Quote:
Originally Posted by DanHoward
I'd love to know from where you derive your information about kabadions. As far as I know, none survive.
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Cited from "A Companion to the Byzantine Culture of War, ca. 300-1204":
"A type of garment resembling a coat made of padded cotton opening in the centre front was the
kabadion. There were two types of
kabadia: (a) for the infantry, reaching down the knees, with long detachable sleeves split between the elbow and the wrist, and (b) for the horse archers, offering protection from the waist down to the lower part of the archer's body and part of the horse."
If it was something that "offered protection", then would be something at least somewhat thicker and heavier than GURPS Ordinary Clothing. And, in your own work for GURPS, you classified both the European aketon and the Eastern Roman kabadion as being GURPS Padded Cloth - and note, the point of the discussion isn't if these garments were "6 lbs. for 100% torso armour" in real life because 1) GURPS low-tech armour and items tend to be heavier than their real counterparts, and 2) the granularity and the abstraction of GURPS system doesn't take in account different sizes for the same SM and decimal DR variations. If I'm in error at translating these items as GURPS "Padded Cloth", well, then you did the same thing in your book.
To me, for game mechanics, an arming undergarment or overgarment a little heavier than the 3 lbs. Arming Doublet could be something like "Padded Cloth with Expert Tailoring" that count also as Ordinary Clothing, removing the need of a separate tunic: you can see it as being 3.5 lbs. of padding +1.6 lb. of Ordinary Clothing if you like. Worn as standalone armour, it would give DR 1* (-1 DR vs. impaling) or full DR 1*; worn with other armour that is designed to be worn with it, would give full DR 1* and no DX penalty. Note that the total weight is only +27.5% heavier that Light Leather/Winter Clothing designed to be worn with armour, is only +2% heavier than the full DR 1* Heavy Coat, it weight less than half than the Charles heavy pourpoint (which was IRL a thing that weighted 10 to 12 lbs. and that Polydamas, according to his writings, would consider as being "Light Layered Cloth") and does include in its stats a layer of Ordinary Clothing, which alone doesn't give any DR, but here is combined with this padding and the light padding that usually is included in armour stats.
For game balance, the result is +1* DR at a fair price (+$300 and +5.1 lbs. for 100% of torso armour); -1 to Fast-Draw rolls, -1 FP lost after an heavy fight.