Padding

Padding Combat Effectiveness Rating Table Rating Name -16+ Substantially diminished -15 to -11 Noticeably diminished -10 to -6 Somewhat diminished -5 to -1 Slightly diminished No Padding (baseline) 1 - 2 Lightly 3 - 4 Fairly 5 - 6 Somewhat 7 - 8 Decently 9 - 10 Heavily 11 - 13 Very heavily 14 - 15 Exceptionally 16 - 20 Masterfully 21 - 25 Superbly 26 - 30 Expertly 31 - 35 Phenomenally 36 - 40 Fantastically 41 - 45 Incredibly 46 - 50 Wondrously

Armor that provides greater-than-normal protection against some form of attack is called padded. Both critical and damage padding utilize the same padding point table albeit toward different effects. Note that critical padding, damage padding, and flares occupy the same enhancement slot and can not be added to an item in conjunction with one another.

Critical Padding

Reduces the severity of a wound caused by a damage source. Each critical hit in GemStone has certain effects associated with it, including a wide range of additional points of damage, any of three degrees of injury (from minor scratch to some degree of bleeding to severed limbs), and possible additional effects such as being knocked prone, or stunned and thus unable to act. These effects are somewhat unpredictable due to critical randomization.

Critical padding can not reduce a critical that would have been rank 1 or higher to a rank 0. Characters have natural critical padding derived from CON bonus. GILCHRISTR's research indicates that 1 potential phantom damage is removed for each 4 bonus.

Armor padded in this way has a given number of padding points which fall into categorical ranges outlined in the table below. The padding points are directly subtracted from the phantom damage of a particular strike.

Sample Calculations

It is often desirable to compare critical ranks across several types of armor. To calculate the critical rank generated by a given endroll it is necessary to know the damage factor of the weapon vs the armor, the critical divisor of the armor, and the number of padding points the armor has. If the attacker's weapon has critical weighting, it similarly has weighting points which are added to the phantom damage. The general formula for determining an critical rank is:

• Critical Rank = Truncate[ ( (Endroll - 100) * Damage Factor - Padding Points + Weapon Weighting ) / Critical Divisor ]

The following sample calculations use standard (unweighted) weapons with 200 endrolls and utilize 10 points of critical padding:

• Handaxe vs. Brigandine : ( (200 - 100) * 0.270 - 0 + 0 ) / 7 = 3.86 ≈ Rank 3 critical
• Handaxe vs. HCP Brigandine : ( (200 - 100) * 0.270 - 10 + 0 ) / 7 = 2.43 ≈ Rank 2 critical
• Handaxe vs. Hauberk : ( (200 - 100) * 0.240 - 0 + 0 ) / 9 = 2.67 ≈ Rank 2 critical

Critical Rank Table

The table below shows how the critical ranks from a handaxe and maul with various endrolls scale across the different armor groups. The calculations including padded armor assumed 10 points of padding. Where noted (*) the padding is sufficient to reduce the critical rank to 0 if it wasn't otherwise restricted to a minimum of rank 1.

Endroll	Handaxe
	Cloth		Leather		Scale		Chain		Plate
	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP
105	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
110	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
120	1	1*	1	1*	0	0	0	0	0	0
130	2	1*	1	1*	1	1*	0	0	0	0
140	3	1	2	1*	1	1*	1	1*	0	0
150	4	2	2	1*	1	1*	1	1*	0	0
160	5	3	3	1	2	1*	1	1*	1	1*
170	5	3	3	1	2	1	1	1*	1	1*
180	6	4	4	2	3	1	2	1	1	1*
190	7	5	4	2	3	2	2	1	1	1*
200	8	6	5	3	3	2	2	1	1	1
210	9	7	5	3	4	2	2	1	2	1
220	10	8	6	4	4	3	3	2	2	1
230	10	8	6	4	5	3	3	2	2	1
240	11	9	7	5	5	3	3	2	2	1
250	12	10	7	5	5	4	4	2	2	1
260	13	11	8	6	6	4	4	3	3	2
270	14	12	8	6	6	5	4	3	3	2
280	15	13	9	7	6	5	4	3	3	2
290	15	13	9	7	7	5	5	3	3	2

Maul
Cloth		Leather		Scale		Chain		Plate
Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP	Norm.	HCP
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1	1*	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2	1*	1	1*	1	1*	0	0	0	0
3	1	2	1*	1	1*	1	1*	0	0
4	2	2	1	2	1	1	1*	1	1*
5	3	3	1	3	1	2	1	1	1*
6	4	4	2	3	2	2	1	1	1*
7	5	5	3	4	2	2	1	1	1
8	6	5	4	4	3	3	2	2	1
9	7	6	4	5	4	3	2	2	1
11	9	7	5	6	4	4	3	2	1
12	10	7	6	6	5	4	3	3	2
13	11	8	6	7	5	5	3	3	2
14	12	9	7	7	6	5	4	3	2
15	13	10	8	8	7	5	4	3	2
16	14	10	9	9	7	6	5	4	3
17	15	11	9	9	8	6	5	4	3
18	16	12	10	10	9	7	6	4	3
19	17	12	11	11	9	7	6	4	4
20	18	13	11	11	10	8	6	5	4

Damage Padding

Will directly reduce the blood loss inflicted by a damage source, but will not reduce the other non-damaging effects of that source (e.g. scratches/bleeding/severed body parts, stuns, or knockdowns). For example, if a particular attack would deal 25 damage against someone wearing heavily damage padded armor (with 10 points of padding), the attack would instead deal 15 points of damage.

Randomization: Critical & Damage Padding

The amount of padding points applied to a successful attack may be randomized (note that this is distinct from critical randomization). For critical or damage padded armor up to somewhat padded, the amount of padding applied is fixed. That is, any armor with 6 points or less (inclusive) of damage or critical padding will always provide the maximum amount of padding it can to any attack. In the case of greater levels of padding, the amount of padding points applied will be randomized but the armor will never provide less than somewhat critical or damage padding. The exact probability distribution of the possible values is unknown. This change was announced by GM Warden in early 2008.

Elemental Padding

This can reduce damage taken from an elemental source, either from creatures that use fire/cold (these are the most commonly seen elemental creatures, but there can be others) in their attacks or from a hot/cold environment such as Pinefar and Aenatumgana and the Glacier on the cold side, or the Lava Flows on Teras Isle on the hot side.

Probably the most common elemental padding is a Bard making use of Sonic Armor (1014); this magical armor inherently has cold, heat, and lightning padding. Another source of elemental padding that has recently become available is from the Ranger spell, Resist Nature (620).

Natural

This is another facet of padding available through the Ranger spell, Resist Nature (620). Nature resistance is similar to elemental resistance in that it protects the wearer from a specific type of attack. Natural resistance lets the wearer withstand hits from nature-specific attacks, which include all offensive Ranger spells and Sandstorm (914).

Armor Accessories

Combining armor items with enhancements have various effects. Note that the effects only take place in the active area. i.e. Effects due to enhancement of armor remain unchanged with respect to the head, neck, torso, and arms when worn in conjunction with leg greaves that bare an enhancement.

• Padding + Padding (Similar) : Armor accessories with padding types similar to the armor they cover result in the area having padding equal to the highest rank between the two. e.g. Masterfully critical padded leg greaves worn with heavily critical padded hauberk results in masterful critical padding of the legs.
• Padding + Padding (Dissimilar) : Armor accessories with padding types different from the armor they cover causes both types of padding to be halved in effectiveness. e.g. Heavily critical padded leg greaves combined with heavily damage padded hauberk results in somewhat critical and somewhat damage padding of the legs.
• Padding + Spikes/Flares : Armor accessories with flares combines with critical or damage padded armor results in the padding being halved in that coverage area. e.g. Fire flaring leg greaves combined with heavily damage padded hauberk results in somewhat damage padding of the legs with the appropriate flaring effects.
• Padding + Enhancement : For these purposes, enhancement refers to resistance to specific damage types, an active bless, or TD enhancement. Armor accessories with such enhancements cause padding of the base armor to be halved in effectiveness. e.g. Heavily critical padded hauberk worn with blessed leg greaves results in somewhat damage padding of the legs.

Availability

A padding merchant is one of the more highly sought after types. Merchants may offer permanent padding, but it is usually very limited in number and quite expensive. More often merchants offer temporary padding, which lasts for several hundred hits depending on what the adventurer wishes to pay.

Temporary damage padding is also available through the Adventurer's Guild. Adventurers can have either somewhat or heavy damage padding added to their armor that will last for 50 hits.

Guardians of Sunfist members have access to Sigil of Minor Protection and Sigil of Major Protection which grant them 60 seconds of heavy damage or heavy critical padding, respectively.

Padding is available through the Premium point system at a cost of ((2 × Padding Level) + Enchant Bonus) × 100 points. For example, to add heavy padding to 4x armor it would cost 4000 premium points.

See Also

• Armor Accessory & Padding Changes - REVISIONS - 5/31/05
• Changes to Padding and Damage Weighting - 1/29/2008