History Main / ArmorIsUseless

** In ''Film/RogueOne'', Chirrut manages to kick much Stormtrooper ass with ''[[MartialArtsStaff a staff]]''. On the other hand, the armor is shown deflecting the Stormtroopers' own rounds, so it could simply be a case of the armor being made to withstand more common blasters, as opposed to the military-grade or heavily-modified stuff we would see in the Original Trilogy and beyond.

** ''Film/TheHobbit'': Thorin stabs Azog straight through his breastplate.

** In ''Film/RogueOne'', Chirrut manages to kick much Stormtrooper ass with ''[[SimpleStaff a staff]]''. On the other hand, the armor is shown deflecting the Stormtroopers' own rounds, so it could simply be a case of the armor being made to withstand more common blasters, as opposed to the military-grade or heavily-modified stuff we would see in the Original Trilogy and beyond.

* Played with at the end of ''WesternAnimation/UltimateAvengers'': when the team fights [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk The Hulk]], guess who appears to be doing the least well in the fight? ComicBook/IronMan. That's right, the only dude wearing any kind of outfit that would seem useful when fighting something that can rip a tank apart, is the one who seemingly does the least. This is, however, mostly due to his massive power demands to operate the suit and less due to the armor itself failing to protect him. It even manages to shrug off a hit from the Hulk, though not before he rips Tony's helmet off.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'', unless it has an attached defense ability, a bulkier gear doesn't protect any more than less bulky ones. [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in single-player modes, where you can pick up to three (two in the [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 sequel]]) pieces of armor, each serving as [[BodyArmorAsHitPoints an extra life of sorts]].

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Exaggerated/parodied in "It's a Trap!", a parody of ''Film/StarWarsReturnOfTheJedi''. The stormtroopers' armor can't even withstand arrow fire, and one of them even as he's [[HumanPincushion riddled with arrows]]) exclaims "[[LampshadeHanging This armor's useless! Why do we even wear it]]?"

* In ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'', unless it has Defense Up, a bulkier gear doesn't protect any more than less bulky ones. [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in single-player modes, where you can pick up to three (two in the [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 sequel]]) pieces of armor, each serving as [[BodyArmorAsHitPoints an extra life of sorts]].

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Exaggerated/parodied in "It's a Trap!", a parody of ''Film/StarWarsReturnOfTheJedi''. The stormtroopers' armor [[WeaknessWeaksauce can't even withstand arrowfire]], and one of them ([[MajorInjuryUnderreaction even as he's]] [[HumanPincushion riddled with arrows]]) exclaims "[[LampshadeHanging This armor's useless]]! [[LampshdeHanging Why do we even wear it]]?"

** Played straight and averted in ''VideoGame/Fallout4''. While its possible to upgrade any normal armour you find, as well as upgrading regular clothing with a ballistic weave which gives it a defense value which stacks with other types of armour after completing a specific quest, on higher difficulties (specifically Survival Mode, where you take 200% damage from all attacks) even a fully upgrade set of gear will give you maybe one or two extra seconds to find some cover and heal. Averted though with PoweredArmor, which in this game acts more like a vehicle you pilot rather than worn gear like it was in the previous games. A fully upgrade set of X-01 armour will let you tank a ''mini-nuke to the face'' and limp out the other side, even on the aforementioned Survival mode.

** The improved graphics of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' reveal that Link wears chainmail under his trademark green tunic. But he takes exactly the same amount of damage from goblin attacks with the armor as he does without it in the prologue.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Exaggerated/parodied in "It's a Trap!", a parody of ''Film/StarWarsReturnOfTheJedi''. The stormtroopers' armor can't even withstand arrowfire, and one of them ([[MajorInjuryUnderreaction even as he's]] [[HumanPincushion riddled with arrows]]) exclaims "This armor's useless! Why do we even wear it?"

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Exaggerated/parodied in "It's a Trap!", a parody of ''Film/StarWarsReturnOfTheJedi''. The stormtroopers' armor can't even withstand arrowfire, and one of them ([[MajorInjuryUnderreaction even as he's]] [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice riddled with arrows]]) exclaims "This armor's useless! Why do we even wear it?"
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}: [[Recap/FuturamaM1BendersBigScore Bender's Big Score]]'', the head nudist scammer informs the cast that he was wearing a doom-proof vest -- then dolefully repents that he wasn't wearing doom-proof pants.

* Alan Williams' book ''The Knight and the Blast Furnace'', chapter 9.4, used materials science and experimental archaeology to quantify the effectiveness of armor throughout the years. He found that it takes about 50-60 joules for a blade, spearpoint, arrow, bolt, or bullet to inflict a serious wound on a naked human, and 50-100 joules (depending on type of impact) for them to penetrate 16 layers of linen (equivalent to standard light padded armor or under-armor). He further worked out a formula for the energy needed to penetrate metal with an arrow, bolt, or spearpoint as: [55 joules x Thickness (mm) x Thickness (mm) x Armor Coefficient (0.5 to 1.1)][[note]]The coefficient represents the quality of armor. He calculated that wrought iron armor's coefficient would be 0.5, low-carbon steel's 0.75, modern mild steel's 1, and relatively high-carbon steel (by medieval/early modern standards) 1.1. Most armor would be of 0.5 or 0.75 quality.[[/note]] / Cos A.[[note]]Angle of impact to perpendicular. So at 0 degrees, the result would be divided by 1. At 20 degrees, by 1.1. At 30 degrees, by 1.2. Et cetera.[[/note]] He also made formulas for determining penetration with blades and bullets, which are the same as the above except with the 55 swapped out for 80 and 155 respectively. Using these finds, Williams demonstrated that standard (average c. 2 mm thick around the body, 0.75 quality) plate armor would render the wearer very highly resistant to blades and arrows,[[note]]The range for sword and axe strikes by regular men was given as 60 to 130 joules, while an exceptionally strong man with a two-hander could perhaps manage 200-300 joules. As for arrows, most were under 100 joules; longbows, as well as most crossbow bolts, were in the 100-200 joule range, maybe slightly above for the really big examples.[[/note]] with only very strong men being able to input enough energy into their muscle-powered weapons to achieve penetrations, and even then the under-armor would likely render said penetrations non-lethal without repeated and precise blows. However, that armor would in turn be useless against bullets with much higher energy values (the first handgonnes packed around 600-900 joules per shot, early arquebuses were 1,300 to 1,750, and later arquebuses/calivers as well as the standard muskets of the line infantry era averaged 3,000 or more). Armor capable of offering any resistance to increasingly powerful firearms was impractically heavy for the utility it provided (''5 mm'' of 0.75 quality, over twice standard thickness, would still likely be insufficient to stop a later musket), explaining why armor steadily dropped him in commonness as firearms advanced from c. 1400 to c. 1700, despite becoming easier than ever to mass produce.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E1TheMasqueOfMandragora "The Masque of Mandragora"]], the Doctor dons a suit of armor under his clothes to channel the {{Hand Blast}}s of the VillainOfTheWeek, though only because he uses a wire to ground it. In the novelisation the wire melts from the energy pouring through it, forcing the Doctor to absorb the final blast unaided.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem "The Sontaran Stratagem"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E5ThePoisonSky "The Poison Sky"]], the Sontarans' armour seems mostly decorative, as UNIT mows them down with impunity once they regain working guns. It might be that their armour is specifically designed to counter energy weapons like their own, in the same way that Kevlar is intended to stop bullets so is decidedly less effective against blades.

* During some battles, Greek hoplites did not have torso armor and relied on their huge shield -- hoplon -- for protection. Note: They did have normal clothes, and likely also had skirts which served as a part of armor. Note that lacking torso armor wasn't necessarily due to lack of access, just that early plate armor was so heavy and uncomfortable to wear that hoplites took them off whenever they could. Sometimes they didn't have enough time to put it back on, or just preferred to fight without it.

*** As for the Soren's P.O.V. in Chapter 29 shows, the apprentice hunters are trained to [[AttackItsWeakPoint attack the weak points of armour]]. While he does [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] how he doesn't have enough strength to ''tear'' into the chestplate with his bare hands, Soren goes for his armoured opponent's [[ImpromptuTracheotomy throat]], winning the fight.
*** There's also how the hunters [[InvokedTrope invoke]] and [[ExploitedTrope exploit]] this trope via their emphasis on manoeuvrability over protection. After all, avoiding damage outright is better than receiving damage, with incapacitation or death being the likely result.

** Jedi only really wear armor when the situation is just that dire, because they are ultimately peacekeeping [[WarriorMonk warriors monks]]. The Clone Wars became fierce so quickly that the Jedi had to adapt to survive and embrace many things once thought to be taboo.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}: Bender's Big Score'', the head nudist scammer informs the cast that he was wearing a doom proof vest -- then dolefully repents that he wasn't wearing doom-proof pants.

** Humorously lampshaded in ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront2'', where after gunning down Stormtroopers Rebel soldiers can be heard to mockingly say "Yeah, that armor worked real well, didn't it?".

** Humorously lampshaded in ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront'', where after gunning down Stormtroopers Rebel soldiers can be heard to mockingly say "Yeah, that armor worked real well, didn't it?".

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Exaggerated/parodied in "It's a Trap!", a parody of ''Film/StarWarsReturnOfTheJedi''. The stormtroopers' armor can't even withstand arrowfire, and one of them ([[MajorInjuryUnderreaction even as he's]] [[ImpaledByExtremePrejudice riddled with arrows]]) exclaims "This armor's useless! Why do we even wear it?"

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': It is often lampshaded that [[https://youtu.be/Vaqq0zGPyHU?t=62 Stormtrooper armor is almost completely useless for protection.]] So far, the only thing the armor has ever canonically stopped is a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2s0a7guIX4 very weak stun weapon.]]

* For "It's a Trap!" of the Star Wars trilogy of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', when the stormtroopers are being killed by the primative weapons of Ewoks, one exclaims "This armor's useless! Why do we even wear it?!"

[[folder:Real Life]]
* In real life this has been a CyclicTrope, called the "arms race" between weapons and armor. In the beginning, there were weapons, and then shields and armor were invented to protect against them. Obviously, they worked against whatever they were originally designed to protect against, or else nobody would have bothered with the encumbrance and expense. The pattern throughout history has been that as soon as some new weapon is introduced that can reliably defeat the armor of the day, then there are two options: The first is to increase the weight or thickness of the armor you're wearing so it will be harder to penetrate or to add more pieces to cover more of the body, but this only works before you reach the point where you're too encumbered to march or fight effectively. The second option is to discard the parts that are no longer useful -- which if the new weapons are really effective could mean ''all'' of it -- until technology develops to the point where armorers can provide a new kind of armor that can protect against the new weapons while still being sufficiently affordable and practical to wear.
** It's important to note that fighters don't necessarily seek the most protective armor that cutting-edge technology can provide, but rather tend to keep using whatever's "good enough" against the threats they expect to face until it's no longer sufficient. Even then, it depends on the economics of production and harder-to-quantify factors such as tradition and fashion. For example, mail armor persisted in Europe well past the point of them technically having the ability to cover themselves in plate, because mail was flexible, easily covered the whole body including the joints, and was quite protective against the weapons of the day. The increasing power of crossbows, English warbows, halberds, and the couched lance contributed to the adoption of plate defenses as a supplement to mail beginning in the mid 13[[superscript:th]] century, but it was partly the fact of plate becoming more cost-effective to produce that led to it becoming the primary form of armor, with mail retaining a significant role until the 17[[superscript:th]] century.
** To give an example of the cycle in action: By the 18[[superscript:th]] century, flintlock muskets were so efficient at spitting volleys of lead when fired in massed ranks that any armor with enough strength and coverage to protect you would be too heavy to wear in battle, let alone on the march. Besides, state armies had gotten a lot bigger since the Middle Ages, and it was expensive enough supplying the soldiers with muskets and ammunition, so if armor wasn't practical anymore they might as well get rid of it. The socket bayonet allowed the roles of pikeman and musketeer to be combined into one role, so the cuirasses and helmets that pikemen had used were discarded too. While the heavy cavalry continued to wear steel helmets and breastplates, these were really only thick enough to deflect a musket ball that had spent most of its energy and were mainly to protect against bayonets and swords in close combat. The light cavalry and infantry all threw away their helmets and adopted various fabric and leather hats such as the cocked hat, shako, and pickelhaube. Many of these hats were actually sturdy enough to stop a sword cut, and nobody expected them to do anything about bullets. But then came World War I with all sides using shrapnel shells, and the belligerent nations realized that a major cause of death was low-velocity shrapnel balls hitting their guys in their unprotected heads, which also happened to be the most exposed target in trench warfare. At that point, they all scrambled to issue steel helmets to their infantry. Despite improvements in subsequent wars, steel helmets were still more to protect against airborne fragments and falling debris things kicked up by explosions rather than bullets, since at most a typical steel helmet could stop a pistol round like 9 mm parabellum or .45 ACP, probably taking a big dent in the process. In the 1980s and '90s, flexible kevlar and hard ceramic plates were introduced to make bulletproof body armor and helmets that were practical to wear, bringing everything full-circle.
* Varies in terms of ballistic armor; in the United States, most bullet-resistant vests are rated based on the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_vest#Performance_standards NIJ's laboratory testing]]. Each tier is rated based on the highest-powered round it can stop. If you find yourself wearing a type IIA vest in a firefight, for example, it should do its job fairly well if everyone present has a 9mm handgun. But once somebody breaks out a .44 Magnum, you might as well be wearing so many kitchen aprons.
* On a related note, this was much less true in the early days of gunpowder warfare than you might think; the phrase "bulletproof" derives from the "proof" mark on a breastplate left when the smith fired a pistol into it before witnesses to demonstrate it could take a hit. In earlier periods armor was sometimes proofed against crossbow bolts.
** Of course as firearms technology improved, plate armour got thicker and heavier to compensate, to the point where it became too heavy and cumbersome to move effectively in. Which is why you might see in appropriate period works, for example, a Roundhead of the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar wearing a helmet and breastplate, but not a soldier of the American War of Independence or Napoleonic Wars.
** Also, only good steel plate armor was "proof." The vast majority of soldiers in Europe did not wear that (and basically none did anywhere lese), in either the Middle Ages or the early modern era. Instead they mostly used padded armor (buffcoat, padded jack, etc.), mail, lower-quality munitions plate (usually made of iron or thin low-quality steel), or transitional armor. While effective (to varying degrees) against arrows and melee weapons, ''none'' of these would help against even early firearms at typical combat ranges (munitions plate ''might'' deflect a mid-long range pistol shot, but pistols were almost never used at such ranges anyway). Thus, this trope very much was the case in regards to bullets for ninety plus percent of combatants, which was one of the contributing factors to the decline of armor. In the Thirty Years War, musketeers/arquebusiers (comprising about half of the infantry) usually just wore buffcoats and helmets, while melee troops (mostly pikemen) were evenly divided between men wearing a buffcoat/helmet and those who went farther with half-plate armor. A similar ratio was observed in contemporary conflicts like the English Civil Wars. By the late 17th century only some cavalry wore body armor in Western Europe, as 65-85% of the infantry had guns, faster-firing flintlocks outnumbered matchlocks, and battles were usually decided by shooting alone (bar cavalry charges - which were still complemented with pistol and carbine fire - and occasional infantry melees in close spaces like towns, forests, and forts) with pikemen being a purely defensive tool against cavalry.
** While pikemen in 17[[superscript:th]] century armies usually wore at least a helmet and cuirass, musketeers would often forgo armor altogether. This was partly because they were not expected to engage in as much hand-to-hand fighting, and partly because without special modification a breastplate might interfere with bracing the musket against your shoulder.
** In fact, armor plating fell out of favour among land-based troops until the advent of motor vehicles, namely the tank and the armored personnel carrier.
* During some battles, Greek hoplites did not have torso armor and relied on their huge shield -- hoplon -- for protection. Note: They did have normal clothes, and likely also had skirts which served as a part of armor. Note that lacking torso armor wasn't necessarily due to lack of access, just that early plate armor was so heavy and uncomfortable to wear that hoplites took them off whenever they could. Sometimes they didn't have enough time to put it back on, or just preferred to fight without it.
* This has also been a CyclicTrope in regards to naval warfare. During the age of WoodenShipsAndIronMen, cannon fire could blast through anything that could float, so warships didn't bother with armor. Then came the era of ironclads, where cannon balls would bounce off armored hulls. This began an arms race between naval weapons and naval armor that saw both getting ever bigger and heavier. This pattern finally broke in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, when it became clear that heavily armored warships were not effective against serious airpower. Thus, ships were generally low on armor again... at least until the 1970s and '80s, and especially UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar showed that then-modern destroyers were so unprotected that they would take catastrophic damage from things that WWII-era ships could just shrug off. So they began adding ''some'' protective armor back; for instance, the USS ''Cole'' (a '90s design) survived an explosion that would've destroyed a '70s-era Spruance-class destroyer.
** The Soviet Navy feared the Iowa-class battleships above any other ships in the US fleet because of this. There is a story that they even nicknamed them the "Cockroach Battleships" because, when the Sovs ran simulations, they just wouldn't die.
** In practice, UsefulNotes/WorldWarII capital ships could survive tremendous amounts of air attack, enough that ''Tirpitz'' needed a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_(bomb) gigantic 5.4-ton supersonic bomb]] to sink her, and it survived the first hit from it well enough to steam under her own power afterwards. And she was permanently immobilized due to turbine damage from another attack and moored as a floating coastal artillery battery. And a ''[[Film/TheDamBusters whole squadron of Lancasters]]'' was needed to sink her.
*** The ''Tirpitz''' sister ship ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck Bismarck]]'', though it took 14 hours and something like four hundred hits to actually sink, was disabled by a single torpedo hit to the rudder, dispatched by an obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplane.
*** The problem with battleship armor was that (since just armoring the whole ship equally would have made it unreasonably heavy) it was optimized to protect against incoming shells, and there primarily those coming in on relatively low angles and hitting the sides. High-angle shots and bombs would hit the thinner deck armor, and torpedoes would just hit below the armored belt in the first place (indeed, the original purpose of destroyers, all the way back to before World War ''One'' was to serve specifically as ''torpedo boat'' destroyers to help protect the vulnerable battleships against just such attacks). These weaknesses were never truly eliminated, and since gunfire is at best a secondary threat on the modern naval battlefield to begin with the main defensive benefit of a hypothetical "modern" battleship would be its sheer ''size''[[labelnote:*]]Or, as some have argued, it's ability to cheaply provide naval fire support, as battleship shells cost a fraction of what cruise missiles do[[/labelnote]] -- which doesn't really justify the expense, especially given that aircraft carriers are vastly superior for most modern battlefield purposes. Combined with the diminished value of artillery in the age of cruise missiles and drones, which always hit their targets, and battleships simply have no purpose anymore -- they just aren't cost-effective enough to justify their existence.
** A similar effect ended up going into the use of anti-torpedo technology. At their advent, ships used torpedo nets to "catch" torpedoes and explode them further from the hull to reduce damage. This stopped working after WWI when torpedoes became fast enough to penetrate torpedo nets. So designers came up with the anti-torpedo bulge, an additional section of the hull with absolutely no purpose other than to be destroyed by torpedoes in lieu of a hull breach. Then came guided torpedoes able to explode under the ship: the blast will move so much water out from under the ship that it will buckle and break under its own weight. Nowadays there is literally no defense against torpedo attacks from modern submarines. As such, most modern anti-torpedo defenses focus on decoying or destroying the torpedo rather than surviving the hit.
** Other changes in naval warfare due to completely different technologies have made the use of heavy armour on ships somewhat useless. Modern naval warfare depends heavily on sensors and communications for conducting operations and fighting opponents well outside visual range, and those can't, for obvious reasons, be as protected. So while a World War 2 era battleship might easily survive being attacked by modern explosive warheads, if those explosive warheads destroy the radar arrays and communication antennas then the ship has been rendered tactically ineffective. Against an enemy who can easily detect and avoid it well outside the battleship's ability to detect or engage them, the battleship might as well have been sunk. This wasn't an issue as late as World War 2 when warships were just starting to depend on something other than the human eyeball to detect other ships and not every vessel had even basic radar.
* Modern body armor is all about tradeoffs. The lightest vests are very light, but only block handgun bullets, and then only over a limited portion of the body. Many provide no protection at all against knives and similar sharp objects, which is a problem for prison guards, necessitating the development of armor which was both knife and bullet resistant. Heavier vests, such as dragon scale and interceptor body armor, can provide protection even from rifle rounds thanks to ceramic plating, but only the portions with plates are protected, often leaving limbs vulnerable. Dragon scale armor is more flexible, but less heat-resistant, as the glue can fatigue in extreme heat. Heavier armor still is available, but it is considered too heavy to be worn for everyday use - it is typically only worn for extreme situations, such as bomb defusal and similar things. It can provide great resistance, even to the limbs, but the weight is prohibitive.
* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, armies experimented with chain mail and found that it actually made bullet wounds ''worse'' -- it couldn't stop a bullet ''and'' the rings would shatter, shoving more shrapnel into the wound than if the bullet just hit an unarmoured person. However, when hung like a curtain, it proved surprisingly effective at stopping shrapnel, leading to terrifying items like the British [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Splatter_Mask_%28WWI%29.jpg splatter mask]] for tank crews.
* Not the fault of the armor, but human psychology can make armor useless or worse. People tend to react to increased safety by ''taking more risk'', in an unconscious attempt to balance risk versus reward (riskier behavior is offset by safety equipment like armor, resulting in increased reward for the same amount of risk); this is called the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltzman_effect Peltzman effect]]. The problem is that a) risky behavior may transfer the risk to {{Innocent Bystander}}s rather than the one wearing the safety equipment, and b) people are ''really bad'' at judging risk, meaning that instead of balancing out, safety equipment + risky behavior may actually be significantly ''more'' dangerous than no safety equipment + no risky behavior.
** The battlefield behavior of medieval knights sometimes appeared to confirm this. Knightly armor, especially full plate armor from the 14th century onward, was undoubtedly the best protection that had yet been developed. Lance thrusts, sword cuts, arrows, and crossbow bolts that would instantly kill an unarmored man would bounce right off a man in full plate armor, and there were only a limited number of weak spots between the plates which were difficult to exploit. It could weigh 45 to 60 lbs. and did restrict range of motion a bit, but it was designed to be as unencumbering as possible so that a physically fit person could fight effectively in it. Once you get over the initial sense of claustrophobia, sensory deprivation, and breathing your own carbon dioxide that starts when you put on your helmet and close the visor, you can start to feel pretty secure and invulnerable in your protective shell. When you combine that sensation with the BlueBlood elitism and BloodKnight attitude that were bred into men of the knightly class starting from boyhood, you can see how they could get cocky, especially when faced with troops of lower station and simpler equipment. Whenever they weren't kept under stern and experienced leadership, bodies of knights would get so eager to come to grips with the enemy -- both for glory and to capture loot and ransoms -- that they would sometimes decide to charge against a highly prepared, dug-in enemy line without first letting their own crossbowmen and infantry weaken the enemy formations. In the worst case, such recklessness could lead to a bloody defeat, and the sense of invincibility provided by being fully armored and mounted can be said to have been a factor leading to the slaughter of mounted knights at Courtrai in 1302 and at Crecy in 1346.
** It would be wrong to attribute these defeats to the armor itself, since it undeniably saved countless lives and enabled men to perform great feats of combat. The popular image of lightly armored English archers massacring the knighthood of France with their longbows at Agincourt is rather distorted: the main contribution of the arrows to the English victory was to shoot the horses out from under the initial French cavalry charge (not to mention deterring them from using more cavalry in the first place), and then to buffet the French on either flank as they advanced on foot through the mud so that even if few were killed by arrows, they were all tired and dangerously crowded together by the time they reached the English lines. The dismounted English men in armor held the center while the archers dropped their bows and joined the fight with hand weapons, and as French were being killed, even more were taken prisoner. At one point the also-exhausted English were afraid the French would try to mount another assault and started to kill their prisoners to eliminate the threat from behind, but just then the French host gave up and retreated, leaving the English in possession of the field having inflicted lopsided casualties on the enemy. The English archers wouldn't have been able to hold against the French onslaught if it hadn't been for their defensible position which prevented the enemy from flanking them, the stakes they'd put in the ground to ward off cavalry, the bad weather and freshly plowed fields creating a muddy no man's land for the French to cross, the tactical blunders of the enemy (such as missing the chance to attack the English while they were re-positioning), and the presence of the English men at arms. It's notable that many of the French taken prisoner were not even significantly wounded thanks to their armor. Also, consider what madness it would have been for the French to advance into the English arrow storm wearing anything ''less'' than the most complete armor available.
** Averted by Julian the Apostate. He thought he was a living god, attacked a Persian cataphract unit whilst wearing no armour, and ended up with predictable results.
** This was brought up on QI -- One of the best ways to improve road safety is to fix a large, sharp spike right in the middle of the car's steering wheel. Drivers are so used to a cocoon of airbags and crumple zones that they take more risks when driving, often to the detriment of those around them. This isn't so much the trope for the driver so much as the driver's armour for any unfortunate sod in the way.
** Though not technically for "combat" but still a form of battle, protective gear in full-contact sports has spurred similar discussions. In games like American Football or Hockey, the response to improvements in padding and helmets was to simply ''hit harder.'' Concussions and neurospinal injuries now plague both sports to a startling degree in comparison to their early years.
* Protective gear also introduces additional risks in martial arts.
** In the days of bare-knuckle boxing, striking a blow to your opponent's head could potentially damage your fists. Therefore, bare-knuckle boxers used head punches less frequently than body blows and were generally more cautious about where they punched. Now that boxing gloves protect the hands from the hardness of the opponent's skull, a boxer can basically punch his opponent in the head with impunity. The gloves do reduce the frequency of cuts and eye injuries: they use padding to soften the sharp protrusion of the knuckles and spread that force over a wider surface area; enlarge the fist so it can’t enter the eye socket as easily; and immobilize the thumb so that it can’t gouge the eye. Yet they do not reduce the kind of damage that’s most serious in the long term, which is the brain trauma caused by the brain getting slammed against the inside of the skull by the force of the punch. Gloves actually aggravate the TBI problem by increasing the frequency of head punches. It’s also a problem in other combat sports such as MMA and Muay Thai in which gloves are used. The fact that boxing fatalities have fallen since the use of gloves became mandatory is actually just a coincidence: the real reason is that back in the bad old days fights could last for hours and continue past the point where one guy was clearly no longer able to intelligently defend himself. The most important safety measure today is a good referee who will call an end to a fight when he sees that someone is in danger of taking permanent or life-threatening damage.
** Similarly, as explained in [[https://youtu.be/os5zJYeIINc this video]] by Shanghai-based MMA instructor Ramsay Dewey, boxing-style headgear such as people wear in training or amateur matches can only prevent superficial damage and does nothing to protect against brain damage. In fact, by nearly doubling the target size of the head when worn, headgear causes the practitioner to catch more punches which they might otherwise have narrowly dodged. He thinks it is actually worse if two fighters at the gym gear up in order to go at each other full force with a false sense of security, compared to if they practiced light, controlled sparring without gloves or headgear. He really only recommends headgear if you’re incorporating elbow strikes into a practice session, since the elbow is hard and pointy enough to inflict damage even if you’re going light.
* The ISU-152 assault gun of World War II, nicknamed ''Zveroboy'' ("Beast killer"), was able to invoke this when used in the anti-tank role. Its very large 152mm high-explosive shells did not usually perforate German heavy tanks' armour, but would nonetheless usually put them out of action. The crew inside could be harmed by concussive force and spalling; the tracks and running gear could be wrecked, rendering the tank immobile (and soon to be abandoned by its crew, who would not want to wait around for the enemy to realize this and promptly shoot at one of its completely-still vulnerable points); or frequently the entire turret would be blown clean off by the force of the explosion.[[note]]Despite this, the "Beast Killer" nickname was mostly propaganda; the ISU-152 '''could''' kill any tank Germany fielded, but reliably scoring a hit with the low-velocity howitzer required getting dangerously close. This resulted in tests of very high-velocity guns that could hit a moving target from a mile away, but by the time they were ready there weren't many German tanks left to kill.[[/note]]
* High Explosive Squash Head (HESH) rounds, favored particularly by the British during the Cold War, would also kill tank crews without perforating the armor. The large plastic explosive charge of the warhead would flatten itself against the armor plate before being detonated by the fuze, transmitting a shockwave through the armor that caused fragments called spall to break off from the inner plating and fly around inside the crew compartment. This was later countered by spall liners made from materials such as kevlar, and modern composite armors don't let the shockwave from a HESH round travel properly because they're made from different materials sandwiched together instead of homogeneous steel plate.
* Tanks in general went through a period of this trope during the 1960s when advancements in shaped-charge warheads gave tank guns and Anti-Tank Guided Missiles the ability to pierce through any practical thickness of homogeneous steel armor. This led to a number of tank designs--most notably the German Leopard 1 and French AMX 30--to dispense with the heavy armor used by the contemporary American M60 and British Chieftain in favor of greater mobility and lower cost, while still retaining sufficient protection against anything short of dedicated antitank weapons. The development of composite and reactive armors in the 1970s restored the weapon-armor balance in tank warfare, a balance that still holds today. Though top-attack missiles in particular threaten to swing the balance back away from armor since it's virtually impossible to protect the turret roof enough to stop a modern ATGM warhead without making the tank dangerously top-heavy. The current trend is to augment the armor with active defense systems that decoy, jam or destroy incoming missiles before they can hit the armor itself.
* In the 1987 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War Toyota War]] between Libya and Chad, the Libyan tanks proved no match for the Chadean "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle) technicals]]: unarmoured Toyota pick-ups with anti-tank weapons mounted on the back. There are stories of how two technicals would approach a T-62 from opposite sides. The tank ''might'' get one of them if it was lucky, but by then the other would be close enough that it could stay behind the turret and shoot the tank up at leisure. The technicals were also too light to set off anti-tank mines.
* Bomb-disposal technicians have to weigh the odds that protective armor suits will actually shield them from injury against the degree to which it may impede their vision and movement. If an explosive device is deemed sufficiently powerful that armor can't possibly help, and robots aren't an option, a brave technician may forego armor to free up their hands to work (and allow them to run like hell if the attempt to deactivate it proves futile).
** A black joke among British ordnance disposal technicians is that the body armour serves ''one'' useful purpose: if it all goes pear-shaped, the armour keeps enough of the corpse together to justify a coffin at your funeral.
* An erstwhile inventor has-for the past several decades-been trying to build a bear-proof suit of armor. There are several problems with this, not the least of which is that fact that it simply may not be possible to build a suit of armor that is light enough to be worn but durable enough to withstand a bear attack. And even if it is possible, there's the issue of even if you're protected from the bear's claws and teeth it's still going to be able to knock you around and probably give you substantial blunt-force trauma. There's also no real practical application, as researchers have found the best way to study bear behavior is from a distance when the bear doesn't know it's being observed. Lastly, there's only one way to test such a suit of armor, and the best time to find out that your armor is not going to keep out a pissed-off 1500 pound Kodiak bear is not while you're wearing it.
* During the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar Arthur Haselrig outfitted a regiment of cuirassiers: fully plate-armoured horsemen. Cuirassiers were considered obsolete across Europe by the start of the war so the "Lobsters" were something of a joke to their Royalist opponents, and probably to some of the Parliamentarians too. However, they were actually very effective, being almost invulnerable to the weapons of the day. They were defeated once or twice by Royalist cavalry, not from any failure of protection but mostly due to poor tactical decisions failing to make good use of them - Haselrig himself was at one point cut off during the Battle of Roundway Down, shot at three times (including a pistol shot to the head at close range) which all bounced off his armor, and attacked by swords all to no real effect while his unarmored horse was shot out from under him, allowing him to last to be rescued just before he was trying to surrender. King Charles I was said to have joked that the man could have withstood a siege if he was as well supplied as he was fortified.
* During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, many of the tanks used by the UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRustingRockets came equipped with slat armor overhead which was advertised in the Russian PropagandaMachine as being able to block American Javelin anti-tank missiles, but they actually don't protect against anything. This has led to [[https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/russian-tanks-in-ukraine-are-sprouting-cages/21808191 western analysts]] nicknaming them [[SecurityBlanket "Cope Cages"]] and "Emotional Support Armor".
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* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Discussed. In Volume 4, Blake's father comments that Blake's combat attire doesn't "seem to cover very much"; he's talking about her complete lack of armour. She defensively points out that she doesn't need any armour in battle, which Ghira accepts. Huntsmen have trained [[{{Mana}} Auras]], which act as spiritual armour. While some Huntsmen do wear minimal or token armour, such as Ghira himself, who wears only an abdominal plate, a Huntsman's best protection will always be their Aura.

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Discussed. In Volume 4, Blake's father comments that Blake's combat attire doesn't "seem to cover very much"; he's talking about her complete lack of armour. She defensively points out that she doesn't need any armour in battle, which Ghira accepts. Huntsmen have trained [[{{Mana}} Auras]], which act as spiritual armour. While some Huntsmen do wear minimal or token armour, such as Ghira homself, who wears only an abdominal plate, a Huntsman's best protection will always be their Aura.