Science of the Smith

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This long explanation was posted the the BattleMaster Discussion mailing list as the conclusion of a long debate mostly revolving around the question of whether or not to add a portable smithy as a paraphernalia. Additional information and conflicting viewpoints (with supporting data, please!) are most appreciated.


Does Equipment Matter?

Historically, I don't see equipment mattering much, with several exceptions.

When men discovered how to make Iron, they could more easily butcher tribes and peoples that were still using bronze or brass for their weapons, and when men discovered how to forge the impurities from the iron and create steel, they were at an advantage again over those still using iron.

However, these were mainly differences in cultural progress, and happened over great periods of time. Since we are looking at a Battlemaster world that is meant to be based on a medieval time period, I would think the Ages of Stone, Brass, Bronze, and Iron are long past.

With all realms assumed to have the knowledge of steel, the current equipment advantages likely pertain to more armor than weapons, with the emphasis being on the level of armor worn instead of the quality. i.e. Plate Mail providing more defensive advantages than Splint (Banded) Mail.

Still, the disadvantages of more armor are not displayed as a function of the game. i.e. 100 men on foot in 80% Quality Armor ( I equate that with something along the lines of Full Plate ) would have to move very very slowly for the carts / horses carrying their armor to keep up, as they would not have their squires put on the armor until before the battle.

From my studies of military tactics and warfare, it seems to me that most battles were won in the Medieval Ages based on several things.

  1. Training
  2. Morale
  3. Discipline
  4. Superior Tactics
  5. Sheer Numbers

So from a historical point of view, I don't even see the quality of equipment making any difference in warfare.

However, from the perspective of a typical roleplaying game, 50 men with +5 Holy Avenger's and 0 AC Magical Full Plate will always defeat 1000 men in Hide Armor with Hand Axe's. In real life, I'd put my money on the 1000, and take it to the bank.

This is mostly meant as a rebuttal to the idea that you can purchase and arm poorly trained fresh recruits with high quality weapons and it will make a huge difference in their combat effectiveness.

Historically, I see the majority of combat effectiveness being a result of training, discipline/unity (cohesion), and experience (function of training + cohesion). Which is why I do not see a need for the change to be able to upgrade arms since the majority of troops never last to see 80+ training anyways. They either get killed off, or reinforcements lower the training value.

You take 100 highly trained battle hardened veterans with high morale that fight well as a unit, and give them hardened leather armor and hand axes, and put them up against 100 new recruits with little training, no combat experience, and no unit cohesion with quality longswords and chain mail, and the battle hardened veterans are soon going to have new equipment if you catch my drift.


A Portable Smithy - Impossible

And as to the idea of a portable smithy, it dwells totally in the realm of fantasy. I'm an apprentice blacksmith, and the anvil I use to make small decorative pieces is 100 pounds. An anvil of the size needed to work on armor and weapons needs to be around 500 pounds, as you want to minimize vibrations in the anvil when you strike your work with a hammer. Add also 80 pounds for the blower and firepot assemblies.

Also, you need to add about 200 pounds of various anvil attachments, tongs, hammers, and scrap metal to use in the forging process. If you also want to repair armor, include 50 pounds of leather for strapping, about 40 pounds for the equipment needed to draw out the rings for chain mail, and another 40 for the equipment needed to form and cut plates or scales of armor.

Also, in medieval times, coal, charcoal, and propane were not available to smiths, so a very large amount of wood had to be dried and cooked to a point to where it could be used for a suitable fire, as temperatures need to reach the neighborhood of 1800 to 2200 degrees (Fahrenheit) to make the steel effectively malleable. So a portable smithy would either have to carry around 800 pounds of wood for fuel, or make darn sure they aren't in the deserts of Talerium or MDP.

Also, once a blade is damaged to a certain point, your only options are replacement, or totally reforging the piece, in order to keep it structurally sound. Totally reforging a blade, sharpening, (assume leaving out polishing), and annealing to a suitable hardness takes hours. To rework just the blades for an army of 50 would be a matter of days. This also takes into accounts 5 smiths working the forge, 1 on the anvil, 1 tending the fire, 1 tending the blower, 1 sharpening, and 1 annealing the blades.

Even though I am only an apprentice, and my skills are limited, forging a straight blade knife with a 5" one sided blade with no crossguard, no polish, and no decoration takes about 8 hours of total work before the piece is finished, and that is without having to worry about a blower, tending the fire, or waiting for the fire to get the metal hot enough for forging, as we use propane that we can keep the forge box at a high temperature.

These are only a third of the problems a portable smithy would have to endure.

A more reasonable and realistic solution would be able to purchase caravans that could be filled with a finite number replacement weapons from the castle armory that could in game terms reduce the amount of damaged equipment in the unit to a certain percent. For example each Caravan could carry enough weapon and armor replacements for a unit armorer to be able to repair minor strapping and sharpening issues, and replace weapons and armor up to 10%.

Smithing in Medieval Times was a difficult and time consuming process that consumed vast amounts of resources and money in a time when resources were scarce. That is why fielding an army for extended periods of time could effectively empty the coffers of kingdoms that had been hoarding for decades.


Repairs do not need a smithy

Just remember that minor repairs can be handled without a smithy. Sharpening issues for weapons, new handles for spears and axes, and strapping for armor can be handled with no smith work at all. Although I must point out that a perfectly sharpened edge is more brittle and will chip and shatter easier than a slightly dull one upon contact with armor and bone, and in the hands of an experienced swordsman, a slightly dull blade is more dangerous than one that is perfectly sharpened, as the fine edge of a blade absorbs more force from impact than a slightly dull one does.

Also, if a piece of armor is punctured or cleaved to the point it needs smithwork, then it is almost a surety that the owner of the armor is seriously wounded or dead, and no longer in need of it. An army would value the time gained by simply gleaning the battlefields or by simply carrying replacements instead of carrying a greater weight of equipment / materials / fuel to make new equipment.

Why would they move over half a ton of equipment/materials/fuel to reforge weapons when they could just carry a quarter ton of weapons and have replacement weapons for every man in the unit? Less weight, and you save time.

Also, remember that the swords you can purchase today through the Renaissance Faire and Knife catalogs are not swords. They are pieces of steel ground down to the rough outline of a sword. They do not have the internal crystalline structure of a sword, they are made out of stainless steel, which no swordsmith in his right mind would use for a functional weapon, and they have no distal taper.

All of these factors result in the replicas you can purchase cheaply today weighing almost twice what a real sword weighs, and they have no balance to them whatsoever. Period longswords weighed in at somewhere between 3 and 6 pounds, depending on extra length and decoration, and were suitable balanced to feel even lighter than that in the hands of it's wielder. If you have bought a sword from one of these catalogs, and it advertised them as historically functional pieces, you were misled unless the fine print said "functional for hacking at shrubs and small trees."

Major repairs to the steel of a weapon are still not very feasible in BattleMaster's small timeframe. Steel isn't like clay, it is a crystalline structure composed of many layers, and it's structural integrity is important to it's ability to cleave/puncture metal, hardened leather, and bone. If a weapon becomes badly chipped, then there is no way to repair it without reforging the blade. It is not possible to just put in a piece of steel and forgeweld it to the blade and still have a functional weapon.

To make a functional weapon, steel has to be forged, sharpened, and then reheated to over 1600 degrees (Fahrenheit) and then cooled below 400 degrees (Fahrenheit) in under 8 seconds to make a crystalline formation known as martensite. If this process isn't exact, you end up with pearlite or bainite, both of them are to soft or ductile to be suitable for a functional weapon, and the piece ends up having to be reworked. Period Bladesmith's understood this, even without our current level of science.

In Conclusion, minor repairs were often done in the field by smiths traveling with the army, but the kind of equipment repair that many are wishing about here simply cannot be done without reforging the weapon, which is a process takes too much time and resources for BattleMaster armies on the move to be able to handle.

However, if you don't mind your army staying in the region for a week or so, then by all means a full portable smithy would be technically if not historically possible, but the repairs that many in BM are wishing for with a portable smithy simply could not be done in the field in the timeframe that they want them to be done, and carrying one with you would slow an army down to the point of being unbearable to the players.