Should Plate Armor be Harder to Penetrate?

[GODSLAYER]

So I've been chatting with a few guys in a Games Design channel lately, and one of their issues with GURPS is that they feel that, historically, armor was much harder to penetrate than what the current rules represent.

I've heard this argument before. That melee weapons might have been effective vs. cheaper armor, but that vs. hardened steel plate you weren't going to have much luck getting through it.

I found an old thread on the topic here.

I'm wondering what your opinions are on it?

[Anthony]

Plate armor is plenty hard to penetrate with average ST. The problem is a combination of how damage scales with ST, and GURPS being an RPG, not a simulation -- being forced into a very small list of weapons because nothing else can punch through armor isn't really that fun.

[Rupert]

That many of the proponents of "better armour" have a very different idea of what 'playable' and 'game balance' mean than I do, and/or quite different priorities.

[Mister Negative]

Looking at the Edge Protection rules may give Plate the protective properties you envision, without rendering it invulnerable to many.

[afnord]

If you use the rules from Low Tech then Plate Armour becomes almost impossible to penetrate. You need 13 cut or 10 imp to penetrate DR 6 plate. But it protects you less from the blunt trauma. This means a guy with ST 12 or less is never going to penetrate unless he aims for gaps or rolls a critical hit.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by afnord

If you use the rules from Low Tech then Plate Armour becomes almost impossible to penetrate. You need 13 cut or 10 imp to penetrate DR 6 plate. But it protects you less from the blunt trauma. This means a guy with ST 12 or less is never going to penetrate unless he aims for gaps or rolls a critical hit.

Which means that it's not really DR6... It also means that you get this odd effect where a cutting weapon doesn't do great damage and then suddenly it does amazing damage. For example, vs. that DR6 plate, a 12-point cut does 6 damage and a 13-point cut does 10 points.

[tanksoldier]

The difficulty penetrating plate, and chain, with edge weapons is the reason war hammers, maces and the like exist. Not only can you injure the guy inside, you can damage joints and reduce his mobility.

I’d guess that two guys in plate swinging long swords at each other like the movies wasn’t the way things were usually done. There are some vids on YouTube about how medieval martial arts might have worked.

I’d bet that edges were mostly used against unarmored or lightly armored opponents, and the war hammer came out for the guy in plate.

The problem is, with all the variables, how do you simulate that in a game and still make it playable?

I think GURPS does that well enough, especially with some of the optional rules.

12-point cut does 6 damage and a 13-point cut does 10 points

The difference between barely getting thru and a solid puncture.

Part of it also involves an abstraction of hit location. Maybe the 13 point hit managed to strike a weak spot.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Which means that it's not really DR6... It also means that you get this odd effect where a cutting weapon doesn't do great damage and then suddenly it does amazing damage. For example, vs. that DR6 plate, a 12-point cut does 6 damage and a 13-point cut does 10 points.

The second seems very 'working as intended', though I'm not convinced that the large amounts of 'blunt trauma' pass-through before true penetration is reasonable.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by GODSLAYER

I'm wondering what your opinions are on it?

There are several fixes to make armour harder to penetrate. Any of these prevent the problem of plate penetration.

There's at least one fix to stop damage scaling so rapidly in the human scale, which also solves the problem from a different angle.

GURPS plate is excellent protection against ST 10 opponents, probably within a reasonable game simulation of reality. Real world plate wearers probably didn't have to contend with multiple ST 15 opponents but you can easily have such an encounter in GURPS.

Games only model reality and playability is an important goal as well as passing a sniff test.

[Mr Frost]

The house rule I use is to give all muscle powered weapons {including crossbows and such} except for an armour piercing option for impaling weapons {that changes Imp to Pi -layered cloth still get double DR however} an Armour Divisor of 0.5 - thus armour is effectively doubled - along with edge protection {Low Tech p.102 "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons"} .

I also adjust the hammer option on the Poll Axe to have one higher damage than the axe option and a flanged version of the Maul does one more damage .

It means that DR 2 Padded is now actually useful {it takes 4 to penetrate and 8 to get the Cut multiplier} , a full hauberk is the excellent protection it should be and if you want an impaling weapon that is a one weapon fits all number then put a flanged poll head on the peen .