From a practical perspective, this is one of the best things about BotN: they hit each other very hard, in the head. Consequently we can use it to sanity check ideas about what hitting people in plate armour will do.

If you're swinging a 2kg sword, you need a mere 12m/s to get ~150J of impact energy. It's not hard to deliver far more energy than that.

If clobbering people with ~150J was lethal even 1% of the time, BotN would see a casualty every 2-3 melees.

Another way to look at this is that a punch delivers more energy than this. People do die from being punched, but it's extremely rare - and almost always from hitting something when they fall over.

So was the main focus of blunt trauma to knock a person down so that another weapon could be used, such as a dagger to find the weak spot in the armor?

Also, this makes me think of another question. Since a full armored man at arms/knight was so difficult to kill, the horse would logically be the easier target (I don't know much about horse armor), but....I am currently reading "The Greatest Knight" by Thomas Asbridge (Very good book) and he goes into great detail about how much the war horses were worth.

So would an opponent have aimed to kill a warhorse even if it was an easy target to bring down a knight, or would they have tried to save the horse for it's value much like capturing a knight for ransom?

Well, Battle of the Nations uses more padding and thicker armour than was used historically, so they could probably survive more blunt trauma to the helmet than a historical suit, so there is that.

Alec Cawdor wrote

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So was the main focus of blunt trauma to knock a person down so that another weapon could be used, such as a dagger to find the weak spot in the armor? Also, this makes me think of another question. Since a full armored man at arms/knight was so difficult to kill, the horse would logically be the easier target (I don't know much about horse armor), but....I am currently reading "The Greatest Knight" by Thomas Asbridge (Very good book) and he goes into great detail about how much the war horses were worth. So would an opponent have aimed to kill a warhorse even if it was an easy target to bring down a knight, or would they have tried to save the horse for it's value much like capturing a knight for ransom?

If you imagine standing and shooting an assault rifle, you don't fall over when you shoot it, and under Newtons law, the bullet imparts the same force to the target, so that shouldn't fall over either. There are lots of other things going on, but that is the raw basis of it. So if you are hit by a mace or arrow blow in principle it won't knock you over. Surprise, a change in balance, a blow to the head that jars it, etc may well take you down in conjunction. Although a blow to the chest of 150j is not that great, I suspect the vertically down onto the crown would transfer and concentrate that 150j directly to the neck vertebrae and that I suspect would be damaging.

War horses were worth money, but ultimately worth less that your life and so were targets and were lightly armoured in comparison to the guy sitting on it, and if the battle was arrayed to be fought by mounted knights and they become dismounted then the best laid plans are disrupted. In essence this was the nature of many of the early victories in the 100 years war. The French came at the English on horses, the English shot the horses, French plans were left in disarray and the battle was finished off by the English on foot. Later the French learned that sending in the knights on foot left them largely immune to the arrows and so they could plan and win using their larger forces on foot.

Tod

As has been said, modern soldiers from Western nations receive shots on helmets and body armour and not only survive but also continue to operate. Modern comparisons are not terribly helpful usually but I think it is worth pointing out that weapons producing many many times more joules don't necessarily stun let alone damage struck soldiers. I personally know two people who were shot (one several times in body armour and one to the head through a helmet) and while they don't recommend it managed to carry on fighting.

Here is a man being struck by a baseball estimated at 140 joules of energy, he just looks miffed. Blunt force trauma, though possibly had some effect on specific individuals in certain conditions is wildly over stated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0U_1TIBzY0

The number of heavy cavalry involved in the battle of Agincourt was negligible. Out of the 1400 or so heavy cavalry intended to flank the English (most had wandered off as the day went by with no sign when the battle would commence), only a tiny number actually made the charge.

Eric S wrote

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Dan, are you really saying that no part of the human body would suffer ANY blunt force trauma simply by wearing armor???

I have a feeling that Dan was referring to projectile weapons specifically in this context, just that he did not state this.


Tod

there seems to be a fair bit of ambiguity in this discussion about the term "blunt force trauma". Some people seem to be using the term to mean the very specific form of injury caused by high velocity projectiles that are prevented from entering the body but still cause bruising, broken bones and hydrostatic shock. Others seem to be using the term to mean any effect that gets through armour. If I am wearing a great helm and you grab the sides and shake vigorously I might well become disoriented, this would seem to fit the later description, but not the first. I am no forensic pathologist, what exactly do we mean for the purposes of this discussion?

Ok, would falling on an outstretched arm while in plate harness and dislocating your elbow count as an example of BFT? Ground is firm, and would be considered a break using the definition provided.

From our perspective surely the only traumas that count are the ones that stop a person from fighting either short term, thereby disrupting the formation, or long term. Scrapes and bruises just aren't significant. If BFT was as big an issue as people are making out casualties and deaths in sports as gentle as cricket or baseball would be common, while boxing and MMA would be profoundly hazardous.

No muscle powered weapon can deliver blunt trauma injury to someone wearing a steel cuirass.