Realistic Fantasy Adventuring Armour

[Legendary Emu]

If you have ever played a fantasy RPG, you will most likely have worn armour in it. I noticed that a lot of the armour worn in these RPG's look very epic and intimidating (and in some cases, very skimpy) but probably isn't something you would want to wear while traveling or dungeon crawling. You also don't want something so light even a big rat could incapacitate you.

Yeah, it looks cool, but how hot would it get in there? In the cramped and stuffy halls of an ancient tomb, how would you be able to react quickly to anything? Wouldn't those giant boots alert potential enemies of your presence? If there was an enemy too strong for you, or a particularly blunt trap, or a 5 foot high ledge (shoulda brought a stepladder), you couldn't do run away or do anything. You get the picture.

And the higher level you go, the more impractical and bulky things get (female armour gets the opposite treatment)

But we are not here to complain about that.

If we were to make an RPG dungeon crawl as realistic as possible without taking out the danger (traps, dragons, level 5 Dire Weasels), what kind of attire would be appropriate for it? Also, if you were to be ambushed on the road to said dungeon by bandits, what would you like to be wearing?

I thought at one point that a cuirass would be a fantastic adventuring armour-piece.

DISCUSS!

[Camacha]

Not to rain on your parade, but both medieval European armour and traditional Japanese armour were not much less bulky than the one shown in the image. Even modern soldiers have heavy army boots and bulky vests and jackets. Of course, game armour gets embellished, but people go to war in and with stuff that is pretty intrusive.

Also, a lot of games make you less silent with big, heavy boots on. The TeS series do this, for instance. You can put on your big suit, but you can be sure you have to actually fight your enemies, as sneaking up is pretty much an impossibility at that point.

[Frozen_Heart]

Skyrim is one of the better games for armour. It stays at least slightly practical looking and lower tier armour looks very realistic.

And the female armour is barely revealing at all unless the male version also is which is great and so much more immersive.

As for what would work well realistically for adventuring, I'd assume light leather or fur armour with some kind of heavy cloak so keep warm and dry(ish). A backpack would do nicely as well. Heavy armour like in a lot of RPGs just wouldn't work. Fine for pitched battle but you wouldn't want to travel in it.

[Camacha]

As for what would work well realistically for adventuring, I'd assume light leather or fur armour with some kind of heavy cloak so keep warm and dry(ish). A backpack would do nicely as well. Heavy armour like in a lot of RPGs just wouldn't work. Fine for pitched battle but you wouldn't want to travel in it.

I suppose medieval knights travelled long ways too, though probably not fully armoured at all times. You might stash your cave kit on your horse or squire.

[Starwhip]

Really, light chain mail to deflect some less powerful blows is all that you can wish for. In hand to hand combat (In this case, sword-and-shield) your best defense is speed. At least, it would be in reality. If you dodge a blow, you never needed the armor in the first place.

In any case, I use bows and magic in RPGs, like Skyrim, so I don't give armor a second thought. Not much point when your enemies are dead before you are even five times the length of a sword away from them.

[Camacha]

Really, light chain mail to deflect some less powerful blows is all that you can wish for. In hand to hand combat (In this case, sword-and-shield) your best defense is speed. At least, it would be in reality. If you dodge a blow, you never needed the armor in the first place.

That is a pretty optimistic view, but probably not very realistic. Besides, chain mail is meant to prevent cutting, not to soften blows. If does very little to dampen impacts.

Real life armour has pros and cons, definite strengths and weaknesses and does not neatly get linearly heavier and stronger like video game armour.

[Iskierka]

Chainmail was developed to make mace hits survivable, decent leather will block cutting blows. If a mace gets a solid hit on platemail, then it doesn't matter how well-designed it was, it'll almost certainly crumple and be crushed into the wound, making it almost impossible to remove the armour and making the wound worse with every movement. Compared to that, some broken bones from a direct hit is highly preferable, and you would generally try avoid being hit in the first place, as stated. All the weapons that can do major damage need a big swing, which means you do have reaction time available.

Of course, yes, IRL armour has pros and cons, meaning all variations - chainmail, platemail, leather, lamellar, and everything else that everyone came up with - are all viable in certain situations, rather than being clear choices of "best noisy armour" and "best quiet armour". Much like how almost all games make a gun's suppressor reduce its damage or accuracy, when IRL the opposite is true, if it affects bullet power then it only ever increases it. But, games don't have any good way to replicate the suppressor making the gun more bulky and awkward to hold and move, so they have to make up some solid stat penalty to give you, even if it's not as clear-cut IRL as some basic number changes.

[Camacha]

Chainmail was developed to make mace hits survivable, decent leather will block cutting blows. If a mace gets a solid hit on platemail, then it doesn't matter how well-designed it was, it'll almost certainly crumple and be crushed into the wound, making it almost impossible to remove the armour and making the wound worse with every movement. Compared to that, some broken bones from a direct hit is highly preferable

Do you have a source for all this? Quite a few bits seem to be... off. Leather protects pretty well against blows (due to massive padding and reinforcement) and it does a fair job against cuts, but barely helps at all when stabbed. Chain mail protects a bit better against the latter two, but is heavier and was a lot more expensive to make.

You see mail still in use today against to protect against cuts, like in butcher's shops and in shark diving suits.

[pincushionman]

Properly-fitting plate armor was not as bulky and restricting as many often think. Quite the opposite, in fact. I used to frequent another messageboard where several notable members were members of SCA or other such organizations and owned their own kit; they made it clear they were quite mobile while wearing it. The key is that it's custom-fitted to you.

This should surprise no one once you think about it. Yes, it was not worn when it wasn't necessary, but warrior nobles spent the equivalent of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for kit, and they would not have put up with that if it unless it gave them a significant advantage in battle. And weapons that were reasonably effective against it such as warhammers (more like picks, actually) were carried both by unarmored foes and other knights, so it wasn't just a slugfest against impenetrable armor. Knights were rightly feared for their battle prowess, and not because they could only stand and take blows. They were capable of much more.

tl,dr: Heavy-armor users were legitimate badasses, not lumbering hulks that couldn't move.

[Wesreidau]

Plate armor not only represents the pinnacle of precision hand forging but the peak of the arms / armor race, where armor outright won. Won. Knights were effectively impervious to arrows at all but the closest ranges and greatest forces, as evidenced by the abandoning of the shield.

I don't know what Iskierka is talking about. Plate armor was built to defeat blunt force trauma by deflecting the impact and fullered to resist crushing (fullers are magic). By the scenario given, jousting with blunt tips would be a bloodbath. Furthermore armorers were always on hand at the battlefield or tournament. Knightly armor can be cut off a wearer by bench shears, if you absolutely had to. Most pieces can simply be untied and removed. Plate is easier to wear than chain due to load-bearing being distributed across each section of the body. Chain was to convert lacerations and puncture wounds into bruises and broken bones. In this it prevented the risks of bleeding to death and infections. Chainmail was notorious for after-injury affects; links could break off after being crushed into the skin where bits of rivet would fester. However one never wore chainmail over skin. There was always an arming-coat of some sort which acted as padding and arrow-proofing. These coats were five or ten or twenty layers of linen, depending, and by some accounts could stop a sword. By many actual tests, they could be useful against arrows. Most first-rate harnesses were a composite affair of all three.

Were I picking my own armor without a budget, I would wear a Maximilian harness with a longsword. Were I paying for it, I would wear an open salet helm, chain coif and hauberk, longsword, shield and warhammer.

[Camacha]

Knights were effectively impervious to arrows at all but the closest ranges and greatest forces, as evidenced by the abandoning of the shield.

Powerful bows with armour piercing tips tend to do nasty things to plate and its wearer, as it does to pretty much all other things. Normal 'flesh hook' type affairs might have more trouble, but bows were really a game changer in some cases. To be fair, heavy bows are hard to handle and take a lot of training and practice, it took crossbow type weapons to bring that power to the masses.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Camacha

[magnemoe]

Chainmail was developed to make mace hits survivable, decent leather will block cutting blows. If a mace gets a solid hit on platemail, then it doesn't matter how well-designed it was, it'll almost certainly crumple and be crushed into the wound, making it almost impossible to remove the armour and making the wound worse with every movement. Compared to that, some broken bones from a direct hit is highly preferable, and you would generally try avoid being hit in the first place, as stated. All the weapons that can do major damage need a big swing, which means you do have reaction time available.

Of course, yes, IRL armour has pros and cons, meaning all variations - chainmail, platemail, leather, lamellar, and everything else that everyone came up with - are all viable in certain situations, rather than being clear choices of "best noisy armour" and "best quiet armour". Much like how almost all games make a gun's suppressor reduce its damage or accuracy, when IRL the opposite is true, if it affects bullet power then it only ever increases it. But, games don't have any good way to replicate the suppressor making the gun more bulky and awkward to hold and move, so they have to make up some solid stat penalty to give you, even if it's not as clear-cut IRL as some basic number changes.

The other way around, leather offer little protection against an sharp knife but offer some protection against blunt. Chainmail offer very good protection against cutting, you have to pierce, the padding give some protection against blunt but it works the same way as with leather.

Plate offer best protection against everything and is lighter than heavy chainmail, since most parts has an front and back its seldom no problem removing, blunt work well against plate as most other stuff don't work, you can pierce but this is also hard. lamellar is sort of halfway between chain and plate, most plate armors will have laminar parts even chain parts.

Downside with plate is that its expensive, has to be pretty custom made, and is hard to put on.

As for adventuring, an light chainmail will protect you against daggers and lighter hits without being to heavy.

[Wesreidau]

Agincourt was the test of longbows against plate, and the French knights largely made it to the English lines. It rained bodkins and they still made it through. Crossbows allowed the same poundage without the training. You can see demonstration videos of people shooting modern homogenous steel bodkin arrowheads against unhardened sheet iron at a 90 degree angle, but none of these test the backing or actual case-hardened steel plate against a wrought-iron head with a steel tip. Furthermore arrows hardly ever strike at 90 degrees; all armor is sloped, angled or curved to prevent this. You can see the re-discovery of armor sloping in tank design through the years.

[Legendary Emu]

Plate armor not only represents the pinnacle of precision hand forging but the peak of the arms / armor race, where armor outright won. Won. Knights were effectively impervious to arrows at all but the closest ranges and greatest forces, as evidenced by the abandoning of the shield.

If we were going to go this far, we have to remember that a pope tried to ban the crossbow because it was basically cheating. The longbow for a long time was the only weapon capable of punching through knight armour, and require years and years of training. But then crossbows came to Europe and a peasant could pick up a crossbow and take out a knight with only a few weeks training.

[Rune]

I'm surprised nobody brought up the brigandine. Light and tough, not restrictive of movement, and a huge improvement on mail since the weight is better distributed. That plus a nice helmet and shield would be a decent protective gear for dungeoneering: you have you vital organs protected against traps and surprises by a few mms of steel and plenty of padding at all times while retaining high mobility, and when you know there's trouble ahead, you grab your shield and drop down your helmet to get splendid protection.

Rune. And affordable, too.

[Scotius]

I second what Wesreidau and Rune wrote earlier. Plate armour offers best protection, but it was crazy expensive and best suited for field fighting. For dungeoneering you would want something lighter, and offering more mobility. Brigandine, Chain shirt combined with padded gambeson would offer decent protection without encumbering the wearer too much. For full protection during a fight an adventurer would also need a helmet, gauntlets (preferably reinforced with chain pieces or metal plates) and some sort of leg protection.

[baggers]

I'm surprised nobody brought up the brigandine. Light and tough, not restrictive of movement, and a huge improvement on mail since the weight is better distributed. That plus a nice helmet and shield would be a decent protective gear for dungeoneering: you have you vital organs protected against traps and surprises by a few mms of steel and plenty of padding at all times while retaining high mobility, and when you know there's trouble ahead, you grab your shield and drop down your helmet to get splendid protection.

Rune. And affordable, too.

A full length chain mail armor is more expansive, but cover much more for the same mobility.

You can complete at will with some hard steel plate for arms or knees, feets or head if you feel you need extra protection to trade for a bit of mobility.

- - - Updated - - -

Note we have some nice mail gantlets today: probably very useful for dungeon crawling with all these little blades traps (or just knifes and poisonned/pointy/sharpened stuffs lying arounds)

Usually uused by butchers today.

This is a full chain mail:

[RainDreamer]

I think it would be depending on the type of combat style you intend to get into and the role you would be playing. There are some truth behind why we get our rogue wearing leather armor and paladins in heavier armor.

It is also depending what type of weapons you expect the enemies to have. Arrows, spears, swords, maces, guns, or even magic has different kind of counter measures.

And then the condition of the place you fight in. The hot climate armor looks different than a cold climate armor. Example: this is a laminar leather armor worn by native Siberian people:

The shoulder pauldron is reinforced with wood. Likely to be warm, but...that looks ridiculous.

Then you have to consider the kind of situation you tend to use it in. Armor for warfare is different than armor for adventuring.

Finally, consider the technology you have on hand and what you can create. There was a mythbuster episode about paper armor, and it was actually plausible, with the ancient chinese paper armor as effective as period accurate steel.

So, realistically, you would have smart adventurer scouting and researching information about the place they are about to go to, switching armor on the go as they reach towns, buying new armor/reinforcing and modifying old armor. Likely going unarmoured in safe area though. They would go in a group with a lot of armor types going around according to roles, and the quality and type would be depending on their budget.

As for me, I am a real life archer, and I would prefer wearing something light and maneuverable, like leather or bamboo armor.

[Camacha]

Agincourt was the test of longbows against plate, and the French knights largely made it to the English lines.

Thing is, those arrows were most likely meant to weed out the masses, meaning lightly armoured peasants and lower ranks. Like in modern tanks, it all depends on the type of munition you use. If you use a sabot round against infantry, you are not going to get far. Different points for different purposes, and bows back then were blanket weapons, not ones of much accuracy.

[SemiaCloud]

Why is the guy in the image floating?

But yea, it is super impractical to have armor like that.

[Rakaydos]

if the players get it, the monsters should too.

[baggers]

Usualy, dongeonners figth little monsters first: rats, smurfs or goblins.

both have littles fangs, like to knife the back, the feets, bite fingers, make little pointy traps, that sorts of things.

A "ligth full chain" armor, is probably what you need to protect from theses littles noises.

If you go for the dungeon master and/or dragon, it's another story.

[Camacha]

A "ligth full chain" armor, is probably what you need to protect from theses littles noises.

Exactly how light do you think chain mail is? It is, in reality, pretty hefty. Some argue that plate is actually more comfortable, as the distribution of weight is better.

[baggers]

Exactly how light do you think chain mail is? It is, in reality, pretty hefty. Some argue that plate is actually more comfortable, as the distribution of weight is better.

I agree a quadruple layer heavy full chain mail is heavy. Probably even as heavy as a full plate armor.

I think more for our purpose of a single layer small chain mail, like the butcher gantlet on a previous post, but one that cover all body.

http://www.schlachthausfreund.com/butcher_equipment/metal_mesh_safety/metal_mesh_gloves.html

Edited May 28, 2015 by baggers

[Camacha]

I think more for our purpose of a single layer small chain mail, like the butcher gantlet on a previous post, but one that cover all body.

That is still going to be an awful lot of metal hanging awkwardly from your body. It is not going to be light.

Additionally, remember that back in the day all chain mail was forged, naturally limiting the size of the rings. Very fine chain was pretty much impossible.