Min/Max Boards

I just added links to works that might be more obscure here, added creator credits to works with a clear creator and included tags for links to future example entries. If anyone else finds this thread interesting, please say so.

Looks like I was just over thinking things again, that's fine. Thanks for letting me know Nanshork.

What pops in your head when you hear the word sling, as a weapon I mean? Well, this...
...isn't it. That a slingshot, a relatively modern almost toy-like "weapon", with an effective range of 25 yards/75 feet and lethal enough for hunting small-game. There are special modifications that can let you shoot an arrow, making slingshots suitable for hunting medium-game, like smaller deer, but still at an effective range of 25 yards. Now this...
...and this...
...are slings. Just a rope or cord made into two retention cords with a pouch in the middle, with some leather, cloth, or in modern times, electrical tape, linings on both ends to make it easier to use. This makes slings relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, and gives them negligible weight, at least individually. This video on the Balearic Slingers, by Invicta, goes into further details on slings and their ammunition. As the video says, while slingers would prefer bullets made from cast-lead, or at least kiln-fired clay, but small, smooth, oval-shaped stones could suffice, and would be strong enough to break bones, crack skulls and rupture internal organs through ancient armor, penetrate remarkably far through unarmored bodies, and of course, dent the armor. This is on top of sling having, a real world, top range of 400 meters or approximately 1,312 feet or about 437 yards and a top speed of 100 km/h or about 62 miles per hour. Now that's not really possible in standard 3.5, or any D&D, not at low levels at least, so I'm thinking of basing projectile weapon range off of spell ranges. So, let's put slings at long range, the farthest reasonable range for spells in 3.5/Pathfinder. Still not realistically long, but it's a start, and I have an idea for that. In 2e AD&D and older, spells and missile weapons had their ranges changed from feet to yards outdoors, giving the humble sling a range of 400 yards + 40 yards/level, for 440 yards or 1,320 feet at first level. We are trying to be realistic here, and the top range on a sling is 400 or approximately 1,312 feet, which is in the neighborhood of 1,320 feet and well within the capabilities of a first level sling user under these rules. That said, there are some catches with slings. First, they require years of training to be competent with, more so than even a longbow, and that one requires a good deal of strength training. Second, slings need a lot of room to be swung, so no tight formations, which shouldn't be much of a problem for PCs, who start out more like fantasy special forces than normal soldiers. Third, since you have to take time to load, swing, and then throw the rock/bullet, it takes you more time to shoot a rock or bullet than it does for an archer to shoot, meaning that if they're good enough they can keep shooting and shooting faster than you. Fourth and finally, a sling stone/bullet can't fit through a narrow crack or gap like an arrow. Still a damn good weapon though.

An archer's primary weapons were their bow and arrows, or crossbow and bolts in the case of a crossbowman. Despite the differences between them, bows and crossbows do have some commonalities, namely draw weight and arrowheads. In simple terms, draw weight is the measurement, in pounds, of both the force needed to pull the bow's limbs as far as they can be pulled and the kinetic energy from the limbs snapping forward after the nocked arrow is loosed. Interestingly enough, there are two main methods of doing this in Europe. One is the better known drawing the bow, where the archer nocks the arrow and pulls the bowstring back to in front their ear before loosing the arrow. The lesser known bending the bow involves holding the nocked arrow in front of your ear while using your non-dominant hand to push or "bend" the bow staff away from you. Both are done until you reach full draw. As for arrowheads, archers had broadheads for causing aggravated injuries, crescent moon or fishtail heads for taking down large animals, incendiary arrows for lighting flammable materials on fire and bodkin points to be more aerodynamic and pierce through chain armor. That and bodkins were cheaper and easier to make. An arrow loosed from a longbow can reach a maximum effective distance of 200 meters or about 656 feet and a crossbow, depending on draw weight and bolt mass, can shoot for 260 yards or 780 feet. While he doesn't get quite that far in this video, Tod of Tod's Workshop does manage to shoot a crossbow to 238 yards with an 850 lbs. draw weight crossbow, which is still impressive. According to the Pathfinder stats for light (lower draw weight) and heavy (higher draw weight) crossbow are 80 and 120, respectively, with ten range increments. This means a light crossbow tops out at 800 feet and a heavy crossbow at 1,200 feet, with a total attack penalty of -20 for both. That said, most real-world military archers were volley archers, you just got them into one mass and had them shoot at the enemy mass. But even starting characters in D&D aren't comparable to standard troops.

What happened if an archer ran out of arrows, or their enemies close into melee range? Well, they had backup weapons, as well as various pieces of headgear. Archer's picks, bearded hand axes with flat heads on the back to drive that big pointy knife into the gaps of an armored foes armor, bollock daggers, poniards, falchions and one-handed bill hooks for pulling down knights or gutting horses. As for the headgear, it starts at sheepskin, goes on to boiled (hardened) leather, then various caps and hats, to actual metal helmets. Of course, these are the weapons and armor of a typical volley archer, not necessarily a PC grade sharpshooter archer, not that a PC grade archer couldn't benefit from such gear. Of course, those are just the loadouts for a Medieval English commoner archer. Samurai, on the other hand, were aristocratic archers first, then spearman at polearm range and swordsmen third. Weras English longbowmen were trained for distance and used for massed volleys, samurai were trained more for accuracy and on top of that they were mounted archers, allowing them easier and greater range of movement. Depending on the era, and preferences of the samurai, their armor consisted of lamellar such as o-yoroi or do-maru to gusoku plate armor.

Armor: it's what you wear to keep your enemies from killing you, or at least make them work at it. While in 3.5 D&D and newer, armor is divided into light, medium and heavy groups, I feel it makes more sense to group armor by construction type, soft, medium and rigid. Starting with soft armor you have gambeson and it's variants like linothorax, ichcahuipilli or myeonje baegab. It wasn't until the 17th century that you had any real single layer leather armor, simply because they hadn't invented the process for making it and because gambeson already existed, and was good enough for that role. As for the 17th century leather soft armor, that's called a buff coat.

What I like to call medium armor is made up of segments of sturdy, rigid material, stitched, welded or riveted together. This would either form a mesh, like mail armor, be shaped into a piece of armor with non-overlapping segments like a lamellar, or a suit of overlapping segments, such as laminar, mail and plate or brigandine, which is also talked about here, here, here and here.

Rigid armor is just that, solid pieces of armor made from a single piece of some rigid material, whether it's boiled leather, iron, bronze, steel, or some stronger fantasy material. Unlike soft or medium armor, good rigid armor is never flexible. It should allow for a good deal of flexibility around the joints and a decent range of motion though, just that the actual armor pieces need to be rigid.

Let's talk about quarterstaves for a bit. In D&D 3.5 a quarterstaff is a simple two-handed double weapon that deals 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage with each end and weighs 4 lbs. What they don't say is that quarterstaves, at least in the English and Germans traditions, are taken from quartersawn lumber and carved to a typical range of 6' to 9' long, either up to your mouth level or 15% longer than their intended wielder is tall for a dedicated fighting staff, and with a diameter of 1.5 inches. Afterwards the staff would be sanded down and then coated in linseed oil and allowed to dry. A bit more involved than just grabbing any old piece of wood and calling it a day. It would have also been held one of two ways. The first one, with the wielder's dominant hand holding the butt of the staff and their off hand holding the staff about 3/7 of the way up. In the second grip method, you hold the staff a hand's space away from the butt of the staff with your nondominant hand and somewhat loosely grip the staff a third of the way up with your dominant hand. Much like the montante, zweihander, spadone, or let's just call it the greatsword, the quarterstaff is an excellent melee range area denial weapon. You also have various thrust, overhead strike and counter focused techniques in addition to the staff's area denial capabilities. Staves also have some interesting matchups against swords.

With staves out of the way let's get to other polearms, like halberds. Halberds are what happens when you take a staff and fix an axe bit/spike or spear point hybrid one end. Like all other polearms, halberds share the same basic techniques with the quarterstaff, except the additional mass and necessity of edge alignment make executing these same strikes, thrust, counters and displacement techniques more complex, in exchange for greater offensive power. Enough to justify bumping them up to martial weapon status in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder terms. As a result, halberds and other more complex polearms tended to have oblong or oval cross sections, to allow for easier edge alignment in battle. Add on a hook for snagging foes to trip them, force them to the ground, dismount them, or even catch and throw them as far as you can.

Now, for some dagger fighting demonstrations. Now the reason they're wielding daggers in reverse/icepick grip, is that this dagger fighting style was developed for both fights among late medieval to Rennaissance men wearing thick padded slash resistant clothing, or for grappling knights trying to get the point of their daggers through gaps of the other guy's armor. The icepick grip used grants greater point control and penetrative force at the cost reduced reach and more awkward attack angles. Could probably be represented by increased piercing damage, bonuses to initiate a grapple and effective reduction of the target's armor/natural armor bonus to AC for the attack, in exchange for attack penalties, possibility of an AoO and reduced defensive capabilities, like no bonus from Two-Weapon Defense when using icepick grip in your off-hand, or any other feats or abilities that grant a shield AC bonus for dagger wielding.

Next time I'd like to cover slings and arrows, but until then have these examples of video game two-handed sword use, cheers.

Dragon Age: Origins
Elden Ring
Final Fantasy VII Remake

Like you I've seen the typical dim-witted arguments for keeping D&D fighter types "realistic", throughout the character's whole career. To which I say, they'd have to be realistic to begin with then, which fighter types in D&D and Pathfinder really aren't. That's because they're often unrealistically bad, especially at low levels, levels that make sense for warriors to be realistic at. Yes, I said it, making low level warriors, 1st-3rd level to be precise, realistic in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, maybe even in D&D 5e, would be a boost for them.

Take these four montante demonstrations for example, two of them solo exercises, one an exhibition and the last a spar. Notice how in each one the montante is kept in near constant motion to both build and maintain momentum and to cover multiple angles of attack. This is not a slow and clunky style that relies on brute force, but instead a nimble and agile one. Both Just Nate's and Montante Nino's videos also show the great deal of range one can cover with proper footwork, and feature twirling footwork as a means to drive back foes and strike any would be attackers before they can hit you. Less the "hit everyone in sword reach" melee AOE of mithril tornado or whirlwind attack and more of a "guarantee any idiot that moves closer to you takes an AoO to the face" technique, but it can serve as a foundation for a melee AOE.

I have more weapon examples to go through, but let's leave that for tomorrow, it's really late and I can use some sleep. With that said, D&D can use more realism in fighting styles at lower levels and use that as a springboard into more fantastical and superhuman fighting styles for higher level fighter types, but I don't think that will ever come from anything official.

Example #4 Guilty Gear, created by Daisuke Ishiwatari


Low Post-Apocalyptic Urban Science Fantasy

Yes, the fighting game franchise that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world with magically empowered mutant superhumans, superpowered martial artists, widespread magitech, at least two benign vampires, an order of assassins bonded with enhanced artificial lifeforms that grant the assassins weird and fantastical powers, an extra-dimensional realm that acts as the world's source of all magic and an annoying little sky pirate girl who can summon aquatic creatures to beat the shit out of you is low fantasy! How is it low fantasy you say? It all takes place on a fictional post-apocalyptic future version of our world with magic, that's why!

Example #2: Spy X Family, created by Tatsuya Endo


High (not our world at all) Urban Science Fantasy

On a world much like ours's during the 1950s or 1960s lies two countries, Westalis and Ostania, who for many years fought a bitter and nearly all-consuming war, have recently entered into an uneasy peace that can better be thought of as a cold war. Yet there are those, mostly in Ostania, who would disrupt this fragile peace and reignite the flames of this now cold war. Into this backdrop we find three lone people, Agent Twilight of Westalian intelligence, aka psychiatrist Loid Forger, on a prolonged mission to get close the Ostenian far-right industrialist Donovan Desmond and investigate him for covert militarist activity, Yor Briar, humble Ostanian civil servant by day and terrifying operative of the Garden known as the Thorn Princess by night and finally Anya, a bright and precocious orphan girl of 4 or 5 years old, with telepathic powers from her years as a test subject at the hands of the Ostanian government. Whatever reasons they may have had for coming together, from Loid needing a fake family for Operation STRIX, Yor needing a husband to avoiding arrest for suspected treason all for being unmarried at the age of 27 and Anya simply wanting to be safe and cared for, this disparate trio has grown into a loving, if unusual family.

Since I like to have a system for things, I came up with this template below for sorting and detailing fantasy works. I then moved it to its own post, so it'll be more noticeable.

Title of fantasy work
[image]
Fantasy Subgenres

Description

A really strange thought started percolating in my head quite some time ago. From 1993 up until 2010 the Walt Disney Company owned Miramax and by extension Dimension Films (Dimension was part of Miramax from 1992 until 2005). Now that would mean that the movies Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill 1 & 2, From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3 and The Faculty were all produced and distributed by the Walt Disney Company, by way of Miramax of course. Or as my father once half-jokingly said, "See, Pulp Fiction is a Disney movie."

I'm going the Kingdom Hearts route and combining all these Miramax/Dimension Films into one world, along with one mainstream Disney live-action movie. I'm talking about the Disney version of The Princess Diaries, because I can think pretty dark and fucked up when I feel like it. I doubt I'm much more than a mere apprentice at thinking up dark and fucked  up ideas though. Now oddly enough this screwed up mess of a world has more than one Princess of Heart, six of them to be exact. When I said that I'm going the Kingdom Hearts route, I meant it.

    Sidney Prescott
    Fabienne
    Mia Thermopolis
    Mia Wallace
    Kate Fuller
    Yolanda/"Honey Bunny" (maybe)

For this crossover I've decided that Princess Mia has an older maternal second cousin, from Woodsboro, CA. The two have visited several times before the most recent one in 1995, for the funeral of Mia Thermopolis's beloved second aunt, Maureen Prescott, following Mrs. Prescott's brutal murder. So was their great grandfather, retired U.S. Army Lt. Aldo Raines, still remarkably spry, hearty and hale for his age. The original Ghostfaces should thank God he wasn't in town, because he wouldn't have granted them the relatively quick and merciful deaths they got, especially after what they did to his granddaughter and tried to do to his great granddaughter Sidney. He'd also have two new scalps to add to his collection. I'm cheating here a bit, but since Tarantino took his film universe to The Weinstein Company after leaving Miramax along with the Weinstein brothers, I feel no trouble with grandfathering in Tarantino's later films.

I'm thinking of starting this crossover at or around the beginnings of The Princess Diaries and Scream 3, which will occur simultaneously in this crossover. Of course this will give Mia Thermopolis even more reason to be mortified about suddenly learning of her royal status. In canon, both book and Disney film, Mia was worried about failing to live up to expectations and being thought of as a freak, along with generally feeling like her world has been turned upside down. In this crossover, Mia has all these reasons and more to be frightened by the prospect of being a princess.

The "more" part is being related to Sidney Prescott, something Mia and her cousin Sidney would like to keep quiet for as long as possible. Mia and Sid are afraid that when the media, specifically the paparazzi, digs into Mia's non-royal side, that they'll uncover her relation to Sidney Prescott and practically lead psycho killers right to Sidney, her father Neil or even Mia and her mother Helen as well as each others friends. Mia and Sid are afraid for the lives of pretty much the only family either one's known for most of their lives. Mia Thermopolis will be really reluctant to reveal she's a princess to the public in this fic/adventure.

So how do Pulp Fiction and Kingdom Hearts fit into this you ask. Simple, this fic/adventure takes place shortly after the conclusion of KH Dream Drop Distance with Xehanort and his duplicates as the new Organization XIII. Yes, Master Xehanort has the requisite seven Princesses of Heart in his reach, but he also knows they aren't the only ones out there. In fact he spots a single world that actually has seven Princesses of Heart living on it. Well six Princesses of Heart and one Prince of Heart, a pudgy and dimwitted boy who prattles on about "the Talking Walnut" and gets bullied and beaten up almost daily. Yep, that's Thurman Merman for you. That and one of this world's six Princesses of Heart is Mia Wallace, the coke snorting, ex-actress wife of ruthless crime boss Marcellus Wallace. Now strange and dark creatures begin hunting for this world's Princesses of Heart for Master Xehanort, focusing on three of them to start, Mia Wallace, Fabienne and "Honey Bunny"/Yolanda. That should help get this story moving.

So, the basic gist of this crossover is that the film adaptation of The Princess Diaries shares the same world with Quentin Tarantino's movies, the Scream movies, From Dusk Till Dawn and Bad Santa, maybe even The Faculty. Here's a rough movie based timeline for the crossover.

    The past
        The events of Django Unchained.
        The events of The Hateful Eight.
        The events of Inglourious Basterds.
        Maureen Roberts' brief acting career in Hollywood, ending in her gang-rape at a party hosted by B horror movie producer John Milton, which he participated in. This in turn resulted in the conception and birth of her son Roman Bridger, née Roberts, Scream 3's Ghostface.
        The birth of Sidney Prescott to Neil and Maureen Prescott.
        The birth of Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi or simply Mia Thermopolis, heir to the kingdom of Genovia to Phillipe and Helen Thermopolis Renaldi.
        The divorce of Phillipe and Helen Renaldi.
        The events of Reservoir Dogs.
        The events of Pulp Fiction.
        The murder of Maureen Prescott, née Roberts, by Billy Loomis and Stu Macher and their framing of Cotton Weary. This was done at the instigation and with the advice of Roman Bridger, Maureen's son and a bastard in both senses of the word.
        Maureen Prescott's funeral, attended by her husband Neil, her daughter Sidney, her cousin Helen Thermopolis, Helen's daughter Mia and of course, Sid's and Mia's great grandad, Lt. Aldo Raines.
        The events of Scream, From Dusk Till Dawn and the massacre of Beatrix Kiddo's wedding rehearsal by Bill and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
        The events of Scream 2 and Jackie Brown.
        Possibly the events of The Faculty.
    Start of crossover
        The events of Scream 3 and The Princess Diaries. This is where the crossover begins, with Sora and his allies looking for and aiming to protect three of this world's Princesses of Heart, Sidney Prescott, Kate Fuller and Mia Thermopolis while also looking for potential keyblade bearers. The Princess of Heart list for the world may overlap with it's potential keybearer list.
    The future
        The events of Bad Santa.
        The events of Kill Bill 1 & 2.
        The potential events of Scream 4.

The crossover's locations.

    U.S.A.
        California
            Los Angeles
                Jackrabbit Slim's
                The Diner
                Raymond Theater
                Fosters Freeze
                Crown Pawn Shop
                Lance's house
                Ingelwood strip club (Marsellus' front)
                Marsellus Wallace's home
            San Fransisco
                Genovian consulate
                The Thermopolis family home/former firehouse
                Grove High School
            Woodsboro
                The Prescott residence
                The Loomis residence
                The Macher residence
                Woodsboro High School
                Woodsboro Police Department
                Woodsboro Town Square
        Ohio
            Herrington
            Whatever town Scream 2 takes place in
                Windsor College
        Tennessee
            Knoxville
                Butch Coolidge's home
                Aldo Raines' home
                Maybe even Jules Winnfield's home
    Mexico
        Coahila
                The Titty Twister

Imagine Sora, Mickey, Donald, Goofy and rest of the gang adventuring though this world. By the way, various Disney/Kingdom Hearts villains will also get involved. As our friendly neighborhood pool guy Wade Wilson would say "This shit's gonna have nuts in it!"
________________________________________________________________________________

I've been thinking about making this crossover a table top RPG adventure and expanding it out into a setting. I'm just drawing a blank on what system to use for it. You have FATE, Mutants and Masterminds, a modified World of Darkness or a re-skinned Star Wars Saga Edition to pick from, as a start. Any other system recommendations would be welcome too. I'm also thinking about adding some non-Disney or TWC elements too. I'm thinking along the lines of giving Lilly and Michael Muscovitz an aunt Cynthia, with an ex-husband by the name of Walter Sobchak. Yes, that Walter Sobchak.

One class that has intrigued me since it first came out in Tome of Magic is the shadowcaster. Yes, I admit that the official shadow leaves a lot to be desired, but you do have sirpercival's shadowcaster rewrite here as well as jiriku's on Giant in the Playground. Jiriku's take on on shadowcasting is one of my favorite 3.5/Pathfinder subsystems, along with psionics, arcane formulae and ToB/PoW-style maneuvers. Though I do feel like changing the flavor a bit from a strictly shadow based magician to a more occultist style of mage. Something along the lines of a John Constantine or Dennis Wheatley's Duc de Richelieu. While technically on the same side in the spiritual/supernatural community their political views would drive them to tear into each other like two cats tossed into a burlap sack. If you're going for the shallow end of the alignment pool, there's always Catherine Monvoisin for inspiration.