I have a mixture of different types of armour including Dwemer, Iron and Imperial Steel and the Masque of Clavicus Vile. However I cannot make sense of the armour number below the picture of my character. If I euip all of it, my rating is 20 whereas if I equip JUST the masque, it is 22. It makes no sense that my character is best armoured running around wearing nothing but a pair of leopard print y-fronts and a horned mask. Can anyone give any advice as to how this stupid number works? Ta

Here's what UESP says on armor rating:

Thank you, although I saw that, (should've mentioned it!) I still don't understand why my armour rating starts at 23 with the masque but drops to 22 when I add Dwemer Greaves on, for example. If I add on other heavy armour it can drop to 20.... :wacko:

Actually, when he is wearing nothing the rating is 13, put on the greaves it goes down to 12. I'm guessing it has something to to do with my unarmoured/ heavy armour skill... :banghead:

What's your unarmored level? What's your heavy/medium/light armor levels?

^ This. It has to do with your skill with those different armor classes. I'm not sure exactly how it works if you combine different
types of armor ( light, medium, heavy ) but I would imagine the formula makes it less effective to mix and match than it does
to keep all your armor of one type. But don't forget, even if it doesn't penalize you for mixing and matching, unless your skill
with each type of armor is 100 some of those armors won't be as effective as it says they are. Does that make sense?

For example, it might say a piece of armor has a rating of 100, but if my skill with that type is 10, I might only get 30 AP
for that piece added to the equation?

Actually, I don't think there's a penalty for combining different armor types. I could be wrong on that.

I do think, however, there's a massive penalty for wearing half a set of armor and half not, especially if your unarmored is high and armor skills are low.

Well even if there isn't a penalty for mixing and matching, it's less effective to wear half light and half heavy armor when your light skill is say 20 and your heavy skill
is 100 than it would be to wear all heavy, so I don't see why a developed character would do so. But that's JMO.

As a rule you shouldn't mix and match, that is generally only something you must do when you are too poor to afford a full set of one thing.

Oups, my bad. I misunderstood what you were saying. In that case, your unarmored skill simply seems to be more efficient than that armor skill.

Thanks for the replies everyone, my unarmoured skill is 48 and my heavy armour is 50. It is only heavy armour that I use, not medium or light - i don't believe that effects my problem! I only mix and match different types of heavy armour.