Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5864697" data-attributes="member: 22424">There were a couple of things from the article that caught my eye, but I wasn't able to comment on until the WotC site came back up..."May all those who go to don armour tomorrow, remember to go before they don armour tomorrow." - Prince Edmund, the Black Adder.The problem is that in a world where other things exist, loincloths are silly. The moment a culture can craft any other type of armour (or, indeed, make anything we would describe as clothing), loincloths disappear - they're simply inferior in terms of protection, hygeine, and durability.Tarzan doesn't coexist with Charlemagne. In any marginally-realistic world, he finds himself cut down in seconds.Historically, there really aren't a lot of women-warriors to draw from, at least amongst those who served openly. Of course, there are several tales of women who disguised themselves to serve - in which case they didn't wear "smaller men's armour" - what they wore was simply "men's armour".I tend to agree. My preference for the implied setting is something like the "Battlestar Galactica" model, where of course a woman can be a warrior, or a fighter-pilot, or president, and nobody gives it even a moment's thought. That's not historically accurate, and it may or may not be 'realistic', but I think it's the best baseline assumption.Where it comes to armour, then, I think the game would be best served by dressing female warriors in the armour that would exist had such a thing been common in our history. So, chain mail should indeed be as depicted - Morgause from "Merlin", rather than some equivalent of Seven of Nine's catsuit.Similarly, plate armour should absolutely not be moulded to highlight the warrior's breasts, because that is stupidly impractical - doing so would direct incoming attacks in towards vital areas, rather than away.We may not have examples, and we may not know how such armour would look, but we can certainly take a guess or two at how it is likely to be designed, given its purpose.Basically, if the game is going to be serious about depicting female characters in dangerous situations, then it should depict them seriously - they're dungeoneers, not catwalk models!This is exactly what I would like to see. IMO, this is the point where the article is at its best. And the image of the two warriors (which I haven't quoted) is the best in the article. Again, IMO.Not really. On the one hand, we have a knight who has been stupid enough to don armour inappropriate to his environment. On the other we have a female fighter who has been stupid enough to don 'armour' that is inappropriate to any environment.Honestly, I'd rather not see chainmail bikinis anywhere in a D&D book. But if you feel you must have them, then fine - just don't pretend they're anything other than cheesecake.</blockquote>

Verification