Indigenous African tribes have been successfully defending themselves from lions for many thousands of years with much less than that.
It depends on the skill of both the knight and the lion.
I like the cut of your jib
Knight is King Arthur, lion trained with Jackie Chan.
So a meaner Tai Lung?
Lions are pretty strong, right? While the armor could protect from being mauled or clawed, the impact of those hits would add up. That’s why things like the mace and other blunt instruments came to be.
And given the title and lack of comma, the lion in full armor is a given, easily.
By necessity the hands and feet of plate armor are thinner and more flexible. If a lion was able to get a hand or a foot in its mouth, it’s game over for the knight. They have more than enough bite force to crush the armor and the body part inside.
One big benefit of the plate armor when facing a lion is that the armor was usually shaped to deflect and defend against strikes to the head and neck. Lions usually dispatch their prey by crushing the throat and asphyxiating them. The armor should be a good defense against such attacks.
What I think it comes down to is terrain. If the lion can ambush the knight, the knight will be knocked down before they can bring any weapons to bear effectively. From there, their armor will only make their demise slower and more agonizing. If there is no cover and the knight sees the lion coming, they may be able to keep the lion at bay with weapon swipes. This gives the knight the opportunity for a killing blow or for multiple strikes to make the lion retreat. The knight just has to hope the lion doesn’t charge regardless of potential harm because then it’s just the first scenario again.
If, however you shove your arm down it’s throat to the shoulder, your pauldrons might give you some protection, and the arm and hand can now choke the lion from the inside. It’s gonna try to claw you back out, but hopefully it doesn’t gain a purchase, and then the fight is over in less than 5 minutes.
This is actually what I’ve heard suggested, without the armor, to survive a Jaguar attack in South America
Your arm would be destroyed from the bites, armored or not.
You might survive, but your arm wouldn’t and you’d need medical attention to prevent death from blood loss or crush syndrome.
Yeah, I assume the arm is sacrificial. Hopefully the knight has tourniquets
A lion is 2-3 times as large as a Jaguar though. There is a good chance they just tear your arm off at the shoulder and run off with it.
Trivial with the weapon the knight should be using: a spear or polearm.
I choose to believe the lion wins. Fuck knights and people. I won’t read anything to the contrary.
Knight stomps the lion.
And you read this against your will.
And you did it again.
Nope. You can’t prove it.
“Your honor, this man’s defense is impregnable”.
For one, you weren’t allowed to make me read it twice. That’s Double Jeopardy and is against federal law, per Ashley Judd.
If the knight was equipped with a shield and sword - Knight.
If the knight had neither - Knight.
Even if the knight had no shield or weapons, it would fare better because his limbs become the next weapon being covered in armor a lion cannot penetrate. At least immediately. The only chance a lion remotely has is if it manages to knock the knight’s helmet off and go for the face and head following a takedown.
But I also wouldn’t say it’d be easy for the knight either because, all of that weight will just fall onto him should he be tackled. A full suit of armor typically weighs 50 pounds all over combined. So if a lion tackles the knight and manages to have enough intelligence to try and use suffocation as a means, that’s 50 pounds + the weight of the lion of 420, that knight is not getting up anytime soon.
100% the knight.
Steel armor is quite resistant, and the lion doesn’t have anything that could realistically penetrate it or blunt it.
Even without weapon once they are entangled into a fight there’s two outcomes, the lion runs away once it notices it’s fighting a moving rock. Or the lion gets tired, once tired the human can beat it to death even without a weapon. Humans are famous for their resistance, we have more stamina for long fights and the presence of an armor will make the fight long.
If the human have a weapon there isn’t even a contest.
The lion lacks a can opener.
But the setting was a fight to death, therefore we have to assume that the lion actually wants to kill, not just eat.
So the lion strikes once, and the knight goes down immediately from the blow. Then it’s over because of the immobility caused by the full armor.
Contrary to popular belief, a set of full plate does not slow you down or limit your mobility at all. If it did it would not have been so widely adopted.
I don’t know your physical shape.
It would slow me down terribly.Well the post says “knight in full armor,” implying a person in good shape.
It’s a reasonable assumption but there was a… French? king who survived a battlefield gut wound because the knife stuck in his stomach to the hilt didn’t make it through the fat.
Knights were nobility by definition, and it was precisely as plate became a reality that conditioning standards were dropping.
Of course they also brings up that what a “knights full armor” is varies widely by time and place
You can absolutely get back up while wearing a suit of armour.
Yes, but only like an old man. Not like fighter who survives.
Not sure you know what you’re talking about.
It’s worth mentioning there’s different kinds of full plate armour, too. It’s going to be harder to move around in something designed for mounted jousting, with hard impacts and strict rules, than something made for actual infantry use. That being said, you can obviously jump up on a horse even in jousting armour, and this is an actual knight who we can assume is in excellent physical condition and has a lifetime of practice.
Winner: Lion (in round 1)
I think you gotta consider that a knight has likely never seen a lion or a beast of such proportions before. If you put the knight into a moderate-sized arena with a large cat, I’m willing to bet the bravery of the knight fails him and he is mauled to death by the lion.
It all comes down to the mental game.
Wait, there will be rounds in a fight to the death? Does this imply the use of some cleric or shaman?
I hadn’t considered the dark arts… lions can’t do magic, so that’s obviously an advantage for the knight.
IDK man. Knights know what a bear is, lions aren’t that much scarier than bears and bears are larger. And AFAIK, knights should be trained to stand their ground if fleeing is not an option, which it clearly isn’t, because large animals are always faster than humans on foot and anyone who ever hunted from horseback (which was very common for knights) would know that.
In contrast, has the lion ever had experience with being hit by a sword, spear etc.? I know boars will often just keep attacking, but is that true for big cats, too, or will they decide that the fight isn’t worth it and try to fuck off?
If the arena is a forest, I think you’re right that there’s a chance the knight plucks up the courage to fight and the lion runs away. In that case, the knight would be called the victor.
But if it’s a smaller arena… and the lion can’t flee… well then you’ve got a big cat cornered with a decision to fight for its life. I’ve seen an 8lb house cat cornered in real life by a human before and it was terrifying.
I think you gotta consider that a knight has likely never seen a lion or a beast of such proportions before.
You do realize that like 90% of knights had a lion on their crests and coat of arms?
Yeah, but like, seeing a 2-inch by 2-inch medieval depiction of what a lion is and actually seeing a 420lb roaring beast are two different things. They didn’t have TV or Internet, so like, most people on the planet would never be within 100 miles of a lion in their whole lives.
Nam sayin’?
But they know they exist and they are probably familiar with wolfs and bears, so it’s not like they would be totally awestruck and not know what to do or expect.
Kinda hard to see how a lion would win this. Lion probably dies immediately to a sword stroke. If it gets past the sword and tries to bite or swipe at the knight, it might have a chance, but even then the knight still has a chance to draw their dagger. If the dagger doesn’t work (bit hard to stab a lion with a dagger), I can’t imagine that the lion would actually stick around to gnaw the tin can to death.
Doesn’t say “armed knight”. 😉
So assuming a lion vs. a knight who can just turtle and hope for the best? I give the edge to the lion.
If the knight isn’t armed, I’ll assume the lion is declawed and too old to still have teeth.
Armed or unarmed? Armor might help you not die for a while…but without weapons, there isn’t much a person could do to kill a lion.
Shove an armored arm down it’s throat to the shoulder. It will possibly suffocate and die. This is the advice I have emheard for unarmed and unarmored humans to survive a Jaguar attack in South America. I would wager that chain and plate mail would level the playing field against a lion.
That sounds like someone was pulling your leg. How do you get an arm down a moving animal’s throat, and past it’s limb-severing jaws?
Punches with steel globes do hit hard. Lions can get concussions as well. Specially if they are not wearing helmets.
Depends on the “full armor”. Full plate? The knight can probably win even without a weapon, as the gauntlets will make his punches more dangerous. Chainmail + gambeson would probably protect the knight enough, but any exposed parts, especially the neck, would make the fight super dangerous for the human.
Keep in mind that certain blunt strikes, or even the strength of the lion’s bite, can hurt or even disable a limb, even if it’s protected with armor, be it plate or chainmail (the gambeson helps protect against these strikes). Ever seen how dogs can grab a person’s arm and twist it hard? Now imagine that dog weighs 150kg and it should be pretty clear how you can still get fucked. Also, the lion will likely run and pounce, taking down the knight who will be at a disadvantage. Humans are strong, but lions are waaaaaay stronger.
Who would win in a battle to death, a lion or a pilot in a B-29 including it‘s load?
Can the lion start in the plane?
Yes, but to make it fair, neither the lion nor the pilot can take parachutes
