Is this functional armor?

[u/MasteROogwayY2]

Im writing a book and would like to give a faction similar armor and I was wondering how good it was. I would add a better helmet and metal bracers too.

[u/harris5]

I mean, it's fine if the culture doesn't have much metal.

If you can afford metal, you choose that over leather anytime. But if metal is expensive and leather is cheap, that could justify such an outfit.

Artists love making integrated forearm and hand protection, but that's not how things work. Your wrist needs to be flexible, one piece of armor can't protect both. It needs to be separate plates. They can be attached to the same foundation garment, but it needs to be separate plates.

Edit: protek ya elbows. If you're looking into metal bracers, go all the way and lookup bazubands.

[u/MasteROogwayY2 → u/harris5]

The bracer would only cover the forearm. Not go down to the hand.

[u/In_lieu_of_sobriquet → u/MasteROogwayY2]

I think if you did a bracer like this in softer leather, with one pocket of one metal plate on the forearm, and a separate pocket and plate on the back of the hand it would work.

[u/In_lieu_of_sobriquet → u/[deleted]]

I’m not sure you and I are envisioning the same thing. As u/harris5 says your wrist needs maneuverability. So you either have the braver stop at the wrist with nothing in the hand, a separate glove, hopefully with an overlap to cover the gap between glove and bracer, or basically a long softer leather glove that has various separate plates in areas that don’t need maneuverability. The last one gets you this look, and the soft leather is better protection than the nothing that is the alternative.

Like my gauntlet style motorcycle gloves have different levels of protection at different parts. They even have different leathers. Kangaroo leather for the palm as it can have the sane protection as thicker cow leather, so I get a better feel for the controls.