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Boob plate isn't a problem of functionality. Change my mind.

Zero Shingetsu·1/20/2019, 3:18:53 AM·22 votes·12,969 views

My friend and I were talking about some League designs and I had some thoughts I decided to share with the community here. These thoughts revolve around the (incorrectly) perceived impracticality of what is colloquially known as "boob plate".

Foreword I am not saying every armored female champion should wear "boob plate". I'm not even saying it's 100% the best look, every time. Personally, one of my favorite armored females aesthetically is Suikoden's Chris Lightfellow, who wears domed armor that barely shows her chest at all. This analysis looks purely at the practicality of "boob plate".

First Analysis: Existence "Boob plate" is essentially the female equivalent of the articulated "muscle armor" of the ancient Greek hoplites. As you can see, almost as far back as humans learned to work metal into armor, this is one of the first things we see: They want armor that looks impressive at a glance.

So as to the question of whether or not boob plate should exist? I say probably. It doesn't historically because not a lot of women fought. But in a fantasy world where women are just as likely to fight as men are, how big a stretch is it to think that a portion of fighting women would eventually want armor that goes for a distinct look? An aesthetic that's evident to be female just at a glance?

Second Analysis: Design Plausibility Armor is not flat. Armor is not a bunch of straight pieces of metal slapped over the body. ... Well, brigandine is, but that's a technicality and even some pieces in a coat of plates are curved. No, plate armor has a curvature to it. It conforms to the body, but more importantly, it uses an engineering practice called "doming" to enhance its protective qualities.

This principle is still in use today in the form of angled armor on tanks and the like, and it goes a little something like this: Force is applied relative to how small an area of impact is delivered. Try cutting a piece of steel with a sword, and you'll have no luck. Try piercing it with a lance or an arrow and your odds improve substantially. Doming works to expand the area of impact by not giving the enemy a flat surface to punch into. Force is now transferred along a curve; rather than shooting straight inward, a pointed weapon has a tendency to glance off or "roll" along the curve, negating most of its force and preventing puncturing of the armor.

Ever wonder why maces had all those blocky corners? Or why morningstars had spikes? It wasn't exclusively to look imposing. It was to help them dig into domed armor so less force slid across the curve and more went into the point of impact.

All that said: does boob plate do this?

Yes. Breasts are obviously curved, and to articulate armor after their shape is going to deliver the exact same effect as domed armor at that location. Another form of "boob plate" simply shifts the doming on your run-of-the-mill medieval breastplate from the abdomen to the chest, and it still serves the exact same purpose.

Third Analysis: Practicality But is it practical to wear boob plate? Well, depending on your shape, yes. Sometimes it might be downright necessary, so you're not smashing yourself with your own armor, as it were. A common trope when complaining about boob plate online is to bring up modern fighting women, and the fact that they use the same armor as men. This is inaccurate.

Ballistic vests for female police officers are designed in what's called a "darted" shape, where the chest area curves outward to allow for a more conforming fit. To do otherwise would prove uncomfortable and unsafe, as your armor would find ways to shift around your chest, possibly leaving a gap at the waist.

Boob plate, if made correctly to the wearer's shape, would most certainly prove more comfortable to wear than standard plate. "But it's not always MADE for the specific person, Shingetsu." Ah, but it is. Plate armor was the purview of the wealthy, and was almost always tailor made to the specific lord, knight or monarch commissioning its forging. In point of fact, men are uncomfortable in plate armor not made for their unique proportions.

Fourth Analysis: Functionality But here's the big one. Does boob plate make you less safe? The common argument against boob plate is that strikes are going to slide right to the sternum, transferring all the force of a blow to a weak point in the armor. An alternative version of this argument I see often is that one good strike to the weak point between the "cups" will break the sternum.

There's a very major flaw with both of these arguments in that the point between the cups is not a weak one. You see, steel armor is made from not only steel, but hardened steel. It's tempered to withstand things like, I dunno... hard impacts from other steel objects. That crevice between the cups? It's hardened steel. It's not going to cave because it was hit by the pommel of a sword.

As for transferal of force, also incorrect. When the blow connects, its force transfers across the surface it strikes. By the time it starts sliding across the armor, the weapon is barely transferring any kinetic energy at all. Take a pencil and slap it hard on your desk. Now place your fist on your desk, knuckles up, and hit your knuckle with the same force, then slide through the strike to hit the desk. Notice how much softer the desk impact is the second time.

Let's add to this the fact that the crevice doesn't need to sit directly against the body anyway. On top of that, you have an arming coat underneath that armor and probably a gambeson under that, both of which will absorb any kinetic force that happens to transfer through your plate.

Further, historical male armor has these points already. The breastplate meets the fauld in a crevice. A bevor likewise meets the top of the brestplate in a crevice. Neither of these places are particularly weak to impact damage. If they were, they wouldn't have designed armor that way for so long. No, the fact is, an opponent is still aiming for places such as the armpit where you're not armored. They're not going to aim for the crevice between your steel breasts, and even if they did, they wouldn't find much success without a weapon designed to split armor (such as a bardiche or a halberd). And in such a case, crevice or no, you're in trouble.

Conclusion There is nothing wrong with "boob plate" on a functional level. Leona is fine. Sejuani's sternum is not broken. Riot, please make more armored female champions.

49 Comments

Warlord Dienekes1/20/2019, 4:36:16 AM28 votes

Hi, I'm Dienekes, medieval historian with a focus on military history and HEMA practitioner (I'm shit though, literally the worst). I've seen this topic come up a lot the last few days, probably because Shadiversity dropped a video on it a few days back. Good guy, gets a bit excited for my tastes, I think he's overlooking some details on this one.

Anyway, let's fucking do this.

Point of order the first. Muscle cuirasses happened at a specific time and place in history. The Ancient Greek and Roman muscle cuirass had to deal with a lot less force than the medieval equipment, and furthermore the amount of muscle cuirasses that have actual battle damage to prove they were used in combat is somewhat limited. The ones that do, don't look like the highly detailed artistic variants we commonly see. They look like this:

https://www.by-the-sword.com/images/product/medium/AH-6096N.jpg

Or this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Greek_bronze_panoply_in_RMO_AvL.JPG/220px-Greek_bronze_panoply_in_RMO_AvL.JPG

The emphasis is there, but it is not to the huge extent that the artistic ones would have you believe.

Now there's also a really important thing to note about military technology and what weapons people were facing when various developments occurred. The muscle cuirass came about during the bronze age by the Greeks and Romans. The most developed anti-armor weapon was an axe. The Romans may have faced some early maces, but only rarely. You don't need to have anything beyond just metal to protect you from swords and spears, and you can get away with these little eccentricities.

By the late medieval period where the full plate harness we always associate with knights came about, that is no longer the case. Armor needs to deal with pollaxes, heavy shock cavalry with couched lances, and guns. It is not at all surprising that by the time that these weapons started to become dominant on the battlefield we see armor going from roughly flat or bell shaped like this:

https://ugc.futurelearn.com/uploads/assets/1a/58/hero_1a585566-22b2-4339-a129-bb16f964f574.jpg

To having a large crease, which developed into the full peascod style, like this:

https://theknightarmor.com/store/image/cache/data/br/br04-armor-breastplate-500x500.jpg

This lasted until armor was mostly abandoned. Because it's important against those heavy strikes that would hit the center of your mass: bullets, bolts, arrows, and lances. That is where the idea of not wanting the strikes to glance inward comes from. You want the strike to glance off out at an angle away from your body, not toward it. You are right, against most maces and swords and axes a boob plate would be fine. Against a lance pointed toward your chest? No it is the opposite of what you want.

Now here's why shifting the point toward the chest and not the abdomen is kinda missing details. Look back at the peascod armor, unless you hit directly on the ridge, which is highly unlikely the attacks are not directed toward the waist. They're directed down and to the side. The goal is to angle the hit away from the body as much as possible. Now can an unlucky blow strike at the fauld? Of course. People still died in armor. Armor's amazing, but it happens. The faulds themselves also have a rather nice curve to them. They are not a flat surface for the weapon catch, nor does the angle of the fauld move the force inward. It's always outward wherever possible. The neck is harder, because it has the chin to deal with and the need to move your head. So that's always going to be a point of weakness, unless you get that thick sweet tournament armor, like this:

https://collections.royalarmouries.org/media/emumedia/320/331/large_A5270_2.jpg

Mhhmm. Look at that grandguard. See how the crease would move blows away from the body? See that nice curve is set up in a way that the enemy's weapon wouldn't catch on anything? Ohh man that's beautiful design right there.

As to most plate armor being custom made. That's not always true. High Medieval to early Late Medieval period, sure. But then it gets cheaper to make and there's something called "munitions plate" and a lot of the armor we have that survived is this munitions plate. Many of them have these rather ingenious little quirks to help them fit varying body types. Like the Landsnechkt had these vambraces of overlapping metal so you could pull them apart or push them together so they would fit the length of the user's arm.

As to the female requiring different general shape. Yeah probably, but I'd be willing to bet that a simple alteration that allowed more room for the breast of the wearer would come about more than basically a holster for each boob. I mean, bras weren't even really invented until the 1800s, most medieval and early modern women would be wearing more cloth linings and single hole boob bags that go around the body.

So, no, I don't think boob plate is a good armor design. Redirecting things toward your center of mass is the opposite of what the goal of armor is to do.

Now that said, I can see boob plate being invented, in the early ages before couched lances and the dominance of shock cavalry turning way into arquebuses and arbalists. Or, it could be like parade armor. You see we do actually find armor that is designed in such a way that a weapon would catch like this:

https://www.thevintagenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lead-hernuii876t.jpg

See how the embossing creates a lot of rough surfaces for weapons to catch? Yeah, that's because this armor was never meant to be used on the battlefield or in a tourney. This is parade armor. It's meant to look damn good, and get everyone's attention when you're at a party, or making an entrance into a city, or participating in a celebration/parade.

If boob plate would exist by the late medieval/early modern period I can only see it being used as parade armor.

Furthermore, to get into the game design. Leona is not fine at all. All she has is a metal bikini a weird plate thing that just covers a narrow strip of her torso in such a way that should prevent her from rotating. And the rest she's wearing is spandex.

She has horrible armor design.

Criomhthann1/20/2019, 4:02:39 AM10 votes

My friend and I were talking about

No, you didn't. You're simply turned Shadversity's video into a forum post.

Your post doesn't work for the same reason; fantasy armor, particularly as it relates to females is practically skin tight. This negates two points. First, their would be little to no distance between the body and the armor, and second it presents a very obvious structural weakness at the very center of the plate.

Absolutely no one is talking about a bulge in the armors designed to accommodate a larger chest size as one finds in some HEMA circles, or about ballistic armor being designed for a smaller frame when they talk about boob plate and dishonest to pretend otherwise.

The Ecdysiast1/20/2019, 3:25:00 AM7 votes

Well, Leona's actually has a fairly thick piece in between her breasts, covering the weakness of having two curved surfaces pointed directly at your heart. But in general, and including both Lux and Sejuani, that weakness is still very prominent. Especially if an enemy were to use a thrusting weapon.

It doesn't matter, though, since Lux has shields of light and Sejuani's armor is true ice, their armors don't need to be shaped properly. They're magic.

DrCyanide1/20/2019, 3:37:23 AM6 votes

Here's a picture of a set of King Henry the 8th's armor. The astute viewer may notice that not all of it was "practical", some of it was certainly for fashion.

http://images1.fanpop.com/images/photos/2400000/Armour-Wore-by-King-Henry-VIII-king-henry-viii-2430710-1000-1500.jpg

DuskDaUmbreon1/20/2019, 3:31:18 AM4 votes

Lots of well-made points, honestly. +1 from me.

BoringLittleF1/20/2019, 11:20:07 AM4 votes

Dude, the thing is, it's a fucking game. You don't need to write a thesis on a non-realistic armor. People drop suns on each other's heads, run around with hair so long and flowing it would tangle in their feet, armor and weapons, causing them to trip and stab themselves, wear gigantic pauldrons or masks that are fucking impossible to see through.

So if people cry for realism let's be realistic till the end. Same armor design template for characters of any allignment because this is war, you cannot be flashy. Give similar short haircuts to all male and female characters. Long hair gets stuck everywhere, it serves no purpose in battle. Remove beards and moustache. Remove unnatural hair colors: blue, purple, green, etc. Your colorful head is a marksman's dream. Give them all simple short swords because almost all current weapons are impractical and cannot be used IRL. Cover up all shirtless males. BTW make sure all males and females are in their 50s and built like Torbjorn from Overwatch GTFO with your athletic triangle-shaped bods and Illaoi bodybuilder stature - this is how a rugged warrior looks like. Remove yordles - their head size is hurting their necks. Remove magic and magical creatures whatsoever. Magic is not practical and it can make people feel bad because you cannot prolong your youth or heal your toothache with a snap of the fingers IRL.

Now, this is the perfect and practical game everyone will enjoy playing!

Hammermancer1/21/2019, 1:02:09 PM1 votes

what irritates me is that I don't see enough codpieces

Like taric, rakan, braum all need these to protect them