[Axel]

After a long talk with Raven regarding the Iron Age armors (everyone go read) he raised the interesting point of how padded armor is rationalized. I've got to agree, what good does padded armor do at all? I get the concept, enough layers of something will stop or dull incoming blows, but does it deserve to actually work mechanic wise?
Which led to an interesting tangent, what is leather armor anyway? I mean, physically what does it look like? Leather pads? Leather plates? A suit of leather? What?! It could conceivably be any of these. Maybe it should be.

[Dthclaw]

Padded armor is basically what ye olde archers wore. It provided a minimal amount of protection - not enough to truly stop a weapon, but it was still better than clothes. Hence, why padded armor is in the game.

Lether armor operates on much of the same principle. Except instead of thick layers of cotton or wool between cloth layers, it is layered, treated pieces of leather. Leather armor actually came in a variety of designs, including those you mentioned, but it's more or less aesthetic - little difference in protective value. It provides a little better protection, because leather is thicker and more "solid" than padded armor, but it was still vastly inferior to pretty much any metal armor.

[Jimp]

Basically what Dth said. Padded was just a tiny bit better than regular clothing but protection is protection. 20gp is alot of money for your casual lad. Padded leather may be a more cost effective form of protection of beginning hunters or some similar 'trainee' NPC.
Leather armor was treated more thourghily, layered more and just toughened up basically. It provided a little more durability at the cost of a few more coin and some flexability. Studded Leater went one up by adding many studs to try to deflect blows or absorb a tiny bit more of the impact from a weapon.

[dragonhand777]

Quote

Which led to an interesting tangent, what is leather armor anyway? I mean, physically what does it look like? Leather pads? Leather plates? A suit of leather? What?! It could conceivably be any of these. Maybe it should be.

Artisin Armors
Scmitthernner.com
Hammer and Thread
Hope this helps.

[Axel]

The question was more what does the game consider leather armor to be? A leather breastplate does not offer the same degree of protection as a complete set of leather plates, which is superiour to a leather bodysuit.

[dragonhand777]

Axel, on Apr 3 2006, 06:47 PM, said:

The question was more what does the game consider leather armor to be? A leather breastplate does not offer the same degree of protection as a complete set of leather plates, which is superiour to a leather bodysuit.

Page 125 of the 3.5 players handbook provides a picture for you, also the discritption found on the same page reads; "The breastplate and shoulder protectors of this armor are made of leather that has been stiffened by boiling in oil. The rest of the armor is made of softer and more flexible leather."

[Axel]

Which raises the further question: why not the other possible designs using leather? There's leather scale, why not full leather plate, or leather body suits? What distinguishes hide from leather?

[Jimp]

I think that regular leather armor is a body suit. The pictures in the Equipment section of the PHB show it.
I don't understand what you mean by 'leather plate'. Something along the lines of full plate but made with thicker layers of leather?
As for Hide, I think the only difference is the level to which it's treated. Leather would be more refined and treated skins while Hide would be a simple combination of cleaned and raw skins. I think that Hide armor is only detailed for barbaric races/societies that would not have the means to treat the leather. I can't be sure though.

[Dthclaw]

Which raises the further question: why not the other possible designs using leather? There's leather scale, why not full leather plate, or leather body suits?

Because there's no appreciable difference in protective value. Unless you decide to seriously beef up all the metal armors, there's no reason to worry about whether its a leather breastplate or a suit of leather plate when, to scale, its something like a +1 vs +1.3 AC (additional +1 for studded, because that DID make a difference).

A character can call it what they want - it has pretty much the same utility, same protection. Not worth making separate headings for armors that are identical in function and almost identical in overall mechanics.

What distinguishes hide from leather?

Hide armor is untreated and generally much thicker, with layered animal skins offering somewhat better protection at the expense of being thicker and stiffer.

[Axel]

And yet leather scale is significantly more protective? Or a thicker piece of animal hide? Why should these have more protective value, while the composition of leather armor does not?

[dragonhand777]

At this point, Axel, I would suggest that you design the leather armor and it's variants as a house rule of sorts.

The armor in the PHB was designed for simplicity and game balance. The folks who designed it probably could've done it a hundred different ways, but they had to settle on just one, otherwise they would've spent much more time and money devotiong an entire book on the way armor works in D&D. That doesn't imply that a creative mind couldn't come up with some cool variants and keep them balanced. Especially having the armors laid out in the PHB as a guide line (the more protection, the higher the armor check penalty etc.)

In fact, if you're running a relatively low magic campaign where the pcs are less like lo rely on magic to beef up their armor as they gain levels, it would be a good idea to come up with a more suitible table of armors too choose from.

[Axel]

Actually we ended up discussing something like that. A set value for one variation of an armor (probably iron), then modifiers for bronze, leather, and such. Problems arise with armor weight classes, among other things. Not to mention working up tables of armor types and materials. That'd be a whole project unto itself.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

The basic idea we came to was to have a set of types of armor that would have base AC values that would be further modified by the materials from which it was made. It just seems to make more sense than actaully trying to make up a royal crapload of armors based on the materials used. After all, bronze, iron, steel, rhino hide, cow hide, elephant hide, mithril, adamantine, and tungstun armor would all have vastly different characteristics.

[Dthclaw]

Tungsten armor, eh? I'm somewhat curious what the benefits of wearing tungsten would be.

[Axel]

Don't forget PVC and kevlar, just to lighten things up a little. Although, I must admit, I've never heard of anyone using rhino hide armor.