Asmor said:
Realism given the fantasy elements. A fighter in D&D and a soldier in medieval Europe fight very different battles against very different foes with very different weapons on very different battle grounds. To assume that the same armor would be not just effective, but ideal, would seem to me quite naive.
Naive? I don't think so. Consider:
In the real world, different armors were better for different purposes. Plate, for instance, rendered the sword almost obsolete, but it was (relatively) easily penetrated by a good warhammer or crushed by a flanged mace. Chain might stop a slash, but could be punched through with a thin and/or powerful arrowhead.
So it's true that different armor works for different purposes. I'll grant you that.
But...
The average warrior in a D&D setting is,
for the most part, facing the same basic sort of attacks as a warrior in the real world. Swords, axes, maces, and bows work the same in both contexts. The bite of a dire wolf includes both puncturing and crushing, but each attack individually is not
substantially different from a piercing or bludgeoning weapon.
A slash is still a slash. A stab is still a stab. A wallop is still a wallop. This is true whether it comes from a weapon wielded by a human, a weapon wielded by an orc, or the natural attack of a monster.
Now, of course there are exceptions. Some monsters in D&D have wonky attacks. Some monsters are big or strong enough that even if they're "just" stabbing you, it's not going to be like a "normal" stab.
But then, I'd argue that--using metals like steel and iron and bronze--it's almost impossible to build an effective defense against that sort of attack. Certainly the shape and style of one's armor is going to have little impact.
So, should armor in D&D look just like historical armor? Nope. There are cultural and aesthetic differences, certainly. And people in D&D do have to deal with abnormal possibilities, such as being grappled by a worm the size of a city bus.
But at a level of baseline practicality, the armor in D&D has to deal with the same sorts of abuse--cutting, stabbing, and crushing--that historical armor did. So while D&D armor should not necessarily equal historical armor, it also should not deviate
too dramatically, either. And thus, while it's perfectly acceptable to have funky, blatantly-fantastic armor (as long as it doesn't reach the point of being woefully ineffective), historically-accurate armor should
also sometimes be portrayed, because it's
not rendered out of place by virtue of this being a fantasy setting.
)
