Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Anders

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).

Oh nice idea. I feel like it might want to be a higher ratio of addition per SM.

[Tyneras]

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.

[DanHoward]

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.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

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.

True and I made that point in my first post*, but that's more** to do with saving weight due to the restriction of them being worn by actual real life people (i.e. not ST30 chaps). I only raised that thickness to point out that historically it was possible.

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

[sir_pudding]

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.

[mhd]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

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.

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.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

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.

They certainly could do if all they had available was armour designed for more regular people (of course some type of armour just won't layer like that). And should Mr "blessed by the gods ST30" actually want to have someone make some one off armour that requires ST30 to wear I would certainly charge him a one off price!

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!

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by mhd

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.

You make a good point but I'd ague that the way injuries work in GURPS even less than total protection is pretty good.

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 ;-)

[mhd]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

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 ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I'm fully behind wearing "mediocre" armor in the game. Every point counts. Heck, even 0/1 vs. cutting is better than running around like an Elmore painting.

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.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

They certainly could do if all they had available was armour designed for more regular people (of course some type of armour just won't layer like that). And should Mr "blessed by the gods ST30" actually want to have someone make some one off armour that requires ST30 to wear I would certainly charge him a one off price!

I'd imagine, given the limits on the hand fabrication of quality armor, and especially with the structural limits of mail thickness that they would layer even with custom made pieces.