Piecemeal Armor

What happens when a character takes a heavy metal breastplate from a set of field plate and then wears chain mail sleeves and leggings and a leather armor cap? (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.


Bonus to AC Per Type of Piece:
Armor
Full
Breast-
Two
One
Two
One
Type
Suit
Plate
Arms
Arm
Legs
Leg
Banded Mail
6
3
2
1
1
0
Brigandine
4
2
1
0
1
0
Bronze plate
6
3
2
1
1
0
Chain mail
5
2
2
1
1
0
Field Plate
8
4
2
1
2
1
Full plate
9
4
3
1
2
1
Hide armor
4
2
1
0
1
0
Leather armor
2
1
1
0
0
0
Padded armor
2
1
1
0
0
0
Plate mail
7
3
2
1
2
1
Ring mail
3
1
1
0
1
0
Scale mail
4
2
1
0
1
0
Splint mail
6
3
2
1
1
0
Studded leather
3
1
1
0
1
0

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. One body wears a badly battered set of field plate (of which the breastplate is intact), while the other wears a full suit of chain mail (of which the chest is riddled with holes and one leg is destroyed).

He tries to piece this together into a suit for him. He takes the field-plate's breastplate. Looking at the chart, we see it grants an AC bonus of 4. He also takes the field-plate's two arms. Looking at the chart, we see they grant an AC bonus of 2. He takes the surviving chain mail leg. Looking at the chart, we see that it grants an AC bonus of 0. (He'll also take the surviving helm or helmet from one of these warriors, so that he'll have some armor on his head in case of a Called Shot to the Head.)

His AC bonus is 6, so his AC now is 4—not too bad. If there's a shield, he'll have an AC of 3. If someone takes a Called Shot to his unarmored leg, he'll be at AC 10 (or 9 with the shield), as per the Combat Rules chapter, but that attacker will take a –4 penalty to attack rolls for the Called Shot maneuver.

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