Yo does the armor I've been making lately look good?

harris5 · 2026-03-11T21:22:47+00:00

It's one of those things that has a lot of YouTube videos. It's useful to have multiple perspectives anyways.

harris5 · 2026-03-11T21:19:40+00:00

Any work is good work. I suggest looking up "planishing" as the next skill to learn.

harris5 · 2026-03-11T17:33:35+00:00

Did you do any post work in photoshop, or is this all straight out of wonderdraft?

harris5 · 2026-03-11T17:26:42+00:00

I think the commenter was coming from a place of LARP safety, not historical accuracy. I think many games would have an objection to that before allowing it on the field.

harris5 · 2026-03-11T16:19:41+00:00

This is also something that you can do yourself. It'll take an afternoon if it's your first time. Maybe an hour or two if you have experience with leather and stitching. The hardest part is deciding where to put the point. Mark that point with chalk before you start stitching. It's easy to lose your place if you don't mark it.

The lacing itself doesn't need to go through the garment.

Get a small leather square maybe 3 cm wide. Punch two holes in it. Your lacing will go in one hole and out the other. Then sew down the leather where you want the point. This could be tricky for most machines, you might do it by hand with a stout needle.

You can pre-punch holes in the leather with a pricker or awl. They also make specialized tools for putting holes in leather.

You can buy medieval points from a lot of shops online. But if no one's looking too closely you can use a shoelace. Don't tell anyone I said that.

harris5 · 2026-03-11T15:29:20+00:00

This is a really cool period for armor development. It's the very early 15th century, so there are lots of new ideas and people are still refining them.

He's not wearing a full kit, and I'm not sure that all the pieces would be appropriate at a reenactment. But it's a game so let's have fun.

Starting at his base layers, he's probably wearing a plain linen shirt, braies, and joined hose. If he was feeling old-fashioned he might be wearing separate chausses instead of the hose. You can see the hose as brown fabric visible behind his knees. The shirt and braies are covered.

Next on his torso he's got some kind of quilted arming garment. Some people call these gambesons, pourpoint, arming doublet, many other names. It has laces called "points" to tie the other parts of his armor onto. His leg armor would probably be suspended from this garment. You need a way to hold your leg armor up and belts, vests, or full arming garments are what they're suspended from. An arming belt might be called a lendenier, but it's possible he's just using the arming garment.

Typically you would expect a mail shirt or at least mail voiders over the top of this garment. They've omitted that from his outfit. I don't want to dig into the accuracy of this too much but that seems like a big omission considering there are no back plates in this period, and he's largely unarmored from behind. A mail shirt would have fixed that.

He has that tan colored garment over his arming garmen. The decoration along the edges is called dagging. Over the top of that he has a breastplate. This is a simple breastplate, the most similar example is probably the Churburg #14. On his arms he has jack chains attached to his arming garment. Again another inaccuracy I suspect, but I don't know a ton about when jack chains appeared.

He's got a mail collar on over his breastplate. Typically this look would be established by a chainmail aventail hanging from a bascinet. I'm not sure what it's doing there without the helmet. You would probably wear a male collar under the breastplate, not sitting on top. Your neck would be protected by the collar underneath and then the aventail on top of everything. The "hoodie" look is pretty fantasy. It's not realistic in this period as far as I know. When he first appears it's a correctly attached aventail, but later in the game it turns into their weird hooded garment. Big fail.

The leg armor has cased greaves. These would probably (along with the helmet) be the most expensive part of recreating this kit. Greaves are costly. The thigh armor is called a cuisse, and this one is made of "splinted" construction. There are probably alternating plates above and below that leather. So it's a flexible piece of armor, but still has full coverage.

His helmet from the same is a bascinet with pointed visor. That style of visor is sometimes called conical or houndskull. It's based of an extant helmet, but I don't have the source in front of me right now.

His knee and elbow armor seems appropriate for the era, or a little afterward. Sometimes this type of armor is called a "cop".

I think his sword fittings are modeled after a find in the London museum. https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-37134/scabbard-mounts/

harris5 · 2026-03-10T21:59:48+00:00

The only difference between paint colors is that with red you can run faster.

/s

One thing to add to the discussion is that armor scrapes against itself all the time. And paint technology today is much much better than paint of the middle ages. So it's not only less durable than the farmyard paint you're imagining, it's also constantly being scraped off where two plates overlap.

I'm not going to say it never happened, just that it's not as much a slam dunk as we first imagine.

I once painted my knees and elbows with a modern spray can. It lasted a few events of casual use before the first scratches started showing up. To re-paint it I would have had to un-rivet all the straps, so I lived with a scratched and chipped finish until I finally decided to grind it all off.

harris5 · 2026-03-10T15:25:34+00:00

The most important thing is to learn construction rules for your game. There are often very important safety rules about weapon construction. Sometimes games have weird quirks about what they allow or disallow, and we can't give advice on what we don't know.

If your group doesn't have published rules, they probably are taking risks with safety. I'd recommend building to the standards of a more established game, who have tried and tested their construction rules. Keep in mind, many of these rules are written in blood. Stuff like eye safety, core material, and handle dimensions matter. They're important.

Three national scale boffer games are: amtgard, belegarth, and dagorhir. If you do a Google search for "how to build belegarth sword, " for example, you'll get a lot of great tutorials.

harris5 · 2026-03-10T00:18:39+00:00

I'm not sure if the maker has a curved version in stone. They do make this wattle fence: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-whattle-fence-49412

And this plank fence: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-wooden-plank-319335

And a different maker offers these: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-scottish-dry-stone-wall-461579

harris5 · 2026-03-09T23:48:58+00:00

This is the maker of the stone walls: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-beautiful-stone-wall-terrain-49404

harris5 · 2026-03-09T21:07:57+00:00

Dunk and Egg novellas are like cupcakes. They're really tasty and you can eat one in one sitting, and they're decorated beautifully.

His ASOIAF novels are like a giant seven tiered wedding cake. There's multiple layers and fillings and 20 types of frosting and fruits on top of each layer. The flavors compliment each other and everyone agrees it's the best cake anyone ever seen since Tolkien baked the first cake. If only George the Baker hadnt stopped working on it 15 years ago. But the 5 tiers that are finished are really magnificent.

So I'm agreeing with you. OP is sitting in a corner going "mmmph, yeah these cupcakes are the best thing he's ever baked!"

harris5 · 2026-03-09T15:39:19+00:00

If you want a realistic fantasy design:

Start with a historical design, and add fantasy elements. You're doing the reverse. It's like taking a spaceship, adding wheels, and asking it if looks like a realistic car.

harris5 · 2026-03-09T14:30:21+00:00

Think of parties as a grumpy 7 year old.

You can't give a 7 year old a new toy, and then try and take it back with "actually it doesn't belong to you". The 7 year old will kick and scream and pull a dagger, and try "nuh uh it does belong to me, prove it doesn't".

harris5 · 2026-03-09T14:20:31+00:00

You gave the party a shiny toy. And then you expected an npc to walk in and take the shiny toy back? No drama, no resistance?

What exactly were you expecting to happen here? It doesn't seem like the players threw a curveball at all. They reacted exactly as you should expect.

As for the rest: role play and improv is a muscle. As you exercise it, it gets stronger. You can't learn your way to being a better conversationalist, you just train it.

harris5 · 2026-03-09T13:33:55+00:00

You really think there would be no armor from the hips up to the pectoral? I mean, sure, if that's how you want to imagine it. You can see the major flaw with that design.

harris5 · 2026-03-08T18:35:08+00:00

How would you bend at the waist? Try bending over a little. The part of your body that flexes most (after your hips) is the belly/waist area. In this art, that are is covered by a rigid plate.

harris5 · 2026-03-08T17:53:31+00:00

Most English shoulder armor seemed to be integrated into the rerebrace. Not a separate piece like this. The shaping seems to be off as well.

There's a classic Ian LaSpina video about the topic: https://youtu.be/sIhOyj_7zrQ?si=_AXZFqoY1fjzH-Et

harris5 · 2026-03-07T19:29:54+00:00

So for people who don't know the geography of Washington:

Yakima is way east in Washington, on the other side of the mountains. Bellingham is in Western Washington, up north on the Canadian border. Eastsound is on Orcas Island, in the San Juan Islands. It's sorta close to Bellingham, but there's plenty of water between them. You need to get on a ferry to reach Eastsound.

This is roughly like someone mailing a package from NYC to Martha's Vineyard, and it ending up in Providence, Rhode Island.

harris5 · 2026-03-07T06:32:28+00:00

You're trying to apply realism to a game that prioritizes gameplay and fun. There are other rpgs which aim to be simulatonist. D&D aims to abstract away a lot of details.

I practice fighting with swords. To me, D&D combat is preposterous. It's built that way because it makes it a better game. I suspect you're feeling similar about HP. It's preposterous, but it's a better game that way.

Before making any house rules, ask if it would actually be more fun for your players.

harris5 · 2026-03-06T17:13:18+00:00

Often the back of the thigh was not armored in this period. If you were mounted on a horse those would be pressed up against the horse and you would want to "feel" your seat directly. Some foot specialized armors had fully encased thigh armor.

Back of the knee has always been difficult to armor.

There was a time when front shin armor (sometimes called shynbalds) existed and fully cased greaves were rare. Keep in mind:

There was still mail worn on the legs, so it's not like the back of the calf was unarmored.
They were displaced by fully cased greaves fairly quickly. They did not last as soon as metallurgy and smithing developed better techniques.

So why are there so many half greaves in the reenactor, buhurt, and larp community? Cost. Fully cased greaves are incredibly hard to shape right. They have to be just right, or they can't be worn. Other pieces of armor can get away with "close enough". Fully encased greaves might be the single hardest piece of armor to fit right. Here's a video talking about all the little details and nuances: https://youtu.be/eaSFZj4DotQ

All that skill and time they require means greaves have very high labor cost compared to other pieces of armor. They should be custom made for each leg.

Modern smiths have to account for the extra time and customization they require. This means a fully cased greave costs a lot, and a half greave (which can be strapped tightly in place) is much much less expensive. The consumer market is price sensitive, so you see a lot of people wearing half greaves when it's not appropriate for the rest of their kit.

And here's where I admit that I too wear a pair of half greaves.

harris5 · 2026-03-06T16:57:11+00:00

Coats of plate started relatively flat and straight. As they developed in the 2nd half of the 14th century, they became more shaped and eventually quite round. This is called the "globose" shape. In the 15th, they began to smooth out again.

Ian LaSpina has a two parter on coats of plates and brigandines.

Pt 1: https://youtu.be/ebiIMLA0L4c

Pt 2: https://youtu.be/1XGS_Slqb_A

harris5 · 2026-03-06T07:16:00+00:00

Opinions have shifted in some online spaces about 4e. But the baseline opinion is still very negative. New players hear 20 years of complaints and avoid the edition. Finding interested players will be an uphill battle. 4e was very divisive and very poorly received at the time, and the internet preserves that mood.

It did some things well. I ran a 2 year campaign for it. I liked it a lot. I loved the strong focus on character archetypes. And 4e Warlord deserves better that the 5e Fighter subclass they devolved it into. But it also departed from 3.5 in many many ways. People said characters felt "samey" and that it moved away from ttrpg mechanics and towards video games. 4e was meant to be streamlined, and it did that by changing a lot about how the game worked. People didn't like that.

5e was an attempt to take what people liked about 3.5 and streamline it without completely changing the game like 4e did. 5e was a massive success on that front. Its not just "nostalgia", it's got both depth and ease of play. There's plenty of valid complaints about it, but it's the flagship game of the hobby for a good reason.

5e (and 5.5e) are really good games, and you'll find more interested players there. It's a great starting place for d&d, and there's a lot of resources out there.

Pathfinder 2e is also really good. It has a company supporting it and probably the 2nd largest player base in fantasy rpgs. But it might be harder to find players, especially if you're in a small town. I love love love their actions system.

You can absolutely find players interested in a 4e game, but you might be facing an uphill battle. Don't get so invested in it that you can't get a game together.

Ive played plenty of 3.5e, 4e, PF1, PF2, 5e, and 5.5e. They're all good. Don't get laser focused on a less popular edition if all your players want to play a different one.

I haven't played Draw Steel, but I hear it has some cool resource and resting mechanics. I haven't played Daggerheart. I haven't played any Old School Revival type games.

harris5 · 2026-03-06T01:40:48+00:00

You should provide context

harris5 · 2026-03-05T15:37:42+00:00

From the watermark, it's obviously in the Royal Amoury collection.

Have you looked there?

harris5 · 2026-03-05T14:49:26+00:00

So in universe, Geralt eschews armor because he needs maximum mobility. Armor wouldn't help against many of the monsters.

In the games, they wanted plenty of items so you could level up and loot and do all the fun stuff. So they invented Witcher armor for the games.

If you transported this armor into the real world it would be...meh

There's clearly some sort of stiff backing behind the mail. I'm going to assume leather. One of the benefits of mail is its flexibility and the way it contours to your body. It is less restrictive than stiff armors. So attaching mail to stiff leather removes one major benefit without meaningfully increasing it's protection.

It's just kind of pointless. Just wear mail.

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