Chainmail Combat with OD&D

[Matthew]

Sept 20, 2009 18:22:01 GMT -6 coffee said:

Okay, I'll bite: Why not?

Well... a few reasons. In general, history made for television in the current climate (even for the History Channel) is made primarily to entertain and its final form depends far more on the money men than the historical advisers. A good rule of thumb is if something is being narrated it means they could not get a historian to say it.

Terry Jones is an entertainer first and foremost, but my observation of his programmes is that he also has something of a sensationalist, and sometimes political, agenda. In particular his crusades series was much reviled for being very inaccurate and out of date, even at the time of production. His Medieval Lives series is entertaining, but it only tells half the story, if that, because it concentrates on the funny or tragic bits. Lacking context, it is basically a form of popular history, and its chief virtue is that it may inspire somebody to actually inquire into the subject more thoroughly.

Now, to be fair, that is the nature of modern history programming and it is not like you have a lot of time to deal with potentially intricate subjects, so perhaps he can be forgiven for dealing only with the highlights. Nonetheless, a series like Weapons That Made Britain is much more credible because the fellow presenting it is actually an expert in his field and also familiar with the ins and outs of television productions. His chief purpose is to convey information, entertainment is secondary.

Terry Jones, on the other hand as I understand it, hires people to do his research for him and when questioned on a subject, such as his Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery turns out to have less knowledge on the subject than one would hope. Indeed, his four co-authors are probably much better people to ask. ;D

So, not to defame the man, as he is clearly intelligent and interested in the subject matter, I would not trust much of what I heard him say on the television because the explaining of history is subordinate to its purpose as entertainment.

[aldarron]

I will second Matthew on this one. Frequently, I notice plain factual errors, or more commonly, overstatements, overgeneralizations, and misapplied facts when watching History Channel, Discovery, PBS, BBC, whatever programs dealing with archaeology, prehistory, viking age and other topics I am familiar with. These errors are not coming from the experts - what they have to say is never the issue - its coming from the "explanations" of the narrator. In many cases its really clear that the staff writer really did not understand what the academics were saying, grabbed on to some "fact" and ran wild with it. It makes me wonder how much nonsense I swallow when I'm watching some science and technology show or something I don't know anythig about and blythly take in whatever the narrator tells me.

[thegreyelf]

Sept 20, 2009 19:21:59 GMT -6 Matthew said:

Well... a few reasons. In general, history made for television in the current climate (even for the History Channel) is made primarily to entertain and its final form depends far more on the money men than the historical advisers. A good rule of thumb is if something is being narrated it means they could not get a historian to say it.

Heh. My favorite professor at Pitt used to always say, "The History Channel: God bless 'em...they try so hard..."

I still think that--despite the factual, historical accuracy of your arguments, the debate about determining troop type based on training, qualifications, and all that severely over-complicates things for a game, and goes against the readings implicit in the book...but we can agree to disagree on that all day long. Simple fact of the matter is that basing it on weapons and armor works, and works well for OD&D, which should always be held strictly to the KISS principle.

[coffee]

I figured it was something like that.

Thanks, Matthew, for your response (particularly about not wanting to defame the man; he is one of my favorites). I do understand that he can't give us the entire story in a short programme. I'm still trying to find the book and I'm hoping that because of his co-authors it will be much more informative.

The main thing I get from programmes like that is that I do not, in fact, know all that much. I have a few books on the period and enjoy reading them, but I'm by no means a historian (even an amateur one). So I take what I can get.

And thak you, too, Greyelf, for getting us back on track. I do tend to derail threads around here, but in the end I mean well.

(I will say, about the American version of the History Channel anyway: Thank God it's no longer "The Hitler Channel", which is what they seemed to be for a while.)

[Matthew]

Sept 20, 2009 20:49:52 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

Heh. My favorite professor at Pitt used to always say, "The History Channel: God bless 'em...they try so hard..."

Sept 20, 2009 20:10:15 GMT -6 aldarron said:

I will second Matthew on this one. Frequently, I notice plain factual errors, or more commonly, overstatements, overgeneralizations, and misapplied facts when watching History Channel, Discovery, PBS, BBC, whatever programs dealing with archaeology, prehistory, viking age and other topics I am familiar with. These errors are not coming from the experts - what they have to say is never the issue - its coming from the "explanations" of the narrator. In many cases its really clear that the staff writer really did not understand what the academics were saying, grabbed on to some "fact" and ran wild with it. It makes me wonder how much nonsense I swallow when I'm watching some science and technology show or something I don't know anything about and blithely take in whatever the narrator tells me.

Heh, heh. Indeed. When you realise the problems with history shows on subjects you have actually studied it throws the whole genre into chaos as the probability is that similar errors are being accepted by you on subjects you otherwise know nothing about. This leaves the viewer in the unenviable position of either "not watching" and missing out on the entertainment and any chance of receiving new ideas and information that he might otherwise not be exposed to, or watching with a very critical demeanour, which reduces the value of the show as entertainment.

My father was particularly disappointed when I explained to him that HBO's Rome was not simply dramatisation of actual events, but wholesale fiction written against a background of historical events. It leaves one wondering about the effects of information presented as fact on the general population in a "War of the Worlds" sort of way.

Sept 20, 2009 21:41:09 GMT -6 coffee said:

I figured it was something like that.

Thanks, Matthew, for your response (particularly about not wanting to defame the man; he is one of my favourites). I do understand that he can't give us the entire story in a short programme. I'm still trying to find the book and I'm hoping that because of his co-authors it will be much more informative.

The main thing I get from programmes like that is that I do not, in fact, know all that much. I have a few books on the period and enjoy reading them, but I'm by no means a historian (even an amateur one). So I take what I can get.

And thank you, too, Greyelf, for getting us back on track. I do tend to derail threads around here, but in the end I mean well.

(I will say, about the American version of the History Channel anyway: Thank God it's no longer "The Hitler Channel", which is what they seemed to be for a while.)

No worries. If you do manage to get hold of the book, do be sure to check the bibliography and follow up on anything that catches your attention. Academia is in fact a lot more accessible than people tend to think, it is just a matter of following the paper trail. Some otherwise excellent books have very short print runs and end up running into the hundreds of dollars/pounds to get hold of, or are simply too expensive to begin with (The Cambridge Histories are a great example), but many others are more easily obtained.

Sept 20, 2009 20:49:52 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

I still think that--despite the factual, historical accuracy of your arguments, the debate about determining troop type based on training, qualifications, and all that severely over-complicates things for a game, and goes against the readings implicit in the book...but we can agree to disagree on that all day long. Simple fact of the matter is that basing it on weapons and armor works, and works well for OD&D, which should always be held strictly to the KISS principle.

I am not sure that it does make things too complicated, because it just means that the arms and armour of troop types end up being slightly more subjectively judged than the direct proposition. In most cases light foot are not going to be armoured in plate, or heavy foot for that matter, but could easily range from unarmoured to shielded or half armoured. For instance, if we were to characterise the Anglo-Saxon army we might go with:

Peasants: Unarmoured
Levies (General Fyrd): Shield
Heavy Foot (Select Fyrd): Shield, and some with Mail
Elite Heavy Foot (Huscarls): Mail and Shield

Light Foot (General Fyrd): Bow and unarmoured
Elite Light Foot (Select Fyrd): Bow, Shield and some with Mail

Really the issue is with what level of detail the game master is comfortable adjudicating. In this case I think adhering too strictly to a KISS methodology may be too inhibiting, and somewhat misleading.

[thegreyelf]

I guess we can agree to disagree on that, Matthew. People who want more detail will always want more detail--I'm just in the opposite school.

[snorri]

Back to the same issue the armor-worn as troop class could be easily adopted for game purpose, considering we don't seek from such a system a total accuracy. But what about the attack class ? Why would changing of armor makes one a better attacker ? For Chainmail, this isn't a problem, as troop class for both attack and defence purpose is a feature of each miniature. For Od&d trying to stick close to Chainmail, the lack of way to get an attack class (by a random or class method) is a gap to fill.
Matthew suggestion is nice to design a setting with troop class, but how to make it fit to any character ?

It seems difficult to do it by class (even if the sheme MU = light, Cleric = Medium and Fighter=Heavy is an easy temptation), as the Wizard class is : "all this class will fight as two Armored Foot, or two Medium Horse if mounted, and Wizards can handle magical weaponry."

[thegreyelf]

It doesn't. In my rules I equate attacking with arms. A bastard sword makes you a better attacker than a knife. A two-handed great sword makes you a better attacker, but (I think I included this bit...if I didn't I need to update) degrades your defensive ability.

[thegreyelf]

Something else just hit me: when using Chainmail combat with some monsters, there's no way to gauge their attacks, this assuming you don't use the fantasy combat table for every single monster that doesn't fight with weapons. But let's say you have a breed of goblin, for example, that's 1 hit die and well within the capability of normal people to fight, but is so savage it uses claws and teeth? What then?

My solution: use the Dagger entry in the M2M combat table, and increase the "to hit" scores by one across the board. In the Troop Type system, of course, they simply fight as Light Foot and defend based upon whatever their AC would indicate.

[aldarron]

Nov 19, 2009 13:37:31 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

But let's say you have a breed of goblin, for example, that's 1 hit die and well within the capability of normal people to fight, but is so savage it uses claws and teeth? What then?

Then its not 1 HD., its two or three depending on how ferocious you think it is.

[thegreyelf]

Why? Why does its ability to use claws and teeth automatically mean that it can suck up more damage as well? I don't agree that simply having a natural weapon equates to being tougher to kill.

[aldarron]

Ah, taking more damage. Sorry, I'm thinking Arnesonian here, meaning the damage of a given type of creature is fixed and hit dice applies to the damage roll. I think the text is ambiguous regarding the application of the bonus and that gives anonther possibility. We're told the bonus applies to the attack, and while attack would seem to mean the to hit roll, it might concievably mean the damage roll. If you chose to read the HD bonus in OD&D as applying to only to extra damage (not the to hit roll), that could solve your problem without altering the HD so you could continue to use them to generate randome HP amounts. It may be Arneson was using it that way in FFC with his strange 8 HD +5 for Svensons soldiers <shrug>. I know you don't favor that idea though, so a more Gygaxian solution might be to keep HD for hp only and have a seperate "Fighting Capability" for your Goblin as is done for characters.

[thegreyelf]

I think we have a miscommunication going on (sorry, just re-read and noticed this).

Actually, what I'm talking about is using the Man to Man tables to score creatures with natural weapons. Using the man-to-man system, a monster gets one attack per hit die, which is straightforward enough...but what weapon entry does the creature use, if it doesn't have weapons but uses claws and/or teeth? My solution was to score claws and teeth as "dagger -1."

[tombowings]

I just stumbled across Forbidden Lore a couple of week ago. I've written a review on my blog if anyone is interested in checking it out.

[thegreyelf]

Excellent, thanks!

[aldarron]

I’ve been mulling over my chainmail with OD&D notes and reread this thread. The idea of converting AC ratings to “Troop type” ratings seem pretty sound to me but I find the objections raised by Snorri and Matthew interesting, namely that troop type rating might be based on a range of characteristics rather than just arms and armor class. There doesn’t seem to be any examples from Gygax that tell us one way or another, but I knew there were a couple references from Arneson that might shed some light at least on how he saw it so I decided to dig a little deeper and found three cases wher equipment and troop type are specified:

In First Fantasy Campaign, buried in the tables of Blackmoor Forces (from about 1973 or 1974) these two show up a couple times each:

Bow Armed - Equip light horse only
Pike Armed - Equip Heavy or Armored foot only

The Pikemen seem to fit the model okay, but archers are supposed to be light foot in Chainmail. Perhaps these are special horse archers? It is also ambiguous if the meaning is that they attack as archers but defend as light cavalry, perhaps due to “equipment”

The last case- from Supplement II, Temple of the Frog (1975) - is a lot more interesting.

"First level of the Dungeon
Barracks Room
...All men are as heavy infantry with either leather and shield and/or studded leather and shield with either swords or spears.”

Swords and spears are certainly weapons that can fall in the heavy foot category, but in some of the breakdowns of AC to troop type, leather armor and shield gets classified as “Light Foot”, most, however, such as the more recent versions from GreyElf, do have leather and shield as Heavy Foot.

So either Arneson was using a breakdown similar to GreyElf's(LF = AC8-9, HF = 7-4, AF = 3-2, or Jasons alternative classification "where shields matter" of LF = AC7-9, HF = 6-4, AF = 3-2) or the “and situations” part of the “arms and situations” quote meant that they were really making a judgement call of the nature of the troops rather than their arms and armor per se. For D&D it’s probably most efficient to work with a different AC breakdown than to try to assign troop type by some other characteristics, I guess, and this one bit of evidence from the time period does agree with the AC to Troop type schemes being presented.

[aldarron]

Yeah, and then I had to go and notice this:

"Example of Bandits: ...
Composition of Force: Light Foot (Leather Armor & Shield) = 40%; Short Bow
(Leather Armor) or Light Crossbow (same) = 25%; Light Horse (Leather Armor &
Shield) = 25%; Medium Horse (Chain Mail & Shield, no horse barding) = 20%. All
super-normal individuals with the force will be riding Heavy, barded horses."
Monsters and Treasure, P. 5

So same armor - leather and shield - is here classed as Light Foot. Ugh. I note that on one hand we have professional soldiers - the temple guards, and on the other we have bandits. So it looks as if "situations" are a significant determining factor here. Maybe the trick then is arguing that the "& shields" in the AC table provides breaks that could go either way depending on the nature of the combatant.

Like this:

Lite Foot - AC 9-7
Heavy Foot - AC 7-4
Armored Foot - AC 4-2

So AC 7 and 4 could go either way and could be refined by class, such that for fighters and clerics its always the heavier rating and for thieves its always the lighter rating. I suppose monsters are a judgement call.

[thegreyelf]

I prefer to leave class as "x number of men," based on combat ability. This is how I'm running it in my Age of Conan game and it's working very well.

[aldarron]

May 4, 2010 19:54:39 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

I prefer to leave class as "x number of men," based on combat ability. This is how I'm running it in my Age of Conan game and it's working very well.

Yeah, I don't think Fighting Capability would be affected, just your troop type on the Mass Combat tables.

[thegreyelf]

Right, right. Your final guess, which leaves an overlap between the top and bottom values of each troop type, is quite valid, and could easily (and perhaps should) replace what I have. It leaves a degree of DM fiat in play which should unarguably be there in OD&D.

[Matthew]

Here is an interesting note in the Nomad entry of Monsters & Treasures:

"Encampments will be guarded by an additional 20-40 medium foot with composite bows."

At first I thought it must be some sort of mistake, given that "medium foot" are never mentioned anywhere else and the nomads are otherwise all mounted, but then it occurred to me that this might represent dismounted guards, after the fashion of other war games [i.e. medium horse dismount as medium foot, or the like]. That could argue for weight of equipment as informing troop classification, but on the other hand most of the nomad horsemen are classified as "light".

Anyway, I had not noticed this before, though I imagine other more eagle eyed readers have.

[snorri]

I can't remember if the following table has allready been studied, crossing defnce class and armor class for known monsters:

Name / Defence class Armor class
Sprites / Light foot / 6
Dwarves / Light foot / 4
Gnomes / Light foot / 5
Goblins / Light foot / 6
Kobolds / Light foot / 7
Elves / Heavy foot / 5
Orcs / Heavy foot / 6

It's pretty clear that it will be difficult to match them exactly, as AC6 can be light foot or heavy foot... But the Chainmail's defence class includes aspects which would in OD&D be a part of Hit points.

[Malchor]

On a "Guidon D&D" thread about the use of ranged weapons and "hit to wound," derv commented:

The missile tables are verbatim Chainmail with the addition of "hit to wound" scores. Are you asking where the idea of HTK originated? Chainmail is a HTK system. Things get a little cramped trying to incorporate "wounding" with a 2d6 (roll high) and the probabilities naturally get a little wonky when squeezing scores into such a pre-existing table.

This led me to wonder the following — as a way to use Chainmail for D&D:

• Thought: In Chainmails mass combat system you had 1 figure represent 20 soldiers. A hit resulted in a number of soldiers being killed—using Appendix A. So in a sense, you could look at it as a "swarm of humans" with a total hit point value of 20.
• Question: Could you adapt Appendix A to count the number of points of damage to a single combatant in melee or from a hit by a ranged weapon? (Note: this is not how BTPBD does it, I'm just curious about using it as a method).

Is this a feasible replacement for "a hit = a kill" found in the man-to-man system in Chainmail?

Has anyone actually done it this way?

[derv]

I use Appendix A for mixed scale combats. I think the basic accepted idea is that 1 man = 1 HD. A kill on the Combat Table is one HD damage. So, at 1:1 a normal man would take one hit to kill. But a hero would take 4 hits to kill.

[Malchor]

Sept 1, 2018 9:41:41 GMT -6 derv said:

I use Appendix A for mixed scale combats. I think the basic accepted idea is that 1 man = 1 HD. A kill on the Combat Table is one HD damage. So, at 1:1 a normal man would take one hit to kill. But a hero would take 4 hits to kill.

You had me up to a point.

In Chainmail 1 figure = 20 soldiers (purposely not using "man" to avoid confusion).

A Playing Character = 1 figure = 20 HP out of the gate (a fighter is 20 + 1 = 21) — just following this experiment, sure you can role HP on 1d6, but then you would need to tweak the number of kills on Appendix A, for now, I will assume 20 hp.

Appendix A deals between 4-6 kills (again, against a 1 figure representing 20 soldiers).

In this case, a Hero is as powerful as 4 figures = 80 soldiers = 80HP.

So in this case, 1 Hit Die = 1 figure = 20 HP.


If you wanted to scale 1 Hit Die to a 1-6 HP (a 1d6 roll), then we need a way to scale it all back about 1/3 to get to 1 figure = 6 soldiers = 6 HP, then reduce damage on Appendix A by about 1/3, which works out to basically 1, 2, or 3 points damage per hit. If I was using something like that I would then include a critical hit system to double damage so you can get an instant kill on the off chance. I'm usually not into crits, but this system calls out for it as using it gives you most combat needing more than one hit to kill (a problem in the first Blackmoor game using Chainmail) and yet still leave the danger (and excitement) of a one hit kill.

This is looking only at damage and not getting into things like number of attacks (e.g., for a Hero).

[derv]

Sept 1, 2018 10:03:17 GMT -6 Malchor said:

Sept 1, 2018 9:41:41 GMT -6 derv said:

I use Appendix A for mixed scale combats. I think the basic accepted idea is that 1 man = 1 HD. A kill on the Combat Table is one HD damage. So, at 1:1 a normal man would take one hit to kill. But a hero would take 4 hits to kill.

You had me up to a point.

In Chainmail 1 figure = 20 soldiers (purposely not using "man" to avoid confusion).

A Playing Character = 1 figure = 20 HP out of the gate (a fighter is 20 + 1 = 21) — just following this experiment, sure you can role HP on 1d6, but then you would need to tweak the number of kills on Appendix A, for now, I will assume 20 hp.

Appendix A deals between 4-6 kills (again, against a 1 figure representing 20 soldiers).

In this case, a Hero is as powerful as 4 figures = 80 soldiers = 80HP.

So in this case, 1 Hit Die = 1 figure = 20 HP.


If you wanted to scale 1 Hit Die to a 1-6 HP (a 1d6 roll), then we need a way to scale it all back about 1/3 to get to 1 figure = 6 soldiers = 6 HP, then reduce damage on Appendix A by about 1/3, which works out to basically 1, 2, or 3 points damage per hit. If I was using something like that I would then include a critical hit system to double damage so you can get an instant kill on the off chance. I'm usually not into crits, but this system calls out for it as using it gives you most combat needing more than one hit to kill (a problem in the first Blackmoor game using Chainmail) and yet still leave the danger (and excitement) of a one hit kill.

This is looking only at damage and not getting into things like number of attacks (e.g., for a Hero).

In Chainmail a figure can equal whatever scale you choose. The published rules suggest 1:20 for mass combat. Earlier versions used 1:10. 1:1 is just as viable an option. The key is that we are dealing with individual figures that are intended to be of the same ratio.

In D&D a character with an average of 20 hp's would be a 6th level fighter. A 6th level fighter would have 6 attacks against normal men (your 1:20 figure) because he is equal to 6 normal men in ability. At 1:20, your normal figure is worth 20 men. At 1:10 he equals 10 and at 1:1 he can equal one man.

To equal the scales you would need a 10th level fighter fighting at 1:10 against normal figures. This wouldn't account for magic armor and weapons.

edit: Ah, I think I see the confusion. Apendix A doesn't deal 4-6 kills. It gives the result of a kill on the roll of 4-6 on a d6. And that's only against Light Foot troops.

[Malchor]

Sept 1, 2018 10:30:47 GMT -6 derv said:

In D&D a character with an average of 20 hp's would be a 6th level fighter. 

Why? How do you arrive at this?  See Men & Magic page 16 for how derv got to this.

Men & Magic lists Hit Die, but does not tell us what a Hit Die is. It can be a d6, but that is not defined in the book, so it can just as easily be something else.  Bzzzz... My bad, Zenopus  reminds be below that yes, Men & Magic page 16 all but spells out the use of a d6.

As mentioned in my comment below, I should have pointed out that I was using 1 HD = 20 hp as a starting point based off Chainmail's 1:20 ratio of 1 figure = 20 soldiers, but did adjust down to closer to a 1:6 ratio to make it work with a d6/HD in determining Hit Points. That would have been the smart thing, rather than saying something dumb like the striked out text, which I will admit I kept thinking I should double check before hitting send.

Edit: Ate some crow, made come corrections to incorrect statements.

[Zenopus]

Sept 1, 2018 10:42:26 GMT -6 Malchor said:

Sept 1, 2018 10:30:47 GMT -6 derv said:

In D&D a character with an average of 20 hp's would be a 6th level fighter. 

Why? How do you arrive at this?

Men & Magic lists Hit Die, but does not tell us what a Hit Die is. It can be a d6, but that is not defined in the book, so it can just as easily be something else.

The example on page 18 suggests a d6 is rolled --- "Thus a Super Hero gets 8 dice + 2; they are rolled and score 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6/totals 26 + 2 = 28"
Plus when the rules state "die" or "dice" without specifying further it generally means a d6.

[derv]

I think d6 HD is generally accepted for OD&D prior to Greyhawk. But, you tell me what a HD is worth. It still needs to average for both the 1:20 figure and the character. Are you suggesting you use d10 HD and damage for all your characters in D&D?

[Malchor]

Sept 1, 2018 10:59:57 GMT -6 derv said:

I think d6 HD is generally accepted for OD&D prior to Greyhawk. But, you tell me what a HD is worth. It still needs to average for both the 1:20 figure and the character. Are you suggesting you use d10 HD and damage for all your characters in D&D?

Sept 1, 2018 10:52:37 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

The example on page 18 suggests a d6 is rolled --- "Thus a Super Hero gets 8 dice + 2; they are rolled and score 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6/totals 26 + 2 = 28"
Plus when the rules state "die" or "dice" without specifying further it generally means a d6.

Going to address both of the above together.

Yes, generally accepted for sure—but more importantly all but spelled out on page 18 as Zenopus reminds us (knew I should have double checked before saying a d6 was not specified).

That said, I'm not arguing against following the generally accepted, nor ignoring page 18, but if Appendix A can be, or has been used, in the manner I suggest.


I first went through it without modification, which results in 20hp per hit die, but then adjusted downward from 1:20 to about 1:6 to bring things back to a HD = 1d6.

In retrospect, I should have pointed that out the adjustment rather than made an erroneous case for HD not being defined. 

So, taking a step back and ignoring that bit (which I added an edit to) and bringing us back to Appendix A.

I also missed where derv said "basic accepted idea" and read it as, the first "I use" and then "...I think the idea..." in the below.

I use Appendix A for mixed scale combats. I think the basic accepted idea is that 1 man = 1 HD. A kill on the Combat Table is one HD damage. So, at 1:1 a normal man would take one hit to kill. But a hero would take 4 hits to kill.

Correct, Appendix A is for mixed scale combats—no one will argue that. And you are correct that I am asking about something outside of the "basic accepted idea."

Man to Man is generally accepted to be 1 man = 1 HD = one hit to kill, p 41, "Roll two dice, score equal to or greater than the number shown kills."

Why I am asking is that in early versions of D&D (maybe this was not the thread to ask, but the original thread that spurred me to ask was not right either) in Blackmoor anyway, the story goes that the first time they tried using Chainmail for man-to-man combat, there were complaints from the players about the nature of one-hit death. Hit points are a way to fix this, giving the character the ability to take on multiple hits. OK, but now that the character can take multiple hits, does it: a) take one hit of damage per hit, b) roll a d6 per hit (the currently accepted way for LBB play), c) use some variation of Appendix A  to do 1-3 points, maybe with a 2x damage on a crit.

I get it that the last one is not how we do it now, but was curious if anyone has done something like this or run across it. The answer might be no, but figured it was worth asking. 

Either way, I am putting it on my list of ways I might try applying Chainmail to resolve combat to D&D.