How would you rationalize a setting where armor isn't used in melee combat, or doesn't even exist

Metal is so rare you can barely get a decent sword and leather don't exist (animals are extinct), that would leave clothes and wooden shields.
Or humans got some hyper sensitivity and can't weak anything that isn't cotton

I'd just say that's the setting and not really bother justifying it.

I guess an extreme shortage of metal, or something about the metal being unsuitable for armour, would work at a basic level?

>not making bone armor

Well, there could be weapons and methods commonly available that to make armour obsolete, like widespread magic use. Of course, without some heavy-handed ruling you'd also have little to no melee combat whatsoever. Or you could go fancier and have all beings be of a more immaterial constitution, without manipulating the physical world around them so much, if such a physical world exists at all and it doesn't all take place in some etheral realm of wherever.

Its a high magic setting where it is simply far more cost effective and time saving to enchant easy, comfortable, and stylish clothing with protective enchantments and barrier spells to be far more effective protection than metal ever could be.

Done.

>(animals are extinct)
Just as a sidenote, you mean?

Correct answer. Just have weapons or enemies that make armor absolete. Armor won't help you if you are getting sliced by a lightsaber or smashed by a giant.

Pretty much this.

Why not just use magic?

Maybe setting-equivalent prehistoric race(s), for whatever reason, decided that armor was more of a detriment than a benefit. Sure, it is objectively wrong, but there are examples of long-lived wrong concepts that are perpetuated even in our own world.

It's illegal to wear armor if you're a civilian but not illegal to carry a weapon for self-defense.

Do personal force fields like shields made of light count as armor? Those are pretty common in sci-fi settings.

Or it is easy to enchant weapons to be able to easily defeat any armor

The heavens are a perpetual battlefield between the forces of order and chaos, with neither side gaining the upper hand since the conflict started before recorded history, and humanity isn't even a factor in the celestial war.

When a warrior is struck down on either side of the conflict, their weapon falls to the mortal plane below. This is common enough that it doesn't take a terrible amount of money or luck to come across one of these celestial weapons, but it does mean that empires can't afford to outfit their entire army with them, and small bands of trained warriors become more valuable.

These weapons can cut through any mortal-made weapons or armor like butter, and the flesh beneath even easier, leading to fighting styles revolving around evading and blocking with their own celestial weapon, since the metal is indestructible, even against it's own kind. This also means that the blessed metal can't be crushed or melted down to make armor.

I don't. 90% of the time if you don't bring up a half assed explanation for something that's a basic part of the world the audience will just roll with it.

no animals = no hide = no leather armor

I've always liked the KOTOR personal shields, where they can deflect blaster fire, but anything moving slower than a projectile gets through, leading to a resurgence of vibroblades.

Everyone worth fighting is so powerful and has so many bullshit mystic techniques that there's no point in armor.

>This also means that the blessed metal can't be crushed or melted down to make armor.

So don't try to reforge it. Just make a suit of splint mail out of celestial daggers.

Dune, personal shields and you can fight naked.

There is a cultural and/or religious taboo against wearing armor.

you mean earth today?

Those are basically how Dune shields work, except that Dune shields also deflect sword strikes if they're too fast, resulting in a bizarre form of combat where the attack needs to be slow enough to not get deflected by the shield.

Everybody invest in dodging and need to be as light and agile as they can, armor hinders movement and make you easy to hit in a world when penetrating damage could fuck you up in two hits at best

Something like the golden period of Tokugawa Japan I guess. No internal wars for a long period so people never bother with armor. Most fights are solved in seconds with quick-draws and ambushes.

Mobilization efforts against Perry's expedition was a mess with japanese samurai having forgot how to use their old armor among other things IIRC

Further proof that she's smart
AND slutty!

Any sufficient ranged weapon (magical or no) who can surpass the effectiveness of armor development will render armor ineffective.

The only reason body armor has made a comeback in the modern times is because we've advanced armor enough to be cost effective against bullets and shrapnel. If you can make bullets and shrapnel much more powerful than modern body armor, then you'll see them stop being used and different tactics applied.

There are a lot of other things you also end up without when there are no animals. Like, a single ecosystem capable of sustaining human lives.

And by much more powerful I mean, readily available and more likely to hit and not be impeded by any armor.

>a setting where armor isn't used in MELEE combat

The action is underwater or up in the sky.
>riot police don't wear armour

Does not mean a setting that soley has melee combat.

When british grenadiers made bayonet charges, did they strap on metal breast plates?

If you wanted to be clear, say "a melee combat setting where armor isn't used."

There's this cultural thing that if you use armor you're considered a coward by society. It's a tradition of manly warriors.

You can keep birds and little animals as long as they are not enough to produce hide, people will focus on plants and little domestic animals for food, fishing and sea life would mitigate the need for land animals too, so you basically have a water world with artificial farms or a bunch of little islands you can travel around using small boats

Leather armor is mostly a meme. Cloth armor is what was really popular.

She's smart and slutty!

Fish, crustaceans, whales etc. are all animals.

Melee combat is still a thing even today dude.

Why did you say it twice?

He has autism.

How? processed layered leather can protect from cuts and even stabs

We had this thread already. Dunno if it was you who posted that, but we had it.

You DON'T rationalize it. Armor is used in melee combat because it is 'useful'. You have a higher chance of surviving melee combat.

1 If armor cannot fulfill its purpose, it will go away.

2 Armor will not lose its purpose as long as melee weapons are used. Only in a setting where firearms are the norm armor will fade out. This is not because melee weapons are shit, it is because firearms are an entirely different league to melee weapons.

3 Of you have a melee weapons that can cut through armor, you make armor out of that.

4 Don't attempt to rationalize light sabers.

Leather used to be extremely expensive. I'll not say anything about its effectiveness because I don't know for certain.
Cloth armor is cheap and highly effective (of course not as effective as cloth armor + mail or a plate armor set.

>3 Of you have a melee weapons that can cut through armor, you make armor out of that.
Unless its generally not suitable material for armor. Like fire swords hot enough to melt metal like butter.

>joke
>your
>head

When your protagonists are demi-gods that can bend steel bars with their fingers then wearing steel armor becomes pointless..

Oh boy, I can't wait to hear this. What was the joke meant to be?

She says it twice

>4 Don't attempt to rationalize light sabers.
Arbitrary. Why would you do this

Hardened leather shields exist too, not using leather when travelling in the old days was basically stupid, it was effective against harsh conditions and give you a good chance against those nasty bandits

Be like RWBY and have people project body level forcefields

I'm not saying leather armor did not exist.
But most armor was not leather.
>it was effective against harsh conditions
Leather clothes were also not very common. A good wool coat is pretty much rainproof and keeps you warm too.

They could always make armor that was still effective, mass conscription killing the industries had more to do with it.

Can't believe I didn't get that the first time around!

>Be like RWBY
This is a joke post, right?

This is bullshit meme history. Steel cuirass is good enough to stop musket ball or in some cases even rifled ball. Muskets were never a threat to plate unlike field guns.

The reason musketeers, fusiliers and foot infantry weren't equipped with cuirass around about the Napoleonic Wars was due to the cost of outfitting them. But you could be damn sure the more developes economies (like France) had every single Cuirassier wear plate front and back.

Now you know
and knowing is half the battle

Also, holy shit that's an old reaction image.

>every single Cuirassier wear plate front and back
It's almost like the word "Cuirassier" is descriptive or something.

Playing a d&d game baed on this rule where everyone who's inot combat mostly use magic instead of armor. Barbarians/Monks tap into primal energies to harden their bodies, arcane casters have mage armor, and divine casters/druids have shield of the faithful+bark-skin. Since most of the worlds fighters have magic in one way or another armor is irrelevant since it pierce through it or ignores it via checks. Secondly armor tends to get in the way of spellcasting anyway.

Cuirassier... cuirassier... assier... rass... rassier... racier... raci... s... DEY'S RAYCISS!

>3 Of you have a melee weapons that can cut through armor, you make armor out of that.
What if it's the specific design of the weapon that let's it cut throught anything and not just the materials?

>Soldiers don't wear body armor

>Tfw divine casters can get up to a +7 sacred bonus to ac by just by taking one feat, and it even effects allies up to 30 feet away
Magic man

Thats the point. It was not cost effective to produce enough armor to deflect musket balls.

Hell, by WW2 the metallurgy existed for some good armors to be resistant to the bullets being thrown around the time, but only the economy of the 21st century allowed for us to mass produce them for our soldiers.

As long as its cheaper and more viable to penetrate armor than it is to make armor, then armor goes out of style

>As long as its cheaper and more viable to penetrate armor than it is to make armor, then armor goes out of style
Only if you have a sufficient supply of manpower.

Nations wihout a sufficient supply of manpower are forgettable and literally can be walked over.

Belgium and Luxemobourg's only relevance to world affairs is triggering friendly nations to war when it gets stepped on by other, also larger nations.

[insert god here] is an asshole and has beef with armor because [insert reason here].

If you don't have enough manpower the last thing you would be making is armor. Making weapons is way more cost effective especially If you lack any resources.

>Making weapons is way more cost effective
Most humans have only two hands.

It's a wuxia setting, or if you prefer a Western aesthetic something like Bloodborne. The ceiling for human ability is much higher than in the real world, and if you get hit with a punch or jab from someone with sufficient strength and skill, then armour isn't going to make a difference. There's also monsters with enough speed and strength for armour not to make a difference if they hit you. The focus is instead on mobility and being able to dodge or block blows (because of course, a blow that can pierce armour won't break your arm bones if you block it and have the same level of martial skill as your attacker).

piercing weapons and gunpowder makes armor obsolete

(OP)
You have several options, including:
- Cultural Bias (we'd do it if we could stand it)
- Limited Resources (we'd do it if we had enough)
- Mechanical Limitations (we'd do it if we could)
- Strategic Undesirability (we'd do it if it helped)

cultural bias doesn't make a lot of sense unless they're completely isolated from outside influence

history is filled with ancient civilizations stuck in their ways getting wiped off the face of the earth by more practically minded newcomers

Just use your pic. Create a feudal Japanese world except it's like that in every country on the planet regardless of skin colour.

Or do what others have suggested and create a star wars like world where the weapons are made of lasers and would go through armour anyways

yeah but you are working with the premise that you have limited manpower. Does it take longer to make a couple of war hammers or a couple of suits of fullplate armor?

That's how my world works
When you're strong enough to stop a speeding car with a front kick you don't need armor

>feudal Japanese world
>no armor

riot armor povides decent protection from blunt and slashing attacks, and when combined with a riot shield, does a decent job of protecting you from an angry mob
and if people are expecting an all-out brawl, they do wear that gear

and a kevlar vest wont stop a stab from a screwdriver, but it will deflect slashing cuts, not ideal but its better than a T-shirt

Sorry, I meant limited martial manpower.
For example, prior to the French revolution you had a relatively small professional army. During the revolution and the resulting wars with the rest of Europe, every able-bodied man got a gun.
I don't have the numbers to prove it, but I'm pretty sure that the proportion of armor wearing soldiers went down when that happened.

Obviously they had armour, at least the army did. But your average person/adventurer isn't gonna walk around in plate. Plus you could do a boshin war era Japanese world instead, make it so guns just got adopted by the military, so people who practiced the old ways don't bother with armour anymore, or at least not all of them do.

Except it evolved past being merely descriptive of armament during the time. For example, many of France's German satelite states fielded Cuirassiers without cuirasses. It sounds stupid but there is a distinction

Cultural bias usually had a source at some point. Changing circumstances can invalidate the bias's underlying justification.

As for isolation, at some point all systems are isolated because influence only goes so far in a given moment of time and beyond that limit you are effectively isolated.

The very fact that civilizations can get stuck in their ways in the first place shows that cultural bias can exist. Isolation can end as the range of influence of any given party increases, but if your civilization spans the setting, then your isolation can only end from within through fracture. In this case the new factions are indoctrinated with the same bias and so disruption of that bias usually comes out of some sharply significant change in the other three factors.

Keep in mind that these 4 factors are usually working in tandem to some degree.

Yeah that's just Dune.
Great concept, but it has been done by so few tings since dune that they still feel like Dune owns them.

TARKUS
TARKUS

>your average person/adventurer isn't gonna walk around in plate
So you mean like almost any setting closely based on the real world? Why single out feudal Japanese like it's not the default state for average people to walk around in something other than plate?

if your civilization spans the entire setting it's either so magical all logic goes out of the window anyways or else advanced enough it should not be relying on melee weapons for anything serious

Go the anime route.

People are strong enough to cut through armour with their magical weapons, but the power level of the person determines their natural defense. See pic related.

We're obviously not talking about civilizations in a narrow sense, but simply a group of people that can share and reinforce cultural beliefs.

Settings can be quite limited as well, as not all games span the entire cosmos from the beginning, or even at all.

Cause he posted a weeb picture and asked for settings that wouldn't have a lot of armour. My suggestion was feudal Japan or star wars.

>people across a setting can't share a cultural bias

thing is, while your setting may be limited to a certain culture, unless said culture spans the entire width of the accessible world it is going to be marked by outside influences

generally speaking, civilizations that are set in their ways to the point it starts affecting their military negatively have started a downward spiral of decline