Protection: armour, body zones and shields

What protection is, how it changes from one part of the body to another, how shields add to it, and what can bypass it or break it.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake7 min read

Protection is what stands between a landed blow and the unit’s hit points. It comes from armour, from a creature’s own hide, or from both. This page explains how it is used when a blow lands: which body part is hit, which protection value applies there, what a shield adds, and the few ways a blow can get around it. How the blow reached the target in the first place, the attack roll against the defence roll, is on the combat page.

All figures here are the ones the game’s manual states. We have not re-measured them, so this page reports what Illwinter says the rules are.

What protection does

When a blow lands, two numbers are set against each other. The attacker’s damage roll is strength plus weapon damage plus a DRN. The defender’s protection roll is the protection value plus a DRN. If damage is higher, the gap is lost as hit points. If protection is level or higher, the blow does nothing. This means high protection never makes a unit unhittable: it makes each landed hit less likely to hurt. And because a tie goes to the defender, the attacker has to win outright.

A unit has no single protection figure. According to the manual the figure differs from one body part to another, depending on what is worn or on the creature’s own hide, and the separate values appear when you click Protection on the unit’s card.

Where a blow lands

The game uses anatomical hit locations. An ordinary attack has a 50 percent chance of striking the torso, 20 percent the arms, 20 percent the legs and 10 percent the head. Each location then uses its own protection value.

Two things shift those odds. An attacker at least two sizes bigger than its target (the mount’s size counts for a rider) is likelier to hit the head and less likely to hit the legs: 20 percent for the head and 10 for the legs. And an attacker can only strike a part it can reach. For a head hit, its size plus its weapon’s length must equal the target’s size; the torso needs one less, and the arms two less. In the manual’s example a size-3 human with a length-1 mace can reach only the legs of a size-7 creature.

A few creatures hold their heads lower than their size would suggest. That makes the head easier to reach, though not more likely to be the part struck. Reaching anything above the legs is two steps simpler on lizards and dragons, and one step simpler on most four-legged animals such as wolves and elephants. Other creatures are missing whole locations, and an attack simply cannot land there. Dragons have no arms to hit, and a gelatinous cube offers neither limbs nor a head.

The manual states the reach requirement as an equality. It does not say whether a longer reach also works, so this page repeats the rule as written.

Armour is made of pieces

Armour comes as separate pieces, and each lists a value for each body part it covers. A helm lists one for the head. Body armour such as a hauberk or a breastplate lists values for the torso, the arms and the legs. The protection used for a hit is the unit’s listed protection for the part that was struck. For a head hit the manual says the helm’s protection is used in place of the main protection value.

Our own measured test on how body armour and a helm combine at the head is on the combat page and in the research article does body armour protect the head. The manual itself says only that a helm’s value is used for the head.

Shields

A shield can add to protection, but only on a shield hit. A shield has a parry value, which counts toward the defender’s defence. If an attack beats the defence roll but would not have beaten it with the parry included, it is a shield hit, and the shield’s own protection value is added to the protection roll. The blow is assumed to have struck the shield, or glanced off it.

Head hits use both pieces. The helm’s figure stands in for the main protection value, and when the blow was a shield hit the shield’s figure is still added, because the manual imagines the blow skidding off the shield and into the head. For the clean hit against shield hit worked example, see the combat page.

Damage types and protection

The kind of physical damage changes the calculation. A piercing weapon reduces the target’s protection by 15 percent before the comparison, and the armour-piercing ability reduces it by 50 percent. Used together they give a 65 percent reduction. Slashing and blunt damage act after the protection step. The damage types page lists each.

Armour-defeating hits

A very low protection roll can result in an armour-defeating hit. Such a hit bypasses 25 percent of the protection. Because the roll was already very low, it is likely to produce a serious wound. Whether a low roll counts depends on how tired the target is. The manual states the conditions as a protection roll of a given number:

• A roll of 2 always results in an armour-defeating hit.
• A roll of 3 does so against a target with 50 or more fatigue.
• A roll of 4 does so against a target with 100 or more fatigue.

An immobilised or unconscious unit is treated as carrying 100 fatigue here. The manual sums it up by saying such a hit is very hard to get against a fresh unit that can move. It does not say whether the “roll” in these lines means the dice alone or includes the protection value, and neither does this page; the DRN page shows how seldom the lowest dice totals come up.

Shield destruction

A shield hit can also damage or destroy the shield. Each shield has a resistance and each attack has a break value, and the two are compared.

• Resistance: the shield’s protection figure, with 5 added for a magic shield.
• The attack’s break value is the attack’s damage before any protection is taken off. Slashing attacks add 50 percent to it, and blunt attacks add 25 percent.

A break value of three times the resistance or more damages the shield, and five times or more breaks it. Hitting a shield that is already damaged gives a 25 percent chance of breaking it. A damaged shield gives 20 percent less protection, and a broken one 50 percent less.

A worked example

These numbers are invented. A mundane shield has protection 6, so its resistance is 6. A blow with damage 20 and no weapon bonus has a break value of 20, which is at least 18 (three times 6), so the shield is damaged, but it is below 30 (five times 6), so it is not broken. The same blow from a slashing weapon has a break value of 30, which is five times the resistance, and breaks the shield outright. If the shield had been magic, its resistance would be 11, and the same 20 damage would not even damage it: three times 11 is 33.

After the battle

A damaged magic shield mends itself when the battle ends. A broken magic shield is lost for good, and its owner falls back on an ordinary shield if one was carried. Mundane shields that are damaged or broken get repaired in any province that has enough spare production resources.

What this page does not cover

The manual does not give the protection values of any particular armour; those are in the Inspector tables on the item and unit pages. It does not say how a creature’s natural protection combines with a worn helm at the head, how protection interacts with the resistances, or how the shield’s protection is chosen when a unit carries more than one. Those are left out until a source states them.