Here's an interesting thread (several years old) at MyArmory.com testing various weaponry against padded linen and good mail armors. Lots of nice pictures.
Executive summary -- Arrows are stopped by both types. Slashing with a sharp blade can work against padded, but is basically futile against mail. Thrusting attacks can work against both (even mail, if the weapon is long/heavy like a 2-handed sword or spiked poleaxe). A heavy poleaxe can be used to chop mail, and while the links maintain structure, the person beneath is likely smashed to pieces.
So really, I read this as a nice test between the basic armor types that OD&D calls "leather armor" (which I assume is mostly layers of padded linen, with an outer coat of leather, i.e., a padded jack) and "chain-type mail". You might rule-ify this by saying that swords have no extra bonus (as base armor level), axe/hammer/halberd get +2 vs. chain (i.e., making chain & leather equivalent), but arrows are -2 vs. leather (again, chain & leather equivalent). That's quasi-similar to what the OD&D Sup-I/AD&D weapon vs. AC charts (and my house rules) do, except for the arrow part which is actually reversed (and simply ignored in my OED).
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The linen thing looks more like a linothorax to me, but you do have a point. :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this test is important because:
1: it shows that chain behaviour is compels, being made of two layers with completely different properties, interacting for better protection.
2: it give us hard data! :D
3: it demonstrates that polearms are THE AWESOME
This is great stuff, thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteAll of those pictures of fragmented chain links and slashed linen make me glad I am not a soldier in medieval times. Painful looking! Even if a slashing sword or polearm didn't penetrate, I would imagine it could be like getting whacked with a baseball bat --- bones would break and organs get ruptured.
ReplyDeleteI once got hit by a golf ball right in the stomach. It hurt a lot more than a fist would have and I was sore for days.