Ulfsark1982 said:
For instance, I doubt that people who never learned to smith metal would have any sort of heavy or possibly even medium armor. Also as the area will be mostly warm jungle I can't imagine people teomping around in plate mail. Any suggestions?
See if you can find a book called
Aztec Warfare in the library or buy a copy. Nice source of fighting practices of that group. From memory:
Armor (for those who had it) consisted of a padded cotton vest. More complex suits incorporated cotton forearms and leggings. This was often covered with a 'feather suit' which made grappling them harder. While VERY rare, this armor was occasionally augmented with copper or gold plates/bands.
Shields were made of wicker and stretched leather. These small shields had a feather fringe along the bottom that was used to sweep asside missile weapons. Again, while rare, this was also sometimes augmented with beaten copper or gold plates. An older shield style was made of a wicker mat that could be rolled and unrolled for portability, and was more the size of a large or tower shield.
Weapons were made mostly of wood and obsidian/flint. Most of the weapons in the PHB had equivalents or could be extrapolated easilly enough. Common weapons would be short bows, slings, atlatls, macahuitls (Long swords and two handed swords), maces, and tepoztopilli (Glaive or halberd). Obsidian actually holds a better edge then steel, is self sharpening, and weapons were often designed to have 'serrated' edges. They could cause devestating damage vs. unarmored opponents, but had a tendency to break against metal. I would suggest liberal use of Glassteel if you dont want to worry about weapon replacement as much.
