Since leather and especially studded leather armors are stupid as shit, should they be replaced by the gambeson as the definitive light armor?
>>94364061Gambeson is useless against slashing weapons
>>94364061What you mean by replaced? I always just say "gambeson" instead of "leather armor " when running my games. Do you?
>>94364080No it isn't. Try cutting through that shit, it's not easy. It was exactly made against slashing and stabbing. Obviously not as good as mail, but it's a lot cheaper.
>>94364080FPWP
>>94364061why not have both?
>>94364061Gambeson is just a thickly padded coat. We all forget but thick clothing can be a form of armor too. What I want to see more of is Combining them. I want Gambersons with Leathers. Linen chest armor with a layer of Leather. Segmented wooden armor with leather or cloth padding over them.
>>94364111Because the leather isn't breathable or washable, and is also stiffer if you want it to be strong enough to give protection.If you're thinking about how leather is used in biking gear and horse riding gear, it's more about mitigating scuffing damage and to protect in one time high speed accidents like motorcycle crashes or being violently thrown from a horse. And then it needs to be replaced.Armor made for actual combat and worn daily in the line of duty had to be repairable on the road, durable, and relatively easy to clean. Leather armor is 100% about fashion, not function.
>>94364260>cuirass
>>94364106now add a layer of ringmail and a breast plate and a good pair of boots with greaves and you gota decent heavy medium infantry
>>94364363>heavy mediumim silly sometimes, forgive the confusion, i mean medium infantry
>>94364061In what games?
>>94364381Car Lesbians.
>>94364324What are you trying to refer to?
>>94364061Leather isn't stupid. Fantasy leather is. Actual leather armour is fine.>>94364393I feel like wearing leather in Car Lesbians would be only a benefit.
>>94364420One of the longest lasting warriors in the americas, the dragones de cuera, used leather armor (cueras) because how hardy they are and how well they did vs the indian weapons.
At least to me, the point of "light armor" in actual games is to offer maximum or best mobility while sacrificing protection. If the leather armor, brigandine or cuirass stifles moving around, it shouldn't count as light armor.>but actual historical armor...!Don't care, not every system tries to perfectly simulate real life warfare and equipment.
>>94364061I think you should specify which game you're talking about, to let us know if we're dealing with historical fiction or fantasy.
>>94364061Research before posting. Rawhide lamellar was common east of the Med (Syria and Japan immediately come to mind).
>>94364485Literally only dnd and copies use studded leather
>>94364260> how leather is used in biking gear and horse riding gear,>Armor made for actual combat and worn daily in the line of dutyMan, are you just outright denying that buff coats were made for, and worn during, warfare?
>>94364061>retard has never held even a scrap of leatherIs it because "studded" leather is always depicted as having those big round rivets instead of the traditional rings and flat nail heads?
>>94364111Do you know anything about the source of that pic? It's looks pretty cool and I'd like to know more about it.
>>94364061You can fluff armor however you want in your own game, bumpfag, not that you have ever played in or ran one. Honestly even for you this is an inane and pointless thread, so I guess we'll be seeing it nudged off page 10 for the next two fucking weeks.
>>94364061Leather armor was commonly used. It was not soft, supply shit portrayed in media but stiff, boiled in oil, and more akin to thick tooling leather.It was ALSO fortified with wood and metal frequently.Brigandine armor was usually thick as hell leather rectangles stitched together to make it fit better and impede movement less, as an example.It was pretty effective against most slicing weapons too, but it was not considered anywhere near as good as metal armor. Better than nothing, easier and cheaper to make, and was enough when dealing with civilian populations.
>>94364410your ignorance on the topic of armor and how it functionsyour comments on its use in equestrianism alone gave me a hearty chuckleif you don't understand what cuirass refers to when talking about leather armor then just stfu
>>94364810Looks like gear from the English Civil War to me.
>>94364324>implying my games aren't already full of queer ass
>>94364991well duh, you're playing them
>>94364111>>94364810>>>/k/62845337>Swedish cavalry sword and uniform, early 18th century.>Livrustkammaren and Historiska Muséet in Stockholm
>>94364061While I'm a great advocate of gambesons, you shouldn't totally dismiss leather. Yeah, studded leather is an age old misunderstanding of brigandines and the way fantasy art depicts leather armors is usually style over function, but leather armor shouldn't be summarily dismissed. You just need to actually think about which parts of the armor are thin and flexible leather and which parts are "plates" of hard, stiff boiled leather.Really, you should be looking at a combination of boiled leather cuirass+braces over a gambeson if you want decent, cheap armor. Looking at armor in terms of a single material is a bad habit of many RPGs.
>>94364080>he thinks steel is made out of focused light and unicorn miraclesI work with steel every day, we wear cloth arm guards to prevent getting sliced. Would it protect me from a man swinging a cutlass? No, but It's better than nothing. The steel edge doesn't just fall through the cloth like it's not even there. A gambeson might not be plate harness, but it's thicker than my shitty arm guards.Watch less anime. You need to be swinging from the exact right angle with perfect form to pull off the kind of slices you think a sword is capable of, and even then if you use that split second of resistance the gambeson offers, you might turn a fatal wound into a flesh wound.
>>94364061"Leather" armour is stupid, but it's mostly due to a mistranslation. Medieval sources use the French "cuir bouilli", which means boiled leather in modern French. Leather is hide that's been chemically treated to make it more flexible, so leather armour is taking something that's naturally hard, making it soft, trying to make it hard again then complaining it doesn't work.However, in medieval French it "cuir" doesn't mean leather it means skin or hide. "Leather" armour is actually hide treated to make it harder instead of softer. Much cheaper and harder than leather.
>>94364080You're thinking of an arming doublet or aketon, which is armor you wear to protect you from the mail or plate you wear over it.A proper gambeson, as we've galvanized the term to mean in current year, is a quilted linen jacket that can and will protect you from at least one or two hits sword or polearm.>>94364061Read up on Buff Coats. Fantasy leathers are retarded, but buff coats were a real thing and were just as protective as a gambeson.>>94364825Fucking get raped. This retarded attitude is why every single fantasy game anyone plays is D&Dogshi slop. The more of the minutiae you get correct the more you've earned the fantastical aspects of your campaign.
>>94365245What? Boiled leather is still made from leather, not raw hides. It's an additional process to harden leather, not an alternative to the regular tanning process.
>>94364690If it's D&D, then leather armor doesn't need to be replaced, because the properties of animal hides in a world connected to its magic would be different from those of a historical fiction game. Though, house rule retooling is definitely required, because many of the materials and character options that exist don't properly account for the implicit world's connection to D&D's magic system.
>>94365543>the properties of animal hides in a world connected to its magic would be different from those of a historical fiction gameThere's a limit to how much you ought to handwave with "There's magic everywhere, so X doesn't have to align with reality". Messing with people's intuition excessively is dangerous. Rather than tampering with the properties of something people might already understand, you can always just introduce a fantastical alternative. For example, instead of saying cowhide leather is just different because of magic in the air or something, just have the unrealistic leather be made from some fantasy creature, like some kind of commonly hunted boar creature whose hide produces an exceptionally tough yet flexible leather.
>>94365451>The more of the minutiae you get correct the more you've earned the fantastical aspects of your campaign.this is a wild take
>>94364260When it comes to armor I think whether something will better help you not get killed is a more important consideration than whether it's breathable and washable.
>>94365451>Read up on Buff Coats. Fantasy leathers are retarded, but buff coats were a real thing and were just as protective as a gambeson.You'd have to find some opinions on the sort of long coats used in Russia and Ukraine to find out whether contemporaries considered them interchangable, I understand.That would require some serious digging into obscure swedish sources, most likely. In Europe, I think there's at least a 150 year period between the use of gambesons as stand-alone armour and the introduction off buff coats.
>>94365688>Messing with people's intuition excessively is dangerous. Rather than tampering with the properties of something people might already understandWhat do you know about bat guano? Did you know you can't just wave your hands around and babble gibberish to will a bead of light anywhere within a hundred-fifty feet and explode in a neat, twenty-by-twenty foot area? Yet in D&D, that's how you cast Fireball.This guano isn't from a special kind of fantasy bat, it's normal ass shit from normal ass bats and coupled with normal ass sulfur into a normal ass tiny ball, but in a world whose magic is intertwined with its materials and creatures.Don't talk about tampering with understood properties when concerning a system that regularly tampers with understood properties.
>>94364061>Since leather and especially studded leather armors are stupid as shitTell that to the Mongols.
>>94366003Lit is explaining away the ubiquity of leather armor versus gambesons from the fact gambeson-wearers were cut down by the leather horseman chads to the point they're seen as an ill omen on the battlefield.
>>94365725It's also the objectively correct one.
>>94365725I came into the thread to shitpost but I actually think he's right. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds.
>>94365946Except that the bat guano-fireball relationship involves Wizards actively invoking magic, who's material components bear symbolic associations often absent from the settings context. The primary industrial value of guano is in nitrates, which form the basis of many explosives especially with the addition of sulphur. So even if nobody has ever (al)chemically processed the two into a bomb as we recognize, the analogous properties are called upon by spellcasting to generate a deflagration.Many things can be "used in" magic, few things are magical in themselves. You'd have to give a non-trivial explanation of alchemical processing, use an exotic creature, or cast spells to "expect" similar effect.
>>94365487That's the misunderstanding. In modern French cuir means leather, but that's because it's a shortening of the full term cuir tanné. Medieval readers wouldn't read cuir bouilli as tanned and boiled skin.
>>94365946>Did you know you can't just wave your hands around and babble gibberish to will a bead of light anywhere within a hundred-fifty feet and explode in a neat, twenty-by-twenty foot area?Except it's not just waving your hands and speaking gibberish, it's making specific motions and incantations that cause a magical effect when used on the mundane material. That's different from tanning a hide and it's just extra strong because magic in the atmosphere or whatever. It's opening up a Pandora's Box of "Okay, so if passive magic changed this random mundane thing, what else is randomly different?"Now if you want to say every leatherworker knows a bit of magic and is using spells to strengthen their products, then that's fine. That's just a very high magic setting. But that's distinct from the leather itself just being stronger on its own.
>>94366365I'm confused about the distinction you're trying to draw here. What precisely do you think the process for making cuir bouilli is?
>>94365221>watch less anime >you need to have perfect form lol
>>94364462>At least to me, the point of "light armor" in actual games is to offer maximum or best mobility while sacrificing protection. If the leather armor, brigandine or cuirass stifles moving around, it shouldn't count as light armor.That is stupidity inherited from 3e D&D's attempt to make all armor types roughly equal by applying max dex bonuses and not realizing that various armor types represent various tech levels. "Leather Armor" shouldn't be lighter armor than a Breastplate/Cuirass, a Cuirass should be the light armor form of the "Plate Armor" tech level with "Half-Plate" as the medium version and "Full Plate" as the heavy version and Leather armor should have it's own light/medium/heavy variations.
>>94364061The Studd tree is a type of tree in my settings. Studded leather in my settings is leather armor with Studd tree plates in closed pockets over the vitals. Druids can wear breastplate or even full suit if it's made of this wood.>Weights are the same.>Cost and time to make stuff is 150% if it's primary made of Studd wood. Shit is dense and hard, requiring a long time to soak, warp, shave, and dry repeatedly to craft complicated stuff with.>Blades cannot be made of Studd without magics involved. Stories say otherwise, but this is due to the blades just not holding an edge and being a real pain to repair and sharpen, NOT some fairy curse.
>>94366575Of course, the D/GM can say no chainmail of Studd, or whatever. I just wanted a special wood for stuff.
>>94366574Seems like the sensible thing would be to have material categories (i.e. leather, chain, plate) and then break it up into light, medium, and heavy which represent coverage and weight. So leather light armor might just be a boiled leather chest piece and arm braces while heavy leather armor is the full panoply of helmet, cuirass, shoulder pads, arm/leg braces, etc.
>>94366575Iron-wood kind of stuff is neat, although naming it Studd seems kinda cutesy. Could just rename "studded leather" something more sensible like reinforced leather instead of naming your fancy wood to justify the "studded".
>>94365688>>94365946He has a point though. You don't need to worry about 'ambient magic' or whatever when there are monsters who have better natural armor than real-life animals, and that's before you get into questions about stuff like werewolf hide.
>>94365245>>94366365Found my source: >""Why leather." The Material and Cultural Dimensions of Leather.", pg.41-76, Harris, Susanna, and André J. Veldmeijer. Leiden (NL): Sidestone (2014).>>94366458Hide is just cleaned animal skin. Leather is hide that's been tanned, treated with chemicals to (semi-)permanently prevent decay and make it more flexible. Historically this was a long and intense process using dog shit and cow brains. It removes most of the structural proteins that make animal skin hard.What I'm saying is that when they made cuir bouilli armour they would take animal hides, clean them and boil them without spending a month chemically treating them with dog shit first.
>>94366684Very much so. It also allows room for various archaic and fantastical material categories to be added as well. >>94366733Or just call it Jack of Plate which is likely the historical armor that was misidentified as "Studded Leather."
>>94367008>which is likely the historical armor that was misidentified as "Studded Leather."Isn't studded leather just misgendered brigantine?
>>94367191Brigandine and Jack of Plates are pretty much the same armor only being differentiated by the method holding the plates in position. Brigandine uses rivets to hold the plates while Jack of Plate has the plates sewn into position.
>>94366806The dung stuff is done prior to tanning when you specifically want soft, supple leather. The actual tanning part is done by soaking in tannins extracted from barks and such.I think some of the confusion here is that you seem to be avoiding the term rawhide. You're talking about boiled rawhide, but both boiled rawhide and boiled leather coexisted. And then there's partially tanned hides as well, since plain rawhide generally does not handle moisture well. I suspect many medieval writers wouldn't parse between untanned, partially tanned, and fully tanned hide. Plus the various leatherworkers making the armor had different processes/recipes from place to place. You can get very different results depending on how you go about it.
>>94367386Good to know, but>Brigandine uses rivets to hold the plates while Jack of Plate has the plates sewn into position.it's still brigandine cuz rivets=studs in studded leather.
>>94367562Point being that both Brigandine and Jack of Plates are more proper names for that type of armor than the "Studded Leather" misnomer. Jack of Plate is especially appropriate as it was one of the primary armors used by the lightly armored Jacquerie in their peasant rebellions against the better armored knights and nobility.
>>94365116Thank you
>>94364957I know it's the armor that covers the torso you retard. What does it have to do with the fact that leather armor is fantasy bullshit? Responding 'cuirass' doesn't actually make any point.
>>94369733>he doesn't know the etymologystop embarrassing yourself, moron
I have a mighty need for more fertile land
>>94367562>The actual tanning part is done by soaking in tannins extracted from barks and such.The softening stages are an essential part of tanning. Yes, you could soften hides differently and for different amounts of time (shoe leather was left in a mixture of urine and dung for a week, high quality leather for six weeks) you can't skip it entirely. You need to break down the collagen network in the skin before impregnating it with chemicals that bind to collagen. >both boiled rawhide and boiled leather coexisted.Based on? There may be decorative uses of boiled leather, it is a way of making it very soft for moulding details, but there's no evidence it was used for armour. >And then there's partially tanned hides as well, since plain rawhide generally does not handle moisture wellThere are other methods of preserving hide outside of tanning. There's some evidence the hide was boiled in glue rather than just water, which helps with water resistance. Outside of Europe we have evidence of smoking and lacquering as effective ways of preserving hide.The core point is that boiled leather armour is a) totally fucking useless (It's brittle, it's not hard enough to matter and it doesn't even flex to blunt impacts the way cloth can) and b) expensive. You're taking enough leather to make shoes for a village and creating armour worse than wearing a padded shirt. Boiled hide is cheap and reasonably effective, though unlikely to be long lasting.
>>94365161leather tends to creak though so maybe not good for sneaking?
>>94369733Cuirass comes from the Old French word Cuirace which comes from the Latin "Coriaceus Vestis" or "Garment of Leather."
>>94366733So, you see the word "Studd" (stud) and immediately your mind goes to "cutesy" (cute)?Interesting.
The historian/tabletop RPG nerd Dr. Bret Devereaux says armors should be separated like this:Light ArmorsPaddedBuffMail ByrnieMedium ArmorsMail HauberkScale ArmorHardened Leather LamellarBrigandine/Metal LamellarHeavy ArmorBreastplate (over mail)Half PlateFull PlateThis removes studded leather, hide, ring mail and splint armors which never existed in reality (although splinted vambraces and greaves were real).https://acoup.blog/2023/09/15/collections-the-gap-in-the-armor-of-baldurs-gate-and-5e>>94364080I assume you meant "stabbing weapons".
>>94364061The real reason leather armor is used is because you can fill what it should look like with your own artistic imagination. Try to get creative with a gambeson and you get pic related.
>>94378150I was about to bitch at you for describing chainmail and then claiming ring-mail wasn't a real thing because I thought "surely that's just the difference between a mail jacket and a full protective set of mail.Then I went to check source and found this abomination on an SRD. When the fuck did this show up I swear to god I didn't see this in my 3.5 books ever. Did they shove it in-- in 4e/5th? Or did my middleschool ass just make the logical assumption "surely the heavy version is just full body coverage mail because it would be retarded to tie/glue rings to a suit of armor"
>>94378218Ringmail doesn't exist in 4E, but is on the armor table for AD&D1E and 2E, 3.x and 5E. We didn't get art for it until 5E desu.The name for it comes from Gary reading about armor types at his local library and misunderstanding that ringmail is just chainmail by another name, and possibly also misreading bad medieval art similarly to brigandines being reinterpreted to studded leather.
>>94378195What's the problem with pic related?
>>94364061>replace gambeson with gambeson
>>94366574The problem is trying to find ways to balance things which are not balanced by their very nature. Types of armor are. It and never have been balanced; as you correctly put, they are technological improvements over other armor types. What they *should* have done, if they were even slightly competent, was to remove descriptive text entirely. You have several varieties of "light armor", each with an AC bonus and a max dex bonus, and you can fluff the specifics of the armor however you like. You have the same for medium and the same for heavy armor. The fluff literally doesn't matter, just the mechanics. That way, you can run a "viking age" game where the heaviest armor is mail, and the lightest is cloth, and lose nothing mechanically. You can do the same with a late medieval/early renaissance game, but someone can be wearing mail and someone else can be wearing a buff coat, and each guy still gets +3 AC with a +3 max dex. Tying the mechanics to specifically fluffed armor types was always and will always be retarded. The math is all that matters.
>>94379056It's anime.
>>94364061Players won't participate unless they have 25+AC and will gaslight the DM if you correct them on this.
>>94364061Yes.
>>94364061No. Realism is gay and gambesons are lame.
>>94366757>You don't need to worry about 'ambient magic' or whateverBlithely ignoring the point that's already been spelled out doesn't make you correct or sound smart.
>>94378150>>94378218>they don't know about eyelet doublets Yeah ringmail is a dog shit term (so is fantasy ring armor trash), but rings sawn to a backing used as armor did exist
>>94364061>Since leather and especially studded leather armors are stupid as shitYou never used a dire bear's fur as armor, did you?
>>94364462cuirass, more like cute-lass, amirite?
>>94381620touch grass lol
>>94366574If you want realism in Dumb&Dumber, you'd need to remove max dex entirely and replace it with some kind of exhaustion/heatstroke mechanic.Real armor the was properly fittef was not hard to move in at all.
>>94377285It's "cute" because it's trying to work backwards from studded instead of just replacing the term entirely. It's like if your setting doesn't have the metallurgy for making plate armor, yet you can still buy "plate" armor, which is instead made from magic dinner plates.
>>94366003Mongols prefered laminar or brigandines. What you thought was studded leather looked like this on the inside.
>>94376188>Based on? There may be decorative uses of boiled leather, it is a way of making it very soft for moulding details, but there's no evidence it was used for armour. In that case, I was referring to them both being real materials, rather than their particular uses. And in that regard we have very few surviving examples of leather/hide armor of any sort. Even fully tanned leather isn't terribly long-lasting, at least in archaeological time frames.>boiled leather armour is a) totally fucking useless (It's brittle, it's not hard enough to matter and it doesn't even flex to blunt impacts the way cloth can)Like I mentioned, there were various recipes and the exact process you use can make a big difference on the qualities of the result. It's likely that different recipes were used depending on what you were making, in addition to different recipes from place to place.That said, at this point I'm not looking to deny the use of rawhide or that it was preferred for armor. Just adding nuance to the qualities of boiled leather.
>>94379060The problem is this is the only piece of text in all of D&D that actually notes that the studs are attached to metal plates.
>>94381617That unprotected tummy makes me want to penetrate it.
>>94364260It is seriously both breathable and washable (hand washable). It can also be super soft and malleable, while still being more protective than clothing.
>>94365221a suit of multiple layers of cloth would protect you very well from the slashing component of a sword's impact, just not from the bonk factor, because even if games treat slashing damage as some weird mystic property, a sword is ultimately just a metal club that you smash things with just as much as it's a sharp edge
>>94364260Actual leather armor the leather was treated so as to be completely stiff and inflexible.
>>94382615leaving tummy unprotected is just unwise
>>94381926>Real armor the was properly fittef was not hard to move in at all.There is still a slight lost of mobility even with the best fitted of plate armors when compared to being unarmored. A slight penalty to touch AC for wearing heavier armors would have been much better, but would have required combat to include more opponents who used touch attacks to be a factor. The real stupidity of 3e and later editions was turning an armor upgrade path into "balanced options." Prior to 3e, Fighters/Paladins/Clerics were supposed to upgrade from Chain Mail -> Splint Mail -> Plate Mail -> Field Plate -> Full Plate while Thieves/Bards were supposed to upgrade through Leather/Padded -> Studded Leather -> Elven Chainmail (Rangers could swap between either path based on whether they wanted to be sneaky or not) based on character wealth. Starting with 3e your choice of armor was determined by your dex bonus and class features and wearing the appropriate armor gave you an AC of 17 or 18.
nice to see that you faggot autists can still sperg about pointless irrelevant shit. You should all fucking kill yourselves you worthless wastes of fucking life.
Why do people get upset at fantasy armors and weapons in a fantasy game?Like no one spergs out about fire breathing dragons or bug bears or goblins that never existed but an armor made out of rings sewn into leather causes them to froth at the mouth.
>>94385778>Starting with 3e your choice of armor was determined by your dex bonus and class features and wearing the appropriate armor gave you an AC of 17 or 18.Which inevitably ran into the same problem every game that tries to "balance" light and heavy armor runs into, light armor becomes objectively better at high levels with even mild optimization.
>>94381926So, is exhaustion subdual damage over time or what?>>94387018>The Rangz of Powa! argumentVersimilitude, man - didn't you learn anything yet?
>>94364080Here's what a medieval historian has to say about gambeson...Gambeson? That should be +11 or +12 AC, PLUS damage reduction.Full harness? +15 AC, PLUS damage reduction.NEVER underestimate how good gambeson is...
>>94387018>Why do people get upset at fantasy armors and weapons in a fantasy game?Mostly because it leaves a bunch of easily solvable plot holes. A few plotholes are fine but too many and the power gamers start exploiting them. >Like no one spergs out about fire breathing dragons or bug bears or goblinsOh yes they do.
>>94387316If it was versimilitude, one would take in account the peculiarieis of the world, instead of trying to mimic the real world 1:1.
>>94387617Fine, give me an approximation of Dragons scales:a) hardness on MOHs scaleb) plastic strength compared to mild steelc) equivalence of RHA in mm
>>94387252Yeah, because Light Armor has no penalties compared to heavy armor if you had enough Dex. You can really see how much the devs favored spellcasters and rouges with this stupidity.
>>94386883>nice to see that you faggot autists can still sperg about pointless irrelevant shitNot only that but also while being mostly wrong and clueless about the shit they are sperging about
>>94387018Low hanging fruit for armchair experts to flex how much they ""know""
>>94387802>Dragonhide*: Heavy leather armor (DR 2) can be dragonhide. This provides from +1 to +4 DR, depending on the dragon, and double that DR bonus against fire. (Dragonhide with up to +7 DR – and unusual dragonhide that doubles its bonus vs. acid, cold, or other damage – exists but isn’t for sale.) It also gives -3 reactions from dragons! Weight and cost depend on DR bonus: +1 DR (+2 vs. fire) is 1.25x weight and +29 CF; +2 DR (+4 vs. fire) is 1.5x weight and +35 CF; +3 DR (+6 vs. fire) is 1.75x weight and +41 CF; and +4 DR (+8 vs. fire) is 2x weight and +47 CF.DR is based on RHA, 70 per inch. Do the math.
>>94388659DR: damage resistanceRHA: Rolled Homogenous ArmorRHA is not measured per inch, it's used to measure penetration.Unless you mean 70 DR = 25,4 mm RHA?
>>94388751Since no confirmation or denial:Heaviest of that Dragonhide Armor (DR 6 / 8 vs. fire) would be equivalent of about 2 mm RHA.Seems a bit low?As heavy Plate mail breastplate has been at thickest about 6 mm (in thickest places) as I recall.That's not RHA of course, but earlier steel.Does anyone know how 16th-19th century cuirass steel rate against RHA?
>>94364061sorry HEMA fags, nobody is going to find wearing a couch cover in their heroic fantasy game appealing
>>94389632There is a reason padded armor is considered conscript/peasant levy armor. It is cheap stuff NPCs get outfitted with rather than stuff PCs would normally use.
>>94387018Goblins and dragons don't exist in real life. Various armours did. And the people in this thread are mostly enjoying the discussion. Not every conversation needs to be about big things.
>>94382019That's a great idea, honestly.
the 'studs' in leather armour were actually used to fix in place small steel plates on the inside of the coat. its essentially a cheaper jack of plates.
>>94389619According to:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA306059.pdf>The tests showed that use of 1/4-in mild steel in the laminate will stop 5.56-mm ammunition, and that 1/2-in steel will stop 7.62-mm ammunition.So, if half an inch (1.27mm) of steel is enough to stop a 7.62 NATO round (I doubt the thin plywood sheet did not add that much protection), 2mm of RHA most certainly will too. Meanwhile, late medieval breastplate could stop a pistol round of the time, but muskets and rifles could penetrate. So 2mm of RHA would most definitely offer great protection against medieval weaponry and even make the target capable of taking modern day small arms fire.
>>94392984Half-inch is 12,7 mm. But, according to your link the target was indeed mild steel with hardness of 130 BHN. Steel plate is 4-5 times harder than that, so maybe 2-3 mm steel plate armor could turn 7.62 NATO? Modern plates, yes, but I really find that hard to believe to be true of historical armor....and you adressed most of that already.Ok, let's say that modern steel is twice as good as historical steel: 2 mm RHAe would be 4 mm steel plate armor.That's plenty thick for historical cuirass, so yes, it'll turn most if not all weapons.Now, how to give the players chance to hit the chinks in those armors? Just use plate armor stats or what?
>>94393109>Now, how to give the players chance to hit the chinks in those armors? Just use plate armor stats or what?Scale armour is not homogenous, so there's always gaps. Spears, arrows and various thrusting weapons should have a good chance at slipping between the scales.
>>94393145Yes, so how would you represent that in game?Called shots? Just %-based chance? Blowthrough damage finds the chink?
>>94393145Besides, I disagree on arrows. They'd have to come at an truely weird angle to hit under the scales.
>>94393183>They'd have to come at an truely weird angle to hit under the scales.>mfw
>>94393177>Called shots? Just %-based chance? Blowthrough damage finds the chink?You can do all, if you like. A regular attack has an X chance of bypassing the armour, fudged in favour of certain types of weapons/attacks. Targeting specific locations can try to hit vulnerable spots not protected by the armour or where the hide is thinner.
>>94393245>"He must be a Dragon-slayer!">"How do you figure that?">"He's covered in dragon shit."
>>94385207Seen screenshots of this game floating around, what is it?
This thread is teaching me that armour is a rabbit hole too deep for me to breathe in. How am I supposed to balance all these types and materials against the damage types I want in my dungeon crawler?
>>94396243This thread doesnt even scratch the surface and it is full dumb shit anywaysLive happy in ignorance or die in madness
>>94396243>How am I supposed to balance all these types and materials against the damage typesThat's the neat part, you don't. This is why certain types of armour went out of favor, because it was no longer effective and was replaced by something better. This is why in Xth century chainmail shirt with helmet was peak armor and 400 years later it was barely considered armor and you would use it only if super poor.It's like with firearms, mosin nagant or kar 98 are perfectly fine guns, but why would you use it if you can use AKM, M16 or more modern AK-100/200 series, HK416, SCAR that are straight up better.
>>94364061My favorite thing about gambesons are how stylish they are even in modern times.
>>94396317Armor was often also fashion statement. This also make anger at boobplate funny, because if in medieval times females were participating in combat you would see some baronesses and countesses in full plate armor with boobs and big metal asses and other fashionable elements. Warriors needed their bling.
>>94396392>oftenMore like always. And there are period female fantasy armour illustrations around that are reasonably distinct, as far as fashion's concerned.
how can I be armor autist
>>94396392didn't medieval women at court just whip their naked tits out anyway, i totally see it happening
>>94396243The guy that said to create the armor types you like for game balance and to fluff them however you want was right.
>>94396485It was kinda complicated. On one hand they supposed to be modest, on other there was no privacy, because houses were small and poeple took bath in public bathhouses meant that at the same time females were modest and whipping their tits out.
>>94396700i didn't mean during bathing, i meant at court
>>94393347Pretty sure it's LonaRPG, it's on itch.
>>94393347LonaRPG
>>94396307>and 400 years later it was barely considered armor and you would use it only if super poor.No it would still have been very expensive. Poor yeomen were described with literal staves and bows (not even arrows) and nothing else. Maille was still the good standard in the 15th century.
>>94364061Holy fuck I hate this popular history bullshit.Leather armor was used as late as the 14th century. It was used by infantry. Studs were added where they could for those that could afford it. Hell, William III the Hainaut Count used studded leather. It was more movable than full plate (which was mainly horse riding armor anyways since it was too heavy), but still offered protection. You don't want to be stuck unable to move. Further, full plate signaled that you were rich and better captured and ransomed than killed. In a world where a bone break had a ludicrous mortality rate (I don't want to say 75%, but over 50% at least), studded leather was good enough.You can see actual pieces of this armor as well as monuments, mainly in Western and Northern Europe. No, it wasn't "common". Most soldiers didn't wear gambisons either. They worse just their clothes. Leather was used by higher up, studded by those even higher, gambisons by the rich, and full plate by those cavalry men that could afford it.Muslims meanwhile used leather or layered cotton or similar material, with air beneath and between. Was just as good against piercing and cutting, less so with blunt. But plate wasn't good against blunt either, so... And no, not D&D style leather armor, but more what someone below described as buff coats. They were better for the style of combat conducive in that area.With that said, there was nothing called studded leather. They just called it leather. And in D&D the misunderstanding came from seeing the underside of splint. So that's fucking idiotic.Hell, ratan and silk were very good armors for a while in Asia.
>>943983260/10 bait.
>>94396307A game is still a game and needs some balance. Even if one armour is strictly better than another, it has to be limited in availability or price or something else or the game ends up less interesting for it.Uh, all of this is of course based on the premise that I want a lot of different factions with different equipment in the game. If you only have Adventurers and Monsters, linear progression is perfectly fine.
>>94364061boiled leather armor was a thing, it just didnt get preserved to the modern day like other materials didtods workshop has some videos on it
>>94399068>boiled leather armor was a thing, it just didnt get preserved to the modern day like other materials didwe actually have some relatively nice amount of surviving leather armor. The same cant be said for textile armor which is ironic considering the retarded "dichotomy" between gambeson and leather armor pushed by retards and leather armor deniers
>>94382026>Mongols prefered laminar or brigandines.Are there any surviving examples of Mongol laminar armor? Mongols utilized both rawhide and iron lamellar with the former somewhat persisting in Tibet. Brigandine on the other hand is quite the mystery as they were not worn during the Mongol conquests of China. They first appear in the early 14th century, see Jami' al-tawarikh and archaelogical excavations from the Altai(Golden Horde).
>>94398326>Was just as good against piercing and cutting, less so with blunt.wow just like my video games
>>94399407Interesting, I would also like to know if there are any surviving examples of this kind of armour.
>>94396392Yeah, that sort of thing really makes me wonder how and where our efficiency-obsessed contemporary mindset blinkers our interpretations and suppositions of past actions and behaviors.
>>94364061>>94364111these can't be real, can they? They look like some shit out of star wars
>>94403117Anon star wars design is based on real stuff.Darth Vader is wearing samurai suit, almost all blasters are real guns with some or no modifications.History is weird, hell there was armor made of paper in Asia and it was quite popular cuz cheap, or China was invaded twice because it tried to ban opium(heroin before heroin was invented), or conflict of HRE Emperor and Pope, where HRE nobility sided with Pope and clergy sided with emperor, or fucking steppe nomands out of nowhere, created one of biggest empire in history and killed 10% of global population in single lifetime just to fall into obscurity and do nothing of note for rest of history. Also european plate armor were made to look like fashionable clothes inlcuding wasp waist and metal "dick" known as codpiece.History is weird man.
>>94403212how come reality doesn't make any sense, it owes me an explanation
>>94403117The first one is about as real as the protective cover I put over my couch, which is also probably older than whatever that thing is The second one is historical piece or at least a copy of one that ive seen around the webz
>>94396392That's because women didn't fight and rulers are unique exceptions
>>94403117It's called a Buff Coat, and it was used in that thin slither between the late medieval period and the napoleonic era that I love so much; the Early Modern Period/European Wars of Religion.
>>94403703Also known as the Pike and Shot Era.
>>94403708And it was an era of High Fashion.
>>94403716And of actual Gun Knights.
>>94393145>that they identified as tigersDumb yanks identified every panzer IV as a tiger.
>>94404459You try telling T-64, T-72 and T-80 apart at a quick glance from a distance in the middle of combat. With the turret skirts, PzIV and Tiger were both boxes with a circular turret, long barrel and a muzzle break. There's also the possibility of all German tanks getting called a "tiger" by troops, the way people referred to all consoles as "nintendos" in the past.
>>94396440Books, academic papers, going to nearest museum, rejecting reenactorims and other larper with extreme prejudice and going on diet of purely primary sources (reject all modern art and Ospreyslop).
>>94404519I know you aren't sincere by your incorrect use of "modern"
>>94404519couldn't I just watch a documentary
>>94404594Not enough good documentaries. But there is a youtube channel called Knyght Errant that is the closest thing you get to a good book.>>94404588Then replace that word in your head for whatever word makes us both happy
>>94404614>https://youtu.be/vnkuFkcLqpcgood enough for me
>>94403718A seriously underrated aesthetic
>>94378150Byrnie and Hauberk are the same thing though
>>94364080Only if you cheaped out or got scammed hard.
>>94378150I always thought of lorica when I saw the term splint armor
>>94393145Sometimes I think about how mad people got at that film Fury when there was an actual battle where 3 Shermans in C Company destroyed 2 Tiger tanks and killed 500 infantry for a loss of one Sherman and 4 crewman
>>94405867Do you remember anything more about that?
>>94405918Yeah, it's detailed in the 191st tank historical diary on the 16th of februaryhttps://artsandmemories.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/s-3-journal-february-1944.pdfhttps://artsandmemories.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/191st-history-january-1944.pdf>tldr"After dark (February 16th) 3 tanks from 'C' company, under Lt. Cobb, moved north on the main Anzio-Carraoceta road, then east to approximately 870314. They were in support of company 'E', 157th Infantry Regiment. A strong enemy infantry and tank attack was sent against them.Enemy infantry almost completely surrounded them and the tanks fired throughout the night. About 15,000 rounds of small arms ammunition were expanded. Even tommy guns and carbines were fired from the turret ports. Unsuspecting enemy tanks approached to within 50 yards of the position. Two of them were knocked out.One of our tanks bogged down, threw a track and was destroyed by enemy fire a few moments after being abandoned. The two remaining tanks picked up the men from the abandoned vehicle and moved across country. Fighting was so heavy that the crews could not operate in the overloaded tanks.The five men were let out to make their way back on foot. Only one returned. The enemy infantry and tanks finally withdrew and our two tanks returned before daylight. Reliable estimates place the number of infantry destroyed by our three tanks at five hundred."During the night C Company destroyed 2 Tiger tanks and killed 500 infantry for a loss of one Sherman and 4 crewman. All together the 191st Tank Battalion reported during the 16 - 18 Feb 1944. 20 German tanks Knocked out including 4 Tiger tanks, and 860 to 880 enemy infantry killed, wiith a loss of 12* friendly tanks
>>94405598I think the lorica segmentata is the 'banded armor' in the DMG.
>>94406861Correct. Later editions have gone full retard on this, but it's pretty obvious given the kinds of books we knew he had access to back in the 1970s, banded armor is Lorica Segmentata and splint armor is a brigandine or steel cuirass that uses splinted greaves and vambraces.In retrospect, the fact that splinted armor existed lends more credence to my theory as to the origin of ringmail. Not knowing the term was just a euphimisim for chainmail, he likely thought it was a kind of poor man's splinted mail.
>>94407241It's pretty amazing how much more we know and have access to than in the '60s and '70s.In this example from wiki, it could be argued that the 'ring maile' in the lower right is actually chain with two different ring sizes. This was something common in East Asia and there's no reason to assume the armorer wouldn't do something like that instead of putting in the effort with so many gaps.
>>94407241Actually, those neologims and pretty much adding +mail to anything to desginate an armor, goes way before that, all the way back to the 19th centuryThe good folks in 19th century who were pioneering the historical study of ancient arms and armor were looking at the different patterns they used to depict what we nowadays assume to be the (chain)mail in manuscript miniatures, and assuming that those were different types of armor all the [thing]+mail. But later on this idea was dropped in favor of most of them being just different ways of drawing mail, but the idea survived through D&D and evolved from there.Now, while those interpretations might be considered wrong nowadays, there examples of armors that use bands of metal or leather as a construction elsewhere across the world and time beyond the european middle ages. And so there are examples of armor made out of disconected rings and sometimes even coins; and in europe there is a style of armor that is called an eyelet armor kind of a textile armor reinforced by rings of metal sewed into it. And even studded leather can argued to exist if we take in consideration brigandine style armors that use hardened leather instead of iron as can be seen used in Korea.
>>94407820>different ways of drawing mailI'm sure medieval artists were as good at drawing weapons and armour as current artists are (and by "good" I mean "bad"). There's also the possibility that there were more than one way of making chainmail. Just because one way is the best or most common, doesn't mean other ways didn't exist for one reason or another. Not every pistol today uses the Browning tilting barrel and not every rifle is an AR or an AK system. I can't find the image now, but I've seen an Asian armour in the style of 5. It was just a leather coat with large rings sown into it. I imagine they reinforced the leather against various curring weapons. I can imagine 11-13 to just be chainmail with straps or strings added to maybe secure the armour better. Reduce the weight on the shoulders and waist. I have a friend who has a chainmail coif and he has added a string to it going around his head, above his brow, to secure it better.
>>94404519>rejecting reenactorims and other larper with extreme prejudiceNot necessarily, there are decent Chinese armor reconstructions that combine period artwork with extant finds to replicate something that no longer exists. >reject all modern art and OspreyslopCan occasionally be useful if the original source is poorly detailed or to point out some sort of novelty though that largely depends on the skill of the artist. >>94407820>And even studded leather can argued to exist if we take in consideration brigandine style armors that use hardened leather instead of iron as can be seen used in Korea.The only other example I can think of is the Yue Bing Kui Jia. https://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2014/11/leather-armour-of-ming-dynasty.html
>>94409022>There's also the possibility that there were more than one way of making chainmail.There are a ton in actuality. The European standard was a 4-in-1 weave pattern with a heavier 8-in-2 "double maille" or "King's Maille" pattern. The Japanese also use a 6-in-1 weave pattern with a possible heavier doubled 12-in-2 variation.
>>94409777I have a piece if 12-in-3 a friend made just for the fun of it.
>>94409022>wonder what's wrong with this assault cannon>look closer>mother of godAnd yes living in age where everything is handcrafted and often custom made for client meant that there are multiple diferent styles and techniques.
>>94409777As for the individual rings, there's riveted, welded, stamped, butted and double looped ones.
>>94365688>There's a limit to how much you ought to handwave with "There's magic everywhere, so X doesn't have to align with realityno, there isn't you retardbecause magic existing means the laws of physics as you know them don't exist so every "realistic" assumption you make is just that, a baseless assumption because you're too stupid to realize "realistic" is a relative term because in REAL LIFE the laws tt govern us aren't as concrete as you'd like them to be either. History nerds are so mentally ill.
>>94411038
>>94387316if you were considered with realism you would have no expectations of armor in a fantasy world being like ours because "realistically" a magical society would develop different technologies and crafting techniques among other things. This is what makes the armor autism so peculiar. You aren't being realistic at all, you're just a maladjusted loser sperging about this thing nobody else gives a fuck about
>>94411056Le sigh.Verisimilitude = resembling reality.In this case, something that doesn't take the player out of the play and into metagaming like the Studd-trees faggot further up in the thread.In case of magic society, it has to resemble something the average player would have some frame of reference for - otherwise the game will remain niche and little known (It'll also hurt sales). i.e. go back, fag, go back.
>>94411438>Verisimilitude = resembling reality.Oh so it's literally a synonym of realism except you get to apply it selectively.
>>94411521One is real, the other resembling real.
>>94411521No, it's a word with a specifically chosen meaning distinct from realism.I'll stop feeding the trolls, I promise! This is the last one, I swear!
>>94409022>>94409777>>94410220Here's an example of mixed diameter chainmail.
>>94409185There's also Mountain Scale Pattern or Shan Wen Kia - no known examples exist and there's an ongoing discussion on what it actually was.
>>94412064Is this even usable as armor or just dude had skill and too much time so he did a thing?
>>94399407...Shit, I mixed up lamellar and laminar again? My bad.
>>94405446byrnies are usually sleeveless and can be short, a hauberk implies mid thigh length and sleevesyou could argue that a hauberk is a byrnie, but a byrnie does not meet all the criteria for a hauberk by defaultnot that i even care, my worldbuilding is just whatever looks cool and appearance has nothing to do with stats
>>94413052My understanding is those particular types of maile 'blankets' were typically done as Buddhist devotionals - make a prayer with each bend, connection and other action.In my shitbrew game, monks and clerics sometimes wear them as penitence, provides mild AC bonus while being hugely encumbering.
>>94413052That is likely an art piece made as a form of meditation, but the pattern is usable for armor and during times of war the rings used to make the mail were likely much smaller.>>94414248>My understanding is those particular types of maile 'blankets' were typically done as Buddhist devotionals - make a prayer with each bend, connection and other action.The Arabs seemed to have done similar things when making mail. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a shirt of mail with every ring having one of the names of god or a holy figure stamped on it.
>>94412231> Mountain Scale Pattern Modern misnomer stemming from a misinterpretation of an academic paper published in late 1970-80s. The Y shaped pattern was always labeled as Suo Zi(Mail) in historical documents. Examples that survive have the pattern carved onto the surface.https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/35673>no known examples exist and there's an ongoing discussion on what it actually was.Actual Mountain pattern is likely lamellar with cusped edges that originated from the Tarim Basin/Gokturks. The wavy pattern is described as mountain shaped such as the hilt of a Tang sword(Kingin Denso no Karatachi) kept in the Shoso-in repository or patterns found on a Shang/Zhou ritual bronzes from the Northern Song.
>>94411046this doesn't just happen in engineering, you can see it in anything a person knows a lot about, usually professionallylike all paradoxes, it's just something you don't understand
>>94365161Leather Lamellar Armor Eastern Tibetan, probably Kham 15th–17th century from metmuseum. studded leather is a misunderstanding of brigandines but leather was actually used for armour. either in the form of lamellar like in pic related or as covering / backing for other stuff. splints on greaves and braces for exampleand on the topic of gambesons, to quote wikipedia:"There are two distinctive designs of gambeson: those designed to be worn beneath armour, and those designed to be worn as independent armour. The latter tend to be thicker and higher in the collar and faced with other materials, such as leather or heavy canvas."
>>94405435pistol knights are dope. tho i prefer this style of pistol for them. the coat as a cape aesthetic really looks best when done over armour
>>94415820Pattern carved onto it looks the same but doesn't have the functions purported for Mountain Scale.
>>94403718
>>94421736
>>94422128
>>94418908>but doesn't have the functions purported for Mountain Scale.There is no purported function for the Y pattern, the only metallic examples are late Qing religious costumes not combat armor.
An idea for a game I've been playing around with has the following armor:-Light ArmorLight ClothesShorts or Swimming Trunks and a Shirt with Shoes or Boots and possibly a Hat.Worn while relaxing, boating, or doing light labor in safe(green) zones.Heavy ClothesLong Pants with knee pad inserts or external knee pads and a Shirt with a Bump Cap or Hard Hat, Hiking or Snake Boots, and Gloves and/or Vambraces.The most common clothing in warm months. Protects from common bumps and scrapes. Worn by those doing heavy labor or working in semi-safe(yellow) zones.Heavy JacketLeather, Wool, Fur, or otherwise thick, sturdy jacket over Heavy Clothes.The most common clothing in cold months. Worn by those doing heavy labor or working in semi-safe(yellow) zones.GambesonProper quilted cloth armor worn over Heavy Clothes.Often worn by combat personnel who don't have time to don their full armor.Plastic SuitRubber boots and gloves along with plastic pants and a plastic long sleeved hoodie make up a plastic suit. Plastic suits are wmeant to provide a small amount of protection against chemical and biological weapons and are best used in conjunction with a Respirator and Goggles or Gas Mask.
-Medium ArmorRiot ArmorThin Plastic or Wooden Armor worn over a Gambeson and Heavy Clothes and a Steel Helmet.Medium armor meant to give protection against rippers and animals while maintaining maximum mobility. Less effective against melee weaponry though, and useless against ballistic threats.Chainmail/Lamellar/Brigantine ArmorsFlexible metal armor worn over a Gambeson and Heavy Clothes and a Steel Helmet.Heavier medium armor offering good protection against animals, rippers, and melee weaponry while maintaining some mobility. Not much good against ballistic threats.Plate CarrierDurable vest with a thick, high collar with pockets for holding thick plates of metal coated in plastic to reduce spalling. Worn over Heavy Clothes and a Heavy Jacket with a form of face protection such as a Metal Mesh Face Guard or Steel Helmet.Armor worn by troops expecting to travel significant distances and expecting to fight other humans. Offers less coverage and protection against melee weapons and other threats like animals or rippers.-Heavy ArmorLight Full PlateFull Body Steel Plate Armor worn over a Gambeson with a Steel Full Helm and Gauntlets with a thickness optimal for defending against melee weapons and non-firearm ranged threats.Sometimes used by Ripper Hunters, offers little ballistic protection but great protection against melee weapons and rippers with a little more mobility than heavier ballistic full plate.Ballistic Full PlateFull Body Steel Plate Armor with a Plate Carrier worn over a Gambeson with a Steel Full Helm and Gauntlets.Used by defenders of static positions to protect from ranged weaponry, rarely seen used for anything else.
-Head ProtectionRespirator and Goggles /Gas MaskProvides some protection to your lungs and eyes from chemical weapons.Bump Cap/Hard Hat/Bump Helmet/Bicycle HelmetProtects your brain from getting scrambled. Is compatible with seperate eye and face protection like gas masks and respirators.Metal Mesh Face GuardGood for protecting your head from spalling while wearing a Plate Carrier.Steel Full HelmProtects your brain from getting scrambled and good for protecting your head from spalling while wearing a Plate Carrier.-----Note: for those interested, this is for a post-apocalyptic setting that is quite a few decades after Peak Oil triggered those n charge to do a mass depopulation event with a de-evolution "vaccine." Rippers are essentially devolved humans that now have claws and nightvision and slow regeneration but are only as smart as chimpanzees. Essentially it is a world that has scavenged and used up most of the modern tech and has for the most part reverted to Iron Age tech with some Medieval tech slowly popping up and some stuff still being reused and recycled. Guns are mostly blackpowder with the very few working modern guns essentially being artifacts relying on extremely scarce ammo.Each armor should be statted up in the recommended configuration as well as worn alone or with other option such as Light Clothes instead of Heavy Clothes or a Heavy Jacket instead of a Gambeson.
>>94423004>>94423009>>94423018Neat, will you be using GURPS for that or are you a masochist and want to home-rule some other system?Also, if you have skills and inclination this would make a passable old X-com mod.How will the characters deal with the knowledge that civilization will never rise again from that?
>>94422957According to the Ming Armies website, mountain scale was supposedly very flexible. I'm not even saying it existed outside of artworks, but it has purported functions.
>>94364426*native american
>>94425295>According to the Ming Armies website, mountain scale was supposedly very flexible.Religious artwork follow a template where the armor is tailored to resemble the cataphract armors of the Song dynasty, the patterns on the statues are interchangeable however with many examples not having a real life counterpart. Regarding the flexible thigh armor it is not limited to the Y pattern but found in religious artwork as a whole.
