Magic Swords & Armor

[peelseel2]

Am I understanding this correctly?

All Magic swords are intelligent, have egos, and alignments?  They only add to the to hit, except in special circumstances they add damage?

Magic Armor subtracts from the hit dice of the opponent (Thus making them strike as a lower level)?  Not the to-hit roll?

[waysoftheearth]

That is a reasonable interpretation of what is written, yes.

However, we need to remember that the 3LBBs do not describe one, unified set of combat rules. Instead, there are rules from/for normal combat, and other rules from/for fantastic combat. Each type of combat (normal or fantastic) has different mechanics.

In normal combat, involving any normal types (regular men, dwarfs, orcs, etc.), all attacks are equivalent (i.e., all figures involved always attack "as a man") so it is about how many normal attacks each figure has. A hero attacks as 4 men, a giant attacks as 8 men, and so on. In normal combat, a magic sword adds one normal attack, and magic armor conversely subtracts one normal attack.

In fantastic combat, involving heroes and dragons (for example), attacks are not all equal. Instead, hit probability and damage can be improved for more powerful figures, so it's about how good each individual figure's hit probability and damage output is. In fantastic combat, a magic sword adds to hit probability (and sometimes, depending on the target, to damage), while magic armor instead reduces hit probability.

Assuming we believe any of that, then the premise of the OP appears to be comparing how magic swords function in fantastic combat with how magic armor functions in normal combat. This would never really happen, because combat is always either normal or it is fantastic, but not both at once.