06-06-2017, 03:26 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Boston, Hub of the Universe!
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Oh nice idea. I feel like it might want to be a higher ratio of addition per SM.
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Demi Benson |
06-06-2017, 04:29 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
If one is willing to get even more detailed with locations, then a number of possibilities arise.
The area between the side of the torso and inner arm and the armpit area would have much more stringent restrictions on thickness than the outer arm. A lot of power armor cosplay takes advantage of this, with the outer area an inch thick or more and the inside little more than a few sheets of cloth allowing for minimally restricted mobility. Similar things happen on the legs, backs on the hands and fingers and other areas people can think of.
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06-06-2017, 05:20 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
The thickest historical breastplates are around 9mm, but that is only down the front. They taper down to much be much thinner at the sides of the breastplate.
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06-07-2017, 12:05 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Quote:
Now there's the point that if you are the only ST30 chap running about even if you could wear a plate that was more uniformly that thick in all parts, why would you need to if you were facing historical threats IIRC those breastplates with 9mm thickness on parts of the front were designed to stop gun shots at the most likely/vulnerable points of impact from head on. And of course there the point that thanks to clever tailoring and slopping you don't need to have a breastplate that is uniformly 9mm thick to benefit from that thickness (but that probably best shown by the tailoring and fluting options in LT). Anyway the overall point being that if you have human sized people with ST30 and BL of 180 one of the of the big limitations on armour is largely reduced. And while I'm not sure you'd end up with stuff that looked exactly like what we had in reality, just thicker. I am pretty sure you will end up with stuff that isn't subject to the historically recorded upper limits on normal human armour. *Although I was less explicit about it when i mentioned it later. *although there has to be some question regarding the difficulty of working thicker and thicker plate in different patterns with techniques at the time Last edited by Tomsdad; 06-07-2017 at 04:13 AM. |
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06-07-2017, 08:09 AM | #25 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Realistically such a person would probably just layer armor in ahistorical ways, but GURPS players seem to be less willing to accept DX penalties than real-life people are willing to accept mobility restrictions from armor.
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06-07-2017, 08:19 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Land of the Beer, Home of the Dirndls
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
That will stay that way as long as you roll for damage and still have a chance of dealing damage. Given random damage, GURPS armor tends to protect less than it would in the real world. And people want to be 95% sure or they'd rather forgo armor. Which mirrors the real world again, where people rather went unarmored than lugging around "road safety" armor.
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06-07-2017, 08:38 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Quote:
And yeah I definitely take your point about players being more adverse to Layering pens that what seems to be more historically common according to Load outs. But I trend to put that down to people sitting around a table pretending to fight being more keen on hitting, whereas as those who actually got into fights being more keen on not getting hurt! Last edited by Tomsdad; 06-07-2017 at 08:53 AM. |
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06-07-2017, 08:53 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Quote:
Lets take the classic ST10 broad sword (1d+1 cut) vs. Heavy mail DR5 with edge protection. Swing that sword against an un-armoured ST10 foe's torso the minimum injury is 3 points, on average it's 6 which is a major wound. On max its 11 points which is pretty much a fight ender. (make it a non torso location and it get's worse) But with the mail and two thirds of the time it's no damage, with 1 and 2 point cr injuries being the best out comes. Unless they are accumulating with other hits they have no effects themselves beyond shock penalty, and are a first aid roll away from being removed afterwards. Now don't get me wrong do I think that still under sells heavy mail in regards to actually swinging one handed swords against heavy mail? Yeah maybe a bit. But in terms of game-play that is a big difference! I run low fantasy, historical stuff and IME to riff of the road safety point you made armour most certainly saves lives ;-) Last edited by Tomsdad; 06-08-2017 at 08:11 AM. |
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06-07-2017, 09:18 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Land of the Beer, Home of the Dirndls
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Quote:
Part of that is because it's easy to just ignore stuff in the game that is a bit of an annoyance in the real world. Like stuffy and heavy armor, unless you cross an arbitrary threshold. In the real world, people will wear shorts to work. Also: Small wounds matter to real people more than they do to characters, so being wounded is much more a binary thing than accumulative. (This changes quickly in a low-fantasy game where the GM is really into "save v. gangrene rolls". Probably the same type of GM who really likes CoC and Paranoia.) And then we're talking about fictional "adventuers" quite often. People who know that they will fight (especially if we include the meta perspective). A realistic soldier might just carry around all that armor for nothing, so the cost-benefit ratio better be really good. Adventurers are thankful for every minor benefit. |
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06-07-2017, 09:21 AM | #30 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men
Quote:
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