Quote:
Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock
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?
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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.