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[FrisianDude]

I stumbled across this video. Its a presentation that debunks armor myths and shows how flexible and agilie armored warriors actualy were. I found it very interesting and educational. I sure helps me appreiciate armor way more. Since Dwarf Fortress's battles are taking part in your imagination to a large extent, its good to have a solid foundation to build off of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqC_squo6X4

If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, some notable points of interest are at 35 minutes how a guy in full plate armor sprinting and fighting; 40 minutes demonstrates the range of motion of full plate armor.

How does this make heavy armour a myth? It just means that heavy armour was less impractical than some people think; it still qualifies as heavy armour by virtue of being heavier than other armour.

[scriver]

It debunks the notion that heavy armour is immobile, which is the myth. Not that it is heavy, which isn't a myth, unless you want to get into discussion about what "heavy" means in a relative sense when referring to armour.

[FrisianDude]

Yeah, I was being a pedant irt the title. But on the youtube there's actually a decent amount of clips showing the mobility. Not only that really long one which I had planned to watch a long time ago but never got round to it but also shorter ones like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMuNXWFPewg

I think there's more; like a guy doing cartwheels in armour, but I can't find them at the moment. Still might be useful when someone's claiming knights needed cranes to mount horses.

[Alastar]

For some reason people seem to assume there was one type of heavy armour. Take a look at Stechzeug (ideally, get your hands on a replica and try doing cartwheels in it... or mount a horse unassisted in some versions). Anyone going to war in that might as well order an iron coffin and be done with it, but that's not what it was designed for. In friendly tournament bouts where participants would aim at one another's heads, protection is the main criterium.

Armour made for war has to meet much more diverse needs:
offer adequate protection
offer adequate mobility
not interfere with one's senses too much,
reasonably comfortable to wear (impenetrable armour won't do much good if the wearer collapses from exertion)
reasonably easy to service

*

If soldiers today were in the habit of having friendly bouts with live weaponry, it'd be safe to assume we'd see purpose-built body armour (sacrificing mobility for limb protection for one thing).

[GoldenShadow]

Armor from back in that era was designed to protect against slashing and piercing edged weapon. The wearer could contort in such a way that strikes would glance off the metal surface. Imagine trying to strike a bowling ball with a wood cutting axe off center, it would just glance off unless you hit exactly in the middle. The only way to accomplish this was with layers of hard steel plate, layered in such a way that weapon edges would slide across and not get stuck in joints.

 The best weapons to use against it were probably war hammers with a big steel spike at the business end.

[Starver]

Veering off-topic, but first something I may have brought up by my using the term "mail(le)".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

chainmaille(sp?)

Just so you know, because my IT-heavy CV(/Résumé) occasionally features my chainmail(le) making in either hobbies or as a less-than-relevant-occupation 'flavour' item (depending on whether I think this doesn't over-pad and not look gratuitous), I do try to not use the term "chainmail" because that's got a "spam-sending" connotation that I don't like and neither would most IT-type employers.  So I use the more-obviously archaic (if not strictly correct) spelling to make it a bit more obvious.

(And I've deliberately never applied for any of those jobs that I've seen that heavily hint at being (possibly unwittingly, to some unwary applicants) "human spam-servers".)

The following was specifically looked-up in order to redress the balance, but reviewing it, it goes a bit OT as well...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Perhaps to redress this, here's something the discussion about heavy armour vs actually practical for combat situations.

First, a dramatisation (head protection looks too minimal, to me, with a significant amount of "Hollywood ballistics").
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsOWSDtxERU

Second, real footage, but with very little 'gory' detail or easy-to-understand 'timeline', due to the distance filmed at, but it might be more upsetting for being real-life and not in any SFX.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJV9l00dWwg

(Am assuming those URLs will work, they're copied off of an adjacent PC that I can view Youtube on, and untested on this one where I've got that restricted.  If one works and not the other, the "Related videos" links should be sufficient to get something of the incorrect one.)

But, anyway you'd have thought they'd have actually had a proper escape plan[1], or something.  Once they got past the stage of being able to walk through the initial armed response I can't see how they had any hope of actually getting unobserved to safety.  In a movie, they'll have had something to do with sewers, or vehicles hidden in trucks under bridges that they could swap with.  Or maybe they did have such a plan, but it 'just' required getting another block or two away from the original heist.

[1] Originally typoed "plane", there. 

Ok, so maybe still total fail on being on topic with those comments, but I was reminded of another thing, during this thread that does definitely have relevance to the jousting vs. warfare armour kit.  To start with, starts off being quite mobile, and by the end it appears to have become (at least for blunt mêlée attacks and general impact damage) very good indeed, but I can't see the last iteration being used in any active fight back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWiPiks1sU
(Again, hope the URL is correctly re-typed.)

[runlvlzero]

Also I just realized those people who 'test' armor by having it on a rigid maniquen (how do you spell man-eh-quin) or over an immobile sack cloth. If you hit it, it doesn't move, thus receiving full force of a blow at the perfect angle.

People fail to realize that trying to shoot a mobile (and apparently very mobile), flexible human, who will sway around their center of gravity with the impact will make armor MUCH more effective against all kinds of blows. Protection goes from stopping maybe 5% of impacts to something much greater, like 75%

In a real fight that means the difference between you closing for the killing blow and not.

So I have come to the realization that A. armor was quite practical B. allot of people used it back then. After watching the video, I found it interesting how many craftsmen and commoners were depicted wearing it.

[King Mir]

The benifit of armor over no armor is one thing that DF depicts very well.