On Armor

What do you wear?

  • Total voters
    57
Muir

Muir

Fighter
So, I am in the throes of character creation, and have hit the stumbling block that I'm sure we all encounter from time to time. Costuming and armor. Specifically, the all-consuming problem of how to get good looking garb while still bowing to the needs of protection and the vagaries of our armor rating system.

My current theory is split between a gambeson and chain (pretty and very in-character but vastly inefficient on a money/time spent and comfort/ease of fighting in standpoint), something in the way of brigandine, or just investing the couple hundred dollars that decent armoring will cost into nicer garb and donating my way into Arcane. AA has the efficiency contest won flat, and means not having to haul 30-50lbs of steel to every event, but I love the look and feel of real armor.

So, since I'm running in circles between the look I want and the armor rating I want, I want to throw this open to the greater world. What's your solution? What do you wear that looks good and provides protection?
 
I have two characters, a Dryad fighter and a High Ogre templar.

My Dryad has, up until recently, worn home-made leather scale armor, but honestly I'm far from an expert at leatherwork so it looked kinda amateurish, and the most I could get out of it was about 24 points of armor. That didn't bother me too much, but then I got a fancy leather doublet that looks way better for my character and is a lot more comfortable, so given all that I recently gave in and got a 30-point suit of arcane armor.

My Ogre is probably one of like 3 characters in the Alliance that actually bought Wear Extra Armor. I wear a chainmail shirt with steel plates built into it, and depending on how much armor I feel like wearing, I might add leather/plate bracers, leather greaves, leather tassets, steel spaulders, a chainmail coif, or maybe even a plate helmet (though I have yet to bring that in game so far). Once I'm done with all of my crafting projects, GRONK will have at least a 35-suit if not 40, though it'll be a while before I'm done with that and I'm not gonna buy any more WEA for a while. (My plated maille thing is kinda plate and kinda not? I'm putting brigandine in the poll even though that's not 100% accurate.)

In general I love seeing armor when I play. One of the other SoMN players (who plays the recently knighted Sir Victor von Griffin) has a variety of armor configurations ranging from a wooden kendo breastplate up to a full head-to-toe suit of plate armor. I love it. Especially for someone playing a warrior, I really like seeing people wear legit armor - that said, if you would legitimately look better without the armor, or if you can't deal with all the extra weight, I'm not really gonna begrudge anyone for wearing Arcane. I'm a little surprised there isn't more brigandine, or at least some basic coats of plates. Proper brigandine is expensive and requires a lot more knowledge of tailoring than I've got, but you can make a Wisby-style coat of plates relatively easily and the patterns are all out there on the internet.
 
My old 'kin wore brigandine based on the Japanese tsuzumi dô style, with closures in the haramaki dô fashion, complete with sode and haidate for upper arm and upper leg protection. That sort of thing is what I'll build if I go brigandine again, because it was very comfortable and well-distributed weight wise for the armor value. Although western this time instead of Japanese, so pauldrons instead of sode and just a longer split skirt on the brig for mobility to cover upper leg protection.

Coats of plates are, in my experience, very, very warm, though, and they limit what you can do costume wise by the needs of riveting in the plates and the necessary locations of supporting materials for comfortable wear.
 
I'd love to wear a breast plate... but sadly I don't have the like $1000 I'd have to drop to have one made to actually fit my chest (not with breast shaping... just to fit the girls.)

So, instead, I wear Arcane.
 
Wolfkyn fighter: Arcane armor and a patchwork leather vest, kilt.
Dwarf healer: Leather torso and greaves with metalwork bracers and helm.
 
Elf Templar: Arcane armor (used to be a chainmail shirt and leather bracers), bracers still worn for decor
'Kyn Rogue: Leather scale, leather bracers
Hobling Scholar: Leather bracers, garb
 
SkollWolfrun said:
Wolfkyn fighter: Arcane armor and a patchwork leather vest, kilt.
Dwarf healer: Leather torso and greaves with metalwork bracers and helm.
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Skoll, I'm curious, why that split? Given the armor rules, I'd expect to see metal on the torso rather than the extremities, as it's worth much more there.
 
I used to wear micromesh chain, but I ran into two problems: #1, my back started to rebel (be disc in the neck making the load a problem) and #2, it was a problem on my garb. Frankly in a world where "your character" is recognizable by the colorful costumes you wear as much as anything else, wearing armor can make character hard to recognize.

Joe S.
 
Dryad Scholar. I currently have a phys rep meant to mimic suede lined in wool for padded cloth. I plan on upgrading a few of the pieces for leather soon though, just because I would like to not have to retie my bracers all the time. It just wiggles to much on moving parts to keep it on.
 
Muir said:
Skoll, I'm curious, why that split? Given the armor rules, I'd expect to see metal on the torso rather than the extremities, as it's worth much more there.
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Scholar healer, so I am going to cap out real quick between the helmet and bracers then the additional leather pieces. Plus is looks pretty good together.
 
Human fighter: Arcane armor. But I wore my chainmail with plate gorget and plate pauldrons anyway because they looked awesome. I actually had plans to get him a full set of plate before long, but, alas, he permanently croaked.
Mystic Wood Elf fighter: Chainmail with leather bracers and greaves. Leather overcoat as well. Coming soon I'll have another set of full 30-pt AA but I still plan on wearing my physical armor.
 
Elven scholar: AA. I've played with this for fun IG as the character being particularly noodly and not physically strong; mostly I like to make people laugh by pantomiming not being able to pick up and wear heavy armor or wield weapons.

Barbarian fighter: leather pauldron, leather bracers w/hand guards (ugggh), leather kidney belt. I love my leathers - they don't inhibit my mobility, are decently light for me and my itty bitty everything, and look pretty freakin' brutal. The rest of my character's costume is pretty simple - linen tunics in blue and black and a badger pelt under the kidney belt, so I use the armor as her identifier. Means I can't wear it for multiple characters at once, but that's not even kind of an issue for now.
 
My Kin rogue started with crappy home made faux leather with studs. it was horrible but it was quick and easy to make. I then built my own set of black scale armor and bracers. It was fairly lightweight. It was 10oz and was warm and waterproof. The problem was that it squeeked with any movement. I was then given a suit of AA so that is what I rock now and its so much quieter.
 
My elf templar has worn all kinds of different things throughout his time. Leather bracers and torso armor, riveted aluminum chain shirt with leather bracers, just the leather torso armor, Arcane Armor, Arcane Armor with leather bracers. I'm really fine with wearing anything with him, though I shy away from my chain shirt nowadays for the simple reason that it rubs off a lot of gray on my costuming and hands while I wear it. Wearing the 30 AA is nice as a templar since I wouldn't otherwise be able to get that high without some Wear Extra Armor, but if I wear physical armor, I usually rep a 20 suit with my leather bits and I'm okay with that.

There were once plans for my dryad rogue to have some woodland-themed leather armor (and I do indeed have a half-finished pair of tree bark leather bracers), though the time arose for me to be able to debut him and it wasn't complete yet, so I got a hold of some Arcane Armor instead. Once it expires sometime in 2015, it's entirely possible that I'll make the armor, but we'll see. My dryad outfit is intended to be very flowing and floppy-looking, which wearing the armor sort of conflicts with, and it's "not really [the character's] style" to wear armor.

My biata scholar rocks a 7 suit: Full in-genre, full mastercraft, and one leather bracer.

If I were to start another PC (which I have often contemplated), I would probably go with my chain shirt (to show it some love) and some custom leather bracers ('cause fewer things can make a character look more unique than personalized armor pieces).
 
My orc fighter wears Arcane Armor because purchasing the actual pieces I'd need to hit my limit would be stupid expensive. Never get fat, kids.

I am having a brig vest made for my MWE scholar. I am actually going to buy WEA to get the most out of it. I AM SO EXCITED TO BE AN ARMOR WIZARD Y'ALL.
 
Yeah, it looks like Arcane is far and above the way to go. Wow.
 
Muir said:
Yeah, it looks like Arcane is far and above the way to go. Wow.
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Well 2 things to consider about that.

1)Bias of who has accounts in the forums. People invested enough to look at the forums much less make an account are longer players with more invested in the game. So more likely to have Arcane Armor.

2)Donating stuff to gobby arcane armor maybe actually be cheaper then buying real armor of a high value. And for many classes you can wear more armor via arcane armor then real armor.
 
It likely is cheaper, and Arcane is at the end of the day objectively better armor than physical armor, from a combat perspective. More people can wear it, it doesn't encumber you, you don't have to buy/build and haul a duffel bag full of reps to every event. I'm just surprised to see a ritual effect like that be so common as to be an overwhelming majority of responses.
 
Don't forget that you don't need to know Blacksmithing to refit your AA, either. :D
 
Muir said:
It likely is cheaper, and Arcane is at the end of the day objectively better armor than physical armor, from a combat perspective. More people can wear it, it doesn't encumber you, you don't have to buy/build and haul a duffel bag full of reps to every event. I'm just surprised to see a ritual effect like that be so common as to be an overwhelming majority of responses.
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Part of it is a function of the current armor system. A wonderflex replica breastplate would be significantly cheaper and actually within my cost range, but I wouldn't get the same value for it as actual steel, despite being able to paint it to look every bit like metal.
 
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