Quote from: DavetheLost;910992Don't know of reading about codpieces off hand, but try fighting with and without a cup.. An armoured skirt or apron will serve the same function.

There is a reason why "Hit Location 12" is one of the first places to be armoured.

Even in LARPs and boffer combat thats true. Especially since you are oft playing with untrained participants who may forget or just swing badly at the right wrong moment.

Protect your niche!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;9110151981 or 1982

Cool. I very well might have been there. Or I'm conflating stuff I saw at RenFest. Either way, nice to hear the local landmarks referenced. :-)

Quote from: Omega;911040Protect your niche!

Hah!

Quote from: Madprofessor;907754Interesting conversation.  'till now, I haven't given it much thought mostly because as a GM it feels like there is little I can do to prevent it without being arbitrary at chargen.  I also know I know that niche protection is annoying as hell from a GM perspective, and that it is a sacred cow to most players who insist on developing "well-balanced" parties with specialists to handle any situation.  It doesn't matter if it's a class or skill based game either, players design their parties as a mufti-fasceted bonus maximizing machine as a matter of course.

Players want to be effective.  If you don't want your players to be min maxed, which is what strong niche protection is, you need to make fuzzy non-dice based solutions work.      Allow ambushes to work so well with proper planning that the PCs wipe the opposition with out a sctratvh.  If they have to roll dice they will become effective at rolling dice which means min maxing.

Quote from: Headless;911084Players want to be effective.  If you don't want your players to be min maxed, which is what strong niche protection is, you need to make fuzzy non-dice based solutions work.      Allow ambushes to work so well with proper planning that the PCs wipe the opposition with out a sctratvh.  If they have to roll dice they will become effective at rolling dice which means min maxing.

Exactly. It no wonder that most parties have a screwdriver, a hammer, a saw, and a tape measure. Many RPG scenarios require one or more of these basic tools to resolve. The group as a whole will generally do better as a group of specialists rather than a group of generalists.

Giving players in game rewards for playing generalists is difficult unless you split the party or give them multiple instances of the same problem that need to be solved simultaneously. "You have to pick locks on three different doors at the same time on different walls" rewards the group for having more than one character with lock-picking skills. It will begin to feel contrived if evry adventure has this sort of challenge though.

From a game play perspective it is more fun to be really good at a focused thing than to kind of suck at a lot of things. I want my character to succeed, in many systems generalists just don't succeed enough to be fun. Some games even require a character to have the skill before any action can even be attempted.

Quote from: Headless;911084Players want to be effective.  If you don't want your players to be min maxed, which is what strong niche protection is, you need to make fuzzy non-dice based solutions work.      Allow ambushes to work so well with proper planning that the PCs wipe the opposition with out a sctratvh.  If they have to roll dice they will become effective at rolling dice which means min maxing.

Some players require this. But in my experience a lot of players require quite a bit less than this. They don't need their characters to be equally effective or even survivable as a maximized character. What they do require is some degree of comfort that not maxing their character won't immediately, inevitably, and/or repeatedly lead to character death and other serious loss. How much comfort, does vary from player by player.

It also helps if breadth of skills and abilities is sometimes useful. If a group can always choose to have the very best character attempt any given task there isn't any advantage in cross specialization or breadth of abilities. Obviously this is easier to do if the group is sometimes split up. Groups that are permanently joined at the hips get less advantage out of breadth of skills.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;910978As a possible point of reference, my suit of armor weighs 38 pounds all up with weapons, and take me about ten minutes to get on if I'm doing it by myself. With an assistant who knows the suit, it's about three to five minutes. The suit consists of a linen under-tunic, padded cotton tunic, leather over-tunic (protects the tunic from), steel mail 4-on-1 hauberk, steel 6-on-1 mail neck guard, steel breast- and back-plates, metal shoulder defenses, metal greaves, metal helmet, steel buckler, mace, short sword, two daggers, belt pouch. Leather bracers on wrists.

Back when I used to help Gronan into his coat of plates, arm- and leg- harness, and barrel helm, it used to take about the same amount of time.

As for butted mail being crap, I can only quote Vesy Norman, formerly Master of the Armories at the Tower of London, who looked at my 16 gauge / 1/4" mandrel hauberk and pronounced it "Fine stuff!". Gronan was sitting next to me, in the courtyard of the Minneapolis Institute of Art; we were there at an exhibition of medieval arms and armor to show how it was made and used.

Thank you for the reference
As to the butted mail i can actually back this up.
You see the problem with butted mail is that theirs nothing to hold the wire together so it simply comes apart at the ends where the wire meets.
It come apart quite easily in fact people in the middle ages weren't stupid They didn't where armor that didn't work.
This video is a compilation of all the testing these two have done over 6 years with reasonable facsimile of historical armor
with weapons to match and at time the odd ball stand in.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3lcgIAwLk

Butted mail is definitely higher maintenance. It works, but rivited or welded is better. As a sometime blacksmith I am impressed by the fine rivets in mail. As for forge welding mail rings, that would be quite a feat of skill.

Quote from: DavetheLost;911127Butted mail is definitely higher maintenance. It works, but rivited or welded is better. As a sometime blacksmith I am impressed by the fine rivets in mail. As for forge welding mail rings, that would be quite a feat of skill.

interestingly we have proof of forge welded rings in some higher quality suits.
Not every ring mind usually when you see it its like every other ring or the like.

Quote from: DavetheLost;911127Butted mail is definitely higher maintenance. It works, but rivited or welded is better. As a sometime blacksmith I am impressed by the fine rivets in mail. As for forge welding mail rings, that would be quite a feat of skill.

I was once shown a suit of mail and it was all rivited rings. Very impressive. Lindybeige has two videos up showing a suit of real plated mail and all the little details and how the rivited rings change from the torso to the arms for example.

"Plated mail" is a made up term.  You're not the one that made it up, but it is a made up internet/gamer term.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;911203"Plated mail" is a made up term.  You're not the one that made it up, but it is a made up internet/gamer term.

The correct terms, if I remember correctly, although it's been years is:  Plate and Maille or Plate Harness.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;911203"Plated mail" is a made up term.  You're not the one that made it up, but it is a made up internet/gamer term.

Isn't that what you call silver or gold-washed mail when you use electroplating to do the wash?

What did you think the ancients did with their galvanic cell batteries?

The suit that Lindybeige shows is an evolution of indo-persian "four mirror armor", which was worn over chain. The later evolutions have rings on the edges of the plate, which are integral to the mail (no chain behind them).

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/88/a1/7188a113be418b1034d6360a94e953c0.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gPrBbXykwM

Quote from: Telarus;911254The suit that Lindybeige shows is an evolution of indo-persian "four mirror armor", which was worn over chain. The later evolutions have rings on the edges of the plate, which are integral to the mail (no chain behind them).

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/88/a1/7188a113be418b1034d6360a94e953c0.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gPrBbXykwM

Right. In the video he says the proper name is something like zirah baktar. Though didnt explain what that translates to. (Closest I got was "armoured coat of mail")

Quote from: kosmos1214;911124Thank you for the reference
As to the butted mail i can actually back this up.
You see the problem with butted mail is that theirs nothing to hold the wire together so it simply comes apart at the ends where the wire meets.
It come apart quite easily in fact people in the middle ages weren't stupid They didn't where armor that didn't work.
This video is a compilation of all the testing these two have done over 6 years with reasonable facsimile of historical armor
with weapons to match and at time the odd ball stand in.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3lcgIAwLk

Quite good points! I've made and repaired butted, riveted, and welded mail over the years, and handled quite a few historical examples from all over the world. Phil Barker had some very fine stuff that looked like it had come from off one of the Whiting and Davis mail-making machines, and which was al almighty pain to repair.

Agreed that our ancestors were not stupid, although some of them must have been; quite a few of the corpses found in the mass graves at Visby were wearing butted mail coifs and mittens. (It had been a hot couple of days after the battle, and apparently the scavengers didn't want to pull the mail off the swollen and bloated bodies.) Is butted mail as effective as riveted and welded? No, of course not, and it is higher maintenance. On the other hand , it is a lot cheaper to make and buy, which is why lower-status and poorer people might choose to get it and then move up to a better type of mail when they could afford it or get it off the bodies of slain opponents.

I should also note that Gronan has whacked me a few times with various objects (sharp and blunt), just to see how well the stuff really works. There wasn't all that much damage to the mail, but I did get some very picturesque bruises.

Game-wise, I think that it would be likely that your average poor people might very well be desperate enough to wear butted mail, and which is why they look at the usual fully-armored player-character as so much money on the hoof / a walking armor shop.