You’d think after what the Parthians did to Crassus that Rome would learn to just leave well enough alone.
Augustus learned. He was the one who largely pivoted from constant expansion, even if a few later emperors defied this.
well, after he first conquered the rest of Spain and Dalmatia (though that was more of a rebellion), and he was trying to conquer Germania until that went sideways
More importantly, Rome needed constant expansion. Their entire economy was based on incorporating new treasure, resources and (especially, for a mostly agrarian society) arable land. Their internal economic growth wasn't nearly enough to sustain their society. Once they couldn't expand anymore because they couldn't conquer the surrounding civilizations for various reasons, they were forced to debase their currency and inflation went through the roof, and the economy unravelled.
Thank goodness we learned from our mistakes and don't have an economy that relies on an impossible target of limitless growth.
Except limitless growth isn't just possible, it's inevitable. Because the definition of economic growth involves technological invention. We only stop growing if we stop thinking, and given human nature we only stop thinking if we're dead.
Growing the economy doesn't require an endless supply of new material, it just happens to be the easiest way of growing the economy given the current state.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
0
Options
MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
edited August 2023
Also capitalist systems do not even theoretically require infinite growth, they require long-term positive return on (capital) investment which isn't the same thing
When ROI=0 you have reached fully automated luxury gay space communism, congratulations
Monwyn on
+11
Options
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
one of the issues the Romans faced was that the agricultural output of Italy wasn't enough to support the population, so they became dependent on the grain supply from places like Egypt; that vulnerability was exploited, most famously by Cleopatra and Antony, but also by the Vandals when they overran North Africa. A lot of Roman road systems were based around it as well, so once that ended so did a lot of the empire's infrastructure. thats why Rome eventually became a ghost town with people herding their sheep around the ruins
The problem that I've seen isn't so much that growth isn't limitless. It's that it's not exponential.
A 10% average growth, year after year, shouldn't be bad. But if the percentage isn't increasing every year, or god-forbid drops (but is still not losing money), then people lose their shit.
Heck, we see it in US military spending. Can't remember the numbers, but Biden proposed a cut to the increase in spending, and people lost their goddamn minds. The number was still above inflation (I think it was 6%, reduced to 5%, with inflation below that, and two expensive wars no longer on the table), but it was less of an increase than last year, and therefore, bad.
0
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The problem that I've seen isn't so much that growth isn't limitless. It's that it's not exponential.
A 10% average growth, year after year, shouldn't be bad. But if the percentage isn't increasing every year, or god-forbid drops (but is still not losing money), then people lose their shit.
Heck, we see it in US military spending. Can't remember the numbers, but Biden proposed a cut to the increase in spending, and people lost their goddamn minds. The number was still above inflation (I think it was 6%, reduced to 5%, with inflation below that, and two expensive wars no longer on the table), but it was less of an increase than last year, and therefore, bad.
That's not a problem with capitalism, that's a problem with deliberate corporate and policy decisions beginning in the late 70s/early 80s and continuing to today.
The problem that I've seen isn't so much that growth isn't limitless. It's that it's not exponential.
A 10% average growth, year after year, shouldn't be bad. But if the percentage isn't increasing every year, or god-forbid drops (but is still not losing money), then people lose their shit.
Heck, we see it in US military spending. Can't remember the numbers, but Biden proposed a cut to the increase in spending, and people lost their goddamn minds. The number was still above inflation (I think it was 6%, reduced to 5%, with inflation below that, and two expensive wars no longer on the table), but it was less of an increase than last year, and therefore, bad.
Was it a cut to growth or merely saying “let’s just give them what they ask for and not the bonus congress always sends them”
Because the amount that congress always gives them in excess of what they ask for is 50% more every year than the number it’s estimated is required to house every unhoused person in the US
You’d think after what the Parthians did to Crassus that Rome would learn to just leave well enough alone.
Augustus learned. He was the one who largely pivoted from constant expansion, even if a few later emperors defied this.
well, after he first conquered the rest of Spain and Dalmatia (though that was more of a rebellion), and he was trying to conquer Germania until that went sideways
More importantly, Rome needed constant expansion. Their entire economy was based on incorporating new treasure, resources and (especially, for a mostly agrarian society) arable land. Their internal economic growth wasn't nearly enough to sustain their society. Once they couldn't expand anymore because they couldn't conquer the surrounding civilizations for various reasons, they were forced to debase their currency and inflation went through the roof, and the economy unravelled.
Thank goodness we learned from our mistakes and don't have an economy that relies on an impossible target of limitless growth.
Yeah this was the real reason for the countless disastrous wars with Parthia and the Sassanids. Rome needed loot to fund its military. The other borders were Germania (lots of fighters, very little loot), Eastern Europe/the steppes(same), the sahara (no loot here), and Persia.
Persia was the only bordering power in the imperial era with significant wealth. Sure you could scrape up some agricultural land from Britain or Central Europe but there weren’t functioning economies that Rome could tax and coopt or treasuries they could steal in the same way as in the East.
But Persia was always a hard nut to crack for Rome in a way that the greek successor states or various European barbarians weren’t.
I saw a documentary where Abe Lincoln killed vampires so taking Trump out would have been child's play.
But seriously we cannot really engage with how the world was in the 19th Century. It's like the old concept of if you had a time machine, how far back could you go and still be able to interact with the world properly - answer, not very far! The world in 1800s was wild by our standards. Even accounting for disease, the smell would overpower modern humans very quickly.
I saw something recently that basically said if you took a general off of a battlefield in 1813 and dropped him into 1913, he’d be able to be caught up to then-current military doctrine, strategy, and tactics within a day or two. If you dropped him into 1918, he’d be completely lost, and would need to be retrained from scratch. Nothing would make sense, everything he knew was wrong. But if you took a guy from 1918 and dropped him into 2023 in Ukraine, it’d still take a lot of retraining, but it would all fit into his existing mental framework.
The thing is that looking at history shows how wrong this is. One of the reasons the Crimean War and the American Civil War were so bloody was that weapons and thus military doctrine was advancing so quickly that officers were finding their tactical education was being rendered obsolete in real time, resulting in tactics created in the era of smooth bore muskets and mass formations running headlong into minie balls and rifles, with bloody consequences. And this has continued - you can see how the lessons of each war get learned just to see new conflicts create new problems and new doctrine.
Really interesting article on 5e/BG3’s interpretation of armor and by extension D&D and fantasy armor in general.
Lots of things I’d never really thought about but that make sense (for example that ring mail and studded leather armor are pretty much made up, why bother hammering tons of riveted studs or rings into a leather backing when you could use much cheaper and more effective metal plates and make a brigandine or scaled set instead?)
One thing I think he under states a bit is in regards to leather, though he does cover it.
So the idea of a cheap, flexible, lightweight set of leather armor (“rogues leather”) is pretty much bullshit. Through most of history in most places the basic form of armor has been quilted or layered cloth based (linen, etc). Europe, Asia, Africa, etc, even Mesoamerica. This kind of armor was actually pretty decently effective and often formed the basis for other types of armor. For example take a quilted gambeson and rivet some metal plates on and you have a decent scaled or brigandine coat. It was often also used as an undergarment, for example a quilted cloth shirt or gambeson with a mail shirt or lorica segmentata or whatever over top of it. I feel like its important to mention that because people think of padded or quilted armor as being shit and it really wasn’t- it was a mainstay in most cultures including Europe for most of history, and even now modern kevlar armors use a lot of the same principles, just with better fabrics.
So here’s the deal. We think of leather as being like leather jacket or belt leather, like biker gear, and in fantasy this seems to be just used as armor itself. That’s an option for clothing but its not really very protective. In the post gunpowder period thicker leather coats and shirts (buff coats) replaced linen or cotton quilted ones in the role of an underarmor, and it seems these were used at times before by steppe nomads, etc. However, despite having access to these they were rarely used by the greeks, romans, medieval combatants, etc - in other words, people expecting to do serious melee combat. So a reasonable question may have been whether later leather garments were more protective or simply that melee protection became less important in an increasingly firearm centric world and leather was preferred for other reasons (weatherproofing, durability, etc). So light leather armors shouldn’t really have much better stats than padded or quilted necessarily.
Regardless, these kinds of quilted and leather coats and shirts are just that - shirts and coats. A buff coat or gambeson basically looks like a raincoat. And either are reasonable things for a scout or less extravagantly equipped infantryman to be wearing. If your rogue is sneaking around in an urban setting then maybe just a shirt, and maybe a preference for fabric over leather. A coat is going to be more protective of course, but more restrictive (ever imagine trying to sneak around somewhere in a heavy leather trench coat? Imagine the same thing but about twice as thick) and someone wearing a leather buff coat or quilted gambeson with nothing else is definitely going to look more like someone preparing for rainy season than a theif or assassin. Dom gear or biker gear is of course fine as an aesthetic choice for clothing but not protective at all.
You might say, most of the time leather armor as shown in games and movies isn’t just a shirt or coat though. What about my armor with leather grieves and thick leather chest plates and shoulderguards? What about my skyrim leather or WOW leather?
Did those exist? Sure, yeah they did, but with a caveat. Heavy leather armor generally doesn’t survive well, unfortunately, but we have evidence of what they probably used in art and written text in Europe and the Middle East and here’s the thing. Leather armor was thick and hard. Once you get beyond the simple leather jerkin or coat you get into leather that was intended as a cheaper metal substitute. You get into “boiled leather”, which was treated to make as hard and thick as possible, then also most likely covered in an adhesive of some sort. In the East laquer was used, Europeans didn’t have laquer so probably had to make do with glues. Regardless, what you ended up with was something the texture and feel of almost plastic. Imagine ancient old leather chests. It was used the same way they would used metal plates - by riveting them to a cloth base or strapping them together with leather straps, or by fashioning them into plates. They were effective and cheap, but the idea of a rogue wearing them is somewhat silly. A boiled leather breastplate or brigandine or whatever would have the same drawbacks as a metal one for the most part. You could wear a gambeson, throw a chain hauberk on over it (or skip if you can’t afford it as mail was expensive), and toss a boiled leather breastplate, shoulder pads, greaves, etc over top of it and have something reasonably effective that would look all skyrim-y but you would have the same issues as someone in metal armor. A lot of Samurai armors that didn’t use iron were basically this with laquer coating (and the leather plates arranged in a lamellar pattern), but you wouldn’t see a fully battle geared samurai sneaking about anywhere.
The main reason why buff coats became popular is because swords and guns became the norm among cavalry.
A high quality buff coat will provide decent protection against pistols and the cavalry swords of the era, it will provide good padding for the breastplate and it will protect you if you fall off a horse.
It's very bad against thrusting weapons like spears, pikes, lances, arrows etc. With the exception of pikes all of those had conveniently fallen out of use during the 17th century, and you didn't charge light and mid-weight cavalry into pikes. The buff coat falls out of use with the introduction of socket bayonettes, since all infantry now had spiky-bits and firearms were becoming much more powerful and reliable.
Also, "studded leather" never existed. There were leather with studs, but that was brigandine where the studs held metal plates in place (and the use of leather for brigandine was rare. Linen was the preferred material).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
While similarly inflexible leather armour might not be as loud as metal armour?
What's the current state of research/knowledge about Linothorax, anyway?
I don’t know if there is or ever will be any definitive answer since nonmetallic armor just doesn’t hang around for thousands of years for us to study, but it seems likely to have been some form of padded and/or quilted linen armor.
I saw a documentary where Abe Lincoln killed vampires so taking Trump out would have been child's play.
But seriously we cannot really engage with how the world was in the 19th Century. It's like the old concept of if you had a time machine, how far back could you go and still be able to interact with the world properly - answer, not very far! The world in 1800s was wild by our standards. Even accounting for disease, the smell would overpower modern humans very quickly.
I saw something recently that basically said if you took a general off of a battlefield in 1813 and dropped him into 1913, he’d be able to be caught up to then-current military doctrine, strategy, and tactics within a day or two. If you dropped him into 1918, he’d be completely lost, and would need to be retrained from scratch. Nothing would make sense, everything he knew was wrong. But if you took a guy from 1918 and dropped him into 2023 in Ukraine, it’d still take a lot of retraining, but it would all fit into his existing mental framework.
The thing is that looking at history shows how wrong this is. One of the reasons the Crimean War and the American Civil War were so bloody was that weapons and thus military doctrine was advancing so quickly that officers were finding their tactical education was being rendered obsolete in real time, resulting in tactics created in the era of smooth bore muskets and mass formations running headlong into minie balls and rifles, with bloody consequences. And this has continued - you can see how the lessons of each war get learned just to see new conflicts create new problems and new doctrine.
To be fair in the Civil War leadership was often bad because most of the officer core was extremely inexperienced. Except at the highest ranks, even generals were often barely out of west point. It's not a coincidence that most of the more successful officers were veterans of the Civil War. On top of that promotion was messy: officers were less promoted on merit and more on who could give the best stories to papers back home.
“We put a bunch of rivets in to this armor, +1 AC because metal”
“Won’t the arrows and swords just go through the rivets”?
“Nah”
I was always under the impression that the steel of the rivets was just the securing mechanism, of the underlying plates.
Hmmm... hard to describe. To the Paints!
First picture shows a side on view, of two layers of leather, steel disks between, riveted to the outer layer. Second shows a cutaway view, if the outside layer were removed.
Why put the rivets on the outside? Because you want the flat side of the disks being against the side that's got the fleshy bits pressed against it. Why not put the steel on the outside? Again, because you'ld still need some knob of metal on the inside to attach it.
Basically, from what Wiki says, Brigandine armour, but using disks as opposed to oblong plates, and trading weight savings and flexibility for coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandine
Yeah, what about my giant insect carapace splint mail?
Splint mail is weird in d&d, because while there were a bunch of armors that sort of fit what they seem to be describing with it, it isn’t a historical term and the written descriptions and illustrations seem wildly inconsistent as to what in the hell it actually is.
Edit: and in regards to the studded picture, that’s fine but physics being what they are if you have any big gaps like that piercing weapons with a lot of force behind them are just going to try to slide between them. That’s why when you have things like lorica segmentata all the plates overlap.
Really interesting article on 5e/BG3’s interpretation of armor and by extension D&D and fantasy armor in general.
Lots of things I’d never really thought about but that make sense (for example that ring mail and studded leather armor are pretty much made up, why bother hammering tons of riveted studs or rings into a leather backing when you could use much cheaper and more effective metal plates and make a brigandine or scaled set instead?)
One thing I think he under states a bit is in regards to leather, though he does cover it.
So the idea of a cheap, flexible, lightweight set of leather armor (“rogues leather”) is pretty much bullshit. Through most of history in most places the basic form of armor has been quilted or layered cloth based (linen, etc). Europe, Asia, Africa, etc, even Mesoamerica. This kind of armor was actually pretty decently effective and often formed the basis for other types of armor. For example take a quilted gambeson and rivet some metal plates on and you have a decent scaled or brigandine coat. It was often also used as an undergarment, for example a quilted cloth shirt or gambeson with a mail shirt or lorica segmentata or whatever over top of it. I feel like its important to mention that because people think of padded or quilted armor as being shit and it really wasn’t- it was a mainstay in most cultures including Europe for most of history, and even now modern kevlar armors use a lot of the same principles, just with better fabrics.
So here’s the deal. We think of leather as being like leather jacket or belt leather, like biker gear, and in fantasy this seems to be just used as armor itself. That’s an option for clothing but its not really very protective. In the post gunpowder period thicker leather coats and shirts (buff coats) replaced linen or cotton quilted ones in the role of an underarmor, and it seems these were used at times before by steppe nomads, etc. However, despite having access to these they were rarely used by the greeks, romans, medieval combatants, etc - in other words, people expecting to do serious melee combat. So a reasonable question may have been whether later leather garments were more protective or simply that melee protection became less important in an increasingly firearm centric world and leather was preferred for other reasons (weatherproofing, durability, etc). So light leather armors shouldn’t really have much better stats than padded or quilted necessarily.
Regardless, these kinds of quilted and leather coats and shirts are just that - shirts and coats. A buff coat or gambeson basically looks like a raincoat. And either are reasonable things for a scout or less extravagantly equipped infantryman to be wearing. If your rogue is sneaking around in an urban setting then maybe just a shirt, and maybe a preference for fabric over leather. A coat is going to be more protective of course, but more restrictive (ever imagine trying to sneak around somewhere in a heavy leather trench coat? Imagine the same thing but about twice as thick) and someone wearing a leather buff coat or quilted gambeson with nothing else is definitely going to look more like someone preparing for rainy season than a theif or assassin. Dom gear or biker gear is of course fine as an aesthetic choice for clothing but not protective at all.
You might say, most of the time leather armor as shown in games and movies isn’t just a shirt or coat though. What about my armor with leather grieves and thick leather chest plates and shoulderguards? What about my skyrim leather or WOW leather?
Did those exist? Sure, yeah they did, but with a caveat. Heavy leather armor generally doesn’t survive well, unfortunately, but we have evidence of what they probably used in art and written text in Europe and the Middle East and here’s the thing. Leather armor was thick and hard. Once you get beyond the simple leather jerkin or coat you get into leather that was intended as a cheaper metal substitute. You get into “boiled leather”, which was treated to make as hard and thick as possible, then also most likely covered in an adhesive of some sort. In the East laquer was used, Europeans didn’t have laquer so probably had to make do with glues. Regardless, what you ended up with was something the texture and feel of almost plastic. Imagine ancient old leather chests. It was used the same way they would used metal plates - by riveting them to a cloth base or strapping them together with leather straps, or by fashioning them into plates. They were effective and cheap, but the idea of a rogue wearing them is somewhat silly. A boiled leather breastplate or brigandine or whatever would have the same drawbacks as a metal one for the most part. You could wear a gambeson, throw a chain hauberk on over it (or skip if you can’t afford it as mail was expensive), and toss a boiled leather breastplate, shoulder pads, greaves, etc over top of it and have something reasonably effective that would look all skyrim-y but you would have the same issues as someone in metal armor. A lot of Samurai armors that didn’t use iron were basically this with laquer coating (and the leather plates arranged in a lamellar pattern), but you wouldn’t see a fully battle geared samurai sneaking about anywhere.
This is obviously a conversation that has been going around for awhile, but I'm glad to see ACOUP take it on, because they handle it with their typical thoroughness and research. I'm glad to have a link to send someone so I don't have to link Shadiversity anymore!
Yeah, what about my giant insect carapace splint mail?
Splint mail is weird in d&d, because while there were a bunch of armors that sort of fit what they seem to be describing with it, it isn’t a historical term and the written descriptions and illustrations seem wildly inconsistent as to what in the hell it actually is.
Edit: and in regards to the studded picture, that’s fine but physics being what they are if you have any big gaps like that piercing weapons with a lot of force behind them are just going to try to slide between them. That’s why when you have things like lorica segmentata all the plates overlap.
I just like that you sidestepped the giant insect part
But yeah, the D&D armor types is more about wanting variety in the descriptions to map to tiers of protection without leaning on +1/2/3 etc. too much.
And that the nerds that built the system weren’t like, historians.
Yeah, what about my giant insect carapace splint mail?
Splint mail is weird in d&d, because while there were a bunch of armors that sort of fit what they seem to be describing with it, it isn’t a historical term and the written descriptions and illustrations seem wildly inconsistent as to what in the hell it actually is.
Edit: and in regards to the studded picture, that’s fine but physics being what they are if you have any big gaps like that piercing weapons with a lot of force behind them are just going to try to slide between them. That’s why when you have things like lorica segmentata all the plates overlap.
I just like that you sidestepped the giant insect part
But yeah, the D&D armor types is more about wanting variety in the descriptions to map to tiers of protection without leaning on +1/2/3 etc. too much.
And that the nerds that built the system weren’t like, historians.
Yeah, and its understandable that they wouldn’t have the access to reference materials in the early 80s that we do now.
I feel like it does make things feel better to at least be plausible from a technical and historical perspective though.
And sometimes stuff that is inconsistent or completely unrealistic or impractical does hurt immersion a bit, especially when the game is styled more ”seriously” rather than being cartoonishly over the top like World of Warcraft or Warhammer.
Like there was some random breastplate in BG3 my character got. Its a breastplate - ok. It has a leather coat underneath- ok great there. But in the coat there is a giant V slit that goes all the way up to my character’s waist and uncovers his crotch which seems to just have pants underneath… Why would someone make armor like that? Did they just hate dicks for some reason or what?
Edit: BG3 is just weird in general though. Like it seems like the designers know you should layer fabric, leather, mail, and plate in armor sets and that coats are good, but sometimes they just sort of go inexplicably wrong. Like crotches in general seem to be underprotected ( having leather skirts covering the legs is fine but lets be real no one wants to get stabbed in the crotch), sometimes the layering is wierd (bikini plate on top of leather and fabric shirts for example) and then sometimes they just lose the plot entirely. Like there’s a chain shirt (+2 I think) that when you put it on a female character seems to just be a stylized Chinese-style jacket. Umm.. forget something? Is the chain shirt under the jacket or what?
Jealous Deva on
+1
Options
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Listen, the characters in BG3 are so horny they're willing to take the added risk of crotch stab in exchange for faster access to the bone zone when the opportunity arises (arouses?).
I guess that explains why the chainmail shirt laces at the front.
“Hey you have that on backwards”
“No, I like it this way”
“Have it your way, but you know the first time a wild sword swing catches a lace it’s going to unravel and your chest is going to be exposed.”
“Know it? I’m counting on it”
I haven't played BG but plenty of similar games, and the idea of historical armor that you'd wear for more than a day of battle (with a staff to get you in and out of the full plate) vs fantasy settings where you more or less wear like your daily adventure clothes like they're dungarees that protect you from ghouls with crossbows does leave some differences in design to handwave.
The Githyanki plate is especially funny. On Lae'zel, it's intended wearer, it has a lot of gaps. Put it on a halfling, though, and it becomes reasonable coverage.
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Even just a linen gambeson, especially full length, is heavy and hot as hell to wear for extended periods. Throw on a chainmail shirt and hiking for 8 hours is going to be hellish, if not debilitating.
IIRC that’s what jerkins and the like were for. Typically sleeveless and cut shorter than combat gear so the person didn’t overheat but affording some minimal chest protection.
I don’t imagine most people would walk around with something like a chain shirt in everyday life even if they could. Considering how much something like that was worth, they could very well have the opposite of the intended effect.
I saw a documentary where Abe Lincoln killed vampires so taking Trump out would have been child's play.
But seriously we cannot really engage with how the world was in the 19th Century. It's like the old concept of if you had a time machine, how far back could you go and still be able to interact with the world properly - answer, not very far! The world in 1800s was wild by our standards. Even accounting for disease, the smell would overpower modern humans very quickly.
I saw something recently that basically said if you took a general off of a battlefield in 1813 and dropped him into 1913, he’d be able to be caught up to then-current military doctrine, strategy, and tactics within a day or two. If you dropped him into 1918, he’d be completely lost, and would need to be retrained from scratch. Nothing would make sense, everything he knew was wrong. But if you took a guy from 1918 and dropped him into 2023 in Ukraine, it’d still take a lot of retraining, but it would all fit into his existing mental framework.
The thing is that looking at history shows how wrong this is. One of the reasons the Crimean War and the American Civil War were so bloody was that weapons and thus military doctrine was advancing so quickly that officers were finding their tactical education was being rendered obsolete in real time, resulting in tactics created in the era of smooth bore muskets and mass formations running headlong into minie balls and rifles, with bloody consequences. And this has continued - you can see how the lessons of each war get learned just to see new conflicts create new problems and new doctrine.
Not exactly. The actual conditions on the battlefield advanced quickly, but doctrine, strategy, and tactics did not. And when those three things did advance (there was trench warfare in the American civil war!), they were often forgotten. Everyone was very slow to learn and change. The result was the first three years of WWI being a bloody mess as the militaries of the time tried to figure out what the hell they were doing. And then of course things got even bloodier at the end, because trenches were no longer enough to keep men alive once doctrine, strategy, and tactics had caught up with technology.
When France went to war in 1914, they did so on bright blue coats and red pants, and were expected to march at an orderly and disciplined rate towards the enemy. And as I think Dan Carlin put it, if you wanted to see what the French cavalry at Waterloo looked like, you can find photos of French cavalry from 1914. All of the major powers had shell crisis early in the war, because they failed to understand just how many shells would be used daily. Lloyd George first made his mark by resolving the shell crisis in Britain while switching from mostly high fragmentation shells to high explosive shells, which were more effective against entrenched enemies. At the start of WWI, the airplane was an interesting curiosity, and there was no such thing as a tank. Even the structure of the armies was predicated on a different kind of warfare. The British were weird in having a mid-sized fully professional army, while the other major powers mostly used conscripts who did a few years in the army and then made up enormous reserves that would be mobilized in times of need. The overall strategies being planned in 1913 called for short, mobile campaigns that would get people back home quickly - neither Schlieffen nor Moltke ever dreamed that failure in the opening attack on France would result in four years of attritional warfare.
It wasn’t until 1917 or so that generals like Herbert Plumer, Arthur Currie, and John Monash on the Entente side and Oskar von Hutier on the German side finally put together effective solutions to trench warfare, using combined arms, bite-and-hold tactics, and infiltration tactics - all three seeing use today in Ukraine. A general from 1918 told about the use of satellite communications would be able to fit it into his mental framework alongside radio and telephones, satellite reconnaissance is similar to airplane reconnaissance, drones attacking trenches aren’t that conceptually different from how biplanes would strafe trenches, he’d be familiar with tanks, etc. A 1913 general does not even come close to getting that. As late as the Nivelle offensive in 1917 and the third battle of Ypres, there were commanders who expected troops would be successful so long as they showed proper dash or elan.
So yes, technology had moved on from 1813. Hilaire Belloc wrote his famous lines about the Maxim gun in 1898, and that was far from the only innovation in the intervening century. But that’s not what I was referencing. It took over three years of industrial war for doctrine, strategy, and tactics to finally fully move out of the Napoleonic era, and can find the proof of that under a thin layer of dirt that stretches from Switzerland to the Channel coast. Once those things did move on, virtually every practical piece of modern warfare was present in one form or another.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
IIRC that’s what jerkins and the like were for. Typically sleeveless and cut shorter than combat gear so the person didn’t overheat but affording some minimal chest protection.
I don’t imagine most people would walk around with something like a chain shirt in everyday life even if they could. Considering how much something like that was worth, they could very well have the opposite of the intended effect.
According to the sagas, Olav Tryggvason, King of Norway 995–1000, would go for swims in his mail shirt. He also allegedly ran across the oars while his men were rowing his longship and would juggle swords.
Tangentially related: Olav was killed (maybe) in the Battle of Svolder in an ambush by the Swedes, Danes, and the King's Norwegian enemies. This was a naval battle, which the vikings fought by tying their ships together and then duking it out. Fighting by the king's side was Einar Tambarskjelve* ("Bow-shaker"), the best archer in Norway. During the battle, an arrow hit Einar's bow, and when he drew it it snapped. The dialogue, from the sagas:
Olav: "Hva brast så høyt?" (What was it that snapped so loudly?)
Einar: "Norge ut av hendene dine, Konge." (Norway out of your hands, King.)
The king then gave Einar his bow, but Einar was so strong he pulled it so far back the arrow no longer touched the bow.
Einar: "For veik, for veik er Kongens bue." (Too weak, too weak is the King's bow.)
Einar then fought on with sword and shield.
Eventually, after the Swedes and Danes had fled, the Norwegian enemies proved to hardy and the King's ship was overwhelmed. Olav threw himself in the water, in full battle gear, and was never seen again. Although there is a persistent rumor that he survived, and joined a monastery.
The dialogue cited above are fairly common idioms in Norway to this day, especially the "hva brast så høyt" exchange, with "Norge" replaced by whatever has just been lost.
* Probably not. The dialogue here is from Snorre's saga of the kings of Norway, but older sources places Einar, and the dialogue, with another king at another battle. If he was at Svolder, he'd be fighting against his in-laws.
A mail shirt is not very heavy. From historical examples the estimated weight of pre-crusades era mail weighs in at about 10kg (any mail not based on ridiculously overweight recreation mail that uses absurdly thick rings), and much of the weight was on the waist rather than the shoulders (by using a thick and tightly cinched belt). There is also no evidence that the vikings would use padded underarmor (as their fighting style was predominantly about quick raids)
There are two eras where combat armor (tournament armor is a completely different thing) reaches its peak weight:
12th century crusades and early 13th, as it's full coverage and very dense mail with padded armor underneath and eventually a coat-of-plates on top of that (although when used with the coat-of-plates the density of the mail decreases). Most likely a response to islamic horse archers and cavalry on cavalry clashes.
Mid-16th century with the "bulletproof cuirassier", wearing pistol-proof three-quarters plate (covering head to knee with). Notably thicker than the plate of the 15th century since it was designed to ward of cavalry pistols at anything but point blank. In the case of the best armor, even at point blank. During an engagement at the Battle of Roundway Down the parliamentarian Arthur Haselrig (commander of Haselrig's cuirassiers, aka The London Lobsters) was shot more than 3 times at point blank by Royalist forces, but none of the shots penetrated his armor. Not even a point blank shot to the side of his helmet.
Medieval/renaissance suits of plate weighed between 15 and 25kg. Examples of Cuirassier plate measure in at between 30 and 45kg, which (along with tournament armor and various combat armours designed for commanders who were never supposed to move around much) has given rise to the myth that mail and plate were super heavy.
By the Napoleonic era the coverage of armor had been much reduced. The most heavily armoured troops, napoleonic cuirassiers, wore only helmets and breastplates. But on the other hand these 9kg breastplates could actually ward off musket bullets (although not at point blank range).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
IIRC that’s what jerkins and the like were for. Typically sleeveless and cut shorter than combat gear so the person didn’t overheat but affording some minimal chest protection.
I don’t imagine most people would walk around with something like a chain shirt in everyday life even if they could. Considering how much something like that was worth, they could very well have the opposite of the intended effect.
According to the sagas, Olav Tryggvason, King of Norway 995–1000, would go for swims in his mail shirt. He also allegedly ran across the oars while his men were rowing his longship and would juggle swords.
Tangentially related: Olav was killed (maybe) in the Battle of Svolder in an ambush by the Swedes, Danes, and the King's Norwegian enemies. This was a naval battle, which the vikings fought by tying their ships together and then duking it out. Fighting by the king's side was Einar Tambarskjelve* ("Bow-shaker"), the best archer in Norway. During the battle, an arrow hit Einar's bow, and when he drew it it snapped. The dialogue, from the sagas:
Olav: "Hva brast så høyt?" (What was it that snapped so loudly?)
Einar: "Norge ut av hendene dine, Konge." (Norway out of your hands, King.)
The king then gave Einar his bow, but Einar was so strong he pulled it so far back the arrow no longer touched the bow.
Einar: "For veik, for veik er Kongens bue." (Too weak, too weak is the King's bow.)
Einar then fought on with sword and shield.
Eventually, after the Swedes and Danes had fled, the Norwegian enemies proved to hardy and the King's ship was overwhelmed. Olav threw himself in the water, in full battle gear, and was never seen again. Although there is a persistent rumor that he survived, and joined a monastery.
The dialogue cited above are fairly common idioms in Norway to this day, especially the "hva brast så høyt" exchange, with "Norge" replaced by whatever has just been lost.
* Probably not. The dialogue here is from Snorre's saga of the kings of Norway, but older sources places Einar, and the dialogue, with another king at another battle. If he was at Svolder, he'd be fighting against his in-laws.
In my ten years singing in a Swedish academic men's choir, I can recall three songs we did in Norwegian. Two of these are about Olav Tryggvason.
The first, simply named after him, is about him leaving and not coming back.
The second, Land-Kænning, is about him returning from a viking trip, seeing the high coastal cliffs, likening them to temple walls, and declaring that Norway shall be a Christian nation.
A mail shirt is not very heavy. From historical examples the estimated weight of pre-crusades era mail weighs in at about 10kg (any mail not based on ridiculously overweight recreation mail that uses absurdly thick rings), and much of the weight was on the waist rather than the shoulders (by using a thick and tightly cinched belt). There is also no evidence that the vikings would use padded underarmor (as their fighting style was predominantly about quick raids)
Yeah, people who've never handled the stuff always hugely overstate how cumbersome it is. I made a hauberk some years back. Despite it being quite overweight due to the materials used, and despite me not exactly being a beefy warrior of epic legend, it was surprisingly comfortable to wear and move around in, with a weight distribution hugely more forgiving than I would have expected. The adjustments I had to make while wearing it weren't wrestling with bearing the weight; they were mostly adjusting to a different centre of gravity.
An actual, properly made one with thinner/flattened rings could only be an improvement on what I made.
A mail shirt is not very heavy. From historical examples the estimated weight of pre-crusades era mail weighs in at about 10kg (any mail not based on ridiculously overweight recreation mail that uses absurdly thick rings), and much of the weight was on the waist rather than the shoulders (by using a thick and tightly cinched belt). There is also no evidence that the vikings would use padded underarmor (as their fighting style was predominantly about quick raids)
There are two eras where combat armor (tournament armor is a completely different thing) reaches its peak weight:
12th century crusades and early 13th, as it's full coverage and very dense mail with padded armor underneath and eventually a coat-of-plates on top of that (although when used with the coat-of-plates the density of the mail decreases). Most likely a response to islamic horse archers and cavalry on cavalry clashes.
Mid-16th century with the "bulletproof cuirassier", wearing pistol-proof three-quarters plate (covering head to knee with). Notably thicker than the plate of the 15th century since it was designed to ward of cavalry pistols at anything but point blank. In the case of the best armor, even at point blank. During an engagement at the Battle of Roundway Down the parliamentarian Arthur Haselrig (commander of Haselrig's cuirassiers, aka The London Lobsters) was shot more than 3 times at point blank by Royalist forces, but none of the shots penetrated his armor. Not even a point blank shot to the side of his helmet.
Medieval/renaissance suits of plate weighed between 15 and 25kg. Examples of Cuirassier plate measure in at between 30 and 45kg, which (along with tournament armor and various combat armours designed for commanders who were never supposed to move around much) has given rise to the myth that mail and plate were super heavy.
By the Napoleonic era the coverage of armor had been much reduced. The most heavily armoured troops, napoleonic cuirassiers, wore only helmets and breastplates. But on the other hand these 9kg breastplates could actually ward off musket bullets (although not at point blank range).
Sure it could be done, long term you are probably going to want that underarmor or at least a nice set of underclothes to prevent chafing if nothing else, but people run around on long hikes with 50lbs of hiking gear all the time, 20lbs of mail shirt should be doable if you aren’t carrying a ton of other gear.
I’d think a bigger issue would be that mail was ridiculously expensive and probably not the kind of thing that you’d want to risk getting damaged or stolen if you didn’t have to. Even a relatively wealthy knight probably couldn’t afford to casually replace one every year from wear and tear or just write off the loss if they got mugged for it.
People generally underestimate how expensive armor was, even compared to decent weapons. I remember reading something about the Gauls, who had very good blacksmithing but didn’t have access to things like the Roman state or medieval feudal system to help subsidize their gear and often had to fight with what they could afford. IIRC the quote was something like “for every 10 spears they had a helmet, for every 10 helmets, a (metal armor) coat”.
Traveling nobility sometimes had a mail/brigandine explicitly for traveling. Especially nobility of the poorer sort who couldn't afford more than a handful of servants (perhaps just a single squire).
a. You need a servant and a lot of time to get in and out of the more complicated armours of the renaissance era.
b. Your horse and weapons would identify your wealth anyway.
c. Traveling during the medieval and renaissance period was quite dangerous (the roads didn't really become safe until the 20th century), and almost everyone was armed. If you're wearing mail (even just a lighter shirt protecting your torso) and a helmet you're considerably harder to rob.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
People generally underestimate how expensive armor was, even compared to decent weapons. I remember reading something about the Gauls, who had very good blacksmithing but didn’t have access to things like the Roman state or medieval feudal system to help subsidize their gear and often had to fight with what they could afford. IIRC the quote was something like “for every 10 spears they had a helmet, for every 10 helmets, a (metal) coat”.
One of the neat things about Gallic metalworking is that if you're looking at Roman armour, you can actually when they conquered and, eventually, lost Gaul by looking at the legionary helmets. They start to improve dramatically after Rome gets access to Gallic smiths, in terms of overall design, how efficiently they're made, little protective alterations, etc. When that part of the empire unravels in the 400s there's an immediate (like, a handful of years), dramatic plummet in quality where they're clearly cutting corners, relying on less skill-intensive methods to piece helmets together at the expense of protectiveness, etc.
There's a lot of stuff around the empire where you could point to overall wealth or other resources to explain things getting better or worse, but that's one area where you it can be claimed pretty confidently "it was the presence/absense of Those Guys In Particular driving this one thing."
People generally underestimate how expensive armor was, even compared to decent weapons. I remember reading something about the Gauls, who had very good blacksmithing but didn’t have access to things like the Roman state or medieval feudal system to help subsidize their gear and often had to fight with what they could afford. IIRC the quote was something like “for every 10 spears they had a helmet, for every 10 helmets, a (metal) coat”.
One of the neat things about Gallic metalworking is that if you're looking at Roman armour, you can actually when they conquered and, eventually, lost Gaul by looking at the legionary helmets. They start to improve dramatically after Rome gets access to Gallic smiths, in terms of overall design, how efficiently they're made, little protective alterations, etc. When that part of the empire unravels in the 400s there's an immediate (like, a handful of years), dramatic plummet in quality where they're clearly cutting corners, relying on less skill-intensive methods to piece helmets together at the expense of protectiveness, etc.
There's a lot of stuff around the empire where you could point to overall wealth or other resources to explain things getting better or worse, but that's one area where you it can be claimed pretty confidently "it was the presence/absense of Those Guys In Particular driving this one thing."
The Romans (and Greeks) also explicitly copied a ton of their gear designs straight from the Gauls or other Celtic people. That example was specifically used by a professor I had about the danger of assuming who a people were or were related to based solely on what kind of archeological artifacts they produced (as is often done with, for example, finding greek style pottery artifacts somewhere and assuming it was a greek colony).
“If we only went by military artifacts, we would assume Celts were the most widespread people in the classical world.”
Jealous Deva on
+8
Options
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Boy do I love me an Unmitigated Pedantry article. I don't even care why they are written, they're just so great.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
IIRC that’s what jerkins and the like were for. Typically sleeveless and cut shorter than combat gear so the person didn’t overheat but affording some minimal chest protection.
I don’t imagine most people would walk around with something like a chain shirt in everyday life even if they could. Considering how much something like that was worth, they could very well have the opposite of the intended effect.
According to the sagas, Olav Tryggvason, King of Norway 995–1000, would go for swims in his mail shirt. He also allegedly ran across the oars while his men were rowing his longship and would juggle swords.
Tangentially related: Olav was killed (maybe) in the Battle of Svolder in an ambush by the Swedes, Danes, and the King's Norwegian enemies. This was a naval battle, which the vikings fought by tying their ships together and then duking it out. Fighting by the king's side was Einar Tambarskjelve* ("Bow-shaker"), the best archer in Norway. During the battle, an arrow hit Einar's bow, and when he drew it it snapped. The dialogue, from the sagas:
Olav: "Hva brast så høyt?" (What was it that snapped so loudly?)
Einar: "Norge ut av hendene dine, Konge." (Norway out of your hands, King.)
The king then gave Einar his bow, but Einar was so strong he pulled it so far back the arrow no longer touched the bow.
Einar: "For veik, for veik er Kongens bue." (Too weak, too weak is the King's bow.)
Einar then fought on with sword and shield.
Eventually, after the Swedes and Danes had fled, the Norwegian enemies proved to hardy and the King's ship was overwhelmed. Olav threw himself in the water, in full battle gear, and was never seen again. Although there is a persistent rumor that he survived, and joined a monastery.
The dialogue cited above are fairly common idioms in Norway to this day, especially the "hva brast så høyt" exchange, with "Norge" replaced by whatever has just been lost.
* Probably not. The dialogue here is from Snorre's saga of the kings of Norway, but older sources places Einar, and the dialogue, with another king at another battle. If he was at Svolder, he'd be fighting against his in-laws.
In my ten years singing in a Swedish academic men's choir, I can recall three songs we did in Norwegian. Two of these are about Olav Tryggvason.
The first, simply named after him, is about him leaving and not coming back.
The second, Land-Kænning, is about him returning from a viking trip, seeing the high coastal cliffs, likening them to temple walls, and declaring that Norway shall be a Christian nation.
Good music.
The first song is specifically about Olav not returning after the Battle of Svolder. Narrator might be intended to be his wife, as it was she who bullied him into going to Svolder in the first place instead of hiding out in Nidaros, the capital.
There is another song about Olav, too (indirectly): Soga of Tormod Kark ("The Saga of Tormod Kark"). I told the story about Kark before in this thread ("The Earl in the Pigsty"). The band Isenkram ("Hardware Store") wrote Soga of Tormod Kark in 1974.
In the refrain, Håkon, Earl of Lade and de facto ruler of Norway, is speaking to his slave Tormod Kark. They are both hidden in a pit dug under a pigsty, hiding from Olav Tryggvason and his men. It is in the middle of the night, and both Håkon and Kark are aware of a huge bounty Olav has put on Håkon's head, dead or alive. Håkon singing:
Hei-hå, hei-hå, hei-hå du Tormod Kark.
Vår lagnad den vert lik.
For vi to vart fødd i same natt og saman skal vi døy.
Ein træl vert ikkje fri
om han drep sin jarl for å tene ein annan mann.
For stormenn er like feig og falsk og umoralsk,
så svik du meg, så svik vel kongen deg.
Loose translation (me):
Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho oh Tormod Kark.
Our destiny will be the same.
For we two were born in the same night, and together we will die.
A slave won't become free
if he kills is Earl to serve another man.
For lords are just as cowardly and false and immoral,
so if you betray me, the King will surely betray you.
Second to last verse (narrator singing), after the previous verse ended with calling Olav "a pious Christian":
Og trælen fekk si løn
ei løn frå ein monark,
for kongesverdet kvein så kvasst
at hodelaus vart Kark.
The slave got his reward
a reward from a monarch
for the royal sword cut so sharp
that Kark became headless.
What I'm saying is you can tell this was written in the 70s counter-culture movement. My mother used to sing this song occasionally, to the annoyance of her father, an army colonel.
Tormod Kark killing Håkon Jarl for the 1899 edition of Snorre's saga of the Norwegian kings.
(Footnote: It was Håkon's sons who ambushed Olav at Svolder with their Danish and Swedish allies. Norway then became part of Denmark (again) with Håkon's sons as viceroys.)
Posts
Except limitless growth isn't just possible, it's inevitable. Because the definition of economic growth involves technological invention. We only stop growing if we stop thinking, and given human nature we only stop thinking if we're dead.
Growing the economy doesn't require an endless supply of new material, it just happens to be the easiest way of growing the economy given the current state.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
When ROI=0 you have reached fully automated luxury gay space communism, congratulations
A 10% average growth, year after year, shouldn't be bad. But if the percentage isn't increasing every year, or god-forbid drops (but is still not losing money), then people lose their shit.
Heck, we see it in US military spending. Can't remember the numbers, but Biden proposed a cut to the increase in spending, and people lost their goddamn minds. The number was still above inflation (I think it was 6%, reduced to 5%, with inflation below that, and two expensive wars no longer on the table), but it was less of an increase than last year, and therefore, bad.
That's not a problem with capitalism, that's a problem with deliberate corporate and policy decisions beginning in the late 70s/early 80s and continuing to today.
Was it a cut to growth or merely saying “let’s just give them what they ask for and not the bonus congress always sends them”
Because the amount that congress always gives them in excess of what they ask for is 50% more every year than the number it’s estimated is required to house every unhoused person in the US
Yeah this was the real reason for the countless disastrous wars with Parthia and the Sassanids. Rome needed loot to fund its military. The other borders were Germania (lots of fighters, very little loot), Eastern Europe/the steppes(same), the sahara (no loot here), and Persia.
Persia was the only bordering power in the imperial era with significant wealth. Sure you could scrape up some agricultural land from Britain or Central Europe but there weren’t functioning economies that Rome could tax and coopt or treasuries they could steal in the same way as in the East.
But Persia was always a hard nut to crack for Rome in a way that the greek successor states or various European barbarians weren’t.
The thing is that looking at history shows how wrong this is. One of the reasons the Crimean War and the American Civil War were so bloody was that weapons and thus military doctrine was advancing so quickly that officers were finding their tactical education was being rendered obsolete in real time, resulting in tactics created in the era of smooth bore muskets and mass formations running headlong into minie balls and rifles, with bloody consequences. And this has continued - you can see how the lessons of each war get learned just to see new conflicts create new problems and new doctrine.
Really interesting article on 5e/BG3’s interpretation of armor and by extension D&D and fantasy armor in general.
Lots of things I’d never really thought about but that make sense (for example that ring mail and studded leather armor are pretty much made up, why bother hammering tons of riveted studs or rings into a leather backing when you could use much cheaper and more effective metal plates and make a brigandine or scaled set instead?)
One thing I think he under states a bit is in regards to leather, though he does cover it.
So the idea of a cheap, flexible, lightweight set of leather armor (“rogues leather”) is pretty much bullshit. Through most of history in most places the basic form of armor has been quilted or layered cloth based (linen, etc). Europe, Asia, Africa, etc, even Mesoamerica. This kind of armor was actually pretty decently effective and often formed the basis for other types of armor. For example take a quilted gambeson and rivet some metal plates on and you have a decent scaled or brigandine coat. It was often also used as an undergarment, for example a quilted cloth shirt or gambeson with a mail shirt or lorica segmentata or whatever over top of it. I feel like its important to mention that because people think of padded or quilted armor as being shit and it really wasn’t- it was a mainstay in most cultures including Europe for most of history, and even now modern kevlar armors use a lot of the same principles, just with better fabrics.
So here’s the deal. We think of leather as being like leather jacket or belt leather, like biker gear, and in fantasy this seems to be just used as armor itself. That’s an option for clothing but its not really very protective. In the post gunpowder period thicker leather coats and shirts (buff coats) replaced linen or cotton quilted ones in the role of an underarmor, and it seems these were used at times before by steppe nomads, etc. However, despite having access to these they were rarely used by the greeks, romans, medieval combatants, etc - in other words, people expecting to do serious melee combat. So a reasonable question may have been whether later leather garments were more protective or simply that melee protection became less important in an increasingly firearm centric world and leather was preferred for other reasons (weatherproofing, durability, etc). So light leather armors shouldn’t really have much better stats than padded or quilted necessarily.
Regardless, these kinds of quilted and leather coats and shirts are just that - shirts and coats. A buff coat or gambeson basically looks like a raincoat. And either are reasonable things for a scout or less extravagantly equipped infantryman to be wearing. If your rogue is sneaking around in an urban setting then maybe just a shirt, and maybe a preference for fabric over leather. A coat is going to be more protective of course, but more restrictive (ever imagine trying to sneak around somewhere in a heavy leather trench coat? Imagine the same thing but about twice as thick) and someone wearing a leather buff coat or quilted gambeson with nothing else is definitely going to look more like someone preparing for rainy season than a theif or assassin. Dom gear or biker gear is of course fine as an aesthetic choice for clothing but not protective at all.
You might say, most of the time leather armor as shown in games and movies isn’t just a shirt or coat though. What about my armor with leather grieves and thick leather chest plates and shoulderguards? What about my skyrim leather or WOW leather?
Did those exist? Sure, yeah they did, but with a caveat. Heavy leather armor generally doesn’t survive well, unfortunately, but we have evidence of what they probably used in art and written text in Europe and the Middle East and here’s the thing. Leather armor was thick and hard. Once you get beyond the simple leather jerkin or coat you get into leather that was intended as a cheaper metal substitute. You get into “boiled leather”, which was treated to make as hard and thick as possible, then also most likely covered in an adhesive of some sort. In the East laquer was used, Europeans didn’t have laquer so probably had to make do with glues. Regardless, what you ended up with was something the texture and feel of almost plastic. Imagine ancient old leather chests. It was used the same way they would used metal plates - by riveting them to a cloth base or strapping them together with leather straps, or by fashioning them into plates. They were effective and cheap, but the idea of a rogue wearing them is somewhat silly. A boiled leather breastplate or brigandine or whatever would have the same drawbacks as a metal one for the most part. You could wear a gambeson, throw a chain hauberk on over it (or skip if you can’t afford it as mail was expensive), and toss a boiled leather breastplate, shoulder pads, greaves, etc over top of it and have something reasonably effective that would look all skyrim-y but you would have the same issues as someone in metal armor. A lot of Samurai armors that didn’t use iron were basically this with laquer coating (and the leather plates arranged in a lamellar pattern), but you wouldn’t see a fully battle geared samurai sneaking about anywhere.
A high quality buff coat will provide decent protection against pistols and the cavalry swords of the era, it will provide good padding for the breastplate and it will protect you if you fall off a horse.
It's very bad against thrusting weapons like spears, pikes, lances, arrows etc. With the exception of pikes all of those had conveniently fallen out of use during the 17th century, and you didn't charge light and mid-weight cavalry into pikes. The buff coat falls out of use with the introduction of socket bayonettes, since all infantry now had spiky-bits and firearms were becoming much more powerful and reliable.
Also, "studded leather" never existed. There were leather with studs, but that was brigandine where the studs held metal plates in place (and the use of leather for brigandine was rare. Linen was the preferred material).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
“We put a bunch of rivets in to this armor, +1 AC because metal”
“Won’t the arrows and swords just go through the rivets”?
“Nah”
And actually, no they won't go through the rivets.
Around on the other hand... oh yeah around works real damn well. The sword and arrow will still plow through following the path of least resistance.
What's the current state of research/knowledge about Linothorax, anyway?
I don’t know if there is or ever will be any definitive answer since nonmetallic armor just doesn’t hang around for thousands of years for us to study, but it seems likely to have been some form of padded and/or quilted linen armor.
I was always under the impression that the steel of the rivets was just the securing mechanism, of the underlying plates.
Hmmm... hard to describe. To the Paints!
First picture shows a side on view, of two layers of leather, steel disks between, riveted to the outer layer. Second shows a cutaway view, if the outside layer were removed.
Why put the rivets on the outside? Because you want the flat side of the disks being against the side that's got the fleshy bits pressed against it. Why not put the steel on the outside? Again, because you'ld still need some knob of metal on the inside to attach it.
Basically, from what Wiki says, Brigandine armour, but using disks as opposed to oblong plates, and trading weight savings and flexibility for coverage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandine
Splint mail is weird in d&d, because while there were a bunch of armors that sort of fit what they seem to be describing with it, it isn’t a historical term and the written descriptions and illustrations seem wildly inconsistent as to what in the hell it actually is.
Edit: and in regards to the studded picture, that’s fine but physics being what they are if you have any big gaps like that piercing weapons with a lot of force behind them are just going to try to slide between them. That’s why when you have things like lorica segmentata all the plates overlap.
This is obviously a conversation that has been going around for awhile, but I'm glad to see ACOUP take it on, because they handle it with their typical thoroughness and research. I'm glad to have a link to send someone so I don't have to link Shadiversity anymore!
I just like that you sidestepped the giant insect part
But yeah, the D&D armor types is more about wanting variety in the descriptions to map to tiers of protection without leaning on +1/2/3 etc. too much.
And that the nerds that built the system weren’t like, historians.
Yeah, and its understandable that they wouldn’t have the access to reference materials in the early 80s that we do now.
I feel like it does make things feel better to at least be plausible from a technical and historical perspective though.
And sometimes stuff that is inconsistent or completely unrealistic or impractical does hurt immersion a bit, especially when the game is styled more ”seriously” rather than being cartoonishly over the top like World of Warcraft or Warhammer.
Like there was some random breastplate in BG3 my character got. Its a breastplate - ok. It has a leather coat underneath- ok great there. But in the coat there is a giant V slit that goes all the way up to my character’s waist and uncovers his crotch which seems to just have pants underneath… Why would someone make armor like that? Did they just hate dicks for some reason or what?
Edit: BG3 is just weird in general though. Like it seems like the designers know you should layer fabric, leather, mail, and plate in armor sets and that coats are good, but sometimes they just sort of go inexplicably wrong. Like crotches in general seem to be underprotected ( having leather skirts covering the legs is fine but lets be real no one wants to get stabbed in the crotch), sometimes the layering is wierd (bikini plate on top of leather and fabric shirts for example) and then sometimes they just lose the plot entirely. Like there’s a chain shirt (+2 I think) that when you put it on a female character seems to just be a stylized Chinese-style jacket. Umm.. forget something? Is the chain shirt under the jacket or what?
“Hey you have that on backwards”
“No, I like it this way”
“Have it your way, but you know the first time a wild sword swing catches a lace it’s going to unravel and your chest is going to be exposed.”
“Know it? I’m counting on it”
I don’t imagine most people would walk around with something like a chain shirt in everyday life even if they could. Considering how much something like that was worth, they could very well have the opposite of the intended effect.
Not exactly. The actual conditions on the battlefield advanced quickly, but doctrine, strategy, and tactics did not. And when those three things did advance (there was trench warfare in the American civil war!), they were often forgotten. Everyone was very slow to learn and change. The result was the first three years of WWI being a bloody mess as the militaries of the time tried to figure out what the hell they were doing. And then of course things got even bloodier at the end, because trenches were no longer enough to keep men alive once doctrine, strategy, and tactics had caught up with technology.
When France went to war in 1914, they did so on bright blue coats and red pants, and were expected to march at an orderly and disciplined rate towards the enemy. And as I think Dan Carlin put it, if you wanted to see what the French cavalry at Waterloo looked like, you can find photos of French cavalry from 1914. All of the major powers had shell crisis early in the war, because they failed to understand just how many shells would be used daily. Lloyd George first made his mark by resolving the shell crisis in Britain while switching from mostly high fragmentation shells to high explosive shells, which were more effective against entrenched enemies. At the start of WWI, the airplane was an interesting curiosity, and there was no such thing as a tank. Even the structure of the armies was predicated on a different kind of warfare. The British were weird in having a mid-sized fully professional army, while the other major powers mostly used conscripts who did a few years in the army and then made up enormous reserves that would be mobilized in times of need. The overall strategies being planned in 1913 called for short, mobile campaigns that would get people back home quickly - neither Schlieffen nor Moltke ever dreamed that failure in the opening attack on France would result in four years of attritional warfare.
It wasn’t until 1917 or so that generals like Herbert Plumer, Arthur Currie, and John Monash on the Entente side and Oskar von Hutier on the German side finally put together effective solutions to trench warfare, using combined arms, bite-and-hold tactics, and infiltration tactics - all three seeing use today in Ukraine. A general from 1918 told about the use of satellite communications would be able to fit it into his mental framework alongside radio and telephones, satellite reconnaissance is similar to airplane reconnaissance, drones attacking trenches aren’t that conceptually different from how biplanes would strafe trenches, he’d be familiar with tanks, etc. A 1913 general does not even come close to getting that. As late as the Nivelle offensive in 1917 and the third battle of Ypres, there were commanders who expected troops would be successful so long as they showed proper dash or elan.
So yes, technology had moved on from 1813. Hilaire Belloc wrote his famous lines about the Maxim gun in 1898, and that was far from the only innovation in the intervening century. But that’s not what I was referencing. It took over three years of industrial war for doctrine, strategy, and tactics to finally fully move out of the Napoleonic era, and can find the proof of that under a thin layer of dirt that stretches from Switzerland to the Channel coast. Once those things did move on, virtually every practical piece of modern warfare was present in one form or another.
According to the sagas, Olav Tryggvason, King of Norway 995–1000, would go for swims in his mail shirt. He also allegedly ran across the oars while his men were rowing his longship and would juggle swords.
Tangentially related: Olav was killed (maybe) in the Battle of Svolder in an ambush by the Swedes, Danes, and the King's Norwegian enemies. This was a naval battle, which the vikings fought by tying their ships together and then duking it out. Fighting by the king's side was Einar Tambarskjelve* ("Bow-shaker"), the best archer in Norway. During the battle, an arrow hit Einar's bow, and when he drew it it snapped. The dialogue, from the sagas:
Olav: "Hva brast så høyt?" (What was it that snapped so loudly?)
Einar: "Norge ut av hendene dine, Konge." (Norway out of your hands, King.)
The king then gave Einar his bow, but Einar was so strong he pulled it so far back the arrow no longer touched the bow.
Einar: "For veik, for veik er Kongens bue." (Too weak, too weak is the King's bow.)
Einar then fought on with sword and shield.
Eventually, after the Swedes and Danes had fled, the Norwegian enemies proved to hardy and the King's ship was overwhelmed. Olav threw himself in the water, in full battle gear, and was never seen again. Although there is a persistent rumor that he survived, and joined a monastery.
The dialogue cited above are fairly common idioms in Norway to this day, especially the "hva brast så høyt" exchange, with "Norge" replaced by whatever has just been lost.
* Probably not. The dialogue here is from Snorre's saga of the kings of Norway, but older sources places Einar, and the dialogue, with another king at another battle. If he was at Svolder, he'd be fighting against his in-laws.
There are two eras where combat armor (tournament armor is a completely different thing) reaches its peak weight:
12th century crusades and early 13th, as it's full coverage and very dense mail with padded armor underneath and eventually a coat-of-plates on top of that (although when used with the coat-of-plates the density of the mail decreases). Most likely a response to islamic horse archers and cavalry on cavalry clashes.
Mid-16th century with the "bulletproof cuirassier", wearing pistol-proof three-quarters plate (covering head to knee with). Notably thicker than the plate of the 15th century since it was designed to ward of cavalry pistols at anything but point blank. In the case of the best armor, even at point blank. During an engagement at the Battle of Roundway Down the parliamentarian Arthur Haselrig (commander of Haselrig's cuirassiers, aka The London Lobsters) was shot more than 3 times at point blank by Royalist forces, but none of the shots penetrated his armor. Not even a point blank shot to the side of his helmet.
Medieval/renaissance suits of plate weighed between 15 and 25kg. Examples of Cuirassier plate measure in at between 30 and 45kg, which (along with tournament armor and various combat armours designed for commanders who were never supposed to move around much) has given rise to the myth that mail and plate were super heavy.
By the Napoleonic era the coverage of armor had been much reduced. The most heavily armoured troops, napoleonic cuirassiers, wore only helmets and breastplates. But on the other hand these 9kg breastplates could actually ward off musket bullets (although not at point blank range).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
In my ten years singing in a Swedish academic men's choir, I can recall three songs we did in Norwegian. Two of these are about Olav Tryggvason.
The first, simply named after him, is about him leaving and not coming back.
The second, Land-Kænning, is about him returning from a viking trip, seeing the high coastal cliffs, likening them to temple walls, and declaring that Norway shall be a Christian nation.
Good music.
Yeah, people who've never handled the stuff always hugely overstate how cumbersome it is. I made a hauberk some years back. Despite it being quite overweight due to the materials used, and despite me not exactly being a beefy warrior of epic legend, it was surprisingly comfortable to wear and move around in, with a weight distribution hugely more forgiving than I would have expected. The adjustments I had to make while wearing it weren't wrestling with bearing the weight; they were mostly adjusting to a different centre of gravity.
An actual, properly made one with thinner/flattened rings could only be an improvement on what I made.
Sure it could be done, long term you are probably going to want that underarmor or at least a nice set of underclothes to prevent chafing if nothing else, but people run around on long hikes with 50lbs of hiking gear all the time, 20lbs of mail shirt should be doable if you aren’t carrying a ton of other gear.
I’d think a bigger issue would be that mail was ridiculously expensive and probably not the kind of thing that you’d want to risk getting damaged or stolen if you didn’t have to. Even a relatively wealthy knight probably couldn’t afford to casually replace one every year from wear and tear or just write off the loss if they got mugged for it.
People generally underestimate how expensive armor was, even compared to decent weapons. I remember reading something about the Gauls, who had very good blacksmithing but didn’t have access to things like the Roman state or medieval feudal system to help subsidize their gear and often had to fight with what they could afford. IIRC the quote was something like “for every 10 spears they had a helmet, for every 10 helmets, a (metal armor) coat”.
a. You need a servant and a lot of time to get in and out of the more complicated armours of the renaissance era.
b. Your horse and weapons would identify your wealth anyway.
c. Traveling during the medieval and renaissance period was quite dangerous (the roads didn't really become safe until the 20th century), and almost everyone was armed. If you're wearing mail (even just a lighter shirt protecting your torso) and a helmet you're considerably harder to rob.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
One of the neat things about Gallic metalworking is that if you're looking at Roman armour, you can actually when they conquered and, eventually, lost Gaul by looking at the legionary helmets. They start to improve dramatically after Rome gets access to Gallic smiths, in terms of overall design, how efficiently they're made, little protective alterations, etc. When that part of the empire unravels in the 400s there's an immediate (like, a handful of years), dramatic plummet in quality where they're clearly cutting corners, relying on less skill-intensive methods to piece helmets together at the expense of protectiveness, etc.
There's a lot of stuff around the empire where you could point to overall wealth or other resources to explain things getting better or worse, but that's one area where you it can be claimed pretty confidently "it was the presence/absense of Those Guys In Particular driving this one thing."
The Romans (and Greeks) also explicitly copied a ton of their gear designs straight from the Gauls or other Celtic people. That example was specifically used by a professor I had about the danger of assuming who a people were or were related to based solely on what kind of archeological artifacts they produced (as is often done with, for example, finding greek style pottery artifacts somewhere and assuming it was a greek colony).
“If we only went by military artifacts, we would assume Celts were the most widespread people in the classical world.”
The first song is specifically about Olav not returning after the Battle of Svolder. Narrator might be intended to be his wife, as it was she who bullied him into going to Svolder in the first place instead of hiding out in Nidaros, the capital.
There is another song about Olav, too (indirectly): Soga of Tormod Kark ("The Saga of Tormod Kark"). I told the story about Kark before in this thread ("The Earl in the Pigsty"). The band Isenkram ("Hardware Store") wrote Soga of Tormod Kark in 1974.
In the refrain, Håkon, Earl of Lade and de facto ruler of Norway, is speaking to his slave Tormod Kark. They are both hidden in a pit dug under a pigsty, hiding from Olav Tryggvason and his men. It is in the middle of the night, and both Håkon and Kark are aware of a huge bounty Olav has put on Håkon's head, dead or alive. Håkon singing:
Hei-hå, hei-hå, hei-hå du Tormod Kark.
Vår lagnad den vert lik.
For vi to vart fødd i same natt og saman skal vi døy.
Ein træl vert ikkje fri
om han drep sin jarl for å tene ein annan mann.
For stormenn er like feig og falsk og umoralsk,
så svik du meg, så svik vel kongen deg.
Loose translation (me):
Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho oh Tormod Kark.
Our destiny will be the same.
For we two were born in the same night, and together we will die.
A slave won't become free
if he kills is Earl to serve another man.
For lords are just as cowardly and false and immoral,
so if you betray me, the King will surely betray you.
Second to last verse (narrator singing), after the previous verse ended with calling Olav "a pious Christian":
Og trælen fekk si løn
ei løn frå ein monark,
for kongesverdet kvein så kvasst
at hodelaus vart Kark.
The slave got his reward
a reward from a monarch
for the royal sword cut so sharp
that Kark became headless.
What I'm saying is you can tell this was written in the 70s counter-culture movement. My mother used to sing this song occasionally, to the annoyance of her father, an army colonel.
Tormod Kark killing Håkon Jarl for the 1899 edition of Snorre's saga of the Norwegian kings.
(Footnote: It was Håkon's sons who ambushed Olav at Svolder with their Danish and Swedish allies. Norway then became part of Denmark (again) with Håkon's sons as viceroys.)
That is the sort of pedantry up with which I will put.