I think the majority of this forum puts too much stock in the effectiveness of Plate armor

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Thinking anyone in Plate by default bests anyone without it. Syrio drops what 3-5 armored guards (1) with a wooden sword before finally losing to Trent? Acting like Jorah would decimate the Khal. Plate armor is useless as fuck once you're off your feet (2) which any professional war maker can accomplish (3). It was great against sword slashes (4), could easily be pinched by blunt trama (5), easy to knock someone off balance (6), and historically there are countless times where it is useless (7). If it is so impenetrable how do two people wearing it kill one other? (8) If person a with plate can kill person b with plate then someone without plate can do it as well (9). It is just a defensive tool (10), not a guaranteed viceroy.

Rant off

(1) Partially armored guards, with GRRM lampshading the gaps.

(2) May I jump on your stomach with my knees to test that statement?

(3) With great difficulty. If he manages that, he has an advantage. If.

(4) Yes. And that's basically all Drogo could bring to bear with his arakh.

(5) Easily? No. Or at least any inconviniencing blunt force would cripple or kill an unarmored man.

(6) Less easily than an unarmored man. A swift kick to the unarmored shin should convince you.

(7) Swimming tournaments ain't exactly the place for armor.

(8) With lance, poleaxe, flanged mace, warhammer, or with dagger or straight sword in halfsword position while wrestling him.

(9) With appropriate weaponry and at a distinct disadvantage, yes.

(10) Only to somebody not knowing what to do in armor.

But you have to take into account that Barristan Selmy is the best swordsman in Westoros. Even without armor was Khrazz even on the same level?

Khrazz is better. Barristan is far too old, while they may have had the same talent and similar training, his speed, strength and endurance suffered badly. By the way, Barristan was never the best swordsman in Westeros, Jaime Lannister was.

armour is useful and gives an edge yes but its no guarantee of victory by a long shot.

heres a guy in no armour vs guy in full plate going at it using actual sword techniques from the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi757-7XD94

Ouch. Two issues with that:

1) That "edges were not sharp all the way to allow for halfswording" is total BS. Gripping a sharp blade is no problem at all. Loosing you grip and the blade moving into a cut is :devil: But that's the mark of somebody not knowing what he's doing.

2) That sparring video could very well have killed the armored guy. At the very least he got a concussion and with a bit of bad luck, he could have broken his dumb skull. You don't do such shit!

True, but most of the verses threads on here seem to be Drogo vs X in armor so not sword vs sword. The video also shows both combatants clearly handling every inch of the blade so there's obviously no edge on those swords at all, if there were the movement from the unarmorded combatant would have been much slower if he wanted to avoid injury.

Indeed. The entire video (apart from it being damn dangerous) shows remarkable little adherence to the actual techniques (the hands sliding along the edge, ouch) and a bit of (deliberate) idiocy by the guy in armor.He doesn't need to halfsword, why on Earth does he do that in such an inadvantageous way? Apart from demonstration of course.

[Blackfish Tully]

Khrazz as a famous pit fighter would be very skilled and very dangerous for any knight much less an older Barristan but just because he landed a couple of ineffective blows on Barristan's armor really does not mean much . The the whole point of armor is to block blows (no different then a shield) and Barristan fought that fight perfectly and had a pretty easy time with a very dangerous fighter . That's a testament to his skill and experience. Armor has it's pros and cons (slows you down and tires you out) and that's part of the reason that Khrazz was so much faster then Barristan but he never was able to land a blow on Barristan's head that was uncovered because of Barristan's skill.

[mystickristoff]

Ah, so Khrazz wasn't Barristan tier then.

[hodorisfaclessman]

Yeah the vid guy is a pretty well known expert in the field but the vids mainly for demonstration but does highlight plates just an advantage not a fight winner by itself

[Dorian Martell]

Thinking anyone in Plate by default bests anyone without it. Syrio drops what 3-5 armored guards with a wooden sword before finally losing to Trent? Acting like Jorah would decimate the Khal. Plate armor is useless as fuck once you're off your feet which any professional war maker can accomplish. It was great against sword slashes, could easily be pinched by blunt trama, easy to knock someone off balance, and historically there are countless times where it is useless. If it is so impenetrable how do two people wearing it kill one other? If person a with plate can kill person b with plate then someone without plate can do it as well. It is just a defensive tool, not a guaranteed viceroy.

Rant off

The Reality, as proven in Agencourt is that the extra weight of the armor increases the energy a person has to expend to be mobile therefore lessening their effectiveness in combat.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

The Reality, as proven in Agencourt is that the extra weight of the armor increases the energy a person has to expend to be mobile therefore lessening their effectiveness in combat.

One km through freshly plowed dirt rained on for several weeks didin't exactly help.

Of course the English men-at-arms stopping the French assault wore just the same armor. But they didn't have to advance through a mudbath deep enough to literally drown some French.

[Alester Florent]

The Reality, as proven in Agencourt is that the extra weight of the armor increases the energy a person has to expend to be mobile therefore lessening their effectiveness in combat.

Of course someone in armour is carrying more weight and their stamina will thus likely suffer. But that goes both ways, too: an armoured warrior doesn't have to jump around dodging blows to the same extent as an unarmoured one and, against an unarmoured opponent, is likely to get much better efficiency out of his strikes so he's not wasting so much energy battering away at his foe .

Agincourt was a famous victory, but part of the reason it is so famous is because it was to a large extent against the odds. The terrain was also such that made any manoeuvring rather difficult and thus increased the problems of energy expenditure for those in plate armour. It's not like Agincourt was the end of plate armour: far from it.

I think part of the problem with this in England (and by extension the Anglosphere) is that the handful of exceptions where French knights were defeated have become so famous that things have come full circle and we now consider plate armour to have been useless, which is not actually the case at all. It's kind of like the "little ships" myth about the Armada, which has no basis in reality whatsoever but countless schoolchildren grew up thinking that dinghies were superior to galleons in a combat situation because of it.

At the end of the day it comes down to the old failsafe: if armour was as useless as suggested in the OP, people wouldn't have used it.

[Ser Cold Fingers]

How about the effectiveness of Plot Armor?

[Trigger Warning]

The Reality, as proven in Agencourt is that the extra weight of the armor increases the energy a person has to expend to be mobile therefore lessening their effectiveness in combat.

The French literally had to slog through a narrow field of freshly ploughed rain sodden mud with forests on either side under a hail of arrows.

Why do people always bring Agincourt up as the rule rather than the exception.

[mormont]

Ouch. Two issues with that:

1) That "edges were not sharp all the way to allow for halfswording" is total BS. Gripping a sharp blade is no problem at all. Loosing you grip and the blade moving into a cut is :devil: But that's the mark of somebody not knowing what he's doing.

2) That sparring video could very well have killed the armored guy. At the very least he got a concussion and with a bit of bad luck, he could have broken his dumb skull. You don't do such shit!

Indeed. The entire video (apart from it being damn dangerous) shows remarkable little adherence to the actual techniques (the hands sliding along the edge, ouch) and a bit of (deliberate) idiocy by the guy in armor.He doesn't need to halfsword, why on Earth does he do that in such an inadvantageous way? Apart from demonstration of course.

1. It is a fact that many longswords did have an unsharpened ricasso near the hilt, so were not sharp all the way: and that most writers assume this was for halfswording, because that's what the fechtbuchs suggest.

2. As for the sparring video - I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but you realise the two guys in the video are John Clements (director of ARMA, author of numerous books on longsword including probably the two best-known and best-selling modern books on the topic, and a guy who's been studying the subject for decades) and his then-deputy director, Aaron Pynenburg?

Yeah, what they're doing is dangerous. Pynenburg (the guy being hit) was a combat medic, so he likely knows that a lot better than we do. As for Clements: I have my disagreements with some of his stuff, and he may have fallen into a bad habit there (he's using a blunted blade, so no danger of cutting his hand) but it's odd to see someone pontificate about HEMA and yet not recognise Clements and effectively call him ignorant.

[Blackfish Tully]

Ah, so Khrazz wasn't Barristan tier then.

There is a difference between skill level/ability and being smart enough to use that skill/ability to your advantage . Khrazz was very skilled , fast , strong but not the smartest or he would have fought a defensive battle and wore Barristan down before trying to kill him but being a pit fighter that is just so contrary to how they were trained that he just never thought of doing it that way.

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

The problem is people seem to see armour in video game terms: as if it acts as a health bar extension or a damage multiplier, this creates the idea that if an opponent is skilled enough then he can just hit a heavily armoured opponent 10 times before he is hit once.

This simply isn't the case; someone lightly armoured with a weapon unsuitable for fighting someone in plate armour can't harm a person in plate armour.

A modern day equivalent to the idea that Drogo with his arakh can defeat a decent knight is believing that a guy who's great with a side arm can take on a tank.

True, but most of the verses threads on here seem to be Drogo vs X in armor so not sword vs sword. The video also shows both combatants clearly handling every inch of the blade so there's obviously no edge on those swords at all, if there were the movement from the unarmorded combatant would have been much slower if he wanted to avoid injury.

You can hold a sharp blade, no problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuQPfvSSlo

On the point about percussion weapons; yes they can be used to injure a guy in armour, but they won't instantly kill/incapacitate, which a sword will to an unarmoured person, swords offer far superior reach and speed to percussion weapons of the same weight, so going toe to toe with an armoured person with one isn't a good idea.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

1. It is a fact that many longswords did have an unsharpened ricasso near the hilt, so were not sharp all the way: and that most writers assume this was for halfswording, because that's what the fechtbuchs suggest.

2. As for the sparring video - I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but you realise the two guys in the video are John Clements (director of ARMA, author of numerous books on longsword including probably the two best-known and best-selling modern books on the topic, and a guy who's been studying the subject for decades) and his then-deputy director, Aaron Pynenburg?

Yeah, what they're doing is dangerous. Pynenburg (the guy being hit) was a combat medic, so he likely knows that a lot better than we do. As for Clements: I have my disagreements with some of his stuff, and he may have fallen into a bad habit there (he's using a blunted blade, so no danger of cutting his hand) but it's odd to see someone pontificate about HEMA and yet not recognise Clements and effectively call him ignorant.

1. Yes (more on the greatswords), but that's not related to halfswording, where the swords are often gripped close to the point. Well, at least not insofar that the sword has to be gripped at the ricasso.

2. Yes, I did recognize him. Not Pynenburg though. Anyway, I didn't intend to discuss HEMA practitioners on a personal base (how many on the forums would even know about ARMA?) but criticize the video itself.

[eyenon15]

A modern day equivalent to the idea that Drogo with his arakh can defeat a decent knight is believing that a guy who's great with a side arm can take on a tank.

Depending on what type of tank and what type of sidearm you are talking about, a guy one on one vs a tank might survive the encounter.

Both tanks and armor were designed for battles with lots of people, not for one on one fights.

[James Arryn]

How vulnerable would a strawman be if he were wearing articulated plate?

[Bright Blue Eyes]

How vulnerable would a strawman be if he were wearing articulated plate?

Damn vulnerable. Because against a strawman opening his visor and stabbing through isn't going to be a problem. Or lifting his arm and stab below. Or spread his legs and step into his groin from below.

[Red Typer of Dorne]

How vulnerable would a strawman be if he were wearing articulated plate?

Less vulnerable than a strawman not wearing plate. :laugh:

Really though, the reason armor is lorded so much on these forums is the context it is discussed ie. armored person vs non armored person. Armor is not a magic shield that will stop the person wearing it from harm no matter what, but when you're looking at hypothetical Drogo vs Edmure Tully in armor thread you can't ignore that it will be much harder for Drogo to kill Edmure as Drogos primary weapon is next to useless against armor. I'm not in the Edmure wins 100% of the time camp as there are ways for him to win (dagger though the visor) but i think Edmure who must of had training as a knight as he is one before he becomes a lord will have a huge advantage. On the other hand when we get to Sam in armor vs Drogo, I'm not sure that the armor will do anything but buy Sam a few seconds extra of life.

[Davos's Missing Fingers]

Less vulnerable than a strawman not wearing plate. :laugh:

Really though, the reason armor is lorded so much on these forums is the context it is discussed ie. armored person vs non armored person. Armor is not a magic shield that will stop the person wearing it from harm no matter what, but when you're looking at hypothetical Drogo vs Edmure Tully in armor thread you can't ignore that it will be much harder for Drogo to kill Edmure as Drogos primary weapon is next to useless against armor. I'm not in the Edmure wins 100% of the time camp as there are ways for him to win (dagger though the visor) but i think Edmure who must of had training as a knight as he is one before he becomes a lord will have a huge advantage. On the other hand when we get to Sam in armor vs Drogo, I'm not sure that the armor will do anything but buy Sam a few seconds extra of life.

^ This.

I think there's an overreaction coming the other way as well. We aren't saying that the armor is invincible and regardless of who's wearing it, he would defeat an unarmored person wielding an arakh. But when you have a pretty damned good fighter in Jorah Mormont (this topic arose because of the "Could Jorah kill Drogo?" thread) in armor against an unarmored behemoth that's using a weapon that we've seen to be relatively ineffective against the armor, I'm picking Mormont.

If you dress Sam up in the armor, he'd die relatively quickly.

[Talleyrand]

Sure Armour doesn't make an automatic win. Put Sam in plate against Drogo and Drogo will most likely be able to easily disarm Sam and try and stab him through the visor.

But we're rarely talking about Sam vs Drogo level discrepancy we talk about high level guy in plate vs high level guy with no armour on. And in most cases the armour is sure as shit going to make up for any small discrepancy in skill. And you can talk about how the unarmoured guy can get the knight on their back and get the visor up or get him at the joints but this somehow always seem to take place in a bubble where the guy in armour isn't also trying to kill the unarmoured guy and only has to get one or two hits in to render him useless.

Yeah it can be done but its like the issue with Superman: He has to win a 100% of the time or else the earth gets blown up. The unarmoured guy has to do everything right: a single fuck up and chances are the armoured guy has him. Where as Barry vs Khrazz shows us an armoured guy can afford to be slower, he can let a blow past his guard and shrugg it off no problem. A luxury the unarmoured guy doesn't have.

[Nictarion]

I do think some people tend to overrate armor on this forum. And the amount of people in Westeros who would actually have full plate armor. It mostly seems to come from 1 particular thread too.

I'm sorry, but when we're getting threads about how the likes of Sam, or Edmure could easily defeat Khal Drogo......