I am not sure how to read Taking Hits in conflicts (p. 69).
Assuming four heroes have a helmet, leather armor and each 2 hit points. Now Player A is hit with 8 disposition damage froma successful attack.
He uses his helmet to reduce damage to 7 points.
He rolls for leather armor and succeeds: 6 points of damage left.
Player A is taken out 0 hp left and we have 4 excess points to distribute by the conflict captain.
Now there are some possibilities:
4a. Player B takes 4 damage and this counts as another hit allowing armor to protect him again. Maybe he does not succeed with his leather armor and uses only his helmet he will be taken out and 1 excess point will hit Player C.
4b. The conflict captain decides that Player B and C both take 2 damage and both may defend with armor against it.
4c. The conflict captain decides that Player B and C both take 2 damage and are out of the conflict as they are not allowed a second armor check.
I tend to 4a and would of course allow it to work on armored monsters too! So excess points on monster sides could be reduced too with their armor.
4b must be wrong.
I can see TB designed to work with 4c. It would weaken masses of monsters vs. one big monster as they can not multi-reduce their damage by applying armor many times.
Another question that’s been answered before, and once again I can’t find the quote I blame thread names, too many are called “Some Questions” or something like that
However, “Armor” (p. 37) states that armor “reduces an attacker’s successful or tied Attack or Feint action by -1s”. This would mean that only the armor of the first target applies. The test of target vs attacker determines the margin of success. If additional targets could change the MoS (i.e., the outcome of the test) again each time damage spills over, that could lead to some funny results.
My reading is that armor does not protect additional targets against spill-over damage. But, who knows, sometimes I tend to overanalyze things.
I like to think of that moment as when you see a party member get taken down and go “OH #&@@~!” and panic. Which leaves everybody open to getting taken out.
Yeah, basically… sorta like this. (The game has already been very frequently compared to Torchbearer, and for good reason! They both do a great job of tapping into that dungeon-delving atmosphere.)
The danger is quite real in Basic D&D, of course, if characters are arranged in a ranked combat formation (as they should be). Once there’s a breach in the front rank, suddenly your supporting ranks are vulnerable to whoever manages to move into the gap (initiative!), so now the front rank has to split its attention while lacking the firepower from further back, and then everything can go to hell very quickly.
(Also, what is it with this game? There’s only some concept art, and yet everybody is going nuts …)
I blame thread names, too many are called “Some Questions” or something like that 
