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Mass_Driver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong Discussion
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In canon, the hardness and thickness of materials are described as stopping spells, especially stunning spells. Hagrid, e.g., is able to resist several Aurors' stunning spells for a few minutes because of his thick, hard, half-giant hide. No form of cloth or wool clothing is ever described as stopping a magical attack, but Harry can hide behind (presumably granite) gravestones for some time while Death Eaters blast away at them. Toilets, which presumably are not quite as thick or hard as gravestones, are shown as stopping one offensive spell but then exploding.
IMHO wearing metal armor is a brilliantly canonic tactic. The least plausible facet of it is that first years in January, average age 11.5, probably cannot build enough muscle mass to wear a full suit of medieval armor at all, let alone in two weeks. I do not think we have seen evidence that wizards are stronger than ordinary folk, as opposed to more resilient. The captains are described as wearing only metal shirts, but they practice by swinging metal objects on their hands and feet -- this is odd.
Actual medieval plate mail, of the kind intended to be worn in battle, weighed about as much as the safety equipment that hockey goalies wear today. There was a guy in a History Channel show that did cartwheels while wearing it. So Harry wearing plate mail probably would work, assuming he could get it to fit properly.
Chain mail, however, was indeed heavy and cumbersome, and "armor" designed for merely decorative or ceremonial purposes could indeed have been heavy enough to compromise the wearer's mobility, but Harry wouldn't have been wearing something like that.
Then how come plate mail is listed with a higher encumbrance than chain mail in my D&D manual?
ETA: :-)
Perhaps the same reason that the D&D spells Melf's Minute Meteors and Meteor Swarm have much of their effect in the form of fire damage.
1) Because the D&D designers either didn't know the truth or didn't care and 2) because it works better for game balance.
If you care about this kind of thing I recommend Riddle of Steel.
D&D arms and armor has very little connection to history. Indeed, many historical fighting styles are either impossible or very difficult under the standard rules. (This is true in both 3/3.5 and 4th. I don't know how true it is in earlier editions.) Similarly, arrows are aren't nearly as deadly as they were historically. And then you have ridiculous things like the "dire flail" which seems to be a recipe for getting yourself hurt real fast.
@ arrows: "I have seen soldiers with up to 21 arrows stuck in their bodies marching no less easily for that." ~Beha ed-Din Ibn Shedad (an advisor to Saladin)
To be fair, the source I read the quote in ("50 Battles that Changed the World," page 34) implied that Beha meant that the arrows were mostly absorbed by their cheap quilted armor, not their actual bodies.
I've worn full-weight chain and plate reconstruction items while running around for a full day, and I'm not physically fit at all - I'd say that a random geeky 12 year old boy would be easily able to wear an armor suit, the main wizard-combat problems being getting winded very, very quickly if running (so they couldn't rush in the same way as Draco's troops did), and slightly slowed down arm movement, which might hinder combat spellcasting. It is not said how long the battles are - if they are less than an hour, then there shouldn't be any serious hindrances; if longer then the boys would probably want to sit down and rest occasionally or use some magic to lighten the load.
This. I've also worn multiple layers of armor, and something that's heavy to lift with your hands becomes much easier to handle when you're supporting it with your shoulders/body. If we extrapolate from harry, they transfigured the armor into existence, so it could be even lighter than average armor in any case.
They wouldn't have had to get the heaviest stuff either, they were trying to stop first year sleep spells, not Auror stupify's. Chain mail was probably more than enough, and heavy wool might have had good effect if it were thick enough.
Edit: I should have read down further, apparently chain mail is much heavier than plate. Who knew?
My first thought when I finally figured out that the metal was about mundane armor and not something crazy like transfiguring muscles was 'why don't Aurors wear impressive clanking armor, then?'
It says early in the chapter, when Harry and Neville are alone, that this didn't count as giving Voldemort a good idea b/c the armor would only stop minor jinxes.
But this is for the crappy armor that first years can both build in a short period and also wear. A full grown adult with governmental resources ought to be able to obtain and wear much better armor.
Given the problem Aurors seem to have with surprise attacks, that alone might make them worthwhile!
(In the real world, no one says bulletproof vests can stop only weaker bullets and don't do anything about explosions or knives, so there's no point in equipping soldiers or cops with such vests...)
On the other hand, its not a new idea. Harry mentions that some wizards used to wear armour in the dark ages, and they probably wouldn't have stopped using it if it was useful.
In Eliezer's HPverse, that may be a sensible argument. (Given the general irrationality of wizard-dom, not a very strong one, though.) I'm criticizing Eliezer for diverging from canon, which IIRC has no suggestion that armor would be useful or had been tried but abandoned in the past. (The only example I can think of is maybe canon had goblin armor, and I'm not sure how that would apply.)
Canon already suggests spells can be stopped by solid objects, but only if they're sufficiently solid. And powerful spells have been shown to blast objects, while weak spells haven't. It's not much of a leap. In HP canon, historical wizards may or may not have worn armor of some sort, but for an adult wizard, armor is probably more trouble than it's worth. Considering how versatile a properly trained wizard can be in combat, it shouldn't be able to do more than force the opponents to slightly revise their tactics, while increasing the wearer's fatigue.
Remember that these are first years. The difference between the quality of armor they and the government can procure is much smaller than the difference between their combat ability and those of aurors or Death Eaters. If they didn't have such a demanding teacher, they would probably be incapable of anything resembling proper dueling at this point.
It could be that in order to get it to the strength that it will stand up to adult hexes, the armor becomes too cumbersome to actually use.
This is true, but in the real world, cops face bullets somewhere around as often as knives (I believe; does anyone know differently?) and far more often than explosions--Dark Wizards, on the other hand, don't go around offensively using first-year spells...basically ever.
Isn't that a rather convenient outcome, though? Why should we think that?
Hence the point that we would expect adults with government resources to be able to wear both heavier armor and much better armor for a net protective effect far beyond what Harry et al managed.
Because if that weren't the case, we might expect aurors to wear armor, and they don't. A hypothesis that suggests that armor isn't useful for adult wizards predicts our observations better than one that suggests that it is.
One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens; we can use the observed lack in canon to argue for Eliezer conflicting with canon or we can use it to argue canon invisibly agrees with Eliezer.
General rule of fiction. If there are two possibilities, neither of which is confirmed or denied in text, assume the one that makes sense.
OK. So to use an earlier Yudkowsky example, what possibility about arbitrage should we assume holds true in canon? That there's some clever witchery which makes it impossible or that Rowling simply made a mistake and didn't think about the economics?
If we assume perfection on the part of the author, doesn't that lead to an odd and desperate kind of rabbinical midrash?
As Harry said, this was a tactic that would only work against weak first-year spells; he did have to dodge Hermione's Stupefy.
My thought is that wizards are not confined to projectile weapons. Armor would be next to useless if the offensive magic, for example, is fire based or involves water or gravity manipulation. Moreover, an armored helmet significantly constrains both visibility and mobility, which may make the wearer more vulnerable.
It probably wouldn't be too hard to create a magical patch for the problem of not being able to carry armor. Wingardium Leviosa is a simple patch to lighten the load, and even if it has limited duration it would be an excellent spell to cast immediately before going into combat.
Doesn't Wingardium Leviosa have to be maintained? I don't think it's a fire-and-forget spell.
Even if the armor isn't weighing down on you though, it still has inertia, so you have to exert yourself to move the extra mass. Maintaining a wingardium leviosa on it might be more trouble than it's worth.
Magic'ed stuff may not have inertia. Remember the description of broomstick flight during the escape from Azkaban? Harry was surprised to have to deal with concepts like "inertia" again when using a rocket, as the broomsticks do away with such inconveniences.