Leafiara (prime)/Fun Facts Friday/Door K

As a general rule, the more rigid the armor, the better it protects. Plate armor protects better than chain armor, which protects better than hard leather, which protects better than soft leather, which protects better than robes.

And that's about the end of what you can figure out intuitively about how armor works in Gemstone.

I commonly hear people saying that if you wear armor with less than full body coverage, it grants you the protection of one armor group below it for exposed parts. That's kind of true, but also underselling it.

For example, if you wear a metal breastplate and your torso is struck, you have the crit divisor and damage factor of plate armor. If your arm is struck, you have the crit divisor of chain armor--which is what people mean--but you still have the damage factor of plate armor.

What are crit divisors and damage factors? That... is way beyond the scope of this Fun Facts Friday door, but in short, the higher the crit divisor and the lower the damage factor, the less you get hurt.

This all translates to: your arm--or leg, or head, etc.--is still better protected when wearing a metal breastplate than when wearing chain hauberk, despite the fact that from an in-universe perspective the character in metal breastplate has a bare arm.

The same general principles would also apply in the choice between chain mail and brigandine armor.

All of the above does come with a qualifier that nearly every weapon has a slightly higher AvD against metal breastplate than against chain hauberk. (And likewise for chain mail vs. brigandine armor.) It's not much, however--generally around 2-12.

Another counterintuitive thing about armor is the way it affects encumbrance. Armor with a standard weight actually has no effect on encumbrance, but the lighter the armor gets relative to the standard weight, it has a positive effect on encumbrance.

Illustrating that, let's take a human with a set of full plate armor and a human with a set of robes, each lightened to half their normal weight. The human in robes started at 8 pounds and lightened the to 4--and when they wear the robes, their encumbrance decreases by 4 pounds. The human with full plate started at 75 pounds and lightened to 38--and when they wear the full plate, their encumbrance decreases by 37 pounds.

So, yes, assuming we're strictly comparing max lightened armor, you're more able to deal with encumbrance the heavier the armor is.

These effects would be more or less pronounced depending on race, as a halfling with these same sets of armor would only see their encumbrance reduced by 2 and 18.5 pounds of capacity, respectively. I could probably go on for much longer, but I'll spare you and end with some other rapid fire quirks of armor:

-CvA improves in a linear way with armor subgroup, unlike AvD which typically improves within armor subgroup but then jumps back up at the start of the next armor group.

-Spell hindrance and action penalty increase in a linear way with AsG rather than on a case-by-case basis.

-Despite that they can have enchantments, enchanted armor accessories add nothing to DS. However, they can add factors like padding or resistance, even if worn over full coverage armor. When not worn over full coverage armor, they'll effectively add AsGs, increasing elements like action penalty and spell hindrance. Armor accessories also add encumbrance, affected by racial modifiers.