Ceramic Low-Tech Armour

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Ceramics have been around for thousands of years. If was suitable for armour then it would have been done. It wasn't - even in cultures that had little or no metalworking.

Thousands of years during which the quality of the ceramics and the threats faced changed. We have ceramics now that are suitable for a particular kind of armour. It's possible that ceramics only really become useful with the introduction of guns. Ceramics also have advantages against some rarer threats like heat. Regardless I don't subscribe to the belief that nothing useful exists that low-tech societies can invent that wasn't invented somewhere. Plenty of things were only invented in one area and were considered useful enough to keep around. If those areas didn't exist we wouldn't have access to those inventions. I see no reason to assume we developed everything that could be useful for earth let alone for combinations that never realistically could have existed on earth. That's not to say it's trivial to find things low-tech people missed, those guys are very clever.

How would you stat up historical ceramics for armour? Is stone a good choice or do you think the DR or ablativity should be worse?

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Leather and cloth are almost always available, you can get DR4 with them.

If you really want to use ceramics, I would say 10% the cost of the metal armor, but fully ablative, so, maybe your ceramic plate will stop an axe, but only once or twice.

I don't "really want to use ceramics". I think they would be cool and I'm interested if you can have ceramics of quality realistically and without resorting to magic. I don't have much investment in them. It's more important that it's realistic than effective.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Ahh, thank you. That raises the question if is it possible and worth it to try to come up with stats for ceramic's differing effectiveness based on velocity?

The game doesn't really define high velocity, though it's also the velocity regime in which unassisted ballistic fiber is essentially useless (realistically, rifle shots go through level IIIa armor like a hot knife through butter).

Originally Posted by Sindri

I don't "really want to use ceramics". I think they would be cool and I'm interested if you can have ceramics of quality realistically and without resorting to magic. I don't have much investment in them. It's more important that it's realistic than effective.

High quality ceramics pretty much require electrically assisted sintering. Our best example for low-metal reasonably advanced culture would probably be medieval Japan. Typically, low metal just means leather for those not wealthy enough to be able to afford metal (it will also seriously impede agriculture; non-metal agricultural implements aren't very good).

[Bruno]

Actual artificial rock wool can't be made until you can melt rock, so lacking magic that's a TL 6 invention that has a strong prerequisite on previous smelting technology. Similar for fibreglass. Polymers wouldn't work with firing, of course, I should have thought of that.

On the other hand, the asphalt coating/backing idea is an interesting one - latex or plant tar could probably substitute if there's no natural reservoirs nearby. Use it to glue a layer of cloth to each scale perhaps, or two (one on each side), You'd start getting into a sort of composite armour at that point.

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I don't "really want to use ceramics". I think they would be cool and I'm interested if you can have ceramics of quality realistically and without resorting to magic. I don't have much investment in them. It's more important that it's realistic than effective.

Well, you have two options:
1)Realistic LT ceramic, with is very uneffective, that's why no one used them, not even when they had no access to iron.
2)Magical LT ceramic, effective, but not realistic.

Ceramics are brittle, they take damage and break, that's how they protect.
So, no, you cannot have realistic ceramic with is effective as armor before TL6, that's what we are trying to tell since page 1.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Well, you have two options:
1)Realistic LT ceramic, with is very uneffective, that's why no one used them, not even when they had no access to iron.
2)Magical LT ceramic, effective, but not realistic.

Ceramics are brittle, they take damage and break, that's how they protect.
So, no, you cannot have realistic ceramic with is effective as armor before TL6, that's what we are trying to tell since page 1.

What do you mean by "very uneffective" though. Stone is the main suggestion so far. Do you think it should be worse than stone? In terms of DR? In terms of ablativity? How about weight and cost?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sindri

What do you mean by "very uneffective" though. Stone is the main suggestion so far. Do you think it should be worse than stone? In terms of DR? In terms of ablativity? How about weight and cost?

Depends what ceramic you're using. TL 3 porcelains might be equivalent to stone armor; TL 0-2 simple clay ceramics will be reduced DR and reduced cost.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Ceramics are brittle, they take damage and break, that's how they protect.
So, no, you cannot have realistic ceramic with is effective as armor before TL6, that's what we are trying to tell since page 1.

This-does-not-follow. You totally can have realistic low TL ceramic that is effective as battlefield armour... for certain values of effective. It depends on what you consider "effective enough" of course.

I think thin pottery scale might be actually worth it if you're in a position where you expect to take more arrow fire than melee blows and not hustling around much - manning the battlements in a siege, or operating siege equipment perhaps. You'd want scale, so you can take multiple hits, but that's about as close as it gets to the modern use case for ceramic armour (against gunfire). It's not a modern composition, but you're not faring against rifle rounds either.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

This-does-not-follow. You totally can have realistic low TL ceramic that is effective as battlefield armour... for certain values of effective. It depends on what you consider "effective enough" of course.

The main standard is 'superior protection to leather or cloth'. Some ceramic scales on top of cloth might be useful if the enemy is using glass arrowheads, as it will shatter the arrowhead, which will go through cloth reasonably easily.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I think thin pottery scale might be actually worth it if you're in a position where you expect to take more arrow fire than melee blows and not hustling around much - manning the battlements in a siege, or operating siege equipment perhaps. You'd want scale, so you can take multiple hits, but that's about as close as it gets to the modern use case for ceramic armour (against gunfire). It's not a modern composition, but you're not faring against rifle rounds either.

This is on the right track, I think.
More generally, I think you simply need to decide what social and military realities in your society would make highly-ablative armor desirable enough for some people to be worth manufacturing.

A difficult task, but not impossible.

If ceramic armor is sufficiently cheap compared to other materials, and ranged weapons are a significant threat, than it might see some use for poor soldiers (perhaps just ceramic plates sewn onto leather or cloth armor.)

Or in a society where assassination by crossbow is common, you might see people in power wearing light weight ceramic plates over their fine chainmail vests because it can be lighter than bronze or steel plates and you never know when the killer might strike.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Sindri

What do you mean by "very uneffective" though. Stone is the main suggestion so far. Do you think it should be worse than stone?

Much, even ignoring that so-called stone armor may never actually have been meant for fighting, so even the theoretical performance attributed to it may be optimistic. Low-fired ceramics are much less hard and less dense than most stones, while high-fired ceramics available to low-tech societies are still significantly less hard and less dense than most stones, and since they're vitrified, they'll completely shatter if struck hard enough or even just at a bad angle. Basically, low-tech armor would be equivalent to stringing a bunch of tiles or bricks together and hanging them off of your body. If the tiles are thin enough that you can wear the armor and still walk around, they won't absorb enough energy to protect you meaningfully if you're struck, and if they're heavy enough to take a blow for you, you probably won't be able to walk around in the armor.

If one of my players were suicidal enough to want to try this, I'd probably treat it as though he'd hung a bunch of pottery jugs around his neck to protect his torso (arm and leg protection: just no). I'd pick an appropriately sized vessel from Low Tech (say, the gallon jugs) and multiply weight by six. Each time he takes a hit, roll a die. If the number hasn't come up before, the jug in that position takes a hit, absorbing up to its HP points of damage and then shatters, providing no more DR.