Medieval & Fantasy Minecraft Roleplaying

Greetings Explorer, Navigate into the Lobby!

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Be sure to "Get Whitelisted" to join the community on server!

Armour to Consider

MRPolo13

The Arbiter of the Gods
Made the weapons thread, now for the armour thread. You may want to use that armour either as part of the skin or say in RP the armour you're wearing is this.
Before we start, I just want to say that there is physically no such thing as diamond armour. If you had diamond armour in real life and fell over on stone, it'd be like wearing glass armour. Diamond shatters pretty easily.

I'll be going through the main torso armour, helmet and types of additional armours (that means gauntlets, boots and others :p)
That means three sections.

First, torso.
We'll start off with normal clothing. The tunic. Tunic wasn't really armour at all, more like a shirt. In Medieval times they were long, sometimes down to the knees, and usually made of wool or linen, but richer people had them made of silk.

This is a normal tunic. Leather wasn't as common as some think by Medieval times, especially as forms of normal clothing. Most peasant units wouldn't ever wear anything more than this.

Up next is a slight level up. The padded armour, also known as Gambeson, Arming Doublet and couple of other names, is the first proper armour we can take a look at, though despite it's name it's still basically a tunic... With, surprisingly enough, padding! The stuffing varied, sometimes scrap cloth or horse hair.

There you go, average padded armour. On its own, it was usually worn by crossbowmen and archers, mainly the first one, but also due to its cheap price, normal infantry too from time to time. You could use leather painted white for this I guess :p

Slight level-up was the leather armour. Now, it wasn't the Roman leather armour. It looked slightly different
By Middle Ages, Leather Armour was mainly studded, which basically means small metal studs dotted around a leather tunic or proper armour. What you get is something like this

Just an example, obviously. They often looked different.

Another level up, we have the scale armour. Somewhat forgotten by many things, it is a pretty early form of metal armour. For those that didn't guess yet, scale armour was literally a leather tunic with metal scales attached to it.

I think (not necessarily correct though) that due to earliness of this armour, the scales are actually copper on this one, but I'm pretty sure they were also steel or iron. Or this is iron. Sorry, trying to sound more professional than I really am xD

Further down, the Lamellar Armour (was wondering why I couldn't find the bloody name ._.).
To quote because I am lazy; "The scales in lamellar armor are attached to all of the adjacent scales making it stronger and allowing it to be made without a restrictive leather or cloth backing."


And here is what it looked like.

Now, Mail armour, or Chainmail armour. Up to you.
You all saw it, I'm sure. Tiny rings that make up an entire suit. They got pretty long too, and were very flexible as to what you can do with them. Always worn as part of plate armour, and richer soldiers would wear them as main armour. Very good at blocking sword hits, as you can imagine due to the rings which spread the attack well. Gives you some bruises, of course, but chainmail was realistically far more effective than some might think.

And a normal mail armour.

Going further up the food chain, the Coat of Plates.
This is basically a long studded leather armour, but even stronger as instead of just studs it included slightly larger plates that were more common. Underneath was usually the chain mail armour, and often had metal protection around shoulders and hands + legs, that's why I put it as better than just mail ;)

Finally, I guess I can do it now, but please get some drumroll...
*drumroll...*
The Plate Armour!
The Plate armour doesn't need much to have said about it, except me ruining some myths. I won't bother describing it, but those myths need to be taken down.

  • Plate Armour was actually around the same weight as modern soldier's gear, and was balanced better.
  • Plate Armour hardly limited any of your movement. A good example is this nice vid.

If you have any questions concerning these, go right ahead dude! ;)

Next up, we'll have helmets :p
 

Faelin

The Court Jester
Retired Staff
A pox unto anybody else that tries to tell me that "tunics aint medeval lol".

I TOLD THEE!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! *flies away gleefully on a broomstick*
 

Legion

No Gods, No Masters.
Retired Staff
Before we start, I just want to say that there is physically no such thing as diamond armour. If you had diamond armour in real life and fell over on stone, it'd be like wearing glass armour. Diamond shatters pretty easily.
FALSE
 

MRPolo13

The Arbiter of the Gods
NOPE.
Diamond does shatter like glass. Just that it's extremely tough.

However, if you were to stud armour with small diamonds, that might work.
 

Legion

No Gods, No Masters.
Retired Staff
still false. Diamond does not shatter like glass.
First of all, that statement is ambiguous anyway, because there are a million different kinds of glass.
Secondly, glass is an amorphous solid/supercooled liquid. Diamond is an extremely sturdy covalent network solid.
Not at all the same. Glass fractures under pressure because the structure throughout is different. (of course, all things shatter with enough pressure)
Diamond on the other hand behaves more like a crystal: its easier to cut than shatter.

If you could place small diamond plates onto normal armor (to maintain mobility) it would be pretty effective. And fairly light.
Just REALLY bloody expensive.
 

Ced

Mountain Bum
Merchant
Retired Staff
MossyMorel
MossyMorel
Merchant
I really love these threads you're making, I find them so interesting :) But might I suggest that you don't enforce this history on people's RP? Altera, while being set in a medieval era, is very different to medieval England. Magic, old age, lack of peasants, etc etc. My point being is that-
I have just noted the title of this thread. Sorry :confused:

Again, this is insanely interesting, please keep writing :D
 

MRPolo13

The Arbiter of the Gods
still false. Diamond does not shatter like glass.
First of all, that statement is ambiguous anyway, because there are a million different kinds of glass.
Secondly, glass is an amorphous solid/supercooled liquid. Diamond is an extremely sturdy covalent network solid.
Not at all the same. Glass fractures under pressure because the structure throughout is different. (of course, all things shatter with enough pressure)
Diamond on the other hand behaves more like a crystal: its easier to cut than shatter.

If you could place small diamond plates onto normal armor (to maintain mobility) it would be pretty effective. And fairly light.
Just REALLY bloody expensive.
Yeah, forgot to mention the point of possibility of small diamonds attached, however overall it wouldn't be worth it.
But they'd have to be small, by "diamond armour" I was thinking what Minecraft assumes, and that being full cuirass of diamond.
Also,
"Diamonds are hard, but they are not particularly resilient. You can destroy a diamond simply hitting it with another rock. It will shatter just like glass."
 

Legion

No Gods, No Masters.
Retired Staff
Any crystalline solid will shatter if you hit it hard enough.
Yea you can shatter a diamond, but you have to apply some serious force.
Far more than would be necesarry for glass.
 
Top