Forum

Hi!
I am now reading through the rules before our session zero, but I have a question about armor. In particular, as said in the title, is your armor "value" rolled against damage from single/swarm attacks or in this case you simply take the damage (as if you were not wearing any armor) ? Thank you !

Armour has a chance to reduce damage, but this seems to apply to the Duel and Brawl rules. i.e. fights against the living.

Fighting the dead has its own system, and even points out what to do when it happens while you're already in a Brawl or Duel, and suffering a Walker Attack has very specific results. many of which just kill you without doing actual Damage. So I'd say, no, Armour is no protection against the Dead (who, unlike the Living, are trying to eat you) BUT it does still have that nasty Mobility penalty....

As a caveat though - none of our lot are wearing anything that could be considered armour, so the matter hasn't actually come up....

There's a few ways to look at it;
1. in the series, the riot armor protected Glenn no problem as he walked through the horde of zombies through the prison; the common wealth soldiers as well have armor, but it seems to offer no real protection I'm guessing when the plot demands it.

2. I'd go with to some degree what makes sense, or how you can shape the narrative of what makes sense; if someone has fullplate armor then it probably won't make sense for them to be insta-killed by some random walker table.

3. Using #2, you could integrate the armor roll; if the armor fails, maybe the bite/scratch found a chink in the armor (lots of open gaps in the commonwealth and riot armor) or possibly with all of the tearing and grabbing of the zombies, they managed to damage the armor ripping pieces off lowering the protection of said armor until repaired should the character survive or they be scavenged.

If you absolutely have to have armour rules maybe it provides a reroll to the injury table where you have to keep the new reroll effect.

The rules as written does not add any benefit from armor in Swarm attack or Single attack. Changing that rule would change the setting and the game. All NPCs and player characters would start walking around in heavy armor all the time, and going on runs would be less dangerous. I think it would create another type of stories/ setting, but that could, of course, also be fun.