Rock, Paper, Scissors (Weapons and Armor)

[skip.knox]

Dragons beat all.

 

[ndmellen]

Full plate was also generally intended for mounted use

 

[Anders Ämting]

But if plate > everything, how does anybody get killed? It seems like it would reduce a battle to just knocking each other about until everyone gets tired and decides to go home. Why would knights even bother with swords?

Easy: Plate was mad expensive. Not just in terms of materials and craftmanship; they were very complex things that basically had to be tailor made to fit the owner. You couldn't possibly outfit a whole army - especially not when everyone was expected to provide their own equipment. They were mostly for the knights and nobles, and those guys could still be overwhelmed by a lot of dudes in inferior armor. So, if the rest of your army lost, it didn't really matter what you were wearing.

Anders' post is good enough. It's my understanding that it's more iron chainmail trumps iron plate, while advances in steel metallurgy gradually made steel plate the better option.

Erm, I'm not sure I've ever even heard of "iron" plate armor - it wasn't really an iron age thing at all. Plate armor didn't really appear until the 14th century, well into the medieval era, and by then decent steel was totally a thing. Before then, armor mostly consisted of mail.

Full plate was also generally intended for mounted use

I'm not sure "intended" is the right word. A man in plate armor can definitely move around and fight on foot just fine. More like, if you could afford a suit of plate armor you could probably afford a war horse as well. That was originally how the knights came to be as a social class.

And war horses were really just the same deal as the armor: If you could go into battle with one, you absolutely would.

 

[Devor]

Erm, I'm not sure I've ever even heard of "iron" plate armor - it wasn't really an iron age thing at all. Plate armor didn't really appear until the 14th century, well into the medieval era, and by then decent steel was totally a thing. Before then, armor mostly consisted of mail.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was thinking specifically of this, which is apparently soft iron, sometimes with a layer of steel on the outside. But your point is mostly what I meant. Mail thrived because that's all you can do effectively out of the toughest material available, not because the form itself had many advantages.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Easy: Plate was mad expensive. Not just in terms of materials and craftmanship; they were very complex things that basically had to be tailor made to fit the owner. You couldn't possibly outfit a whole army - especially not when everyone was expected to provide their own equipment. They were mostly for the knights and nobles, and those guys could still be overwhelmed by a lot of dudes in inferior armor. So, if the rest of your army lost, it didn't really matter what you were wearing.

This is the second thread in a row in which I'll namecheck The Once and Future King. There's quite a bit of discussion of medieval nobles as "fox-hunters", both surrounded and opposed by lightly armored soldiers, but themselves too heavily armored to be much at risk, playing at war without bearing the threat of it. (White makes the case that the nobles themselves rarely died in the wars, although I'm not sure if the historical record backs this up.)

 

[wordwalker]

Easy: Plate was mad expensive. Not just in terms of materials and craftmanship; they were very complex things that basically had to be tailor made to fit the owner. You couldn't possibly outfit a whole army - especially not when everyone was expected to provide their own equipment.

I look at things like the Two Towers movie with its thousands of orcs in plate armor and think "So Saruman's the latest Hollywood general to invent tinfoil armor-- everyone gets it, and swords do go right through it, but at least everyone knows the orcs look like soldiers."

But here's a question: once plate was available, was it more expensive than chain, so some lords could only afford the latter? (Or did chain just get squeezed out in a hurry by proud nobles straining themselves to afford plate?) That is, would both still be around in a given society?

--Although, "tailor made" does remind me of one advantage chain has: if you don't have all the time it takes to make plate that fits (and heroes do tend to turn up out of the woods unannounced), you could still grab a spare hauberk of more or less the right size.

Speaking of fine tailoring:

Chain is a lot easier to make than plate (plate of a quality good enough to be a help rather than a hindrance.) Chain is also far more flexible than plate, so it hampers your movement far less.

I'm not sure that's true. Chain is flexible, in that all its weight hangs and shifts on you; is it really easier to move in than plates that fit tight around the different parts of your body?

 

[Devor]

I'm not sure that's true. Chain is flexible, in that all its weight hangs and shifts on you; is it really easier to move in than plates that fit tight around the different parts of your body?

It depends. Mail could have thick tight rings, each one sealed with a rivet, with six rings looping through each circle. It could even be two layers thick. Or it could have thin wide loops, each one butted, with only four loops passing through each. The weight, labor costs, and flexibility of each could be dramatically different, and so would its ability to block a piercing shot.

Here's mail sealed by a rivet.

Here's butted mail.

You can see the difference in how the ring is sealed and how much force it will take to pierce. But the labor costs go up radically as well.

Also, does the mail cover your legs and arms, or are we only talking about a hauberk? You could wear mail sleeves and leggings separately. A lot of times people compare a hauberk to what we call "full plate," and we forget that a hauberk doesn't cover anywhere near as much of the body. People are also forgetting that you could put on a cuirass pretty quickly as well.

 

[SeverinR]

Wouldn't the best weapon for fighting against plate armor, be the hammer pike combo?
The narrow pike could penetrate the plate, while the hammer could do harm by smashing the plate?
weapon pike - Bing Images

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

There are many weapons designed to counter plate. The spikes and flanges of a mace for example. Footmen also used picks in addition to hammers.

These weapons were also cheaper to produce than swords.

I always thought the most common weapons of this era were spears. Cheap to manufacture...provided a significant reach advantage...able to be employ on foot or mounted...able to puncture armor...useful in both single and coordinated combat, etc.

 

[Nobby]

Mail was about as heavy as plate was. When you're sinking to the bottom, getting out of your armor is impossible. Even mail was strapped to your person with belts (else it would shift around too much). Also, strapping on mail does take less time but how often do you get ambushed when you're out on a hunt? Because other than hunting, war or traveling, a knight doesn't leave his keep often. And when you're traveling or going to war, there's a reasonable expectation there will be trouble. So I'd put on my plate then.

Also, the most dangerous enemy for someone in plate is a misericorde. These knives were carried around to finish off fallen knights (both friendly and hostile - only the heavily wounded of course because you can ransom/heal the others). A misericorde looks like a letter-opener. It's a very slim knife made for one purpose only - stabbing through gaps in armor/eye-slits etc. Needless to say, knights weren't very fond of them.

I still prefer the term bo**ock knife. Mind you, I still prefer saxon shield walls to knights et al. This may just be me.

 

[Nobby]

Damn insomnia!

There is also banded armour, which goes as far back as Roman times. According to some re-enactors though, it is incredibly clumsy feeling, even compared to plate. (I love being British sometimes!)

Then there's brigadine which is basically the padded jack you wear under chainmail, but with small steel plates sewn in and was pretty much de-rigeur for the well dressed archer of the middle ages.

To me, both seem to be useful against slashing weapons, but pretty much useless against anything else.

 

[Sheilawisz]

I imagine that a direct hit with one of these:

Would pierce any kind of armor and kill your enemy, especially if you hit in the head!!

Also, I was thinking that if you throw Magic into the battle scene then the metal (plate armor, chainmail or whatever) would attract the lightning bolts straight towards you, with terrible consequences...

 

[wordwalker]

I imagine that a direct hit with one of these: ((military flail)) Would pierce any kind of armor and kill your enemy, especially if you hit in the head!!

Also, I was thinking that if you throw Magic into the battle scene then the metal (plate armor, chainmail or whatever) would attract the lightning bolts straight towards you, with terrible consequences...

I've been wondering about blunt weapons too. Anders, you said crushing beats plate, so people wouldn't need precision thrusting swords against plate if they had a mace, warhammer, or flail?

(And yeah, battle magic on that level does terrible things to soldiers. If nothing else, just knowing an enemy wizard might have one or two lightning bolts in him might might soldiers act like modern troops, spreading out and moving in behind cover. Or maybe make every lord who could afford chain or plate keep a wizard to put an anti-lightning rune on it.)

 

[Nobby]

What you also have to remember, though, is that if he's outnumbered by foot troops and in plate armour, he is dead