Quote Originally Posted by Mr Beer View Post
I would not have anyone wearing 4" inch thick leather armour unless significant magics are involved; even then I don't see why they wouldn't wear something of normal thickness and magic that instead. It's something you might see on seige weapons or war elephants or something.

Now if I had to run something with 4" thick walrus leather armour, I would make it all enclosing and magically bio-mechanically enhanced. Yes, it would be a gruesomely fleshy sort of power armour. The elite native troops don it and acquire Walrus Power and run around knocking over lesser warriors like ninepins.
This is almost exactly what I thought as soon as he mentioned magic. This would be preeminently awesome, especially of different tribes had different suits. The northern natives could have the walrus super-thick armor that lets you shrug off blows, while others might have Buffalo armor that gives strength and endurance, or Jaguar armor that enhances your speed and agility, etc, etc.

Other than that, though, leather ends up just being a sort of "if you have to" armor that's out-classed in one way or another by everything else other than being really easy to figure out how to make.