Introduction

Below is a list of the different armor types available in GSIII. Critical Range is the roll needed by your opponet to cause a critical hit. Training is the amount of armor training you need to avoid RT penalties. Every 20 points of armor training trains away one second of Rt

Armor Groups (AG) Critical Range

1 Clothing 120

2 Leather 120

3 Scale 150

4 Plate 170

5 Natural -

Armor Type Descripton Training

1) Normal Clothing Robes, Leather Jerkin 0

5) Lether, torso Light Leather 0

6) Leather, torso, and arms Full Leather 20

7) Leather, torso, arms, and legs Reinforced Leather 40

8) Leather, torso, head, arms, and legs Double Leather 40

9) Scale, torso Leather Breastplate 40

10) Scale, torso, and arms Cuirbouilli Leather 80

11) Scale, torso, arms, and legs Studded Leather 120

12) Scale, torso, head, arms, and legs Brigandine 120

13) Chain, torso, and arms Chain Mail Armor 60

14) Chain, torso, and arms Double Chain Mail 120

15) Chain, torso, arms, and legs Augmented Chain Mail 180

16) Chain, torso, head, and legs Chain Hauberk 180

17) Plate, torso Metal Breastplate 80

18) Plate, torso, and arms Augmented Breastplate 160

19) Plate, torso, arms and legs Half Plate 240

20) Plate, torso, head, arms, and legs Full Plate 240

When you wear greaves or a helm, you raise your AT to the highest applicable level. If you wear light leather and wear arm greaves, your AT will rise to 6. If you then put on a helm, your AT will rise to 8 even though you don't have leg greaves. Metal greaves and helms will effect wagglers, so if you are a spell caster, make sure you get the double or reinforced leather and a leather helm once you have enough training. Wearing greaves and helms over armor will help reduce critical hits, but may add RT via extra weight. Leather helms are a good investment since they are light weight and help reduce criticals to the head that can be deadly.

Ok, you ask, I've trained to 80 in armor use, which should I wear AT 10 or 17? AT 17 will be harder to hit for most weapons, but if it does hit your arms or legs, you will get a more serious injury since they are not protected. Hits to the torso will do less damage to you in AT 17 than AT 10. However, both groups leave your head and neck open for (often deadly) crits. You should consider staying in AT 8 until you reach 120 and can wear AT 12. Especially if you hunt alone. This way you can wear a +5 or better helm and greaves which will raise DS. By wearing greaves and a helm with double leather you can reduce crits to your extemities. The drawback is that you will get more bleeders form your torso area, but I prefer bleeders there than magled or severed limbs which will effect your AS, DS and mobility. Especially if you use a two handed weapon.

Wearing plate instead of leather wont raise your DS unless it ETed or made of magic metal. In fact, it will be lowered by an amount dependent on your stats. Higher armor types have higher quickness penalties which are applied against your reflex bonus but never reduce the bonus below 0. Higher armor types also have a higher negative maneuver modifier. The maneuver modifier penalizes your DS and AS because a heavily armored person can't dodge or swing as accurate as they can in no armor. It will often lower the AvD of many weapons, but some weapons, particulary blunt ones, are better against heavy armor.

What heavy armor does do is reduce the damage for the weapon and increase the number needed to get a critical hit on you. So a blow that might do 20 cps to a person leather may only do 10 to someone in chain. See Gloom'suide to Weapons to see AvDs and DFs for weapon types vs armor type. The higher the AG, the less damage you will take vs. a lower AG. However, the higher the AG, the harder it is to cast spells out of it.

E. AT Hinderence Spirit Hinderence Mental Hinderence Action Penalty RT Adder

1) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0

5) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0

6) 0% 0% 0% 0% 1

7) 2% 0% 0% -5% 2

8) 4% 0% 5% -8% 2

9) 5% 4% 3% -5% 2

10) 7% 5% 5% -7% 4

11) 8% 6% 5% -10% 6

12) 10% 8% 15% -13% 6

13) 12% 8% 9% -10% 3

14) 14% 10% 10% -12% 6

15) 15% 11% 10% -15% 9

16) 20% 15% 25% -18% 9

17) 15% 15% 13% -20% 4

18) 20% 20% 15% -25% 8

19) 22% 22% 15% -30% 12

20) 25% 25% 30% -35% 12

Elemental % hinderence, If you are a spell caster, using elemental magic, you have this percent chance of failing to cast the spell, if you wear this armor. Professions that can cast Elemental Magic: Wizards, Sorcs, Bards, Rogues, Warriors.

Spirit % hinderence, If you are a spell caster, using spirit magic, you have this percent chace of failing to cast the spell, if you wear this armor. Professions that can cast Spirit Magic: Clerics, Empaths, Rangers, Sorcs.

Mental % hinderence, same thing as above. Professions: Bards.

You will notice some professions listed twice, that is because they can cast spells from different realms, depending on which list they are casting from. A Sorcerer for example can cast from the 04xx spell list, thats Elemental. Also from the 01xx spell list, thats Spirit.

Action penalty: Thist impeads your ability to perform actions, causing Round Time (RT) If you try to stand up in full plate, it would of course take longer than trying tostandup in Robes. No matter how much you train in it, the difficulty is still there.

RT Adder: This is the amount of RT time added to combat when wearing this armor. It can be trained away. For example, if you swing a weapon that causes a 5 second RT, and are wearing full plate armor without any training in armor, you will have a 17 second RT. If you train in armor enough enough to have a skill in armor of (12 x 20) 240, you will negate all RT effects from the plate armor, and will have a 5 second RT again. If a Warrior triple trains in armor every year, it will take 50 levels to train away the 12 sec RT adder. On the other hand, they are a walking tank by that time.

Now lets look at how armor effects DS. Each armor type has a minimum and maximum maneuver modifier as well as a quickness penalty. The amount of maneuver modifier depends on your armor training.

Armor Type Minimmum MM Maximum MM Quickness Penalty

1 0 0 0

5 0 0 0

6 0 -20 0

7 -10 -40 10

8 -15 -50 15

9 -5 -50 0

10 -10 -70 5

11 -15 -90 15

12 -15 -110 15

13 -10 -70 5

14 -15 -90 10

15 -25 -120 20

16 -25 -130 20

17 -15 -90 10

18 -20 -110 20

19 -35 -150 30

Now lets examine how DS is calculated.

DS = a) (quickness stat bonus - armor quickness penalty)

b) + spell bonus

c) + shield bonus

d) + stance bonus

e) + 1/2 the maneuver mod penalty

Now, let's say that Taluk the Rogue has a quickness bonus of +10, and he wears a leather breastplate that is AT 10. The quickness penalty for AT 10 is 5, so effectively his quicknessbonus is reduced to 5. Taluk now changes to AT 11 armor. The penalty for AT 11 is 15, but since that would give him a negative value for part a) of the DB, it is considered to be zero.

The maneuver mod penalty, as implemented in GemStone III, is halved and applied to both the OB and DB. For example, let's again assume our hero, Taluk, has sufficient training to get the minimum maneuver mod penalty, and he still has a quickness bonus of +10. He is wearing leather breastplate (AT 10) and has no shield, spell or stance bonus. His DB for this would be:

DB = (10 - 5) + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1/2 * (-10) = 0

Let's change things a bit. Assume that Taluk is wearing AT 11 armor and still has enough training for the mimimum penalty. The chart give that as -15, so his DB now is:

DB = (10 - 5) + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1/2 * (-15) = -2

(The -7.5 is rounded down.) The DB has gone negative in this case. This is one of the disadvantages inherent with armor. Now you know about how armor is used in GemStone III, but how can you insure that you minimize the penalties you incur when wearing armor? Well, you train, of course.   Gloom