Armour Mechanics

Armour protection is calculated from several champion fields and equipment objects. It is not a single value copied from the body-armour object. The SPS 439 combat routine first calculates an effective armour value, then uses that value when reducing physical damage.

The rules below describe the Amiga SPS 439 implementation. Object numbers are hexadecimal and refer to the SPS 439 object table.

Effective armour

Calculate_CharacterArmourLevel combines the following values:

• the champion's stored Armour Level at stats byte $0B;
• the currently worn spell at stats byte $11;
• body armour and shield objects in pocket bytes $02 and $03;
• gloves at stats byte $12;
• the seven-entry shield lookup table.

The calculation can be written as follows. All values are unsigned bytes and the divisions in this page discard the remainder.

worn_spell_type  = stats[$11] & $07
worn_spell_power = stats[$11] >> 3

if worn_spell_type == 0:
    armour = min(stats[$0B], worn_spell_power)
else:
    armour = 0

if body_armour != 0:
    body_bonus = 3 + 2 * (body_armour - $1B)
    armour = max(armour, body_bonus)

if gloves != 0:
    armour += gloves - $2B

if shield is in $24-$2A:
    armour += shield_bonus[shield - $24]

The zero worn-spell type is the Armour spell encoding. With no Armour spell active, its power is zero, so the first step contributes zero and the stored Armour Level is not used as an additional value after body armour is applied. An active non-Armour worn spell also makes the spell contribution zero.

The body-armour comparison uses max, not addition: the selected body armour replaces a lower stored/spell armour value. Gloves and shields are then added on top. The resulting value is the effective armour passed to the physical attack routine.

Body armour

The valid body-armour objects are $1B-$23. Their protection is derived from object number rather than from a separate body-armour table.

Object	Name	Body contribution
$1B	Leather Armour	3
$1C	Chain Mail	5
$1D	Plate Mail	7
$1E	Mithril Chain	9
$1F	Mithril Plate	11
$20	Adamant Chain	13
$21	Adamant Plate	15
$22	Crystal Chain	17
$23	Crystal Plate	19

The formula is 3 + 2 × (object - $1B). Consequently, higher-ranked body armour does not stack with the champion's stored Armour Level or Armour spell; it supplies the larger of those values at the body-armour step.

Gloves

Gloves are held in the champion stats record at byte $12. The five valid glove objects add the following values:

Object	Name	Armour contribution
$2B	Chaos Gloves	0
$2C	Battle Gloves	1
$2D	Mithril Gloves	2
$2E	Adamant Gloves	3
$2F	Crystal Gloves	4

The contribution is object - $2B, so Chaos Gloves have no normal armour bonus. They still have a separate weapon interaction: they enable the full Ace of Swords combat record. See Fighting mechanics.

Shields

The shield object is stored in pocket byte $03. Objects $24-$2A are indexed into Shield_ArmourBonuses:

Object	Name	Armour contribution
$24	Leather Shield	1
$25	Buckler	2
$26	Rune Shield	4
$27	Large Shield	3
$28	Moon Shield	4
$29	Dragon Scale Shield	5
$2A	War Shield	7

The extracted SPS 439 lookup is:

01 02 04 03 04 05 07 00

Only the first seven bytes are indexed by the combat routine. The final zero is retained because the extracted resource represents the complete original eight-byte source block; it is not an eighth shield bonus.

The equipment checks separately restrict large shields to the professions that can use them. If those checks are bypassed, the armour calculation still recognises object $27 as a shield and applies its table value. Rendering an item and permitting the equipment combination are therefore separate rules.

Champion and extracted data layout

The standard SPS 439 champion block contains sixteen records of $20 bytes. The fields relevant to armour are:

Record field	Meaning
$0B	Stored Armour Level used as the initial Armour-spell fallback
$11	Worn-spell byte: low three bits are the spell type, upper five bits are power
$12	Worn gloves object

Each champion pocket record contains $10 bytes. The relevant equipment positions are:

Pocket field	Meaning
$02	Body armour object
$03	Shield object

For SPS 439, the extracted resources are:

Resource	Binary file offset	Size	Record/layout
data/champions.stats	$E7A6	$200	16 × $20-byte champion records
data/champions.pockets	$E9A6	$100	16 × $10-byte pocket records
data/Shield_ArmourBonuses.stats	$5FF6	8	Seven indexed shield values plus retained source byte

Offsets above are file offsets in the SPS 439 executable, not Amiga runtime addresses. The resource names are those used by the ReSource extraction.

Armour and physical damage

Effective armour is not added to the defender's opposed combat score. It is carried separately by Prepare_AttackAndDefenceScores and subtracted after a physical attack has produced its hit-quality value.

Let A be effective armour and Q be the hit-quality value after the opposed random rolls. The armour reduction is:

reduction = floor(A / 2)

if A is odd and (Q & $0F) >= $08:
    reduction += 1

The odd-armour rule means that an odd point of armour is conditional rather than always effective. The low nibble of the hit-quality value determines whether that extra point is applied. Armour reduction occurs before the quality multiplier.

For the normal champion physical path, damage before armour and hit-quality multipliers is described in Fighting mechanics. After the armour reduction, the hit-quality ranges are:

Hit quality Q	Damage multiplier
$00-$09	×4
$0A-$18	×3
$19-$27	×2
$28-$40	×1

The routine caps the opposed result at $40. If armour reduces the damage to zero or below, the attack records no damage and the quality multiplier is not applied.

This ordering matters. For example, a raw damage value of 9 against effective armour 7 has an armour reduction of 3, or 4 when the odd-armour condition is met. The remaining damage is then multiplied according to hit quality; armour does not simply divide the final multiplied result.

Source labels and related tables

The relevant SPS 439 source labels are:

• Calculate_CharacterArmourLevel — builds the effective armour value;
• Shield_ArmourBonuses — the seven-entry shield contribution lookup;
• Prepare_AttackAndDefenceScores — keeps effective armour separate from the opposed defender score;
• Resolve_PhysicalAttack — applies armour reduction and hit-quality damage multipliers;
• Weapon_CombatModifiers — the independent four-byte weapon table used to build raw physical damage and attack/defence bonuses.

The visible character status value is not the effective armour value itself. The status routine displays 10 - effective_armour as a signed value, so a high effective armour can appear as a negative displayed adjustment. This is only a presentation convention; combat uses the positive effective armour value described above.

Rendering data is separate

These extracted resources affect how worn character components are drawn, not the protection calculation:

Resource	Binary file offset	Size	Purpose
data/Character_WornArmour_RenderOverrides.lookup	$A40E	9	Worn-armour rendering overrides
data/characters-armour-material.palette	$A81E	4	Armour-material palette selections

Changing a rendering override or palette does not change effective armour. Likewise, changing an object's protection contribution does not by itself change its visible component unless the rendering data is also changed.