View Single Post
Old 09-24-2019, 06:12 AM   #24
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: [Low-Tech] Padded Cloth and Layered Armour penalty

The Pyramid armor design articles treat any flexible material as rigid (for purposes other than setting MaxDR, which I don’t think is actually formally linked to thickness - my suggested 0.2” for rigid and 0.5” for flexible is more a trend than a hard rule) if it’s 0.25” or thicker. The material doesn’t suddenly become rigid, but the effects of flexible - increased blunt trauma, 100% coverage with no armor chinks/gaps - no longer apply (it’s thick enough to readily absorb blunt trauma, but too thick for joints and the like so it needs to be designed more like armor plates than clothing).

For going beyond maximum thickness, I think once something is thick enough to interfere with movement it’s going to become rather restrictive rather quickly. -1 DX per +10% thickness should work (double thickness is “impossible” to function, at -10); I’d even be tempted to make it -1 DX per +5% (1.5x thickness - roughly maximum thickness for a creature 1 SM larger than the wearer - is at the “impossible” -10 level). If multilayered, this assumes the armor was designed to be worn together; if not, the layering penalty would also be in play.

For flexible-over-rigid, I think I’ve read this typically cuts the protective ability of the flexible armor in half, so 50% DR may be appropriate. Of course, that’s flexible armor on, say, a tree stump, rather than other a layer of plate with a squishy person underneath, so this may overstate the effect - perhaps 80% DR would be more appropriate (or just ignore the effect and use full DR). I suspect in cases where flexible armor was worn over rigid for a functional reason (rather than for aesthetics), it was largely to capture projectiles and their fragments so they don’t end up striking the wearer or one of his allies in an unarmored location after glancing/splintering off the armor. See the video from this thread, wherein roughly period arrows were shot from a period bow at period breastplate (roughly because the arrows required some educated guessing, the bow is based on specimens from roughly 100 years after Agincourt, and the breastplate was based more on a German design than a French one).
__________________
GURPS Overhaul
Varyon is online now   Reply With Quote