How do I armour and stuff?

Providing info, tips, critiques and assistance to those who want to tell stories with armour and want to know more about armour and related topics.

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Asymmetrical Armour

@vrisbians asked @bikiniarmorbattledamage:

I have a slightly random question. Yall know stuff about armor, right? What's the benefit of having a pauldron on only one side, or having one be larger than the other? It appears so frequently in designs that it makes me think it must be a real thing, but I can't come up with a reason.

The short answer is: Shields and small weapons (and sometimes sports).

The longer answer is that one of the most effective pieces of armour used throughout history in various forms is the shield, and part of why it was so effective in early eras was that you could hide behind a shield and poke the enemy with your spear.

However, as war evolved and armour became more sophisticated, spears became ineffective and warriors needed to switch to shorter, harder hitting weapons such as maces, axes, hammers, picks, pointy swords, etc.

The problem with these weapons is that in order to have a haft short enough to give you the necessary speed and control you hurt your armoured opponent - you have to swing your arm out from behind protecting of a shield.  Generally speaking the shield also gets smaller since you need to use it to counter balance your swings with your weapon.

So you reach a situation where your oft side doesn’t need as much heavy and expensive armour (due to being protected by the shield) but your dominant arm needs additional protection from the shoulder to the hand.

Warriors who used two handed weapons such as greatswords, halberds, etc needed equal protection on both arms (and armpits) - so they tend to have a lot of plating for both arms.

This is particularly true since the large shield + spear combination was usually paired with tight linked formations so soldiers would protect each other (Romans even had a system for swapping out ranks).  Soldiers swinging weapons can’t bunch up as tightly so need to protect their striking arm.

The other two common sources (that I’m aware of) are the combat sports - gladiators and jousting.

Gladiators had deliberately impractical armours and set combinations of gear designed to create dramatic fights.  Some of this included protecting their arms so they could fight more aggressively and have a better chance at drawing blood or creating dramatic scenarios.

Jousting was a unique sport in that the armour was originally combat armour but as it became more and more specialised as time went on and plate armour fell out of use for combat.

Give that the sport demanded that your opponent use a singular weapon, and was expected to aim more or less in a particular area meant that it made sense to put up the majority of protecting being put in one place:

In these cases, it’s important to remember that specialised armour like this is somewhat like a sports car: a demonstration of wealth with no real practical purpose other than to play in a dangerous game.  There was no expectation of it being used in an actual battle or using an unexpected weapon or strategy.

- wincenworks

[dirgeofthecicadas]

Question for anyone who knows more about armor than me;

I understand that boob cups is needlessly sexualizing but also technically couldn’t it be sorta like a bra keeping the boobs in place or is that a no and it’s just detrimental overall

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Well, the first issue is that hard armour (like plate) should be fairly roomy - because it will dent; it will also get in the way and direct attacks poorly.

Nobody wants a dent poking into a their titty, or to feel the direct impact or vibration from hits on their sensitive bits.

The other thing is that bra creation is very complex at the best of times and hence why sports bras tend toward very simple designs that don’t have high profile cups:

Overall boobcups are generally a big hassle to implement, which is why they were a big deal aesthetically when things like bullet bras came out.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

@the-anchorless-moon submitted:

So this is my current armor design for a character from one of my webcomic projects (nothing published or even started yet, just lots of ideas). I wanted her armor to be simultaneously decorative/feminine/clearly custom made and practical, but I don’t know that much about armor so I’m just going from what I found on google in terms of what armor should look like. Wrt to the helmet: the character is blind in one eye so I thought it might be a good idea to have the eye slit only go halfway, since while it’s very unlikely that someone could get through the slit, fewer holes are generally better in armor and there’s no benefit to having an opening on that side. Idk if that’s at all practical though. The visor can still be flipped up, the top part just goes lower on one side so that the visor overlaps it. I have an alternative design for it if that sounds like a bad idea.

Thank you for your help!

Nice design!  I really like the focus on protecting joints and allowing the mobility that you’d need to actually fight on a battlefield.

The pauldrons being a little too easy to hook with a weapon (being pushed around by your shoulders is a serious problem when people are trying to kill you), however given that giant pauldrons are a fantasy standard you may want to keep them or have her have a parade set and a battle set.

There’s a really, really popular misconception that breastplates usually run all the way down to the hips, when (outside of jousting armour) they stop at the base of the ribs to allow for load bearing and flexibility.  The upper section was also regularly roomier to allow your shoulders to move underneath.

There’s a variety of ways the breaks were done, sometimes they just started the faulds there, sometimes there were sliding plates, sometimes there was another section of plates: but one thing that was consistent was usually it resulted in a narrow waist:

(Image from Geekometry’s article on Musee de l’Armee)

For the helmet I would absolutely support your idea for a half sized eye slit on her blind side - peripheral vision is always helpful in a battle - and recommend that she have a decorative “cover” that mimics her means of covering the eye normally.  (In this case I’ve assumed she uses her hair routinely).

Eye slits are a hard target at the best of times and usually only compromised when you’d already been essentially defeated (and the opponent chose not to capture you for ransom).

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, or a fantasy game where the research was taken from a Dungeon Master’s Guide and wondered what is “studded leather armour” ?

Well, it’s actually a brigandine and not only is it not studded leather (it just looks like it from outside) it’s also not really suitable for sneaking around or trying to get maximum advantage out of your personal agility.

The other great myth that Matt Easton dispels here is at 12:00 - the idea that soldiers were disposable.  Trained soldiers were a precious commodity, particularly since if you ran out of them it made it easy for your neighbours to invade you.

They were in fact often so valuable that they received competing offers mid campaign - and could even become so valuable that they could start charging not to fight people.  Seriously:

- wincenworks

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

The short film Kickstarter we promoted a couple of weeks ago is nearing its finale and has around 12% of funding left.

There’s still time to help fund a video experiment which proves not only that plate armor isn’t a hindrance to agility, but also that it’s no heavier than the gear modern firefighters and soldiers bear.

Help out the informative project here!

~Ozzie

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

While in early books (1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide for instance) they often did cite texts that discussed armour in a serious historical way, this declined pretty quickly to where 

Mostly because in DnD and similar roleplaying games the priority is a focus on their abstract classes and making the equipment list create archetypes and hence “best gear for…” professions that never existed historically.

So often RPGs will combine styles that never co-existed simply to create an easily distinguishable hierarchy and series of archetypes.  This kind of made sense back when you only had a very finite amount of space to explain the concepts and/or primitive graphics to display it.

However in the era of wikis, extended dialogues throughout two hundred hours plus of gameplay and expanded fantasy worlds that include fantastic metals and materials (my favourite being Elder Scrolls where orcs have their own green metal) there’s never been a better time to start taking actual design principles from history seriously.

As a side note, cosplayers and LARPers are also excellent people to consult along with historical information.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Now, in Ostara’s case it seems pretty obvious that they exposed her hips to show off a little leg - however this actually is a fairly prevalent problem with fantasy armour for men as well. 

It seems that while they’re getting used to the idea of long skirts if it’s part of a robe, many fantasy productions worry faulds will look too much like mini-skirts. 

 Take a look at Ostara’s male counterpart: Owen, does indeed seem to be missing some protection over his hips (even though he comes with a single over-done besagew)

He has wings to shield his knees and interlocking plates to protect most of his upper body but his hip region is left for his robe to spill out with no trace of any protection because well, I can only assume they didn’t want him to have a little skirt of metal plates. *

And that’s just silly, I mean check out this manliness.

Tiziano - Ritratto di Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duca di Urbino (1536-1538) 

And honestly, if they just put some faulds on they could still have the robe hanging out to give the pick some dynamic energy and not make it look like the otherwise pretty solid plate armour has a major gap in it.

- wincenworks

* And yes I have seen more than a few games refer to them as skirts and bring the unfortunate consequence of gendering the item in the view of many players.   Faulds aren’t worried about our gender, and in fact most plate armor will give the wearer an curved, hourglass figure as incidental by product of design.

(Images from the Massive Darkness Kickstarter Campaign 1, 2)

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

This outfit does have the usual assortment of “because fantasy” elements to it but it also highlights how Cas’ general motif and design is adaptable to her armour - a leather tabard over the top of the metal plate means she can boldly declare she’s a Seeker without having to compromise her safety.

It still has layers (quilting, chain, plate, decoration) and it does have a few oddities (like defending her muscles rather than her joints) they’re not really related to it’s flamboyance. Overall it conveys that she’s there to kick ass and Seek... something.

It’s also really good to see the movement away from over-exaggerated plate design (which mostly has it’s basis in stylizing for wargame minatures) and towards somewhat more realistic amounts of metal for a person to wear and still engage in mortal combat.

As a side note it is true that tabard’s did mostly fall by the wayside once plate became the core of the armour (rather than an augmentation to chainmail armour), this was largely due to fashion and the desire to show off the quality of the plate.  Priorities in your own world may vary.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Pirates... yarr...

@supernerdallen​ asked @bikiniarmorbattledamage​ 

So a friend of mine asked me to make a purists gang for his DnD setting, and naturally it's going to be a band of merciless, lesbian pirates who are all vaguely shark-looking. Would you know any good resources for clothing and armor they would wear on the high seas?

Honestly I would say just look for clothing and armour that would be suitable for land troops for their region, mix it up a bit so it’s clear they don’t have a uniform and add any adaptions necessary for the “shark-looking” aspect (and well any magic elements that apply since it’s DnD).

Pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy are usually shown in regular clothes with pistols and swords because that was well, an easy enough kit for an opportunist to put together and at that time firearms had greatly diminished the stature of conventional armour (the era basically starts at the decline of plate armour from battlefields).

Though this wasn’t necessarily universal, Cheng I Sao, for instance, probably had armour for her and her troops but she ran her operation more like a navy than a gang (so much so that when she retired most of her troops get work in China’s military)

抢掠中的郑一嫂 (Cheng I Sao looting) 1836

Generally speaking: People who fought at sea whether they be in the navy, hired guards for merchant ships or pirates tended to wear pretty much the exact same sort of armour as warriors on land did in the given era.  (And if armour was redundant, they wore clothes best suited to their task)

The reason is simple: While drowning is undeniably a terrible way to go and a real hazard when you’re wearing 20-30 kgs of gear - it was a somewhat secondary danger compared to the people actively trying to kill you.  That and generally speaking in a fight, the more heavily armoured warrior has more options and can better manage risks.

So if you were in a plate armour you were almost certain to drown if you fell into the sea, but you were also in a much better position to avoid having to anything the might make you slip overboard like jumping to the side.  

(Generally speaking the best you can hope to do in battle is improve your odds of survival and even if you could swim, being in the water when your enemies are on the ship would probably still result in your death)

I mean seriously, these are all Italian navy officers in the 1500s:

Die Sieger der Seeschlacht von Lepanto (The Victors of Lepanto) 1571

However if you can’t protect yourself with armour then you may as well do something else, whether it’s prep yourself to be able to swim should you fall overboard, show off your personal style or a signature look.

Really the major shifts for fighting at sea instead of on land where that long weapons became less helpful so they’d be less likely to carry spears, halberds, pikes, etc.  Those will get tangled in rigging way too easily and you won’t be able to get good use of the reach advantage.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

I want to share this one not only for the popular misconceptions about gauntlets (including that they make your hands indestructible) but also for the early discussion of ergonomics in weapon handles.

Skallagrim references Skyrim in particular but at this point weapons with ridiculous handles are present in so hand fantasy games it’s not really fair to pretend like Skyrim is the sole or even main offender. 

(Frequently when fantasy weapons have overly decorative handles, they also have a slew of other issues that make them particularly jarring when juxtaposed with otherwise realistic weapons *) 

While some games can easily get away with this simple due to a complete lack of plausible gear (pretty much any Final Fantasy title, for example) if you want to world that incorporates more believable weapons as well - it’s worth considering what it would be like to grip the weapon.

Fortunately, there are a plethora of examples in museums as well as online stores that sell weapons for LARPs, HEMA, etc that will show you examples of handles for weapons that are actually intended to be wielded (unlike many “weapons” sold in novelty shops or convention stalls that are meant to be put on your wall)

- wincenworks

* Example image is the Qunari Sword from Dragon Age Origins.

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

We had a few people propose some armours to @bikiniarmorbattledamage due to some.. oddly designed besagews that were somewhat oversized - not quite sexualizing but also not quite making sense either.

More commonly they’re left out of depictions of armour, creating complex suits of plate where the armpits are easily exposed largely due to an expectation that blows would be directed and the head and general torso area (probably because in fantasy worlds swords seem to cut through plate... making it questionable why one would bother with the armour in the first place)

However, in real battles, techniques, armours and weapons all evolved in response to each other.  So once plate made it difficult to harm warriors by blows to the chest or head they started targeting areas that were harder to protect. 

Strikes to the armpits were somewhat awkward but devastatingly effective. Certainly at least as viable as attacking through an eye slot though by no means easy against a trained warrior. (Content warning: Some ableist language in the video below)

The term is also sometimes applied to similar parts set to protect knees from attacks too, though how and whether they are implemented or not is more complicated (mostly relating to whether they intend to fight on foot or from horseback).

- wincenworks

(Example image taken from Wikipedia)

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

Can you move in armour? An Experiment in Mythbusting

On the topic of robust plate armor and the kinds of activity one might do in it, Medievalist recently did an in depth article discussing mobility in plate armor and the sorts of training those who wore it did in order to ensure they could fight effectively.

Whenever someone cites bikini armor as being “for mobility” it’s important to remember that this idea is from 70s pulp, specifically RPGs that needed to give a reason why someone would wear less robust armor and comics that wanted to show off sexy ladies as often as possible.

It has literally no basis in reality and was never employed by any serious warriors anywhere… well at least none that survived a battle.

Thank you to those who brought this article and video to our attention!

- wincenworks

[sofitheviking]

So what you’re saying is, do lots of ‘mundane’ tasks in armor. I can’t get over the jogging one holy shit. 

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Pretty much.  While not every era of every civilization has had sophisticated exercise equipment, pretty much all of them noticed that the way to get fit and strong was to do a lot of work and physically demanding stuff.

So to keep in shape for battle professional warriors would not just practice in their armour but also job in their armour, dig holes, carry buckets of water (or bags of grain) and any number of mundane tasks no longer exist due to automation and improvements in lifestyle.

That way when their life depended on it - they could fight all day without running out of breath or finding their armour to be too heavy.

Generally the wealthier and more prestigious a warrior, the more they leaned towards doing practice over doing chores but all of them worked out in their armour, one way or another.

The Roman Army in particular is noted that upon reaching a destination the soldiers would be required to set up the camp - complete with staked walls, ditches and whatever else was considered necessary to ensure safety over night after marching 35+ kilometers wearing 20+ kilos of gear.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

A pretty good concise summary of the evolution of armour in Europe up until firearms started achieving dominance on the battlefield.

It is intended as a quick primer and not an in depth discussion, but one point I wanted to cover on the final statement he makes is that while firearms did certainly contribute to the decline of this kind of armour there was actually a massive overlap of early firearms and plate armour.

Mostly because it took a really, really long time to work out how to make firearms that were powerful enough to punch through hardened steel without a significant risk of fatal backfire.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Electricity weapons

Some time ago @letrune asked BABD:

Let us say there is a world where energy weapons are the most used. If I want a good protection against them, I can use a rubber/latex suit, padded out and, for good measure, still having an energy shield? :3

And no part of my skin out since that could work as a bad conduit for said electricity..

This is an unusual question but not one I could really work in to @bikiniarmorbattledamage‘s charter since at the core it’s not really a gendered armour issue.  It’s also a little tricky to answer without knowing what level of suspension of disbelief is involved.

Electricity kills you in one of two ways: It either heats up your soft (and potentially hard) tissue until it’s too badly damaged to function or it shocks your nervous system in a way that causes your heart (or brain) to malfunction.

Both of these rely on it going through that region of the body, and since electricity always follows the path of least resistance - ideally the first line of defence would be a layer of armour that actively directs it away via conduits/circuits/etc.  Basically a similar principle to the lightning rod.

Wearing something insulating underneath would make sense, but rubber/latex would have a few major issues: It’s high maintenance, can’t really be repaired, doesn’t breathe and doesn’t really provide protection against many other types of attacks (like say being hit with a metal pipe).

For those who were worried about other kinds of attacks or wanted maximum insulation to go with their re-routing circuits would probably go with ceramic plates (or possibly bulletproof glass) and BDU gear (chemical weapon protection gear optional) made up in parts so it can be easily replaced when damaged.

As far as gaps for skin etc go, I’d recommend weighing up things like mobility, heat retention, being able to breath etc.  Historically most armour has been weak around the neck, armpits, groin and back of the knees but still done an excellent job of protecting it’s wearer simply because these areas are difficult and risky to target - particularly against a well trained opponent.

- wincenworks

[letrune]

Thank you; the nongendering was intentional on my part. :3 This is what I wished to know mainly for a small project of mine. No idea how serious it would be and how much disbelief I might go for. I know that rubber is not the best and that it breathes badly. Might work as an oversuit above some other, more regular padding, simply as an added measure on the channeling of electricity/other less physichal harm? Thank you for the answers. :3 Keep up the good work and thank you very much!

[houkou-nrl]

I’d just like to add: the concept of directing an electric current around the body that Wincenworks describes is already achieved by real life Faraday suits! They’re most notably used by linemen; it seems those ones are usually called conductive suits in practice. There’s a few different companies that make them that have information on what the suits are made of and what they do on their websites. Many of the suits you’ll find information for online are actually made of a blend including stainless steel fiber.

There’s also some chainmail and mesh Faraday suits that are used for stunts, so you actually have some varied and practical options to play around with when designing your armor.

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Faraday suits are pretty metal.

Thank you very much for the extra information @houkou-nrl

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Knight Warden from For Honor

Okay so For Honor appears to have originally designed the female knight figure to emphasize that she has boobs as much as possible and then tried to hastily adapt the design to the male knights so they can pretend it wasn’t ridiculous.  (Interestingly for the Shield Maiden they just went full ridiculous so I’m not really sure why they did this)

More analysis under the cut.

However, it has resulted in a kind of interesting (but still bad) of armour that’s worth a quick review of.

The Good

Layering of quilted armour, chainmail and plates.

Practical battle helmet and shoulder armour

The Bad

The weird coat that’s a combination of quilted and not-quite-lamellar armour

The strap on plate that is more likely to move around and get in the way that prevent a hit

Best case scenario, even if that plate does soak a hit all it will do is prevent you getting the edge - so instead of feeling like you got hit with an axe you’ll feel like you got hit with a comically large warhammer... and still put pressure on your collarbone (which will basically cripple you in battle if it breaks and is an excellent reason why you wouldn’t want rivets on the plate)

The coat would kind of work if they would commit to it being some form of protection, rather than a half-leather, half-quilted thing with a few plate riveted on.  If you attach plates to leather like that, the idea is to use them to distribute impacts and make it harder to puncture you.

Leaving a gap down the centre line (ie a part where basically any injury is likely to be serious due to the presence of vital... everything) essentially gives your enemies with piercing weapons (like spears) a nice weak point target to aim at.

Similarly, since attacks coming from above have gravity and the presence of important areas on their side they’re generally were you’re going to prioritize defense and not a place to revert to quilting over plates.

And well, if you’re going to fight with a giant sword where you swing it around - you want your upper body to be protect as much as possible so essentially there’s no way that he couldn’t justify having a steel cuirass to protect his upper body.

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Next to over-sized pauldrons (and shoulder armour in general), overly long breastplates are probably one of the most common mistakes you see in designs of fantasy armour.

If you’re into understanding how 14th - 15th century armour (mostly plate) actually works and is made I highly recommend checking out Knyght Errant.  Another video you may want to check out is his discussion of weight distribution in armour:

- wincenworks

[how-do-i-armour-and-stuff]

Electricity weapons

Some time ago @letrune asked BABD:

Let us say there is a world where energy weapons are the most used. If I want a good protection against them, I can use a rubber/latex suit, padded out and, for good measure, still having an energy shield? :3

And no part of my skin out since that could work as a bad conduit for said electricity..

This is an unusual question but not one I could really work in to @bikiniarmorbattledamage‘s charter since at the core it’s not really a gendered armour issue.  It’s also a little tricky to answer without knowing what level of suspension of disbelief is involved.

Electricity kills you in one of two ways: It either heats up your soft (and potentially hard) tissue until it’s too badly damaged to function or it shocks your nervous system in a way that causes your heart (or brain) to malfunction.

Both of these rely on it going through that region of the body, and since electricity always follows the path of least resistance - ideally the first line of defence would be a layer of armour that actively directs it away via conduits/circuits/etc.  Basically a similar principle to the lightning rod.

Wearing something insulating underneath would make sense, but rubber/latex would have a few major issues: It’s high maintenance, can’t really be repaired, doesn’t breathe and doesn’t really provide protection against many other types of attacks (like say being hit with a metal pipe).

For those who were worried about other kinds of attacks or wanted maximum insulation to go with their re-routing circuits would probably go with ceramic plates (or possibly bulletproof glass) and BDU gear (chemical weapon protection gear optional) made up in parts so it can be easily replaced when damaged.

As far as gaps for skin etc go, I’d recommend weighing up things like mobility, heat retention, being able to breath etc.  Historically most armour has been weak around the neck, armpits, groin and back of the knees but still done an excellent job of protecting it’s wearer simply because these areas are difficult and risky to target - particularly against a well trained opponent.

- wincenworks