Armor

Game Items that protect from damage.

Armor is game items that protect characters or avatars from various forms of damage. They can be armor similar to that in the real world or be fictive concepts such as magical defenses or high-tech force fields.

Often being combat-oriented, many Roleplaying Games have detailed rules for armor, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, and Hârnmaster, as well as the Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, and Elder Scrolls series. The Fallout series contain a multitude of armors (and clothing) that not only ofter players protection but also bonuses to skills and attributes. They do however deteriorate with use, as do the armors in The Elder Scrolls series, Entropia Universe, and World of Warcraft.

The armor in the Doom and Quake series are abstracted to a number which is decreased by attacks and improved by finding new Armor or armor shards.

Minecraft allows players to craft their own armor out of a variety of material, including leather, iron, and diamond gems.

Using the pattern

The two main design choices for Armor is how it much each piece of Armor should protect and which Avatars and Characters can use it. A fundamental choice is however if Armor should be a Resource and then typically available as Pick-Ups, or Game Items and then be Equipable Items.

While some games limit use of Armor to specific classes, often more or less the same as Functional Roles, others make the useful only to specific Characters (e.g. Dragon Age II). Related to this is how many pieces of Armor may be used, it is common to use a Sockets system so that only one piece of a particular type of Armor (e.g. helmet, breastplate, etc.) can be equipped at the same time, or that there are rules for layering armor (e.g. GURPS and Hârnmaster).

There are a several options for Armor. One is to assign a weight to them as a way to affect carrying capabilities, another is to make them be affected by Deterioration. For providing Tradeoffs or Balancing Effects, Armor can modulating Skills or Attributes by giving Decreased Abilities.

Common ways of letting players get access to Armor is as part of Loot, through Trading, or as Pick-Ups when they are a Resource.