Best historical armor for a fantasy adventurer? FANTASY RE-ARMED

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And so, of course, a big thank you to World Anvil for sponsoring this episode of Shadowversity. Please do go check them out if you are a worldbuilder of any type, writer, dungeon master, or game developer. This tool is awesome. Definitely worth your while. Check it out. And now, let's get to the video. Greetings, I'm Shad, and I want to talk with you a little bit about the best armor a classic medieval fantasy adventurer would want to wear. Because it's an interesting subject, right? When we look at the classic fantasy adventurer, they generally wear armor more defined by their class or role, and that doesn't really make sense. Well, look, it makes sense to a certain level, okay? A fighter, a warrior going right in close combat, it makes sense you would want to wear some heavier, you know, more protective armor. But that does discount a very common thing that happens in adventuring that all fantasy adventurers actually need to account for. And it's travel, okay? It's funny, you don't generally roleplay traveling a lot, unless you get that random encounter and you stumble across, you know, bandits, monsters, or whatever. But generally, the travel side of things is just kind of ignored and put aside, when in actual fact, that traveling would constitute the larger amount of, I guess, time that would be filled by an adventurer. And when we take that into consideration, the type of armor they would want to wear would also actually be affected. And so, let's take a look at this. Let's try and break down all these parts, okay? We'll try and take role into consideration a bit, but also functionality and usefulness and what adventurers do most often, okay? Traveling. The difference between a regular medieval person and an adventurer is that the adventurer is generally actively looking for trouble and traveling through areas that are far more dangerous. And so, it makes sense that they would want to have some level of protection, especially in the random encounter chance. So, if they are traveling through more dangerous areas, would they want to wear armor? Well, we can get a kind of, you know, close comparison from history when we look at medieval armies. And when they traveled, did the regular soldier wear their armor when they were marching? And the answer is yes and no. There are examples of soldiers carrying their armor, such as this depiction on the Bayeux Tapestry where we clearly see the mail being carried and not worn. And there are other instances where soldiers marched in their armor, and this could be due to the fact that the poor soldiers couldn't afford a pack animal and simply had no other way but to carry it themselves. And the best way to carry armor is wearing it. Or if the likelihood of sudden battle was very high. But the conclusion that I'm drawing from looking at different references is that it's preferable to not wear the armor while you're marching if you don't have to. Again, it seems like the fantasy adventurer, they have higher chances of running into trouble. And so, especially if they're going through a haunted forest or an enchanted forest and there's monsters that could come, you know, upon them at any time, yeah, they would wear armor. Now, a realistic thing to apply for this in fantasy role-playing games and stuff is to actually have your players get fatigued much quicker if they're moving over long distances wearing their armor to account for the fact that they might get attacked. So is there a type of armor that is more comfortable to wear and you could wear it over, you know, traveling a long distance? And there is, of course, and you might not be surprised what my conclusion is about this. It's the gambeson. Gambeson, out of all the armors, is the most comfortable that I have ever worn. I haven't worn every single armor in all of history, so if you guys have some suggestions about armor that's actually far more comfortable to wear and is very effective, please do share them in the comments. I'd love to hear them. Now, gambeson, it's linen armor in case you didn't know, and is far more effective than people think. It's not invulnerable, okay? Depending on the sharpness of the blade attacking it, it is usually quite good at stopping the strike from passing through all the layers, and a sword or other, you know, comparable weapon would only, you know, have high chances of passing through a gambeson in each strike if it is insanely sharp. I'm saying sharper than a razor sharp, okay? You know, the arm is scraping, all the hair comes off without any issue as sharp as that or if not sharper. But the thing is, swords rarely retain that level of sharpness for a very long time, okay? As soon as you get that sharp, after the first few swings, the first few times you put it in the scabbard and out, it will lose that keen edge. It'll still be very sharp, chop off limbs and everything, but it won't be super sharp, sharp enough where you could chop through gambeson with each hit. Gambeson is very effective, that's why they wore it historically. And because it is so much more comfortable, you can definitely wear it for longer periods of time, more so than mail, okay? And then that's not even looking at plate armor, which is adds an additional level of awkwardness, inconvenience. The weight is actually kind of comparable, mail between plate. Plate is superior defensively, but in terms of awkwardness, like sitting down, resting in it, in that sense, it is more awkward than mail. There are some detrimental things that you should be aware of about gambeson. I have made a whole video on the gambeson. It's definitely worth a watch, okay? To give all the information. But one of the things I'll point out is heat. The advantage is, if you're playing in a medieval base setting, generally it will be in a cooler kind of environment, cool enough to wear a gambeson, you know, for long periods of time, not like Australia, I can tell you that. But people might say, ah, what about leather armor? Because leather armor is so prominent in fantasy. And yes, it is prominent. Was it as prominent as it is depicted in fantasy historically? No, it was not. Not in my opinion. There are some people who disagree with me, I have perfectly in their rights to, in my opinion, nowhere near as prominent for many, many reasons. There are videos on the subject that I've made. And just going back to the utility side of things, I actually feel gambeson is far, you know, beneficial, it's better for an adventurer than leather armor regarding the travel things. Gambeson is simply more comfortable, okay? It can be more flexible. There is more padding so you can rest in it far easier. And if you're in a colder environment, and I'm not talking about freezing, but still, even in freezing, you know, environments, this would still be useful. But just colder environments, especially during the night, the gambeson would be so much better than leather. So in actual fact, I do feel the gambeson would be the quintessential, the iconic fantasy adventurer type of armor than any other type of armor we would actually see. You would need to take into account how effective it would be, not like, you know, role-playing game statistics, where it's like, I only got what, plus one armor, plus two. No, no. People need to rework how armor works in role-playing games. And I think you need to make a whole video on this. So I will. It'll come later. So that'll have to be a subject for another video, because how gambeson would protect you against, you know, unique kind of creatures, like with larger hits, maybe a bite from a dragon or direwolf, perhaps, goblins, orcs, and things like that, is actually a far more sophisticated subject than we might realize. But the thing that most people probably don't understand is that overall gambeson is actually really effective armor, and it could actually offer very substantial and effective protection in many, you know, circumstances against many types of fantasy creatures. When I say substantial, I'm saying good enough. It will never be perfect, okay? And we do understand that, honestly, mail is better than gambeson, and plate is better even on top of that. But for how much gambeson costs compared to how much protection it offers, it is honestly the best in that regard, absolutely. And you can wear it for much longer periods of time over much longer distances needing to be traveled. How would gambeson interplay with heavier types of armor? Especially when we now consider the different roles that many different fantasy adventurers want to fulfill. So when you look at, like, you know, the classic rogue or anyone who wants to maintain a high level of mobility, the gambeson is perfect for them. In actual fact, they would probably want to only remain with gambeson and not explore things like, you know, well, in actual fact, mail and also plate. You can still maintain a high level of maneuverability. The difference, okay, why you would not want to wear, you know, a heavier armor on top of gambeson. By the way, the gambesons that you wear underneath, like mail and plate, is usually thinner than a gambeson that is made for just whole protection by itself. That's an important point to consider and remember. But going back to the reason why you might want to avoid mail and plate is not necessarily maneuverability, but for how long you can fight in the armor. Because metal armors are heavier, all right, that you will tire quicker wearing them than not. And so if you are a type of warrior that needs to maintain, you know, fighting ability for longer periods of time, and you don't have room to rest, because of course people in history did wear heavy armor and fought in longer periods of times, but they needed periods of rest in between the fighting. And so oftentimes the people on the front lines would, you know, move back in the exchange with people behind to take the front lines. And so fighting on a larger scale battle is actually a very sophisticated thing. The Romans had it down really well. But with adventurers, okay, if you have a party of like six, you know, plucky heroes and stuff that get assailed by some type of monster, it'd be kind of hard for individual adventurers to take a respite while the others are still fighting for their lives and stuff like that. Everyone kind of needs to be hands on deck. And in that regard, if you don't have, say, a higher constitution, you might actually, if you wanted to incorporate this into the rules, fatigue far quicker wearing heavier armors. And so armor types, in terms of the heavy armor types, shouldn't really be determined by maneuverability. You can do cart wheels, you can climb, you can do flips in plate armor, but you can't keep doing those types of activities for long periods of time. So instead of it being determined by maneuverability, it actually makes more sense for armor to be determined by constitution, your fitness level. Interesting thought. There is the noise factor. So if rogues want to sneak, they probably would not be wearing, you know, plate or mail, for that matter. But gambeson, yeah, they could. In factual fact, gambeson would be softer and quieter than leather armor. When leather armor is made, it's made into hardened kind of plates that are fairly stiff and rigid and will make noise when clattering against each other and other things. So the classic rogue wearing leather armor. I'm kind of doing the leather armor in this video, but I'll refer back and all that stuff. But yeah, the classic rogue wearing leather armor, nah, it should be wearing gambeson because it suits their role and what they want to do. Like a thief, much better. Yet still, the interesting thing that we're kind of finding in regards to this, if you didn't want to, you know, sneak around too much and you had a good constitution, even if you were relying on more, I guess, agility and stuff like that. Look, I'm not saying armor is like you're wearing nothing, OK? It will hamper your maneuverability a little bit, but nowhere near as much as many people suppose. You can still do all those flips and stuff. And so even those, you know, fighters, warriors that rely on agility, they would actually in reality be quite OK wearing mail and plate in their fighting styles if they can maintain their energy for the length of a fight that is needed. So this would be character classes like the classic ranger. They should be perfectly happy in heavier plated types armor. Barbarians? Depends. There are cultural things, stuff like that. And I in the sense that they don't wear much armor and actually really comes down to that wanting the desire to fight for a very long period of time. Fitness, OK? Having your skin exposed to the air to cool down and sweat and all those things. It's all interlinked. Good video. Worth a watch. And the rogues that aren't necessarily thieves and don't want sneaking, OK, but like to fight in an agility kind of manner. Again, heavy armor is still a fairly good pick for them. The thing is, and so this is when we go into the exploration, the idea of what about the front line fighters, people that really want to get in there and having heavy armor, it would be hugely beneficial to them. The simple answer is that if you wanted to be realistic, traveling over long distances would fatigue them much quicker. It's very awkward. And there would be that I have to require some fairly extreme circumstances to them to get to the point where they are traveling in in mail and plate for days on end. OK, like there anybody if they're traveling after like half a day wearing this stuff traveling, but getting so fatiguing, so heavy, heavy, it might collapse. I got to take it off. And you're in a situation where then you're not wearing that heavy armor and you would be wearing something more manageable like gambeson or even a thinner lay gambesons underneath. And even if you're an enchanted forest or you're in a dangerous area, you know, you're in goblin infested territory. You have to take that into consideration. But when they get to, say, the dungeon and look, there's ways to make dungeon kind of scenarios. I made a whole video on it, but I generally don't like the classic cliche fantasy dungeon because it's very unrealistic. But when they get to there, the actual place where they know there are monsters behind that door or something like that, of course, absolutely. They would definitely put on the best armor that would help them survive. Okay. And if they're not going to be sneaking and they know there's going to be quick kind of encounters, everyone would actually be wearing much heavier protective armor if they can afford it. Then what we generally see armor being so strictly defined by, you know, the character class with when in actual fact, if that character class is fighting and if they're using agility or not, far more character classes filling many variety of different roles would be wearing much heavier armor. And if there isn't an in-world explanation to explain why the magic users can't wear armor, absolutely would be. Okay. But we know like with Dungeons and Dragons, you know, it interferes with their fine movements, the arcane spell, the spell failure chance that you get depending on the role type. It doesn't really exist in advanced D&D 3 and 3.5. That was anyway, depends on the version that you're playing. But there are really cool ways you can explain why magic users can't be wearing armor. And I was actually talking with my fans who are signed up with the Shatterversity Discord going through different ways you could nullify magic. And, you know, through the discussion, we all kind of had an interesting idea that iron usually burns fey-type creatures in more traditional kind of settings. A great book setting that actually employs this kind of mechanic really well is Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles, starting with Name of the Wind and Wise Man Fear. Beautiful book series. And yet I really have that iron burning fey creatures thing in there. And you can kind of take that idea. It's a more traditional fantasy kind of trope and apply that more fully that art like iron also nullifies magic and a magic user can't cast their magic if they're actually touching iron. So it's an interesting idea. The other idea you could, you know, apply or give this restriction so magic users can't wear armor would be that if the magic is an energy type that needs to, you know, leave the magic user's body and stuff like that, that iron just simply blocks it. It's too solid and they need to wear something like really thin, loose kind of, you know, rose materials or just wear less clothing for the magic to, you know, leave their body and then take form in the spell that they're casting. So these are ideas that you can apply that are more realistic, okay? They kind of take some logical steps and stuff which create good setting elements. But without those things, like I said, magic users would absolutely want to be wearing heavier armor, especially if they can't, you know, use weapons as well as other people. They still want protection and, you know, one of the main things a magic user would want to carry with them? Big honking shields, okay? Even if there was a restriction in place, like the magic leaving the body or steel, iron, nullifying magic and stuff like that, shields are often made out of wood, okay? And so having a big shield protecting these more vulnerable kind of characters. When I say vulnerable, vulnerable because they don't know how to use weapons but they're really, their offensive capacity with fireballs and stuff is huge. Well, I actually think, you know, a shield would be one of the more common and beloved companions to most magic users in a fantasy setting. And you know what type of shield? I think you know what type of shield are high shield, of course, but or any other type of large shield that can protect their whole body really well. And again, if a magic user is fighting another magic user, okay, and there are fireballs being lobbed at them, something that can give them full protection makes a lot of sense. And so again, best type of armor for like adventurers, shields are a type of armor. And I And that is even if there is restriction on metal, other types of armors for them to, you know, actually just wear over their bodies. So there are some really cool ideas that you can kind of come across when you try and explore this idea in detail. And these are some of my thoughts, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts in the comments below. So just to quickly recap, traveling over long distances, something lighter, more flexible and comfortable, gambeson, absolutely. If you're relying on agility and stuff like that, you can still wear heavier armor that still makes sense. Heavier armor, metal armor specifically, makes less sense if you're wanting to sneak or fight over a longer period of time and maintain your energy, okay, because you will tire quicker wearing heavier armor. And if you're a magic user, again, shields really, really good. So there we go, guys. Thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed is really, you know, intriguing, in depth, you know, kind of analysis here, a lot of fun. So I hope you have enjoyed. I hope to see you next time. And until then.