Low-Tech Armor with the Strength of Ten Men

[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.

[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.