Against blunt weapons, The layered leather armor of samurai would diffuse the force far better than a single layer of plate. That's what we give our dwarves. One layer of plate over a t-shirt.
Guess where that shock goes? Yup. Straight into organs, which is why plate is much better.
A thin layer of metal will spread the force of an attack to a certain point. after a certain point, the metal gives, and no longer takes the force. A martial arts expert breaking a block of concrete will hurt his hand less if the blocks break (the force travels through) than if the blocks do not (the force is stopped). It seems that a pointed weight traveling at a high enough speed should be capable of achieve that breaking point if it hits squarely, thus putting all the force through to, you guessed it, the organs, while embedding itself in the flesh. I don't know the mathematics of this though.
We don't even make our armor thick. we use only one bar of metal for a breastplate, rather than the three needed for anything thicker than tin foil. We also only use a five piece suite. Does helm, Breastplate, Mail shirt, gloves, greaves, and boots sound like full steal plate to you? that's practically naked. Not even a groin guard there.
I'm pretty certain it takes more than one bar of metal to make plate....
The thing about how many bars it takes to make metal was meant as a sort of joke. Due to an ongoing bug, every piece of armor takes exactly one bar of metal to make, even if the recipe needs three.
Also, It makes sense that even a skilled sword dwarf might be disabled by a hit from twenty unskilled fighters in a line swinging weights on chains, If he were to just charge into that mess like a real dwarf. I mean, I've never lost a good fighter to a single unskilled chainweilder. But they come in packs.
Sending in one Dwarf against twenty fighters regardless of their weapon would mean suicide in most instances anyways. Not really a good argument :/
Even when we send twenty dwarves in, the most skilled fighter breaks off ahead of the rest and charges in blindly by herself. the goblins, who tend to all run at the same speed, meat him all in a pack. I've lost many a good dwarf to her own annoying bravery.