Armor costs

[Captain Obvious]

Periodically, someone will post a "help me" thread in reference to PCs tooling around inside their impervious suits of armor, and one of the common fixes (at least from me, but I've seen it from others) is to say "make that armor expensive".

 

Well, I recently went over a price list I had made a long time ago, and backwards engineered my prices to find the cost multiplier I'd used. Here it is for anyone interested.

 

DEF Cost/Mass

1 62.5

2 125

3 166

4 200

5 375

6 500

7 1000

8 1250

9 1500

 

This system is based on the mass of the armor as well as the DEF. The price is denominated in rough dollar equivalents, ie if in your campaign, a laborer earns about 200 gold pieces a year, then these costs should be divided by about 100 to find gold piece costs.

 

A full suit of heavy cloth would come out to (3.5kg x 62.5 DEF1 cost multiplier) = 218.75. With the gold piece example given above, this would come out to barely over 2gp, which should be within a peasant's budget when he's called up to join the levy.

 

A full suit of chainmail would run (20kg x 500 DEF6 cost multiplier) = 10,000 or 100gp. This is a much more major investment, and typically only professional soldiers will find it worthwhile to go this far.

 

A full suit of plate would run (40kg x 1250 DEF8 cost multiplier) = 50,000 or 500 gp. This should be beyond most people's willingness to pay, especially given that a proper warhorse should run about this much as well, and it will also need armor. Unless you've allowed your characters to buy Wealth perks (in which case money is no barrier to getting the best equipment) or you've given out too much treasure in the course of the game, this should help keep characters from suiting up this heavily.

 

These examples were all given with full suits, but can easily be adapted to sectional armor by using the sectional armor masses listed in FH. I've never tested the system with the unusual armor materials in the new FH, but a quick glance seems like it would come up with fair prices for armors made of those various materials.

[Theron]

Re: Armor costs

 

I half-recall someone connected with the Tower Armoury Museum in Leeds stating that a full suit of 15th century plate cost about the equivalent of $40,000. Of course, that's for top of the line head-to-toe armour, but it still reflects the expense involved.

 

Questions like this make me wish my library were better organized.

[Eosin]

Re: Armor costs

 

Padded................90 bp........5-10 lbs..........Rural

Hide....................185 bp.......5-10 lbs..........Rural*

Leather................210 bp......14-21 lbs........All

Studded Leather....385 bp......17-25 lbs........Town

Jac or chain shirt...430 bp......15-18 lbs........Town

Scale Mail.............1,650 bp ...40-55 lbs........City

Chain Mail.............1,150 bp....35-50 lbs........Town

Splint Mail.............2,550 bp ...18-28 lbs.........Town

Banded Mail...........2,850 bp....20-30 lbs........City

Breast Plate..........3,800 bp....20-30 lbs.........City

½ Plate................7,500 bp .....50-70 lbs.......City

Plate Mail ..............11,700 bp.....60-85 lbs.....Rare

 

Quick notes: Purchasing something in a locality smaller than where it is intended to be sold generally raises the price by 50%. Example - Chain can be purchased in any town or larger sized community but if you were in a small town and somehow found someone who could sell you chain mail it would cost 1,700 bp instead of 1,150 bp.

 

* Hide is generally available ONLY in rural locales.

 

Special Metals

Weapons and Armor are assumed to be made from standard material. As in all good fantasy, there are several unusual metals that can be used in weapon construction. Some of these metals are just vastly superior grades, while others fell from the stars, or are infused with magic. The following guide will help in pricing these unusual metals, and how skilled the craftsman must be to work with them.

 

Base Material Cost Multiplier

(per pound)

Masterwork......14....BC x 10

Vanduim..........14....650 bp. + BC x 2

Eluria..............16....1,100 bp + BC x 15

Mithril.............18....900 bp + BC x 10

Adamantine.....18....1,350 bp + BC x 15

Star Metal.......16....1,700 bp + BC x 20

Bloodsteel........14....500 bp + BC x 4

 

The first number is the skill needed in Armor or Weaponsmith to attempt to craft the item.

 

The second number in bp (bronze pieces) is the cost of the exotic metal per pound of weight and needs to be figured seperately from the total cost (in otherwords, buy pays for the wieght of the metal).

 

BC x XXXX = The average cost of the item in question - this is multiplied by the last number in the column. THis leads to some exotic masterwork items costing as much as a small kingdom.

 

Masterwork: -2 STR min, -10 wieght total.

Vandium: +1 OCV/DCV enhancement bonus

Eluria: Ghostouched – affects desolid

Mithril: +1 OCV, Penetrating, -2 Str Min, -20% wieght

Adamantine: +1 OCV, AP, -3 Str Min, -25% wieght

Star Metal: Mixed with other metals for greater magical weapons.

Blood Steel: Deadly Blow vs fey creatures

 

Example: Craft a MW bastard sword from Mithril.

Base cost of a bastard sword 685 bp x 20

[10 from MW and 10 from Mithril]

Weight of a bastard sword 10 lbs. x 900bp

= 22,700 bp

 

Example 2: Plate Mail

MW + admantine + cost of metal

Base cost x 25 = 275,000

Metal cost = 90,000

 

Total cost for a suit of Adamantine armor = 365,000

This armor would weigh 65% of the normal value and would be hardened. I would probably give it a total of +9 rPD/+9 rED also.

[tgaptte]

Re: Armor costs

 

::swipe::

 

Thanks!

 

Tim

[Vondy]

Re: Armor costs

 

Don't forget basic economics. How much does it take for the armorer to pay the operating costs for his workshop and turn a profit. A suit of full plate takes a long time to make. You'll be paying his operating costs, material costs, and markup for the duration (though he may have several projects going at one time). And in truth, how many people are buying armor. He's got a fairly small customer base (local lords, mercenaries (few and far between in all likelyhood), and the occassional adventurer. Also, unless you are the local lord you may not get top priority in his production schedule.

[paigeoliver]

Re: Armor costs

 

If I remember correctly the old complete fighters handbook for 2nd edition D&D had a lot of information on making armor and on exactly how long it takes and such.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor costs

 

The answer to how long to make a suit or armour is "not as long as you think"

 

A competent armourer can make a suit of full plate in a couple of weeks, if he has all the tools and stocks to hand - less, with competent assistants. It actually takes less time to make plate armour than to make mail armour.

A blacksmith, OTOH, probably wouldn't know where to start. Blacksmith (the kind you find in a village) is not the same as an armorer (normally a well-paid professional).

 

My objection to the "make armour expensive" advice - which is OK advice, don't get me wrong: the stuff *was* expensive - is that it simply delays the day of reckoning. At some point if you make heavy armour desirable, then players will get their clabbered little paws on it. It's not a solution in and of itself.

 

cheers, Mark

[Theron]

Re: Armor costs

 

The Milanese armourers (by and large, the best the medieval world had to offer) had a surprising degree of sophistication, using specialization, assembly line techniques, and, believe it or not, water driven trip hammers to handle the gross shaping. When most folks think of an armourer, the image that comes to mind is a blacksmith, but that's like comparing an electrical engineer to the guy who installs your cable.

[Eosin]

Re: Armor costs

 

My objection to the "make armour expensive" advice - which is OK advice, don't get me wrong: the stuff *was* expensive - is that it simply delays the day of reckoning. At some point if you make heavy armour desirable, then players will get their clabbered little paws on it. It's not a solution in and of itself.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Too true. The way I handle this is that armor is damn expensive and carries with it some inherint liabilities - you come strut'n into town with $400,000 worth of metal strapped to your back and within minutes every informant, want to be thief, and other disreputible sorts will know where you are at and what you are doing. However, by the point that these things generally become availabe in my games the players have settled into a fortification and are very well known in the land so it is less of an issue. They spend much less time working to rescue a villiage from poorly armed bandits - instead they find that challenges they do go face are much tougher and the challenges that come to them are even worse.

 

Basically, the better equipped and more famous my players beome the more difficult it is for them to act without hinderence or outside intervention.

 

The final point is that my game is pseudo-historical with an analogous time frame of 1070 AD - nothing wrong with restricting the ability to make such armor to a dozen or so famous armorers. Even if you have the money, the king of Massand placed an order yesterday for his two younger brothers and the captian of the guard and then there is the annual Vintrian tithe of 6 suits of half-plate that must be done -- in otherwords give me the money now and I will try to get it done early next year.

 

Not to say that I don't agree - basically I do - but it can be overcome.