The low cost of Plate Mail in 3lbb

[Deleted]

I did a cursory scan of the newest three pages of the Men & Magic subforum, and couldn't find this specific topic, though it's come up tangentially in others, so here goes:

Is it too easy to get ahold of Plate Mail in OD&D? Chances are, with the way gold is generated and with the average party size, at least one full suit of plate mail and a shield can be afforded by the frontline fighting-man of the group, or possibly every single member could be fully outfitted. Is this a balancing issue in your campaigns? Have you pondered this or came up with a solution, or do you not see this as a problem? I've heard it suggested before that AD&D prices and item lists ought to be used instead for certain campaigns, specifically the armor prices. Do you agree or disagree with this? Personally, I don't have a big problem with the way it's written, since it hardly makes the wearer invincible or anything, but it seems it does significantly increase survivability at low levels and given the choice, I believe most Fighting-Men and Clerics would choose to don Plate Mail over Chainmail or Leather if they can afford it. 

[tombowings]

Yes it's cheap, but I'm fine with it. 1st level characters need all the help they can get, in my opinion.

[Deleted]

Jul 1, 2021 11:02:13 GMT -6 tombowings said:

Yes it's cheap, but I'm fine with it. 1st level characters need all the help they can get, in my opinion.

That's kind of how I'm looking at it right now, too. It's the same as Tim Kask arguing strongly for the inclusion of Magic Missile in Greyhawk. "d**n it, Gary. You've gotta give the little guys somethin'!" 

[Finarvyn]

I think what it comes down to is the unit cost of troops in Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign. I don't have it handy, but I think when you bought a unit of soldiers there was a cost associated with movement, attand/defense, morale, and probably other factors. I think that the weapon costs matches those troop prices.

[Zenopus]

Platemail only reduces an opponent's chance to hit you by 10%, so I don't see any real reason to make it more expensive in OD&D.

Essentially, each increment of AC costs 7.5 or 10 GP:

AC 8 (shield) = 10 GP (1 increment of AC for 10 GP)
AC 7 (leather) = 15 GP (equal to 2 increments of AC, each 7.5 GP)
AC 5 (chain) = 30 GP (equal to 4 increments of AC, each 7.5 GP)
AC 3 (plate) = 50 GP (equal to 6 increment ofs AC, 4 at 7.5 GP, 2 at 10 GP each)

Folks get hung up on the "Plate" aspect when it's really just a name for "AC 3".

[geoffrey]

Yeah, just picture "plate" as basically chainmail with a breastplate (rather than a full suit of plate armor fully encasing its wearer), and 50 gp doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

[tetramorph]

I treat "leather" armor as a gambeson that must be worn under chainmail.

I treat plate armor as early medieval plate armor that fixes over chainmail.

So these armor types are cumulative. So the character must purchase them successively.

This contributes to more "realism" in terms of cost.

It also means that many level 1 FM cannot afford plate. This makes them super happy when they come back from adventure with their first treasure and can "level up" simply by buying all their armor!

[badger2305]

Jul 1, 2021 16:51:01 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Yeah, just picture "plate" as basically chainmail with a breastplate (rather than a full suit of plate armor fully encasing its wearer), and 50 gp doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

That's actually a neat work-around, conceptually speaking. Thank you!

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 1, 2021 10:37:32 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

Chances are, with the way gold is generated and with the average party size, at least one full suit of plate mail and a shield can be afforded by the frontline fighting-man of the group, or possibly every single member could be fully outfitted. Is this a balancing issue in your campaigns? Have you pondered this or came up with a solution, or do you not see this as a problem?

Certainly pondered it... and I agree with other posters that AC 2/3 is one of the main advantages (along with missiles) that starting fighters can have over their main opponents (normal types in M&T have an average AC 6).

FWIW, I modelled the impact of plate armor, once upon a time, way back here.

[Desparil]

Jul 1, 2021 15:35:20 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Platemail only reduces an opponent's chance to hit you by 10%, so I don't see any real reason to make it more expensive in OD&D.

Essentially, each increment of AC costs 7.5 or 10 GP:

AC 8 (shield) = 10 GP (1 increment of AC for 10 GP)
AC 7 (leather) = 15 GP (equal to 2 increments of AC, each 7.5 GP)
AC 5 (chain) = 30 GP (equal to 4 increments of AC, each 7.5 GP)
AC 3 (plate) = 50 GP (equal to 6 increment ofs AC, 4 at 7.5 GP, 2 at 10 GP each)

Folks get hung up on the "Plate" aspect when it's really just a name for "AC 3".

I've been toying with the idea of tying the effectiveness of shields to the body armor worn - the heavier your body armor, the more redundant "overkill" the shield is and the less it contributes, but with light or no armor then a shield is the single biggest improvement you can make to your defenses. Something like the following:

AC 9 - no armor
AC 8 - helmet only
AC 7 - leather
AC 6 - shield
AC 5 - mail
AC 4 - leather & shield
AC 3 - mail & shield, or plate mail
AC 2 - plate mail & shield
AC 1 - full plate (if available)

In full plate, a shield provides no additional defensive benefit unless it's a magical shield, in which case only its "pluses" apply. I'd also attach movement speed reductions to armor classes rather than to specific armor types; a shield may not weigh as much as a coat of mail, but carrying it is much less convenient and you have to keep from banging it against things so I think it should be at least as encumbering. I might put the lines as 9" movement for AC 6 or better, and 6" movement for AC 3 or better.

Also, rather than using a hit location rule for not wearing helmets, just have failure to wear a helmet be a 1 point penalty to armor class. I'm also inclined to let magic-users wear helmets, since I like wizards with cool headdresses or skull helmets or whatnot, and the extra point of armor class might just help them a little bit to survive the low levels. Incidentally, I think the idea of "non-protective" helmets mentioned in the description of the Helm of Reading Magic and Languages is nonsense and just a relic of the fact that Gary Gygax's preferred playing style involved giving out magic items like candy with one hand, but with the other hand breaking, stealing, or otherwise taking them away.

[dicebro]

The Price Is Right

[Deleted]

Looks like the consensus around here is that this is largely a non-issue. I somewhat agree, although I do like the idea that different armor types "stack". That has some historical basis. I wouldn't necessarily modify anything I currently had going on to that end, since I don't believe in a lot of mid-campaign procedure changes, but it might be fun to tinker around with in the future. Same with destructible layers of armor that need maintaining, which is somewhat alluded to by the Armorer and Smith hirable NPCs in the written rules, although of course the degree which a referee chooses to interact with or interpret the presence of these can and should widely vary from table to table.

[Red Baron]

Plate isn't too cheap, other items are just too expensive.

I've heard a good rule of thumb, that if prices for food, wine, bows, arrows, carts, and raft prices were in pence, and weapons, animals, ships, and armor were in shillings it closely approximates actual historical prices in the late medieval period (~12th to 14th centuries).

Certainly 50 gold coins weighing 1/10 of a lb each would be sufficient to purchase plate armor. That's 5 lbs of gold which at a 10:1 medieval valuation would be worth 50 lbs of silver, which is quite a lot of money.

Plate armor is also an anachronism. It only starts appearing in early forms in the late 1300. The type of plate armor depicted in the popular imagination / pop culture is contemporary with the Turks taking Constantinople, Columbus sailing to the new world, ubiquitous cannons and personal firearms, finance, banking, stock exchanges, and the printing press.

[asaki]

Jul 1, 2021 16:57:37 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

I treat "leather" armor as a gambeson that must be worn under chainmail.

I treat plate armor as early medieval plate armor that fixes over chainmail.

So these armor types are cumulative. So the character must purchase them successively.

This contributes to more "realism" in terms of cost.

It also means that many level 1 FM cannot afford plate. This makes them super happy when they come back from adventure with their first treasure and can "level up" simply by buying all their armor!

I kind of like this idea.

Also, I know the DM is supposed to make sure that no items last forever...there aren't very many hard rules for that sort of thing, but Gary alludes to it a lot here and there.

I've broken player weapons before when they've tried to do foolish things with them and made a bad roll. I had one player who tried to use their halberd to pry a board off a window, and another time they tried to use it to chop through a thick wooden wall.

I haven't done much with armor, but I've had some ideas.

[Desparil]

Jul 5, 2021 10:09:15 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Plate armor is also an anachronism. It only starts appearing in early forms in the late 1300. The type of plate armor depicted in the popular imagination / pop culture is contemporary with the Turks taking Constantinople, Columbus sailing to the new world, ubiquitous cannons and personal firearms, finance, banking, stock exchanges, and the printing press.

Not an anachronism if I also like running a world with cannon-armed ships, snaplock pistols, winged hussars, pike-and-shot formations, higher than 10% literacy, and the possibility of sea voyages on the open ocean (versus island-hopping or hugging the coasts). 
If it's an anachronism in your the games you run, though, then more power to you to modify or exclude it.

[aramis]

Jul 5, 2021 10:09:15 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Plate isn't too cheap, other items are just too expensive.

I've heard a good rule of thumb, that if prices for food, wine, bows, arrows, carts, and raft prices were in pence, and weapons, animals, ships, and armor were in shillings it closely approximates actual historical prices in the late medieval period (~12th to 14th centuries).

Certainly 50 gold coins weighing 1/10 of a lb each would be sufficient to purchase plate armor. That's 5 lbs of gold which at a 10:1 medieval valuation would be worth 50 lbs of silver, which is quite a lot of money.

Plate armor is also an anachronism. It only starts appearing in early forms in the late 1300. The type of plate armor depicted in the popular imagination / pop culture is contemporary with the Turks taking Constantinople, Columbus sailing to the new world, ubiquitous cannons and personal firearms, finance, banking, stock exchanges, and the printing press.

Having seen the OD&D price list next to a book checked out by an "E Gygax" in 1972 and myself in 1990, there is a 1:1 correspondence between D&D GP prices and Domesday shilling prices as reported in said book. (I got it via Inter-Library Loan.) I don't recall the name of the book. (Odd to think it's over 30 years ago.)
Note that the book referenced prices cited in gold pennies - because at that period, it was of equal value, and more references were in gold pennies than in silver schillings. As for the 10 per lb? taking the weight of the shilling coin, and converting in the wrong direction gets you 8.6 coins/lb.
Given Gygax's decimalization, changing the coin weight down to 10 per seems to fit his sloppiness. (Note that the peak coins of the premodern era were a persion 169.2g, or roughly 110dwt, coin... 11/20 of a lbt, or 0.373 lbav...

I can see how he screwed it up:

• misreading the "gold penny" as gold piece
• misreading the schilling coin's mass for the gold penny's mass, due to nominal same purchase value
• decimalization
• an incorrect conversion of troy to avoirdupois

Also, "plate mail" is a label that has no historical basis, but the armor itself does - plate over mail dates back to Rome, as does mail hanging from breast and back, and ring-joined plate dates to the 6th C in Korea, and to the 15th C in Persia and Russia, with likely use well prior. ring-joined-ivory and ring joined scale existed in the Assyrian empire...

Full plate is available in Japan and China earlier than Europe.

As for anachronism? Bah! Gygax claims the primary inspirations as the Dying Earth series and a bunch of Sword and Sorcery titles.

Dying Earth is post-post-apocalypse; nothing we know of now is anachronistic, tho' a new "dark age" has fallen.

Arneson likewise happily included even crashed spacecraft.

[Desparil]

Jul 6, 2021 12:22:21 GMT -6 aramis said:

Jul 5, 2021 10:09:15 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Plate isn't too cheap, other items are just too expensive.

I've heard a good rule of thumb, that if prices for food, wine, bows, arrows, carts, and raft prices were in pence, and weapons, animals, ships, and armor were in shillings it closely approximates actual historical prices in the late medieval period (~12th to 14th centuries).

Certainly 50 gold coins weighing 1/10 of a lb each would be sufficient to purchase plate armor. That's 5 lbs of gold which at a 10:1 medieval valuation would be worth 50 lbs of silver, which is quite a lot of money.

Plate armor is also an anachronism. It only starts appearing in early forms in the late 1300. The type of plate armor depicted in the popular imagination / pop culture is contemporary with the Turks taking Constantinople, Columbus sailing to the new world, ubiquitous cannons and personal firearms, finance, banking, stock exchanges, and the printing press.

Having seen the OD&D price list next to a book checked out by an "E Gygax" in 1972 and myself in 1990, there is a 1:1 correspondence between D&D GP prices and Domesday shilling prices as reported in said book. (I got it via Inter-Library Loan.) I don't recall the name of the book. (Odd to think it's over 30 years ago.)

Similarly, when he was putting together the AD&D equipment list and prices, it seems likely that he was using English Wayfaring Life in the XIVth Century by J. J. Jusserand and English Weapons & Warfare, 449-1660 by A. V. B. Norman and Don Pottinger. There are also a great number of similarities to Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages by Christopher Dyer, but since that book was first published in 1989 he must have had some older book which used the same sources as, or perhaps was even cited directly by, Dyer's book. It's the same old tricks, shillings become g.p. and pence become s.p., subject to him rounding things off so that the costs are nice even numbers.

Though he also monkeys with some things even further if he wants them to be more expensive, such as taking prices for gallons of ale or wine and making that the price for a pint - or more importantly, taking mercenary soldiers' daily wages in pence, having that be their monthly upkeep in g.p., and calling it "close enough." But of course, he didn't leave it at that, since there are some deviations from what you find in the source materials which resemble nothing other than wargaming points values for troop types, charging more for longbow archers than for crossbowmen and more for pikemen than for other infantry because he felt they were superior and should be priced accordingly. And of course, hyper-inflating the prices for sergeants, lieutenants, and captains as well as all the "specialist" hirelings, most likely for no other reason than to drain players' coffers.

[Deleted]

Jul 6, 2021 12:22:21 GMT -6 aramis said:

As for anachronism? Bah! Gygax claims the primary inspirations as the Dying Earth series and a bunch of Sword and Sorcery titles.

Dying Earth is post-post-apocalypse; nothing we know of now is anachronistic, tho' a new "dark age" has fallen.

Arneson likewise happily included even crashed spacecraft.

Yeah. I'd be willing to bet the percentage of people who run D&D in an actual historical setting rather than some sort of fantasy milieu is miniscule. Even as a ten year old I assumed it was some parallel universe situation, like Narnia or Wonderland. Ergo, our own history's intricacies are more of a nuisance than a support when imagining such a place. The fantasy milieu can be a big salad bowl with a bit from column A and a dash of column G as you please. There's Elves and Cavemen in my campaign so I'm not particularly worried about what year plate mail was invented in - just how much protection it offers for its price. 

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, technological anachronisms are super easy to justify. Gunpowder doesn't work here (as Gygax said about Oerth) so it's absent in an otherwise Late Middle Ages/Renaissance world with full plate etc.; or the presence of plate in an otherwise more mid-Middle Ages technology setting is the result of smithcraft knowledge transferring from dwarves; or whatever...

[delta]

Jul 5, 2021 10:09:15 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I've heard a good rule of thumb, that if prices for food, wine, bows, arrows, carts, and raft prices were in pence, and weapons, animals, ships, and armor were in shillings it closely approximates actual historical prices in the late medieval period (~12th to 14th centuries).

I've been proselytizing that for some time. Or more accurately: a half-shilling or something, like in my campaigns I equate silver piece coin = English Groat = 1/3 shilling.

I made a statistical analysis supporting that here.

On the main question, apparently I'm in the minority by being really bothered by the price of the armors. Note in the first chart above, there are two significant outlier points way in the top left of the regression: and those are the costs for chain and plate. In my campaign I increase those costs to 50 and 200 and wrote about it in this blog post. In brief the arguments were:

• Nice for PCs to experience the full range of options
• Explain why so many NPCs in the world wear leather
• Be somewhat more historically accurate

[Red Baron]

Jul 14, 2021 9:07:18 GMT -6 delta said:

Jul 5, 2021 10:09:15 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I've heard a good rule of thumb, that if prices for food, wine, bows, arrows, carts, and raft prices were in pence, and weapons, animals, ships, and armor were in shillings it closely approximates actual historical prices in the late medieval period (~12th to 14th centuries).

I've been proselytizing that for some time. Or more accurately: a half-shilling or something, like in my campaigns I equate silver piece coin = English Groat = 1/3 shilling.

I made a statistical analysis supporting that here.

On the main question, apparently I'm in the minority by being really bothered by the price of the armors. Note in the first chart above, there are two significant outlier points way in the top left of the regression: and those are the costs for chain and plate. In my campaign I increase those costs to 50 and 200 and wrote about it in this blog post. In brief the arguments were:

• Nice for PCs to experience the full range of options
• Explain why so many NPCs in the world wear leather
• Be somewhat more historically accurate

When I looked into it a while ago,, crossbows were the one item that really didn't work out right, because they were about a 1/3 of the listed price in shillings. Using 1/3 shillings would solve that problem at least.

[delta]

Jul 6, 2021 12:22:21 GMT -6 aramis said:

Having seen the OD&D price list next to a book checked out by an "E Gygax" in 1972 and myself in 1990, there is a 1:1 correspondence between D&D GP prices and Domesday shilling prices as reported in said book. (I got it via Inter-Library Loan.) I don't recall the name of the book. (Odd to think it's over 30 years ago.)...

Perhaps more importantly, this post by aramis is in the running for my favorite post on any forum ever. Thanks greatly for that.

Now if we could only deduce what that book was!!

[howandwhy99]

I think this is something AD&D did right. By raising the costs of the higher Armor Class bonuses they keep (most of) the game in an "easier to hit" zone until To-Hit Ability catches up a little with the item bonuses, as in full plate armor.

To see it from the opposite side, think of doubling or tripling weapon damage ranges before characters Hit Points have advanced some levels. Low levels would be a blood bath even with a -10 rule.

That said, the price as-is will make for a less deadly game at low levels - if a whiffier one, with less incentive to learn to run in some battles.

[aramis]

Jul 22, 2021 23:59:52 GMT -6 howandwhy99 said:

I think this is something AD&D did right. By raising the costs of the higher Armor Class bonuses they keep (most of) the game in an "easier to hit" zone until To-Hit Ability catches up a little with the item bonuses, as in full plate armor.

To see it from the opposite side, think of doubling or tripling weapon damage ranges before characters Hit Points have advanced some levels. Low levels would be a blood bath even with a -10 rule.

That said, the price as-is will make for a less deadly game at low levels - if a whiffier one, with less incentive to learn to run in some battles.

Lamelar is less material, less work, less mass, and roughly equal protection to chain. Scale likewise. Their weakness is against close-in upward thrusts from a short weapon. Vs normal attack angles, lamelar and scale are actually going to spread the force further.
Chain was expensive. It was heavy. Butted mail, from precut links, professionals I know cite 50 to 75 hours for butted, double that for riveted. Making the links, with modern tools,

as a total novice, with a hand crank and compound metal snips, was able to get about 1 to 2 rings per minute cut from the coil, but making the coil was a frustrating and painful process, and took me the better part of an hour; acquaintances who have been making mail commercial scale are able to output about 50 to 80 rings in half an hour, and can make a coil by hand in about 15 to 20 minutes from which those rings were cut. Medieval and ancient makers would not have compound snips. I suspect they'd still be able to make about 50 to 100 rings an hour, mayne a bit more.

A shirt of mail is about 20 to 25 thousand rings. at 100 rings an hour, that's about 1000 per man-day, so a shirt is 20 man-days of labor just making the rings. Then another 5 to 8 man-days.

Making riveted adds at least 2-3 seconds per ring. I knew a jeweler who was working copper link (1mm wire, not quite 1cm ring diameter inner diameter); she said rivetting was doubling the time for each step.

Some numbers I found online that mirror what I've heard from friends and acquaintainces in the business... chainmail101.com/faq


By comparison, a breastplate is about 2-3 man days, plus a day for smelting. A pair of knee cops is about a man day in steel; a couple hours for Cuir boulli of cow or moose. (I've watched both be done.) A gorget in 16oz leather over a metal strip took me under an hour, including cutting the strip from a steel sheet. My much nicer one I bought, and I fence in. it sold for under $30, from sheet stock, cut with modern tools. I've seen similar made by a professional from barstock in under an hour at the renfair, but his sold for close to $100... made to order.

Assembling plates and leather makes for really quite good protection... and the primary costs are labor. A suit of lamellar should take a couple man-weeks, barstock or smelt-block to mounted on leather. With just hammer, rivets, leather, sheet metal, files, a chunk of railroad iron for an anvil, and compound shears, I was able to make leather and plate cuises in an afternoon, including filing 20 linear feet of edges round.

Making the greaves would take about the same. Less area, more curves, needs a better fit. The knees would be a day from sheet by a friend who was making them. Vambraces and rebraces in plate on/under leather are, fundamentally, pretty quick as well. A day per arm.

Mail is good, but it's weak to narrow-point thrusts - poigniards, stillettos, awl-point arrows, picks, proper warhammers. Plate is better versus those. Plus, it's cheaper to make.

Mail's biggest advantages are that it's easier to care for (sand-roll and oil monthly if wearing daily), lasts longer (because it lacks fabric or leather contact to hold moisture against it), allows more bodily flexibility for non-combat actions, doesn't need to be personally fit to be effective, can be repaired readily, and it breathes better than plate or leather, so when you sweat through your gambeson, you start to get the cooling that your sweat would naturally provide unarmored. Those make it mostly worth the price through the 12th C. Once you get Bodkin Bolts and Arrows from Crossbow or Longbow, mail is hors d'combat.

[howandwhy99]

In terms of pricing I would think Chainmail would still be cheaper than plate, but I don't have your experience.

First, it sounds like a head to finger to toe suit of Chainmail could largely be made by a less skilled armorer with wire coiling and a crimper. Plate is far more precise cutting with all the overlapping pieces and sizing.

Second the Chainmail would be easier to custom fit to a new wearer than plate, which requires recutting and refabric-ating. And probably some new spare metal too rather than reused chain.

Also the amount of metal and ease of sheet metal vs wire creation during smelting might further increase the price. Quality metal breastplates are meant to be higher grade too.

I like the idea of a smith full of people working on one suit of armor for days, even weeks at a time. I wonder what Medieval metal costs were like for quality steel? And how long repairs took.

[Deleted]

Isn't "high quality steel in the middle ages" a bit of an oxymoron or have I been misled by pop culture stereotypes? Granted, in a *fantastic* medieval setting you could always justify it as being "Dwarven make" or some such.

[tombowings]

I think it's a matter of scale.

Our high quality MODERN steel =/= high quality medieval steel.

But I'm sure high quality medieval steel was at least better than crappy medieval steel.

[Desparil]

Forging a good, consistent (in both quality and thickness) steel stock and then cutting a consistent width of wire from it definitely took some skill. Cutting the finished wire into link-sized pieces and riveting them together to make the mail is pretty simple, though, and could be done even by apprentices. The Romans were able to mass-produce it for their legions in this way, since they had the infrastructure to provide their armorers with large numbers of assistants. In the Early Middle Ages, with the lower overall population combined with the loss of almost all centralization, it became slow and expensive to make mail. As time went on, the population grew, and royalty consolidated power, the cost of mail came down significantly (at least in relative terms, as there had simultaneously been a great deal of currency inflation) by the High Middle Ages. However, after the Black Plague came to Europe starting in 1347, the massive population crash made labor more expensive once again.

This is when plate definitely became cheaper than mail, though at first it was fairly common to wear a full mail hauberk underneath your brigandine or cuirass. As armor improved, this gave way to only keeping mail sleeves and perhaps a coif, and then later to only using small patches of mail called voiders to cover specific spots such as the armpits. From everything Gygax wrote, it's pretty clear his default setting was in the earlier plate period, so one can consider the cost of plate to include at least a partial coat of mail.

It's also worth noting that a big part of the expense of plate armor was all the leather, cloth, and/or fur finishing that it needed that mail did not. A couple of estimates from an armorer working in 1624 were as follows:

Cuirass of pistol-proof with pauldrons:
* plates: 5s 6d
* finishing, rivets, and straps: 7s 6d
* selling price: 26s
Lance armor:
* plates: 14s 5d
* finishing, et cetera: 40s
* selling price: 80s

Another thing to note is that due to the aforementioned high price of labor, pieces that required more time and effort to shape just right - such as visored helmets and articulated plate limbs - were comparatively expensive, relative to the actual amount of steel needed to make them.

[hamurai]

Jul 1, 2021 16:51:01 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Yeah, just picture "plate" as basically chainmail with a breastplate (rather than a full suit of plate armor fully encasing its wearer), and 50 gp doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

Plate mail is exactly that. It's chainmail combined with armor plates, not full plate armour.

It's even in the name, let me quote etymonline.com for some additional info:

mail (n.2)
"metal ring armor," c. 1300, from Old French maille "link of mail, mesh of net," from Latin macula "mesh in a net," originally "spot, blemish," on notion that the gaps in a net or mesh looked like spots. Its use dates from late Roman times.

AD&D 2e makes the difference, although the prices increase far more than in OD&D: Chain mail 74 gp (weighs 40 lbs), Plate mail 600 gp (50 lbs), Field plate 2,000 gp (60 lbs), Full plate 4,000-10,000 gp (70 lbs). Field plate is described as pretty much the predecessor to full plate, the latter also being a lot more stylized.

[aramis]

Aug 14, 2021 13:01:46 GMT -6 tombowings said:

I think it's a matter of scale.

Our high quality MODERN steel =/= high quality medieval steel.

But I'm sure high quality medieval steel was at least better than crappy medieval steel.

Understand this: I've seen people use old baking sheets to make armor that actually stops damage from rebated weapons.

The hardest part of medieval steel sheet is uniformity... but armor isn't uniform thickness anyway.

From iron barstock, a cuirass (Spanish 17th C pattern) took 2 days by a blacksmith specializing in recreations, using a coal forge. He used an electric fan, instead of a couple apprentices...

the thing is, you don't make sheets then cur them into armor, you take the bar, and form it directly into the shape needed.

The pig iron from the smelter is turned into steel in the forgework, not in the smelting. Quite unlike modern metalworking.


There is also an apparent misperception, and I hope to correct that -- most plate armor was NOT the articulated suit of plates of the 17th and 18th centuries. The best examples of medieval plate can be found (quite inappropriately) in Jackson's Lord of the Rings, on the Elven armies... Vambraces, rebraces, pauldrons, breast and back, greaves and cuisses, gauntlets, gorget.

Arms and legs might be jointed sets, with arms being the vambrace joined by a lame or two to the elbow cop, which is similarly joined to the rebrace. Likewise greaves to knee cops to cuisses.

As the renaissance hit, and gunfire became more common, most working plate armor was just back, breast, vambraces, and greaves.

Roman plate was breast and back, joined at the sides, vambraces (sometimes extending past the elbow), greaves (likewise sometimes to above the knee). The kilt was armored - with cast bronze plates riveted to the linen kilt.