Building Armor Entries

Armor is a body-part protection system (GM Instruction 07). Building it well lives in the same reference philosophy as weapons and weapons modifiers — the absorption number must exist somewhere the master reaches, and the category map must be able to read it. This chapter tells you how to author an Armor entry that the master can actually run.

Category is the enum, always

An armor piece is Equipment with category: "Armor". That enum is the whole point — the master's combat engine reads category to decide how the item protects, exactly as it reads weapons by category: "Weapon".

Inside that, a piece is defined by two coordinates:

• Category (slot): Shield · Body · Legs · Footwear · Hands — where on the body it sits and what blow it can eat.
• Class: Light · Medium · Heavy — how much absorption the piece carries.

Put both where a build can find them — in the description text, in the notes, or (cleanest) as a real absorption number on an Equipment file if your type's schema carries one. The master reads the number, not the prose.

Post the three numbers

Every armor entry should let the master answer three questions at a glance:

1. What slot? — the category the piece covers (do not let a "full suit" blur into "protects everything"; if it genuinely protects everything, state it as five pieces or as a full-harness set that lists each slot's pieces).
2. Absorption (class)? — the flat damage the piece eats. Anchor to the ladder: Light 0, Medium 1, Heavy 2 on Body; 0 / 1 / 1 on Shield and Legs; 0 / 0 / 0 on Footwear and Hands. A full Light harness reads 0, a full Heavy reads 4 — keep the anchors ("leather 0, steel 4") true.
3. Scene cost? — the genre armor modifier (GM 04) applies at the scene, so you rarely write it into the item; you write the item's own absorption, and the scene adds its mood.

Worked entry

{
  "name": "Györ-Köben Prison Harness",
  "category": "Armor",
  "value": 420,
  "weight": 18,
  "techLevel": 2,
  "absorbedbyClass": "Heavy",
  "description": "A steel cuirass riveted at the shoulders, worn by the wardens of the Köben brig. Absorbs 4 from every blow that lands on the torso. (Body, Heavy — set absorption 2.)",
  "notes": "Body · Heavy · absorption 4"
}

Note what happened there: the notes carry the machine-readable anchor (Body · Heavy · absorption 4) and the description says the same number in a sentence — redundancy is the point, because different masters reach different columns.

Genre, tech & the mana layer

• techLevel is real and load-bearing (see Tagging Gear by Genre). A steel harness is native to a Medieval/L2 world; carry your own techLevel only when the gear is foreign to the scene. Foreign armor suffers the same tech disparity penalty as foreign weapons when swung by hands from another level.
• Magic lines the weave. Enchanted armor takes a magicRarity and adds its modifier on top of the piece's base absorption — never instead of it (see Tagging Magic Gear & the Mana Level). Only write the item's own tiers; the scene's Mana Level and Genre add their own.
• Shields carry a stance bonus the other slots don't. A shield's notes should reserve the braced / defensive-stance rule (07) — the +4 Defensive buff while held, its hand not free. That bonus is a situation, written in the notes, not a second number on the item.

Checklist

• category: "Armor", not prose buried in a description.
• Slot and class stated where the master reaches (Body · Heavy · absorption 4).
• Absorption anchored to the ladder — no invented fifth tier (Light 0, Heavy steel 4 stays true).
• Coverage is honest: a piece covers its slot, not the whole body.
• Foreign gear carries its real techLevel; native gear stays untagged.
• Enchantments add to absorption; they never replace the base.