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[franti]

Obsidian Shortswords are large clubs studded with Obsidian.
And I know that on DW, it lost a lot of it's stones in one strike, but he used it like a hacksaw and it DID cut the damn thing in two. On an earlier show, one about ancient weapons, the host cut himself deep enough to require a hospital trip through his Kevlar leggings. Kevlar. 

His Kevlar armor would not stop a slow speed slashing weapon like the Macuahuitl if it was not designed with slashing weapons in mind.  The design of ballistic vests/armors use a variety of materials, some soft and some hard.  If there is no fibre or metals woven into the suit, a weapon designed to cut will do so easily.

My 2 cents for the day

The majority of Kevlar equipment is designed to protect against cuts. The stuff is regularly used as a component in bulletproof equipment. I doubt someone who with that much experience handling weapons would use a vest with no protection against a slashing weapon, let alone while wielding something that was claimed to have cut live horses in half.

If you saw the bit, you'd see why I found it impressive. He was swinging the thing around, and on the backswing he appeared to nik himself in the thigh. I'll try to find the clip.

[lasserith]

Kevlar is cut as easily as any other fiber by a sharp blade. It's simply not designed to resist cutting at all. This is why most police who are deployed to areas where knife crime is prevalent put special ceramic plates into pockets on the vest (specially made to hold such plates). If he didn't have a ceramic plate where he nicked himself with a weapon designed to cut you better believe it will go straight through that kevlar.

[krenshala]

This reminds me of the joke about soldiers arguing about whether kevlar would stop a knife attack.  One says yes, the other says no.  The one that says it would stop a blade talks the other into stabbing him in his vest ... which fails to stop the blade.

Kevlar cloth is designed to spread out impacts over a larger area.  Even when shot at and it works to protect the wearer the cloth tears because individual strands fail until the blunt impact of the bullet. Individual fibers can be cut with a dull pocket knife -- my knife had a small bit of trouble with the kevlar fibers in the CAT5e cable I was putting ends on, but then my knife was so dull also had trouble cutting paper at the time.

[Psychobones]

I'm sorry for necroing this topic by a few weeks, but there's a lot of misinformation going around, and it bugs me.

His Kevlar armor would not stop a slow speed slashing weapon like the Macuahuitl if it was not designed with slashing weapons in mind.  The design of ballistic vests/armors use a variety of materials, some soft and some hard.  If there is no fibre or metals woven into the suit, a weapon designed to cut will do so easily.

My 2 cents for the day

The majority of Kevlar equipment is designed to protect against cuts. The stuff is regularly used as a component in bulletproof equipment. I doubt someone who with that much experience handling weapons would use a vest with no protection against a slashing weapon, let alone while wielding something that was claimed to have cut live horses in half.

No Kevlar can stop a knife, even a dull rusty knife can cut through Kevlar. The key factor you're missing here is that pistol rounds(which Kevlar stops), are most closely aligned to bashing damage, not slashing or stabbing. I also hate the word bulletproof.

If you saw the bit, you'd see why I found it impressive. He was swinging the thing around, and on the backswing he appeared to nik himself in the thigh. I'll try to find the clip.

Armors adapt to the changing warfare. Most ships today are defended with a complex anti missile system. If you could get close enough to use an old WWII battleship cannon you could easily sink most ships in the US Navy with a few shots. The same can be said for infantry weapons. Kevlar is designed to stop pistol rounds, if you can get close enough to use a sword, you'll cut through it as if it weren't even there.

Kevlar is cut as easily as any other fiber by a sharp blade. It's simply not designed to resist cutting at all. This is why most police who are deployed to areas where knife crime is prevalent put special ceramic plates into pockets on the vest (specially made to hold such plates). If he didn't have a ceramic plate where he nicked himself with a weapon designed to cut you better believe it will go straight through that kevlar.

SAPI plates(ceramic plates, also know as hard armor) are used to stop rifle rounds and things heavier than small pistol rounds. The fact that they stop knives is just a side effect. Most cops who choose to carry SAPI plates are doing so to stop heavy rifle rounds and shotgun slugs, not knives. Most cops hate their Kevlar, which is extremely light in comparison to SAPI plates. Officers deployed into a knife heavy areas might use SAPIs to combat it, but more likely they'll get some sheet armor to wear over their Kevlar. A thin sheet of steel or titanium will stop a knife better than SAPIs will, cost an eighth of the price, and are a quarter of the weight.

[Girlinhat]

Chainmail is pretty oldschool and will protect against slashing damage.  As just stated, it's a matter of the times.  Kevlar protects against bullets, but is poor against edged weapons.  Chainmail will absorb a hard slash, but bullets will ignore it.  It's a simple issue of "wrong armor for the wrong weapon".

That said, historical use of obsidian swords would have been a short-lived, powerful weapon.  It'll rend flesh like paper, causing a lot of pain and bleeding, especially with the naked/leather aztec warriors.  It might shatter after two hits, but it's a 2x4 with nails in it, so cheap you could mass produce them by accident and carry a dozen into battle.  They failed to do any damage against the conquistador's plate armor, and allowed them to get tossed around like the dirty naked natives they were.

Being able to cause bleeding and skin/muscle damage would be ideal for obsidian, but it shouldn't do much damage at all against armor.  Maybe some through copper mail, but against any metal it would waste its sharp edge trying to get penetration and just jab the enemy with a blunted stick, which is fine and all until that person uses their bronze sword against you.

It would make an ideal training weapon for hunting wildlife though, and swap to hard metal once some skill is achieved.

[Dynastia]

Ideally, obsidian shortswords should be removed and replaced with a new Sawtooth Sword class of weapon, which could use bone, glass, teeth and other weapons-grade rocks like chert. This could be done via raw editing, but the short-lived nature of it in battle would need to be hardcoded in.

As far as obsidian swords vs chainmail go, I'm not so sure chainmail would be that effective. Heavy chopping swords and axes can cause massive open cavities through mail, without even piercing it. I guess it would depend on how much damage is done by the paddle-swords weight and sharpness, as opposed to it's ability to rend flesh open with a sawing motion (which would be useless against mail)

[Girlinhat]

Weapons and armor take zero damage.  When Toady includes weapon degradation, then obsidian swords can be made very sharp and flimsy, as they should.  Until then, they need a slightly duller edge so that they don't rend armor apart, because it's about the best balance you'll get until weapon damage is put in.

Also, chainmail pretty much turns slashing damage into blunt damage, so a solid sword swing would cause significant bruising and broken ribs, certainly internal bleeding, but probably not very much external.  Assuming the mail held, of course.  If the rings popped then it would just be a sword against flesh, and that's certainly worrisome.

[Dynastia]

I can't say I totally understand the physics behind it, but I vaguely remember seeing a documentary of some sort, in which a chainmailed pig carcass was struck with a greatsword ; the mail held, but the pig was cut open nearly to the spine. Of course, the pig was prone on the ground and chopped overhead, and it had no quilting whatsoever under the mail, so it hardly resembles a real combat situation. But it still implies that a heavy enough sword (or more likely, axe) can create massive gashes through armour, even if it fails to penetrate it.

[Girlinhat]

Similar to the "chainmail doesn't stop an arrow" demonstrations.  "Here, we're going to take a 2x2 inch sheet of chainmail and pull it taunt before we nail it to this hard wooden board, then we're going to shoot bodkin arrows at it from 15 feet away!"  An overhead greatsword swing is about the most powerful blow you're going to see short of a felling axe.  A dead pig on the ground is about the least reactive thing you're going to see short of a rock.  It's like butting a sniper rifle against a bulletproof vest and firing full metal rounds, and declaring it unfit.

[G-Flex]

The majority of Kevlar equipment is designed to protect against cuts. The stuff is regularly used as a component in bulletproof equipment.

Bullets aren't the same as handheld weapons by any means. A bullet is a blunt object with no force behind it, only momentum. A knife or a sword has some continuous force behind it (you can stab through kevlar relatively easily), which changes how it interacts with the material.

[franti]

Lets not necro this one.