What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

[Knaight]

Instead of one craftsman making a suit over many months, we could crank out high quality knightly gear in factories and have entire armies of peasants armed like dukes

The solitary craftsman is a romantic figure, but not one common to late medieval or early modern commerce - especially not armor. The armor trade of that era centered around large scale mechanized workshops (mostly watermill powered). A head armorer would have a bunch of people working under them, making different pieces in parallel, cranking out suits of armor. The fancy expensive armor for the particularly wealthy isn't representative of the whole. This was a trade in volume.

During the height of this you never saw armies of peasants armed like dukes, but that was mostly because armies of peasants armed like dukes is a terrible way to do things. Large armies still need to be fed, people still need to be trained, and given the weapons at the time masses of troops were worth less than a smaller force of professional soldiers - which you tended to see, albeit not necessarily in the form of today's familiar standing armies. Well trained city militias turned to mercenary work, condottieri, personal guards overgrown to the size of small armies, even the occasional militant religious or knightly order (though those were way more ubiquitous a few centuries earlier). These small armies were routinely extremely well armored.

Obviously this could still be scaled up significantly, especially if anything near modern machinery is allowed into the process, but there are real diminishing returns there. The weapons involved still favor smaller numbers of soldiers over large scale conscription. There's still potential for significant developments on the material side, a lot of which would end up with producing the best steels and best pieces made reliably instead of on a more intermittent basis. Massed troops just seem unlikely.

[Radar]

I disagree there. Moving the weight from the hilt toward the tip changes the moment of inertia of the blade, which is relevant when you're swinging it in a circular arc. There's a reason they generally build flywheels with as much mass as possible toward the outside of the wheel, after all--it makes for a higher moment of inertia and thus more kinetic energy stored when the wheel is rotating at a fixed speed.

The problem is, the speed will not stay fixed, when the mass shifts toward the tip during the swing. Since the mass near the hilt is moving much slower then near the tip, it will pull the sword back, when it moves outward. Thus it will be much harder to swing fast with such a sword.

[Liquor Box]

I don't know if it would actually work as it did in the books, but Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" (set in the far future) has a large, heavy sword which has liquid mercury running down a channel in the middle to supposedly make it easier to swing--e.g. the weight balance would tend toward the hilt as you raised the blade, then would move outward toward the end as you swung it down. Said sword is an executioner's sword rather than something designed for battle, though.

I suppose you could make something similar with a spring-loaded weight inside the blade, though.

It increases the crit range:
https://www.realmshelps.net/stores/w...ord3_mercurial
https://www.realmshelps.net/stores/w...ord3_mercurial

[Xuc Xac]

I disagree there. Moving the weight from the hilt toward the tip changes the moment of inertia of the blade, which is relevant when you're swinging it in a circular arc. There's a reason they generally build flywheels with as much mass as possible toward the outside of the wheel, after all--it makes for a higher moment of inertia and thus more kinetic energy stored when the wheel is rotating at a fixed speed.

It would hit harder if the weight started at the tip because you would be accelerating the weight at the end of a long lever for the entire swing. If it starts by your hand, the swing won't impart as much momentum to the weight.

Think of the classic example of the spinning figure skater. When they start spinning with their arms extended, they speed up when they pull their hands in. When they extend their hands while spinning, they slow down.

If the weight is at the end of the sword, you can push the weight with the full length of the sword as a lever. If the weight starts near your hands, the lever that accelerates it is much shorter so the swing doesn't impart as much momentum. When the weight moves to the end of the sword mid-swing, it will drain a lot of speed from the swing just like a spinning figure skater extending their arms. Less speed with the same weight means less force of impact.

If you want to use this mercury filled sword for executions, you'll need to do a little spinning flourish to move the weight to the tip before taking a real swing on the second go around.

[Telok]

If you're dealing with animal level intelligence then poisoned meat and bear traps work just fine. Boar spears for backup.

For anything without sufficent technology you have catapults/ballista with chlorine and mustard gas.

If it breathes chlorine gas and is sufficently intelligent then you can mix powdered aluminum and iron for thermite. Add neat hydrogen peroxide for a more energetic reaction.

If somethings chemical make up is perfectly temperature stable you can try dousing it in elemental flourine or pentaflourine. If nothing else you've just surrounded it with scalding clouds of hydroflouric acid as the flourine reacts with the dirt or concrete its standing on.

Actually since hydrogen peroxide has been available since the early/mid 19th century you can totally have jet packs, rockets, and aircraft using it.

See, while we like gun powder and gasoline, they aren't the only way to get things done. You can build a turbine that will run on whiskey and move a truck. Aersol inflammables power potato gun style launchers that you can scale up or down.

[Xuc Xac]

See, while we like gun powder and gasoline, they aren't the only way to get things done. You can build a turbine that will run on whiskey and move a truck. Aersol inflammables power potato gun style launchers that you can scale up or down.

Early automobiles were designed to run on alcohol, but alcohol was taxed heavily to raise the price higher than the cost of gasoline. Car makers wanted the tax repealed so more people would drive, but oil companies opposed that because they wanted to sell gasoline (which at the time was basically a waste product of the petroleum industry that mostly produced lamp oil and lubricants). Then oil was discovered in Texas which dropped the price of gasoline even more and that was the end of alcohol powered cars.

[Iku Rex]

JoergSprave's YouTube channel is worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVZ...vVqzRJXhAGq42Q

[BisectedBrioche]

It's worth remembering that improved manufacturing processes and mass production makes disposable armour more practical.

For example, modern helmets (combat or otherwise) are usually designed to be discarded after absorbing one good blow, and focus on preventing the brain from being knocked about too much in the skull as much as actively protecting the head (a modern cycle helmet has a better chance of protecting you from a mace to the head than a metal helm).

[factotum]

Having disposable armour is predicated on the assumption that you will rarely need it, though. A cycle helmet can be disposable because you're very unlikely to crash your bicycle twice in a short time. In a battle situation, though, you're going to be hit numerous times, and your enemy isn't likely to be sporting enough to allow you time to switch out of your ruined piece of armour into something still intact in the middle of the battle.

[J-H]

The Level IV plates in bullet-resistant armored vests are disposable, though. Once you've taken several hits, they lose effectiveness at impact dissipation and replacement is expected.
It's been a few years since I looked at it, but I know for a while they were made out of some sort of multi-layered combo of ceramic and metal. They keep getting fancier and fancier, and fatality rates go down accordingly.

[Brother Oni]

The Level IV plates in bullet-resistant armored vests are disposable, though. Once you've taken several hits, they lose effectiveness at impact dissipation and replacement is expected.
It's been a few years since I looked at it, but I know for a while they were made out of some sort of multi-layered combo of ceramic and metal. They keep getting fancier and fancier, and fatality rates go down accordingly.

That's more because you can't stick 12mm thick RHA steel plates with spall liners on an infantryman and still expect them to be able to fight effectively.

Looking at just a medium ESAPI front plate, it's 241 x 318 x 25 mm and weighs 2.5kg. Making the same out of AISI 1065 steel (a high tensile strength carbon steel) would make it (24.1 cm x 31.8 cm x 2.5 cm x 7.85 g/cm³) ~15 kg in weight.

Even if you thinned it down to the bare minimum of 12 mm to stop a 7.62mm AP round (what level IV plates are rated to stop), it'd still weigh 7.2 kg.

So the reason why the level IV plates are disposable, is that making them more durable is simply not practical as the necessary protection is so high.


That said, medieval armour was much thinner - 3mm on the crest, tapering to 1-1.5mm on the sides was common. It's not until you start getting into the Napoleonic era that armour was absolutely ridiculous (a cuirassiers' front plate was typically around 28mm thick on the crest) - with the D&D style threats though, you're probably going to have to juggle protection vs manoeuverability. A 28mm thick cuirass didn't save Carabinier Antoine Favreau from a cannonball and most high level D&D threats hit as hard, if not harder.

Spoiler: Ouch

Show

[Aedilred]

That said, medieval armour was much thinner - 3mm on the crest, tapering to 1-1.5mm on the sides was common. It's not until you start getting into the Napoleonic era that armour was absolutely ridiculous (a cuirassiers' front plate was typically around 28mm thick on the crest) - with the D&D style threats though, you're probably going to have to juggle protection vs manoeuverability. A 28mm thick cuirass didn't save Carabinier Antoine Favreau from a cannonball and most high level D&D threats hit as hard, if not harder.

Spoiler: Ouch

Show

Ow.

Depending on your opponent, in a D&D environment, you might be better off not wearing armour at all. Against a giant, or a dragon, or something of equivalent strength, even the thickest armour is going to do absolutely nothing, so you might as well take it off and regain the mobility. (Obviously, setting aside the rules here, but D&D armour rules bear relatively little resemblance to real life anyway).

Indeed, against things like breath weapons, armour might even make getting hit worse than it would be otherwise. Maybe keep a helmet to protect against flying debris, although even then I'd have thought you wouldn't want anything approaching a full-face helmet, because your field of vision is going to be important when the majority of your defensive strategy revolves around not getting hit at all.

Magical enchantments would probably make more of a difference to your protection, but depending on how they work, you could probably do better just applying the enchantments to a cloak or a regular robe, or the like.

If fighting a giant beastie and a bunch of peons with normal mortal-type damage output at the same time, though, there could be some hard decisions to make.

[warty goblin]

While actual metallic armor would be pretty useless against a dragon, there's a solid argument to be made for padding. It's not like dragons are going to be polite and set up their lairs in well padded gymnastics facilities, so unless you want to pulverize yourself dodging various draconic attempts to pulverize you, you're going to want some solid protective gear of some sort.

Obviously you'd also want this to be rather fire resistant as well.

[gomipile]

So, something like a gambeson and padded cap made of wool for fighting fire dragons, then. Seems reasonable. More reasonable than some of the weird choices made in the equipment sections of various editions of D&D and other TTRPGs, anyway.

[warty goblin]

So, something like a gambeson and padded cap made of wool for fighting fire dragons, then. Seems reasonable. More reasonable than some of the weird choices made in the equipment sections of various editions of D&D and other TTRPGs, anyway.

And knee and elbow pads. So much with the kneepads.

[J-H]

Yeah, kneepads and elbow pads are a big help even with modern combat - going prone quickly, shooting prone, kneeling and shooting, etc.

I think metal armor would help against 1 glancing hit from dragon breath. Any energy that goes into heating the metal is energy that would otherwise go into burning your clothing and/or skin. If the metal gets hot, or if the environment's too hot, then you want to have a quick-release option.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Obviously you'd also want this to be rather fire resistant as well.

That'll be very useful against vengeful Ancient Black Dragons, dimwitted half-blue dragon bounty hunters or the sonic reptilian unicorn.

[Brother Oni]

I think metal armor would help against 1 glancing hit from dragon breath. Any energy that goes into heating the metal is energy that would otherwise go into burning your clothing and/or skin. If the metal gets hot, or if the environment's too hot, then you want to have a quick-release option.

I wonder if you could use some sort of water cooling system to help bleed off the heat - since we're working with medieval military style logistics and operations, the soldiers don't have to go into battle carrying everything that a modern infantryman does, so their armour could potentially be better focused on surviving the immediate battle. A closed water system attached to a small backpack full of water, attached with leather pipes to a semi hollow stainless steel underplate worn under the actual armour front plate, would assist in surviving multiple glancing hits.

Alternately, they have a fire-brigade like supporting line where overheated soldiers can have a bucket of water splashed over them before they head back into the fray.

[BisectedBrioche]

Having disposable armour is predicated on the assumption that you will rarely need it, though. A cycle helmet can be disposable because you're very unlikely to crash your bicycle twice in a short time. In a battle situation, though, you're going to be hit numerous times, and your enemy isn't likely to be sporting enough to allow you time to switch out of your ruined piece of armour into something still intact in the middle of the battle.

And? It can still be made to take a few hits before it gives out. A piece of armour you just replace instead of patching up is always going to be more reliable (if for no other reason you have no idea when a "permanent" piece of armour might finally give out). So when the capabilities exist, mass produced armour you discard after it saves your life just makes more sense.

It's a lot like the safety of older cars; sure they'll work after an accident, but the chances are the structural damage they sustain in one will make the next one more likely to be fatal. Modern cars are totalled, which absorbs more damage (so the passengers don't have to) and makes sure that people don't wind up driving around cars which are on the verge of falling apart.

[Brother Oni]

And? It can still be made to take a few hits before it gives out. A piece of armour you just replace instead of patching up is always going to be more reliable (if for no other reason you have no idea when a "permanent" piece of armour might finally give out). So when the capabilities exist, mass produced armour you discard after it saves your life just makes more sense.

Which medieval armour was intended to do; last long enough to get the wearer through this battle (or joust), whereupon it was replaced as required. It just wasn't designed with absolute wearer protection at the expense of its durability like with modern vehicles and motorcycle helmets.

That said, on re-reading your post, you say that a cycle helmet is going to offer better protection than a steel helmet - did you mean a EPS foam with a polycarbonate shell helmet? I'm highly dubious that would protect you better than a 2+ mm thick hardened steel helmet with a coif or other padding underneath.

Fortunately, Youtube has also investigated this; a bicycle helmet lasts about 4 or 5 sword strokes, while a metal helmet is impervious to sword blows and needs specialist weapons (or a pole axe) to penetrate. Even then, they can be fairly resistant as this flanged mace demonstrates (link).

[warty goblin]

I wonder if you could use some sort of water cooling system to help bleed off the heat - since we're working with medieval military style logistics and operations, the soldiers don't have to go into battle carrying everything that a modern infantryman does, so their armour could potentially be better focused on surviving the immediate battle. A closed water system attached to a small backpack full of water, attached with leather pipes to a semi hollow stainless steel underplate worn under the actual armour front plate, would assist in surviving multiple glancing hits.

Alternately, they have a fire-brigade like supporting line where overheated soldiers can have a bucket of water splashed over them before they head back into the fray.

Honestly any iteration of metallic armor strikes me against a bad idea when dealing with incendiary reptiles. Fire is basically very hot air with some particulate matter in it, so isn't a particularly good conductor of heat. Steel is a much, much better conductor of heat; being strapped to a plate of hot metal is an excellent recipe for very, very nasty burns. Adding water cooling doesn't really help, since although now you're probably keeping the temperature of the metal plate down to boiling, you're strapped into a harness of pipes filled with boiling water. Again, a very good recipe for burning yourself, and if the pipes should rupture due to, say, steam pressure, now you're basically experiencing a boiler rupture trapped between a metal plate and your torso. This seems like a recipe for flash-boiling yourself.

Basically if you're in the business of dragon-fighting, just dress like the world's most murderous firefighter.

[Grim Portent]

With souped up medieval tech and modern materials a dragon hunter would probably be best off wearing some sort of fireproofed gambeson made of fire resitant fabrics, asbestos and leather unless you have access to actual NOMEX, but I think you need electronics to make that.

A padded metal helmet to avoid getting killed by flailing claws or wings seems like a good idea though.

Early modern firefighters had heavy woolen coats and leather or metal helmets, which did ok, but I'm not sure they'd do much against claws, teeth or concentrated gouts of flame.

Depending on quite how it's made the fireproofed gambeson will still be effective against some human weaponry, though late medieval tech with modern materials would probably be able to punch straight through.



To more directly adress the OP, most monsters in a D&D type world are not meaningfully different from the existing megafauna of our world. An ogre is not really much different from something like an angry hippo, griffons are basically flying lions, giant beasts are basically elephants and so forth. You don't fight* them so much as hunt them. Spears, pikes, javelins, bows, crossbows, broadly speaking anything that penetrates thick hide and into organs from a distance is suitable for killing large tough creatures.

A giant or similar would probably be harried with dogs, chased on horseback, peppered with javelins or arrows and slashed about the legs until it began to bleed out and/or tired enough for hunters to close and stab it with long spears. Basically like an old fashioned bear hunt.

Modern materials wouldn't actually change the appropriate equipment for this much, some weapons would be lighter or longer, arrows might penetrate deeper into flesh, but armour won't help much against large foes no matter what it's made from. A rhino sized enemy can stomp on you and crush you if it gets the chance. A bit of lightweight gear to protect from glancing strikes and snagging foliage, but the best defence would be a well trained horse, distance and companions to hunt alongside.

*Now if someone manages to train and equip monsters for war in any meaningful number, then things become tricky unless gunpowder is still a thing. Shooting a giant or ogre with a culverin should be enough to kill it without needing some drawn out method.

[Telok]

It occurrs to me that with modern materials and manufacturing practices armoring trained war beasts might be worth while. Sure, they're a nuisance to catch, tame, train, and keep happy. But an angry spike armored combat elephant might be useful in attacking giants and other megafauna.

Elephants, rhinos, and hippos might not be great replacements for armored vehicles but they might be close enough to make a difference and they should be strong enough to carry enough armor that it could make a difference.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The issue there is training them. Ancient writers who talked about training war elephants like the Carthaginians did indicate you start with five to get one panicky prone to bolt behemoth who might be worth bringing into battle, as long as you're willing to risk the great probability that when it panics, it will destroy your forces instead of the enemies' troops. And nobody has found a way to deal with hippos and rhinos.

[Kaptin Keen]

We haven't tried hard enough with rhinos. Irrespective of how hard we tried.

[Grim Portent]

Rhinos, hippos and elephants all share a weakness to cannonballs regardless of how well trained or armoured they are. Granted so does more or less everything.

With modern material tolerances it might be possible to build steam engines that don't explode much, but I don't know how much weight they can actually move. A steam driven war wagon could be pretty handy as a replacement for vehicles.

[Radar]

Rhinos, hippos and elephants all share a weakness to cannonballs regardless of how well trained or armoured they are. Granted so does more or less everything.

With modern material tolerances it might be possible to build steam engines that don't explode much, but I don't know how much weight they can actually move. A steam driven war wagon could be pretty handy as a replacement for vehicles.

Steam engines can be extremely powerful. The key problem is, they are inevitably bigger and heavier than internal combustion engines with the same power. The other problem is they are slow to start up and give a constant output that cannot be adjusted quickly.

Still, if there is no internal combustion engines, then you totally could make steam-powered wagons and in fact, people did this before. To be honest, I am surprised how long did people build those and how well did they work.

[Aedilred]

Rhinos, hippos and elephants all share a weakness to cannonballs regardless of how well trained or armoured they are. Granted so does more or less everything.

Rhinos look like great options for shock attacks but in reality they're a nightmare. They're hard to tame, let alone domesticate, not being particularly social animals. They are moderately intelligent - but only to the degree that it makes taming them harder. Their natural temperament is fairly aggressive. They're big animals, requiring a lot of food, take years to reach sexual maturity, and have a really long gestation period, producing only one calf at a time and waiting years between calves. When domesticating animals you want them to reproduce quickly so that you can process several generations of selective breeding within the lifespan of one trainer.

While their skin is tough compared to humans', it wouldn't necessarily protect against arrows (or crossbow bolts) or a well-thrust spear. We know it's not much cop against bullets. So if you were to take a rhino into battle you'd still have to armour it fairly thoroughly, which would slow it down. They run faster than humans, but not by as much as you'd think: armouring them would bring that down. That has all sorts of implications for their battlefield use: manoeuvrability is lessened, as is shock power on the charge (which is presumably why you have it in the first place). It also makes it easier for infantry to swarm the rhino and stab it in its sensitive areas, because it can't outrun them easily or break through them on the charge.

So what you're really lugging around with your army is a massive eating machine that's difficult to control and vulnerable to the majority of the enemy's weapons. It's not really worthwhile.

There have been incidents of rhinos being "tamed" but they are very rare.

Hippos have pretty much all the same problems, and more (they're often more aggressive, their skin is more sensitive, they have fairly specific environmental requirements, etc.)

Now, much of the above also applies to elephants, which have been successfully used in warfare. But even then, they were used successfully relatively rarely, and were at least as much status symbols as useful weapons of war. Even, indeed possibly especially, in antiquity, they couldn't resist the temptation of the rule of cool. But once the novelty of being attacked by elephants wore off, armies tended to develop strategies for dealing with them which made them as much of a liability as an asset. Also, and while Indian elephants have been used for war, the most famous uses were of north African elephants, a species which seems to have been both smaller and more docile than modern elephants, and is extinct (largely though over-exploitation).

Moreover elephants are more intelligent and more social than rhinos, so should in principle be easier to tame - which is one reason why Indian elephants can be used for work. (African elephants, less so). Even then, as noted above, taming them was a nightmare, with a low success rate.

So while I like the visual idea of a war rhino as much as the next reasonable man, I have to recognise that the possibility of its happening, short of major genetic engineering, is beyond remote.

Early modern firefighters had heavy woolen coats and leather or metal helmets, which did ok, but I'm not sure they'd do much against claws, teeth or concentrated gouts of flame.

Depending on quite how it's made the fireproofed gambeson will still be effective against some human weaponry, though late medieval tech with modern materials would probably be able to punch straight through.

I don't think there's much personal armour that would be effective against a large dragon's claws or teeth - or indeed a direct flame blast. Against a glancing blow, padding might be worthwhile, and if you're on the edges of a blast then fireproof gear will help, but against a deliberate, direct hit you're toast.

Even if you somehow manage to create armour hard or thick enough that the claws don't penetrate, the impact alone of a blow from the claws would pulverise you. Teeth you might stand a slightly better chance against, because if your armour is hard enough, it'll be uncomfortable for the dragon to bite down with full force, so you might survive long enough for it to claw at you or unleash another breath attack at point-blank range.

Hence why I go back to my theory that you want your armour to be relatively minimalist, because you're better off trying not to get hit at all. Against smaller dragons, though, armour might be more effective.

[Grim Portent]

Ideally the dragon won't even see you before you stab it in the vital organs or shoot it with a siege weapon. Nothing will save you from a direct physical hit, much like there's no real defence against a large crocodile, a fireproof padded jacket and helmet is more of a way to survive glancing blows and errant gouts of flame and shouldn't restrict movement much.

I wonder if dogs could do much to a dragon? One of the breeds used for bear baiting might be able to restrict the movement of a dragon if used in enough numbers (and assuming the dragons aren't impervious to most damage) and make them easier to fight. Dogs gnawing on ankles, grabbing and tearing at wings, the tail, the underbelly. It would be very unpleasant for the dragon at least.



Something like a ghillie suit might be quite useful for monster hunting much the same as hunters often wear camo today and wildlife photographers use concealed hides. Pit traps, snares and various other unethical hunting methods would also be great for monster killing. Trick a troll into a pit full of spikes then come and burn the impaled creature to death at your leisure.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Dogs basically exist as blood sacrifices for hunters going after large prey. One of Sir Walter Scott's novels had a character quite upset at losing a couple dogs going after a bear, and the resulting avalanche of letters made it clear that even at that late a date, losing half the pack was a more realistic outcome. Boar hunting is worse.

There's a reason why you don't give them names.