things at the same time the other thing i would say as well is in terms of the pole arms and i've spoken about this before if you have a pole arm which is primarily a cutting weapon that requires two hands like this danax or indeed if it was a halberd or a bill then you've got to think about well what's that shield doing and i think it's got to be on your back until you're using it with a sword okay you shouldn't really be carrying a shield and carrying a cut a cutting pole arm in your other hand at the same time because what you're doing is you're putting yourself in an unready situation you're not ready to use either the shield or the pole weapon so either the shield should be on your back and you have the pole weapon or you put the pole weapon away and you have the sword and the shield out so i hope that has given you some food for thought the gaming project that is upcoming i think a lot of you will enjoy and when you're next equipping your heroes for your adventure with their armor and weapons think about some of the things i've said in this video think about whether that armor can be worn throughout the day or whether it can only be worn when you really need it so if you do have heavy armor heavier armor than i'm wearing at the moment you can't wear it all day at least not easily not every day not comfortably you might not even be able to put it on or take it off without assistance without servants or at least someone else in the party helping you that takes time and it means that it needs to take time to get off and it takes time to get to put on and think about what weapons you can carry at the same time and actually deploy or use at the same time and there has to be a time penalty essentially for if you need to deploy those weapons in a situation where you're not in that moment ready to use them if someone attacked me right at this second i'm in a really bad position because i'm holding a weapon that i can't use one-handed with a shield on the other arm and oh look the strap has got caught up on my sword scabbard so think about those little details and you can work these into into stories you're writing you can work these into games if someone attacks me at that moment i need to throw down that danax probably or throw down the shield one or the other and get myself into a situation where i actually have weapons in my hands that i can use together um right i hope that's been useful and fun give me your thoughts down below um give us a like and subscribe if you haven't done already and i'll see you really soon again on scholar gladiator channel for another video cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 156,545

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Id: DeGe7L5zCkU

Length: 33min 22sec (2002 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021