For those complaining about blunt damage vs armor

[Honved]

Wouldn't it make a LOT more sense for armor to reduce the first X number of points of damage? A strong user should be able to do SOME damage with even a low-damage weapon, and a weak user with a high-damage or piercing/blunt weapon should be able to have some effect, but a low-tier looter with makeshift weapoms shouldn't be able to inflict damage at all through sufficiently heavy armor. The combination of a high-damage weapon with blunt or piercing effect in the hands of a strong user would be able to deal serious damage through even the heaviest armor.

 

[five bucks]

OP, think for a second how bad that hit would have been if the guy wasn't wearing a helmet.

Also it's a bit of an isolated example. Nobody would bother wearing helmets at all (they can be various degrees of expensive, heavy, uncomfortable, and very constrictive of vision!) if it was standard behaviour that tapping someone on the chin would KO them.

Right now blunt weapons:

1) Just pure garbage in stats.
2) Ignore armor completly

And it should be:

1) A little worse in stats
2) Quite better against armor.

+1.

 

[Ling*]

Right now blunt weapons:

1) Just pure garbage in stats.
2) Ignore armor completly

And it should be:

1) A little worse in stats
2) Quite better against armor.

True that. There should be a blunt damage multiplier against "Heavy Armor" dependent on the materials used and type of armor and not the current "ignore armor" mechanic that it is now. I could be wrong, but I can't imagine Blunt damage is very effective against armor such as leather + chainmail, however I'll bet it is extremely effective against armor like lamellar and platemail.

 

[five bucks]

I could be wrong, but I can't imagine Blunt damage is very effective against armor such as leather + chainmail, however I'll bet it is extremely effective against armor like lamellar and platemail.

For starters it's important to acknowledge that all good armor used layers of padding beneath that would greatly help absorb a blow. This went for both mail and plate.
Secondly, mail, being non-rigid, would do very little to absorb the force of a blow. Mail itself provided decent protection against piercing, and excellent protection against cutting, but poor protection against blunt impact. BUT the padding beneath it provided good protection against a blunt hit.

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Coat-of-plates, being made up of larger linked rigid sections, would provide better surface protection than mail, and if you had the same padding beneath, you would get the same protection as mail but better. Coat-of-plates is the closest thing to plate we have in Bannerlord.
Full plate (not really a thing in Bannerlord with the exception of helmets), being rigid, and with the same padding, would provide the best protection out of all of them. Because when someone hits you with a blunt object, some of the force is dissipated across the plate and the energy goes into dinting the plate, rather than being pushed directly into your chest or bones. Of course, some force will get through. But not all of it.

You couldn't cut through full plate, and could only pierce it with difficulty. So blunt damage was the easiest way of dealing with a suit of full plate. But that doesn't mean it was super effective like a Pokemon Fire type attacking a Grass type, either- padded plate was still great defense even against blunt force. And through a process known as "Flanderization", the best way of dealing with plate - but still not highly effective - has now become known as some sort of hard counter in video games and movies.

For a TL;DR, here is how I would say that armor works comparatively against types of damage. Each star = more protection.

Cloth: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

Aketon: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

Aketon+Leather: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

Aketon+Mail: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

Aketon+Double-Linked Mail: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

Aketon+Coat-of-Plates: Cut - Pierce - Blunt -

 

[Maximum997]

True that. There should be a blunt damage multiplier against "Heavy Armor" dependent on the materials used and type of armor and not the current "ignore armor" mechanic that it is now. I could be wrong, but I can't imagine Blunt damage is very effective against armor such as leather + chainmail, however I'll bet it is extremely effective against armor like lamellar and platemail.

Blunt damage is actualy really bad against armor. With same mass and balance blunt weapons are the worst against everything.
It was used becouse you dont need perfect angle of atack and it cant stuck in armor. And unbalanced weapons like maces and hammers can deliver tons of energy.

 

[Grank]

I could be wrong, but I can't imagine Blunt damage is very effective against armor such as leather + chainmail, however I'll bet it is extremely effective against armor like lamellar and platemail.

You can test that quite easily at home. Just get any kind of blade protection, like those plastic boards people use to write on, and put it on your chest. Prepare a regular hammer and a kitchen knife. Lightly tap either on your chest with the same amount of power. You will feel that the hammer kinda hurts a little bit, while the knife barely feels like anything. Now you can imagine what a proper swing can do against armor. It's big ouchie.

 

[Honved]

There are several damage effects here which make armor difficult to accurately portray in a game.

First, you have the overall impact, the sheer energy being delivered to the target. That needs to be dissipated or redirected somehow, otherwise it kicks you backwards and you suffer from the sudden change in inertia, kind of like a body slam that doesn't bruise or break anything, but can still knock the wind out of you or otherwise hurt you. A hard hit to the head can cause concussion injury, or "whiplash" to the neck, regardless of whether or not the impact dents the helmet. The bigger, heavier weapons are going to deliver the most kinetic energy, regardless of what kind of damage they do, so polearms are going to be the primary means of delivery, followed by other two-handed weapons. Small, light weapons will deliver practically none.

Second, you have directed blunt damage which will dent armor, break unprotected bones (like your skull), and cause massive bruising of unprotected or only lightly protected tissue. Muscle can be crushed against the bone, doing horrendous damage. Damage to armor may also cause problems to the underlying muscle by obstructing it, even if there was no injury to the muscle in the impact itself (such as wearing a piece of armor with previous dents that dig into your arm or chest), and will tend to further aggravate any injury beneath. Many maces were designed to crease the armor, others to create a small but deep dent, or actually pierce by over-stressing the metal at the point of impact.

Third, you have piercing damage, which either penetrates the armor and inflicts puncture wounds to the body beneath, or fails to penetrate and glances off with little or no harm done. This is close to an "all or nothing" mechanism, where it either inflicts significant harm or utterly fails. Arrow and spear wounds, as well as stabbing swords, should do this. A well-placed puncture can be fatal, or it may not hit anything vital, but still be fairly serious.

Fourth, you have cut damage, which is relatively easily deflected by armor, but can slice skin and muscle apart and cause appalling wounds to an unprotected body. One such wound and you are in serious danger of bleeding to death, and may immediately lose the use of a limb due to one of the major muscles being severed or maimed.

Axes should inflict a combination of blunt, piercing, and cut damage, making them brutally effective against both armored and unarmored targets, but slow to use due to the inertia of the heavy head at such a distance from the grip. Most swords were either designed to inflict either cut OR piercing damage (slash or stab), or either cut OR blunt (slash or chop) for heavier blades (many of them with one sharp side and one blunt), and tend to be faster to use than comparable axes or maces, due to the center of mass being closer to the point of grip. Many spears were able to slash (cut) as well as stab (pierce), and many polearms were designed to function as axes as well, slow to use but extremely powerful (with good reach and leverage).

Another thing to consider is the FUNCTION of armor, which was often designed to provide protection against light, quick jabs and slashes which would gradually incapacitate you, rather than trying to stop the more visible and easily blocked heavy attacks that would actually penetrate the armor. In order to injure the wearer, you had to utilize a weapon or a form of attack that left you vulnerable to blocks and counter-attacks. Unfortunately, we cannot vary the speed versus power of our attacks (possibly the only thing that Bethesda's old game Morrowind got right in its combat system), so the abstracted attack system makes realistic armor somewhat pointless.