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[Medicine Man]

Because even if you have armour on a blunt weapon will mash your internal organs.

[Silverionmox]

Armour protects against blunt weapons in three ways: by cushioning the blow if there's padding, occasionally by deflecting blows if design is good (though obviously less so than with blades), and by moving/spreading the impact to a place where it less harmful (instead of concentrated on a point on the skull, a helmet spreads out the force of the blow), if it's hard enough.

[Medicine Man]

How about making armour wear out over time?it goes from normal to worn to dented to broken once it is broken it is useless.[blunt weapons could make it wear faster]

[Pilsu]

I doubt you could hammer the tin can to the point it just magically stops being in your way due to reaching 0 hit points. But yes, severe denting should have an effect. Mobility reduction is the obvious outcome but I don't really know how to model it. Skill penalties might also work if specific parts are dented sufficiently.

[Medicine Man]

I doubt you could hammer the tin can to the point it just magically stops being in your way due to reaching 0 hit points. But yes, severe denting should have an effect. Mobility reduction is the obvious outcome but I don't really know how to model it. Skill penalties might also work if specific parts are dented sufficiently.

Well it could be so dented that most of it is broken and only will take a few stabs of a higher class metal to break through it

[wolflance]

Armor can't stop blunt damage completely yes, but a rigid plate of steel still offers the best protection against war hammer ( Compared to mail, leather or naked anyway.)

[Starver]

Armor can't stop blunt damage completely yes, but a rigid plate of steel still offers the best protection against war hammer ( Compared to mail, leather or naked anyway.)

Not Being There trumps them all, of course.

I've seen a few different games' ways of handling armour, and you're going to have problems with any system.

Maybe the one I like best is (roughly, and highly paraphrased for DF comparison) based upon Blunt, Sharp and Pointy damage per weapon (usually just the one[1]) with separate Blunt, Sharp and Pointy protection values applied to the protection (by item type and material).  Depending on what attack is being made, the defensiveness varies accordingly (aside from all the other factors such as respective weapon and armour-use skills).  And an amount of damage goes into damaging the armour, proportional to the damage 'leaking' through to the next layer/injuring the wearer.

Might be considered unnecessarily complex.  Although adding "Ballistic" for arrows and thrown siege ammo (unless considered the same as "pointy" or "blunt", in their impacts, but reliant upon the missile's speed and mass rather than directly upon the attacker's strength[2]) would be an idea here, the 'donor' system that I'm referring to not having much accountability in that direction.



[1] But occasionally there's a multi-type weapon, which I'd personally have the game engine flip a coin for which one was applied.  But might be reliant upon skill of weapon-use to use 'the right one'.  Or the right skill with the weapon as to whether to choose to attack a bit of body armoured with a relatively poor bit of protection (and successfully accomplish such a palpable hit), but I don't think there's even an bias (except for a player's own intelligence in Adventure Mode) to strike at unarmoured areas, so that might preclude attempts to strike against stab-weak armour with one's dagger or impact-weak armour with a hammer.

[2] Except insofar as the bowbeing or thrower's strength has governed the missile's initial speed, of course.

[Vester]

Armor can't stop blunt damage completely yes, but a rigid plate of steel still offers the best protection against war hammer ( Compared to mail, leather or naked anyway.)

You guys are forgetting that a war hammer probably looked like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyway, something "ignoring" armor completely seems to go against the whole materials system in the first place. When armor is damageable, then you've got your solution to blunt weapons not being that useful.

[Untelligent]

How about making armour wear out over time?it goes from normal to worn to dented to broken once it is broken it is useless.[blunt weapons could make it wear faster]

This is almost certainly planned to go in at some point, possibly even in the first few waves of new features after Toady finishes these rounds of bugfixing. It was actually planned to go in for 31.01 originally, but was delayed (along with a few other things) in the interest of time (if you remember the List Topic that was in general discussion for most of 31.01's development, this sort of thing would've went under "Item/Attacking Part Damage").

Well, now that I think of it, armor wear isn't the same as weapon wear, which that bit might've been specific to, but if one goes in the other probably will soon after.

[Funk]

plate armor is mosty attacked round than smashed thou.
the force need to deform plate armor is a lot more than you think:
1)the armor is shaped so that a alot of metal must be defomed to harm its user.
2)the armor may have parallel fluting.
3)the armor is thicker than just the plate there is padind and mail cover at least the gaps is not all the body.

the number and range of weapon made to defeat plate armor can be taken as a testament to just how good plate armor was.
 

[Iden]

Typically, if you had a suit of plate (which was terribly, terribly expensive) you would wear it with chain maile and padding underneath. It was heavy, and it was hot. And at the very least I would imagine you wouldn't wear plate without padded gambeson underneath, anyways.

Having done some Heavy Armored Combat in the SCA in the past, in my experience pretty all armor (In my experience, typically half-plate or brigandine are used. Occasionally chain maile, scale maile, or lamellar) is made to be used with a padded gambeson underneath. Kneepads and elbowpads were typically used at the joints for extra protection (unless you had well-made gambeson sleeves). Otherwise you're going to get pretty beat up just from the metal getting smashed into your body by the blows coming at you. It's painful and your own armor can hurt you if not padded against. Metal will absorb some of the impact, but it doesn't cushion it very well. The impact will transfer right through, especially if used by a blunt weapon.

Plate typically was designed and shaped in such a manner as to deflect blows. However, a good solid hit is still a good solid hit and is going to do a heck of a lot of damage. Generally a warhammer, as pointed out by Vester, had a small, concentrated head and a pick on the back to maximize damage and create holes in the armor. There were weapons designed to counter plate armour specifically.

Blunt weapons should not ignore armour. In fact, I daresay that realistically, nothing should ignore armour. They should have an advantage against plate. No. I disagree with that previous statement. Blunt weapons should have less of a disadvantage against plate in comparison to bladed weaponry. The same goes for puncturing weapons. Picks especially, spears, and even longswords were used with great force to try to puncture plate, though you still needed a rather powerful, solid hit with a spear or a longsword to puncture plate.

Plate armour was designed to give maximum protection, especially against bladed weaponry. Weapons were then designed to counter plate armour. Concussive and penetrating forces were ideal, since you aren't cutting through that metal with a blade of similar metal. Even normal swords slowly grew to be fairly heavy around the time of plate armour. A good hit from an arming sword or a longsword could still, due to its size and weight, do damage against plate armour. You aren't cutting through anything, but the force of impact from that size blade could still cause bruises and dent armour. A good hit to the helmet with a sword of that size and weight, could concuss you or disorient you at the very least. Albeit, not as effectively as hammers and maces.

[Hyndis]

Plate armor should be nearly immune to bladed weapons (assuming it is well constructed plate, your mileage may vary depending on the skill of your armorsmith and your budget) and highly resistant to blunt weapons due to the layered armor and thick padding underneath.

Piercing weapons, if anything, should get the armor penetration bonus. The spike on a warhammer is very tiny, allowing massive amounts of force to be focused into a tiny area, which means it can penetrate the metal with relative ease. A warhammer is less effective against an unarmored person than a sword (you still would not want to be hit by either!) simply because a sword has a much larger cutting area, and so its easier to hit your target. The spike on a warhammer requires precise delivery otherwise it will just glance off the plate, but if it hits in just the right way it will easily piece through the metal, chainmail, and padding underneath, causing puncture wounds.

[Vester]

Plate armor should be nearly immune to bladed weapons (assuming it is well constructed plate, your mileage may vary depending on the skill of your armorsmith and your budget) and highly resistant to blunt weapons due to the layered armor and thick padding underneath.

In that vein, actually, heavily decorated armor (I'm lookin' at you, Gothic era armorsmiths!), especially if the decoration is engraving-based, should have a higher chance of a cutting weapon embedding itself in the armor, to the point that extricating your weapon would be a chore. Although fantasy style armor doesn't lend itself to engravings; more often than not it's covered in all sorts of unnecessary extras. Like, you know, dog bone spikes and bands of iron - which would make a cutting weapon even more vulnerable to getting stuck in something that really shouldn't be there.

[cameron]

plate should be nearly immune to being cut by bladed weapons as some were rather big in order to combat plate and larger pole armshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder  and these swords were not used to try and cut through plate, there was more bashing involved
The main advantage hammers have over swords is that their weight is almost entirely in their head and so its easier for them to gain the necessary amount of momentum
Other later bladed weapons though made for fighting much lighter armored opponents would have been much easier to hit gaps in the armor and unless it is a full suit there will be lots of unfortunate gaps, though finding these could go up with skill.

also from my limited experience i seem to recall that normally you would have either a suit of chain or a suit of mail and any combination would not for the most part be layered except for a few key areas, though correct that if i'm wrong

anyways from the look of the weapon raws right now most of the weirdness ought to fixed once toady gets the interactions fixed up a bit and all these special cases shouldn't be needed

p.s. and hyndis normally its a bad idea to pierce too far through as then it can get a bit hard to take your weapon out again if you're in a hurry

[Vester]

plate should be nearly immune to being cut by bladed weapons as some were rather big in order to combat plate and larger pole armshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder  and these swords were not used to try and cut through plate, there was more bashing involved
The main advantage hammers have over swords is that their weight is almost entirely in their head and so its easier for them to gain the necessary amount of momentum
Other later bladed weapons though made for fighting much lighter armored opponents would have been much easier to hit gaps in the armor and unless it is a full suit there will be lots of unfortunate gaps, though finding these could go up with skill.

Don't forget the Mordhau sword technique. Armor was so effective that gripping your sword by the blade and smacking the other guy in the face with the pommel/crossguard could be as effective, if not more so, in striking at a well-protected area.