Sorcerer's Armor, Stacking Rules Questions

[Arch0n]

Hey folks,

Two rules questions.

1) How do you handle attacks that "ignore armor" when applied against characters protected by Sorcerer's Armor and similar spells? Do you ignore all the spell protections as well, or do you ignore only the mundane?

What if it was a fire attack against a character wearing plate mail with sorcerer's armor 4?

What about an attack that bypasses armor (a headshot on a character with an unarmored head), but protected by a crown with sorcerer's armor 4 on it?

2) How do you handle stacking of spells? For instance, I have Sorcerer's Armor 4 on my longjohns, and then cast it again on my outer robes. Do I have 8 points of protection, or 4? If 4, why? Do the longjohns know that the robes have armor, and resent it? Do you allow spells and items to stack in general?

If there's an official rule on these, I'd love to know it, or if there's good house rules handed down by the Old Masters of Runequest/Elric!, that'd be great too...

[Nightshade]

Hey folks,

Two rules questions.

1) How do you handle attacks that "ignore armor" when applied against characters protected by Sorcerer's Armor and similar spells? Do you ignore all the spell protections as well, or do you ignore only the mundane?

Tends to depend on the attack and why it ignores physical armor; as a general rule of thumb, if I think something would bypass an SF force field, then it probably shouldn't care about most of the spell based protection spells.

What if it was a fire attack against a character wearing plate mail with sorcerer's armor 4?

Well, personally, I'm not convinced fire should generically ignore physical armor; its not optimized against it, but I don't have any doubt that a piece of plate armor between me and the burning torch would be better than just my skin.

What about an attack that bypasses armor (a headshot on a character with an unarmored head), but protected by a crown with sorcerer's armor 4 on it?

In that case the spell should work, because its not locational.

2) How do you handle stacking of spells? For instance, I have Sorcerer's Armor 4 on my longjohns, and then cast it again on my outer robes. Do I have 8 points of protection, or 4? If 4, why? Do the longjohns know that the robes have armor, and resent it? Do you allow spells and items to stack in general?

I thought such spells were cast on you, not your equipment; if I'm incorrect I'd have to look at the language and consider it further.

If there's an official rule on these, I'd love to know it, or if there's good house rules handed down by the Old Masters of Runequest/Elric!, that'd be great too...

Well, in RQ, almost all that stuff _was_ cast on you, not on your armor, so it was usually a non-issue.

[frogspawner]

1) Attacks that ignore armour (critical hits) ignore any magical protections as well. (But now I come to look for it, the BRP rulebook doesn't make this clear. A close reading to the example on p.192 reveals "ignores any armor the target may be wearing, whether natural or powered" - which is pretty flimsy evidence. That was the rule in old-time RQ, though.)

Hence, although the magic crown would probably protect the whole body normally, the armour-bypassing attack would still do damage.

Fire damage is prevented by armour on the first round only (as per the Spot Rule, p.223).

2) The wording of Sorceror's Armour means it affects a person, not an object, so longjohns/robes stacking shouldn't normally be possible. If something like that did arise, though, I'd say the only better magical protection would apply - still no stacking. (And if some powergamer did make their longjohns/robes sentient in an attempt to make the bonuses stack, I'd be tempted to say their mutual jealousy made them attack and annihilate each other - which would probably be quite uncomfortable for anyone wearing them. )

[Arch0n]

Thanks for the responses!

[Jason D]

1) How do you handle attacks that "ignore armor" when applied against characters protected by Sorcerer's Armor and similar spells? Do you ignore all the spell protections as well, or do you ignore only the mundane?

I'd ignore spell protection as well as mundane, unless a compelling reason would be to rule otherwise.

What if it was a fire attack against a character wearing plate mail with sorcerer's armor 4?

Does the fire attack ignore armor? Is it magical fire? If not, then both forms of protection would be in effect (the armor for only one round).

What about an attack that bypasses armor (a headshot on a character with an unarmored head), but protected by a crown with sorcerer's armor 4 on it?

Are you using hit locations, or generic (whole body) armor protection?

The spell is traditionally cast on a person, not an object, but if the GM allowed an item to have the spell invested in it, then the item would protect for that location. A crown certainly would count as armor.

2) How do you handle stacking of spells? For instance, I have Sorcerer's Armor 4 on my longjohns, and then cast it again on my outer robes. Do I have 8 points of protection, or 4? If 4, why? Do the longjohns know that the robes have armor, and resent it? Do you allow spells and items to stack in general?

I'd take the value of the highest level of protection and let that be the top. So in other words, stacking of items is fine, stacking of effects... no.

[Arch0n]

Thank you very much for your responses, Jason.

We are allowing Sorcerer's Armor to be invested in items, yes. We are using generic (whole body) armor protection with random armor (similar to Elric!).

It sounds like to date I've been playing it correctly, as I've treated Sorcerer's Armor as a sort of "force field" that applies to the character, regardless of the source, and that doesn't stack higher than rank 4.