Real World armor for d20 fantasy games

[Yora]

One kind of a problem with the standard D&D armor is that half of it is actually pure fantasy. Ever wondered how studded leather armor works? It doesn't. Thankfully ring mail was dropped in 3rd Edition, as that type of armor never existed either.

I think it would be interesting to create a new set of armors that is based on armors that are actually known to have existed. Before we get to making stats for them, I want to collect ideas and suggestions for what kind of armor should go on the list.

Padded Armor: Apparently one of the most common types of relatively affordable armor. It doesn't work so much by being a cushion, but instead is made of many layers of fabric glued together to make really thick cloth. And it works amazingly well, stoping sword slashes and arrows, and even offering some protection against being stabbed.
Chainmail: The full body chainmail is very well known from the Norman knights who conquered England and the crusaders, who simply added new types of helmets to them. The stuff that everyone is wearing in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Lamellar: The best known example is the classic samurai armor. Lots of small metal plates sewn together with cord to form larger plates.
Scale Armor: Possibly the most common type of metal armor used all over the ancient world and also sometimes in medieval europe.
Leather scale: Seems to have been the common type of armor in central asia where herding was the only great economy and you ended up with a lot of animal skins anyway, so you could use the best and thickest pieces for armor. Making it scales has the advantage that you can use even small bits from many different animals an you can repair holes without needing a large piece of thick leather, which you can only get from the neck and shoulders of cattle, which were already not that common.
Gothic Plate Armor: Were used relatvely recently and are very well preserved, so no real doubt about them.

Any other suggestions?

[lesser_minion]

You've got most of the real-world armour I know about, and I don't see anything wrong with your descriptions. I am not an expert, however.

I don't really mind studded leather -- while it was never called that in its time, and the designers completely misunderstood how the armour would be constructed and how it would work, it's essentially a real technology.

I actually think that plate armour would be more problematic. It doesn't have any historical issues (although I'm not sure how far a culture with access to both chain and full plate would continue using chain or scale), but I think it does pose some design problems.

Compared with heavy armour designs using other mundane technologies like chain and scale, full plate provides excellent protection with next to no downside. When statting it, you'd end up having to either artificially weaken the armour or end up with fake variety.

Current 3e armour diversity is artificial and fake -- as far as I'm aware, scale wasn't inherently worse as a technology than mail, for example.

[Spiryt]

Out of most 'basic' types this lacks all kinds of coat of plates and other armors from smaller pieces of fabric.

Generally though, overall variety can be hard to capture - at the end of 14th century we have quite a lot images portraying people in full mail, with splint limbs protection, cloth armor over mailed torso, and scale elements for good measure.

Can be quite confusing to 'stat', probably full plate would be best.

[Yora]

Scale armor with a leather cover can hardly be called leather armor improved by metal studs.

I guess the centerpiece of any armor is almost always the chestpiece. Any combination of helmets, leg protection, and gauntlets can probably be just ignored for convenience. I think the focus should be on the basic technology.

With coats of plates, I have no real descriptions of how they were made and used.

[lesser_minion]

Scale armor with a leather cover can hardly be called leather armor improved by metal studs.

My point is that "studded leather" is not a horrible description as long as you understand what the studs would actually be: rivets used to fasten metal plates to the inside of the garment.

Admittedly, what D&D calls "studded leather" could easily be neither studded nor made of leather, but that's totally besides the point .

[theDuskling]

ring mails existed and equal chain mails.

studded leather existed even if you do not like the name.

[TopCheese]

Ever see a chinese/japanese painting where a warrior is wearing something that looks like Lamellar armor but with a ton of arrows sticking out of it?

I forget the name of said armor but it is a bunch of pieces of paper (paper is being used loosely) layered together so to stop arrows from bows and crossbows.

EDIT: Each section that looks like a plate is actually a lot of layers of said "paper".

This armor more or less makes people immune to arrows because instead of sliding off the metal and going into the person, the armor I'm talking about lets the arrow sink into the layers and get stuck there.

Warriors could literally have dozens and dozens of arrows sticking out of them as they fight, never getting their bodies hit.

Of course this type of armor was only decent against slashing weapons.

[Spiryt]

My point is that "studded leather" is not a horrible description as long as you understand what the studs would actually be: rivets used to fasten metal plates to the inside of the garment.

The problem is though that placing it as "light armor" doesn't really have sense.

"Studded leather" also doesn't really, and names like " coat of plates" or "brigandine" are much better and correct.

Then again, whole D&D idea about light/heavy and so on armors is very botched, so it's hard to be very 'realistic'.

[Veklim]

More a personal niggle than anything, but the majority of Japanese armour was bamboo, lackered wood and hides, virtually no accessible or viable iron deposits were available anywhere in the country and so most was imported and saved for weaponry. Metal armour would have been seen as a waste, since you could get many weapons from the same amount of iron and it was so ludicrously expensive (hence samurai being funded by powerful and therefore rich people who could afford to have MORE THAN ONE SWORD.....EVER!!!).

[Veklim]

More a personal niggle than anything, but the majority of Japanese armour was bamboo, lackered wood and hides, virtually no accessible or viable iron deposits were available anywhere in the country and so most was imported and saved for weaponry. Metal armour would have been seen as a waste, since you could get many weapons from the same amount of iron and it was so ludicrously expensive (hence samurai being funded by powerful and therefore rich people who could afford to have MORE THAN ONE SWORD.....EVER!!!).

[lesser_minion]

studded leather existed even if you do not like the name.

This is what D&D calls 'studded leather':

This armour is made from tough but flexible leather (not hardened leather as with normal leather armour) reinforced with close-set metal rivets.

They could have made armour like this, but you'd have to be something of a nutter to wear it. Any decent blade will go through the leather like a hot knife through butter, and the rivets wouldn't do much either: the blade might deflect off a rivet, but it would simply end up somewhere that isn't covered by one.

Armour did exist that one could call 'studded leather', but it was very different to what D&D thinks it is.

[Spiryt]

More a personal niggle than anything, but the majority of Japanese armour was bamboo, lackered wood and hides, virtually no accessible or viable iron deposits were available anywhere in the country and so most was imported and saved for weaponry. Metal armour would have been seen as a waste, since you could get many weapons from the same amount of iron and it was so ludicrously expensive (hence samurai being funded by powerful and therefore rich people who could afford to have MORE THAN ONE SWORD.....EVER!!!).

I'm pretty sure that Japanese armor in actual Feudal period was almost never from wood or any other thing - leather and iron was used.

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_jpn_armour.html

Similarly, while swords were indeed very precious, only very rich people having more than one would be exaggeration - after all every Samurai was supposed to have a pair of short and long one.

Iron wasn't really all that expensive and there was plenty of it - the problem was that it was mostly from river sand, so extracting it and forming into useful pieces was difficult and very laborious.

Thus armor from many small plates - easily made even from tiny pieces of adequate material.

[Yora]

I found some mentions of waist length, short sleved chainmail, which could reasonably be called a chain shirt. I think Roman chainmail was mostly that type.

To sum it up:

Padded Armor
Chain Shirt
Chainmail
Lamellar
Scale Armor
Brigandine
Plate Armor
Leather Scale

That's already quite a number. Would anyone say the greek bronze breastplate should also be on the list, or is it too narrow in area and time of use?

I would also like to add some armor value to Hide and Fur clothing. While it's debateable if one would call that armor, it should still make a difference over a shirt or tunic.

To bring some order to the list, I start with what I think would be degree of quality. If you have more than one to chose, which one would usually be the better choice?
Still, we're talking about d20 games here, so it's okay to be highly abstract and not completely accurate.

Hide Armor
Leather Scale
Padded Armor
Chain Shirt
Bronze Plate
Scale Armor
Chainmail
Brigandine
Lamellar
Plate Armor

Thoughts on this so far?

[lesser_minion]

Disconnected thoughts:

Since we are dealing with a fantasy setting, I don't really agree with the idea of presenting complete suits of armour: asking the player to specify which parts of their character's body are covered with what and then deciding the stats from there might be a better option.

Offering a small bonus for heavy clothing might be OK, as long as players still feel free to have their characters wear light or partial clothing where appropriate. Wearing thick furs in a desert isn't that much better than running around the arctic in armoured lingerie.

I'm not really sure what performance differences existed between scale and mail. Also, are you sure it's correct to separate out "scale armour" from brigandine, coat-of-plates, and lamellar? As far as I'm aware, that's really the name for the technology itself, not a particular design.

[Spiryt]

To bring some order to the list, I start with what I think would be degree of quality. If you have more than one to chose, which one would usually be the better choice?
Still, we're talking about d20 games here, so it's okay to be highly abstract and not completely accurate.

Hide Armor
Leather Scale
Padded Armor
Chain Shirt
Bronze Plate
Scale Armor
Chainmail
Brigandine
Lamellar
Plate Armor

Thoughts on this so far?

Even for highly abstract d20 rules 'quality' may be high, but all scales, metal, leather, doesn't matter, together with lamellar would probably be on similar tier of 'quality'.

Smaller plates, forming quite formidable defense, but getting heavy quickly. Possibly brigandine goes here too.

Plate probably indeed would be highest quality, though brigandine seemed to be used pretty much alongside - but only for the torso.

Mail would probably be delegated for some more 'mobile' roles if plate's available. And for secondary armor, obviosuly.

[Yora]

In scale armor, each scale is connected to the backing material but not to other scales.

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In lamellar, the scales are all tightly connected together, often interlocking and without no backing material at all.

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Brigandine and coat of plates seems to be basically the same thing. Metal plates sandwhiched between an inner and outer layer of fabric.

I agree that leg protection, gloves, and helmets should be left variable and undefined, but in an armor system that basically comes down to AC and armor check penalty, I don't think they make any mechanical difference.

[Spiryt]

Brigandine and coat of plates seems to be basically the same thing. Metal plates sandwhiched between an inner and outer layer of fabric.

Usually there was only one layer, and brigandine is coat of very small plates, and a lot of them, forming rows of very similar plates. Exact boundaries of size etc. are obviously not strict at all.

Visby coat reconstruction:

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Brigandine late 15th century reconstruction:

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[lesser_minion]

In scale armor, each scale is connected to the backing material but not to other scales.

That implies to me that brigandine and coat-of-plates can be considered special cases of 'scale armour' then. Mechanically distinguishing chain from scale seems like it will be hard enough, without also having to decide whether it's better to have your scales on the inside or the outside of your armour.

[Conners]

Problem with real armours, is how to deal with coverage. No matter how good your chest piece is, it means nothing if they attack your exposed arms or face.



Back on the current topic... so you're trying to work out a list of armours? Making it progressive will be hard, considering the diverse quality in each type of armour (some weaves of mail are amazing). Maybe something like...


Plate
Coat of Plates
Legio Fulminata (Banded Armour?)?*
Steel Lamellar
Heavy Mail
Scale
Leather Lamellar
Light Mail
Ring armour**
Cloth



*: I might be biased on this... Have always loved the design of that armour.

**: I've heard about this as large metal rings (or coins) which are weaved on top of cloth armour. Don't know a lot about it--sounds like a poor-man's metal armour.

[Galloglaich]

"Studded leather" should probably be replaced by Brigandine, and / or Coat of Plates, which would make it medium or heavy armor instead of light armor.

That said you do see some armor in Central Asia where they have added little bits of metal to leather.

Leather armor in fact really shouldn't be classified as light armor because in thicknesses and stiffness necessary to be useful as armor, it's actually pretty cumbersome.

I don't think 'leather scale' is realistic because it's much more often lamellar. In fact lamellar seems to be a vastly more common type of armor than scale, historically.

Another common type you mixed is 'mixed' armor, what the Russians called Bakhterets. Mail and plate, mail and lamellar, plate and lamellar. Can be somewhat hard to define as it covers the range from very light armor (cloth or light leather with a few discs or plates of bronze or iron) to very heavy (lamellar and small plates over mail, covering the entire body)

G

[lesser_minion]

Back on the current topic... so you're trying to work out a list of armours? Making it progressive will be hard, considering the diverse quality in each type of armour (some weaves of mail are amazing). Maybe something like...

Instead of presenting armour based on its materials and construction, why not start by presenting armour based on who in the setting might want to wear it? So instead of having royal guards wear 'chain mail', they wear "Immortal Armour". This has the advantages that:

• It acknowledges the fact that this isn't Kansas any more, in a way that talking about 'chain mail' and 'lorica segmenta' doesn't.
• Anyone reading the names can understand what's going on -- immortal armour is presumably nigh-impenetrable, very expensive, and of impeccable craftsmanship, for example.
• It also shouldn't annoy weapons and armour geeks, especially if there's a good description of what an immortal might wear and how it might be constructed.
• It's easy to differentiate "thief's armour" from "immortal's armour", and it's also easy to chop and change designs to provide a different aesthetic for different parts of the setting.

[Yora]

But that seems to go into a completely different direction than having a list of specific armors that actually existed.

Though there is some merrit to separate armors by specific cultures and periods rather than construction method. Shin length coats of lamellar are quite a different thing than the lamellar breast plates on late samurai armor.

I don't think 'leather scale' is realistic because it's much more often lamellar. In fact lamellar seems to be a vastly more common type of armor than scale, historically.

Of course. All example of leather armor I've ever seen have always been lamellar and not scale. Just used the term that you read everywhere without properly thinking.

[lesser_minion]

But that seems to go into a completely different direction than having a list of specific armors that actually existed.

I was under the impression that the goal was to have armour based on real-world armour that actually existed, not to directly copy real-world armour. The problem we're trying to address is that certain D&D armours are silly and implausible, after all.

[Galloglaich]

Yora if you want I'll send you a comp copy of my book on armor and missile weapons; it's not perfect or even arguably complete but it has gone through a lot of this already for you and has the research in it, you can feel free to play with what is there, use whatever you want and discard the rest.

PM me if you want a copy.

G

[Yitzi]

You want to include wooden armor? Also, laminar armor might have been mentioned before, does it deserve mentioning?

[Yora]

Depends. I guess a good guideline would be if they had been used in different places at different times. An oddity that existed only on one small island as has only been found in a single source probably wouldn't be of any interest to most people.

[toapat]

While i would like to see the addition of Lamelar, the problem with Lamelar is, it has never been defined well enough in terms of performance to represent it within the systems of Dungeons and Dragons (It is well defined for construction)


I think we could effectively break down the armor system into a more modular system that would allow more flexible constructions, broken down into Torso, Arms, and Legs:

Torso:
Padded/Quilted/Leather Tunics, Hide Clothing: +1 AC, Max Dex Mod = 8
Chain Shirt or Hardened Leather Leather Tunic: +2 AC, Max Dex = 7
Coat of Plates/Scale Mail/Lamelar/Brigandine: +3 AC, Dex cap = 6
Breast Plate: +5 AC, Dex Cap = 4

Arms:
and now im completely blanking on how to do this

[Yora]

That's what I meant earlier. Chainmail armor comes both with and without arm and leg protection. In the form of chainmail armor and chain shirt.
And I think the idea of having whole sets rather than components makes this all much easier.

In D&D, a breastplate over a gambeson is breastplate. Add to that helmet, gauntless, and shin guards and you have half plate. Cover the gaps between them and you have full plate. Which is of course a simplification as you can't just add some more parts to a half-plate and end up with a nice all in one full plate, but that's the idea.

Which I think is a good idea to base the entire armor system on. You could have a whole metal coat type lamellar armor and also a samurai type lamellar armor consisting of a breastplate, a skirt, and shoulder guards, with gauntlets and leg guards made with other technologies.

[Spiryt]

One can possibly break down armor to some 'main' - torso, bit of thighs and head, and legs.

Choosing to armor legs gives more AC, but limits speed additionally. This could be still really simple, but give some customization.

Mail hauberk - 5 AC - 5 to move speed.

Mail hauberk with mail chausses - 7AC and -10 to speed.

Mail hauberk with plate leg defenses - 8AC and run only 3 times speed.

Torso armor still covers skill penalty, dexterity bonus (if used), spell failure.