I was mainly referring to a buckler rather then a shield, my bad.
There are period paintings that show armored knights with bucklers in both the 14th/15th centuries.
I’m not saying that it out numbered two handed weapons, but bucklers lasted for a while, even after the shields started to go away.
I remember watching deadliest warrior and it was pretty cool seeing the plate armor of the knights stop the pirates flintlock pistol dead (bullets are different than arrow heads) and the helmet stopped the point of the boarding ax. They also found that it was relatively easy to brake the links of mail with any sort of stabbing point. Bows had no problem with mail http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4gPgHyaG1Q. The shape of the plate armor makes a big difference because it was made to deflect the object, not just stop it. Any heavy weapon with a small point would be good against plate. You also have to factor in the broken bones from big impacts. There have been many tests on armor and recreations that warhourse can use to make weapons realistic and im sure they will.
arrows costed money and time to make so they wouldnt even waste time on archers if they didnt kill anyone.
I got a full italian handmade medieval armor a copy of the Churburg armour, i can tell you that mail doesn hold the war arrowheads (botkin-needle) but the hunting heads holds. Its protective against all CUT weapons but not against Swinging weapons (they can break bones maces, hammers and so on). The plate armor is effective against cuts, it holds til a certain certain force (if i hit you with a sharp axe with full force it wont hold, and if it holds it deforms the metal that you arent anymore able to move) . But its always depending on the material, if its a good iron quality it holds a lot, and it depends the zone where you get hit. I was in a lot of battles with more then 600 people and i never got hurt or something (only a few blue spots from lances swords).
But you have to think that the people from that time knew the spots where they have to hit. Look the battle of Visby where they made medical surveys about the cuts and hits, and it came out that really most part of the first hits went behind the knee (to cut and then you felt down). Rest was quite easy baam in the face.
I trust the guys they know what they do 
I agree. Main advantage of a buckler is that you can use it together with any pole (2-H) weapon. It is easy to hold handle of a buckler and a pole of a weapon at same time. I would definitely take a buckler with me and hold it in my hand closer to the enemy. Some nice extra protection.
I think that it is important to remember that plate armor is rigid, and is susceptible to buckling. Chain mail being made of rings means that it does not have this fault. Also a mace or hammer will be damaging, no matter the armor you are wearing.
If hit by any weapon, it will be damaging. However, the amount of damage will greatly differ depending of what you are wearing to protect yourself. An arrow will penetrate your maille, but it will not have as much power as against boiled leather.
Yet boiled leather is better than nothing, but then an arrow won’t be able to go through a cloth, like a cape, bloated by the wind.
you can’t be serious.
Don’t know exactly how does he mean it and I’m no archer but friend of mine has an interesting way to practice archery. He ties rope between two trees and puts a denim cloth over the rope. Then he uses this cloth as a target and he uses good bow and sharp arrows. They would normaly pierce wooden target, but they just harmlessly fall to the ground after hitting the cloth. I know that neither denim or present bows and arrows are historical, but that’s just my private observation.
In that case the cloth is only fixed on 2 points the arrow cant get the full impact energy to the cloth.
When i wear cloth it is “fixed” on my body and it will hurt.
Eventhought it depends what bow and arrowhead using. But a 120pound warbow will blow u simply away
I am. Try the Horo, a cloak that samurai would wear while on horseback. The cloth would slow the arrow down so much that it could not pierce through the armor at all. Of course, the cloth would be damaged. I saw a video of a man shooting arrows at something similar (silk cloth bloated by a fan). Couldn’t go through it.
It is part of the “Forbidden Knowledge ; Ancient Elite Fighters” documentaries. If you can find it on youtube, try to go at the 31th minute.
There’s also the bit about the Mongols wearing silk beneath their armor, because if struck by an arrow it was less likely to penetrate the silk than any other form of padding, which made it much easier to extract the arrow later.
@WSOutlaw87 Ugh, how dare you bring THAT program up.
This is the reason why Crossbows were despised by knights and somewhere even banned if I remember well.
An untrained commoner who could easily kill a valiant knight was the sort of nightmare lords had at the time.
I’d be curious to know if they’re planning on different patterns of chain mail with various protection levels, in terms of how many rings are linked together with others and in which ways. It may not always be the best style of armor alone, but it can have different pros and cons along with being incorporated with other pieces.
I’d rather not see that. As I understand it, mail in Europe was universally 4-in-1. Some more exotic forms appeared in Japan, but most of the others are fictional or modern inventions.
If 4-in-1 was the norm, that definitely simplifies things and eliminates a possible need for variety, then.
Yep banned by the pope as a weapon of unchristianity (hope i wrote it right) , first the crossbow was seen by the islamic troops on crusades. then came to italy and europe.
Like some cook/boy mortally wounded Richard I The Lionheart if i remember correctly :]
oh, Crossbows have bin known i europe since the early medieval periode… if not even earlier.
During the crusades in the middle east the europeans used crossbows a lot… the muslims didn.t
There is no such thing as “platemail”. There is chainmail (usually called just mail), and there is plate armour (called plate harness if there you’ve got a complete set, and usually came with chainmail covering the back of knees and inside of thighs etc). There is scale mail, with small (<1") plates of metal sewn onto leather, that looks like the scaled skin of a fish, that was halfway between the two, and there were various leather armours, from a plain jacket to tailored cuirboulli. Platemail does not exist.
@Sabremeister I would argue that there’s not even such a thing as “chainmail” or “scalemail,” either. “Mail” explicitly refers to armor made from interwoven metal rings, so calling it “chainmail” is redundant, and makes “scalemail” completely inaccurate. You’d just call it “mail” or “scale.”
Now you’re only half-right about “platemail.” Full rigid plate armor would certainly have just been called plate or harness for the whole set. Otherwise you’d just mention the individual pieces being worn if not as full harness, IE cuirass, etc., as appropriate. However outside Europe you did have “plated mail,” which was mail with integral metal plates woven into the armor.
Leather in of itself isn’t great for armor. Better than nothing? Sure, but so is a gambeson. ALL leather armor would be cuir bouilli simply because that’s what was required to make it actually useful as armor. Without hardening it the best you could make was a gambeson with an outer shell of leather rather than linen or wool.
You’re also forgetting about brigandine and coat/jack-of-plates, both featuring small metal or hardened leather plates like scale, only sandwiched between layers of fabric or leather and fixed in place by rivets (brigandine) or sewn to the lining (coat-of-plates). There’s a few surviving doublets that are also known to have been constructed with concealed plates sewn into the lining.
Finally, there’s splinted armor, which appears to have been used solely for limb protection (greaves and vambraces).
And if ANYONE comes in here talking about “Studded Leather” I WILL track you down and hurt you. 
