Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole
Yet another video of people doing remarkable things in armor made me think about whether really spry people in full armor should really lose all of their DEX bonus. As I note, I'm not sure I'd mod the game, but it did get me thinking. |
While live-action roleplaying combat is not particularly realistic in that we use foam weapons, we do use real armor for the most part. I wore a coat of plates and plate pieces (arms, legs) for two of my characters.
Even did a back flip in the ensemble although I have to admit it wasn't intentional and would not try it again. I was surprised, started to fall backwards and for whatever reason wound up doing a full flip landing on my feet. We all stood there stunned. Looking at each other for a beat and than I ran. (I was ambushed when I was alone).
What critical is doing anything athletic in full panoply is that it is properly fitted. And for the most of the armor you where that means the straps are all the right lengths and you are belted up properly (this is important for chain).
Of Chain versus Plate, it is far easier to do athletics in plate as chain is a shifting mass of metal on your head and body supported by a few points (your shoulders, the crown of your head, etc. Belting properly distributes the weight better.
Plate in contrast is strapped to your body at several point of contact. Properly fitted plate feel like wearing football or hockey gear. Obviously medieval warriors are carrying more weight than sports players today. But like modern athletics they have conditioned their endurance to deal with a full day of wearing armor.
My own gear weighed 40 to 50 pounds by itself and when I was attending events every month I could wear it the entire weekend and fight when I needed to without being winded. At times I could even outrun lightly clad fighters but the point where I got out of breath came a lot sooner for me.
You learned to accommodate that because the last you wanted to have happen is be so out of breath that you start flailing with your weapon. I sat down whenever I could, I worked at my armor setup so when I moved it "breathed" to keep me cool in the summer. I cut my kit down to the absolute bare minimum and kept everything else secured in my cabin.