[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Rasna

I suspected that the sample tested by Williams wasn't very strong, and in fact I was unsure if it may figure as GURPS light mail or fine mail. If I'm not wrong, the arrow required 80 J to pierce the light mail and other 20 J to pierce the padding underneath. A longbow arrow, depending its weight and the draw weight, has up to 140-150 Joules of energy at close distance: enough to pierce light mail, gambeson and inflict a serious wound to the wearer. I don't figure exactly how "GURPS-like fine mail" would perform against the same bow/arrow used in the test: superficial penetration and/or some blunt trauma, or no damage at all for both armour and wearer?

These tests are good at telling us how much energy is required to compromise the armour but not so good at telling us how much damage the wearer takes. The main problem is that they are never placed on a target that is as mobile, flexible, and resilient as a human being. We seriously underestimate how much more effective armour is when it is worn by a human.

The point of armour is to get destroyed. Every joule that goes into deforming the armour is a joule that isn't going into the wearer. Anyone who comes out of a battle with their armour undamaged is going to get accused of not pulling their weight, if not of outright cowardice.

The most common threat on any battlefield for the best part of three thousand years was from spears and arrows. All body armour for all of this time was designed to stop these weapons. We know from the primary sources that some types of mail were considered completely arrowproof. What we don't know is which types. It seems reasonable to assume that they were the variants made from a combination of heavy links and denser weaves.

This might help.
http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

There are dozens of different types of mail. Low-Tech took all of these and created three generic categories, but more realistic modelling isn't possible so long as we rely on the current ST-damage table.