[Cosmos] Armor - Etlas Photon Armor

The best in lightweight defense from Etlas Industries, this reactive photon armor has saved lives in more than 32 percent of unexpected fatal situations.

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Etlas Photon Armor
Armor (any), technomancy, rare (requires attunement)

Whenever you take damage from an external effect, such as an attack, a magical explosion, a dragon’s breath weapon, or a trap, you can activate this armor to reduce the damage taken by up to 10 (no action required). Once used, this property of the armor can’t be used again for the next 10 minutes while it recharges.

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Photon Armor Mk. 2 (Very Rare Variant). The very rare version of this armor also grants a +1 bonus to AC.

Photon Armor Mk. X (Legendary Variant). The legendary version of this armor also grants a +1 bonus to AC, and can reduce damage taken by up to 15 instead of 10.

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

This armor is a reprint (and revision) of an unillustrated item from the Cosmos Theme 2. The armor originally deflected slightly more damage and scaled by damage deflected as its rarity increased, and its recharge time was 1 minute instead of 10. Now, the armor deflects 10 damage every 10 minutes.

Its utility will completely depends on how your game is run. At the rare level, you should be facing monsters that can deal more than 10 damage in one hit, so you'll get the maximum utility out of it. If the armor only deflects damage in combat, you'll see ~30-50 less damage per adventuring day assuming ~3-5 combats. (Reminder that 10 damage is ~2d10 or 3d6).

If your games sees damage from traps and environment, you'll also get some extra use out of it, maybe 1-2 uses.

On average, this armor will deflect ~55 damage per day, which is about 2x the healing you'd get from a Rare consumable (potion of superior healing). This seems about right.

For the Very Rare and Legendary versions, instead of increasing the damage mitigated, I went with added AC because that provides a more noticeable, persistent benefit without incurring too many opportunity costs.

While drawing the armor, I ended up doing 3 deflector shield designs (because I wasn't sure what looked best), so I guess now there is one version of each art for each rarity variant.