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Piecemeal Armor by Colin
Chapman
What happens when a character takes a heavy metal breastplate
from a set of full plate and then wears studded leather sleeves,
and padded leggings? (That is, what happens other than he looks
stupid?)
Characters can wear armor assembled out of the remnants of
other, mismatched sets of armor. It's not as good, and certainly
not as good-looking, as wearing a matched suit. But sometimes
necessity dictates that characters wear what's on hand.
When you're assembling a full suit of armor out of pieces on
hand, the first thing to do is to see what you have. Compare your
armor on hand with the chart below, rounding halves down in the
final calculation, and three quarters up.
Bonus to AC Per Type of Piece
| Armor Type |
Full Suit |
Breast Plate |
Two Arms |
One Arm |
Two Legs |
One Leg |
| Light armor |
| Padded |
+1 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
0 |
+1/4 |
0 |
| Leather |
+2 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
| Studded lthr. |
+3 |
+2 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
| Med. armor |
| Hide |
+3 |
+2 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
| Scale mail |
+4 |
+3 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
| Chain mail |
+5 |
+4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
+1/2 |
+1/4 |
| Heavy armor |
| Splint mail |
+6 |
+4 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
| Banded Mail |
+6 |
+4 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
| Half plate |
+7 |
+5 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
+1 |
+1/2 |
| Full plate |
+8 |
+5 |
+1 1/2 |
+3/4 |
+ 1 1/2 |
+3/4 |
Example: A character is robbed of all his worldly goods.
Later, he finds the aftermath of a battle, with a couple of dead
warriors still in their armor. He manages to scavenge a
breastplate from a suit of half plate, a decent chainmail sleeve,
and a pair of studded leather pants.
He tries to piece this together into a suit for him. The
breastplate grants an AC bonus of +5. The single chainmail sleeve
grants a bonus of +1/4. The pair of studded leather pants grant
an AC bonus of + 1/2.
His AC is now is +5 3/4 (rounded up to +6)-not too bad. If
there's a shield, he'll have an AC of +7, and if he can salvage a
helmet, his head will be protected from specific strikes. Now if
only he could find protection for that vulnerable single arm...
WEIGHT OF PIECEMEAL SUITS
To calculate the weight of a piecemeal suit of armor, follow
these guidelines: The breastplate is 60% the weight of the
original suit. Each arm and leg is 10% the weight of the original
suit.
In the example above, the cobbled together armor would weigh 38
lbs. (30 lbs. for the breastplate, 4 lbs. for the chainmail
sleeve, and 4 lbs. for the pair of studded leather leggings).
IMPAIRMENT OF PIECEMEAL SUITS
Unfortunately, piecemeal suits of armor tend to encumber their
wearers more so than properly-tailored full suits of armor do,
for obvious reasons. To find out how much a piecemeal suit
encumbers a character, and how it penalizes their dexterity,
inhibits their dexterity bonus, and interferes with arcane
spellcasting, do the following:
Locate the full suit of armor with the weight closest to, but
heavier than, the piecemeal suit, and reduce the Maximum Dex
Bonus by 2, increase the Armor Check Penalty by 2 (making it
worse), and increase the chance of Arcane Spell Failure by 10%.
Use the modified Speeds normally. In cases where more than a
single full suit is comparable in weight, use the one with the
worst penalties.
Continuing our previous example, we find that the full
suit of armor with the weight closest to the piecemeal suit (38
lbs.) is Chainmail (40 lbs., Max Dex: +2, Armor Check: -5, Arcane
Failure: 30%). Using the Chainmail modifiers as our basis we get
Max Dex: +0, Armor Check: -7, Arcane Failure: 40% for our AC +6,
38 lb. piecemeal suit.
ABOUT MAGICAL ARMOR
If a suit of magical armor is used for one of these piecemeal
efforts, it grants none of its magical bonus; once the magical
armor is split into little bits, or pieces are merely separated
and not worn together, the magical bonus doesn't work.
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