You may choose to buy your armor or make it at your option. Costume armor that is not “real” is acceptable so long as it looks like what it is supposed to represent. For example many people who are handy have made suits or armor pieces out of rigid plastic and painted it silver to represent plate mail. If this looks good you will be awarded points. If however you make armor with tinfoil and duct tape, it is unlikely you will get any points at all. This type of armor looks terrible and detracts from the game. As we have said before, the word of the person evaluating your armor is final.

Armor does convey several other key benefits to the wearer. First, all armor will stop blade poison of the various types from affecting you as long as you still have at least 1 armor point remaining. If any WEAPON strikes you and the word “Poison” is used (i.e. “Poison!” or “Sleep Poison!”), you may avoid the effects of the poison (but will still take the damage from the weapon) by simply calling “Armor, Resist.” This lets your attacker know the poison is used up (it came off his blade and got on your armor), but did not affect you. This will not protect against magical poisoning (i.e. via packet), contact poison or oral poison.

Note that if your attacker causes “PIERCE” in conjunction with any kind of poison, your armor will NOT protect you from that poison, though you may still resist it through other means should you possess any. Remember that PIERCE causes damage directly to your character’s health (including arrows, which would cause 3 direct health damage), and will not cause your physical armor to take damage.

Some of the other key benefits of wearing armor are dependent upon the type you are wearing and the body area they cover.

    Note that all these benefits are independent of each other, since a wearer can technically wear just bracers, just a torso piece or even mix armor types (Ex – a plate helm, chain torso and hard leather bracers), so the benefit is assigned per area. For purposes of limbs, an “area” consists of both arms OR both legs. For this reason, a resistance that is listed in the column under “Both Arms” can only be used one time for the pair when one of your arms is struck. The same rule applies to the legs, whereby you may use the resistance once total for the pair. The benefits are passive and affect the first strike of a given type, but you may always choose to first use a parry or any other resist you may have in place of this benefit, preserving the effect on your armor. Once you use this resistance, the armor points on that body location are reduced by one and you lose the resistance. In this way only armor in full repair on a body area will provide you this benefit. Since armor points form the aforementioned “pool,” it is expected that using the honor system the armor wearer will keep track of the condition of his/her various armor pieces.

*Note—in cases where long sleeves are attached to a chain shirt, they WILL count as bracers for armor purposes but you must combine the materials and time for both bracers and chestguard in order to get full benefit of both.

There are a few exceptions to these rules. 1) If you resist a waylay with a Hard Leather, Studded Leather or Chain mail helm, your helmet will be considered destroyed and should be removed, resulting in the loss of any armor points it was worth. Plate mail helms provide immunity to waylay, and thus not only will the skill not work, no damage will be caused. Simply say “Immune, Armor.” A daze can only be resisted 1 time and will reduce the armor in that area by one as per the normal rules. While you cannot resist another daze in this fashion, you are still immune to waylay as long as the helmet has at least 1 armor point remaining. If the helmet is reduced to zero armor points, it should be removed to show that it is no longer offering protection. This can be done at a safe time after the combat has resolved. 2) In the case of plate mail, several body areas list something like “Resist 1 Pain Strike & 1 Pierce.” In these cases, you may resist the first of the two skills 1 time and it will reduce the armor in that area by one as per the normal rules. You may also resist the second of the two skills 1 time but it will not subtract armor points or reduce your effectiveness. You may only claim this benefit one time. This is representative of the resiliency of plate armor and prevents meta-gaming the mechanic to waste the resistance of that armor on a lesser skill.

Here are a few other notes regarding armor that you need to know. Armor cannot be stacked. If you wear a metal breastplate over a leather jerkin you do not get points for both. As a courtesy we will give you the higher of the two values. You may of course also use magical armor in addition to this normal armor. Each character is only permitted 1 suit of armor per event. Lastly, in order for the armor to be in effect it must be worn at all times. If the armor is removed, you will not get the benefit of the armor points.

Some combat scenario examples as to how this system works in practice follow. Note that “AP” will be used in place of “Armor Points” for simplicity:

1) John is wearing a short sleeved chain mail shirt, a pair of plate mail bracers and a pair of leather greaves. Looking at the chart for reference, staff awards him 4 AP for the torso, 4 AP for the arms and 2 AP for the legs for a grand total of 10 AP. Additionally he has the ability to resist a single pierce because of his chain mail torso, and may resist 1 Break Limb & 1 Disable Limb if directed to his arms on account of the plate mail bracers. His legs, being covered in only hard leather receive no addition benefit.

Feeling rather invincible John throws himself into combat with some orcs. The lead orc feeling threatened, tries to disable Johns left leg and the strike connects. Since John is wearing only hard leather greaves, the armor will not protect against that strike. John may still choose to use the skill “parry” (or another means if he has it)to negate the blow, but otherwise he must take the disabled left leg.

John calls “parry” and avoids the disabled left leg, vowing to be more careful with these orcs! He kills the lead orc without taking another hit of any kind, but just as he turns to face another foe he is struck on the right arm by another orc who calls “disable.” He made the mistake of only buying one parry so he can’t use that, but lucky for John his plate mail bracers can resist a single “disable.” John calls “resist” (but would be even better off saying “resist armor” so his foe knows exactly how the resist occurred) and the skill does not affect him and his armor remains undamaged. Seconds later another orc hits John’s left arm and calls “disable.” Now John is in trouble because he has no parries and has used up his one-time resist for disable for both of his arms. John is left with a dangling, disabled left arm.

The other orc, now moves in for the kill and swings “Break limb, pain 5 seconds” and connects with John’s right arm again. He calls “resist, armor” and negates the broken limb. His total armor pool is reduced to 9 points and the armor on his arms in particular is now 3 instead of 4, since he lost 1 point resisting the attack. He can no longer resist any broken or disabled limbs and is starting to enter into an area of serious trouble.

Note that in the scenario above, John could not use his limb resistances for his legs, since only his arms were covered in the appropriate armor type. Additionally, his resistances only counted once for the pair of arms, not once per arm.

2) Next event rolls around and upon Stephanie’s recommendation, John has her make him a chain mail shirt with long sleeves, he sells the plate mail bracers and buys plate mail greaves. His new armor total becomes the following calculation: Torso 4 AP, arms 3 AP, Legs 4 AP = 11 Total. While he can no longer resist a “break limb” effect on his arms he still can resist the first “disable” limb on that location. He also can resist either effect on his legs. Not that although they are technically attached, the chain mail sleeves and shirt count separately for terms of armor and resists. Full details on repairing it are provided in the armor smith recipes.

3)      Another event rolls around and John decides he does not trust some of the more unsavory types around town, so he buys a plate mail helmet. His new armor total goes up by 3, to a total of 13 AP. While walking in the woods at night, John is surprised as an amateur highwayman tries to waylay him. John calls “Immune, armor” turns around and dispatches the foe. His armor remains at full effect. He walks further down the road and through sheer obliviousness he is jumped 10 minutes apart by two more highwaymen, both of whom try to waylay him. He again calls his immunity and dispatches his foes, still at full armor. This same situation can go on indefinitely so long as John is wearing his helmet and it has armor points remaining.

In the event John is attacked by a foe in straight up combat, and that foe lands a “Daze” John can resist the daze by calling “resist, armor.” In the event he does this however, his helmet is reduced to only 2 points of armor and his total armor is reduced to 12. Note that his helmet can no longer resist daze, but it still offers immunity to waylay so long as even a single armor point remains. When the helmet loses its armor points, John should remove it.

Shields must be within the constraints of 30″ round. Tower shields must be no wider than your forearm (from your elbow to the end your knuckles with a closed fist) and no taller than the space between your ankle and your collar bone. All shields must be padded around the edges with pipe foam, and no screws, nails bolts or other potentially hazardous things should be protruding. Shields may be made of almost any sturdy material including plywood and plastic.