Low Armour Settings

Custom armour for special occasions not covered in this post.
Stephen Cartwright for Usborne.

This isn't about historical accuracy/realism, but gameable fiction using a D&D adjacent system.

In my setting defaults, armour is usually low availability/use because that's the fiction I'm going for, and I'll support that with whatever makes sense - fashion, scarcity of materials or knowledge, lack of need, relative local stability, market forces and legal systems (both malevolent and benign).

Bear in mind I came to some of this via using a 3d6 Hit Roll with capped AC and assuming a low level campaign, so even though the numbers aren't that different to regular d20 play, they could break down at higher levels.

Metal Suit Armour is Expensive.

While armour prices generally rise across D&D editions, plate is cheap in BECMI and a suit of full armour (BECMI Master set) is only 250gp - still cheaper than plate in AD&D.. 

Using the 1e AD&D Lankhmar setting as a starting point, chain is x4 the listed cost and plate is unique, beyond the means of common adventurers (so maybe costing the equivalent of XP to reach 2nd level). Little-remembered UK rpg Dragonroar gives price of plate as 600 to 6,000 without commentary.

This is not because metal is especially scarce or because the technology isn't up to it, but because you need one of a dwindling number of specialists to make it, or because it belongs or belonged to someone important. Except for maybe the military during an actual war, there aren't workshops churning out suits of mail and plate.

Leather/Light Armour.

This type of armour exists in all settings except where there is no armour at all. Usually leather, or cloth, or padded, but can be reskinned as whatever you like (even mail or plate) as long as it's Light and protects as such. 

Includes robust clothing, crude animal hides and furs, catsuits, hazmat, otherwise impractical chainmail bikinis - whatever marks out the character as being armoured as opposed to not. 

Helmets and Shields.

Though shields have fallen out of common use, the buckler is still used for fighting practice and is readily available. 

Helmets, bucklers and parrying daggers as in this post. Helmets will be open as standard, but visors etc can be fitted easily enough.

Common Armour Types.

Relatively generic, covering approximately 17th/18th Century European pseudohistorical period (Hammer Horror-ish), but related examples exist in non-Euro settings and both earlier and later.

No prices, because it will vary place-to-place, time-to-time and depend on how fancy you want your goods.

• Leather Jack/Jerkin gives +1 AC and encumbers as Unarmoured. Basically a padded leather vest or jacket.

• Soldier's Coat gives +1 AC, but encumbers as Light armour. This is a gambeson or buff coat.

• Jack of Plates/Brigandine gives +1 AC, encumbers as Medium armour, but gives a 1 on d6 save vs. crits. Layers of cloth/leather reinforced with bits of metal plate (rivetted or sewn).

• Breastplate gives +2 AC and a save vs. crit, encumbers as Medium armour. Sometimes impractically ornate and expensive and just for show.

• Mail Shirt gives +3 AC, encumbers as Heavy armour. This is old fashioned kit, the armour of unrefined barbarians.

• Heavy Breastplate isn't necessarily available, but would be +4 AC Heavy armour with a crit save. Very old fashioned or worn by monsters.

You can wear a Leather Jack, Jack of Plates or Mail Shirt under a Soldier's Coat to stack the benefits.

You can do the same with a Breastplate and a Leather Jack or Soldier's Coat.

If you're wearing a Helmet with your Jack of Plates or Breastplate, you get the save vs. crit from both - so either roll twice or save on 1-2.

I'm assuming padding under the Mail Shirt as standard, but you could allow layering with a Leather Jack for total +4 AC.

Commentary.

Dark Sun pits non-metal vs. metal, but isn't necessarily a low armour setting. 

A Mighty Fortress provides for a specific historical period. Lamentations of the Flame Princess runs with this - with room for adventurers in plate and chain because they're monsters and weirdos.

Orcs of Thar gives rules for armour made of scraps (I think there were other BECMI/RC supplements that used this or a variation on it). I don't think this sits well alongside the primary armour system - maybe for a pure scavenger game. 

Lankhmar - City of Adventure firmly places one of the formative D&D texts in low armour territory, and this supplement (or at least the 1e AD&D character conversion section) is one of my touchstones for thinking about D&D adjacent gaming.

Again, usual caveats that this might all have been done before, done better or should just have played Runequest/ WFRP.

Bonus Extra.

And not just for low armour settings.

Leather, chain or plate on their own give +2 AC and are Light armour (chain shirt, breastplate etc), but you can layer them up to +6 - leather/padded under chain and/or plate.

Cost is cumulative for each layer.

This also leaves room to add optional  +1 AC armour pieces, such as tassets or an alternative to the helmet as a save vs. crit.

Helm and Shield for the Unarmoured Old School Fighter (D&D adjacent)

Bearing in mind cavalier attitudes to encumbrance mechanics, this is the common-or-garden 1st level Fighter in the D&D I started out with:

Plate and Shield AC +7
(Citadel D&D Adventurers set/Lost Minis wiki)

Until magic items get into the mix, there is no reason not to load up like this: plate and shield is just better than chain and no shield.  And probably one of the reasons why it has been said that every Human Fighter is/was the same.

Shield AC +1
(Citadel D&D Adventurers set/Lost Minis wiki)

Mechanically, there's no reason to play the Unarmoured Fighter or even to give them a helmet in some of the older editions - except for an exceptionally bad starting gold roll, or after an encounter with one of the equipment-destroying monsters. But this Fighter-type is, I think, an iconic/important archetype/figure in the fiction and was poorly supported by the game.

(I know the Unarmoured DEX Fighter comes into their own and then goes beyond in later editions (3e onwards?), but I'm still living in a past when Clerics were Clumsy and Thieves were Foolish)

Shields.

I owe an awful lot to this post I stumbled on via an OSR Facebook group.

It covers (the now venerable) Shields Will Be Splintered, but my main takeaway was from Wolves of God: shields give you significant AC bonus, but don't stack with worn armour. 

So, I'll offer three shields following the basic/classic AC scale, with cost and weight half that of the equivalent armour. There’s even room for a buckler/parrying dagger at +1 AC (cost and weight of a shortsword?).

Materials and designs as you see fit. Pay extra for mods like horns or spikes. Still can be splintered. Shield bash like a club or subdual strike. 

Whether as a Fighter benefit or so it's not just an either/or choice, +1 AC for having a shield when using armour that's the same or better.

Maybe there shouldn't be an AC +6 shield so that plate mail remains The Best. This is better than full cover in a number of D&D adjacents, and might be better applied to static (or semi-static) shields like the pavise or mantlet. Or you need a trained shieldbearer to wield it two-handed on your behalf.

With shields having many more ‘points’ in them and possibly scaling to 6, there’s room for doing something with them if you want that sweet further complexity. Like, they can suffer attrition until they are broken or repaired - WFRP rimless shields were only good for one adventure. Or the AC value is also a save vs. shield-breaking attacks, or the threshold for triggering a usage die.

Gary Chalk for Talisman.

Helmets.

In lots of D&D adjacents, the helmet is more something that you lose for a penalty than possess for its defensive value, which seems to do it a disservice. After all, it's one of the pieces of armour kit that has survived into the modern era. 

I believe (as in "I heard or read it somewhere") that the (re)introduction of the helmet into the British (?) army led to a rise in recorded head-injuries, as soldiers survived previously fatal wounds. Like with that diagram of the bullet holes in the aeroplane.

Tucked away in the 1e AD&D DMG is the information that, if you're not wearing a helmet, there's a 1 on d6 chance of attacks going for the unarmoured head and being made vs. unarmoured AC (don't think it specifies whether or not you get your DEX adjustment). This feels like a spot ruling that made it into the rules (d6 would break down into a basic hit location roll of head, torso, each arms, each leg) and feels a bit clunky.

Instead, use the 1 in d6 as a save vs. critical hits (thank you, abstract combat and hit points). I don’t think this is game breaking, and makes it worth wearing one if you can’t afford full armour. 

(Yes, not all systems use crits, but it's one of those houserules that was so instinctive a lot of us thought it was written down somewhere. I can't remember ever not using it)

This x-in-x save vs. crit/fatality can also be used for pocket Bibles, a locket from your beloved, silver cigarette cases and so on, if you like.

Commentary.

Does this mean everyone in a suit of chain or plate (my assumption is that leather doesn't come with a metal helmet) gets a save vs. crit? 

My intention was to make helmets mean something by themselves, rather than give all armour a boost, and I was coming at it from the perspective of a low armour setting where people don't go around in full battle dress day-to-day.

In Dragonwarriors, wielding a shield in combat gave a 1 on d6 saving throw. There was no guidance on whether shields were class specific, how many blocks per round they could do, nor if they were effective vs. crits (in DW, crits auto-penetrate armour). Magical shields gave you a Defence bonus rather than improved the save, and a little reading around suggests that the d6 save was often forgotten at the table or houseruled as a Defence bonus (so back to +1 AC for a shield).

A feature of the older editions of Talisman and Warhammer that I'm familiar with: roll d6 to save your life.

Which is why I've labelled this post BOSR.

DW makes the shield different in execution to worn armour and to normal combat defence, and I like that mechanical diversity for its own sake.

I've seen (in passing, over years, so not sure where or when) other options for unarmoured Fighters, such as allowing them to use a STR or CHA modifier to their AC (in addition to DEX and shield), representing the bare-chested barbarian/chainmail bikini end of the fiction.