Here's an interesting one: Fungus.

Like these things http://www.blogilates.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/kombucha-tea.jpg.

You have to feed the fungus (eat extra food, certain amount of magic power drains over time, I dunno) and it will grow a thin layer of your body adding extra skin. This stuff in real life is thick and hard to tear and is sometimes tanned into leather.

Another one could be something similar to a ferrofluid today that's soft and stretchable and then on a major impact immediately hardens. It would be light and good for thieves, mages, and archers but obviously would penalize your speed randomly as you received hits (due to parts of the armor hardening and becoming immobile momentarily)

Good old fashion human flesh, skinned, sewn and worn. It fits like a second skin, because it is one.

Armor made out of severed human heads (just visit executions if you're a novice).

- to demoralize humans

Armor made out of severed heads that follow you with their eyes (visit a torture chamber in an abandoned madhouse to find some).

- to make humans go crazy

Magnetized armor

-to make your enemy lose its/his/her weapon, to pin him to your chest or to bear hug him.

Hide made out of dragon embryo's.

-the specific dragon you need is incredibly powerful and aggressive when pregnant, and rarely gives birth (never witnessed in recorded history).

-regenerative, brings luck and raises fertility

Cactus bark

-low intelligence desert creatures remember the needles and might leave you alone

Abberent Flesh - In the DnD Eberron setting, there are symbiots made by the Daelkyr that function as weapons or armor. So you can have evil fleshcrafting enemies who wear things like armor, robes, helmets and whatever, but they are actually creatures (or rather living constructs of chitin and bone). Said armor can have special abilities... like a fleshy robe covered in eyes that lets you see through illusion or detect life or gauntlets with spider legs who provide a poison attack in melee or prevent you from getting disarmed. Liquid Metal - Similar to silver armor, this armor is made of an extra shiny liquid metal supported by magic. Very resistant to magic (reflective?) and possibly werewolves (poisons any enemy that bites you). Depending on how 'skimpy' you want things, the metal could seem literally painted on. Bandages - For mummies or injured people. Bandages provide next to no physical protection but are soaked in medicines and magic. Bandages mostly carry healing bonuses or prevent disease or limbs from getting crippled. Expect enemies/characters like injured people wearing them. Or mummies who are actually zombies or undead people with bandage armor (destroying or looting their armor deprives the healing bonus and they die much faster).

Brigandine!

This was leather armour with sewn in metal plates (or some armour expert can correct me).

Obsidian?

Skeletal?

Demon? (Maybe you have an actual demon skinned into a sort of armour, with still gnashing snarling teeth and whatnot + snarky commentary if thats your cup of tea).

Obsidian?

As cool as it sounds, obsidian might turn out to be a really nasty backbiter (apart from being super expensive).

Obsidian is brittle and fractures with extremely sharp edges. Which means you're basically giving your enemy an "extra weapon" against you. You had better not trip and fall either, or your own armour will cut you to pieces.

I am still paying attention to this thread, and great to see it's going strong!

A lot of people have suggested some kind of armour that hardens at the point of impact - clay, sap, ferrofluid. I like this idea so I shall be incorporating it in some fashion for 1 style, and shall look at the various ideas before deciding which one

Also, more screenshots coming soon! I'm working on dragon and mithril armour at the moment, but haven't worked on the game much since the last one because I've been busy changing the scripting engine from GameMonkey to Angelscript

This is just weird to me. You can't just put tattoos on and off. At least, non-magical characters can't.

And here I thought you said:

>and feel free to suspend disbelief

What I really meant was in terms of what the armour is made out of. (Apart from anything else, tattoos will mess up how my engine handles armour)

See Aphotic armour - the word aphotic just means dark (a-photic: without photons?)

is it indestructible?

No, it's just really good at absorbing light/heat - the actual material makes for pretty good armour though. It's forged with magic rather than heat, so non-trivial to get hold of some as well!

Paper armor did exsist in Asia. However it was very very tightly compressed paper that was lacquered every layer, and depending on the culture with leather as well.

However often times it was used as a ceremonial armor, that was functional in the sense that it stopped arrows, was warm, and was really light.

I'm not sure "paper armour" would make sense to players either. "Oh cool, some paper to hold off the ARROWS and SWORDS and FIREBALLS" :)

Steel-weave armor - This armor is made of thousands of strands of steel that has been tightly woven to give some flexibility and air-flow to the wearer as opposed to traditional plate armors. The armor would look like the musculature of a human being with no skin, but with thin metallic strands in place of muscle fibers.... I just think it would look cool

Oh yeah that might make a good unique set - like the Nanosuit :D

Ghost armour - makes you incorporeal. Totally useless against anything that's already incorporeal or weapons designed to hit ghosts. Those tattoos might come in handy at that point.

Sun armour - Woven from light. Enemies attacking you are blinded, increasing their chance to miss. Could burn them on hits. Optional special ability to occasionally flare the armour and deal damage to everyone around you.

Natures Sacrifice Armour - The armour spawns (or summons) small creatures and birds that constantly circle you, sacrificing their lives to save you from attacks. Animals spawn over time, so enemies can wear away your defences if they can keep attacking. Optional special ability to spawn cute kittens for the kitten eye attack (will save negates).

I like the Ghost armour as another Unique set, which can only be retrieved from a haunted castle. Maybe it makes superstitious bandits run away in fear...

Armour made of light - This is my intention with Halcyon armour.

As I said earlier in the thread, I'm shying away from armour that attacks the enemy for various reasons - anyway, armour should protect you, you can use a spell or sword to attack enemies just fine.

Thanks for stopping by and posting some ideas!

Here's an interesting one: Fungus.

Like these things http://www.blogilates.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/kombucha-tea.jpg.

You have to feed the fungus (eat extra food, certain amount of magic power drains over time, I dunno) and it will grow a thin layer of your body adding extra skin. This stuff in real life is thick and hard to tear and is sometimes tanned into leather.

Another one could be something similar to a ferrofluid today that's soft and stretchable and then on a major impact immediately hardens. It would be light and good for thieves, mages, and archers but obviously would penalize your speed randomly as you received hits (due to parts of the armor hardening and becoming immobile momentarily)

Ilike this idea, I was trying to think of more "natural world" ideas like the Leaf armour, so I think this will work nicely :P

Good old fashion human flesh, skinned, sewn and worn. It fits like a second skin, because it is one.

You're not a true necromancer without a set :) Although why limit it to human flesh? I might just call it Flesh armour.

Armor made out of severed human heads (just visit executions if you're a novice).

- to demoralize humans

Armor made out of severed heads that follow you with their eyes (visit a torture chamber in an abandoned madhouse to find some).

- to make humans go crazy

Magnetized armor

-to make your enemy lose its/his/her weapon, to pin him to your chest or to bear hug him.

Hide made out of dragon embryo's.

-the specific dragon you need is incredibly powerful and aggressive when pregnant, and rarely gives birth (never witnessed in recorded history).

-regenerative, brings luck and raises fertility

Cactus bark

-low intelligence desert creatures remember the needles and might leave you alone

Dragons lay eggs...? And I already have a dragon-based armour

I like the cactus idea, it shall look pretty cool with spikes all over it :)

Abberent Flesh - In the DnD Eberron setting, there are symbiots made by the Daelkyr that function as weapons or armor. So you can have evil fleshcrafting enemies who wear things like armor, robes, helmets and whatever, but they are actually creatures (or rather living constructs of chitin and bone). Said armor can have special abilities... like a fleshy robe covered in eyes that lets you see through illusion or detect life or gauntlets with spider legs who provide a poison attack in melee or prevent you from getting disarmed.

Liquid Metal - Similar to silver armor, this armor is made of an extra shiny liquid metal supported by magic. Very resistant to magic (reflective?) and possibly werewolves (poisons any enemy that bites you). Depending on how 'skimpy' you want things, the metal could seem literally painted on.

Bandages - For mummies or injured people. Bandages provide next to no physical protection but are soaked in medicines and magic. Bandages mostly carry healing bonuses or prevent disease or limbs from getting crippled. Expect enemies/characters like injured people wearing them. Or mummies who are actually zombies or undead people with bandage armor (destroying or looting their armor deprives the healing bonus and they die much faster).

Flesh - good idea, will use :)

But just to 'flesh' out the idea some more, how does a liquid metal repel attacks?

I like the idea of mummy bandages, but as you said, they provide no physical protection, perhaps I could make them as a non armour item :)

Brigandine!

This was leather armour with sewn in metal plates (or some armour expert can correct me).

Obsidian?

Skeletal?

Demon? (Maybe you have an actual demon skinned into a sort of armour, with still gnashing snarling teeth and whatnot + snarky commentary if thats your cup of tea).

I did encounter the concept of brigandine in my googling. I might make it as a superior version of leather armour.

Ignoring the practical implications of obsidian, as pointed out below, it would look awesome, black and shiny, perhaps towards the lower level.

Skeletal - this is an awesome idea! Perhaps with a chainmail undershirt, it would make you look like a skeleton as well :)

I might also have some kind of demonic armour. I did originally have Demonic/Divine on the list. But as I said earlier, I'm looking for inanimate materials

Glass armor!

The paper and pencil RPG system Rolemaster called it Laen (pronounced 'line' I believe). It provided protection/ability slightly higher than mithril and slightly less than eog/meteoric steel (mithril<-laen<-eog). It was peculiar in that to forge/shape it you needed COLD instead of heat. The colder you got it the more malleable it became necessitating the use of "cold forges".

Pretty cool idea I think.

Awesome thread! Take care.

Thanks, I'm having fun with this thread as well :) I liked the glass armour in Elder scrolls, and love the original spin you put on it.

Cloth soaked in resin (or some other stiffener aztecs di d cotton cloth hardened with salt ??)

Or the pillowing effect cloth in puffy layers (conquistadors adopted indian cotton cloth armor when their metal stuff was to hot/heavy and the indians didnt have the metal weapons the steel plate was designed for and it worked well on the low penetration of most indian arrows)

Armor of illusions (so awesome your enemy wont even try to hit you ??)

I recall mongols wore shirts of raw silk so tough an arrow wouldnt pierce it but still could force it into your flesh, but by tugging on the silk it would pop right out instead of getting wedged into you.(sooner foreign matter is out of you, faster you can avoid infection)