Plate is a promise you make to the whole party: I will be slow, and I will be standing.
What Armor Does
Armor sizes your Guard — the structural middle layer of your defenses. It does not make you harder to hit (that’s Defense, from Grace); it makes hits cost the enemy more progress. Guard erodes and never self-repairs: in combat only Patch (2 points, on yourself or an ally) and Second Wind (2, on yourself) restore it, out of combat repairs cost time against the Clock, and a proper rest restores it fully.
The Starter Rack
Numbers are first-pass and tunable; the shapes are locked.
| Armor | Guard | The cost |
|---|---|---|
| Rags | 0 | Nothing to lose |
| Padded leather | 2 | — |
| Brigandine | 4 | Bane on staying Hidden — it creaks |
| Plate | 7 | Bane on Grace rolls and on staying Hidden — no sneaking in plate |
Off-hand
| Item | Guard | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shield | +2 | Occupies the hand; unlocks the Warden’s Bulwark |
| Buckler | +1 | Leaves the hand mostly free; grants a lesser brace |
Two-handed weapons refuse a shield — the maul takes both hands or none.
The Two Poles
| Build | Shape | Recovery story |
|---|---|---|
| The Anvil (plate, shield) | Big Guard pool | Erodes slowly, repairs never — a fortress that crumbles by inches |
| The Wasp (light armor, high Grace) | Small Guard, big Wind | Wind snaps back every activation if you keep avoiding hits |
Both are real tanks — sourced and recovered differently.
Armor Taxes the Crawl
The penalties above are the point: heavy armor costs you in exploration — noise, stealth, and agility — which ties gear choice to what the contract wants: a wall, or a ghost. Gear is a mission decision, not just a combat one. And every point of Guard feeds your Power Value, so armoring up deals the party a correspondingly harder contract.