Voronwer

Boobplates can break a woman's sternum. Again if you want to go with realism. A male knight in plate armor will destroy the female one because the plate mail is damn heavy and for a woman a huge disadvantage. If I wanted to go with realism, I'd deny the concept of plate armor itself. Armor was already being downsized for mobility due to the invention of the crossbow. I do think that the boobplate is retarded and awkward, but its still better than the chainmail bikini. http://madartlab.com...-and-lady-bits/ This entry has a few good examples of female armor, the best not requiring boobplates or chainmail bikinis. It also has a terrific suggestion to shift the focus from the torso to the face, which is what happened in IE games. Yes, that's pretty much it. We don't need to go Taliban on this, just avoid the silly metal-underwear-for-armor or weird "sexy" things similar to that. I have nothing against armour being "womanly" (though I find boobplates to be silly half of the time) and distinctive from male armour. I'm pretty sure there's a way to make it distinctly more female without going for boobplates. As long as it isn't painting them pink.

I think you're mixing up two different types of fantasy there. I'm not even going to touch the rest of that sentence.

If her goal is to distract men while she robs them blind, she wouldn't be wearing armour at all. Well, that isn't the most stealthy way to pickpocket guys in the streets... What I mean is that there would be a balance there, something "hiding" enough that one could easily walk unnoticed in the street, but all the while revealing enough to draw attention away from the thieving hands. It seems like a weird strategy to me, but then I'm not a thief and couldn't tell you what a good thieving strategy is so... *shrugs* But now you've reminded me of Isabela in Dragon Age 2. Which is kind of my one exception to the no-skimpy-armour rule, because damn. For all the game's flaws, the characters were wonderful, including Isabela. So really, I do understand that there can be exceptions to the rule, but you need to make me love the character for it before I'll accept it. But then, regardless of eye candy, Bioware knows how to write good female characters imho.

If her goal is to distract men while she robs them blind, she wouldn't be wearing armour at all.

An interesting link about female armour: http://madartlab.com/2011/12/14/fantasy-armor-and-lady-bits/ But yes, word. And even more importantly: female characters who go outside the role of healer, mage and ranged attack are lovely too.