Plate Armor

Game Stats

• Type: Over Armor
• Slashing Resistance:
• Crushing Resistance:
• Impaling Resistance:
• Burn Resistance:

Description

Plate armor describes any armor made of relatively large plates.  Plate armor is most commonly associated with the full harness of the Sevillan knight, but a knight's full harness is a very recent development, dating only to about 1500 PE.  Plate armor was in use long before then to cover the most vital parts of the body; indeed, plate armor is one of the oldest forms of body armor in the Circle.

Advantages

Plate armor is the most comprehensive form of body armor in the Circle.  Its large, rigid plates diffuse the force of crushing blows and are shaped to deflect slashing and impaling attacks.  Well-made plate armor can even stop or deflect the shot of firearms.

Plate armor is generally hand-fitted to the individual user, and because it consists of a comparatively small number of individual plates, it can fit quite comfortably.  Aside from its weight, plate armor hinders the user's movement hardly at all.  Indeed, many forms of gymnastics can be performed while wearing plate armor by an individual accustomed to the weight.  Nor is the weight of plate armor exceptional.  Because plate armor can be shaped to deflect blows rather than absorb their force, it can be made thinner than a coat of mail and still provide superior protection.  Full Sevillan knightly harness weighs only about forty to fifty pounds, much less than an equivalent coverage of mail, and even more primitive suits of plate rarely weigh more than sixty pounds.  Moreover, the custom fit of the armor allows the user to bear the weight of most plate better than even a lighter-weight equivalent piece of scale armor.  This makes plate armor the most comfortable of the metal armors to wear, as well as the most protective.

Disadvantages

Once donned, plate armor has no disadvantages compared to other metal armors.  If a warrior is determined to wear metal body armor, plate is the most protective and least restrictive option.  It is, however, also the most expensive option.  Large sheets of metal are expensive to produce and expensive to work into the requisite shape.  Such is the cost of producing plate armor that the only piece of plate most fighters can afford is a helmet, and even that is beyond the means of some.

Plate armor can be slow to don, but it need not be.  Sevillan knightly harness can take upwards of half an hour to don, but that is mostly because a Sevillan harness may consist of over twenty individual pieces of armor, most of which must be donned individually.  Piece for piece, plate armor is much slower to don than any other piece of metal armor.  Nor is the time it takes to don plate as large a disadvantage as it may seem initially.  Rarely is a fighter surprised with enough lead time to don some but not all of his armor.  Much more often there is either plenty of time to don even a full suit of plate, or no time to don any armor at all.

Regional Variants

Plate armor is most strongly associated with the image of a Sevillan knight in full harness, clad from head to toe in plate worn over linen padding with mail reinforcement.  Even in Sevilla, however, this is not the most common form of plate armor.  In Harkania and Sevilla plate armor is most commonly seen as a cuirass in the form of a metal doublet, mirroring civilian fashion.  In the Ugarite Valley, plate armor is often fashioned in the shape of muscled chests (and more rarely, limbs).  Such is the utility of plate armor that it is encountered in every culture throughout the Circle in some form.  Even the frail vaikun of R'hundalla have a form of plate armor formed of alchemically treated glass.

Plate armor can be constructed from a wide variety of materials.  It is most commonly seen in bronze, iron (that is, low-quality steel), and steel, but may also be constructed from hard boiled leather, mithril, thaumic iron, alchemically treated glass or crystal, or even the chitin of sea worms, according to locally available materials.

Party Associations

Gerund Lennaire wears a Sevillan knightly harness of glass plate armor.