Full Leather vs. Reinforced Leather vs. Double Leather

[Blud]

I have a set of 5X double leathers and bought some armor-concealing robes. When I puchased the robes, I put them on and I get a message that reads something like, "You cannot seem to fully conceal your leather armor," or something to that effect. I'm sure the problem is that the robes do not conceal double leather since double leather also covers the neck and head. Someone can correct me on that if I'm wrong.

I am not going to return the robes, as I feel the misunderstanding was on my part for not accounting for the head and neck covering that double leather offers.

My questions is since I'm going to keep the robes, but I don't want any leather to show, what is the difference between full leather, reinforced leather, and double leather from a protection perspective? In other words, do they all protect the same and the only difference is how they show, or does double leather really offer more head and neck protection than reinforced leather, and does reinforced leather offer more leg protection than full leather?

The short point of my question is this: Since the armor is not going to be seen anyway, can I get some full leather or reinforced leather and have the same DS benefit that I am currently getting from my double leathers?

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot for looking at this and posting your input.

[Latrinsorm]

As far as DS goes, you will potentially have marginally higher DS with the fulls than the double due to dodge penalty, but my guess is your character has crap dodge to begin with so it will be balanced by the (also piddly) loss in AvD.

Your Damage Factor will be exactly the same on all parts of the body for each set of armor.

Your Crit Divisor will be different (worse) for "uncovered" areas. Specifically, it will go from 6 (soft leather) to 5 (robes).

[Celephais]

Wear reinforced and get a helm... you'll have the same protection, with slightly lower AvD, and you'll conceal the armor (just not the helm)

[Blud]

I don't think my dodge is that bad, I use a runestaff and it deflects melee blows pretty good and I do have pretty good "luck" at dodging other melee attacks.

So the damage factor is the same no matter what armor I use, but the crit divisor will be higher on my head and neck (and any other part that is not covered with armor)?

If I'm understandin you correctly, I can get reinforced or full leather and not really see a big difference in my DS mechanics?

[Blud]

Thanks for the info.

[Celephais]

I don't think my dodge is that bad...
Physical DS is composed of three (four sorta) elements. It breaks down into Parry DS, Dodge DS, and Block DS. The fourth element being spell bonus.

Parry DS is based on a few stats and the skill of the weapon you are holding, so in your case you generate Parry DS from a runestaff.

Dodge DS is based on a few stats and skill in dodge, using a runestaff I'm going to assume you have zero dodge ranks, potentially some spell phantom ranks (from blur for example). Dodge DS gets penalized by armor and shields, bulkier armor/shields provide more of a penalty, but this is percent based; Full leather providing a 0% penalty and Reinforced/Double providing 2.5/3% (no idea how that percent rounds for Reinforced). Odds are you're getting at best 20DS from dodge so you would see a potential for an additional point of DS going to lighter armor.

Block DS only activates if you have a shield equiped so you are receiving 0 block DS.

These three factors are added together and then spell bonuses are applied to create the actual DS you see in the combat formula. AvD is a hackish form of DS given to Armor, because as you can see armor doesn't come into the formula other than as a penalty to dodge (at least in the "to hit" formula, how much damage is determined and crit are heavily dependant on armor); AvD quite literally changes by a value of one going from Double to Reinforced and again from Reinforced to Full for every weapon type.

Summation: the to hit combat formula with see an effective change in the range of 0-2 DS for someone who doesn't train in dodge skill going from Double to Reinforced or Leather. If you equip a helmet and Reinforced you will see no change in Crit divisors but you will still be affected by the AvD disadvantage of one point.