[GURPS Low Tech] Armor

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But far more expensive than other TL2 armour.

If it was fairly common anywhere, it needs to be at least marginally competative to the alternatives. Sure, people do dumb things in the name of fasion, but they generally wise up to it after a generation or two have died of stupidity and move on to more efficient forms of protection.

There's dumb things that kill you, and then there's just expensive things that take a lot of sweat equity. Unusually Expensive armor is more in that second category than the first one. Especially if it is an improvement over the previous armor - you're still getting an advantage, it's just not maximally optimal compared to other options.

I also think you're grossely underestimating the stupidity of people as a group :) It took western medicine over a thousand years between forgetting about ritual purity for medical practitioners (which left them more-clean than if they weren't ritually washed, although not modern-sterile conditions) and the modern discovery of the role of hygiene in patient survival. A lot of people died because of that.

There's basically a fundemental split between the cultures that got excited over mail, and the cultures that went all-in with scale or lamellar. The only ways to look at it are either that the two paths were roughly equal, or one was better than the other, which means that one group did something sub-optimal but good-enough-for-most-purposes. It happens that way some times.

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Historically the earliest true lamellar I was able to find was the Warring States period in China (TL2) and it was fairly common in Asia after that. Scale armour is the most common metal armour at TL1. You could treat lamellar as an advanced version of scale - perhaps fine quality with reduced weight. This would make it more comparable to other TL2 armours.

Maybe use segmented plate stats for lamellar, even tought is different, the way it would work in gurps would be more similar.