Hi CabbageFoot
This post was indeed super ancient. After I posted it before RoboB0b recoded how combat (and armour, specifically) worked. The Land Of Claymores saga happened back when the "hitpoints" of the armour was not pooled, but you had 3 different types of hp - one vs slashing, one vs piercing and the last vs. blunt. This caused the claymore that did have 2 damage types at the same time to divide its damage potential into two pools, being actually the worst thing since the invention of a shit sandwich. Twohanded got a lot better, but the game had a weird balance in the end (unmodded) in which the armour had the brunt of the health, and the gnome beneath it was basically squish. To elaborate: Gnome skin, flesh and bone together was about 100 hp with very low block (if anything at all), steel was 9k or something. A steel weapon did about 700 damage. This means that everytime the armour broke, the gnome was basically dead. Armour blocked all the damage until it broke, but let status effects through sometimes, wich caused the attacked to be knocked prone or loose its breath etc.
If I would revive it, i'd buff gnome resilience by factor 5 and lower the scaling of the weapons (so they can take a hit naked), while lowering the scaling of armour too. Combat would again be bloody (and unrealistic. I do care little for that). Unfortunaly thats about all you can mod, because how combat/armour actually works is pretty hardcoded.