>Light Armor:
Leather Armor: Made from hardened leather, offering basic protection against cuts and thrusts.
Padded Armor: Consisted of layers of cloth or felt, providing some protection against blunt force trauma and cuts.
Lamellar Armor: Constructed from small rectangular plates laced together, offering flexibility and moderate protection.
>Medium Armor:
Scale Armor: Comprised of metal scales attached to a backing material, providing good protection and flexibility.
Brigandine: Fabric armor lined with metal plates, offering moderate to good protection while maintaining flexibility.
Coat of Plates: Overlapping metal plates sewn between layers of fabric or leather.
>Heavy Armor:
Plate Armor: Full-body armor made of articulated metal plates, offering exceptional protection against all types of attacks.
Is this some shitty thread made about the cliches in classic fantasy roleplaying games?
For what purpose should it remain.
How did OP forget that mail existed?
Except all those were used in different time periods for different purposes. And yeah, mail was the most common one.
>Made from hardened leather,
How do you 'harden leather'?
boil
That is an interesting article. Looks like it's archeotech now. Though some recipes survive.
Be interesting to try and recreate, I might look into it.
>Many, but not all, sources agree that the process involved immersion of the leather in water, but not actual boiling.
http://web.archive.org/web/20190528003210/https://onicrafts.com/a-comparative-study-of-leather-hardening-techniques-16-methods-tested-and-novel-approaches-developed/
Thank you anon. When I get round to it, I'll post results.
May be a while, and will probably not be armor, but I'll drop it in an armor thread. 🙂
>try and recreate
people still make boiled leather goods today, it's not forgotten, but historically this was not split tanned leather, modern leather fabrics will not produce anything close to the result you want. you need rawhide or at a minimum boot sole leather, and when you're done you produce something about as hard as wood with quite a bit more toughness, it can be carved and shaped like wood.
Rawhide all by itself will cure into almost a cuit bouilli-like product, for example some of the famous Zulu shields from Africa were neary 2" thick cowhide at the middle. they wouldn't stop a bullet but they'd stop anything else
there was considerable mix and match- the Japanese used leather and steel plates for their heavy armor, the Romans had leather corsets and shoulder/chest plates or bronze and iron , and many suits of full plate used cuir bouilli for various smaller parts like pauldrons and elbows and etc. Many an 'incomplete' set of plate is simply missing the leather parts which rotted away or got eaten by something
Helmets were also very often cuir- the famous WWI pickelhaube is completely made of boiled leather with metal trimmings,m for example.
>How do you 'harden leather'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_leather
Lamellar literally beats out scale. Equal or better in protection, and far less susceptible to damage due to the interwoven nature of the plates.
>Brigandine: Fabric armor lined with metal plates
Other way around.
Yeah I like to think of it not unlike a WW2 air crew flak jacket, but better fitted. You have a heavy backer, usually canvas or leather that the plates are riveted to. And then a fabric cover which is often dyed a nice color to make you look fancy. It's also likely where the idea for the fantasy studded leather came from.
Keep in mind that you're talking about armor worn for hundreds of years in dozens of cultures made out of many different materials. In addition to iron or steel, bronze, leather, bone, and horn can be used for scale, lamellar, or both, and the resulting protective quality will vary significantly. Lamellar made of equal material will typically be heavier than scale and protect better. This is because there is more overlap of lames than scales in most cases.
>Light Armor:
>Leather Armor: Made from hardened leather
cour boulli armor is actually medium/heavy armor pieces the word cuirass for a heavy full torso covering is derviced from the same root
padded jacks are a light armor
coat of plates is a subset of articulated plate armor
you left out banded and segmented intermediate armors like Roman lorica and oh I don't know, CHAIN MAIL
here are the tiers:
light armor
>doublet/padded jack/gamberson
>quilted jack or gambeson
>heavy leather coat
>padded cap
medium armor
>reinforced fabric/cloth based armors- >brigandines
>banded/lames
>chainmail
>mail coif
>partial helm (iron/leather)
heavy armor
>iron plate and chain/jack
>lamellar/segmented iron and leather plate over chain/jack
>cuirass and/over chain/jack
>full plate etc
>full helm/mail coif
never post here again
What about mixed plate and leather corsets?
For instance, this is more of a quarter plate, it emphasizes dexterity and mobility, allowing for the long reach of the weapon to be effectively employed. Practical yet deadly.
Mind you, plate armor is actually comparably light as opposed to mail, lamellar or especially mail and plate compositions.
>Lamellar Armor
>light
moron.
Scale, brigandine, coat of plates, mail - all heavier than plate. Stop.
Its based on the protection they provide not just weight.
Anon, you forgot about
Paper Armour.
No bully. Paper armor done the Chinese style floats like a life jacket. Soldiers can cross bodies of water at a slight advantage instead of being laden with water.