Is padded armour underated?

[Trencher]

In most rpg systems I seen padded armour is almost nothing. 

Except maybe in the Hero system which is why I put this in general role playing. 

While padded armour is pretty much a thick mattress topper wrapped around you its still a lot better than nothing. 

Imagine if you are hit with a spiked club or a sword or whatever. You would be grateful for that mattress topper between the weapon and your body then!

Further more while lots of armours would certainly save your life if hit it would often not save you from getting taking an injury to the point of not being able to fight. 

And that is what the padded armour does. It has the potential to save your life if you are hit with a sword, club or other implement of destruction. 

I think padded armour is a lot closer to other types of armour in usefulness than most games give them credit for. As in most other games I seen padded armour is just a joke or worse it actually hinders your movement so much you are better off (having a better armour class) without it.

I think padded armour is vastly underrated as the difference in having padded armour and nothing at all is insurmountably greater than the difference between padded and plate and chain in my opinion. 

Atlest in Hero you do get to take away that one point in damage and the player would be grateful for that. 

[Greywind]

I think padded armor is mostly seen as training armor where the attacker is using a blunt wooden sword.

[Ninja-Bear]

Isn’t armors such as Plate also assume that you are wearing Padded Armor too? 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Trencher said:

Is padded armor underrated?

 

Ooh!  

 

Something I can answer based on real-world experience!

 

Yes.

 

Padded armor is, in every system I have ever played, insanely underrated.

 

I say that because my racing gear was, essentially, padded armor.

 

For those who do not know this already:

 

From the time I was twelve until I was twenty-nine, I raced dirt bikes.  (I preferred enduro and cross-country to track racing, but I entered pretty much anything within a 36-hour driving range from home, so long as I could pony up entry fees.)  From the time I was nineteen until I was forty-two, I dragged raced bikes.  (Yes; there was significant period of overlap.  What can I say?  To this day, I _love_ motorcycles, and still ride them-- body's too stove up to race them these days, but I still ride them.)

 

I will spare you all the great stories because-- well, because most people aren't as interested in the same things the way we might hope they are.   

 

A case can be made (a bad case, mind you) that dirt bike armor is more akin to plate armor, but the fact it that it is not: it's plastic, and can easily be wrecked with pretty much anything with an edge and a little bit of mass-- such as a sword or a hatchet.  When the discussion comes up, I tend to feel it might be akin to boiled leather over heavy padding, but even boiled leather is more "sword resistant" than is plastic.

 

Drag racing armor, though: that is straight-up padded armor under -- well, traditionally leather, but since the mid nineties more and more synthetics have slipped in, and today the vast majority of racers are competing in padded suits under a synthetic shell.   Before drawing the leather armor comparison, I want to point out that the leather or synthetic shells-- even the plastic plating on dirt bike armor, for the most part-- offer _nothing_ in the way of impact protection or sword protection or whatever (dirt bike armor _does_ get props against the gravel and dirt clods being flung from the wheels of other bikes, though) and are intended to protect the padding from the abrasion of the road, period.

 

Now it's pretty obvious that as I've never been to big regional or national events or been featured on television or even at big "name brand" races, I was one of those guys who spent a lot of time either not being in a race (for various work or finance-related reasons) or being _in_ the race, but _off_ the bike.   Being off the bike though, does not always mean being off the _track_   .  There is no feeling quite as confusing or disorienting as running somewhere over a hundred mph, feeling the tail whip (which usually isn't what happened: usually the front end folds, but your perspective makes you interpret it incorrectly), the horizon does a barrel roll and you completely lose track  of it for a minute, then you hear your helmet grinding away as you skip and flop until you can figure out where your limbs are and then bring them in as tight and still as you can (yes; that causes you to conserve momentum you want to shed, but you don't want to do it at the expense of broken limbs, so you do what you can).  You slide-- sort of-- down the track, usually bumping, thumping, tumbling, and generally not sliding (unless you can afford one of the fifteen-hundred-dollar top end synthetic sets of armor, of course).  At the end of this beating, even after being thrown at the ground at hundred plus, unless you broke a bone, you're fine.  I mean _fine_!  Ready to break out the spare bike if you didn't disqualify and run again!

 

Sure: if the fasteners fail and you expose your natural hide, you're going to have serious road rash here and there, and that'll drop your mood a lot, and in thirty minutes or so, you're going to feel a _lot_ of bruises if it was an off-road event and something got under your plates while you were bumping and thumping (usually because you fastened them incorrectly), but you're likely going to be "unhurt" in a "can I continue fighting?  Did I take any BODY damage?  Did I take _serious_ STUN?

 

 

It may be a poor analogy; I don't know, but based on my own experience, I have felt that padded armor is always _horribly_ short-shafted in games, at least again non-pointy weapons.  (note that I say "non-pointy" as opposed to non-edged: I think that it should do better against large edged-weapons as well (save maybe the Japanese katanas or "lop off a limb because it's just that sharp" kind of swords-- wait!  Didn't samurai go into battle against exactly those weapons wearing essentially padded armor?)

 

 

 

 

[ahduval]

I don't know if these youtubers are accurate, but I think they make some good points.

The TRUTH about padded and leather armor (Gambeson / Aketon)

Testing the effectiveness of a spear throw against padded armor

[Ockham's Spoon]

Padded armor is going to be somewhat more effective against blunt weapons, and less so against edged and piercing weapons, but most games don't make a distinction there, so you get the average defense which isn't spectacular.  And let me qualify this by saying I have no real world experience here, but that is my perception.

 

But the real problem with padded armor is that it generally has the similar defensive value to soft leather which has a lot more sex appeal.  Really, do you want your rakish rogue character to be dressed in black leather or something that looks like a canvas quilt? 😁

 

Soft leather can also often pass as clothes while padded armor generally can't, which limits where you can wear it.  That said, I have allowed characters to purchase (or be gifted) expensive padded armor made by highly skilled artisans that look like courtier's clothes but have the defensive bonuses of padded armor.

[Duke Bushido]

Also from personal experience:  

 

 

I took a 121 mph header with just my leathers on (give me a break: it was 109degrees; I was standing and racing on black asphalt and the padding was _miserable_, so I snuck off to shuck it before my heat came up).

 

Leather offers protection against abrasion, period.  There is _zero_ impact resistance to leather, no matter how cool it looks.  I had more purple and green skin than I did any of my natural skin tones.   I think the only reason I didn't break anything is because it was a low-side slide; that is, there wasn't much of a fall, just a lot of rolling and bumping.   

[Trencher]

In my fantasy campaign I add some extra pd to padded just to stop blunt and impact damage like that.

Lots of good thoughts here, I think in general that padded armour is indeed underated.

[unclevlad]

But also note one is usually equating the defense offered by padded armor...however the system defines it...and connects a cost to it.  SOMETHING needs to be the lowest-cost, least-effective type of armor.  

 

And it's rare to get distinctions between blunt damage (wood sword), abrasion damage (Bushido's Asphalt Slide), edged damage, and piercing damage (point-first), or the crushing damage of a heavy mace.  For a real-world example:  a bullet-proof vest might mean your chest doesn't suddenly grow a huge hole...but a good-sized shotgun slug can still kill you from the concussive shock.  So in many of these cases, the protective value is going to be based on an overall representation, particularly in *combat* situations.  Abrasion protection doesn't help you all that much;  the Hulk doesn't usually decide to skip you down the tarmac like a stone across the pond.  (Altho that would be a very amusing Brick Trick.)

 

Of course, you could also define the padded armor as normal Def, not resistant.

[Duke Bushido]

That's the thing--

 

while you make a good point: something has to be on bottom-- the fact is that defense-wise, padded is better than leather in all terms except looking cool.  Cost-wise, I can't really say.  I feel like padded armor, at least as demonstrated in the linked videos, would cost less than taking some cow peels and getting them tanned, cut, and sewn, but I could be wrong.  I have alluded to boiled leather / saddle leather a time or two, but I'm just referring to that particularly thick and sculpted leather that's been treated to be particularly hard.  I have always assumed it would offer a bit more protection than just regular leather, but when I think about it, it would be useless against _any_ sort of impact without padded armor underneath.  

 

So it's possible that we've been thinking about armor entirely wrong to begin with.

 

 

First: no one needs to point out that I am no expert; I will do it for you:

 

I'm no expert.

 

But thinking about racing gear, dirtbike armor, and some of the points raised in the video, it seems that padded armor is an important part of _all_ armor.  That being said, perhaps instead of thinking about how Wooden Plates are better or worse than padded or plate mail is better than chain mail and all that---  we might need to rework our ideas so as to think of it as "what does each of the other armor types _add_ to padded armor?"    

 

In such a case, padded would default to the "cheapest" if only because the others are X plus padded.  Leather adds PRE: only to look cool and maybe a point or two of DEF, but without the padded it provides only what it adds.

 

 

 

Of course, I'm just thinking out loud.   😕

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I’m thinking that Padded Armor could have 1DC of Damage Negation-Blunt Damage.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Not very many combat systems in games take full advantage of the way armor works in real life, protecting well against some kinds of attacks and not against others.  Even Hero doesn't quite, because it gets really complicated differentiating between different special effects of weapons.

 

Hero does special defenses really well.  For example, Mongol warriors wore silk armor which were good at stopping arrows, or lessening their effect: the spinning arrow would spin into the fibers of the silk and slow rapidly, reducing their effect on the target.  Hardened defenses!

 

But yeah, padded armor is actually quite good defense, surprisingly good, against a lot of different kinds of attacks.  There's a reason knights had that padded Gambeson on under the armor.  Its better than leather for blunt and abrading attacks, worse against edged attacks, and bulkier, but lighter according to my extensive study. Padded is also cheaper than leather, but takes longer to make (unless you add in curing time). 

 

But as Duke notes: you look like the Michelin Man wearing the stuff, which is tough to impress the ladies with.

 

Something I've done is break the normal and resistant damage of armor out so some armor is better normal defense than others, some better resistant, and of course, the ED is different in each.  Plate armor has remarkably bad energy defense.  Padded and leather, pretty good.

 

The tough part is keeping swift, interesting playability balanced against really gritty simulation.  Phoenix Command went way, WAY overboard the simulation side.  Marvel Superheroes and Top Secret went overboard the other direction in my opinion.

[unclevlad]

The padding for hard armor is for shock absorption.  Like I mentioned:  a ballistic vest on its own stops penetration but doesn't dissipate the force very well.  Chain mail would be poor at that as well, just considering the forces involved.  Some forms of banded or plate would be better, but at the point of contact, especially with a heavy weapon, there's a LOT of force.  The padding is there as a compression zone...and potentially to help ensure that metal bits don't get driven into your skin.  

 

Plate armor's ED would vary a LOT with the SFX.  Electrical...unless you assert full grounding...terrible.  Heat?  The thermal mass should help some.  BUT...repeated heat attacks would circumvent that, so...hmm.  As has been said, real-world stuff is trickier than we generally care to deal with.

 

Defining padded as Negation makes sense.  It focuses on the stun-reduction aspect.  Could even argue it's nonresistant damage negation if you wanted to.

[theinfn8]

My personal experience with regard to armour. I have two different sets of padded armour, one lighter vest for shock absorption under my harder armour (plate and chain) and a thicker one for unarmoured practice (read, with blunts, whether that's wasters, shinai, or synthetics).

 

In the thicker padding most attacks, you feel them but unless someone connects with a full force swing from the back forty, you aren't likely to suffer any long term damage. Now, would I expect the padding to stop a real warhammer or mace from cracking my rib? Not at all. The blunt force impact is way more concentrated with the weight consolidated in the front of the weapon. Swords actually lose a little against the padded armour, mostly due to the lack of weight. I've seen test cutting and arrow shots against heavy gambesons, but never really anything that measures the affects of blunt force against them.

 

Even adding chain on top of the gambeson, I've heard of people breaking ribs in the SCA (not what I do, but that's blunt force trauma as a comparison). The chain robs a lot of the energy from the strike and would stop the cut from most metal swords. The gambeson just helps soften it some more.

 

With the plate and chain, you know when you're hit, but it's mostly academic. Unless you're fighting a trained individual that knows how to get around the armour (or gets a well timed blow) the metal is going to do all the work. I took a counter blow that hit the armpit, which tends to be hard to armour, and was I ever glad I had my padding on. I had a nasty bruise that turned some amazing shades of color over the next 24 hours. Luckily nothing broken.

 

All that for, is padded armour underrated/cost inappropriately? Depends how much accuracy you want on weapon type vs armour type and if we're trying to emulate reality or fiction. Underrated, yes, since it's an essential part of any heavier armour kit. Cost or valued inappropriately? Unless you feel the urge to be super specific about type of damage vs type of armour, probably not. It's useful, essential even, and way better than nothing, but I would still rather have some kind of steel on top of it.

[Duke Bushido]

19 hours ago, theinfn8 said:

I would still rather have some kind of steel on top of it.

 

 

That's the thing!  That's what I _think_ is at the center of this discussion:

 

What credit is given to the padding?  What is the armor that is not padded armor?  How well does armor _without_ the padded underlayers offer to the wearer?   How could armor be better modeled to reflect these realities?

 

Will we ever get a perfect simulation of real armor?  No; of course not.  I can't think of a single gaming system that takes a long hard look at physics (except possibly Universe, and then really only with regards to spaceship travel) and drafts rules that follow them.

 

 

But that doesn't mean that we can't strive to use the existing system to create a model that is more accurate than what we have now.

 

Sure: it won't translate to D&D or a thousand other games, if only because HERO does armor and deals with damage much differently than do most other systems.  That still doesn't mean we shouldn't like to see some tweaks to what we're currently doing. 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I feel the same way about weapons: could they be modeled better, with greater distinction between each type?  How can we make an axe feel cool but a sword feel cool in a different way, so they both are attractive in different situations?  How can we make different bows matter other than just a few DC difference in damage?

[Duke Bushido]

2 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I feel the same way about weapons: could they be modeled better, with greater distinction between each type?  How can we make an axe feel cool but a sword feel cool in a different way, so they both are attractive in different situations?  How can we make different bows matter other than just a few DC difference in damage?

 

 

I agree, but as someone here just very recently pointed out, there is a serious scaling problem at the low end.  HERO shows its superhero roots when you try to really differentiate the "mere mortal" end of the scale.

 

The easiest option is to decimate _everything_, but that leads to depressing things like "this sword can average 1.15 BODY while this arrow can average 1.7 !", etc, etc.  (yeah: I tried this once.  Mathematically, it works, but it really doesn't _feel_ like anything.  Alternatively, multiply everything by ten, but that's really just roll under / roll over, applied to other parts of the game. 

 

I don't know if you've read it, but one of the most depressing HERO-compatible things you will ever read is Guns! Guns! Guns!  and it's sequel.....    

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I agree, but as someone here just very recently pointed out, there is a serious scaling problem at the low end.  HERO shows its superhero roots when you try to really differentiate the "mere mortal" end of the scale.

 

Its less dire than portrayed, but to what extent it is an issue, the rebuild of KA damage we did makes all the difference.

[theinfn8]

Most definitely, tweak away at the rules! Depending on the tone of the game I'm running, sometimes I want those gritty realistic rules and other times I don't bother to stat something out because the specific game mechanic is unimportant. Yeah, I could "build a starship with FTL travel" or I could say "it works, you arrived, travel was otherwise uneventful".

 

With armour and weapons, there is a lot of granularity that could be added. One of the things I've been thinking about is how to differentiate characters in a sword and sorcery type setting. Being a specialist in one specific unique weapon is one way of accomplishing that. But we would need more development of weapons to make them unique and interesting

[assault]

A general thought about ranged weapons: the amount of energy an arrow or spear has drops away quickly over distance. While an arrow may go straight through padded armour at short range, it (the armour) might be quite effective at a distance.

 

That might suggest a horrible level of complication, so maybe it should be left alone 

[theinfn8]

Some sort of "drop X DCs per range increment" wouldn't be too horribly complicated. I would be afraid of getting into Chartmaster levels of weapons vs. armour complexity. But people still love and play the game, so *shrug*.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Reduced by range is a pretty simple mechanic already in the game, so that's not tough to cover.

[theinfn8]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Reduced by range is a pretty simple mechanic already in the game, so that's not tough to cover.

 

You are absolutely right and that slipped my mind.

[unclevlad]

But Reduced by Range IMO rolls off TOO sharply, and for minimal cost savings.  It's -2 DCs at 30 feet, for example, for only -1/4.    And that -1/4 is very likely less than normal, as there will be other limitations.

 

But figure if you're talking a 2d6 RKA bow...2 DCs is 1/3 of its attack power, and you're less than a full move away from the opponent.

 

I don't think this is a path the system wants to travel at all.  It's a hassle for marginal benefits...the point about the coarse, discrete damage is valid, and another point is the coarse resolution on advantages and limitations.  How many of these feel like a lot less than a -1/4 limit?  And the math on limitations down-values the 2nd, 3rd, 4th limits, particularly on small powers.  The differences will be very small.  And systems that go into this much detail, generally *don't* have extensive options in so many other areas.  Just for weapons, we've got AP and Reduced Pen and Reduced by Range...even if I think it's too much, it's there.  And that's before getting into Beam, Limited Range, No Range, focus, etc. etc. etc.  The weapons and armor are preset in those systems...but not, by and large, in Hero.

 

17 hours ago, theinfn8 said:

With armour and weapons, there is a lot of granularity that could be added. One of the things I've been thinking about is how to differentiate characters in a sword and sorcery type setting. Being a specialist in one specific unique weapon is one way of accomplishing that. But we would need more development of weapons to make them unique and interesting

 

Weapons and armor developed for a few reasons:

1.  Production considerations...how fast could they be produced, how costly were they?  

2.  Training required.  

 

These are huge factors for the peasant levies.

 

3.  What *worked*?  This was a big race, particularly between armor and weapons.  Chain mail is very good against swords, but poor against arrows.  Note that this captures issues that haven't been mentioned, such as recovery times.  That heavy axe is very hard to get back into line.

4.  How is this gonna balance against the spellslinger, staying in Fantasy Hero?

5.  Where else does this apply....cuz it darn sure doesn't seem to apply to Champions.

 

Went down this rabbit hole in 1E.  There's no bottom to it, IMO.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Note that this captures issues that haven't been mentioned, such as recovery times.  That heavy axe is very hard to get back into line.

 

Yeah, "Haste" and weapon speeds as have been implemented in game systems do not very well represent actual combat experience, but it is true that a big heavy weapon is tougher to get back into action than small, light ones.

 

But things like a small penalty to multiple power attacks (cleaves), for example, can help represent things.  As can a small reduction in DEX Rank (when you act in a segment).  Small modifiers, but nothing so complex you need a spreadsheet to engage in battle.