RC 2.0 Update

[Point Blank]

Been reading 'Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest'. It spends a lot of time on the 4th Crusade, and most usefully for our purposes on the movement from Acre to Jaffa. The Crusader column was continually harassed by archers, and though the horses were vulnerable, armored targets (mostly wearing heavy mail plus padding) are discussed in multiple examples as being largely immune to arrows, with many looking like porcupines from non-penetrating hits.

Nothing new about that, and horse archer shots are obviously not as powerful as foot longbows, but it is a simple inductive exercise to think of those versus plate as being similarly ineffective.

Regarding Agincourt, several names does not a theory make. There are plenty of vulnerable points in such early plate (plate + mail really), which says little about it's general vulnerability. There are always outliers on the S-curve.

Impact energies from arrows max out at 70-80J AT CLOSE RANGE, and plate will typically withstand that, not to mention angle of impact considerations, underpadding, and the fact that arrow penetrations would often still enable a man to fight for the duration of a battle unless in the head or torso. An amusing example from the book is where one French noble at a parlay insults one of Richard's Welsh archers for his 'weird accent and manner of dress', whereupon the man promptly drew an arrow and shot him in the head at point blank range. Relatively unhurt, the Frenchman ran off to King Philip with the arrow sticking out of his skull, causing negotiations to break down with perhaps incalculable results for European and Middle Eastern history from that point onward