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Old 06-08-2017, 05:51 AM   #41
DanHoward
 
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

Buff coats weigh around 20 lbs and are barely DR2. Proper standalone leather armour was multi-layered and very thick. There are extant examples with as many as seven layers of hide in their construction. A layered textile jack could be over four fingers thick before quilting. After quilting it compressed down to 1-2 fingers.
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Old 06-09-2017, 04:38 AM   #42
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

I assume that, for GRRM fans, we're talking about something like the armour made for "Sir Robert Strong" that the armourers said was "folly and no man born could move in it" (or words to that effect)...
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Old 06-09-2017, 07:47 AM   #43
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
Yeah I was thinking more you can't layer entire sets of plate layered over another entire set of plate even if you could in theory carry the weight. (Which is a point about articulation again)
I bet you could, it you made the layers for exactly that purpose. Possibly considering the whole thing a single set of armor made with multiple layers. the engineering behind such a thing may be a unique though, which would really raise the price of this already ridiculous getup.

Quote:
And TBH I wasn't even thinking of mail. I think with mail in terms of thickness you have to layer that, as there's only so thick you make a single layer of mail (or there's only so thick you make the links and join them up) and maintain flexibility
What are the drawbacks of layering it though? I suppose density and thickness will eventually come into play, but you can get a few layers in the mean time.
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:22 AM   #44
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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I bet you could, it you made the layers for exactly that purpose. Possibly considering the whole thing a single set of armor made with multiple layers. the engineering behind such a thing may be a unique though, which would really raise the price of this already ridiculous getup.
Layering plate armor over plate armor is historical, for example great helms were typically worn over bascinets.

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What are the drawbacks of layering it though? I suppose density and thickness will eventually come into play, but you can get a few layers in the mean time.
That is probably a very bad idea. Mail snags against mail. You could maybe layer mail, then cloth, then mail, but that will run into thickness problems if the cloth layer is thick enough to matter, I think and you have the problem with unpredictable shifting of the layers, too. Also that is a lot of insulation, and super strength isn't immunity to heat stroke.
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:57 AM   #45
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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Layering plate armor over plate armor is historical, for example great helms were typically worn over bascinets.
One shouldn't take head armor as a good example for the rest of the body - there's relatively few points of articulation in your average head :)
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Old 06-09-2017, 09:01 AM   #46
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I bet you could, it you made the layers for exactly that purpose. Possibly considering the whole thing a single set of armor made with multiple layers. the engineering behind such a thing may be a unique though, which would really raise the price of this already ridiculous getup.

I think it would be almost impossible to do on the limbs and other joints, as in two sets of articulated plate one over the other



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What are the drawbacks of layering it though? I suppose density and thickness will eventually come into play, but you can get a few layers in the mean time.
Well they did layer mail

I think layers will work better in some locations than others. I think mail layers were generally on the chest and to a lesser extent the torso as a whole. Your protecting your most important area* (and weight was a limiting factor). More over your chest doesn't articulate/hinge so layers are less cumbersome. (Which the layering rules pretty much have in effect).


I guess a clever enough fitted mail sleeve or legging could be layered over the top of another, but I wouldn't fancy it. I think you'll have issue with movement in the joints of different layers moving independently and bunching up or even snagging** on each other.


TBH Dan Howard might come along and give a more educated answer!




*Other than the head but helmets have a different set of factors going here


** and if you get into separating them with other material that suddenly a lot of material and layers interacting on the joints

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Old 06-09-2017, 09:04 AM   #47
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Layering plate armor over plate armor is historical, for example great helms were typically worn over bascinets.

That is probably a very bad idea. Mail snags against mail. You could maybe layer mail, then cloth, then mail, but that will run into thickness problems if the cloth layer is thick enough to matter, I think and you have the problem with unpredictable shifting of the layers, too. Also that is a lot of insulation, and super strength isn't immunity to heat stroke.
yep this, I know plate was sometimes layered over mail, but again I think most often over the chest and avoided points of articulation
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Old 06-09-2017, 09:28 AM   #48
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Layering plate armor over plate armor is historical, for example great helms were typically worn over bascinets.
The head is the exception. It won't work on the body.

Quote:
That is probably a very bad idea. Mail snags against mail. You could maybe layer mail, then cloth, then mail, but that will run into thickness problems if the cloth layer is thick enough to matter, I think and you have the problem with unpredictable shifting of the layers, too. Also that is a lot of insulation, and super strength isn't immunity to heat stroke.
Mail over mail is historical. Plate over plate is not. Layered mail had liners in between to stop the links from snagging. If you have my Loadouts book then read the description of Usamah's kazaghand on p. 27. We have several texts telling us that up to three layers of mail were worn on occasion. The only example I can think of atm is the Chanson de Roland where a lance hits a rider and penetrates two layers of mail but is stopped by a third layer.
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Old 06-10-2017, 10:25 AM   #49
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Default Re: Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

I've always interpreted the Max DR values from the armor design articles in Pyramid to correspond to the maximum thickness before you run into DX penalties. One of the later articles allows twice this for the Head, and personally I'd allow this for the Chest as well, at least for 5/6 or less coverage. Reduced Max DR near the joints might also make sense - maybe somewhere around 2/3-3/4 the nominal Max DR. In theory, it should also be possible to design armor that can be layered without a DX penalty, but if you then wore the outer layer without the inner (or with an inner layer of a different thickness) you'd suffer DX penalties for wearing armor that doesn't fit properly. For determining how thick you can get without a DX penalty, flexible materials seem to go out to around 0.5", rigid out to around 0.2". For purpose-designed layers of flexible + rigid, for simplicity I'd just require the rigid layer to not exceed 0.2" and the combination to not exceed 0.5". Going beyond this is probably at least -1 DX per +1 SSR (x1.5, x2, x3, x5, etc), and honestly I'd expect the penalties to build up faster than that.

For a normally-sized person with the strength of 10 men, he has BL 200. Going with the above and maximum thickness, his armor is 0.4" thick on the head (I'd personally do it 0.4" on the skull, 0.2" elsewhere), 0.4" thick for 5/6 coverage on the Front Chest, 0.15" or so thick near the joints, and 0.2" thick elsewhere. It'll be Plate, and he'll be wearing an arming garment with voiders of DR 4/2* mail (the mail is such a small amount of weight I'm assuming if heavy mail were an option, it would have been used). Realistically (based on previous comments from Dan Howard), Strong Steel with a layer of Hardened Steel is the best that can be managed at TL 4, with the latter giving +1 DR, but we'll ignore that for now and just go with Strong Steel. That's DR 28 armor on the Skull (total DR 30) and for 5/6 protection for the Front Chest, DR 11 near the joints, DR 4/2* for most of the armor gaps, and DR 14 elsewhere. Total weight for plate is somewhere around 210 lb (so long as the rest of his gear weighs no more than 190 lb, he's at Light Encumbrance), with a price tag of around $52,000. Ignoring Ornate, a tricked-out version would be Masterfully Tailored, Fluted Duplex Plate, with Hardened Steel for the voiders (note Duplex Plate is basically Hardened Steel +). That drops weight to around 105 lb (with 95 lb or less of other gear, he's at No Encumbrance), boosts all DR by +1, makes it harder to target chinks/gaps in the armor, and increases price to around $2.2M. Do note such a character is very nearly immune to musket fire (most of his DR is 15, while the musket averages 16 damage), and the thicker pieces of his armor can protect against small cannon (the falconet and smaller, and the swivel-gun).
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