[LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Browsing some gambesons available for sale I noticed they're very light, none weighting more than 10 lbs, and after googling some more I found no evidence that gambesons and padded jacks are as heavy as shown on Low-Tech (lightest version with only 1 dr weights 9 lbs, dr 2 jumps to 18 lbs).
Why are textile armor in GURPS so heavy? Is it to balance their low cost?

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Pretty much everything made in bulk today would count as Ordinary Clothing or Padded Cloth not "layered cloth" in GURPS Low Tech. Fabric armour meant as armour had 12-30 layers of strong linen, or an inch of cotton wool packed as densely as wood. Garments like that, scaled up to cover what GURPS calls the Torso, can easily weigh 10 pounds.

Its like how a leather jacket from a department store is DR 0 and 1-3 lbs, not any of the kinds of leather armour in a game book.

Edit: The best definitions of damage and DR in GURPS are for steel plates vs. bullets, and have trouble representing things which provide a bit of protection against muscle-powered attacks, so GURPS Low Tech has optional rules ... but its not unreasonable for most of the padded jackets for sale today to give DR 0 to DR 1* (cutting and crushing only)/0. They are lightly built from cheap materials to look good and take the sting out of blunt swords.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

It's because of the amount of textile needed for DR 1 against impaling. There's rules in LT for heavy clothing that is DR 1 vs cutting only, and that weighs less.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Also ... I think there was tension between having rules for padded armour 6 mm, 12 mm, 18 mm, and 25 mm thick, and between making its DR-to-weight ratio appropriate in comparison to metal armour. As is, I would treat Padded Cloth and Light Layered Cloth as the main options, because 30 layers of linen protecting just the Torso weigh about 3600 g (8 lbs) and an extant mid-thigh-length, long-sleeved, inch-thick padded armour would weigh 10-12 lbs if it were adult sized.

Dan Howard has said that it would help for representing muscle-powered combat if a point of DR represented about half as much resistance as it does now. As it is, there are optional rules in Low Tech to describe how someone in a heavy winter jacket, flannel shirt and longjohns can get away with things in a knife fight that someone in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaian shirt can't risk.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

So those gambesons being sold as "padded jacket class" are all just the inner padding gurps includes in the armor weights or at best padded cloth (dr 1*)? That's a bummer...
Thanks for dispeling my misunderstanding.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Yep. Textile armour weighs more than an equivalent item made from metal. Leather is even worse. A buff coat weighs around 20 lbs and barely rates DR 2.

Here is an example of proper textile armour. It is about an inch thick and is as rigid as a board.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O8...rmour-unknown/

Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor would be a good book to read. It dispels a lot of historical armour myths.
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/l.../lowtecharmor/

Keep in mind that clothing can be very heavy. A lot of older-styled wedding dresses can weigh 30 lbs or more.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

And then there's dwarves making padded fabric quilt armour out of rock wool and woven basalt fibre.... :)

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Rock fabric would probably be similar to the real world version using serpentine or asbestos fibers.
Dwarves are naturally immune to mineral induced cancer, right?

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Woven basalt fabric is a real thing, and is now used instead of asbestos in most brake pads and other places.

And is used because it won't give you cancer or lung diseases.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Natural miners should have a bunch of small resistances, and dust is certainly one of them.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Interesting... I think it would fall somewhere between rigid and flexible armor, but I'm not sure exactly where (for blunt trauma purposes). However it would edge out steel in strength and lightness.

Not sure it's ease of use though, and it would require magic at the lower tech levels.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

The very best might count as DR 0 or 1 (cut)/0 Ordinary Clothing or DR 1* Padded Cloth. Most would count as Cheap and have several quirks and flaws which historical clothing did not: the ones for combat sports tend to be too bulky for plate armour to fit properly above them, its common for them to have a gap at the armpit or be too tight about the hips and thighs so they gap between the legs when the wearer walks ...

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Arming garments are not much use unless they are custom-tailored to properly fit the wearer. You can't get one "off the shelf". The whole point of underpadding was to stop chafing, to improve the fit of the armour, and to provide a foundation to which the armour can be attached. They were never intended to provide additional protection.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Definitely flexible, unless it's one of those made stiff enough to be solid, and that would generally be determined by whether you have many quilted layers or stuffed quilting. Think of making armour out of sail canvas rather than clothing linen, and rather rougher on sword edges.

And if you have dwarves you've either got magic or sufficient tech.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Depends what 'dwarves' means in context. Doesn't take magic or advanced tech to have short people about, or even to have a separate related species (it's just ahistorical).

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Stereotype fantasy/fantasy-style gearhead dwarves. 'Just short people' would mean less cloth required.

But you can make basalt cloth with early-Victorian-era technology, if you know how.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

According to wiki, "The manufacture of basalt fiber requires the melting of the crushed and washed basalt rock at about 1,500 °C (2,730 °F). The molten rock is then extruded through small nozzles to produce continuous filaments of basalt fiber." That is not Victorian-era tech, it's not really practical much before when it was actually first attempted (1923).

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Practical=/=possible. Victorians could get to 1,500 C. If you've got the oxygen for a Bessemer Furnace you can do it.

It's what you would see in a Steampunk or Steampunk/Fantasy game, not a historical one.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Are you telling me Dwarves wears socks made of rocks?

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

10 - 20 micron extrusion of material at 1500C?

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Large numbers of them, in a box.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

And that's why they don't get jokes about someone's socks or pants staying upright when taken off.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Yeah, they just give them a stony stare

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Sure, but you then have to productively work with it at those temperatures. The required machinery has lot of applications, enough that you're probably TL 6 by the time you get it working.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "get your rocks off".

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Look, sir! Look, sir! A dwarf called Knox, sir!
Knox in rock socks.
Knox rocks in rock socks.
Knox with holes in rock socks.
Knox with holes in rock socks sucks.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Yes. This. I have turned my tongue to mush so many times in the last nine years.

Re: [LT] Padded/Layered Cloth weight
 

Ayup. Which is why I specified Steampunkish, which gets around such mundane TL considerations. If it could have been done real-world it probably would have been even if just experiments.

But if you strain the existing technology at the time, as a few genres do a lot, you can do it. But it'll be an experimental and/or inefficient process used for a character's gear or as a McGuffin.

But a fantasy setting with either or both of Heat and Shape Stone plus Microscopic Vision and Shape Metal, it's not too hard to do. Although it probably won't be general issue.