[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Neck armor can be distracting, as well as potentially restricting head movement, both of which directly interfere with a sentry/lookout's job (and make it easier for the infiltrator to sneak up on him). Wearing Neck armor also makes things only slightly more difficult for the infiltrator when stabby time comes around - he still has to grapple the target from behind to prevent him from calling out (this can be - but isn't advised to be - avoided if the sentry is completely unarmored, as it's difficult to shout with a collapsed lung), and after that slipping the knife into the gaps in the neck armor - or failing that just stabbing the sentry a few times in the face - isn't much more difficult than stabbing the neck would have been to start with. In other words, the cost isn't worth the gain.

Leather stocks and mail coifs may be an exception here, however, but the former isn't great protection (DR 1 IIRC) and if you can afford to put your sentries in mail coifs for the modest improvement, their chest armor is still pretty well guaranteed to be better than that on their necks, so the infiltrator is more likely to be able to get through with a neck stab than with a vitals stab.



Eh, I consider that as a case where the sentry has failed at his job, but managed to make the most of the failure by alerting the other guards. There's a reason I snuck that "arguably" weasel-word in there, after all.

By definition if the camp is alerted in time he has not failed. He has just gotten killed and there's more where that came from. He is obviously a lot more concerned and so is his widow and orphans but not the army.