Bizarre D&D invented armors

Man, shut the fuck up. He was just asking if there is in fact a real world equivalent.

A buff coat was a loose heavy leather coat worn with a breastplate. Became popular around the time guns were around. (pic related) It "might" protect you from getting cut by a bayonet or a saber with the idea being I think that the coat would be sliced before getting to your skin. Certainly better than nothing.

Brigandine is probably what studded leather is supposed to be. Think a bunch of little light steel plates held together and sewn into a canvas or leather jacket. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandine

wikipidea article has good pictures of the stuff.

Is the buff coat what they're going for when they say "leather armor"?

A brigadine sounds like what the Starks wear in GoT.

>Buff coats
Thick, sleeveless, tanned cow/elk hide tunic.
Worn beneath armour to prevent chaffing.

>brigandine
Sheets of metal riveted onto cloth or leather.
You wear it with the metal side inward.

No he wasn't, he was bitching. Fuck, he even gave the answer in his post.

No, I was actually asking if what I suggested in my post is what they mistook for being just leather, or if there was infact a real world equivalent

It appears so far there hasn't been one mentioned, because cuir-bouii is typically worn with a breastplate, the linen armor is a different (quite good) armor, and lamellar armor also quite different than what is described (thick little leather plates vs flexible leather)

Or rather, cuir-bouii is typically attached to other metal bits, and if memory serves is party of the origin of the the word cuirass

Lots of people used leather for armor, I think the question is really "how".

Leather and sturdy cloth will in no way stop direct blows from weapons but in combat there are lots of deflections, bumps and bruises and smaller cuts it would protect you from. Maybe would even mitigate lower power long ranged missile attacks.

Even just doing the lower half of your body in sturdy leather would let you charge through undergrowth without lots of nicks and smacks from the bushes and such.

Followed by two posts of outright bitching and calling the writers silly, which really colors your OP. Face it, you're not fooling anybody you fucking autist.

>outright bitching and calling the writers silly
I think you may be the autist here is you consider that bitching, and get offended at the word silly..

Sorry if I offended you with the S word. I guess I'll have to go with goofy now

I always imagined spiked leather was like the heavy deaqth metal clothes worn by rocker musicians. More for the rogue character than the fighter un less he also wore assless chaps with his furkini bottoms

>+2 dancing assless chaps
they jump off your body while still providing you an AC bonus!

Leather armor is cuir bouille.

Studded leather armor is a massive misunderstanding on brigandine.

Lamellar and gambesons and buff coats are under represented, and under statted, when they are represented at all.

This is good

Since when is D&D armor ever realistic, though?

You have a point. Those armor restrictions are ridiculous - why is plate HARDER than mail to move around in?! why is it so hard to swim in?!

its like all they did was read "a Connecticut yankee in king arthurs court" and decided that was an accurate depiction of armor

Brigandine was one of the most common and popular forms of armor in it's time. It was comparatively light and inexpensive, rther comfortable, and offered good protection.

You can't swim in metal plate armor user. You sink and walk on the bottom. Then you died unless you could breath water. It usually took a squire to help put on and remove plate armor so you wouldn't be able to take it off and swim up after you sank unless you dragged your squire down with you. Hell it's hard to swim with shoes and wet clothing especially if the clothing is loose fitting, it's like trying to sail under water.

As for moving, I saw vids about it and yeah it might restrict your agility a bit but not to the level d&d claims, you certainly won't be doing cartwheels but if you had momentum you could roll.

The first part of your post is hilarious.

I don't know if you're being a silly billy with the second blurb either, but yes, you can do cart wheels without issue, and if you can do them outside of the armor handstands are also trivial

youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg

its actually much easier to swim in plate then loose fitting clothing

Isn't the problem the 50 lbs or so of armor not the mobility? Strap 50 lbs of non-buoyant anything and it gets a lot harder to swim.

This is some serious budget barn looking plate. Notice how he's not wearing a helmet, or heavy pauldrons like the ones with the scoop on them to prevent beheadings from claymores? Yeah. Nice assless/thigh FULL plate user.

Also don't forget your clothes and padded armor (gambeson or arming doublet) that would drink water like a sponge.

Plate armor isn't very heavy, and in any event the system of straps and buckles used means the weigh its perfectly distributed around your body - its like a second skin. It doesn't make a difference while swimming.

Anyway, I lost 100 pounds recently due to a disease and it hasn't affected my ability to swim at all

No, it's not. It's actually from a museum. He actually wears a helmet near the end of the video but that's a non-issue. Adding heavy pauldrons wouldn't make a difference, and the ones you're thinking of are probably ones from jousting armor (which was sports equipment and MUCH MUCH heavier than armor worn for combat). In addition, full plate actually didn't often armor the butt much because you were going to be sitting on a horse and your butt would be well protected. Some very expensive suits did, but they were in the minority

All in all, the armor the guy is wearing is historically accurate and well representative of the typical suit of plate armor. I can post dozens of videos of guys running around in plate and they're all going to have similar levels of agility unless they're fatasses who cant run 10 meters OUT of armor

vimeo.com/13634653
There's a bit where he swims

youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc

youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI

I can keep going but its just more of the same

Note that the guy in the first video is a visibly out of shape nerd - the guys wearing this stuff would be athletes who train their whole lives to fight and move around in it

In the third video the guy even does some rock climbing!

>its like all they did was read "a Connecticut yankee in king arthurs court" and decided that was an accurate depiction of armor
I guarantee you that's what happened.

Our understanding of history improves over time, user.

mark twain has done far more to ruin peoples perception of armor far more than D&D ever did....

It vaguely looks like some Asian-style armor I've seen.

Historically, a kings chainmaille was double linked. Have you ever worn actual steel chainmaille? I have. It's really heavy. I'm a good swimmer, but I wouldn't try swimming in even chain, let alone the padding you'd wear under it. see Now fill the chain holes with metal. Now try to swim. All these vids you will link are modern made armor, better lighter alloy metals, or wall hanger armor donated to museums and would never have been worn by a real knight. It's thinner and useless in battle. Jousting armor was so heavy the knight had to be raised and lowered onto his horse with a crane. Which is why the dismounting was so important. They couldn't stand up after they were dismounted. Field armor was lighter but still heavy enough to prevent amputations.

The sad part is that leather armor is actually really cool, and you can do some things with it as far as decoration is concerned that you can't with metal (like actually carving into it, as you can see in some medieval statuary), but everyone just thinks it's the rogues' go-to armor or somesuch.

Why would plate armor be easier to move around in than mail? Mail seems pretty flexible, plate mail is fairly rigid and heavy (though not quite as heavy as people seem to think).

>vimeo.com/13634653

If by swimming you mean he is struggling and slowly going under the water then I would agree with you.

Actually they could acid etch metal with very intricate designs. Much more intricate than could be done on leather.

plate armor etching

I'm not talking about mail, I'm talking about plate - mail puts all the weight on your shoulders, and is indeed difficult to swim in. Plate is designed for the user and extremely maneuverable

I don't know what to tell you if you just want to look reality in the face and say "nope, you're wrong". I can show you videos of people wearing real suits of arm actually worn in combat, people wearing suits of armor being manufactured using the same materials and same techniques as was historically used. These people can move without issue and swim without issue. I an show you firsthand historical account of people describing people moving without issue and swimming without issue in their armor. I can show you videos of every single expert asked that moving around and swimming is a non-issue. I can show you papers with legitimate citations all saying the same thing - plate armor is far easier to move around in than any mail, is trivial to do rigorous physical activity in, and even easy to swim in.

I don't know what else to tell you if you don't want to believe it. The shit is even easier to move around in than modern bullet\proof armor FFS

Using jousting armor as a reference is patently ridiculous, those idiots were literally locked and bolted into lancing position.
The whole reason they could afford to put so much metal into jousting armor and make the sport relatively less lethal was because the competitor literally was not expected to move at all.

>These people can move without issue and swim without issue

They can move with some limit on your dexterity.
You can't put a palm on your chest. You can't put a right hand palm on your right hand shoulder.

You can't swim.

Mail armor is heavier than plate, puts all the weight on your shoulders, and your limbs have less range of motion because it covers your joints exactly how it covers the rest of your body

Mail armor is inferior in every respect compared to plate armor, except cost. Hell, a full suit of plate armor only takes two weeks to make.

will nothing please you? He is swimming without issue, yeah hes moving a little slowing but hes not sinking like a brick and can clearly move around. The guy is a poor swimmer out of armor anyway and is out of shape, look at some of his other videos - the point is its not significantly impeding him.

its a FAR cry from how D&D treats swimming in plate. If swimming in plate in real life was anything like D&D, itd be impossble for that guy to do anything but drown

True, I had forgotten about that. But it's still cool that you can do such deep carvings with leather without ruining functionality, and most people think leather is either a coat or a stiff piece of undecorated leather.

What the fuck nonsense are you spouting? I can swim just fine and any of these people can swim fine. If what you're trying to say is "wearing armor is more cumbersome then not wearing armor" then no shit sherlock, of course it is. But what it looks like you're trying to say it "D&D accurately models physically fit humans trained in armor's dexterity" then no it doesnt, and it also looks like you're trying to imply that it's not possible to effectively swim in armor and that it greatly impedes your movement - thats not true, it's totally possible to swim and plate armor only barely impedes your movement

Jesus christ you people are idiots if you seriously want to ignore proof sitting in front of your face

...

Dude. He moved maybe 2 meters tops before he goes under the water (and the almost immediately starts to sink) and needs to put his feet on the bottom of the pool.

I think a lot of the misconceptions about plate armor come from exaggerations about jousting armor, which is more akin to sports equipment than anything else

Did you list to what he said he was going to do?

He was trying to see if its possible to swim and float in armor at all, if someone more fit than him culd do it easily, if a story about someone riding into a river and climbing out the otherside and join the battle was possible, and if historical accounts of people in armor being able to walk along the bottom and jump up for air to surprise their enemies was possible

He wasn't trying to showcase Olympic class swimming, and he proved everything he was trying to prove and every i said

I'm starting to realize you all are actually just trolling me and trying to get me to reply as often as possible, good job. 8/10

Agreed. Leather is a beautiful material to make armor with. Some leathers were boiled, waxed and shaped to be very stiff though. I have seen some remarkable carvings (and colorings) in leather biker seats and saddles. It's amazing to see what a true craftsman can do with it.

>Why would plate armor be easier to move around in than mail?

Not him, but maille is loose, the weight is more poorly distributed, and it has a bad habit of shifting momentum (which is why you wore a belt over your mail shirt in the first place, to mitigate the fact that it has a habit of swinging around like the world's most cumbersome dong).

He's making an odd universal statement by saying that plate armor is easier to move around in than mail - are we talking about technologically advanced shit from Italy and Germany that cost thousands of Medievalbux, or mass produced munitions plate that wasn't specifically tailored for you?

Sure, short distances with the ability to stand, like a river, but no way would someone be able to swim across a lake or in the sea. Did soldiers wear plate while on ships? No, and there's a reason for that. Hint: you sink if you go overboard before they could tack and rescue you.

I'm not who you're replying to, but seriously dude, you need to check out just about any source that tests it. It's trivial to swim in armor. Actually, the guy in the third video in this post: Has a BUNCH of videos of him swimming in armor, doing laps around a pool, etc. None in english though.

Actually yes, soldiers wore plate on ships. In the time periods where they didn't it's because plate was irrelevant. EVERYONE expected to drown if they fell overboard, very few sailors knew how to swim until the past hundred or so years. Also, it's trivial to swim across a lake in plate armor. The sea though, who the fuck can swim across a sea, plate or no? Nobody.

Wouldn't the plate be destroyed by all the salt and sea on ships anyway?

Oh dear lord, it's obvious I'm talking about tailor made shit that cost a lot of money because thats what PLATE ARMOR in D&D describes - I'm not talking about shitty inch thick breastplates handed out to footsolders to spot bullets.

It's clearly said in that I'm talking about armor restrictions in D&D, I'm not making an odd universal statement about all armor that uses plate, no matter how pedantic you want to be.

Imagine an entire army of Michaels Phelps.

The ships patrol the waters and see no enemy navy, so they assume their borders are safe...

Nah dude. That's what the bags of sand are for.

In their defence, the scholarship of medieval arms and armour has come on leaps and bounds since when they first started writing. A lot of the things we take for granted as common knowledge just hadn't been made part of the historiography yet and Victorian myths still ruled the day.

No. Not at all. Not only would it take a long time for that to do any damage, the steel used is resistant

It seems like no one here has done the tiniest bit of actual research, instead just basing everything off cliches

Then he could have use a fit person to try and swim instead of him. You clearly are a genius.

>because thats what PLATE ARMOR in D&D describes

Well in D&D "Field Plate" and "Half Plate" are munitions armor and "Full Plate" is plate harness, full plate actually does let you use some of your dex mod to AC (in the games that have dex modifiers).

It's not enough of a modifier, but it's a clear recognition of the fact that custom designed plate is for you.

>The sea though, who the fuck can swim across a sea, plate or no? Nobody.

Veljko Rogosic swam across the Adriatic sea in 2006 and Penny Palfrey swam 112km of the Caribbean sea between the Cayman Islands in 2011, to name but two.

I think that's just supposed to be layered leather armor. Like the studs are there to hold the layers together. I could be mistaken though.

That is the BEST "why so" of D&D armor mechanics I've ever heard, in all seriousness.

It doesn't defend them as realistic but it doesn't also vilify them for doing bad research. It just describes why they are why they are.

New setting idea...

Then give me the link. Not one of his videos show a thumbnail of pool or swimming.

That dex bonus is like icing on poop, considering they give you massive penalties to all the activities i described

it's a poor model of real world armor, even though it does have a few nods to reality

You know I'm talking about youtube.com/user/Medievalists/videos right?

Yes. I scrolled all the way down. No pool or swimming thumbnail

You lost 100 pounds of fat and you use that as a proof? Back to science class.

It's kind of a system artifact, really. I also want to point out that "research on arms and armor wasn't so good in the days they wrote the rules" isn't an excuse, considering this is the AD&D version of full plate:

>In most campaigns, the number of sets of full plate armor can be counted as easily as the numbers of crown knights who owe their allegiance to the king. In many kingdoms, it is a crime to possess a set of full plate armor without royal permission, as a wise king keeps any armorer capable of such craftsmanship at his beck and call.

>Full plate armor is one of the greatest gifts a great lord can bestow upon his followers. It is a prize as coveted for the status it confers as its monetary value. A suit of full plate armor will often be a gift presented to great knights upon great service to the realm, or as an incentive to attract a knight errant of unquestioned prowess to the king's private circle.

>In addition, full plate armor is the most technologically advanced armor available in the later medieval and high chivalry settings.

>The special touches and custom enhancements added by the few living master armorers are what give full plate armor its increased armor class rating over the more traditional forms of field plate. At prices that start at 4,000 gold pieces for a simple, unadorned suit, full plate armor represents the crowning achievement of the armorer's ultimate goal--to forge for man a new skin of steel, as flexible as his own, but as invulnerable as anything in the land.

No penalties, no nothing, just the best armor in the game.

Not only fat... Most of it was muscle and bone

So the D&D rulebook those quotes come from is from 1991, and it's basically got plate harness being the wearable equivalent of a meme katana. Which is great.

5th edition's version isn't very bad at all, if you're proficient in it and strong, the only thing you do poorly in it that you're decent at out of it is sneaking, and I'm guessing thats from the metallic sheen or the noise.

The no dex bonus is also understandable from a balance perspective, and because a dex of 10 is average, with no bonuses, and anything higher is better than the human average. That means, in plate armor it limits you to the human average as far as your BONUS to DODGING attacks go. I think that's fair.

Well, it's historically accurate - in a setting where plate is relevant, everything said there makes sense

>but everyone just thinks it's the rogues' go-to armor or somesuch.

that's because it's made of... hide

>lost bone
Did you lose both legs or some shit?

Well he probably did lose some bone mass. Bone mass can increase with weight-lifting exercises and can decrease with an extremely sedentary lifestyle and with age. It's a pretty negligible amount of weight though. Muscle and fat would have accounted for most of his weight loss.

>What the hell is the so call "studded leather" armor that crops up in almost RPGs after D&D came out supposed to be?
Oh for God's sake! It's supposed to be a brigandine! We have gone over this Ad Nauseam! How is this still a mystery to people!?

Not in the "kings concentrate all the best craftsmen", since any kings, historically, would just be clients

plate armor is incredibly noisy just by walking, to say nothing of parkouring on the rooftop

you also physically weigh more so if you make a thud when you fall any sort of distance

while plate doesnt give you a dex modifier to AC, its still gives 18AC, which is the same AC you get from studded leather (or brigandine) with maximum dex

Now everyone is a graybeard like you.

We are in agreement - it makes sense from a balance and logical perspective

I was under the impression that any iron or steel, especially with older makes, was very easily corroded, especially from salt water.

Eh, that makes sense in a feudal state where a king is attempting to centralize

that line is pretty setting dependent though

Nope, steel is resistant enough to corrosion that just regular maintenance will prevent it

Any blacksmith capable of making steel by default uses techniques that are resistant to corrosion, bluing is pretty much done by default

Heck, even painting it black with the pigments used to paint armor back then was enough to make it almost maintenance free - that's why black knights were a thing, being rogue generally means you dont have a squire, so your armor is made resistant to corrosion so you dont need a squire to maintain it

You could also varnish the armor with with linseed oil varnish and then burning the varnish - this also makes it black and extremely resistant to corrosion

instructables.com/id/How-to-Blacken-Armour/

Example you can do in your garage!

That's me doing it to my armor btw

Yep, Literally just rivets.

Inner bone mass

I lost mostly muscle mass. I use to work out a lot with a high protein diet and got cancer. Never had much fat to begin with

>instructables.com/id/How-to-Blacken-Armour/

Nice. Learn something new every day!

shit user. Hope you will recover.

hide from this motherfucker