Chapter 3: 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 various types of armor in I&A, and each comes with their own benefits and drawbacks, as shown in the table below. Certain class features will not be usable in certain armor types, e.g. Elemancers cannot cast spells while wearing any armor that grants disadvantage on DEX checks or any kind of shield. The weight of the armor assumes the wearer is a Medium creature. Light/Medium/Heavy armor takes 2/5/10 minutes to put on and take off.

The type of armor you’re wearing also affects your Dodge score: none, Light, or Medium armor makes your Dodge score your Dodge Penalty + your AGI score + your DEX score, while Heavy armor makes your Dodge score your Dodge Penalty + your AGI score.

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.

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 Quality Bonuses

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

Armors

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 armor and weapons, each shield can also be Shoddy, 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 shield gives only +1 additional Armor). Only Large shields use hide and metal/scale; Small and Medium shields use only metal/scale.

If you are wearing a Medium or larger 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 1 second to don/doff a Small shield, 2 for a Medium shield, and 4 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). 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. Finally, a shoddy Small shield gives an Armor Bonus of +1, not +0.

Shields