ya but always awesome to walk around with one in the streets 
That is so wrong it canāt even be quantitatively measured just how wrong that is.
The point was to knock them down because then you could PIN THEM and stick a rondel in their eye socket. The idea that it was hard to get up if you were knocked down in armor is one of THE most annoyingly enduring myths about Medieval combat.
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No plate armour can hold spike on hammer (with reference to Ambaryerno). By the way, no medieval armor will protect you from breaking legs or arms, when someone hit you by this kind of weapon.
Hi Sharkozis,
please have a look at my first posting in this topic. The posting with the table.
I really doubt that even a spike or hammer will have more than 200 joule. And then you must not slip off the round, polished surface of the armour to get a really good hit.
There was a really good short-movie from the german armour-maker Peter MĆ¼ller and the best german expert for medieval crossbows Jens Sensfelder showing in slow motion shooting with exactly reconstructed crossbows on excactly reconstructed armour. With the best hit they got a small dent and a hole, that was even big enough for the first milimeters of the bolts head.
They had help from a technical university with speed-measurement, force measurement etcā¦ very interesting!
Unfortunately I canāt find it anymore 
On events with visitors we usually do some armour demonstrationsā¦
The normal stuff, like running, jumping, stand on hands, etc in full arms.
And we do some demonstrations where for instance this guy let somebody destroy a broomstick or one of those wooden fencing trainigswords on his breastplate. That is shown on this picture. Not a single dent till now.
Not the same like a hammer, but I tell this because if the armour ist well fitted on your body, the force of the strike is not punctual on your body, but is spread to a big surface on your bodyā¦ the guy on the picture donāt feel more than a light punch. That holds true only till you get deep dents (or penetration), but hardened steel will more get cracks instead of getting deep dents.
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I think itās worth to notice that modern elite soldiers for example have more load to carry around than the usual medieval knight in full plateā¦so much to the ābad mobilityāā¦
This is a very good video about medieval armour and the its (often wrong) conception in modern times from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts (made by the real expert Dirk H. Breiding ):
Oh, and another good one:
In Mount and Blade Warband are hammers and they do ābluntā damage so they just crush through armor.
Thank you, very interesting movies. And wowā¦ so much compliments for our reenactment-group in the first clip! 
By the way and while looking at the second clip:
If sombody wants to see a ārealā joust like in the clip (but hopefully even bigger) and has the chance to get to north Switzerland/south Germany. Then you really should not miss this!!
Real Joust in July 2014, Swizerland/Germany
Real armour, no fake-weapons (, even real blood ), the best reenactment-jousting-riders from all over the world, and ā¦(boring, I know) we are at the cloister and doing some reenactment stuff, too. Iā am there around weekend 12th july (this time āonlyā as the apothecary) and I can make a short tour, if somebody from this forum will be there.
I am well aware of that. However a sword (edge) will never harm you in any way if it is struck against you plate armor. You might brake something if you hit hard enough, but with a sword thatās next to impossible. This thread was mainly meant for edged weapons, although blunt and spiked weapons are useful to discuss too!
Although thatās not really how hammers actually work against armor. Itās not a matter of pure concussive force, but how itās delivered. The blow is directed into a very small point. This gives a better chance of denting the armor, (which makes it very uncomfortable to wear, or can outright prevent it from articulating properly) while at the same time focuses the energy of the blow and causes the energy of the impact itself to penetrate deeper.
A hammer with its small head is far more likely to shatter the bone beneath the armor than a club or mace because of this.
Name the mass and the lenght of the hammer and its center of mass, Also good would an estimation of the movement speed of the center of mass, else i can only say at which speeds the 200 are reached. The rest is simple.
But a Fastball of a major league player has around 120Nm or J, so i would not put a bet on your statement.
Do you Joust?
I think that some people here overestimate the effectiveness of weapons like simple warhammers or maces. They were good when fighting from horseback but pretty bad when fighting on the ground, The problem with these weapons is that you actually need a lot of space and time to use them powerful enough to be of any harm against an enemy in full plate. These weapons are not very flexible, they only have basically one effective attack and an enemy in close combat could estimate an enemy fighting with them quite easily. Another problem is that they are not that well suited against enemies without heavy armor. Again you have much more flexibility and options with a sword or polearm.
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Hi Z.C.,
no, I do not joust, I am a coward.
Joule: I do that not to end up beeing right, I really didāt know that and I was curiousā¦ so I did a little Google research. here is what Mr. Google said:
A modern bow with 60 pound has ~60-80 Joule
A pneumatic hammer has around 70 joule, a smallone 8 Joule.
A German police pistol Walther P99 has around 450-490 Joule.
A big hammer for a smith 4kg has around 70-100 Joule energy for the hot metal, but only if the anvil has a hig mass of minimum 150kg and more.
You will say, that the energy is collected in a very small spot at the tip of the hammer, but please keep in mind, that a human body is not fix and somewhat elastic, so you got a more elastic punch and can not use the full energy.
And, I said it before, a good armour ist exactly build to withstand such an atack. It has a polished surface with no flat parts. All is round and the chance to slip off is high. The critical parts are ticker, like the breast part, and has a good steel quality. The best armours of that time are hardened and also elastic like āspring-steelā.
I have a reconstructed breastplate, even from old steel, made years ago from a guy (Walther Suckert) who worked also for museums. For demonstrations I do the following thing: I put the breastplat flat on the floor and then I stand on it and do a little jumping with my full weight. I would not do that, If I would expect any problems.
But that are only the historical informationsā¦ I agree, for the game we need only something like simple damagepoints and special anti-armour-weapons. Nobody wants to fight invincible enemies. (But I agree, wrestling down a man in full arms with chance and then kill him with a simple knife in his throat would be a a show, but a nightmare to do the game-balancing )
You are correct, they are by their nature cavalry weapons.
Hi loksley,
i have asked, because i think about Jousting in high terms. But i cannot even ride a horse, also have never worn an actual knight/jousting armor, and i had some questions about its use in action.
Or a smart man. My lifeās experience shows, that this things (names) are very often interchangeable. Sometimes it would have been better for me, if i were more a smart man or a coward.
Once told me a japanese professor: To watch out for yourself (to be a coward) is a form of love for your parents.
The Energy or Work in Joules or Nm can be nice calculated. Dependent on the strength and movement of the one who executes the attack, it could reach even towards the 250Nm. Higher Energies are quite possible but i did not calculate that.
But a force attacks on an area, and with a lower attack area a higher penetration is possible. A attack angle above the 0Ā° degree (orthogonal to the attacked surface / or below the 90Ā° degrees to the surface) would lower then the 250 Nm depending on the degree towards the surface. And the surface would gain under the attack degree, more depth for armor to penetrate. Both intertwined things result in reducing the penetration rate.
So as i wanted to show the penetrations depends on the kinectic Energy (also the time interval of the effect or the speed of the effect), on the weapons attack kind or the area of the attacking Energy, the kind of armor, the energy distributing area of the armor and the attack angle.
Disclaimer: Certainly i have forgotten many things.
The given calculations in the books are often not good enough from a scientific viewpoint. Often they are only laboratory values, and often it is not shown how they arrived to this data.
I share your believe that the armor is made to withstand very strong forces and attacks, and even a very good attack with a Horsemanās Pick will not always do his job. And the number of 450J for the 3 mm Gothic armor is real killer.
That depends on your weight and the height of your jumps.
Weight (mass m) * Velocity (distance s / time t = v) = momentum / (p = m * v)
Energy (kinetic) = p^2 / 2m
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I canāt post the whole book because iād be violating copy right law of the authour and the uni library but here is the introduction to the armour penetration testing of the book mentioned above.
In this chapter, the energy available from different weapons to attack armour will be discussed.
The kinetic energy of any moving object is given by the expression
Energy = lA X mass X velocity X velocity
The units of energy are joules (J). So a 100g (0.1 kg) missile travelling at a velocity of 40 m/sec will have a kinetic energy of
lA x 0.1 x 40 X 40 = 80 J.
Throughout the Ancient World as well as the Medieval period, swords, spears and axes would have been employed in hand-to-hand combat, and such blows might deliver anything between 60 and 130 Jā. By comparison, modern police body armour is supposed to resist an attempted stabbing, which may deliver about 50 J or more2. Of course, the area of impact is of equal importance to the energy available; the smaller the point, the greater the threat of penetration
It seems to add up
@LordCrash thank you, as always, for posting such insightful information. My experience with heavy armor only goes so far as tabletop RPGs and chain at LARPs. As such I was of the opinion that a knight in plate and chain was inflexible. Now I see in the video you posted a guy tapping his feet in the air like heās dancing in the rain. I might have to refer some of my fellow gamers here to check that out (and hopefully to interest them in KCD while theyāre here).
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But dangerous of hammers is not that it can create hole to plate, but breaking body periphery. it is simple to break an arm, leg or skull with hammer. And it is nonsense to know energy of attack. You must know size of affected area. Crosbow has advantage of high concentration of energy to thin spike, so it can have energy 200 joule and āGotischer Harnisch 3 mm: 450 Jouleā, but it still goes through.
As chance would have it, I met the actual best armourer in germany and he shows me one breastplate which he has used as a testing object for his famous ā250 pounds crossbow against well reconstructed armour-testā (I donāt know what āBeschusstestā is in English), I mentioned above. There was only a small flat hole at the surface of the breastplate from one of the best shots.
Ahhh, I finally found some of the video clipsā¦
Maybe seeing is believing.