In the time period that this game is set, the armor was near impenetrable by sword and arrows.
My point being that any plate-type armor should be impenetrable (damage resistant) up in till a certain magnitude of force and “immune” to cuts, while maille (chainmail), leather and gambeson, should be damage reductive.
My argument is that unless you wield a magic katana (obviously), you cannot cut through a hardened metal plate be it one singular, a coat of plates or lamellar. You can of course stab through gaps of visors and so on, but not in till he is there is an opening. The armor does get damaged but you will survive.
Hire a blacksmith (or someone else) and make him test weapons and armor against each other. That would make the game better I believe. The more complex the better!
It looks like a great game concept! Don’t do it half-assed!
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First, 1400 was just before full plate become common (1420 onwards).
Second, fighting against an enemy in full plate armour was probably more wrestling than a “classic” sword fight. You tried to bring down your opponent and not to kill him with sword blows. Another technique was halfswording in duels between two opponents in full plate armour.
Third, with the upcomming of full plate mail swords turned from slashing to stabbing weapons once again (from the long sword with two sharp blades to the Estoc with only a sharp tip which was only used for halfswording against armoured proponents). As you said, you tried to stab enemies in their weak spots between various body and armour parts (the shoulder was probably a very popular target). You weren’t able to slash with an Estoc but it was an effective weapon for “knights wrestling” with halfswording and stabbing. 
But I agree that you should be able to slash an enemy in full plate. My guess is that Warhorse will implement some “deadly strikes” aka “finishers” according to the combination of your weapon and the armour of your opponent. At least that would make the fighting aspect a lot easier in development…
Maces, Hammers, and Clubs? I believe armor can only take so much bashing let alone the fragile person inside the armor.
Hammers were the preference, since they focused the energy of the blow into a smaller point than would a mace or club.
Always annoyed when I see RPGs account for “slashing,” “piercing” and “blunt” damage, but never include “penetrating” damage. The mechanics of a hammer strike and the way it focuses the energy of the blow to penetrate through the armor (remember that military hammers weren’t the giant whack-a-mole mallets most RPGs are fond of, but had heads not too different from a modern carpenter’s hammer) just don’t accurately fit under “blunt.”
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A relatively good book for this topic is:
“The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period (History of Warfare, 12)
by Alan Williams,Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers”
For my taste very roughly averaged:
Cheap Armour from a Zeughaus 2 mm: 131,25 Joule
Mailänder Harnisch 2 mm: 192,5 Joule
Gotische Harnisch 2mm: 262,5 Joule
Cheap armour 3 mm: 225 Joule
Mailänder Harnisch 3 mm: 330 Joule
Gotischer Harnisch 3 mm: 450 Joule
Leather: 30 Joule
Cuir boille: 40 Joule
Maximum penetration forces:
Sword: 60 - 130 Joule
Longbow: 80 Joule
Crossbow: - 200 Joule
Handgun ~ 1400: 250 Joule
Tell me when you are going to penetrate armor with a hammer. I’d like to see that!
Joking aside… If someone where to bash you with a hammer, yeah it would hurt a lot, but if they don’t hit hard enough you will not take any damage. You might get dazed a little, but no real damage. However my original point, witch I could have made clearer, is that a metal plate is very good protection against slashing and piercing damage.
When someone says warhammer, think more of a pick - a massive head with a small blunt point.
It will cause concussive and blunt trauma much more effectively than a sword because the weight/momentum is mostly in the head, rather than concentrated near the hand.
In addition with the thin materials used in plate I can easily see material failure with a hard and clean hit - the ‘blunt’ side is probably more useful against softer armours (maile, leather, gambeson), but the reverse usually has a blunt point, which would be more than capable of clean penetrations.
A Medieval warhammer looked like this:
As I said in my post, not too dissimilar from a modern claw hammer (replace the claw part with a spike).
Because of the small size of the head, the blow was highly concentrated. This not only gives a better chance of collapsing the armor, but because the impact is focused into a much smaller area it has the side effect that the energy of the impact is going to penetrate much deeper (this is what I mean by “penetrating” damage. I don’t mean that the weapon physically penetrates the armor, but that the force of impact penetrates deeper). A solid hammer blow could shatter bones even if the armor itself stopped the impact.
The hammer heads often varied slightly with small protuberances, which concentrated the energy of impact even FURTHER. An example of this is the lucerne hammer:
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Yes, from around the late 14th century there is even a special “plate armour defeating weapon” and it’s corresponding martial arts style designed around it: the “Mordaxt” in German manuscripts or “la hache” in the french ones. This is basically a hammerhead on one side, a small axe blade on the opposite side and betwen them a nice narrow point for all the weak spots/openings… all on a haft of about 150 cm or a little more. That’s one powerful tool against armour. But ingame, same as for half-swording and wrestling in armour, it should be something the character has to learn from a trainer first. And if that kind of damage dealing weapon is in the game, I want normal sword blades to be unable to penetrate plate armour with slashing strikes, so I say no hitpoints but yes to a system of damage resistance and damage reduction like Scandinavia posted in this thread.
tourist
Even with those “can-opener” you have to place a lucky hit on good armour in the very best angle. Against those penetrating arms, the armour was all round and polished with genious flutes and stoppers to deflect the blow away from the body. And with 3mm of hardened steel like on “German” breastplates, it will be extremely difficult to penetrate even if the breastplate stood still… believe me, we’ve tried it
But back to the topic: I think it would not be very good for the game or even funny to fight against invincible opponents or be invincible yourselves. So I think (arrg, I don’t like that word ) we have to live with some compromises. And if I take a look at those KDC ingame-videos, its already a hard work to fight a guy in plate armour.
Fighting between enemies in full plate armour:
Half-swording + martial arts + stabbing
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Haha, yeah, hugging was quite common during that times. No wonder all the knight’s culture came from France… 
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It’s worth to mention that the best “anti armour” weapons were probably polearms, stabbing daggers and maces. But they didn’t really appear before about 1420 during the 100 years war. In fact, they appeared at the same moment or soon after full plate armour became common on a greater scale.
In 1400 full plate armour wasn’t that common yet. It was more a transitional period between medieval times and late medieval times. At the time people began to change their equipment which actually makes it a quite intersting period for the devs since they can use many different armour and weapon design which were all common to a certain extend…
They certainly had maces, I believe its use was revived during the crusades. Or the mamluks (re)introduced it to the Crusaders.
They had. But not on a greater margin as far as I know. Weapons like that became more important with the upcomming of better armour.
Hehe, just stumbled across that picture… this was the best “anti-armour” weapon for sure.
The poor horse… 
all I got to say is, Flail. Like it was said before the whole point of full armor plated fights was to knock your opponent down cause once they were it was nearly impossible to get up cause of the weight of everything they were wearing.
Flails were rarely used in medieval combat and mostly only from horseback. A flail is a really bad choice for a close encounter anyway…