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[Urist Sonuvagimli]

Slashing/hacking attacks, even from masterwork steel weapons, glance off/get deflected or partially blocked even by items of clothing in this version. It is really frustrating when squad of axedwarves takes so long to kill an elf wearing tons of ramie clothes that it dies of suffocation, NOT bleeding. That is less of a case with experienced soldiers, as they usually manage to crush the head or decapitate.

I really wish it was only my individual case, but I've played tons of adv. and fort mode games in 43.05 to be absolutely sure about it.  The only solution is to use adam. axes/swords or resort to blunt/piercing attacks.

I would've thought the new damage mechanics would cause the clothing to be shredded to pieces very quickly. I've seen adv mode screenshots of XXclothingXX during fights.

Shredding still occurs, however, since elves (and many others) tend to wear multiple layers of the same class clothing (e.g. Dress and tunic at once) the damage to the items is distributed: Dress takes one slash, tunic takes other. Needless to say, It can take quite some time to get a bodypart fully exposed due to shredding.

It is a less of a concern in adv. mode, since it's possible to wrestle clothes off, kick the heads in or simply choke targets.. Fort mode is where it can become a problem.

[Sanctume]

There has been a bug / issue from attacks deflected by cloth robes and this issue is exacerbated by large creatures wearing the robe vs dwarfs.  In particular to this reported bug are Ogre robes. 

Necks are still unarmored.  I have not seen axe deflecting off cloth hoods.

[Melting Sky]

I'm not sure this should even be considered a bug but rather just a slight balance issue. In the real world even common place articles of clothing like denim or leather garments are capable of preventing some serious lacerations. There is a reason bikers traditionally wear heavy leather or denim and its because when they hit the asphalt at 50mph it saves them a layer or two of flesh. Historically armor has been made of everything from paper and cloth all the way up to steel. A jean jacket is obviously not going to stop somebody trying to stab you with a knife, but it certainly will greatly reduce the harm you take from somebody trying to slash you with one. Try slashing a few layers of heavy fabric or leather with a knife sometime. It's not as easy as you think. Puncturing is a different story but its wide slashing attacks that this is happening with not stabbing.

The protection clothing provides vs slashes becomes far more prominent with the sort of garments you find on giants creatures since their clothing scales up in size with them. I saw somebody mention an Ogre earlier for instance. Ogre's are absolutely massive creatures, considerably larger than elephants and the clothing they wear is considerably thicker than even historical human cloth armor. We are talking about a garment that weighs more than a person does. If you think it's unrealistic for it to be difficult to slash through 3/4 thick elephant hide leather or denim then I suggest you try it sometime. I honestly haven't sat down and properly tested this yet but from what I have seen just from going through my usual combat reports and playing around a bit in the arena this is nowhere near as bad as the original poster made it out to be. I wouldn't call this a bug and more along the lines of a feature that needs a bit of tweaking and balancing.

It actually brings up another problem that really is a bug which is that extremely large creatures don't have their strength scale with their size. In other words an Ogre or Giant has the same sort of strength range that a dwarf does thus they can't even wear a single piece of armor without being crushed by the weight of it. They can be encumbered just by wearing normal clothing which weighs just a couple hundred pounds which is just silly for a creature that weighs 12,000lbs.

[King Kitteh]

Sounds kinda weird that clothing size scales directly with creature size. Does an ogre really need clothes hundreds of times thicker than a Dwarf's?

Maybe there should be a max clothing thickness. I mean 100 layer thick leather must be extremely rigid and difficult to move.

[mikekchar]

Don't really disagree with you Melting Sky (wrt to need to balance rather than calling it a bug), but I'm thinking about my own cooking knives (which are high quality carbon steel, folded Japanese knives).  Leather would be virtually impossible to get through, but I'm quite sure I can slash through any cloth you can throw at me (well, not adamantine ;-) ).  It depends entirely on the blade length and the skill of the slash.  If you watch a very good sashimi chef at work (which I often do ;-) ) they will place the back end of the knife on the fish and then pull backwards, slicing through the fish.  They have some pretty big knives to deal with large fish (like as long as a long katana!).  That will get you through an entire tuna, bones and all.  But if you just press down on the knife (or hack at the fish), you won't even make it a quarter of the way through.

Because the fibres of cloth are easy to cut, you really just need enough blade length to get through the thickness (and strength is actually immaterial).  So for instance, a katana really should have no problem getting through a bale of cloth (which will be thicker than anything an ogre is wearing).  A kitchen knife would have no hope.  It also depends greatly on the skill of the wielder.  If you only hit with the tip of the blade, or you don't have the correct motion, or if you use too much strength, it's not going to cut.  Also, if the cloth is thick enough, the wearer may have enough time to jam the blade (using friction on the sides to stop it from moving).

So in the end, I think you probably want to vary the degree of success by the length of the blade, and the skill of the wielder.  But you should probably also allow some protective facility on armour skill as the cloth gets thicker.

[SkeleBret]

Just want to chime in real quick and say that when my human adventurer (Talented level swordsman) got an adamantine short sword from a dwarven fortress, he had a hard time slashing through several layers of plant cloth clothing, and it started to take wear damage after about 20 strikes to the clothes. Stabbing always severed limbs, but slashing itself usually resulted in minor bruising. I just now generated a Professional level human swordsman in the arena wielding an adamantine short sword, along with an unskilled human wearing two ramie robes. The sword tore apart muscle and damaged the clothing a bit with each slash.

As legendary and rare as adamantine is, I feel like its edge should be a bit more potent in a short sword, which are basically just glorified daggers in their current state.

[King Kitteh]

Doesn't make sense that you can stab of limbs, but not slash them off. If it's a full sever then it's cutting the same amount of stuff, right?

[Melting Sky]

Sounds kinda weird that clothing size scales directly with creature size. Does an ogre really need clothes hundreds of times thicker than a Dwarf's?

Maybe there should be a max clothing thickness. I mean 100 layer thick leather must be extremely rigid and difficult to move.

Actually that's a very good point. I think the cloth scales directly with the size of the creature so when I gave an example of 3/4" thick leather or denim on an ogre that was probably way off. I wouldn't be surprised if people did the math and the actual in game results were really freakishly out of whack, like an inch or two thick. I know for instance that armor is so big and  heavy that very large creatures can't even wear a single piece without it crippling them with encumbrance.

[Melting Sky]

Just want to chime in real quick and say that when my human adventurer (Talented level swordsman) got an adamantine short sword from a dwarven fortress, he had a hard time slashing through several layers of plant cloth clothing, and it started to take wear damage after about 20 strikes to the clothes. Stabbing always severed limbs, but slashing itself usually resulted in minor bruising. I just now generated a Professional level human swordsman in the arena wielding an adamantine short sword, along with an unskilled human wearing two ramie robes. The sword tore apart muscle and damaged the clothing a bit with each slash.

As legendary and rare as adamantine is, I feel like its edge should be a bit more potent in a short sword, which are basically just glorified daggers in their current state.

Yeah, that definitely seems a bit off. Does steel perform similarly?

[chevil]

Don't really disagree with you Melting Sky (wrt to need to balance rather than calling it a bug), but I'm thinking about my own cooking knives (which are high quality carbon steel, folded Japanese knives).  Leather would be virtually impossible to get through, but I'm quite sure I can slash through any cloth you can throw at me (well, not adamantine ;-) ).  It depends entirely on the blade length and the skill of the slash.  If you watch a very good sashimi chef at work (which I often do ;-) ) they will place the back end of the knife on the fish and then pull backwards, slicing through the fish.  They have some pretty big knives to deal with large fish (like as long as a long katana!).  That will get you through an entire tuna, bones and all.  But if you just press down on the knife (or hack at the fish), you won't even make it a quarter of the way through.

Because the fibres of cloth are easy to cut, you really just need enough blade length to get through the thickness (and strength is actually immaterial).  So for instance, a katana really should have no problem getting through a bale of cloth (which will be thicker than anything an ogre is wearing).  A kitchen knife would have no hope.  It also depends greatly on the skill of the wielder.  If you only hit with the tip of the blade, or you don't have the correct motion, or if you use too much strength, it's not going to cut.  Also, if the cloth is thick enough, the wearer may have enough time to jam the blade (using friction on the sides to stop it from moving).

So in the end, I think you probably want to vary the degree of success by the length of the blade, and the skill of the wielder.  But you should probably also allow some protective facility on armour skill as the cloth gets thicker.

Nope sorry.
No sword is going to cut through a bale of cloth.
Cloth is harder to cut than flesh and if you layer enough of it you will get some decent armor.

[SkeleBret]

Okay, after some testing, I'm pretty sure this almost qualifies as a bug at this point. Why I believe this will be clear towards the end of this post.

So I decided to test long swords versus short swords against opponents wearing three ramie cloth robes.

Short swords would bruise muscle and damage the robes, sometimes tearing the muscle, but never much else.

Long swords would tear muscle and damage the robes on the first strike, but then the second one to the same limb would sever it. I made sure that the easiness and squareness were close or the same, and every time, the second strike to the same limb severed it. The short swords couldn't sever limbs even on the third or fourth strikes. So I don't think cloth is the problem all the way.

But then I decided to test daggers versus short swords. This is the interesting part.

I went into the arena and armed a Grand Master Swordsman and Grand Master Knife User with an adamantine short sword and adamantine large dagger, respectively. The opponent was an unskilled naked human. After making the opponent aware of my existence (to avoid surprise attacks interfering with results), large daggers consistently performed better than short swords, often severing entire upper limbs with a slash. The short swords never did so, and would always just tear muscle and get lodged in the wounds.

Daggers are more effective at slashing than short swords.

I take back what I said about short swords being glorified daggers - they're apparently even less useful than daggers.

Yeah, that definitely seems a bit off. Does steel perform similarly?

Steel performs almost identically.

[Melting Sky]

Daggers have a small contact stab attack and have always been much more dangerous weapons than short swords. Short swords are one of the weakest weapons in the game because they have a relatively high contact area even with their stab attack and more importantly they are light weight weapons on top of that.

A weapons mass is an important factor in determining the damage it does. This is why I asked how steel performed. Candy in some instances performs more poorly in slashing weapons than candy simply because it is much lighter. Candy truly excels as armor, but from what I remember of my testing in older versions is about on par with steel for slashing weapons.

The one huge exception to that rule is when you try to cut something that is as hard or harder than steel. In those cases you must use candy to be effective. All of my testing was done many versions ago so I really don't know how much has changed since then but daggers have always been pretty sweet weapons compared to short swords and long swords have always been vastly superior to their smaller cousins.

If you don't fear dagger users you will after you have one of your elite melee dwarves get crippled by a kobold master thieve that shanks him strait through his armor. The way damage and physics is modeled in DF is exceedingly complex compared to most games so there are few hard and true rules as to which weapons will perform best in every situation but as a general rule of thumb you want a small contact area, a high mass and a high velocity multiplier on your weapons. 

[mikekchar]

Nope sorry.
No sword is going to cut through a bale of cloth.
Cloth is harder to cut than flesh and if you layer enough of it you will get some decent armor.

Hmm a bale is half a meter apparently, so you're probably right.  I thought it was considerably thinner than that (every time I go to the cloth store with my wife, they are much smaller, so they must be getting partial bales).  I'll see if my wife has any leftover cotton material to see what I can get through with my kitchen knife (which is 20 cm long, I think...).  I'm guessing I can get through 5 cm (about 2 inches).  If it's not on a rigid surface it might be considerable more difficult, though...

[Miuramir]

Nope sorry.
No sword is going to cut through a bale of cloth.
Cloth is harder to cut than flesh and if you layer enough of it you will get some decent armor.

Hmm a bale is half a meter apparently, so you're probably right.  I thought it was considerably thinner than that (every time I go to the cloth store with my wife, they are much smaller, so they must be getting partial bales).  I'll see if my wife has any leftover cotton material to see what I can get through with my kitchen knife (which is 20 cm long, I think...).  I'm guessing I can get through 5 cm (about 2 inches).  If it's not on a rigid surface it might be considerable more difficult, though...

In American English, at least, what you see in ordinary retail fabric stores is referred to as a "bolt", but this is itself a misnomer; a traditional bolt of fabric is on a roll, and about 40 to 100 yards worth depending on material.  The "bolts" most fabric stores have are typically 1/2 or 1/4 of that, re-wound onto rectangular cores to maximize variety, ease of display, and ease of handling. 

A "bale" is not commonly a measure of finished fabric; however it is a traditional name for several measurements for various bulk-bound farm and forest products, including raw cotton and raw wool.  A cotton bale is defined as 500 lbs. (about 227 kg).  A wool bale is 110 to 204 kg (about 243 to 450 lbs.). 

A more commonly seen bale is a paper bale, which used to be 4800 sheets and is now 5000 sheets; folks may be familiar with a "copier paper box" which is usually ten 500-sheet reams or one bale, but weighs only around 50 pounds. 

[Mathel]

Nope sorry.
No sword is going to cut through a bale of cloth.
Cloth is harder to cut than flesh and if you layer enough of it you will get some decent armor.

Hmm a bale is half a meter apparently, so you're probably right.  I thought it was considerably thinner than that (every time I go to the cloth store with my wife, they are much smaller, so they must be getting partial bales).  I'll see if my wife has any leftover cotton material to see what I can get through with my kitchen knife (which is 20 cm long, I think...).  I'm guessing I can get through 5 cm (about 2 inches).  If it's not on a rigid surface it might be considerable more difficult, though...

Also do not forget to slash it rather than slice it, since in combat the foe would not allow you to slice him. Slashes do less edge damage and more impact damage than slices.

As for the original problem, I do not think that a steel sword would really cut through an "iron" armor. Steel is not that much harder than wrought iron and It surely is not pure iron (that would be useless for this purpose)