LogFAQs > #897553935

shadowsword87 posted...

I guess you have the "real" answer, which is breastplate plus stuff.

Well, the "real" answer is that no one ever really made armor like that historically. Other options were always better for a myriad of reasons, so no one would waste the time or resources to make armor that way.

Essentially, it mostly just boils down to LOOKING cooler than historical analogues, which is why it tends to show up in RPGs, where actual practicality is a moot point. In the same sense that female warriors wear chainmail bikinis and yet have armor classes comparable to men wearing full plate armor.



shadowsword87 posted...

Then you have the "just roll with whatever armor and reflavor it" which is what 99% of people do if they want special armor.

I was mostly just wondering if there was an existing fictional term for that sort of armor, since the fantasy genre has invented fictional armor types with little to no real world providence before (like "banded mail").



WhiskeyDisk posted...

That's a little overbuilt to be a gambeson, maybe it's something more like a cuir bouilli?

Design-wise that's pretty similar, but boiled leather sort of lacks the bolt-on plate effect I was talking about. That's actually closer to a "coat of plate"/"jack of plate", where the plating is deliberately under the cloth/leather/etc as opposed to being the outer layer.

A gambeson is usually referred to as padded or quilted armor in a lot of modern fantasy contexts, and isn't that far off what I had in mind either (at least some of the thinner, more flexible designs), but only in the sense that you could theoretically bolt/strap/etc metal plates to the outside of it.

Basically sort of how a brigandine works. Except that's usually limited to just the chest plate, with the limbs and head being covered by mail. I'm sort of thinking more along the lines of a somewhat segmented brigandine (to allow for greater torso flexibility) combined with similarly constructed bracers and greaves, and with the leg and arm areas mostly covered by quilted or leather armor.

Mainly, I'm trying to think of a way to make heavier armor for a more Dex-based character like a Ranger or Rogue (though ironically, this has absolutely nothing to do with the previous Dex-based character I was brain-storming - something entirely different set me off on this track).


---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family