Armor Weight

A full set of plate armor in the late middle ages was ~45 lbs. Additionally the mace, a common weapon for fully armored knights, adds another ~2.5 lbs. JOUSTING armor could be around 110 pounds, however it was NOT used in actual combat, and the knight was ALWAYS on horseback.

Modern soldiers typically carry 60-100 lbs into combat, made worse because the weight isn't as evenly displaced. This results in a lot of 25 year old veterans with sore joints.

All this in mind, we can assume that even if plate armor weighed 80-90 lbs, a knight would still be able to perform at modern soldier levels, given similar levels of training.

Generations of constant warfare combined with wealth to fund several concurrent arms races. Just look at swords, we had major changes in design several times per century. We could afford to repeatedly adopt techniques and technologies that made generations of accumulated equipment worthless. Steel was cheap and plentiful in Europe, true, but we could also buy a fucking lot of it.

Explain to him that he is a loser who escapes into do-it-yourself fantasy. and proceed to do acrobatics wearing tungsten.

Around forty pounds for a full set of plate. Weapons and supplies definitely add on to that, but it won't add up to nearly as much as the actual armor.

I cant do half of those things wearing clothes...

It's a good question which I'm not sure there is a very clear answer to.

"full plate" is very hot compared to other armors, which may be a contributing factor.

Another I've only taken note of recently, is after the Black Death and such, manpower became more valuable, so I think armies became smaller but better armored around this time as well.

Maybe it's one of those things we'll never fully understand, like the Chinese mostly ignoring mail armor for centuries.

Historical armor is awesome, most weapons wont hurt you while wearing it and an unarmored opponent is pretty much fucked if he has to fight an armored guy alone.

You are not gonna sneak on anyone wearing it tho'

1) Other places developed plate armour, though not to as intricate a degree. Sengoku-era gusoku was made of as many large metal plates as possible; they are often misinterpreted by the casual observer as wood due to the lacquer and paint that is applied on top.

2) Plate armour isn't necessarily a straightforward upgrade. Even quilted armour, if layered in enough quantity, will stop sword cuts and blows. The improvements plate brings are in logistical areas and in areas of encumbrance, as well as protection against firearms (which plate evolved alongside).

3) full plate armour was never actually that common to begin with; most soldiers would not be wearing it

4) Europe had a mixture of factors that led to the specific type of plate armours we see: the right social organization (a class of wealthy landed gentry), tradition (a martial tradition of warfare on horseback for said landed gentry, political fragmentation (small states resulting in small armies that had lower overall manpower), and constant warfare including firearms (incentivizing the development of weapons and armour). Note plate armour emerges in similar contexts - Sengoku Japan, for instance.

Is that a samurai wearing a mail hauberk?

Other misconceptions - steel is not iron. The amount and type of iron deposits only has bearing on the metallurgical processes you need to develop to create steel.

Generally speaking before steam engines most cultures are in a similar boat regarding the availability of iron. "Poor" iron does not inherently result in "poor" steel - the quality of the steel produced is far more dependent on the methods you use to create it. The famous folding technique used by Japanese smiths to stretch out steel produced by bloomery methods of producing steel from iron sands also show evidence of having been used by a few Celtic groups, for example.

Yes, the Japanese did use mail - known as "kusari". They generally preferred to stitch it into long strips to reinforce vital areas of an otherwise padded cloth or leather armour piece (shown in the kote, or armguard, here), rather than as a completely interlocking weave, but there are a few examples of complete kusari hauberks.

Yeah i knew that but i had never seen a full hauberk before, only patches of mail reinforcing other armor

Btw, is it true that jap mail was butted? Heard that once but nobody confirmed it

40 to 100 pounds depending on details.

admittedly the the 100 pound one I'm thinking of was meant for jousting, so It wasn't like you where ment to be walking round in it

It's not really hard to find pictures of it in this day and age...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6_in_1_doubled_up_butted_kusari_2.jpg

Correct. Jousting plate could reach up to 110 lbs but was unfit for battle due to its ineffectiveness on foot and the cumbersome nature of it. Jousting armor needed that weight to put force behind your lance to hit the other person.

Full plate armor, with gambeson and chain, could reach up to 60 lbs.

Well, i said i heard it, never said i looked it up

Nips why yu no riveted

Probably around 45 lbs for the average man, up to 60 if you've got extra padding underneath and reinforcements for the joints. (Not strictly necessary for most warriors but it's no good having the crown prince die from a stray arrow wound getting infected)

/Thread

Generally these hauberks are from the later Edo period, and reserved for samurai police of the Tokugawa regime. Due to drastic restrictions on weapons (restriction of swords to very specific social classes, absolute bans on firearms, etc.) imposed by the Tokugawa, kusari gusoku provided more than sufficient protection for peace officers while being more breathable and wearable over long patrols than a traditional tatami gusoku panopoly.

Japanese pop culture likes to portray Bakumatsu-era duels between completely unarmoured samurai, but the Shinsen-gumi and other similar anti-reformist samurai with the official sanction of the regime would have enjoyed the advantage of wearing full mail hauberks on raids which would have been excellent protection against swords and daggers.

Google is your friend
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Riveted_kusari_close_up_3xx.jpg

To allow autists to come back with 'well not ALLLL chainmail was riveted the japs did this dumb fucking thing' when being told that chainmail should be riveted.

Weight hanging from the shoulders has nothing to do with encumbrance. Mail will encumber you *less* than plate, because it's more flexible.

The worse weight distribution means mail will be more tiring to wear for long periods.

Looking at armor designs from the Middle Ages to the Early Renaissance before the dawn of shot is so awesome. Something about it just is really satisfying to me, watching the armorers slowly figure out how to fit on more and more efficient armor, and then right at the end going "we did it! FUCK IT!" and then just baroque and flute the shit out of it.

Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be a trained warrior in, say, the 15th century, when you were still coming out of the dark ages but you could still manage to get your hands on proper full plate? You'd feel invincible facing down footmen.

Well, probably not. But it'd still be badass.

My Armour weighs about 65lbs, but I have a rather heavy configuration and a full maile shirt as opposed to Voiders. From my reading 70lbs was about as heavy as they would make it for actual soldiering.

>youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI
>that little dance at the end
cute

Actually brits tested out the whole thing and found out that people in armor got exhausted quicker because they had weights on the limbs and that made one exhausted quicker.

iirc the Japanese wood armour components was actually a thing but way way earlier than the Sengoku jidai, like 12th century and earlier.

>the Early Renaissance before the dawn of shot is so awesome.

Dude, plate harness is entirely concurrent with increasing prevalence of shot in armies.

>the 15th century, when you were still coming out of the dark ages

15th century is about 5 centuries too late for dark ages, which in turn basically were made up by shit old historians and not actually a thing anyway. The era is generally known as the Early Medieval Era now.

why would the guy ruin that realistic looking armor with boob plate

>implying boobplate matters at all
The only reason against it is that it would take a lot of time and measuring to forge and shape.
>but muh redirecting blows like plasma lightning somehow
Nigga physics does not work that way and you can just reinforce the valley's meeting point anyway (which that image looks like it is even)

maybe he just wanted to draw boobs

Why would you waste time sculpting breasts and reinforcing a weak spot when you could just have made the cuirass in a simpler design that has no obvious weak points to begin with? Is showing off your tits that important to you?

Because the customer paid for it. Blacksmithing is a job, not some freaking esoteric cabal of pragmatism and efficiency.
>Is showing off your tits that important to you?
It is for plenty of women, yes.

Maybe there is a religious reasons for it, like worshiping mothers and maternity

You know how those really big Backpacks have metal rods in them and belts?
Those f*cking retarded modern designers making a backpack more rigid and putting some of the weight on your hips when you clearly state that it has the opposite effect.
Why the hell didn't they ask you before making such silly decisions?

>Pie Plate instead of springform pan.
>Nutella.
>Store bought crust.
>Cracked top.
>No water bath.
>MOTHERFUCKING STORE BOUGHT CRUST.

No... no... calm... caaaaalllm.

People have different traditions and different expectations. There's no one true way. As long as you are baking and enjoy YOUR FUCKING STORE BOUGHT HALF ASSED ABORTION OF a... no... no... calm. You've made cheesecake sous-vide with mason jars. You're not one to judge.

>Nigga physics does not work that way and you can just reinforce the valley's meeting point anyway (which that image looks like it is even)
It isn't only about penetrating the metal.
It doesn't matter how much you reinforce the area because if you are struck with a heavy weapon all of the energy will go into the armor (and your body) so even if it doesn't go penetrate you'll steel feel like you were punched in the stomach

Not him, but isn't that true with or without the boobs?

no because most armor pieces at least breast plates had an overall conical shape, this works to disperse impacts in the same was as an arc disperses load, the focal point between the two breasts on a "boobplate" would be more or less flat and the overall design would focus any blow there directly their rather than dispersing it wider.

It would be a subpar design, but its not a catastrophic instant death generator like people suggest sometimes

A regular breasplate is shaped to deflect weapons away from your body, so the weapons only tranfers a bit of energy before it chages direction and keeps on moving
With a boobplate there's a good chance that a blow would directed towards the valley between the boobs so there isn't anyhwere else for the weapon to go and all the energy is transferred to the armor/body

youtube.com/watch?v=I7CUfkGLB48

Normal breastplates bow out not just to deflect blows, but also to give the plate some crush space in which it can give without destroying your internal organs. See pic related, which was cause by a straight-on hit from a blunted lance during a joust. You can get similar effects from pointed lances as well as weapons weapons like maces and warhammers. Now if the blow had been just a little off-center it would have probably glanced off, since it wasn't, the plate crushed inward, but the guy wearing it is fine. He'll probably have some difficulty breathing until he takes the plate off, but his internal organs are fine.

Now imagine it was boob plate. Firstly, there is little chance for the blow to deflect, because the cups will direct it in rather than out. Secondly, there is no crush space, so if the plate is dented inward like in the picture it will go straight into your sternum. This will result in you having difficulty breathing not just because of a dented metal plate constricting your chest, but because of the bits of shattered bone driven into your heart and lungs.

When considering armour design, it is important to consider not just now it will deflect blows directed at it towards it, but also how it will deform when it receives blows head on. Boob plate performs poorly in both these respects.

OP, here is the real question:
How hard it is to open site of any give museum of arms and check actual data?

Besides, pic related

>I play with a GM using a homebrew system who insists DnD full plate would weigh "at least 80-90 pounds"
Change GM

>maille
fromme ye olde armoure shoppe?

>Secondly, there is no crush space
There is absolutely no reason to believe this.

Of the women in history who wore Armor, none of them to my knowledge wore it with the intent to show off their tits. One generally wears armor to keep themselves from being skewered with sharp pieces of metal or to avoid having ones fookin' 'ed bashed in with a rock.
>Armor sculpted to conform to the curvature of your body will deform in exactly the same way as armor designed with sloping that deflects objects away from your body.
Nah, I don't think so. Every honest person knows that the purpose of titplate is not to be good or realistic armor, it's mean to give the appearance of protection with the added benefit of a great honking set of tits obviously with more emphasis on the tits than on the ability of the armor to protect it's wearer.

>>Armor sculpted to conform to the curvature of your body
There is absolutely no reason to believe this either.

>First plate breastplates started appesring around 1250.
Wat. Breastplates weren't around until 1350 you mong. Coats of Plate are not breastplates.

It would weigh more because they would sometimes wear supplementary armor on top of that, not to mention that leaves out the chausses and probably doesn't include the coif or full sleeves. Plus maille was actually thicker and heavier than the historical examples we have- merely existing results in the maille slowly grinding iron off the links, wearing down. So they've lost weight since whenever they were made.

>A breast(there it is)plate shaped to show off a woman's tits.
>Not conforming to the curvature of her body.
Isn't that basically the entire purpose of titplate, to follow the shape of the woman's body so that the shape of her breasts remain visible?

"An entire suit of field armor (that is, armor for battle) usually weighs between 45 and 55 lbs. (20 to 25 kg), with the helmet weighing between 4 and 8 lbs. (2 to 4 kg)—less than the full equipment of a fireman with oxygen gear, or what most modern soldiers have carried into battle since the nineteenth century. Moreover, while most modern equipment is chiefly suspended from the shoulders or waist, the weight of a well-fitted armor is distributed all over the body. It was not until the seventeenth century that the weight of field armor was greatly increased in order to render it bulletproof against ever more accurate firearms. At the same time, however, full armor became increasingly rare and only vital parts of the body, such as the head, torso, and hands, remained protected by metal plate."

Breiding, Dirk H. “Arms and Armor—Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm (October 2004)

given how the rest of the harness appears practical its reasonable to assume the breast plate isn't figure hugging and there is the standard gap and padding underneath.
the breasts are a purely decorative element and can likely be much less protruding than they appear with clever work to induce an optical illusion of depth.

yes it probably is somewhat less practical than a regular breastplate, but impractical flourishes for appearance sake aren't unknown in tourny or "dress" harnesses.

no. it's to showcase feminity and look cool. like a steel version of the roman/greek muscle cuirass.

plus a figure hugging solid plate would be crazy uncomfortable and restrictive.

>Every honest person knows that the purpose of titplate is not to be good or realistic armo
Actually, every honest person knows that the concerns of armor were almost never the breastplate, nor the shape of the breastplate, and instead entirely centered around the joints and eliminating the vulnerability of joints. A titty-shaped plate is just as impervious to most weapons as the perfect conical plate. A self-obsessed woman who commissioned such titty armor will still, realistically, be killed through the joints like her male counterparts or - even more likely - detained and ransomed like her male counterparts.

No, the point is showing off, like the greek breastplates. There is no reason you cannot take the exact regular breastplate, down to its crush space, down its its mail underarmor, and then sculpt out breasts. They could make it conform perfectly to her body, just like they could have for men, but like with men, there's no reason to. There's a million and one ways of doing tit plate, from even just a slight opening for breasts to a mere stylistic addition welded atop a regular plate, with no such "cups" inside. They could go full retard and do a literal metal bikini, supporting the breast with cold steel against skin. Just because they can do something stupid doesn't mean they will just because you don't like it. These are still people looking to use armor to protect their lives in war, made by blacksmiths who have an accumulated knowledge of what roughly works and what doesn't. If there was a warlike woman vain enough for titty armor, to show off said tits, it would still be made fully intending to protect her. Male nobels have done far worse than tits when it comes to aesthetic modifications on their armor.

The Japanese didn't wear plate armor. The only thing made of plates was vambraces and solid helms. Everything else was actually lamellar.

Because it looks good.

Yes, people do that kind of thing IRL.

That's how maille is spelt you dongle.

Speaking of boobplate, I still don't see why it can't utilize an advanced form of that V wedge (I forgot the name) used to stop arrows from deflecting upwards into the throat. You could say those V's prevented certain blows from deflecting to the sides (like boobplate), but clearly such blows were not of great concern to the people wearing armor.

In the same vein as above:

youtube.com/watch?t=30&v=5hlIUrd7d1Q

>Actually, every honest person knows that the concerns of armor were almost never the breastplate, nor the shape of the breastplate, and instead entirely centered around the joints and eliminating the vulnerability of joints.

Joints aren't the main fucking danger you retard, not only is it easy to staunch the bleeding in your limbs by amputation followed by cauterizing or simply tying the arm off, but there's a fucking reason why the breastplate was always the single thickest piece of armor you wore, even more than the helmet. Because it protects the second most vital set of organs, and unlike the helmet, the upper torso doesn't move a whole lot and doesn't need to save on weight.

Breastplate shape matters a whole fucking lot, because as the biggest part of your body it's the most likely thing to get hit, and the hardest to stop bleeding (along with the head). This is why every time armor develops in a culture, the first or second piece of armor is ALWAYS THE TORSO. Possibly superseded or followed by the head.

...

That's primarily ceremonial armor for a high status individual, dumbass.

The Renaissance starts where the medieval period ends.

Of course, that's an academic distinction, because people didn't suddenly behave differently and use different items just because.

Changes are gradual.

>ceremonial armour

Are you saying that someone able to afford a plate armor wouldn't be of high status?

>The Renaissance
No such thing. Any true 'Renaissance' occurred in the late 13th century, followed by the Commercial Revolution of the 14th.

If that's actually Roman, and depending on the era? Yes. Segmentata was used briefly compared to all other Roman Armor, but it wasn't exclusively available for Patricians. That muscle plate is unlikely to be combat armor unless it's for some pompous blowhard, because the plate is too long. You couldn't bend at the waist.

the romans did take it too battle.

though it was mostly officers wearing it admittedly.

They didn't wear that in medieval times, but most fantasy settings are anachronistic anyway.

Here is a useful video regardless.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=llPAuGy6XvQ

You're acting like the breastplates were just randomly pierced all the damn time. Whose the retard here. The breastplate is easily the most useful piece of armor, with an average thickness of 1 to 2.5 mm, and it did its job at diverting blows.

I honestly don't even know what you're trying to argue in your post. Yes, breastplates are useful as fuck. They may even have been a bit thicker, I guess, not that that has any place in the discussion. Yes, they protect important things. Yes, they get hit. Yes, if you get hit without a breastplate, you're either going to die or be incapacitated. But that's why you wore breastplates in the first place - because medieval weapons did an absolute shit job at piercing, slashing, chopping, or otherwise penetrating breastplates. Which is why weapons evolved to circumvent it, particularly by striking the joints. That is why swords were made with sharper and sharper edges, with diamond-shape blades to maintain rigidity while thrusting. Not to penetrate a solid breastplate but to penetrate the mail-covered joints. The shape of breastplates evolved through the years not because of an inability in doing its job but to better cover the places where it couldn't do its job.

What are you even trying to argue?

Depends of the criteria. There could also have been one in the 12th century.

But the historians placed the "Renaissance" at the Enlightenment period/discovery of America/invention of the typographic press, so eh.

Once again, it's a purely academic distinction.

>That's primarily ceremonial armor
No, that's armor of status for a rich or powerful person because there was no way of affording to outfit the average soldiers all in plate. Said wearer was also significantly more protected than all of their soldiers.

I know it's Roman, I was just saying that high-status individuals adding decorations to their armors isn't new.

Also, impractical looking armors were actually used to fight, so it's not outlandish to think they were more practical than expected.

The fact that you're saying that limb armor is the most important than the shape and structure of breastplates, which is absolutely retarded because limb armor was for the most part extremely thin, and would not survive missile fire or gunfire, nor would it survive lance impacts. What in the fuck is YOUR point, because boobplate is absolutely retarded in war for its shape is not sloped to divert energy and present an angled target to lances, missiles, and gunshots.

Breastplates were absolutely the primary "concerns" of armorers, as were helmets. This is why breastplates come in an absurd variety of shapes and sizes from the invention of the steel breastplate in Europe from the late 14th century onwards. Culminating in Early Modern breasplates, which were made of two layers of steel fused together to function like a ceramic shield or the spaced armor of a ship to prevent penetration by arquebuses.

Not to mention that when armor got heavier and heavier because it was getting thicker and thicker to stop close range gunshots from going clean through, it was joint protection that went goodbye FIRST. Followed by limb armor.

That's tournament armor.

12thC renaissance is best renaissance.

Aside from all the advances in architecture, engineering, the explosion of popular literature, the development of universities; you had the first real mass revival of Classical Greek (and Roman and Islamic) learning.

Philosophy, medicine, astrology (and thus mathematics) and science in general get catapulted forward with access to rediscovered texts. In my entirely subjective opinion this was a much more significant rebirth of learning than the actual "renaissance" (which had other good stuff of course but as a rebirth it pales).

I'm cool with boob plate. I prefer armour that looks like something that could actually be worn and still be practical despite its fantasy aesthetic, but I'm not gonna chew someone out for liking boob plate. At least, not until they start arguing that it's perfectly fine and realistic and how dare I say it'd be more practical to have a traditional breast plate shape.

Just say you like cheesecake and leave it at that, dude, I won't judge.

You know what I find sad?

That almost nobody use gambeson in fiction

Specifically foot melee tournament armour. The armoured skirt is called a tonlet. It's a shame that jousting armour hogs the tournament limelight as the other forms of sporting armour for other events have their own unique and specialised attributes.

Well, jousting was more popular, and I think it was more documented.

But it's true it's kinda shame

As a general rule, if it looks too bulky to move your arms in, it's probably jousting armor. If it's too bulky to squat or mount a horse, then it's foot armor.

You came to the wrong neighbourhood motherfucker

>Dark Souls PvP

I know someone who does

>The Renaissance starts where the medieval period ends.
Nope. It starts in the late medieval period (around 1300 is the general cutoff point).

We've got lots of different names for eras, and they often overlap.

>Just say you like cheesecake and leave it at that, dude, I won't judge.

you're a good person, user

Onion Bro?

>full plate would weigh "at least 80-90 pounds"
Please tell me he's joking...

A fucking full-body CHAINMAIL barely weights 60 pounds, where chainmails are the heaviest type of armour in existence (contrary to D&D potray), since the entire thing is fitted over the body due to own weight.
For comparison, a plate armour will weight roughtly half of it, where about 1/3 of the weight will come from the padding rather than the armour itself.