Armor sizes and outfitting

>Thief loots a viking barrow, picks up a surprisingly well-preserved (possibly magical) set of chainmail and helmet
>Him: "I'll give them to [the halfling fighter]."
>Me: "A bit too big, isn't it?"
>Him: "Eh, we can find a blacksmith to fit it for him

I'm genuinely at loss on how easy or difficult this would be. How bad would it be, realistically speaking, and how would it work in a fantasy game instead?

Stop looting graves

In your example I'd go for impossible. Imagine it that way - take a leather jacket for a normal sized grown man, and then imagine how someone would "resize it" to fit a 10 years old. It cannot be done without pretty much destroying it and making a new one from the scrap.

Other than that, when you find a random human armor and want it to fit your own human/elf (depending on a setting) fighter, I wouldn't go too much into detail, just an arbitrary number of days of work plus x amount of currency, the more powerful/complex the item the more expensive it should get.

Can be done somewhat easily.

Historically, noblemen would sell their outdated or damaged gear to highranking soldiers, who then would sell their gear to lowranking soldiers. This means that it was very common for blacksmiths to have experience retrofitting armour, or altering staps on weapon scabbards. Shrinking down helmets... that's a bit trickier I imagine. Maybe the blacksmith can just "shave off" a bit of the helmet?

Mind you, shaving off bits of the helm will only really work with "advanced" helmets, like you find in the later medieval periods.

You can't do it with a viking era nasal helm because that thing is constructed out of pieces, and when you start shaving off pieces of that thing, you have to reassemble the whole thing, and might as well melt it down and make a new smaller one.

Usually, with conventional armor, you can have the blacksmith just trade a player's Medium piece of armor for a Small one of the same kind, as smaller equipment is usually the same price or cheaper. The blacksmith won't have any real work and would end up profitting the difference between sets. If both are worth the same, ask for a small "exchange fee".

Magic stuff, though, is setting-dependant. If you're talking about common D&D settings, where magic is everywhere and magic items are just another form of currency, you can do the same as above. If it's a world where magic is rare and mysterious, it might be easier to try and somehow transfer the enchantment from a Medium gear to a Small one than to cut off half of the enchanted one. Results may vary.

I would assume a magic set of armour would resize itself once attuned or whatever. If you're gonna flood the thing with protective charms, you may as well make it super comfortable to boot.

It's patently absurd to believe a suit of chainmail made for an adult human can be "fit" to an adult halfling without removing about half the rings.

If it's D&D, magic items explicitly resize to fit the wearer. A goliath and a halfling can both wear the same suit of magical armor.

>If it's D&D, magic items explicitly resize to fit the wearer

Not in editions before 3e.

I don't think they ever had to resize a piece of armor made for a man so that it could fit a child, which is basically the human to halfling ratio.
I don't think you could get armor fitted for different size categories.

So you remove half the rings. There's no problem actually fitting the thing.

Yeah and then you can make another magic chainmain shirt for another halfling.

If it's D&D and it's a magic item chainmail, that might pose a problem, as it would be nearly indestructible.
You'd need some mt. doom style shit to split it in two.

You clearly have never seen late middle ages/renaissance era full plate armours made for young nobility children.

Semi unrelated but in Ancient Greek literature they always just stole each other's armour after defeating each other and that all fit

Sounds like a good way to horsefuck whatever enchantments the armor has.

Ancient Greek literature doesn't have halflings, though.

A professional blacksmith could resize the chainmail easily enough but resizing a helmet is impossible beyond adding padding to the inside and adjusting straps

Depends on the setting, I think. If you're looking at a setting that has some reasonable amount of magic, I mean, shit, you can conjure solid steel in some settings. What's to stop you from taking it to some transmutation specialist and have it shrunk down to size magically?

It'd be difficult for the blacksmith to do, but if it's possible through magic in the setting anyway, what's the point in not letting him get it done at the blacksmith, besides overt fun-policing? He's just going to find another NPC to do it anyway.

What do you call chainmail fit for a hobbit?


[Spoiler] Halfring Armor [/Spoiler]

That.
My brother made his own suit of mail, and it took him over a year due to lapsing resources and free time; over the course of which he also worked out a lot and had resize the waist and arms of his hauberk, which was as easy as taking out some rings from teh proverbial seams.
In that same span he's made two helmets; the latter because the prior was too small.

Magic gear resizes for its user.

That's pretty lazy. A resizing piece of clothing or armor sounds like an enchantment in it's own right, something that would be in demand for nobility to have the perfect fitted outfits or powerful mercenary guilds to have one-size-fits-all uniforms, rather than something included in all others.

I get it's for game flow but it's just a little bit contrived. Maybe a compromise? Magic gear has a focus somewhere on it; a bone rune or crystal or whatever and you swap that over. Re-attuning the focus takes a little time and energy instead of re-making the entire suit of armor.
Plus maybe the focus is designed for a specific type of armor, so you can swap a chain focus to other chain, maybe scale at a pinch but trying to stitch it into wizard robes just fucks up the enchantment. But it might be worth a shitty unoptimised enchantment swap in some situations.

Why would you want a dead loser's armor? Obviously it didn't work very good

Stop arson about.

>Made for
Key phrase, retard

Depending on your fantasy tropes it makes sense.

In Stackpole's 'Once a Hero' there's a magic sword that changes shape to better fit its' users fighting style and race.

Now sure, you could have that only be applicable to certain magical items of a particular power level. But the resizes thing is generally in place because it cuts out the part where you have to carry your new item around for a few sessions before you find someone who can actually work on it to adjust it for you. This whole thing depends entirely on how your magic/enchantments work, if a piece of armour is enchanted against damage can you no longer adjust it?

Or is the armour enchanted to protect it's wearer from damage? In which case it's logical that the armour would reshape to better fit it's wearer right?

>enlarge/reduce person
>implying you cant nigger-rig it to work with armor

Just re-fluff it

chainmail would be easy as hell to tailor, all you have to do is take out or insert rings to change it.

I generally just say "no, it is too big for them to wear without essentially remaking it from scratch." That being said I tend to let "fate" give them magical equipment that is best suited for the respective party members. So if the party tanks are 7+ feet tall they will happen to find magical armour on someone 7+ feet tall.

You didn't need the second greeline user

Making an armor fit different size categories isn't really realistic. Whenever this happens in one of my games I have some wizard npc transfer the magic from the armor to another appropriately sized suit for a bunch of money. If you're in a low magic setting idk what to tell you lol.

Armour is magical, changes to fit the size of the one who wishes to wear it.
Else they find a blacksmith real quick, who reforges it for 1/4th the cost (or however hard you wish to be on your players)

Doesn't Dungeons & Dragons have some sort of bullshit Attunement system that automatically scales magic items to the wearer?

>I'm genuinely at loss on how easy or difficult this would be.

The Halfling wouldn't be large enough to functionally wear the chainmail.
It'd wear on him like a gown or a dress and impede movement.

Trying to "refit" it would most likely destroy it due to the drastic changes that would be necessary to do such a thing. It'd be more equitable to pawn or trade the item in and get new armor.

If he were a Human, Elf, or similarly "man-sized" species that'd be a different story, but a Halfling is too small.

It should be easier the more prolific magic items are in your setting because this event is going to repeat every time they find a new set of armor or weapon.

Criminally underrated post
Thanks for the laugh

...

In a world with differently sized races I'd say some very experienced blacksmith could do it.
However if we are talking about a magic chainmail, it would likely take a master blacksmith and/or a wizard to retrofit it without breaking.

A halflings is more like the size of a 5 or 6 year old. They're only 3 feet tall.

I always have magic armor resize to fit the wearer after a set amount of time wearing it. it IS magic, after all, otherwise you gotta run through having a smith or wizard remove parts of (possibly) enchanted armor.
Just what I use personally for ease of use though, your mileage may vary.

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