Armour Overview

Now that we’ve talked about weapons, let’s cover armor briefly. What form armor takes in your game is going to depend a lot on the setting. However, mechanically, all forms of armor work the same, whether medieval plate mail or modern ballistic armor.

For our purposes, armor is pretty much anything that your character wears to increase their protection. If your game involves combat, we expect that your character wears some sort of armor. We should emphasize that the game is designed with that conceit in mind, so if your character is getting into fights without any armor, they are taking on more of a risk.

For that reason, we keep our definition of “armor” really broad. Not everyone is going to want their character to be wearing the bulkiest body armor available all the time (after all, most action movie heroes don’t!) So, in our game, even a heavy leather jacket or sturdy clothing provides some protection. Often, that’s all your character is really going to need, and narratively, it still looks like something they might wear every day.

Your character can only benefit from wearing one piece of armor. Even if they wear two or more pieces of armor, you have to choose which one improves soak and defense and provides any unique benefits.

Armor Characteristics

Every piece of armor is defined through the following characteristics. Armor also shares some characteristic categories with weapons, notably price and rarity. The descriptions of these characteristics can be found on page 90.

Defense - The armor’s defense adds b equal to the defense rating directly to the attacker’s dice pool. This reflects the armor’s ability to deflect damage away from the wearer’s body.
The defense rating of armor sets the user’s defense at a certain value, while other abilities and talents may then increase the user’s defense rating.

Soak - A suit of armor’s soak is added to the wearer’s soak value and you subtract the total soak from any damage suffered. If an attack causes 10 damage, for example, a soak of 2 plus a Brawn of 2 reduces the damage incurred by four, leaving a total of six points of damage.
Most armor adds +1 or +2 soak, rarely more.

Encumbrance - Each full suit or discrete piece of armor has a listed encumbrance value. However, armor’s full encumbrance rating only comes into play when a suit or piece of armor is carried instead of worn. When armor is worn, its encumbrance rating is reduced by three, to a minimum of zero.