Plate mail
[ plate mail 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | plate mail |
| Slot | body armor |
| AC | 7 |
| Special | |
| Base price | 600 zm |
| Weight | 450 |
| Material | iron |
- For other kinds of plate mail, see bronze plate mail and crystal plate mail.
Plate mail is a type of body armor that appears in NetHack. It is made of iron. For Samurai, it appears as tanko.
Contents
Generation
In addition to random generation, general stores and armor shops can stock plate mail.
Mercenaries with a target AC of -1 or better (e.g., Yendorian Army lieutenants) have an effective 16⁄25 chance of generating with plate mail.[1]
Player monster barbarians, knights, priests, and valkyries have an effective 11⁄155 chance (roughly ~7.1%) of forcing plate mail in place of their initial body armor.[2][3][4][5]
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
As part of commit 20cbadcf - which strengthens quest leaders and makes it so that killing them no longer makes the game unwinnable - the Knight quest leader King Arthur always generates with +4 plate mail.Description
Plate mail is one of three types of armor that confers the most base AC after dragon scale mail but also weighs 450 aum, making it prohibitively heavy for many characters. Early non-casting characters with plenty of carrying capacity may consider an early set of plate mail if they find it, but those that opt for it will want to swap it for less weighty armor (such as a dwarvish mithril-coat or elven mithril-coat) at the first opportunity.
History
Plate mail first appears in Hack 1.21 and Hack for PDP-11, which are based on Jay Fenlason's Hack, and is included in the initial list of armor for Hack 1.0.
Origin
Plate armor is a historical type of personal body armor that is made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, with examples ranging from a 'simple' cuirass to the recognizable full-body panoply that dates back to the Roman Empire. "Panoply" refers both to this historic armor and to other forms of plate armor that would come much later. Full-plate steel armor developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages from the coat of plates (popular in late 13th and early 14th century) worn over mail suits during the 14th century, especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War, and reached its peak usage in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Plate armor's popular association with the "medieval knight” archetype is due to the specialized jousting armor developed in the 16th century, and full suits of Gothic plate armor and Milanese plate armor were worn on the battlefields of the various wars of that period. The most heavily armored troops were heavy cavalry, such as the gendarmes and early cuirassiers, but the infantry troops of Swiss mercenaries and Landsknechts also took to wearing lighter suits of "three quarters" munition armor that left the lower legs unprotected. The use of plate armor began to decline in the early 17th century, but remained common both among nobility and cuirassiers throughout the European wars of religion.
After the mid-17th century, the development of the armor-penetrating musket meant that the use of plate armor was mostly reduced to the simple breastplate or cuirass, with the exception of the Polish Hussars; body armour made a brief reappearance in the American Civil War with mixed success. The breastplate in particular gained renewed importance for infantry with the development of shrapnel in the late Napoleonic Wars, and were still in active use during the first few months of World War I prior to experimentation with shrapnel armor and early forms of ballistic vests. Post-World War II, steel plates were soon replaced fully by vests made from synthetic fibre: Kevlar was introduced in 1971 and set the standard for most ballistic vests since then, with the option to add "trauma plates" made from ceramic, metal (steel or titanium) or synthetic materials to reduce the risk of blunt trauma injury.
Naturally, various forms of plate armor feature in fantasy-based media such as Dungeons & Dragons - the plate mail of NetHack appears to be of the cuirass type since it does not offer full-body coverage.
Variants
dNetHack
In dNetHack, plate mail provides 10 AC and MC3.
Encyclopedia entry
Tanko
Samurai plate armor of the Yamato period (AD 300 - 710).
References
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 622
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 174: 1⁄2 for barbarians and other mentioned roles to get random body armor within the range of objects from plate mail to chain mail in objects.c, using normal generation odds
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 201: see previous citation
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 215: see previous citation
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 242: see previous citation
