The Grim-n-Gritty Rules

[jasper]

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Don't make generalizations. True, the plate armor of Agincourt was pretty flexible: I've seen folks wearing "authentic" replicas of Agincourt English armor roll on the ground, jump up and keep fighting. However, at the height of the tournament era, mounted knights couldn't indeed get on their horses by themselves, and if knocked off were unlikely to get back up. But that was more a regional thing (mostly in Germany) and much later than Agincourt, and only existed under special circumstances.

exactly my pt you are talking about late tourney armour. So which was made to explode on a good contact. And yes they could mount horse alone or with set platform.
The tourney armour was like Nascar auto compared against my Corsica.

Both go when you set on the gas but one is not street legal. Also the height of tournament period was around the 1300 hundreds not later 1400 early 1500 hundreds.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

On the subject of long bows... To my knowledge, a cloth yard shaft COULD penetrate plate, but only under a particular circumstance. The arrow had to be fired UP and then arched down onto teh target to add velocity to the arrow. A direct shot at close range by a long bow would dent the armor, but thats it.

Quick physics lesson:

The arrow comes down with exactly as much force as it went up (give or take a negligible amount due to differing wind resistance, perhaps). And it strikes the ground at exactly the same velocity as it left the bow.

The arrow leaves the bow with 100% kinetic energy. As it travels into the air, kinetic energy trades out to potential energy. At the apex, the arrow has 0% kinetic energy and 100% potential energy.

It then returns to the ground, converting all that potential energy to kinetic energy again.

This is a bit of a simplification, but the end result is the same and governed by a major principle of physics: You can't create more energy in the system than you put into it with the bow to begin with.

Wulf