Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

If people were really interested in reducing the time it takes to don low-tech armour what (if anything, but presumably they can get some amount of improvement) could they do without requiring major technological developments?

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

The don times for most of the items in LT are already way too low. It was a compromise between gameability and reality.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Have you given any thought to "harsh realism don times" then?

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Perk:
Fast Donner: You can put on your armor in half the usual time.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I thought Fast Donner reduced the time it took to eat your fellow party members.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

About 15 mins for plate harness and a lot more if you try it by yourself.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

They wear an armoured coat and a simple helmet. The later takes a few seconds to put on, and they can belt or buckle the coat as they ride or run. Anything with more pieces or which has to be laced or buckled in place is out.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

What I'm interested in is how much you could improve each kind of armour, I guess with a fine: quick donning option, compared to normal examples. How much can you optimize one armoured coat compared to the next?

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I'm guessing it comes down to different fastening types and positions.

Fastening at the front is easy, but then you have this great big potential chink to your front.

Fastenings at the back remove this issue, but are functionally impossible for someone to do by them selves

Loose over the head tunics, smocks etc are quick, but by their very nature preclude being well fitted which while annoying for ordinary clothes, is uncomfortable and tiring for anything with DR points.


The armourer/tailor who comes up with mediaeval velcro or even zips will do well.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Make a DX-based Amoury (Body Armor) roll at a penalty according to Time Spent on p.B346.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

By far the biggest improvements would be procedural: keep people in armour, hang it ready to put on instead of storing it in a box or bag out of the way, have soldiers dress each other instead of waiting for their servants. After that come choices with tradeoffs of speed for fit, durability, and security eg. replacing a back opening with a front opening or three buckles with one belt. Anything beyond that would probably be below the resolution of the guesses in Low Tech. I don't have enough armour to guess how long you might save by the second or third type of choice.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

A realistic Low-Tech fast-donning solution: Always carry a maille hauberk (with long arms and even an attached coif if desired; double-maille if you need extra protection). Even if it's not a part of your primary armor, you can slip it on or off in a matter of seconds.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Can you really? remember that you also need padding underneath.

Better solution: A shield.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Yes, literally seconds. I own a hauberk and a haubergeon. Padding will help keep you from getting broken bones when the swords' edges are converted to blunt impact damage, but a quick donning of a hauberk is better than nothing in a pinch. If you need the gambeson (cloth armor), you can sew the maille to the gambeson for quick donning.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

From experience mail is not much harder to put on than a sweater with a bit of practice anyway and neither is an arming coat.

Its not a matter of a couple of seconds though as some belts need to be tightened and mail is heavy.

Its much faster than many other kinds of armor which I suspect contributes to the fact it lasted more than a thousand years as primary armor and is still in use for various purposes.

However if you need an immediate defense, the most popular was a buckler, worn at the belt.This was the default defense for something like half a millenium and its as fast as a weapon and with the training very effective in melee.

Since I am in a GURPSY state of mind (best to the tune of BillY Joel's New York State of Mind)

Gurps Low Tech calls this weapon the dueling buckler. Its DB 0 giving plus one to block which is realistic and makes it almost a borderline ethic badass weapon

Given a skill of say 12 in sword and buckler, rather a basic amount for an adventurer -- this is a block of 10, 50% typically -- typically with retreat a bit of defense, the block goes up to 12 still allowing an attack role of 10. Thats with basic training.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

in GURPS terms I think this take a quick donning penalty. Still with edge protection it would be a DR of 6 vs cuts 3 vs everything else

Proper use without the penalty of course needs the waist belt to take weight off the shoulders and I think a little adjusting sometimes,

Its still massively faster than say say a plate harness and can easily be done by one person.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Don times for armour are a bit like the hiking rules. They assume an optimal situation that rarely occurs in the real world. I'd have problems with any attempt to reduce the times any further. Realistically it should take a lot longer for most types of armour. Mail is probably the only exception so there isn't much point concentrating on that example. As has already been said the don times are supposed to include time to put on any underpadding. Joinville wrote that during a night attack he didn't have time to put on his mail so he had to fight in his aketon. He was wounded by five arrows because of it and complains about still feeling "sore" the next day.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

It seems reasonable to allow faster or slower dressing than normal with appropriate penalties and bonuses but there obviously has to be a floor on how much time you can shave off.

The thing is not "armour donning times are unfun and must be lowered" it's "how much can you shave off realistic donning times whatever they may be."

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I really want to see the supplement 'Dan Howard Unfettered: The Gameability-less, Pitiless Conversion of GURPS Low-Tech to Untenable Levels of Realism'.

Or is there already a similar blog? :-D

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I'm also quite a fan of untenable levels of realism. : ).

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I admit to being a bit of realism fan. But not allowing one to slip on complex state of the art armor like a pair of pants isn't pitiless or inherently un-fun.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

It also further reinforces the point that even if knights owned full sets of fantastic plate armour you probably didn't go around in the full set when combat wasn't imminent. But quite often you had either a travelling "mooching" set of less complex, lighter and more comfortable armour. Or your armour was to an extant modular so that you could walk around partially armoured relatively quickly and more freely, but have all the extra bits added on if you needed them.

Something I believe that was quite common with armour for the face and neck, and great helms going over smaller ones.

Also Knights had squires and batsmen for a reason

Counter to D&D-SOP where everyone walks around with their best armour on, visors down and weapon drawn every moment of the day in case the DM throws a random encounter at them while they take a p*ss or haggle for bread.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

I'd buy that.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

It would be full of pretty boring things like the so called "bagdad battery" written up as a scroll case, clerics' maces that actually shed blood when they smack someone in the head, longbow arrows bouncing off plate armour, and medieval peasants that only work 200 days a year.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Rules Exemption (Don Times) [1] (GURPS Power-Ups 2: Perks, p. 20). Lets you put on armor as fast as a normal set of clothing, or in 2d turns if the GM wants to be generous.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Well I'm really looking for improvements in armour not in the wearer, that aren't silly and for reasons of "tacticool" more than donning times actually being at all relevant.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Methods for reducing don time (at any TL) boil down to one of the following:

• Proper Storage. If you have to untangle the cords before you put armor on, you're losing time. I'm guessing LT already assumes the armor is properly stored.
• Improved Fasteners. It's likely that low-tech armor already uses the best available, though maintenance to make sure the fasteners are in good shape should make some difference. Again, I think LT assumes properly maintained armor.
• Looser Tolerances. If you care less about how well the armor fits once donned, you can make it faster to put on. This will generally mean the armor has weight or DX penalties.
• Limited Coverage. Each additional little piece of armor does take a bit of time to put on -- so just leave some of them off. This will mean the armor has rather large gaps which can possibly be targeted quite easily.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

You seriously underestimate the geekdom of this forum.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

The real reason so many were religious; all those holidays you weren't allowed to work. ;)

Arrows off plate, like sniper rifles' bullets off tank armor. Why do people think they should penetrate?

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

The Japanese use armor stands that were intended to allow the warrior crouch under it and basically crawl up into his armor in less than a minute. I think my source on this is some Time-Life book series when I was a kid so take it for what it's worth.

Re: Reducing Low-Tech Armour Don Times
 

Oh, agreed - not a post intended to insinuate such. Meant entirely good-naturedly. I actually have little doubt that a (somewhat less exaggerated) book of that nature would be a solid read!