Designing Your Armour

"This piece is Winter Steel Plate, that's Burned Leather, and that's Darksteel," - King Aeron Starfall

''"Isn't it odd to have so many different pieces of armour, father?" - Prince Daemon Starfall''

"Probably, but they tell stories, stories of who I am and what I've done," - King Aeron Starfall

-Excerpt from 'The Accounts of the First King'

In this world, armour is no longer a single set of bits that you put on and get a single set of bonuses from. Each piece matters, from a breastplate to a helmet, and even the gauntlets. The primary pieces of armour are all their own separate pieces, they all give separate bonuses, and can be applied or removed separately. Want to wear a steel breastplate but cover the rest of your body in leather armour, go ahead!

Each armour piece gives you an: AC, Weight, and Weight Class. These numbers decide what category your armour is and what the total bonuses are. For example, let's design a unique set of armour. We'll go ahead and select a medium breastplate, some heavy vambraces and gauntlets, and light greaves and pauldrons. We'll also forgo having a helmet.

-Iron Chain Breastplate - +2.9 AC, 16.7 Ibs, +2.9 WC

-Scaled Leather Pauldrons - +.3 AC, 1.5 Ibs, +.25 WC

-Steel Plate Vambraces - +1.2 AC, 4.3 Ibs, +1 WC

-Steel Plate Gauntlets - +.9 AC, 1.8 Ibs, +.8 WC

-Scaled Leather Greaves - +.4 AC, 1.9 Ibs, +.5 WC

-Custom Armour Set - +5.7 AC, 26.2 Ibs, +5.45 WC

So, there is our armour that we'll be using to explain everything, now let's begin with the AC. This works exactly like normal AC except you'll be seeing a lot of decimals unless you plan things perfectly. Simply use the normal mathematics to round to your nearest whole number. So .4 and below go to the lower whole numbers and .5 and up go to the higher whole number. In our case, our 5.7 will round to 6 when calculating our AC.

The weight of the armour does matter, as weight will dictate your armour's Max Dex and its Check Pen. Every 5 Ibs of weight decreasing the Max Dex by 1, starting from 10. Every 10 Ibs of weight increases the Check Pen by 1. When it comes to decimals, use standard rounding techniques, and if the number isn't an even five or ten round down, even if it is 29, it goes down to 25. In our case, our Max Dex is +5, and our Check Pen is -2.

Weight Class is the final number, this indicates if our armour is Light, Medium, or Heavy. I have produced a small chart for this:

-0-5 = Light = Full Speed

-5.1-8 = Medium = -5 ft Speed

-8.1-12 = Heavy = -10 ft Speed

-12.1+ = Super-Heavy = -15 ft Speed

Each increase in weight level also reduces your speed in your armour by 5 ft. The only difference is the introduction of the Super-Heavy weight level for armours. In our case, our Weight Class is 5.45, falling nicely in the Medium weight class. Don't worry about rounding in this situation, you won't have to do any to figure out what weight level you are.