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If the armor the players are expecting the knight/paladin to be wearing is TL4, why not just make the campaign TL4?
A weapon that becomes preeminent about the same time: The gun.
While I don't think they would cause too much of a problem in the game, they don't match expectations.
Matching those expectations is how we ended up having Henry the VIII's jousting armor worn on foot in a dungeon. Page 39-40 of GURPS Loadouts Low-Tech Armor has the suit that everyone thinks of when they "full plate".
The 15th Century German Ritter full suit is 46.7 lb. and runs $21,860.
The French 14th Century Chevalier is prolly what a TL3 dude would wear. 110.7 lb. $6,610.
Higher TL is better.
There's a trite solution.
Dwarves or Elves figured out a way to make steel in larger quantities. Typically I decide the Elves figured out magic and the Dwarves the blast furnace (perhaps with magic too).
But nobody advances to TL4 in chemistry and there's simply no gunpowder.
Elven and Dwarven plate is TL4 and available, and it's double cost because the base campaign is TL3.
Easy peasy.
Once you enter other races and magic in, then it's a different story. And all good with me. Making the Elves and Dwarves the master sword craftsmen and the blacksmiths and masters of the forge fits with what a lot of people expect in a fantasy setting anyway. That being Tolkein as a major influence. Maybe sometimes an overused one, but it is and has always been a rich source material.
ReplyDelete-swj
The Scandinavian/Germanic Alfar and Duergar (Elves and Dwarves) are what Tolkein, being a scholar of Scandinavian/Germanic lore, based his Elves and Dwarves upon.
DeleteElves go for light and elegant use of metals, swords and spears and such. Dwarves go for light and strong, armor and axes and smashy things.
But it's the stuuuupid humans who combine both genres of metal working to make lighter, elegant and strong weapons and armor. Maybe not as light as Alfar or Duergar equivalent pieces, but stuuuupid humans learn, oh, yes, indeedy, they do.
Again, in Scandinavian lore, capturing an Alfar or Duergar metalsmith and enslaving them was a thing. A dangerous thing, but a thing. And having the smith teach stuuuupid humans the tricks.
Then, again in Scandinavian lore, there were a few human smiths who ascended even the powers of the Alfar and Duegar. Often using star metals and such. Star metals being good nickle-iron meteorites, of course, which are found often in the Scandinavian (mostly upper Norse or Swedish areas.)
History confirms the Scandinavian lore on this star metal. Pattern-welded blades of metal far more advanced at the time than the standard.
Access to high-quality ore aides making high-quality metal items, as long as the smiths in question know the secrets of the ore-to-metal process.
And then there's middle-medieval period water-powered bellows, preceded by multi-human powered bellows that allowed for much more air to be introduced into the smelting and smithing processes.
It's all very complicated both via lore and actual history. What is found in one area isn't found in another, and wildly varies by country, region, time period, who's in control, who's not in control, climate change (variations between warming and cooling periods affected stuuupid humans quite a lot, especially with the corresponding blooms of humans (warming) and blooms of diseases (cooling.)
Now plug that into GURPS...