Padding
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Padding is a rare defensive property, typically found on armor, that provides greater-than-normal protection from critical hits (known as "critical padding") or health point loss (known as "damage padding"). The level of padding is represented as a number (usually from 0 to 50), known as padding points. This number is typically not directly visible in-game, but skilled warriors can ASSESS an item to get an estimate. The relationship between padding points and assessed estimates is shown on the table to the right. For example, an item that assesses as "heavily padded against critical blows" has 9-10 points of critical padding.
Spells and abilities can also provide temporary padding while they are in effect.
This property is typically not found on off-the-shelf armors from town shops, but may be available in varying levels from special merchants. Merchants may also offer a special service to add padding to an existing piece of armor. Merchant services do not add padding points directly. Instead, they will add service points, which correspond to actual padding points on a diminishing returns curve.
As of the August 2017 update, padding has been changed to a Category C item property and can coexist with all other properties, including both critical and damage padding on the same item.
Critical Padding
Critical padding reduces the critical severity of a successful attack by subtracting a phantom amount (up to the number of padding points, subject to possible randomization if the padding is greater than 6 points) from the raw HP damage before resolving the critical rank. Critical padding cannot reduce a critical that would have been rank 1 or higher to a rank 0. Characters have natural critical padding derived from CON bonus, but the exact formula is not known.
For attack rolls (Attack Strength vs. Defensive Strength), to calculate the maximum critical rank generated by a given endroll it is necessary to know the Damage Factor of the weapon vs the armor (reduced by a factor if redux is active), the critical divisor of the armor, and the number of padding points the armor has. If the attacker's weapon has critical weighting, its weighting points are added to the phantom damage. The general formula for determining the maximum critical rank is:
| Max Critical Rank = Truncate[((Endroll - 100) * Damage Factor - Randomize(Padding Points) + Weapon Weighting) / Critical Divisor] |
where Randomize(Padding Points) = Padding Points exactly if Padding Points ≤ 6, otherwise it is a random number in the range [6, Padding Points] with an unknown distribution.
(Note: Critical weighting is not randomized and always adds a fixed amount of weighting points.)
After computing the max critical rank, the actual critical rank of the attack result may be reduced by critical randomization (separately from the randomization of padding level).
Critical damage taken from other sources than attack rolls (such as from flares or maneuvers) is also reduced in many cases, but the exact formulas and conditions where it is applicable are not known.
Sample Calculations
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.
(Note: These tables assume no active redux. If redux is active then the endroll margins required to achieve the same results should be multiplied by 1/(1 - redux_factor).)
| 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
Damage padding directly reduces the health point loss inflicted, but will not reduce the critical rank of the original attack. For example, if a particular attack would deal 20 HP damage and a wound from the critical, then against someone wearing armor with 6 damage padding points ("somewhat padded") the attack would instead deal 14 HP, but the wound and critical rank would remain the same.
Randomization
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.
Interactions
Redux
If redux is active, then for the purposes of calculating max critical rank, critical padding is applied after weapon damage factor reduction. In the Max Critical Rank formula above, the Damage Factor should be reduced by the redux factor. For example, for a handaxe against chain armor, the usual DF is 0.240. If there is 50% redux then simply use 0.120 as the DF, the rest of the crit rank calculation proceeds the same.
Damage padding is applied to the end result after all redux effects.
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 critical padding of the legs.
- Padding + Stat/Skill Enhancement : Armor accessories that are only skill or stat enhancives will retain the padding of the main armor. e.g. Heavily critical padded double leather with +2 strength arm greaves will retain heavily crit padding in that area.
Flares
Temporary flares applied to an item (such as Consecrate (1604) plasma flares) have reduced strength if the item has padding. If the padding is 10 points or more, temporary flares will not take effect. This restriction only applies for temporary flares; permanent flares are not reduced.
Spells and Abilities
Padding from spells and abilities are applied additively to any existing padding on armor. This includes Mage Armor (520) and the Sigils of Minor/Major Protection of the Guardians of Sunfist. For example, if a character is wearing armor with 10 padding points ("heavily padded") and uses Sigil of Major Protection for 10 additional padding points, they would have an effective 20 padding points for the duration of the sigil (equivalent to "masterfully padded").
Merchant Services
| Weighting/Padding/Sighting (W/P/S) vs. Total Service Points (SP) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The merchant service to add padding points will, in most cases, offer to increase the number of service points on an item. The relationship between padding points and service points (SP) is shown on the table to the left. This table is shared with weighting (for melee weapons) and sighting (for ranged weapons). Weighting/Padding/Sighting properties are collectively known as W/P/S.
For example, adding 20 service points for critical padding to a non-padded item will give it 2 critical padding points. Adding 20 points to an item that already has 130 service points (9 padding points) will take it to a total of 150 points (10 padding points).
Intermediate values of service points do not confer additional mechanical benefit until reaching the next full padding level: an item with between 130 and 149 service points will behave identically in combat, conferring 9 padding points.
It is possible for an item to have both critical and damage padding, and they can be added separately (with a price surcharge). The total number of service points is still capped at 5000.
60 Day Service Window
When a W/P/S merchant service is offered, the price (silvers or event currency) of adding service points increases as more service points are added within the same 60-day window. This service window is tracked per item across all merchants and venues. Cost per service point only increases with the number of service points added within this window, not the total number of existing service points on an item.
A 60 day Service Window is started at the first W/P/S on an item. Every W/P/S service done to that item within that 60 days will increase the Service Count within that window. Items will become more expensive to work on as the Service Count increases. Prices increases happen at Service Counts of 5, 10, and 15, with significant prices increases starting at 20+. On the first service after 60 day Service Window ends, the Service Window and Service Counts are reset.
Base item pricing will be determined based on the other attributes of the item, including (but not limited to) enchant, flares, resistances, scripts, etc. The price of a single service of W/P/S is consistent no matter how much of that W/P/S type is on the item, but there is a surcharge for other types of W/P/S on the same item.
Premium Point Padding
Heavy Padding (only) is available through the Premium Point system at a cost of 1200 points + (armor enchant bonus * 100 points). For example, to add heavy critical padding to 4x (+20) suit of armor would cost 1200 + (20 * 100) = 3200 premium points. The premium point benefit is not additive; it will simply take an item to 150 service points.