Armour

Armour

Armour increases your PAC which means that the amount of physical damage you take from blows are reduced. The amount of PAC the armour gives you varies according to the type you wear. Light armour like Padded Cloth or Soft Leather gives only small amounts of protection and is relatively cheap, whilst heavy armour like Chain mail or Plate gives a lot of protection but is much more cumbersome and expensive. You do not need any proficiency in this skill category if you wish to wear head armour. 

For a full description of how armour protects your character, read the Damage and Health page of the Base LARP Rules, for a description of the skill required to use it, read the Armour Use Combat Skill.

Master crafted Armour provides an additional +1 point of PAC when worn, for example a suit of MC Padded provides 2 points of PAC but still only counts as Armour 1 when determining Dexterity.

Master crafted Armour must be tailored for each individual wearer, and as such can't be worn until it has been re-sized to the new wearer. Re-sizing costs half of the price of a new suit of Master crafted armour, this is taken into account when purchasing new armour, but must be paid separately if a suit is found on an adventure.

You can purchase a Master Crafted suit of armour but it takes 3 months for the weapon to be completed and the order must be placed with the Battleboarder.

Purchasing Equipment

Characters do not need to purchase standard quality suits of Armour or Weapons which they are proficient in, for example a character with Armour 3 does not need to spend groats to buy a suit of Plated Leather or Chain mail, and one with Thrown Weapons does not need to purchase each individual Throwing Knife - it is assumed that this is either provided by their guild or they have otherwise somehow managed to acquire one without meaningfully impacting their money. This does not apply to Master Crafted, Silver, Cold Iron or otherwise non-standard equipment, nor to disposable items such as Kits and Potions, which must be purchased normally.

Characters are required to suitably phys-rep their equipment on an adventure - for example the scout may not need to buy 100+ Throwing Knives, however if the player can only bring or borrow 5 then the character only has the 5 throwing knives.

Partial Suits of Armour

Purchasing a full suit of armour is cheaper than buying all the pieces separately. The individual prices are for each piece i.e. a full set of leg armour would be two upper legs and two lower legs. The following prices are for normal quality pieces of armour.

Shields

Shields protect your character by blocking an opponents blow. If you successfully block a physical blow using a shield you ignore all damage dealt, including stamina damage, from that blow. Although you may block projectiles such as arrows and bolts, you may not deliberately move your shield to intercept it without the Skill Dexterity IV or higher (since blocking is equivalent to trying to catch the missile). Since shields do not provide PAC, they do not interfere with bonuses from the Dexterity Skill.

Shields last indefinitely with simple maintenance. However, they can be broken just like any other non-magical item, becoming useless.

Note that some blows are simply too powerful to block with a shield, and may result in breaking the shield or even still strike you, such as Siege Weaponry. For example an Ogre Bow is equivalent to a Ballista Bolt, and will go clean through a normal shield to strike you, although often the damage will be reduced to compensate. Usually the description of a monster will give a clue when a weapon is too powerful to block, and you will be told if your shield failed to stop the blow.

Master-crafted Shields do not provide extra PAC like armour does, instead they are careful composites of material that resist being broken. A new MC Shield has 5 lives, each of which will resist a Break spell or similar effect, such as Heat Metal or Mighty Blow Crush. Once the last life has been lost, it is useless, but could be restored using the correct spell as usual for MC equipment.

Example: A MC shield is broken 4 times (using the Break Spell), then the last life is destroyed using Heat Metal. A Reshape spell is needed to repair it, restoring it to a MC Shield with 4 lives lost and 1 remaining, a Mend III spell would then restore it back to a full 5 Lives. The Mend III spell can actually be cast at any point provided the Shield still has some Lives remaining.