Form Fitting Armour

[Ililsa]

This is a question I've pondered on for a while, and I would hope there are some people more adequately qualified to answer it than me on this forum. So.

Would form fitting plate armour actually work? Plate is very deliberately designed to deflect hits due to its shape. Would plate still have this protective quality if it were better designed to fit a female body?

For the record, I'm talking about form fitting armour similar to how heavy armour in Dragon Age: Origins fits on female characters (I hope Taleworlds don't smite me for mentioning other RPGs)

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[Reverend L. Lamb]

No, no it wouldn't. Especially the cleavage would get you into a world of trouble.

[Ililsa]

Odd, I personally would have thought that the abdomen would get you in the most trouble, due to the inward curves of it, and that the cleavage, being outwards, would have had the biggest chance of deflecting a sword.

Though obviously the angle is important, so I can see where the issue lies.

[Arzeal]

Odd, I personally would have thought that the abdomen would get you in the most trouble, due to the inward curves of it, and that the cleavage, being outwards, would have had the biggest chance of deflecting a sword.

Though obviously the angle is important, so I can see where the issue lies.

They wont directly go to your boobs, they will aim between it, and that place is inward curved

[Eogan]

Yep.  Boobs in armour should be flattened as much as possible.  You don't want to create a concave point that funnels blows to one spot, especially right above your sternum and heart.

[Kobrag]

Didn't ol' Henry wife-hacker have form fitting armour though?

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[FrisianDude]

Not really. That would be several sizes too big for him if he didn't go properly padded. And the steel cock is mainly just an ornament.

[Ule]

thing with armour is you want to avoid as much stickie outie bits as possible, because they allow a blade to stick/get tangled etc, where as with smoothness blades bounce off. so you cheat the blade of a method to pierce or tear the armour.

the ornate armours you tend to see in museums and the like are purposefully made that way to show of wealth while at tournament, so theres no real threat to life as it was, as your opponent isn't trying to dismember you just score points and thus lady clunge.

however being form fitting aslong as there no probtubants, ie: boobies, spikes etc. wouldn't actually have any major effect on how well it works, as long as you can wear a decent amount of padding underneath rather straight to flesh as it were you ll be fine. if you look at high medieval armour, 14-15Th cent you ll see the armour is actually rather form hugging, small waists, streamlined limbs etc. which all help in the deflecting of hits as its shaped rounded.

fantasy armours tend to be all ragh with bits sticking out all over the place because the 13 yr old designers have no idea about armourology and just do it make stuff look "good" i blame WoW for all bullshit fantasy armour that is in every mmorpg now, even my old favourite lotro, which i was part of group trying to get the armours look more realistic to which the designers told us most mmorpg players dont want realistic armour because their all retards so we wont do realistic armour so people keep playing, haha jokes on them with their dying game. but i digress.

armour smooth good
armour knobbly spiky stickie outie bad


ps: clunge isn't recognised by spell check!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Swadius 2.0]

A bit of padding underneath the plate confers a good amount of protection. You don't make armor that goes around the fat bulges of the human body, you wear pieces of clothing that bind these areas flat man or woman.

What form fitting boob armor makers tend to forget is that the damage that comes from a blow isn't only on the edge of the weapon. A great deal of concussive force is transferred through the armor. If there isn't any padding underneath the plate, most of that force will be absorbed through the flesh and organs translating sometimes into internal bleeding and in some cases surface wounds would also occur due to the force imparted. If you have a part of the body that you can make smaller to afford better protection at little cost, it's obvious what needs to be done.

You would also have massively more protection is it's shaped in a sloped "V" with the tip pointing outwards towards your opponent. As said by others, this severely reduces the risk of someone stabbing upwards and following the channel between the breasts and piercing the unprotected bottom of the chin. This would also confer the advantage in that you can stuff the inside of this V plate with force absorbing material. Though not always effective against every sort of concussive blow, it confers an enormous advantage to energy absorption. Having your skin right next to the plate or any other surface layer is an extremely bad idea when there's a good chance of going into combat. A strike at the boobs may not dent the armor, but the flesh underneath is likely going to suffer major injuries and cause a good deal of pain.

Boob armor is ornamental given a charitable interpretation, at worst it's a poor choice of protection when going into combat given the far superior alternatives as well as cost inefficient when you compare what you can make at the cost of making a plate. And as Ule described, armor is best when there's no catching point. For the blade and for when things get grabby up close.

[AWdeV]

i blame WoW

Don't. WoW is heinous at it but by no means the first nor the most influential.

[Eogan]

I saw a blue respond to a query saying that Azeroth had an endemic plague that caused shoulder armour to grow exponentially over time.  I loled.

[Ililsa]

I saw a blue respond to a query saying that Azeroth had an endemic plague that caused shoulder armour to grow exponentially over time.  I loled.

As a WoW player, Blizzard's design makes me weep, and it only ever gets worse.
This thread was created partially after I looked at concept art for Guild Wars 2's armour and thought 'Well, it looks good, but would it work?'

There really are so few games with armour that would actually work, particularly on women, Mount&Blade is one, and thinking back, I'm fairly sure Morrowind was another.

[xenoargh]

Fantasy armor designs, particularly female fantasy armor design, has nothing to do with functionality.  If it looks cool or looks sexy, that's enough.  Realism just isn't the objective at all, and never will be. 

The aesthetics of character design fit a game design model and the goal of the overall aesthetic, just like in any other type of depiction.  If the goal isn't to depict historical reality, then anything is permissible, and questioning it is fairly pointless.

[Night Ninja]

I disagree.

The problem here is a different standard of what constitutes 'cool'. I think you can look plenty cool in realistic armour (just look at anything by Michael Komarck), but many artists don't have a proper appreciation for what armour ought to be and tend to go over the top with their designs. They tend to design for visual impact, and while striking at first glance it doesn't take a terribly critical mind to notice that the armour would be terrible for actual use.

Also, if people think they ought to look sexy while fighting, that's their prerogative, but then I have the right to call them a bloody idiot. Feminized armour of that sort panders to the lowest common denominator and completely buttfucks verisimilitude.

Questioning it if it doesn't make sense in the context of the game isn't pointless. Egregious clipping would tend to indicate that a particular design is unsuited to the anatomy of a particular character.

[johncage]

no. and it looks like crap.