01-23-2006, 09:24 PM
Hmm. Very interesting.
It does seem a bit superfluous to have the the wooden shaft break off to add to the effect of it being un-reusable when the soft iron part does that wonderfully effective by itself. Especially if it hurts the performance of the weapon being thrown.
Of course if I was an advancing enemy and had my shield busted by a lucky toss... I'd pick up the broken Pilum and be damn sure to break at least 1 Roman's skull with it before I went down.
Of course like Jef said, if you cant test it in combat you really dont know how it performs in combat. Or reactions to it.
I bet there were a few unlucky Romans who were on the wrong end of a broken pilum at one point or another.
It does seem a bit superfluous to have the the wooden shaft break off to add to the effect of it being un-reusable when the soft iron part does that wonderfully effective by itself. Especially if it hurts the performance of the weapon being thrown.
Of course if I was an advancing enemy and had my shield busted by a lucky toss... I'd pick up the broken Pilum and be damn sure to break at least 1 Roman's skull with it before I went down.
Of course like Jef said, if you cant test it in combat you really dont know how it performs in combat. Or reactions to it.
I bet there were a few unlucky Romans who were on the wrong end of a broken pilum at one point or another.