1: Yes.Ok, so you've given us an answer here. Based on the way you structured your answer, combat involves these things:
1. An attack roll.
2. A defense roll.
3. A location hit roll.
4. An armor soak roll.
5. A damage roll.
6. Want to spend a Hero point?
2: Yes.
3: No. (That's taken care of in the attack roll...if you hit, you hit him in the leg or whatever)
4&5 are linked. (there's no seperate "armor save" and "toughness" save.)
6: Yes.
This is something I'm not sure about, and will be influenced by what combat options you take (I did say that there's a reason to use an all out attack, yes?)Considering you have a bunch of other defense type rolls coming after this one, I'd assume you want to wallop people more often than 1 in 4 swings. That might be a factor of your armor as well, it makes you less likely to make a defense (parry/dodge) roll.
Head, upper torso, arms, lower torso, legs. Hands or feet I am not sure about. Default shot goes to either upper or lower torso (I'm not sure how to handle this).How distinct do you want the location hit roll? Do you just want chest, arms, legs, and head? Do you want to separate out hands and feet? Upper torso and lower torso?
An axe wielded by a person with Strength 5 (and I'm making up numbers) is TN (Test Number) 15 to soak. Roll armor's benefits plus your benefits from being tougher than average (or penalties for being frailer). Success and you soak. Failure by a certain amount - injury, then worse injury, then worse, (details to be hammered out).Do you want a limit to how much damage armor can soak? In the sense that if someone gets a mighty hit in for 10 damage, the armor will soak a max of 5 or 8 or whatever? I'm getting ahead of myself, you apparently want the damage roll to come after the armor determines how much it will soak, correct?
See above.With the damage roll, how much damage equals a serious injury?
Somewhere between 0.1% and 60%.In other words, if by some chance we stumble apon the perfect ruleset to represent the game you have envisioned, what would the chances be.
I want to hammer out how effective mail is, how effective defenses are, etc.
Details first, big picture later. If the details don't produce the desired picture, we can determine that when we see how they add up.
So when we get to berserkers, how effective berserkers are is relevant. When we're not even usre how effective standard is, or what standard is, answering if a berserker is twice as good isn't very helpful.