Some reading I've been doing over the course of the last couple of years, about RL European Knights and their Asian counterparts (Samurai in Japan; Youxia in China; some Indian Hindu Paladins the name of which I can't recall; to a lesser degree these elite Celt warriors the name of which I also can't recall; etc.) made me think about the debates over armor in UO we have periodically.
I refer to the debates that wonder out loud why leather and plate, for example, should be on an equal footing; wouldn't plate protect better? Shouldn't there be some kind of resist cap that's hither for plate than for leather? Etc., etc.
My own contribution to that has long been to argue that perhaps there should be a PvM-only damage absorption for any kind of non-meddable armor, and only for a complete suit of it, not stackable with the swamp dragon absorption (so it would be either/or). That struck me as a fairly easy and not unbalancing if inelegant way to make non-meddable armor valuable and useful.
While I still support that, my reading about RL warriors of the middle ages and antiquity made me realize something important and obvious....Well, it's obvious when you think about it. Not so obvious until you do.
Armor grows out of the need to protect against weapons and fight effectively while wearing it. Plate armor, in addition to protecting better than Chain Mail, some scholars have said was actually lighter and allowed for more freedom of motion than Chain was. (So much for the worse dex penalty I recall Plate having.)
But eventually arrows, pikes, and then finally guns appeared, plate was no longer as useful and it slowly died out. Though Plate was never as heavy or cumbersome as some think (most scholars appear to agree that cranes hoisting knights onto their horses were mostly a myth), it wasn't light either; there's a story about how the King of Hungary died during a Muslim invasion of his country because he fell off his horse in his plate armor and drowned in a comparatively shallow river.
So basically once they could stop wearing that ****, once it didn't matter as much anymore? They stopped wearing it. Maybe a breastplate to prevent an accidental death from a glancing blow. And because it looks ****ing cool.
Now, what do we have in UO? Firstly we have magic; often about as much firepower as a primitive gun, sometimes more. Secondly we have materials to make weapons and armor that are way different than anything any RL crafter of the Middle Ages or Renaissance had to work with. And thirdly we have things like dragon teeth to contend with. Lots of other differences but those will surely do as examples.
The upshot is.....Why shouldn't, leather and plate be equivalent in such an environment? It's just too different from RL to draw comparisons. Who is to say magically Imbued Plate made from materials that metals that don't really exist (the only hits I got in a Google search for "Valorite" were related to UO) would be any better or any worse than magically Imbued Leather armor made from leathers that don't exist (as there are no dragons IRL)?
And who is to say that in such an environment, some warriors just wouldn't prefer plate and some prefer leather? Who is to say it wouldn't come down to personal preference and aesthetics?
Those Hindu Paladins I mentioned early on in this post? They would, one source says, ride into battle on chariots.....Stark naked. This was supposedly a religious thing, but personally I think the shock value was a factor. ("Hey are those guys naked?" And then you are dead before you know it, because a few seconds of confusion count for a lot when a deadly warrior is hurtling toward you in a chariot.) Ditto for a similar group of Celt warriors; naked chariot riders. They chose to not wear armor at all. And this was IRL.
Add to this that not everyone who knows about Crafting agrees that Leather really is superior to Plate in UO; the last few threads on this issue have shown an enormous amount of disagreement on that point.
I'll almost always, I think, support ways to customize the look of our characters, for example converting an artifact to another item in the same equipment slot. (Mace and Shield Glasses to Plate Helm or Norse Helm, to look more Knight-like, would be the best example for present purposes.) And I still like tha PvM-only damage absorption idea.
But reading about how this stuff worked IRL has convinced me that the Leather/Plate issue in UO is, by itself, just really no issue at all. What we have is perfectly logical for the unique, most definitely fantastical circumstances our characters find themselves in. And thanks to Imbuing you can have an awesome plate suit anyway; there's a thread someplace about an all-plate Sampire suit, for example.
-Galen's player
I refer to the debates that wonder out loud why leather and plate, for example, should be on an equal footing; wouldn't plate protect better? Shouldn't there be some kind of resist cap that's hither for plate than for leather? Etc., etc.
My own contribution to that has long been to argue that perhaps there should be a PvM-only damage absorption for any kind of non-meddable armor, and only for a complete suit of it, not stackable with the swamp dragon absorption (so it would be either/or). That struck me as a fairly easy and not unbalancing if inelegant way to make non-meddable armor valuable and useful.
While I still support that, my reading about RL warriors of the middle ages and antiquity made me realize something important and obvious....Well, it's obvious when you think about it. Not so obvious until you do.
Armor grows out of the need to protect against weapons and fight effectively while wearing it. Plate armor, in addition to protecting better than Chain Mail, some scholars have said was actually lighter and allowed for more freedom of motion than Chain was. (So much for the worse dex penalty I recall Plate having.)
But eventually arrows, pikes, and then finally guns appeared, plate was no longer as useful and it slowly died out. Though Plate was never as heavy or cumbersome as some think (most scholars appear to agree that cranes hoisting knights onto their horses were mostly a myth), it wasn't light either; there's a story about how the King of Hungary died during a Muslim invasion of his country because he fell off his horse in his plate armor and drowned in a comparatively shallow river.
So basically once they could stop wearing that ****, once it didn't matter as much anymore? They stopped wearing it. Maybe a breastplate to prevent an accidental death from a glancing blow. And because it looks ****ing cool.
Now, what do we have in UO? Firstly we have magic; often about as much firepower as a primitive gun, sometimes more. Secondly we have materials to make weapons and armor that are way different than anything any RL crafter of the Middle Ages or Renaissance had to work with. And thirdly we have things like dragon teeth to contend with. Lots of other differences but those will surely do as examples.
The upshot is.....Why shouldn't, leather and plate be equivalent in such an environment? It's just too different from RL to draw comparisons. Who is to say magically Imbued Plate made from materials that metals that don't really exist (the only hits I got in a Google search for "Valorite" were related to UO) would be any better or any worse than magically Imbued Leather armor made from leathers that don't exist (as there are no dragons IRL)?
And who is to say that in such an environment, some warriors just wouldn't prefer plate and some prefer leather? Who is to say it wouldn't come down to personal preference and aesthetics?
Those Hindu Paladins I mentioned early on in this post? They would, one source says, ride into battle on chariots.....Stark naked. This was supposedly a religious thing, but personally I think the shock value was a factor. ("Hey are those guys naked?" And then you are dead before you know it, because a few seconds of confusion count for a lot when a deadly warrior is hurtling toward you in a chariot.) Ditto for a similar group of Celt warriors; naked chariot riders. They chose to not wear armor at all. And this was IRL.
Add to this that not everyone who knows about Crafting agrees that Leather really is superior to Plate in UO; the last few threads on this issue have shown an enormous amount of disagreement on that point.
I'll almost always, I think, support ways to customize the look of our characters, for example converting an artifact to another item in the same equipment slot. (Mace and Shield Glasses to Plate Helm or Norse Helm, to look more Knight-like, would be the best example for present purposes.) And I still like tha PvM-only damage absorption idea.
But reading about how this stuff worked IRL has convinced me that the Leather/Plate issue in UO is, by itself, just really no issue at all. What we have is perfectly logical for the unique, most definitely fantastical circumstances our characters find themselves in. And thanks to Imbuing you can have an awesome plate suit anyway; there's a thread someplace about an all-plate Sampire suit, for example.
-Galen's player
