Armor

Armor in SPAECIMH is not one number on your sheet — it is a set of worn pieces, each covering a part of your body and each eating a little of a blow. Where you are hit decides what protects you. A man in full plate who forgets his gauntlets still bleeds from the hand that holds the sword.

The five categories

• Shield (Щит) — the off-hand. The only armor you actively use. A shield is not worn, it is readied.
• Body (Тело) — chest, back, gut. The largest, most vital target, and the heaviest piece of any harness.
• Legs (Ноги / штаны) — hips, thighs, knees, shinsched. The blow that drops a runner is almost always aimed here.
• Footwear (Обувь) — feet and ankles. Cheap, humble, and the thing that keeps you standing on a battlefield that has been churned to mud.
• Hands (Руки / перчатки) — hands, wrists, forearms. Protects the grip that holds your weapon.

The three classes

Every category comes in three classes — Light, Medium, Heavy. Class is a property of the piece, set when the gear was written)Skip. It sets the piece's absorption — the flat amount of damage the armor eats out of every blow that lands on it.

These two anchors are the ones everyone quotes: leather absorbs 0, steel absorbs 4. A full Light harness is leather — it keeps the weather off and the edge out of your vitals for exactly nothing. A full Heavy harness is steel — it eats four points of damage from every blow that lands on covered flesh.

How absorption works

Every time a blow lands on you, your armor eats its absorption before the wound is counted:

[4d6: 3+4+2+5 = 14] vs [AC 12] → HIT → [Damage 2d6+3 = 6] − [Absorb 2] = 4  → [4 damage]

• Coverage decided where the blow landed. A piece only protects the category it covers. A throat shot ignores your greaves. A leg slash finds the gap between breastplate and tasset. Only the worn piece on that category absorbs — never the whole harness at once.
• Swallowed whole hits still rattle. If the armor absorbs the entire blow, a single point of blunt force may still shake through the bone beneath — the Master's call. Steel stops edges, not weight.
• Genre bends your steel. The scene's genre adds its armor modifier on top of your gear's own absorption (see Genre & Tech Level). Steel in a steam world hits harder than the same steel in a fading one.
• Magic lines the gaps. An enchanted harness adds its enchantment's modifier to the piece's base absorption (see Magic & the Mana Level). A Minor-enchanted gauntlet is steel with a whisper of fire in the weave.

Shields are readied, not worn

A shield's absorption is its resting value, but the shield is the one piece you do something with. Raise it to brace against a charge, angle it to deny a flank, hook it to block — each is a scene action the Master prices. A braced shield grants you the +4 Defensive buff while the stance holds (see Combat), on top of its own absorption. The cost is honest: while you brace, that hand is not free to act.

Choosing your harness

Wear what your story earns, and say it before the fight:

"[Armor: Heavy harness. Body 2, Legs 1, Shield 1. Genre Steel +2.]"

If you are caught unarmored, that, too, is spoken — the world does not let a surprise find out about armor after the dice fall.