Ndeed, Mordraugion is right. Your technique on the sword, or actually any weapon should depend on your opponent, and therefore, his armour.

Armour is usually worn in several layers, mostly two. The first layer consists of padding. Manny layers of fabric often refered to as a gambeson. The padding is worn to increase the stopping distance, therefore decreasing the inpact of the blow.
The seccond layer is worn to protect the first layer from penetration. Leather armour, chainmaille or plate armour. Leather is though and can be hardened by using salt or hot water to make it stronger. Leather still remains the weakest of options for it can be cut. Steel however cannot be cut and has to be pierced. Chainmaille is almost impossible to cut, but can be pierced with verry pointy weapons. Platesteel armour has, unlike chainmaille, the ability to guide a point. A thrusting weapon can easilly slide off the armour, if the angle of inpact is sufficiently smaller or bigger then 90 degrees. Armour of later periods was actually designed in such a fashion to guide the weapon away from the armour`s joints.

Every type of armour has it`s own specific properties and therefore should be dealth with in it`s own manner.
For example;


These are several types of arrowheads. They all have a specific use. From the left to the right; A small head used for hunting, a large head used for horses or other large annimals, a small head used for unarmoured targets, another large head used to cut nerves to cause maximum pain and hopefully pannic to horses, a small thick head used to penetrate plate armour, a long pointy head used to penetrate chainmaille armour.


This is a way of handling your sword called halfsword for obvious reasons. This is ment to enable the fighter to thrust with high accuracy. Using a sword, the only known way to bring someone in platesteel armour down is by wrestling and stabbing to the armour joints.


Well, how it should be in-game I have no idea. I have been studieing Medieval swordmanship for several years now, and I make platesteel armour myself. I have been LARPing for four years now, am a GM myself and still, I have no idea how to represent reallity of Medieval combat in game. I have thought about it a lot, and in my opinion trying to make the fighting realistic comes with so much complexity that I fear it can never be accomplished. But that doesn`t mean it is not worth trying.

Rules according to the armour thus, cannot be seen without regarding the rules according to fighting.
Therefore I say; before looking at the armour, focus on the fighting.

After all, armour is a result of fighting.


(And now I`ll be polite and introduce myself before making aditional posts...  )