The Truth About Armor
by Lord Panthera Pardus of Pacific
Legendary Blacksmith / GM Merchant

There has been considerable confusion regarding the defensive ratings of various armor, especially when it comes to exceptional or magic armor. This is understandable since most documentation speaks only of normal quality armor such as one would purchase from an NPC. Here we shall clear up any questions about armor.

Magic armor is straightforward, as can be seen in the following table:

GM armor however, has seen a lot of confusion. The actual defensive bonus to exceptional armor is +20%.
The following table shows the difference between normal and exceptional armor ratings:

Spined leather gives +8 bonus to leather armors.
Horned leather gives +11 bonus to leather armors.
Barbed leather gives +13 bonus to leather armors.
Bonuses are added before exceptional bonus.

Dex Loss Table

As we can see by this table, even chainmail of defense is better than exceptional chainmail. Also note, that GM armor (exceptional armor with a GM's name stamped on it) is identical in defense rating to unmarked exceptional armor. As long as it has an exceptional tag you get the 20% defensive rating bonus. Another aspect of armor is the durability. Magic armor has durability ratings of +5 through +25. Player made armor however, varies. Exceptional armor may have up to +5 durability, but can vary from piece to piece.

Newly added are bonuses for colored ingots - this is a flat bonus:

In regards to covered area, here is the current table of protection to the various parts of the body (i.e. which part of the body is struck on a successful weapon hit):

Based on this, here are some tables showing the actual armor ratings of common sets of armor:

The numbers before the slash represent the armor rating for the particular part of the body that the piece covers, while the numbers after the slash show the armor rating based on the percentage of hits that part is likely to receive. For the actual AR, the numbers in parentheses are the displayed AR - values are always rounded down (so even an actual armor rating of 28.99 would still show up as 28).

Leather Armor - tables of leather and studded leather armor sets.

About Shields - information on how shields and parry skill affect your armor rating.

What does this all mean?

Most magic armor was once the best to acquire, but with the addition of having colored ingots give armor bonuses there isn't much advantage to magic armor over the more rare ingot colored exceptional armor. Also, with the new leather types I expect to find similar results from the enhanced leather armors. There is the advantage of the durability bonuses often given by magic armor, and it's probably less likely to attract attention than running around with a bunch of blue armor on, so don't rule out magic armor completely! The durability bonuses will allow the armor to not lose effectiveness as quickly as it takes damage. AR loss from damage is a gradual process with armor. Repairing brings the armor back up to full armor rating, but it does reduce the armor's maximum durability (usually by one point if repaired by a grandmaster blacksmith.