Chainmail bikini and full plate thong

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Seeing a picture at NWVault today made me think about something we once discussed in the past... kick ass female warriors in skimpy metal outfits.

The first couple hundred you see you could even find it sexy. But eventually you start wondering, what kind of armour is that? For example, what point keeping the heavy sleeves and legs in place, while reducing the corpus sector to a thong and... hair. Or a minimalistic metal brassiere. What protection does it give? No one in his sane mind would do a called shot on a limb when the corpus is exposed.

The exact opposite of metal bikinis is squeezing the waist sector in a tight metal corset and leaving breasts unprotected, as well as the lower abdomen sector and thigh sector. Speaking of thighs, sometimes our warrioress gets thigh-high boots, so some of the thigh is actually cover. Still, the upper thigh is bare and what is better than easy access to the thigh artery if you want to kill? Or how deep do you need to put a pointy stick into the breast to reach the heart? Errr... right, with some characters it's really deep.

Or full plate armour with parts cut out to show some surves and still supposed to offer the same protection as the all-covering 50 lbs suit yonder guy is wearing. All that skin with translucing juicy pink blood vessels in the open is begging for a blade. Or, worse, something pointy.

Another thing is that who on Earth would wear metal on naked flesh, or even underwear? Not convinced? Go to your closest NCA equivalent, strip bare or to underwear before donning armour and have a fight. Especially in direct sunlight or in winter chill. And adventurers are supposed to wear the stuff all day long! On a more technical level, a layer of soft fabric under the armour - a doublet and a shirt maybe, makes huge difference in taking blunt/bludgeoning punishment.

Yet another concern I have is that fantasy lands aren't all like the Mediterranean in the summer. Heck, sometimes you can see bare bellies or half a bottom and snow in the same picture.

Even in tropical climate, you can't really walk around disrobed like that. The sun will get you. Even in the dry and sandy variant, you're still better off covered. In both cases, likely something extremely thin and possibly transparent (not like thick layers of cotton aren't sometimes better, even in the heat), but still something.

The only climate where it works is something like 30 to 50 latitude (e.g. the Mediterranean) in spring to autumn.

Perhaps we could treat such accessories like Bracers of Armour, or whatever other medium of magical protection, including even +10 AC and 20/- elemental resistance, but that's about it. Either that, or maybe a fancy outfit to wear (nothing wrong with a chainmail bikini ), but armour?

Some of those pictures are so stupid that they aren't even attractive.

 

Chev, you think way too much.

 

Everything is better than studying.

 

You put way too much thought into this. The explanation for this phenomenon is quite simple, as you can see here

Congrats on 6000, chev.

 

Yes, much applause on 6000. On to the matter at hand, I'd say that in many cases it is possible that the different armor (even your basic outfit) can still have a basic enchantment on it. So why not one that protects against sunburns?

 

Thanks, thanks. Hehe. Just trying my best.

Well, it could still carry an echantment, but I don't think it would give much (if any) of a base armour bonus.

 

I think it's just a fashion statement.

 

Maybe they've got layers and layers of stone skins.

 

Gee Chev, I always thought that skimpy female armors where actually designed with "distract" in mind and actually grants your female warrior that "first strike bonus".

 

Vogue meets AD&D. I guess, according to the 3rd ed rules, if you've got DEX high enough, you can pretty much prance around naked, and that would give you more protection than full plate. Or maybe you could wear those nifty AC+9 rings, which would allow you to wear that demonhide g-string.

I actually highly doubt adventurers would wear anything more than studded leather. You wouldn't get very far in full plate, and I don't think they had deodorant in those days.

 

Kinky! That's all I have to say...

 

Argh.... I saw a cartoon relevant to this, and quite funny,but now I can't remember the link. It featured an Amazon warrior with the minimalist armour that covered maybe 10% of her body, covered with arrows which had all precisely hit the minute strips of armour.

 

Fantasy is fantasy and gameplay > realism. If I could choose between half-naked woman and a fully clothed one, I'd take the half-naked one and use nude patch.

But yeah; clothes that actually look believable would be nice, but the kiddies wouldn't probably like of that and since the big companies (EA, Nintendo, Sega, etc) make their games for them...

 

The other good cartoon on this topic is two female warriors standing outside of an armoury, wherein is displayed piece after piece of such ridiculousness. Says one to the other, "I see all the armour designers are male again this year."

 

preety atractive, I guess...

 

Leather stinks worse than chain or just a breast plate, I think. But an all-covering full plate is both too heavy and too uncomfortable to wear all the time, unless it's wartime. And even then you do need lots of cloth layers under it.

 

I realize that was a joke, but it was still rather stereotypical and prejudiced. After all, I'm female, but I would design armour like that. But I'm probably taking the joke too seriously. Lack of an interesting school-day does that to me. Feh.

 

Heck, I'm male, but I wouldn't design armour like that! Being a woman-adorator and womankind-lover, I would offer them the best protection I could.

 

@ toughluck

I bet you would, but whatkind of "protection" it would be...

 

Maybe the site of the female in such a revealing outfit was armour enough. The opponent was too stunned to score a critical hit =D