Realistically how many commoners would it take to overwhelm a top tier warrior such as Loras, Jaime, or Barristan?

[mystickristoff]

Let's say there's a riot, right? And orders are to kill the commoners that are attacking. Barristan OR Jaime, being Kingsguards obey their orders and start killing off the attackers. The attackers are armed with everyday items you may find at a market such as a hammer or a thick stick and whatnot. Commoners won't have formal fighting training, let alone wielding a weapon.

How many do you think would Jaime or Barristan be able to slaughter before becoming overwhelmed? Note, Jaime OR Barristan, not both. A hypothetical Loras too.

[Smoother Than a Storm]

I think it would take an expert on medieval combat to answer this.

[Man of Many Faces]

I don't know, like 20? But I agree that it would probably take an expert on medieval combat to know the realistic answer.

[Mitbert Strangejoy]

It depends. Are they armored? On horseback?

If they're unarmored, about 4 men could do the trick if they were properly motivated. I know people have fantastic notions about Selmy's and Dayne's martial prowess, but fighting 4 people at once is an incredible feat.

If they're just armored, 10 or so should do the trick.

If they're armored and on horseback, the commoners are screwed.

[Alester Florent]

It depends almost entirely on the circumstances. If they are holding a doorway or stairway, somewhere where they can only be attacked pretty much one-on-one, they could probably hold off an almost indefinite number, at least until either exhaustion set in or the attackers' morale collapsed. But if sent out into a large mob that can surround them... they'd probably kill a couple but it would only take a relatively small advantage in numbers to overwhelm them, grab them from behind, and so on. On horseback they stand a better chance but even then they're not invincible and would have to keep moving. If they get bogged down they can be pulled out of the saddle and killed.

In the King's Landing riots we saw how even otherwise fairly decent and well-equipped warriors were overwhelmed by numbers, on horseback or no. They mght have been the absolute cream of the crop but in that sort of situation skill is not as important as it might be.

[Damon_Tor]

Let's say there's a riot, right? And orders are to kill the commoners that are attacking. Barristan OR Jaime, being Kingsguards obey their orders and start killing off the attackers. The attackers are armed with everyday items you may find at a market such as a hammer or a thick stick and whatnot. Commoners won't have formal fighting training, let alone wielding a weapon.

How many do you think would Jaime or Barristan be able to slaughter before becoming overwhelmed? Note, Jaime OR Barristan, not both. A hypothetical Loras too.

Fully armored and equipped with a shield, Jaime Lannister has a Combat Defense of 10 and an Armor Rating of 10: generic "smallfolk" have a fighting rank of just 1. The most they can roll is 6, and even if they use the "assistance" action that can only boost them to 8, not enough to overcome his Combat Defense. Another peasant would have to use the "distract" action which is only effective 40% of the time in this case, to reduce his combat defense by 2 again, leaving him with 8, exactly enough for the assisted peasant to land a single hit... a hit that does nothing, because it's absorbed entirely by his armor.

So peasants are utterly incapable of harming Jaime Lannister directly. However, if they keep him occupied long enough eventually he will become dehydrated: with an endurance rank of 4, Jaime can go 2 days before he begins to have to get thirsty, and on the third day he'll have to pass an endurance check with a difficulty of 6 (which he should pass easily) However, on the fourth day he will need to pass a difficulty test of 9, then 12, then 15 and so on: his average endurance result is 14, so day six is when he will begin failing these tests more often than he passes them. Once he fails 4 of these tests, he dies, so by day 10 he's statistically likely to die. This is compounded by the fact that he will also become sleepy and hungry on day 4, but let's not complicate things

Jaime can kill an average of 3 peasants (using a divided attack) every round, and a round is about ten seconds, so he's killing 18 peasants every minute, 1080 peasants an hour, 25920 peasants a day.

So in other words, it would take 259,200 peasants to kill Jaime Lannister.

[mdw4950]

Let's say there's a riot, right? And orders are to kill the commoners that are attacking. Barristan OR Jaime, being Kingsguards obey their orders and start killing off the attackers. The attackers are armed with everyday items you may find at a market such as a hammer or a thick stick and whatnot. Commoners won't have formal fighting training, let alone wielding a weapon.

How many do you think would Jaime or Barristan be able to slaughter before becoming overwhelmed? Note, Jaime OR Barristan, not both. A hypothetical Loras too.

closest weve come to a situation like this, that i can think of off the top of my head at least, is the hound during the riot of kings landing. the commoners were about as violent as you could get during that and sandor made it back twice from the mob. inside the red keep someone mentions how they watched him get swarmed after joffrey sent him into the crowd but he just popped back in and only seemed to be worried about his horse. when he goes back out a second time he saves sansa and later mentions to her how outnumbered he was but people were still afraid of him.

in a situation like this the hound probably has somewhat of an advantage over the three you mentioned though. commoners might not recognize jaime, loras or barristan as who they actually are right away and wouldnt scare as easily. on the other side a lot of commoners would know exactly who a 6'8 sandor with his signature helmet is right away. based off his reputation and appearance, id assume most commoners would be more likely to be scared of the hound in that situation than they would someone whos just wearing kings guard armor.

if a mob like that really tried to kill jaime or barristan, they would. the only thing that saved the hound during the riot was people being afraid to act. even if they killed him, he was going to easily take some people down with him and no one wanted to test those odds.

[DraculaAD1972]

Fully armored and equipped with a shield, Jaime Lannister has a Combat Defense of 10 and an Armor Rating of 10: generic "smallfolk" have a fighting rank of just 1. The most they can roll is 6, and even if they use the "assistance" action that can only boost them to 8, not enough to overcome his Combat Defense. Another peasant would have to use the "distract" action which is only effective 40% of the time in this case, to reduce his combat defense by 2 again, leaving him with 8, exactly enough for the assisted peasant to land a single hit... a hit that does nothing, because it's absorbed entirely by his armor.

So peasants are utterly incapable of harming Jaime Lannister directly. However, if they keep him occupied long enough eventually he will become dehydrated: with an endurance rank of 4, Jaime can go 2 days before he begins to have to get thirsty, and on the third day he'll have to pass an endurance check with a difficulty of 6 (which he should pass easily) However, on the fourth day he will need to pass a difficulty test of 9, then 12, then 15 and so on: his average endurance result is 14, so day six is when he will begin failing these tests more often than he passes them. Once he fails 4 of these tests, he dies, so by day 10 he's statistically likely to die. This is compounded by the fact that he will also become sleepy and hungry on day 4, but let's not complicate things

Jaime can kill an average of 3 peasants (using a divided attack) every round, and a round is about ten seconds, so he's killing 18 peasants every minute, 1080 peasants an hour, 25920 peasants a day.

So in other words, it would take 259,200 peasants to kill Jaime Lannister.

10 days of constant slaughtering of peasantry, without pause and with no water, seems a bit much. Jaime isn't Hercules. He could probably last a few hours at best before the 18-peasant-a-minute target starts to take its toll.

[Smoother Than a Storm]

10 days of constant slaughtering of peasantry, without pause and with no water, seems a bit much. Jaime isn't Hercules. He could probably last a few hours at best before the 18-peasant-a-minute target starts to take its toll.

Peasants-per-minute is my new favorite statistic.

[ilikethesebooks]

3 ? 5? As soon as he's on the ground it's basically over

[Iron Stag]

Barristan killed 12 of Ned and Robert's friends at the Trident before being cut down. I'm assuming Ned and Robert's friends were likely all nobles/knights due to their high status as Lord Paramounts, so I'd say that Barristans probably hitting close to that number again if not higher since he probably isn't fighting armed and trained men this time

[Iron Stag]

But yeah, as soon as they get to the ground the fights over (isn't this what happened to Greenfield?)

[polythenehigh]

Depends completely on the circumstances, defending a point where you can not be surrounded and only 1 or 2 can approach at once would last the longest but eventually exhaustion would set in or you might make a new body wall before then which stops anyone approaching. If they have surrounded you and you have maybe people coming from 3 directions combined with missiles being thrown... Id say 20-30 could handle it if they were bold enough.. seeing a couple of their companions get gutted might make them suddenly remember the Iron they left on at home..

[ilikethesebooks]

It's all circumstance. One of them alone in an alley? Maybe 3? Alone in a stairwell? Maybe 30? With friends? Who knows?

[oopeed]

Well, I don't know much about swordmanship, but being black belt in nippon kempo I say 4 guys should do the trick... I'm 6'4" and 200 pounds but even I doubt I could handle three motivated men unless I had an obvious advantage like higher ground or a narrow stairwell... Apparently swordsmanship was quite different at medieval times than in fantasy literature, but even then fighting 3+ men is quite a feat.

Now, if those man had swords, it would actually play against them as their lack of training would put them in disadvantage, but three guys with axes and crude shields should not have the same trouble... same goes for guys armed with chains, rocks and those kind of crude weapons used in a riot.

A stampede of six or ten men would do the trick regardless of circumstances.

People often overrate the martial skills of characters and believe they could handle an entire army.

Even having a short spear or a katana, two weapons good for holding your ground, I doubt anyone could manage 4 people coming from different sides.

If you doubt it... even grown dragons couldn't survive in a riot. And Dragons are badass as hell.

[Jasta11]

Since this isn't World of Warcraft and being level 100 doesn't mean you can slaughter armies of level 10 mooks, 3 or 4 at most. It just takes one guy having a good grapple on you or coming from behind and it's game over. In that scenario, actually, a giant like Gregor Clegane has a better chance of surviving thanks to his massive reach and bulk.

Assuming of course it's just said great swordsman vs their opponents. In the chaos of a battle, a skilled mounted warriors can kill a lot of enemies that are on foot, but that's not the same thing.

Hell, Sandor was almost killed by 3 random chumps, and survived only because Arya helped him. So was Brienne. Being a skilled with a sword is great, but doesn't make you Superman.