Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

Yep, and while I knew that in theory before I'd worn any, practical experience certainly backed it up :-0!


EDIT: this raises a possible wider system point. Does GURPS make legs too easy to hit? a -2 to hit to bypass armour in most instances seem a pretty good deal! Especially as while you won't quickly kill your opponent crippling a leg is pretty much fight ending injury unless you really have to make sure they're dead right then and there.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

Armour design LT 3/52 (as per Varyon), there are HT and UT articles in the same format in later pyramids



Sorry I was thinking more about the sliding scale of layer induced DX pens!

I wouldn't covert damage into blunt trauma between layers, as you say you get weird results in the system. The system tends to total up DR and apply damage to it.
this does lead to some oddities though when you get DRs that react to different damage types in different ways as well as if you use edge protection!

However in this case it's kind of irrelevant because unless magic is involved a 25DR cape wouldn't be a cape as we know it! It would be some kind of open rigid cylinder of several inches thick material and I dread to think what it would weigh ;-)!


Yep that's right and it makes sense. That flexibility means you can get a more complete coverage without joins and individual separate pieces, and the body can still move. Rigid armour makes that almost impossible. Some areas need to flex to allow movement and at some point rigid pieces have to join and meet when fitted around the body.

But there are tricks, better tailoring reduced chinks & gaps, sliding rivets to allowed for plates to gain some flexibility (both in LT), some pieces were design to block attacks to those areas Bresurges, extensions to the Polyens

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

Targeting locomotion is arguably too useful in GURPS - I have a similar problem in that when Winged Flight is involved, it’s really hard to justify attacking anything other than the wings (which are unarmored, only at -2, and sufficient injury to cripple is basically a guaranteed victory as your target plummets to the earth). A solution I had there (haven’t really tested it) was that, if the target fails their normal defense, give them a “free” unarmed Parry or Dodge, representing the fact that body part is in fairly constant motion. This required the target use a Retreat either for this defense (in which case they benefit from the Retreat bonus) or a previous one (no bonus, but the second defense is available). Adapting this to the legs can work. Failing that, well, shin guards (front only, defends knee and lower leg for 3/6 protection) aren’t too terribly onerous and we’re fairly common IIRC, and make the “ignore DR and hit the leg” penalty be -4 instead of -2.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

It may be that a normal retreat is just a pretty realistic response to an attack to the legs (you are moving you legs out the way afterall)!

I think retreats are IRL very common



True enough, and at the other end of the leg partial armour often had some kind of coverage for the upper thigh!

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

Around 30% of all the injuries on the Wisby skeletons were to the tibia. Skull injuries made up another 30%.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

Cheers, but other than telling us that 30% of the people killed at Wisby had suffered lower leg wounds I'm not sure what that tells us about how easy it is to hit the leg in terms of GURPS -2 to hit location penalty?

If nothing else if the lower legs were unarmoured and other location were armoured than I'd expect to see those locations dis-proportionally represented in terms for wounds on dead people as opposed to hits on armoured locations.

Plus of course people left dead on the field is a sub category of wounded, and not injuries on the dead were inflicted in open combat

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

My experience is that the legs are not especially hard to hit, but unless your opponent is really sticking his front leg out, you need more reach to hit them, so in a cascading wait situation (which is actually very very common) you lose out timing-wise to someone with an equal length weapon.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

It seems that when you're getting that detailed, it becomes a literal matter of inches. For that, arm length seems just as important assuming equal length weapons. That's really getting fiddly.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

What examples of such heavy quilted garments worn under iron armour do you have? I linked you a page describing arming doublets/pourpoints/aketons worn under iron armour, they are about as heavy as a modern giacca/blazer with a complete canvas lining. If you go by weight, none of them is heavy enough for GURPS Padded Cloth, if you go by thickness than the heaviest might be DR 1.

The anonymous Byzantine treatise on generalship does recommend a garment one finger thick under iron armour, but a sixteenth-century writer says that soldiers without other armour wear a garment three fingers thick to stop stone-tipped poisoned arrows. In GURPS I would probably call the first Padded Cloth and the second Medium or Heavy Layered Cloth.

Why do you think such a fifteenth-century jack would be GURPS Padded Cloth not Layered Cloth? Sources from fifteenth-century Europe describe jacks of from 10 to 30 layers of linen cloth, and we have some extant examples in Germany which are quite thick except where the breastplate will cover them.

Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty
 

GURPS hit location penalties and random hit tables have to include both projectiles, thrusts with hand weapons, and swings with hand weapons. By definition, they can't cover all three accurately. Nor can they cover things like the ability to strike to the leg with a knife, a one-handed sword, and a quarterstaff (generally speaking, its easier and safer with the longer weapon).