Classical Era D&D [Archive] - Wizards Community

Classical Era D&D [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
TheLastEvilDrow
06-22-07, 08:26 PM By default it seems, D&D is a fantasy game in the Medieval era (from Dark Ages to Near-Renaissance), but I am interested in what sort of adaptations would be necessary to run a game of D&D in the classical era. With empires and city-states rather then feudal kingdoms. Obviously longbows, crossbows, platemail armor, and similar technologies wouldn't be available, but what else?

What other changes would be necessary to faithfully run a game in a Classical Era setting?
TheLastEvilDrow
06-22-07, 08:39 PM Xiphos = greek shortsword
Kopis = greek scimitar

Gladius = roman sword (short sword)
Araes
06-23-07, 02:44 AM Well, if you view magic as developing in a similar manner to technology, then you might think about limiting some options for spell casting due to the earlier era. This would of course create some balance issues, but since melee warriors would be deprived some of their perks as well, you could twiddle it until it felt correct.

Quite a bit of the general equipment for characters would also need to be removed or changed, as a significant quantity of the items weren't available in the classical era, or were of inferior quality.
TheLastEvilDrow
06-23-07, 03:04 AM Personally bronze or iron weapons (instead of steel) would only be a problem as long as they were mundane, but the time the PCs would've used their mundane weapons to the point where they'd need to be replaced (and thus require a ruling on materials) they'd have earned an assortment of magical or masterwork (definitely more common) weapons, and or they could simply pick swap out with an uncounted mook's weapon, I personally don't list out every spear, flail, or morning star a goblin wields not to mention small sized armors. Too much crunch, I simply allow PCs to earn money for killing the things, in other ways, like a local authority pays them for their services, plus EXP is its own reward in many ways.

Definitely will need to drop things like magnifying glasses and other higher tech level equipment.
Chris_The_Guy
06-23-07, 03:51 AM I'd try to keep things as much the same as possible mechanically, to save time and effort. For example, though plate mail may not have existed, you can simply come up with a list of armors that did exist and arrange them with the same stats as existing armors. A bronze breastplate could have the same +8 AC that full plate does, since the entire idea of AC is abstract anyway. That way you don't have to worry about balance issues surrounding things like that.
taradusis
06-23-07, 07:26 AM They used to publish green books for 2 ED set in ancient greece or rome.The greek one was called AGE OF HEROS.The roman one was called GLORY OF EMPIRE.I beleive they're available at RPGNOW as a PDF. download?
swanyusd
06-29-07, 05:28 PM The use of different armors wouldn't matter too much if you used the class defense bonus variant from Unearthed Arcana. That way, any heavy armors (breastplate would be the biggest that I can think of) would just give DR instead of AC. This fits more with the low-tech concept of classical Greece or whatever. You would probably have to scale down the creatures HPs a bit too, as the damage of the weapons would be less (ie a 1d6 spear vs a 2d6 greatsword would probably yield a creature with 1/2 or 2/3 hp compared to normal).

-Swany
Elessar
07-26-07, 01:42 PM Actually, armor would go higher than breastplate... the Roman legion was known to wear Lorica segmentata, which is more or less banded mail. There were also Persian and later Roman mounted units known as cataphracts (basically lance wielding knights) that wore head to toe scale mail. Technically, that's more coverage than the scale mail from the PHB gives... you could stat it out as half-plate.
NorthWind
07-28-07, 11:52 AM Why no bows? If I'm not mistaken, crossbows were used as early as 397 B.C. in Greece, and I believe the Romans also had crossbows.
Elessar
07-28-07, 01:13 PM Well, there wouldn't have been longbows (although D&D longbows, I've noticed, seldom resemble real longbows in pictures), but yeah crossbows of a sort existed back in Antiquity. As early as 5th century BC, the Greeks used a weapon called the gastraphetes. I've never personally read about Romans specifically using crossbows, but since they absorbed pretty much everything from the Greek's ideas, I think it's a safe bet that they did. Also, they definitely at least knew the design and mechanics behind one, since they used ballistae as artillery weapons.
Alltat
07-28-07, 06:14 PM I'd take out the crossbows, or at least make them a lot more rare. While some siege engineer could probably have made crossbows if he wanted to - at least the technology for it existed - the weapon type was extremely rare at best. Note that 'proper' ballistas work very differently from a crossbow, although they do resemble each other visually.
Elessar
07-28-07, 11:53 PM link: http://www.frapanthers.com/teachers/white/siege_gallery.htm

Hm - Roman ballistae seem to resemble them more than cosmetically. I found this neat link showing the evolution of hand held to siege weapon. Early Greek ballistae seem to have evolved directly from the mounted version of the gastrophetes. The difference between the Greek gastrophetes and the medieval portable crossbow that may have lead the former to the evolution into the ballistae seems to be that the gastrophetes was loaded solely by the muscle of the user. See that U-shaped crook at the end of them? My guess is that it's to brace against the user's body while he loads the bolt. Since they didn't have hand winches at the time, that would have made reloading rather slow (since they were cumbersome for one person to load, they were made bigger so that multiple people could load them using their whole bodies rather than just their arms.) You might rule in your campaign that reloading a crossbow is always a full round action, and discard just light crossbows. I think disallowing PCs from using crossbows is a little iffy, especially since the time period did have precedent for them. They are the PCs after all, and they are exceptional - why not let them carry around weapons that most people don't see everyday? And the only time they'd run into enemies wielding them would be if they ran into some sort of imperial swat team with siege support.
Optimized_Commoner
07-29-07, 12:08 AM Wait, the romans had crossbows didn't they?

EDIT: Oh, I see some people have beaten me to it.

The difference between the Greek gastrophetes and the medieval portable crossbow that may have lead the former to the evolution into the ballistae seems to be that the gastrophetes was loaded solely by the muscle of the user. See that U-shaped crook at the end of them? My guess is that it's to brace against the user's body while he loads the bolt.

The gastrophetes or "belly bow" is loaded by you putting the U-shaped crook against your stomach and the front end against the ground. By leaning forwards you exert your entire body weight allowing you to load it almost instantly. A ratchet mechanism holds the string once your weight brings it back, then you stick a bolt in it and release the catch to fire.

Ancient Civilizations - War and Conflict, a documentary by one of the monty python boys shows one being demonstrated. They are amazingly quick and easy to load, probably easier than the medieval versions which relied on winches and using the strength of your arms, rather than just gravity.
Elessar
07-29-07, 12:51 AM The gastrophetes or "belly bow" is loaded by you putting the U-shaped crook against your stomach and the front end against the ground. By leaning forwards you exert your entire body weight allowing you to load it almost instantly. A ratchet mechanism holds the string once your weight brings it back, then you stick a bolt in it and release the catch to fire.

Ancient Civilizations - War and Conflict, a documentary by one of the monty python boys shows one being demonstrated. They are amazingly quick and easy to load, probably easier than the medieval versions which relied on winches and using the strength of your arms, rather than just gravity.

Cool.
Artifact
07-29-07, 02:18 PM Check out the New Argonauts by Sean K. Reynolds. Its basically a d20 resource for adventuring in mythic Greece. He's giving them away, so I downloaded a free PDF copy from RPGNow.com.

I can honestly say, its worth every penny :D. In all seriousness though, I haven't run a "Classical" campaign in years (last time was in the Hollow World setting for Original D&D, I think). The New Argonaughts and a new DVD copy of Clash of the Titans has definitely inspired me to go at it again, and soon! Oh . . . that and 300 ;).
Alltat
07-29-07, 07:55 PM link: http://www.frapanthers.com/teachers/white/siege_gallery.htm

Hm - Roman ballistae seem to resemble them more than cosmetically. Well, technically only the Ballista, Scorpio, Cheiroballista, and the bottom seven on the right side on that page are actually ballistas. A ballista, by definition, uses ropes to provide the power, similar to how the onager works. Not that it makes all that much of a difference to a D&D game; they most likely won't be using any siege weapons anyway.

I suppose the main thing is how much realism you're going for. Yes, the technology existed and there were primitive crossbows in use, but it wasn't something that a group of adventurers would have access to. Sure, you can justify it by saying that they're heroic and should have exceptional gear, but by that same reasoning you can justify fullplate, greatswords, or pretty much any standard D&D item. But if you're going to do that, why bother with adapting the rules to fit the classical era?
Elessar
07-30-07, 09:33 AM I suppose the main thing is how much realism you're going for. Yes, the technology existed and there were primitive crossbows in use, but it wasn't something that a group of adventurers would have access to. Sure, you can justify it by saying that they're heroic and should have exceptional gear, but by that same reasoning you can justify fullplate, greatswords, or pretty much any standard D&D item. But if you're going to do that, why bother with adapting the rules to fit the classical era?

If you're going for absolute accuracy then, you could just make the crossbow an exotic proficiency, since presumably not even the majority of Greek and Roman soldiers would have known how to operate it without special training. As for fullplate, the reason behind disallowing this sort of thing and allowing crossbows is that the first represents a later evolution of contemporary concepts (full German armor of the Holy Roman Empire evolved from lorica), while the other actually existed during the time period. The same concept exists behind allowing Renaissance campaigns to include firearms. Were they common enough to be seen all the time? No. Can the PCs use them? I don't see why not. If they're PCs granted the full 20 level progression they have the potential to enact world-affecting events. I don't see why some special technology should be beyond their ken. Especially if we're talking late Antiquity and the technology (in the campaign's real-world counterpart) has been around for some 700 odd years.

I'm also going on the assumption that since the original poster didn't say that "fantasy" wasn't still included in the equation (and since he wants to adapt D&D and not some other system), that the level of realism was low to middlin'.

But I don't want to labor the point anymore. I'm not a true history buff, just an interested party. I've run a fantasy Roman campaign in the past, and actually found few reasons to change most of the equipment - although in hindsight some weapons might have fit better into the exotic weapon category.

I just changed the names:
short sword = gladius
longsword = spatha
shortspear = hasta
spear = pilum
longspear = contus
shortbow = arcus
dagger = pugio
light shield = cetratus
heavy shield = parma
tower shield = scutum
scale mail = lorica squamata
chain mail = lorica hamata
banded mail = lorica segmentata

Also, thanks for the New Argonauts link. Can't get better than free.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TheLastEvilDrow 06-22-07, 08:26 PM	By default it seems, D&D is a fantasy game in the Medieval era (from Dark Ages to Near-Renaissance), but I am interested in what sort of adaptations would be necessary to run a game of D&D in the classical era. With empires and city-states rather then feudal kingdoms. Obviously longbows, crossbows, platemail armor, and similar technologies wouldn't be available, but what else? What other changes would be necessary to faithfully run a game in a Classical Era setting?
TheLastEvilDrow 06-22-07, 08:39 PM	Xiphos = greek shortsword Kopis = greek scimitar Gladius = roman sword (short sword)
Araes 06-23-07, 02:44 AM	Well, if you view magic as developing in a similar manner to technology, then you might think about limiting some options for spell casting due to the earlier era. This would of course create some balance issues, but since melee warriors would be deprived some of their perks as well, you could twiddle it until it felt correct. Quite a bit of the general equipment for characters would also need to be removed or changed, as a significant quantity of the items weren't available in the classical era, or were of inferior quality.
TheLastEvilDrow 06-23-07, 03:04 AM	Personally bronze or iron weapons (instead of steel) would only be a problem as long as they were mundane, but the time the PCs would've used their mundane weapons to the point where they'd need to be replaced (and thus require a ruling on materials) they'd have earned an assortment of magical or masterwork (definitely more common) weapons, and or they could simply pick swap out with an uncounted mook's weapon, I personally don't list out every spear, flail, or morning star a goblin wields not to mention small sized armors. Too much crunch, I simply allow PCs to earn money for killing the things, in other ways, like a local authority pays them for their services, plus EXP is its own reward in many ways. Definitely will need to drop things like magnifying glasses and other higher tech level equipment.
Chris_The_Guy 06-23-07, 03:51 AM	I'd try to keep things as much the same as possible mechanically, to save time and effort. For example, though plate mail may not have existed, you can simply come up with a list of armors that did exist and arrange them with the same stats as existing armors. A bronze breastplate could have the same +8 AC that full plate does, since the entire idea of AC is abstract anyway. That way you don't have to worry about balance issues surrounding things like that.
taradusis 06-23-07, 07:26 AM	They used to publish green books for 2 ED set in ancient greece or rome.The greek one was called AGE OF HEROS.The roman one was called GLORY OF EMPIRE.I beleive they're available at RPGNOW as a PDF. download?
swanyusd 06-29-07, 05:28 PM	The use of different armors wouldn't matter too much if you used the class defense bonus variant from Unearthed Arcana. That way, any heavy armors (breastplate would be the biggest that I can think of) would just give DR instead of AC. This fits more with the low-tech concept of classical Greece or whatever. You would probably have to scale down the creatures HPs a bit too, as the damage of the weapons would be less (ie a 1d6 spear vs a 2d6 greatsword would probably yield a creature with 1/2 or 2/3 hp compared to normal). -Swany
Elessar 07-26-07, 01:42 PM	Actually, armor would go higher than breastplate... the Roman legion was known to wear Lorica segmentata, which is more or less banded mail. There were also Persian and later Roman mounted units known as cataphracts (basically lance wielding knights) that wore head to toe scale mail. Technically, that's more coverage than the scale mail from the PHB gives... you could stat it out as half-plate.
NorthWind 07-28-07, 11:52 AM	Why no bows? If I'm not mistaken, crossbows were used as early as 397 B.C. in Greece, and I believe the Romans also had crossbows.
Elessar 07-28-07, 01:13 PM	Well, there wouldn't have been longbows (although D&D longbows, I've noticed, seldom resemble real longbows in pictures), but yeah crossbows of a sort existed back in Antiquity. As early as 5th century BC, the Greeks used a weapon called the gastraphetes. I've never personally read about Romans specifically using crossbows, but since they absorbed pretty much everything from the Greek's ideas, I think it's a safe bet that they did. Also, they definitely at least knew the design and mechanics behind one, since they used ballistae as artillery weapons.
Alltat 07-28-07, 06:14 PM	I'd take out the crossbows, or at least make them a lot more rare. While some siege engineer could probably have made crossbows if he wanted to - at least the technology for it existed - the weapon type was extremely rare at best. Note that 'proper' ballistas work very differently from a crossbow, although they do resemble each other visually.
Elessar 07-28-07, 11:53 PM	link: http://www.frapanthers.com/teachers/white/siege_gallery.htm Hm - Roman ballistae seem to resemble them more than cosmetically. I found this neat link showing the evolution of hand held to siege weapon. Early Greek ballistae seem to have evolved directly from the mounted version of the gastrophetes. The difference between the Greek gastrophetes and the medieval portable crossbow that may have lead the former to the evolution into the ballistae seems to be that the gastrophetes was loaded solely by the muscle of the user. See that U-shaped crook at the end of them? My guess is that it's to brace against the user's body while he loads the bolt. Since they didn't have hand winches at the time, that would have made reloading rather slow (since they were cumbersome for one person to load, they were made bigger so that multiple people could load them using their whole bodies rather than just their arms.) You might rule in your campaign that reloading a crossbow is always a full round action, and discard just light crossbows. I think disallowing PCs from using crossbows is a little iffy, especially since the time period did have precedent for them. They are the PCs after all, and they are exceptional - why not let them carry around weapons that most people don't see everyday? And the only time they'd run into enemies wielding them would be if they ran into some sort of imperial swat team with siege support.
Optimized_Commoner 07-29-07, 12:08 AM	Wait, the romans had crossbows didn't they? EDIT: Oh, I see some people have beaten me to it. The difference between the Greek gastrophetes and the medieval portable crossbow that may have lead the former to the evolution into the ballistae seems to be that the gastrophetes was loaded solely by the muscle of the user. See that U-shaped crook at the end of them? My guess is that it's to brace against the user's body while he loads the bolt. The gastrophetes or "belly bow" is loaded by you putting the U-shaped crook against your stomach and the front end against the ground. By leaning forwards you exert your entire body weight allowing you to load it almost instantly. A ratchet mechanism holds the string once your weight brings it back, then you stick a bolt in it and release the catch to fire. Ancient Civilizations - War and Conflict, a documentary by one of the monty python boys shows one being demonstrated. They are amazingly quick and easy to load, probably easier than the medieval versions which relied on winches and using the strength of your arms, rather than just gravity.
Elessar 07-29-07, 12:51 AM	The gastrophetes or "belly bow" is loaded by you putting the U-shaped crook against your stomach and the front end against the ground. By leaning forwards you exert your entire body weight allowing you to load it almost instantly. A ratchet mechanism holds the string once your weight brings it back, then you stick a bolt in it and release the catch to fire. Ancient Civilizations - War and Conflict, a documentary by one of the monty python boys shows one being demonstrated. They are amazingly quick and easy to load, probably easier than the medieval versions which relied on winches and using the strength of your arms, rather than just gravity. Cool.
Artifact 07-29-07, 02:18 PM	Check out the New Argonauts by Sean K. Reynolds. Its basically a d20 resource for adventuring in mythic Greece. He's giving them away, so I downloaded a free PDF copy from RPGNow.com. I can honestly say, its worth every penny :D. In all seriousness though, I haven't run a "Classical" campaign in years (last time was in the Hollow World setting for Original D&D, I think). The New Argonaughts and a new DVD copy of Clash of the Titans has definitely inspired me to go at it again, and soon! Oh . . . that and 300 ;).
Alltat 07-29-07, 07:55 PM	link: http://www.frapanthers.com/teachers/white/siege_gallery.htm Hm - Roman ballistae seem to resemble them more than cosmetically. Well, technically only the Ballista, Scorpio, Cheiroballista, and the bottom seven on the right side on that page are actually ballistas. A ballista, by definition, uses ropes to provide the power, similar to how the onager works. Not that it makes all that much of a difference to a D&D game; they most likely won't be using any siege weapons anyway. I suppose the main thing is how much realism you're going for. Yes, the technology existed and there were primitive crossbows in use, but it wasn't something that a group of adventurers would have access to. Sure, you can justify it by saying that they're heroic and should have exceptional gear, but by that same reasoning you can justify fullplate, greatswords, or pretty much any standard D&D item. But if you're going to do that, why bother with adapting the rules to fit the classical era?
Elessar 07-30-07, 09:33 AM	I suppose the main thing is how much realism you're going for. Yes, the technology existed and there were primitive crossbows in use, but it wasn't something that a group of adventurers would have access to. Sure, you can justify it by saying that they're heroic and should have exceptional gear, but by that same reasoning you can justify fullplate, greatswords, or pretty much any standard D&D item. But if you're going to do that, why bother with adapting the rules to fit the classical era? If you're going for absolute accuracy then, you could just make the crossbow an exotic proficiency, since presumably not even the majority of Greek and Roman soldiers would have known how to operate it without special training. As for fullplate, the reason behind disallowing this sort of thing and allowing crossbows is that the first represents a later evolution of contemporary concepts (full German armor of the Holy Roman Empire evolved from lorica), while the other actually existed during the time period. The same concept exists behind allowing Renaissance campaigns to include firearms. Were they common enough to be seen all the time? No. Can the PCs use them? I don't see why not. If they're PCs granted the full 20 level progression they have the potential to enact world-affecting events. I don't see why some special technology should be beyond their ken. Especially if we're talking late Antiquity and the technology (in the campaign's real-world counterpart) has been around for some 700 odd years. I'm also going on the assumption that since the original poster didn't say that "fantasy" wasn't still included in the equation (and since he wants to adapt D&D and not some other system), that the level of realism was low to middlin'. But I don't want to labor the point anymore. I'm not a true history buff, just an interested party. I've run a fantasy Roman campaign in the past, and actually found few reasons to change most of the equipment - although in hindsight some weapons might have fit better into the exotic weapon category. I just changed the names: short sword = gladius longsword = spatha shortspear = hasta spear = pilum longspear = contus shortbow = arcus dagger = pugio light shield = cetratus heavy shield = parma tower shield = scutum scale mail = lorica squamata chain mail = lorica hamata banded mail = lorica segmentata Also, thanks for the New Argonauts link. Can't get better than free.