Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

[ericthered]

going for a straightforward shot at this...

Basic lift will be 180. We can use a good deal more weight that basic lift. I'm going to go for 3x basic lift, to leave him at medium encumbrance even when lifting massive weapons and carrying some gear. So our target weight is 540 lbs.

In low tech, all armor locations together are 300% of a torso piece, and all weights are for torsos.

On page 109 of low tech, its says +50% cost and weight per +1 DR. Witch is probably going to give us strange results, but here we go:

If you use heavy plate, adding +9 DR will give you 18 DR for a torso weight of 176 and a total weight of 528 lb. it costs 660k$.

If you use light plate, adding +43 DR will give you 46 DR, weight 540 lbs (exactly on target), and cost 675k$.

I do not think this system was meant for such cases, however.

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by ericthered

going for a straightforward shot at this...

Basic lift will be 180. We can use a good deal more weight that basic lift. I'm going to go for 3x basic lift, to leave him at medium encumbrance even when lifting massive weapons and carrying some gear. So our target weight is 540 lbs.

In low tech, all armor locations together are 300% of a torso piece, and all weights are for torsos.

On page 109 of low tech, its says +50% cost and weight per +1 DR. Witch is probably going to give us strange results, but here we go:

If you use heavy plate, adding +9 DR will give you 18 DR for a torso weight of 176 and a total weight of 528 lb. it costs 660k$.

If you use light plate, adding +43 DR will give you 46 DR, weight 540 lbs (exactly on target), and cost 675k$.

Using Light Plate as the base is correct, as that's how Medium and Heavy are calculated.

But from a realistic point of view, 40+ points of DR would be over half an inch thick, which is no longer in the realm of thin-walled cooling (from an engineering perspective), and this slab armor is far too thick to hammer or shape by hand. This might require industrial machining and manufacturing.

So how would that affect fabrication?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ericthered

On page 109 of low tech, its says +50% cost and weight per +1 DR. Witch is probably going to give us strange results, but here we go:

...

I do not think this system was meant for such cases, however.

If you look at the examples in the book what Dan's done is add 50% of the cost and weight of light armor to the armor. Note that this goes for plate only - it does not work for e.g. mail. The text also says that the highest DR for torso armor is DR 14, and for other armor is DR 10 - anything else is too cumbersome and difficult to articulate.

My personal house rule is that you can increase the armor one step more for each +1 SM - so a SM +1 character could have extra-heavy plate (DR 12) or extra-heavy segmented plate (DR 6).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anders

If you look at the examples in the book what Dan's done is add 50% of the cost and weight of light armor to the armor. Note that this goes for plate only - it does not work for e.g. mail. The text also says that the highest DR for torso armor is DR 14, and for other armor is DR 10 - anything else is too cumbersome and difficult to articulate.

Well, it also says that above DR 14 isn't available at all, probably because of limitations on metalworking at that TL.

It makes sense that mail has no equivalent to the heavy plate rule: the basic problem for mail is that to make heavier mail you need thicker wire, and if you have thicker wire you need larger rings, and if you increase ring size by too much it no longer either protects or moves properly.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Anders

... The text also says that the highest DR for torso armor is DR 14, and for other armor is DR 10 - anything else is too cumbersome and difficult to articulate.....

I think the issue I have with abstract hard upper limits here is what is deemed too cumbersome is a function of weight and the ability to operate under it (so will be rather different for Mr. ST30*) and not all pieces of plate need to articulate. And even on limbs and joints often the entire plate don't need to articulate.

I.e the need to articulate the arm does require arm armour to be articulated as a whole, but not every bit of arm armour is subject to the limitation because not every square inch of limb armour needs to equally articulate for the arm to articulate.

basically arms aren't only made of joints!

So for instance some of the thickest bits of plate were breastplates that were 8-9mm thick generally worn by cavalry, and if were saying DR14 is the max that would mean such breast plates would be made of 39 DR per inch metal overall. Even if we say it was hard to produce plate of higher and uniform DR in that thickness range, I think that 14 upper limit is a little low. But like the point about ST30 I don't think the LT rules were written with 8-9mm thick plate as the standard in mind, because well historically it wasn't only being needed to withstand latter guns etc.


*EDIT, TBF I don't think the armour rules in LT were written assuming ST30 humans as the standard though!

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

So for instance some of the thickest bits of plate were breastplates that were 8-9mm thick generally worn by cavalry.

Modern level IV plates can be twice that, you can wear a lot of armor on the center torso before its thickness causes serious problems. However, the dropoff for what's practical anywhere else is fairly extreme, a plausible simplified assumption is that the maximum thickness is something like 10% of limb diameter if no articulation is needed, half that if it's needed. For a rigid torso, that lets you have in the vicinity of an inch (DR 70). For articulated wrists, it's about DR 4; for articulated fingers, DR 1 or maybe 2.

[martinl]

Fabrication problems can be overcome with cast bronze armor (at TL2+).

Articulation and movement are the big limitation. Joints are going to be much more vulnerable.

I'd eyeball DR 40 on head and torso, 15 on limbs, and 5 on hands/feet/joints as a start, with maybe an extra +2 or +4 to target chinks.

Maybe add 5 to the non-torso locations if we're talking low-cinematic.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Modern level IV plates can be twice that, you can wear a lot of armor on the center torso before its thickness causes serious problems.

Yep

Originally Posted by Anthony

However, the dropoff for what's practical anywhere else is fairly extreme, a plausible simplified assumption is that the maximum thickness is something like 10% of limb diameter if no articulation is needed, half that if it's needed. For a rigid torso, that lets you have in the vicinity of an inch (DR 70). For articulated wrists, it's about DR 4; for articulated fingers, DR 1 or maybe 2.

I'm interested in your 10% of diameter figure (and half that for points of articulation) where's that from? If it's correct it's a handy rule of thumb, but I have to say questions about it's underlying assumptions do spring to mind.


As an example taking myself as a model I could wear armour 13mm thick on my upper arms, 5mm on my elbow (taking the shortest measurement) and 11-13mm on my forearms! In terms of plate that is hugely thick. Since I'm not ST30 weight is going to be the limiting factor here long before I hit those 10% and 5% figures!

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I'm interested in your 10% of diameter figure (and half that for points of articulation) where's that from?

Nowhere in particular. Simple geometry says that the plausible thickness is going to be proportional to limb thickness and also vary by the range of motion needed, but the actual 10% number is just a guess.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Nowhere in particular. Simple geometry says that the plausible thickness is going to be proportional to limb thickness and also vary by the range of motion needed, but the actual 10% number is just a guess.

Ah Ok, cool

Cheers

TD