The Purpose of Armor

I’m still on a bit of a post-vacation crash; the Thanksgiving break did not help. Boy, January is going to suck, I think.

This week, I finished season four of The Witcher (which kind of inspired this Note!), and I was planning to begin season three of Dark Winds, but it turns out that Hulu is going to remove Burn Notice in less than two weeks, so I might be doing a mad dash to finish that. I probably won’t finish it all in time, though. Finishing up LEGO Star Wars and the Artemis Fowl series right now.

The Purpose of Armor

Alright, so, while watching season four of The Witcher on Netflix, I noticed that in the season’s climax, we have a massive battle. Our heroes drive off a force of Nilfgardian soldiers from a bridge, and their swords hack and slash right through the enemy’s plate armor. What made this particularly egregious to me was that Geralt has a different sword this season, one that is explicitly not as high quality as the one he used to carry.

Some guy on the Internet saying, “Hollywood doesn’t understand armor,” is probably not new to you, dear reader. There is a lot of material out there about how armor in movies and television seems absolutely useless, because people seem to cut or slice through it  as if it’s nothing. And I do get it–if you’re doing a story set in a medieval-ish setting, and there’s a fight, you want dramatic sword fight scenes, and having guys bash on each other with hammers or maces doesn’t hit the spot the same way.

But dang it, there is a reason for armor, and if you have characters cut through it easily, then the audience will start to wonder why anyone wears it at all. Heavy plate armor is not going to be penetrated by a basic sword slash, or a quick sword thrust. Swords are not lightsabers. Not even katanas, no. In genre fiction you can come up with some sort of explanation for a sword having this behavior: it’s made of magic metal, or forged by the gods, or utilizes some kind of technology that most people haven’t accounted for. 

Like, Greatcoats tries to do a thing, where it’s mentioned that a longbow (which not most archers have) can shoot an arrow through a chest plate, and because it’s an uncommon skill, most people aren’t prepared for it. And I kind of let it slide because it’s explained that way, even though the notion that an arrow from a bow can pierce a solid breastplate is… questionable. But at least the author goes and explains it. Which is a thing you can do in a book, that TV and movies don’t really do.

But I noticed, also, that in some things it’s pretty arbitrary. If you read Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, Conan often does where armor, despite what the book and movie covers lead you to believe. And when he does, it comes in handy! Though I notice that there are plenty of instances in which his armor, usually mail, holds against enemy attacks, while his weapons just so happen to be strong enough to burst through the links of mail his enemies are wearing, which seems pretty contrived to me.

In instances like, it’s “Hey, what works for the scene, and what needs to happen?” There’s a cool scene in season two of Marco Polo in which Hundred Eyes attacks a guy in mail, and his sword can’t cut through. Which is nice and all, but there’s a scene in the first season where Kublai and his brother go at it, and their swords hack through each other’s plate and mail as if they were plastic toys.

I’m not suggesting that armor in fiction needs to be invincible–it wasn’t in real life, and it doesn’t have to be in fiction. But give it some reason to exist if characters are going to wear it. Characters fighting someone in armor should be looking for the weak points in armor: the joints, like the neck, armpit, and knees. 

You can also give perfectly valid reasons for characters to not wear heavy armor! Maybe they don’t want to carry something heavy on their quest, they need to move quickly. Maybe they don’t want to be weighed down against slower opponents. Maybe it’s stealth, maybe it’s too loud, or maybe it just attracts the wrong kind of monsters (Dune does this with shielding on Arrakis–it brings the sand worms). Or heck, maybe your character just plain old can’t afford heavy armor. Outfitting someone in that much strong metal costs a lot–which is why footsoldiers are probably not wearing all that much of it.

There are plenty of excuses to just not have armor, instead of making it so that the armor is useless.

There’s a reason armor exists! And it’s not because it looks pretty–there are plenty of ways to wear a shiny outfit that doesn’t involve wearing heavy metal plates as you run around. If it doesn’t do anything, for the heroes or the people they’re fighting, then just… get rid of it. No need to be silly about it.

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