Please help me design giant-resistant armor

Off the cuff answer?

The ability to get out of the way very quickly


IF your giants are slowed because if their capability then your best defence is light armour to evade them , because most armour won't survive a direct hit and any that would, would have severe disadvantages against anything else, like the ability to move.

The best sort of armour against things made out of rock is not being where it hits.

On a slightly more serious note, one of the ways to deal with a chap in heavy armour was to break enough bones with percussive force that he couldn't move any more. If you have a metal like titanium, full plate might work, but the loss of vision and spatial awareness will be a killer if they can't see the fist coming.

It might be easier to go with something more hoplite in nature (breast/back, vambraces, greaves, hat) and train them to get the heck out of the way.

YMMV.

Well Clare vision depends on how close the eyeslits are to your eyes.

efreyson, your flintblades aren't going to be able to slice through normal plate like a bannna, plate would stop a longbow arrow, crossbow bolts, and early guns, at ravenna the men-at-arms charged at a gallop through the front of a solid pike square and emerged relatively unscathed (Extremely good protection when you keep in mind how that those guys would have been slamming into pike points at around thirty miles an hour) Usasmas mentioned in his memoirs that his running horse jumped over a hedge at a gallop and his lance point had all that weight and speed behind and it slammed into the chest of a mail-armoured frankish knight . . . and the frank was completely unharmed. So go with normal hardened steel full plate, the giants might knock the guy flying but he'll survive the blow. Or have the plate made from the metal that those swords (why do they have to be swords anyway? a one pound warhammer would be a better choice) are made fro, I think you kind of answered your own question there.

Honestly, if they're wielding a two-handed claymore against giant brutes like that, they wouldn't be donning any armor except for any to deal with the elements. They want movement. What armour would you wear if you were fighting off a grizzly, moose, rhino or elephant?

Xelebes said:

What armour would you wear if you were fighting off a grizzly, moose, rhino or elephant?

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um...powerarmor?

Do they have anything mystical that can act as a forcefield or shield? If not, speed would be the best defense.

Xelebes said:

Honestly, if they're wielding a two-handed claymore against giant brutes like that, they wouldn't be donning any armor except for any to deal with the elements. They want movement. What armour would you wear if you were fighting off a grizzly, moose, rhino or elephant?

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Armour and swords aren't that heavy, even greatswords (claymores and such) rarely weighed more than six pounds.

I would take full plate to the fight against a grizzly, a moose or an elephant. Of course it wouldn't say much for my common sense if I engaged in hand-to-hand with said animals. . .

Nothing could prevent death from even a single strike from a rock monstrosity. Internal trauma from the jerk of the strike would instantly destroy the brain and might pulp other organs. The only way to live is to not get hit. But everyone else has covered that pretty well.

Padded armour might be best in that case. However research flack armour.

efreysson said:

What I need to figure out is what kind of armor the Flintblades would develop to wear into battle against these things, i.e. what kind of armor best protects against blunt force damage spread over a large area of the body. Think wrecking balls instead of hands.

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If the Giants are that powerful, I think that even a Flintblade would want to be able to dodge a blow instead of taking one. But if you have magic swords, why not also have magic armor that somehow absorbs the kinetic energy from a blow or redirects it?

I too think that evading the attacks is your best option.

But if you want armor... Hmm. I'm thinking out of the box here, but what about a roll cage? A big assortment of struts that form a ball around the knight, and is strapped to his back at the center of the ball. The giants don't have piercing weapons, so nothing's going to poke through the bars of the cage. And if they hit him, he rolls and bounces but eventually comes to a stop unharmed.

Now, whether a medieval/rennaissance society could make a functional roll cage is another question. Another good question is whether you can write a serious combat scene when your protagonists are pinballs most of the time...

RemusShepherd said:

But if you want armor... Hmm. I'm thinking out of the box here, but what about a roll cage? A big assortment of struts that form a ball around the knight, and is strapped to his back at the center of the ball. The giants don't have piercing weapons, so nothing's going to poke through the bars of the cage. And if they hit him, he rolls and bounces but eventually comes to a stop unharmed.

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How would you swing a sword inside a roll cage?

From the sound of it, armor isn't going to work. The point of armor is to prevent piercing/cutting, and to distribute the impact over the whole body area. If you're hit by a man-sized fist, the impact is distributed over the whole body area anyway. While good armor won't hinder them much (especially with superhuman strength) but it won't help either, so it's a waste of money.
I'd say take a look at the way humans hunted big and dangerous animals. The basic idea was to keep your distance, i.e. either use a long spear, or shoot them full of arrows. Superhuman strength wouldn't help much making the spear more effective (though magical metal would) but it helps a lot with using stronger bows.

ClareGreen said:

If you have a metal like titanium, full plate might work, but the loss of vision and spatial awareness will be a killer if they can't see the fist coming.

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Titanium is not actually harder than steel. It is stronger per weight, but not per volume, and it's softer.

RemusShepherd said:

I too think that evading the attacks is your best option.

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This is what I was thinking. In the few stories I've written where one of the characters/group of characters uses armor, it is usually deemed useless at some point during the confrontation. Because, in my opinion, the character should rely on his/her brains to get him/her out of the situation and/or win the fight, rather than relying on protection from something material.

But that's just me.

It seems like you've set up something that is pointing to evasion of some sort as the best option, though, and then gaining victory through an unorthodox means.

MGraybosch said:

How would you swing a sword inside a roll cage?

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The cage goes out as far as your arms; the sword extends beyond that. But pikes would probably be a better choice.

Seriously, though, go with the lightly-armored evasion strategy instead.

MGraybosch said:

If the Giants are that powerful, I think that even a Flintblade would want to be able to dodge a blow instead of taking one. But if you have magic swords, why not also have magic armor that somehow absorbs the kinetic energy from a blow or redirects it?

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That would have been my suggestion if you are intent on having some cool armor.

How do you kill beasties that are mostly rock? They obviously have to be magical in some way too? Figure out how you're going to kill them, and then build an attack/defense strategy out of that.

Anything besides magical armor is going to be comically stupid.

The best I can think of is armor that lets them curl up like a pill bug.

RemusShepherd said:

But if you want armor... Hmm. I'm thinking out of the box here, but what about a roll cage? A big assortment of struts that form a ball around the knight, and is strapped to his back at the center of the ball. The giants don't have piercing weapons, so nothing's going to poke through the bars of the cage. And if they hit him, he rolls and bounces but eventually comes to a stop unharmed.

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This wouldn't work, anyway, if for no other reason than that such gigantic opponents could probably strike the cage with such force that the human brain would be ruined by the acceleration. These big guys are made out of rock; the collision would be almost perfectly inelastic.

SPMiller said:

This wouldn't work, anyway, if for no other reason than that such gigantic opponents could probably strike the cage with such force that the human brain would be ruined by the acceleration. These big guys are made out of rock; the collision would be almost perfectly inelastic.

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Not necessarily. The point is the force has to go somewhere. If it can't, your organs get gooyfied (totally a word). The best place to send it is into the ground. Dear old mama earth can take a whole bunch of pounding.

The cage that sends the force into the ground works pretty well. If you make it out of magic springy metal then the time factor kicks in and the force is sent into the ground more slowly.

A roll cage is kinda impractical as you couldn't move very well in it. New model space suits are designed like armor though. With all hinged joints you can channel the force out and around the human body, much like the roll cage in your car protects you. If the joints are further reinforced with shocks and struts you could make it absorb an absolutely insane amount of pounding. It'd be heaver then sin, but if you're super strong...

My problem with the get out of the way idea is that it ain't possible unless you want to make your warriors super duper fast. I mean like stupid vampire fast. Anyone who has been in a real hand to hand fight knows that getting out of the way is really frickin hard unless you are in Hollywood (Which has different rules of physics). It's much easier to block then to dodge. You can't block something that out masses you. It doesn't matter how strong you are. It is more so you go flying.

Aservan said:

The cage that sends the force into the ground works pretty well.

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Well, the description of "12-30 foot giant made of rock" doesn't sound like a cage would work. The giant would probably just squash the cage including whoever's inside.

If you make it out of magic springy metal then the time factor kicks in and the force is sent into the ground more slowly.

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Magical springy metal would be a really bad idea, since the human (or superhuman) inside probably isn't springy as well. When the cage spring back into shape, the human inside stays squished.

A roll cage is kinda impractical as you couldn't move very well in it. New model space suits are designed like armor though. With all hinged joints you can channel the force out and around the human body, much like the roll cage in your car protects you.

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Doesn't work like that. The roll-cage protects you from the car deforming, not the impact force. If the armor is hard, and gets hit, the result would be the human inside being pretty much hit by his own armor, instead of the fist of the giant. Same result though. Armor can only protect against massive impact if it is hard enough and rests against something, transferring the kinetic energy around the human to whatever it rests against. I.e. imagine putting a tin can on the ground and an egg inside. If you kick it, the egg will break. If you stomp down on top, the egg will stay intact. Now imagine stomping down on a soda can instead. The problem with any giant-proof armor is that you have to find one that's hard enough not to end up like the soda can.

My problem with the get out of the way idea is that it ain't possible unless you want to make your warriors super duper fast.

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Well, the soldiers are superhuman after all. But the real point is that a ~20 foot rocky giant's fist sound pretty damn much like an incoming freight train. Doesn't matter if getting out of the way is hard... GTFO or be squished.

Definitely: don't get hit or use magic armour. Creatures of earth and stone have to accelerate and decelerate a lot of mass to hit you, so getting out of the way should be easy. If you can get out of the way, the issue isn't what armour you wear, but what weaponry you use to destroy them (explosives? rock chuckers? garden hoses? sand blowers?)

If you really have to hack creatures of rock and stone up close, you'd surely need something more like a mattock or pick-axe -- something with a curved point you could drive in deep, then some way to lever the creatures apart. Perhaps knights with grapnels or mattocks on chains?

Or perhaps knights with little inertia that could get batted around the sky like shuttlecocks, but glide back to wield their grapnels? Or knights whose armour converted blows to heat, gradually glowed redder the more they fought, and fought best in a river? Or perhaps magical armour that linked a knight to a castle, so that the castle would take the blow instead of the knight? Or perhaps armour that turned the knight into a sort of ballistic jelly inside -- able to withstand blunt blows well, but a sucker for being ripped, torn or poked hard with something sharp.