Distinguishing Edged Weapons from Hafted Weapons

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by JLV

I'm sure he chose the names of his original armors more for simplicity's sake and to evoke a mental picture for the players

We'd all like to think that. But it requires us to think that the fact D&D does it exactly the same way is a coincidence.

It's a philosophical question whether it's desirable to evoke a mental image that is, from an historical context, inaccurate.

I always assumed that the armor types were "generecized" by a severe application of both Occam's Razor and the KISS principle in the interest of rapid character creation and simple effect-averaging to keep combat easy to run.

Doing it more historically isn't any more complex: it's still Armour I to Armour V but the names have changed. The only obvious impact is for wizards wearing armour: instead of being limited to the lower levels, they are now at some kind of "not made of steel" penalty all the way up.