Armor

Protection You Wear

Armor is an adventurer’s best friend. It grants them added protection against the dangers they face on their travels, from the foes and monsters they fight to the various traps that they encounter. Without it, no group of novices could slay a roving band of Goblins, no soldier could survive an onslaught of Scorched, no outpost would have any hope of surviving an ork assault. Simply put, anyone who goes into combat without something to keep the swords, claws, arrows, and bullets away has little-to-no chance of survival.

Armor

There are 5 types of armor in I&A: Torso, Helmet, Gauntlets, Boots, and Shields. Each Torso armor comes with its own benefits and drawbacks, as shown in the tables below; Helmet, Gauntlets, and Boots grant smaller and much more uniform benefits and drawbacks depending on their quality, each described in their respective sections. Certain class features will not be usable in certain armor types, e.g. spells cannot be cast while wearing any armor that is made of antitherium, grants disadvantage on DEX checks, or Medium or Large shields. The weight and cost of the armor assumes the wearer is a Medium creature. A set of armor takes a number of minutes to put on equal to half its Armor Bonus.

Your armor also affects your Dodge score: if your Torso armor forces disadvantage on DEX checks, then you do not add your DEX score to your Dodge.

Armor Quality

Much like weapons, armor comes in varying degrees of quality, from Shoddy to Masterful, and also much like weapons, you can refer to the table below to see how quality affects an armor's properties, including what materials are needed to make it. The exception to all of this is Thick Cloth/Thin Leather armor, which can only ever be Normal quality.

Armor Materials

In regards to what armor can be made of, there are 3 types of materials: hide, metal, and scale. There are 2 types of hide (beast and monster), 3 types of metal (steel, antitherium, and mithril), and 2 types of scale (dragon and monster), for a grand total of 7 different armor materials. Materials can be bought or harvested, and a creature’s statistics in the Bestiary will say what kind of material, if any, can be harvested from it. The cost to buy the materials for crafting can be found here. Armor made of antitherium costs twice as much as it otherwise would.

Armor Quality Bonuses

Armor Quality	Armor Bonus	Cost	Materials	Appraisal DR
Shoddy	-2	.5x Normal	Wood, rusty metal, damaged hide, etc.	6
Poor	-1	.75x Normal	Wood, rusty metal, damaged hide, etc.	8
Normal	--	Normal	Steel/Antitherium and/or Beast Hide	10
Fine	+2	2x Normal	Just Monster Hide, just Steel/Antitherium, just Monster Scale, Steel/Antitherium and Monster Hide, Steel/Antitherium and Beast Hide, or Monster Scale and Beast Hide	14
Exquisite	+4	4x Fine	Just Dragon Scale, just Mithril, Mithril and Monster Hide, Monster Scale and Monster Hide, or Dragon Scale and Beast Hide	18
Masterful	+6	6x Exquisite	Dragon Scale and Monster Hide	22

Torso Armors

Helmets

The primary benefit of helmets is to protect you from Critical Hits by reducing the Crit Range of the attacker; for example, if a weapon's Crit Range is 20, then a helmet of Normal quality or better will prevent attacks with that weapon from performing Critical Hits on you (assuming the weapon's Crit Range is not expanded for any reason, such as by being higher quality). Additionally, better helmets will hamper your Perception checks, so bear this in mind when deciding what helmet you wish to don, if any. Lastly, a helmet made of antitherium will prevent the user's mind from being read by any means and will grant them a bonus on Willpower saves against Psychic damage equal to the helmet's Armor Bonus, but bear in mind that helmets made of antitherium are twice as expensive and antitherium helmets must be at least Normal quality. Assume a helmet for a Medium creature weighs 2 lbs.

Helmets

Gauntlets

Gauntlets grant slight Armor bonuses and allow you to safely interact with things in your environment that might normally only be reduced by your Natural Armor score, assuming you are interacting with them using your hands; in such instances, reduce the damage you take from these sources by the Armor Bonus granted by your gauntlets as well. Beware though, as lower-quality gauntlets will impact your DEX and Sleight of Hand (SoH) checks (your Stealth checks will not be affected, unless your GM says otherwise). Assume gauntlets for a Medium creature weigh 2 lbs and take 3 seconds to don/doff.

Gauntlets

Boots

Boots grant slight Armor bonuses and allow you to safely interact with things in your environment that might normally only be reduced by your Natural Armor score, assuming you are interacting with them using your feet; in such instances, reduce the damage you take from these sources by the Armor Bonus granted by your boots as well. Beware though, as lower-quality boots will impact your AGI checks, as well as your Walking Speed. Assume boots for a Medium creature weigh 4 lbs and take a minute to don/doff.

Boots

Shields

Shields are always good whenever one feels they need some added protection. Shields come in a very wide variety of shapes, forms, sizes, and the like; however, for the sake of simplicity, all shields have been narrowed down to three categories based on their size, and each size confers a different bonus and has a different cost, as shown in the table below. As with Torso armor and weapons, each shield can also be Shoddy, Poor, Normal, Fine, Exquisite, or Masterful quality (requiring the same materials as given in the Armor Quality table), though the additional Armor Bonus given is only half (e.g. a Fine Medium shield would grant an Armor Bonus of +4). Only Large shields use hide and metal/scale; Small and Medium shields use only metal/scale.

If you are wearing a Medium or Large shield, you cannot wield anything other than the shield in the arm wearing it and you have disadvantage on all STR and DEX checks involving that arm. It takes 2 seconds to don/doff a Small shield, 3 for a Medium shield, and 5 for a Large shield.

Shield Bashing

They say the best offense is a good defense, and there are those who would take such an axiom literally. If you wish to use your shield as a weapon, that is entirely doable, and the base damage for each shield is as follows: 1d4 for Small and 1d6 for Medium (Large shields are too big and unwieldy to be wielded as weapons), with each type of shield having a Crit Range of 20. Damage for each shield scales with the Weapon Skill of the same name, e.g. a character with 3 proficiency in Small weapons would deal 3d4 + their STR damage with a Small shield. All shields have the Short property when wielded as weapons.

Shields