Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Weapons & Armour in Mesopotamia

I've been researching the weapons used in mesopotamia, and looking at the list of weapons and armour in my copies of B\X, to see what I need to get rid of.

As a note, it turns out the Mesopotamians were very advanced in terms of military. I mean, there is evidence of them forming shield walls, phalanxes, and squares in battle!

So, onto the list of what weapons are allowed:

Battle Axe
Hand Axe
Short Bow
Dagger
Short Sword
Sword
Two-Handed Sword
Mace
Club
Javelin
Lance
Pole Arm (specifically pikes, or at least their equivalent)
Sling
Spear
Staff

So, for those reading along with their B\X books, that means every weapon except for the long bow, crossbow, and war hammer.

The new weapons are two in number, being the Egyptian bladed mace, and spearbreaker.

The Egyptian bladed mace is, quite simply, a normal mace with a large blade stuck on the back of it. Costs 16 gp (or rough equivalent, I'll post about money later) and deals 1d8 damage, and, if using weapon vs. armour class tables from AD&D, uses whichever is better: broadsword or mace (light or heavy, you decide).

The spearbreaker is essentially a handle with two sharp prongs, in which you catch a spear and proceed to snap it. Costs maybe 20 gp, and requires a roll to break the spear?

Now, onto armour in Mesopotamia.

Looking at the B\X list, we find shield, leather, mail, and plate.

Here is where I'm torn. The Mesopotamians had shields, leather, copper studded leather, and bronze or iron breastplates and other such armour. My initial thought is to keep the B\X armour list as is, but swap mail for studded leather and just note that plate is essentially a breastplate and maybe greaves, over some leather armour.

That's it for now, next up: Money in Mesopotamia

27 comments:

  1. thank you I had to do a project for school and this helped me so much

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  2. Replies
    1. Basically a piece of leather which is used to throw small stones at very high speeds. Try looking on google.

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    2. Thanks. help me out on the this project i am doing

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    3. Is that, 'I helped you out', or do you want help?

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    4. Search it dumbelll!

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  3. thanks man you da man
    rahhhhhhh
    meow
    thanks Anhtony
    btw
    you da bomb

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  4. Hi--would there also be a properly weighted throwing knife?

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  5. Interestingly, I just stumbled over the "Caravan" supplement/scenario (you can find it on DTRPG - if I remember, I'll drop a link below). It isn't all that and the bag of chips - it's an adventure with enough notes on the setting that a player who knows nothing of the Fertile Crescent circa 2500-2300 BCE would be impressed (no special rules, no special notes, just a few pages of text on the whole of the Fertile Crescent).

    That got me interested in either a fantasy historical Fertile Crescent setting or a setting simply inspired from the same. I'm working on it for Savage Worlds, but do you mind if I refer back here from time to time to see what you're doing and maybe plunder ideas?

    BTW - I was thinking about setting it just before the Akkadian conquest (which is when Caravan is set), but there isn't near as much info on the individual peoples (I have data on four tribes of nomads and about six or so sedentary or semi-sedentary nations, including Egypt). Also, obviously I'm looking at more than just Mesopotamia.

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  6. That sounds interesting! No, please do. Everything here is for anything.

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  7. Um... I have a project to do about the mesopotamia weapons and just as a question,are the weapon names links?

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  8. thanks doing a project on it. It helped

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  9. Thank you for showing this for me. It really helped me in school about Mesopotamia. Since my teacher has a list of websites for Mesopotamia and she wants more, I sent this website to her. Just to let you know about how helpful it is to a lot of us. :)

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  10. This was great i have a project about Mesopotamia at school and this should help me ty

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  11. y do they call it a pol arm

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  12. Great, thank you for all the information. It has really helped me through this school project :-). However I have one question, How did the mesopotamians prepare for war? Thanks

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  13. you helped me on a project,thank you

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  14. Thank you so much, this helped a lot! :)

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  15. To the person who called him a dumbbell... Well, you were the one who looked it up and asked him for help. So really, you shouldn't be calling him dumb when you are actually the rude, inconsiderate one. Oh, and thank you Anthony for this. It really helped me out with a project!

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  16. Thanks for this article it was really helpful with my ancient weapons project at school

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  17. thanks sooo much helped alot

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  18. What are all the materials that weapons are made of? Can you give a list?

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