This is part 4 of my ongoing series on improving the armor tables. Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these changes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes. These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.
This week's subject is medium armor, more protective than light armor but less restrictive than heavy armor. We've got leather plate, wooden slat, scale, light mail, jazerant, brigandine, and lamellar. These include some of the most widely used armors from history. Lamellar, for instance, was used from ancient times through to the 19th century, in places like Central Asia, Byzantium, and Tibet. Some armors are more obscure, or more limited in geographic or temporal range; jazerant was largely a Middle Eastern variation on mail, though the Japanese later got in on it as well.
Brigandine is one of my favorite armors, but it is one that often goes overlooked. Because the actual metal of the armor is concealed (except for the rivets attaching the plates to the cloth backing), it doesn't show up well in historical illustrations and it lacks visual appeal for Hollywood and for fantasy illustrators. Medieval drawings of soldiers in brigandine armor were probably the inspiration for 'studded leather armor', the fictional type of armor so popular among Victorian medievalists, RPG designers, and Hollywood costume departments. Nonetheless, brigandine was an incredibly effective and popular style of armor, and I hope it will become so in your games as well.
Read on to see the stats for all these armor types and learn more about them. As before, I have provided some historical information with each armor entry in order to aid the GM in determining which armors would fit best in a particular campaign setting.
The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.
Brigandine
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| Inside view of brigandine armor showing the overlapping steel plates riveted to the exterior of canvas. Italian brigandine, 1470s. (Royal Armouries, Leeds) |
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| Early Qing dynasty Chinese brigandine (ding jia) showing the riveted fabric exterior. (Royal Armouries, Leeds) |
Cost 200gp; AC +6; Max Dex +3; Check Penalty
-4; Weight 25 lbs.
Brigandine, also
known as jack-of-plate or coat of plates, consists of a series of overlapping
metal plates sewn or riveted to the inside of a cloth or leather garment. The most primitive (and heavy) brigandines
are made of large rectangular plates, but more skillfully crafted ones combine
largish plates several square-inches in size with much smaller lames shaped and
positioned for maximum flexibility and protective coverage. Brigandine’s popularity derives as much from
its level of protection as from its affordability relative to plate armor - it
is much cheaper to make a breastplate out of dozens or hundreds of small plates
of metal than out of one large sheet of metal shaped to the wearer. This armor is either worn over a padded
arming doublet or has a padded doublet integrated into it.
Historical Notes: Brigandine seems to
have developed independently in High Medieval Europe and 8th century China,
although some have theorized that the Chinese invention spread to Europe by way
of the Mongols. Brigandine in Europe was
almost always just torso protection, perhaps extending down to a skirt, with
other armor serving to protect the arms and legs. During its early development, it appears to
have been worn with mail, but during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) a common
arrangement for foot soldiers was a cuirass of brigandine with plate armor protecting
the limbs. In renaissance Italy, a
doublet of brigandine with no limb armor was a common defense for the middle
class.
Brigandine in
Asia was often used over more of the body.
Chinese dinjia was a long
brigandine coat covering about as much of the body as a mail hauberk. The Indian ‘coat of ten-thousand nails’
included sleeves, leggings, and pauldrons.
The Mongolians even wore leather boots lined with metal plates.
Other Names: jack-of-plate, coat of
plates; Chinese - dinjia; Indian - chihal'ta hazar masha (coat of ten-thousand nails); Japanese - kikko; Mongolian - hatangu degel; Russian - kuyak
Lamellar Armor
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| Left to right: 17th century Tibetan votive lamellar armor copy; Mongolian lamellar horse armor; 17th century Japanese Dō Maru, a diplomatic gift from Tokugawa Hidetada to King James I (all from Royal Armouries, Leeds) |
Cost 120gp; AC +6; Max Dex +2; Check Penalty
-4; Weight 30 lbs.
This flexible
armor is constructed of small squares of metal called lamellae laced together into overlapping parallel strips. This method of construction provides superior
protection and flexibility to scale armor.
Lamellar armor is sometimes constructed with lamellae of bone or
horn.
Historical Notes: Lamellar armor was
widespread throughout Asia, first of bronze and then of iron or steel. It saw limited use in Europe as well, though
in Roman times mail came to be the flexible metallic armor of choice. The Byzantine Empire made especially fine use
of steel lamellar armor; their elite cataphracts garbed themselves and their horses
in full suits of it. Vikings serving in
the Varangian Guard in Constantinople may have brought lamellar armor back to
Scandinavia, though it never saw widespread use in that land dominated by heavy
mail. Lamellar armor for men and horses
was also widespread throughout Central Asia and Russia, especially among the
Mongols and the many kingdoms they founded.
Many of types of Japanese samurai armor were also lamellar.
Other Names: Japanese - dō-maru,
hon-iyozane dō, hon kozane dō, o-yoroi
Leather Plate
Cost 100gp; AC +4; Max Dex +4; Check Penalty
-2; Weight 25 lbs.
By boiling
leather in water, oil, wax, or a mixture of chemicals, it becomes thicker and
tougher, and can be molded into hard plates.
Leather plate armor consists of shaped plates of boiled leather that
cover the body in much the same way that steel plate armor does.
Historical Notes: Plates of cuir bouilli were common in the High
Middle Ages during the time when knights were transitioning from mail to
plate. Leather plate was a cheaper and
lighter alternative to steel plate and, although it didn’t provide the same
level of protection, it could still reliably turn aside a sword cut or lance
blow. I don’t know of any specific find,
description, or illustration of a complete suit of leather plate, but it is not
hard to imagine its existence in a fantasy world. Cuir
bouilli remained a supplement to plate armor well into the heyday of full
plate; the Emperor Maximilian I (b.1459 - d.1519), that noted jousting enthusiast, had a suit of
tournament armor with a large molded piece of cuir bouilli that completely covered his left arm, torso, and
neck.
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| The cuir bouilli front piece of the Emperor Maximilian's jousting armor covers the chest, left arm, and neck. (Royal Armouries, Leeds) |
Boiled leather
was used for pieces of armor elsewhere and at other points in history as
well. Some Greek hoplite armor, for
instance, was made of leather rather than much heavier bronze.
Light Mail
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| Left to right: 18th century Rajasthani mail with talismanic disks; 18th century Caucasian skullcap and mail aventail; 18th century North Indian mail with plate defenses. (Royal Armouries, Leeds) |
A lighter
version of heavy mail designed to allow for a greater range of motion and less
encumbrance, light mail is constructed from thin rings of steel linked together
to form a complete armor. Whereas the rings of heavy mail are riveted together, light mail rings are not, making them lighter and cheaper to produce, but easier to split. Visually, it
appears much finer - almost diaphanous - compared to heavy mail. Light mail can even be worn fairly
inconspicuously under clothing (though, naturally, still over one’s arming
doublet).
Historical Notes: Warriors of the Middle
East, India, and Central Asia preferred a lighter mail to the heavy hauberks
worn by Europeans. While it was less
protective, it was correspondingly lighter and less encumbering - a decided
advantage in hot climates. Light mail saw continued use in Asia, especially in India and Japan, into the 17th and 18th centuries.
Other Names: Japanese - kusari; Persian - zereh
Mail Jazerant
 |
| Edo-period samurai kusari katabira - light mail sewn between layers of cloth - with iron forehead protector and mail aventail (Samuraiantiqueworld, via Wikimedia) |
Cost 170gp; AC +5; Max Dex +3; Check Penalty
-5; Weight 35 lbs.
This armor is a
variant construction of light mail. It
consists of light mail enveloped between layers of leather, silk, or padded
cloth which protect it from the elements.
Because of its
protective covering, jazerant gains a +5 bonus on saves against rusting effects
such as the touch of a rust monster.
Historical Notes: Jazerant was primarily a Middle Eastern armor,
used throughout Anatolia, Persia, and the Levant in the 11th-14th
centuries. A form of jazerant was also
used in Tokugawa Japan.
Other Names: Japanese - kusari katabira
Scale Armor
 |
| Bronze lorica squamata fragments (Scottish National Museum, Edinburgh) |
This armor
consists of hundreds of scales of overlapping metal sewn to a flexible cloth or
leather backing. This provides a good
balance of flexibility and protective coverage, but less so than more advanced
armors like lamellar or mail.
Historical Notes: Scale armor of bronze
or iron was widespread in the ancient world, from Europe to the Far East. The Roman lorica
squamata was one such armor.
However, its popularity waned with the advent of more new armors that
simultaneously offered more protection and flexibility - mail in Europe and
lamellar in Asia.
Other Names: Japanese - yorin kozane; Roman - lorica squamata
Wooden Slat
 |
| Early 19th century Tlingit armor. A cuirass and bracers of wooden slats, wooden helmet and gorget, with hide covering the rest |
This stouter
version of rod armor is constructed of broad slats of hardwood bound together
with hide. A simple breastplate protects
the torso, and either a skirt of slats or individual wooden cuisses and greaves
protect the legs, while similar slat bracers protect the forearms. The helmet is of wood, often paired with a
stout wooden gorget. A masterwork suit
of slat armor might use rod armor to cover more flexible areas and help insure
maximum coverage and mobility. This
armor is worn over a leather or padded jacket.
Historical Notes: Slat armor seems to
have spread through North America via the tribes of the northern Pacific coast,
where slat armor was often made of cedar or, in arctic regions, whale bone or
walrus ivory. Slat cuirasses were used
as far the eastern seaboard of the United States, but it was the Pacific coast
where full suits of slat armor were worn.
Most notably, the Tlingit people of the Alaskan panhandle employed full
protective suits of wooden armor complete with heavy, beautifully carved
helmets. Late 18th century accounts of
Russian battles with Haida and Tlingit warriors told how their musket balls
were unable to penetrate the natives’ heavy wooden armor and helmets. On several occasions in the 17th century,
French soldiers and explorers of inland North America donned wooden armor to
protect themselves from native arrows.
Though such
armor is largely confined to North America in the historical period, it was
likely far more widespread in prehistoric times. A suit of 3,900 year old bone armor made with
similar construction techniques was recently unearthed in the Russian city of
Omsk.
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Why the distinction between light and heavy mail? I decided early on that mail should be a heavy armor. But when comparing European and Asian types of mail, you quickly see that Asian mail tends to be visibly less thick, with finer links forming an almost see-through mesh. Also, while all known European mail was made of riveted links, much of the mail from Asia was made of butted links (where the metal is twisted into a ring until the ends meet, but they are not fastened together), which is a lighter but less resilient construction. Because of this, I split mail into light and heavy, letting light mail stay on as a medium armor while heavy mail was, fittingly enough, bumped up to heavy armor. All the variant forms of mail are made with a base of light mail; this is the case with jazerant (as you saw above), and mail-and-plate (as you will see in a future update).
As I mentioned in the previous post, boiled leather plate is actually a lot more protective than D&D has previously given it credit for. If knights could wear it in a joust, I decided it probably deserves to be a medium armor. And although I doubt a full suit of leather plate was ever made, somehow it fits in perfectly to a Medieval-flavored fantasy setting. Here it serves as a more refined alternative to your standard +4 hide armor, so characters who want to wear some form of non-metallic medium armor need not look like an unwashed druid.
Speaking of non-metallic medium armor, let's welcome wooden slat armor to the club! The armor of the native tribes of the Northern Pacific coast is some of the coolest around, in my opinion. Tlingit and Haida warriors, with their stout wooden armor and fierce, carved helmets must have been a terrifying sight to behold. Check out this awesome painting by Ray Troll: The Battle of Old Sitka.
-your squamous d20 despot
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