LARP Armor

Where to buy lightweight, cool-looking, affordable armor for live action roleplaying costumes

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Helmets LARP armor

Most LARPers skip the helmet because they are not usually comfortable and they limit visibility which can hurt you in combat a lot more than those few armor points help. But how many armor points are we talking about? In NERO the head and the face both count as locations so we can get up to 6 points for wearing a helmet. It has to be 18 gauge steel or thicker though.

I wanted the polyurethane "Combined Bascinet & Kettle Hat" (Nortonarmouries.com has the cheapest price I could find even after factoring in shipping to America - they use frames so I can't link directly to the helmet), but it was only 4 points. It looks awesome, but it is quite pricey. I decided to look on Ebay. I needed one that protected the head and face without obscuring visibility too much.

There are lots of 18 gauge steel helmets on Ebay and most descriptions don't tell you how heavy each one is. You have to ask. I found one that was 3.5 pounds, one that was 7.5 pounds, and many in between. I bought the 3.5 pounder. It was open face, which means there's a mask type thing covering the face (not unlike my kendo armor). I figured that would be OK in terms of vision. Plus I spent $60 instead of $320. It might not look as cool but it gets me more armor points and I was still married.

However, when I got the 3.5 pound helmet I was surprised by two things. First, it was heavier than I expected. I weighed it, and the scale said 3.5 pouns but my neck didn't believe it. I also spent $25 on padding from Kingslance.com (I used their ebay store) but that was a big ripoff. Avoid Kingslance.com. The second surprise is that it was built crooked. It wasn't a huge surprise because it looked crooked in the picture too, but I could see fine out of one eye while my other was partially blocked by the helmet. I figured that's what I get for buying the cheapest 18 guage steel helmet made in India I could find. Anyway, I LARPed in that metal thing for one weekend and then bought a polyurethane helmet because I was lucky enough to find this Norton Armouries Celtic style helmet on Ebay (they don't show up on Ebay often - spent about $100, which is only slightly more than the metal helmet plus padding) that you see on the side of this page.