[quote=@ActRaiserTheReturned]
<Snipped quote by Kho>

Ah. . .um, I'm changing the name of this steel then. But, to be fair, for 1500's and 1800's fire arms, I don't know if Kevlar is needed? 
[/quote]

Those old-fashioned muskets were [i]really[/i] powerful. Musket bullets would crush through your bones as opposed to just clip off them like modern bullets do. Not to mention that the old rifle rounds were also something like 0.70 caliber.

As in for Damascus steel, pretty sure that to our knowledge it was just steel with a slight vanadium impurity and a special forging process. Even today that alloy is used, and while it might be slightly superior it's really not that huge of an advantage.

So I think you're underestimating guns and overestimated metal armor. I mean no matter how hard metal armor is, its weight is prohibitive and blunt trauma will still kill you. Hell, slings were extremely effective against armored enemies and Ialu has Wi slingers than are probably more deadly than historical slingers.