Armor type - any actual difference in protection?

[veevoir]

I can't find good info on this - does armor type count for anything except the rock-paper-scissors system of weapons vs specific armor type? Does heavier armor = less damage or not? (Is plate armor giving actually more protection against non-axe weapons than cloth against non-spears? )

[DiceWrangler]

In general,

Plate armor has high physical defense and low magical defense.
Leather armor has medium defense for both types (physical and magical)
Cloth armor has low physical defense and high magical defense.

You can see the specific defense numbers when you select a piece of armor. Note that some armor, skills and buffs can affect the actual numbers when defending from a specific attack.

I have not seen any details on how the (physical) weapon type interacts with the armor type other than the recommended rock-paper-scissors match-ups but, in practice, this seems to be a minor modifier so I do not worry about too much.

The most important thing is to soften-up the target prior to engaging in melee so you can kill or disable the unit before it can counterattack. Diagonal attacks with spears, however, may not trigger a counterattack depending on the target's weapon type and skills.

[LukanGamer]

the weapon modifer is for sure a thing also as far as I am aware.

ie like bow(+spear) for sure seem to do more damage too cloth and less too plate but Axe does well vs plate though I don't think sword is far off except way later with levels and skills equipped which should also be kept very heavy in mind both skills+weapon skills+character skills like leather destroyer or w/e it called

[Trolleur_Durden]

From my experience, there's no inherent MALUS of using a weapon type against a specific armor type. For example, swords are good against leather and average against everything else. Therefore, I've had a lot of success (finished the game on hard/maniac) by ditching cloth armor entirely besides farming the 8 levels needed for some master classes prerequisites, and replacing them with plate armor. Plate armor is only weak against axes, and realistically speaking, your mages and archers will almost never be threatened by axe wielders. Whereas enemy archers, especially later in the game where they have a lot of range, will definitely 2-shot all your mages if you keep them in cloth.