Armor types and protection

The system for armors to provide different protection (in the form of damage resistance) against different damage types could be used for improved realism. Armors were mostly made, and mostly effective, against slashing attacks (such as swords). Since all armors included padding (even the metal armors), they would have some protection against blunt attacks. The weakness of all armor always was piercing attacks, the same impact on a much smaller surface. Consequently the general effectiveness of armor would be best against slashing, then blunt, then piercing (the padding would also mean some minimal protection against cold):

Armor (AC)	Slashing	Blunt	Piercing	Cold
Cloth (0)	0	0	0	0
Hide (1)	0	0	0	7
Leather (2)	0	1	0	1
Studded Leather (3)	1	1	0	1
Chain (4)	3	2	1	1
Scale (5)	4	2	1	1
Banded (6)	4	3	2	1
Half Plate (7)	4	3	2	1
Full Plate (8 )	5	3	2	1

The slashing resistance values remain unchanged, except Studded Leather which has metal parts. Blunt would increase by, essentially, thickness: the thicker leather armors would have 1, the flexible metal armors (with padding) 2 since they bend easily with the blunt force, the rigid metal armors (with padding) 3. Against piercing, the thickness and material would matter, but to a lesser degree: leather would have no resistance, flexible metal 1, rigid plate metal 2. Leather and better armors would all give 1 point of DR against cold simply because they include thick leather armor/padding/clothing.

And here was some explanation about how armor and weapon development worked in real life history, but the boards don't allow me to post all the links, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Awesome, thank you. Though, must ask, how did you make that table?

There is a "Switch Editor Mode" option, you need that on to see the format, and off before posting for it to actually look like a table instead of plain text. Otherwise, I just used the "Insert a table" option.

Oh. Interesting. I always try to make tables and it just makes it look like crap.

If you mean the format, quote the first post, turn on the "Switch Editor Mode" and you'll see it. In essence: <table></table> for table, <tr></tr> for rows and <td></td> for cells in each row. So:
<table>
 <tr>
   <td>cell 1,1</td>
   <td>cell 2,1</td>
   <td>cell 3,1</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
   <td>cell 1,2</td>
   <td>cell 2,2</td>
   <td>cell 3,2</td>
 </tr>
</table>
Replace "<" and ">" with "[" and "]".