What a player saw
Nothing on the screen tells you. The armoury lists each armour with its points and prices it by them. Clothing, worth 1 point, costs 1 gold, Plate Mail, worth 10, costs 981, and God Armour 10126. The game readies the highest-valued armour a hero can wear. Everything says more armour is better. In a fight, the heavier it is, the more often your hero is hit, and the blows hurt just as much.
Why
At the start of every fight the game works out, once, how hard each hero is to hit. That number, his defence, is half his shield's value, plus twice his Dexterity, plus a quarter of his Parry skill, and then minus five for every point of armour he wears. Plate Mail costs him 45 points of defence against Clothing.
And the armour's own value, the thing you would expect to soak up blows, is used in only one place in the whole program, a monster's breath, where each hero takes the breath's damage minus his armour. Swords, claws and spells all do full damage whatever he wears. Only against the six monsters that breathe, the Baby Dragon, Small Dragon, Dragon, Dragon King, Ancient Beast and Boo Boo Kitty, does armour pay off.
Take one hero with a Small Shield, Dexterity 15 and Parry 40. His defence is 37 in Clothing and -8 in Plate Mail. A monster with an Attack of 50 lands a blow on him 13% of the time in Clothing and 58% of the time in Plate Mail, and a hit of 6 takes 6 hit points either way.
Testing it in the 1987 game
I wanted to see it in the game itself, so in the emulator I gave six heroes the same numbers, put three in Clothing and three in Plate Mail, set them all to Parry with 999 hit points, and let three Undead Gnomes swing at them for about 90 rounds. The game's own defence values came out at 37 and -8, as predicted.
| Armour | Defence | Blows | Hits | Hit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clothing | 37 | 134 | 61 | 46% |
| Plate Mail | -8 | 142 | 123 | 87% |
Every hit did 1 to 9 points in either armour, and the heroes in Plate Mail took the full 9 twelve times.
What it was meant to do
My fix is my own design, modelled on the breath, not a guess at what the authors' numbers would have been.
In my recreation
My recreation plays the game exactly as it shipped in 1987 unless you ask for a fix. This one is listed as Armour stops no damage.
In 1987
In 1987 armour only makes a hero easier to hit and soaks nothing but breath, so heavy armour is a handicap.
With the fix
Worn armour also takes some damage off each monster blow (half its armour value, at least 1 damage gets through).
It is one of my fixes, so a game disk made With Justin's fixes has it.
When you make a game disk, the game asks which rules it plays: The 1987 original, With Justin's fixes, or Choose my own. To change a disk later, pick Set fixes on disk on the list of disks.