do the benefits of armor stack? If I wear cloth under my leather armor will i get the benefit of both?

I personally wouldn't allow layering of that kind as I think it is taking the rules to literally. I am assuming here that when we are talking about the stats for leather armor we are talking about anything else you may be wearing under it (any padding, shirts, etc.). When would the madness end if you had full plate, mail, leather, and cloth (which are all present in some form underneath most sets of platemail). I would assume the stats for plate would include all these extra forms of padding and "under armor."

So, leather armor is Defence 0 Soak 2 no matter how much you stuff under it.

Yeah, you cant stack armour with other armour - you can stack armour with shields though.

The only Defense/Soak values that stack are armor+shield.

Why not allow robes and clothing to stack?

No, that would give it the stats of brigandine - that makes no sense.

The system is abstract, it doesn't stack.

morganj said:

Right now a full plate gives 1 Defense and 5 Soak which currently is the best body armor a character can have (excluding shields since they're not body armor). Sure, they could have allowed for example Cloth to stack with heavier armor like Plate. But that would probably have been done in one of two ways:

1) If the game was still balanced around people having 1 Defense and 5 Soak, then plate would probably only have 4 Soak instead of the current 5. Since the best body armor a character can have would be the Plate + Cloth combination.

2) If the armors still have the values they have now then that would mean that the game would have been balanced around characters having 1 Defense and 6 Soak (instead of 5), which would mean that some other things would be different in the game so it was balanced around these numbers instead.

So if you want to allow characters to, for example stack Cloth with heavier armor (as above) and still keep the game balanced, the easiest way would simply be to give all other armor in the game -1 Soak so the Soak value for the best body armor in the game still is 5. Because if you allow this stacking, players who want to have the best protection aren't going to just wear plate.. they WILL wear cloth too.

If you don't do this change... then you'll be stuck with a whole bunch of balancing issues:

• How do you for example compensate Wizards? The powerful warrior with the best equipment currently availible (wearing plate armor and cloth) will have 1 higher Soak (which is quite alot when it comes to survival, thos last few points make the most difference!). At the same time, Wizards is still just as powerful as before.
• How does this balance against enemies. If enemies still does the same amount of damage as before, then players who wear heavier armor will suddenly have a better survivability. On the other hand.. you can't just make all enemies do more damage (for example +1 damage) to balance it out, since then it wont be balanced for players that only have very light or no armor, they'll be even more vulnerable.

The only reason to add Armor stacking to the game and NOT adjust the armor soak values down so the end result is the same, would be if someone who reads this is a player (not a GM) who plays a character that uses heavy armor. Then the agenda might simply be a matter of making oneself more powerful to be more ZOMG IMBA compared to some other players... and in that case.. ANY kind of discussion about GAME BALANCE will simply be dismissed.

There's also the matter of what armors do you allow to stack. Robes? Cloth? Leather? Chain? At what point do the armors start not stacking? For example, many chain and plate armors included leather under them. Do you allow chain/plate to stack with leather? Seems a bit overpowered.

Suffice to say, use the simplest method. So, you allow a player to wear cloth under their plate, but they only get the soak from the plate since that is the highest value. Simple enough.