by Lord Bruherd
with excerpts from Fursbin's original armor help document.
One of the most difficult to understand and most talked about subjects
is the choosing, purchasing and wearing of the best type of armor. The
purpose of this document is to help give you a broad understanding of the
different types of armor, and it's advantages and disadvantages. Give
all the correct information and understanding should help you find the
most effective and least penalizing armor for your own particular class and
fighting style.
First, lets discuss some basics. Armor types will NOT add to your DS
unless they are made from other materials from the custom purchasing list
in the armory or enchanted (ET'd) by a wizard, however you will be happy
to know that wearing a sturdier type of armor(higher AG) will make a
raise in DS less neccesary during combat. A monster simply cannot do as
much damage to you if you are wearing full plate than if you are wearing
double leather. The critter will have a harder time penetrating the armor
with a physical attack in the first place (this is shown in the attack
formula as AvD).
I'd offer the AvD table for your examination, but I can assure you, it's
monstrous. Even if the additional AvD isn't enough to keep the monster
from hitting you, who cares if he can only do 3 points of damage even if
he strikes with over 150 in the final calculation (which would be the
case in full plate)?
There are five major armor groups. Clothing, Leather, Scale, Chain, and
Plate. It's important to keep these five groups in mind, because when a
monster hits you, the amount of damage that's done is affected by what
type of AG is covering that area of your body.
This is a table of armor groups and the sub groups (ASG's). This
information was originally posted by Fursbin, but I've modified the table
itself a little for easier reading. It shows the type of armor, it's ASG
rating, and it's body covereage.
AG class (AG type)
Armor name ASG Body coverage
AG 1 (clothing)
Robes, Leather Jerkin, whatever 1 Varies (pants cover legs, etc.)
AG 2 (Leather)
Light leather 5 Torso
Full leather 6 Torso, arms
Reinforced Leather 7 Torso, arms and legs
Double Leather 8 Torso, arms, legs, head and neck
AG3 (scale)
Leather Breastplate 9 Torso
Cuirbouilli Leather 10 Torso, arms
Studded Leather 11 Torso, arms and legs
Brigandine armor 12 Torso, arms, legs, head and neck
AG 4 (chain)
Chain Mail Armor 13 Torso
Double Chain Mail Armor 14 Torso and arms
Augmented Chain mail armor 15 Torso, arms and legs
A Chain Hauberk 16 Torso, arms, legs, head and neck
AG 5 (plate)
Metal Breastplate 17 Torso
Augmented Breastplate 18 Torso and arms
Half plate armor 19 Torso, arms and legs
Full plate armor 20 Torso, head, arms, legs
Example: If you want to wear Double Chain mail armor, you are providing chain mail type
protection (AG 3) to you torso and arms, but you are leaving your head, neck, and legs
with only natural protection, wich ain't much. Wearing leg greaves and a leather helm
will help some by adding AG 2 protection to those areas, but if you wanted AG 3 coverage
on your entire body, you could just use Chain Hauberk.
Always keep in mind the ASG rating of armor types. While armor can be altered to look
prettier, or even appear to totally change the armor type, the armor will always remain
the same ASG. If you hear of someone selling a 'beautifully crafted full body armor
with diamonds inlaid on the arms', that won't tell you what kind of armor it is. But
if they say it has an ASG rating of 12, you'll know that it's just an especially pretty
set of brigandine.
Ok, now that we all have an idea of exactly what kind of armor is out there and how
better armor will benefit you, let's talk about the penalty factors that go into
wearing heavier armor. This section is especially important to anyone who will be
doing a lot of casting in the field for combat. In general, heavier armor is A. a
greater hindrance in casting, B. harder to move and manuver in, and C. heavier (go
figure). Here's the table, and I'll go into greater depth as to what it all means
later. Again, this table is extracted from Fursbain's original armor text.
Elemental Spiritual Mental Action RT
ASG hindrance hinderance hinderance Penalty Adder
1 0% 0% 0% 0% 0
5 0% 0% 0% 0% 0
6 0% 0% 0% 0% 1
7 2% 0% 0% -5% 2
8 4% 0% 5% -8% 2
9 5% 4% 3% -5% 2
10 7% 5% 5% -7% 4
11 8% 6% 5% -10% 6
12 10% 8% 15% -13% 6
13 12% 8% 9% -10% 3
14 14% 10% 10% -12% 6
15 15% 11% 10% -15% 9
16 20% 15% 25% -18% 9
17 15% 15% 13% -20% 4
18 20% 20% 15% -25% 8
19 22% 22% 15% -30% 12
20 25% 25% 30% -35% 12
Armor hindrance rolls:
Every time you cast a spell, there's a roll generated in the system to determine
whether the spell is hindered by the armor you are wearing or not. You only see
this roll if the cast fails, so you understand why it failed.
Rest assured if you're a mage casting shock bolts or major fire as your livelyhood,
you'll not appreciate the 25% spell hindrance of full plate against elemental spells.
This doesn't mean a wizard woudn't be able to get through life wearing heavy armor,
but it does mean you'd have to learn to recover from spell failure, and have an
effective alternate means of attack.
There are 3 basic types of spells as the armor hindrance table is concerened. Elemental
(Major elemental, Minor elemental, and Wizard spheres), Spiritual (major/minor spiritual,
Sorcerer, Cleric, Empath, and Ranger spheres), and Mental or singing (Bard sphere).
Each type varies differently from spell hindrance. Mind you, armor training has no
bearing on spell hindrance at all, so don't think you can train up to 10,000 in armor
and never see an elemental spell fail in double leather.
Action penalty
This impedes you ability to perfom many actions, sometimes causing Round Time (RT) If
you try to stand up in full plate, it would of course take longer than trying to
standup in Robes. This is also attributed to spells wich require a hard manuver roll
to avoid (such as E-wave, spike thorn, natural webbing from spiders, or dodging your
buddy trying to pour a drink on you). This also affects climbing and swimming sucess.
If you've got a mountain to climb that's giving you a healthy amouunt of trouble, you
might wanna try removing your armor first. Like spell hindrance, armor training doesn't
affect this either.
RT Adder:
This is the amount of RT time added to combat when wearing this armor; it CAN be trained
away (thank goodness! Armor training does have a use!). Every +20 in armor, trains away
1 second of RT, not to go below 0. For example, if you swing a weapon that causes a 5
second RT, and are wearing full plate armor without any training in armor, you will have
a 17 second RT. If you train in armor enough enough to have a skill in armor of (12 x 20)
240, you will negate all RT effects from the plate armor, and will have a 5 second RT again.
If a Warrior triple trains in armor every year, it will take 50 levels to train away the
12 sec RT adder. On the other hand, they are a walking tank by that time.
Other related subjects:
Greaves and helms:
This is where the armor decision really gets complicated. It might seem logical to just
buy somethin' like leather breastplate, and add greaves and a helm, and you'll have
everything covered with AG 3. This is not as true as it is commonly beleived. Wearing
full leather (ASG6) with greaves and a leather helm is no different than wearing double
leather (ASG8). With ASG6, greaves, and a helm, you will have the same spell hindrance,
action penalty and RT as double leather, as well as the same AG protection all over. To
further complicate the issue, wearing a leather breastplate (ASG9) with greaves and a
leather helm will give you AG3 on your torso, but only AG2 on your arms, head and neck.
Furthermore, you'll be penalized by spell hindrance, movement, and RT adder just like you
were wearing brigandine armor (ASG12). That's right... all the penalties of ASG 12,
without all of the benifits. For fighter classes, you'd be well advised to choose only
full body protection armors if you can help it (i.e, double leather, brigandine, chain
hauberk, or full plate.
I would like to offer you the AG ratings of all the different types of greaves and helms
available, but I unfortunately am not privy to that information as of yet. I will try
to find this information and include it into an update of this file at a future date.
A word on wandering merchants:
You will hear from time to time folks speaking of armor that has been specially padded
by a wandering merchant. Armor with critical padding has become extremely rare since
altering merchants of this type have become even more scarce. But it exists, and we
hope there will be more of them in the future. What critical padding will do, is
increase the AG rating of the armor without changing it's RT modifier, spell hinderance,
or movement penalty. Crit padding would basically turn a normal set of full leather
(ASG6) into a set of protection just like studded leather (ASG10), but not change
anything else about it.
You'll have benefits like studded leather, but only the RT, spell hindrance, and action
penalties of full leather. What a help, eh?
ET'ing, enchanted metals, and being kind to the elder wizards:
All this additional help with armor types should give you a good idea of how much
protection each type or armor will offer over the others, but what if heavier armor
isn't suitable for you and you have no choice but to raise your DS high enough to keep
yourself from getting mangled by an iron golem? There are two ways to use armor to
actually increase your DS, and make you less likely to get hit.
One way is by buying the VERY expensive metal infused armors from the armory.
These armors, like anything else, have help and hampers associated with them.
Buying mithril light armor will add an additional +5 to your DS, but don't expect to
carry too much treasure. The stuff is HEAVY! Imflass armor, while not being as heavy
as mithril, and adding a higher bonus of +12, will really stick ya with that 800,000
silver price tag. Also I am told that these armors that are infused with rarer metals
can also add to your defense against certain spiritual spells (TD) as well. In keeping
with normal traditions, here are the ASG ratings of each of the different armors that
are available to be customized in the armory.
Light armor ASG10
Partial armor ASG14
Full armor ASG20
The other way of gaining additional DS is by having standard armor enchanted (ET'ed) by
a high level wizard. This is generally far less costly than having armor made at the
shop with rare metals, and doesn't add any weight. Each time a wizard sucessfully
casts the ET spell at an item, it adds +5 to it's defense bonus. If you hear of armor
being enchanted 4 times, it would have a DS bonus of +20 (4x5) associated with it.
The maximum bonus that can possibly be applied to any item enchanted with this spell
is +50.
Here is an VERY important note: We're all now hanging in a very difficult time in
relation to attaining enchanted armor. The system for enchanting items has become
much more difficult than it was in the past, and the higher the total enchantment
being applied to an item gets geometrically more difficult as it's brought to each
ET level.
What this means in effect, is that it's so incredibly difficult to enchant an item 8
times, that only a very high level wizard with a special shop dedicated to him/her can
possibly create it, and even then, the process of taking just one item that high would
have to be that wizards sole concentration for weeks. We all know there are only a
few legendary wizards roaming Elanthia, and we all know their names. They are under
constant harassment by hundreds of people asking all kinds of questions about enchantment.
I've heard one very high level wizard say that it's so difficult for him to get through
a day without being horribly badgered about item enchantment, that he's considering
giving up the occupation entirely. Who could blame him? He's not playing the game to
work... he's playing to have fun like everyone else. Think what would happen if all
high-level wizards get equally as frustrated. Please, folks... leave the legends alone.
As time progresses, we'll have more legendary wizards with personal workshops, and more
enchanted items available. Try to remember that these older wizards are our key to
surviving at later ages... and offer us great expanses of knowledge about Elanthia.
Let's not badger the elders any longer about enchanting our items. If they have ample
opportunity to make that perfect armor for me personally, I'm sure they'll let me know
personally.
By the time I reach legend, the wizards that are my age now will be capeble of enchanting
what I need. Look at the wizards that you see on your regular hunts today, some of them
will be around that long too. In time, when you really need enchanting, you'll have it.
It's just going to take time to get the market stable.... lots of time.
Already, 2x ET'ed armor is becoming commonplace, and it's cost has been driven down to
what most of the legends say is more suitable. The elder wizards from the new plane are,
as a group, just getting and learning to use the ET spell. Keep an eye out for the wizards
putting new enchanted armor on the net for open bidding. Enchantments that are any higher
than that will continue to be difficult to get your hands on until the wizards get older.
Have patience, and let them have fun playing the game, too.
I hope this answers most of the common questions pertaining to the armor available and
it's use. I realize it's all very complicated, but it's very detailed in it's method,
and I think it's brilliant system. I beleive everything in this document to be true
and accurate, but I did not design the armor system for the game, and do not work for
Simutronics. This means that it's very possible that some parts of this document
could be entirely wrong. Anyone who has more information or is able to correct me in
any part of this document is cordially invited to write me at j.begley@genie.com and
further enlighten me so I can make updates. Otherwise, I hope you're now able to make
a more informed buying decision on they type of armor your character needs.
Cheers! Happy Hunting!
Lord Bruherd (John)
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