Why is there an eyeslit in shardplate when the faceplate can go transparent?

[Creml1ng]

Why does shardplate have an eyeslit when the faceplate can go fully transparent? To my knowledge it isn't possible for non Radiants to make as drastic an alteration to a dead shardplate. So that means the Shardplate must have been made that way by the Radiant that it belonged to right? Why would they intentionally add a useless weakpoint like that?

[Treamayne]

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6 hours ago, Creml1ng said:

Why does shardplate have an eyeslit when the faceplate can go fully transparent? To my knowledge it isn't possible for non Radiants to make as drastic an alteration to a dead shardplate. So that means the Shardplate must have been made that way by the Radiant that it belonged to right? Why would they intentionally add a useless weakpoint like that?

Keep in mind that the Spren are heavily influced by Human Perception. In the early days of Radiance - the Shardplate Spren would have been copying what humans already considered Armor. In live plate, the eye slit is not much of a weakness, so there would have been no impetus to change the design. So, while Deadeye plate can still offer some advantages of sealing the face covering and becoming translucent, without the eye slits it both would not match human perception of Armor and would be less effective due to the difficulty in dead plate achieving the same levels of transparancy that Live Plate can achieve.

WoK Ch 13:

Spoiler

Elhokar closed his helm, the sides misting.

“Hold back, Your Majesty,” Dalinar called, riding past. “Wait until Adolin and I weaken it.” Dalinar reached up, slamming down his own visor. The sides misted, locking it into place, and the sides of the helm became translucent to him. You still needed the eye slit—looking through the sides was like looking through dirty glass—but the translucence was one of the most wonderful parts of Shardplate.

Hope that helps

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

4 hours ago, Creml1ng said:

Why does shardplate have an eyeslit when the faceplate can go fully transparent? To my knowledge it isn't possible for non Radiants to make as drastic an alteration to a dead shardplate. So that means the Shardplate must have been made that way by the Radiant that it belonged to right? Why would they intentionally add a useless weakpoint like that?

Well, non radiants w/ shardplate can't change or see through the slits, (Prob bc the lack of connection) and so my best guess is the armor (the spren) unconsciously changed this while they died. Or smth.

[Duxredux he/him]

Doubles as an airhole for the helmet I would assume. I'm guessing fully sealing off the helmet wouldn't have enough airflow through the neck and shoulder joints for the heavy exercise of fighting. Presumably the Radiants wouldn't want to use Stormlight instead of oxygen every time they donned their armor or make it impossible for a non-Radiant to wear the Plate. I could also see it allowing Radiants to draw Stormlight from external sources when perhaps the Plate itself would interfere from their ability to breathe in Stormlight at a distance. We see with Kaladin jumping towards the Parshendi how useful that can be.

We also know that dead Shardblades, even if they had been generally been used in other forms in life, retain their archetypal shape of oversized Shardblade as they were patterned off of the Honorblades. As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a Honorblade equivalent to Shardplate, with the closest possible option the Plate found by Cord reserved for a long time for guardians of the Dawnshard protected by the Siah Aimians. Even so, there probably is still an archetypal armor that all Shardplate is derived from, perhaps in the same way that humanity is derived from the Yolish design. I would guess this Plate design had the eyeslit. In fact, Shardplate seem to only have the slot design, holes were nixed from the art side for a specific as yet unstated reason.

Quote

Ben McSweeney

The early designs of Shardplate helmets had some options with holes instead of slot visors. These were specifically rejected, and thus all helms (in canon art, so far) have some variation on a slot visor.

I tried getting 'em in there with Plate, but he's got reasons for the slot shape.

Miscellaneous 2023 (May 16, 2023)