Elemental Armor

Wait a second. If she's blind, why does she need the eye slot?

Using Elemental Powers to create Instant Armor.

If it shows up in video games, expect Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors to be in full play. Usually requires a specific damage type to break through, with all else doing only Scratch Damage to it if not being ignored outright - a common trait of Broken Armor Boss Battle. Other times it will act as Damage Reduction to the character themself until hit with the countering element.

Wreathed in Flames is a Sub-Trope. Elemental Barrier and Material Mimicry are Sister Tropes. See also Elemental Weapon and Elemental Punch.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Noelle Silva from Black Clover gains the spell Valkyrie Armor, which compresses her mana to form a water armor that lets her control the mana around her to move through the air. She later gains a Valkyrie Armor – Mermaid Form that increases her power underwater and a stronger Spirit Dive: Saint Valkyrie Armor through the power of the water spirit Undine.
• Naruto:
  • Gaara usually covers himself with sand armor that looks like his own skin when his sand shield is not enough. He can also channel Shukaku and assume its form. Funnily enough the 'armor' aspect is negated in a full channeling as he has to remain exposed on Shukaku's forehead.
  • Kakuzu also had an Earth Release technique which turns his skin as hard as steel and also greatly increased his physical strength.
  • The Third and Fourth Raikage can use lightning aura to create lightning shields, among other things.
• In YuYu Hakusho, there is Risho, the demon ninja with power over rock that Kuwabara fought in the Dark Tournament. His main attack was to create a rock armor then tackle his opponent.
  • And for the armor-out-of-thin-air example, we have Sensui, who can use his Holy Light Energy to create two special sets of armor.
• Toriko:
  • Zebra can create "sound armor" around a person to protect them from harm.
  • Coco can create "poison armor" for himself, complete with a sword.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Gajeel Redfox has the ability to instantly transform his skin into magic iron for the aptly named Iron Dragon Scales, which he boasts is stronger than normal iron to boot. He eventually upgraded his armor to steel by absorbing a large quantity of carbon into his iron and letting it react. This coincides with Extra-ore-dinary as well.
  • Erigor, the Arc Villain of the Lullaby arc, had the ability to coat himself in armor made of wind called Storm Mail as his ace-in-the-hole. Natsu is only able to beat him by throwing so much fire around the heat strips the wind armor away.
  • Spriggan 12 Invel Yura's ultimate technique, True Ice Kamui, coats his body in a fancy suit of armor that he boasts freezes everything, even those who would be otherwise immune to the cold. He's proven right, as even Gray can't touch him and as shown when Gray manages to manipulate the ice making up the armor itself, not even Invel himself is immune to it.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Ghiaccio's Stand, White Album, takes the form of an icy bodysuit with cat ears and ice skates.
• My Hero Academia
  • Tetsutetsu's Quirk allows him to turn his body into steel. He needs to take in iron supplements in order to replenish himself.
  • Mina Ashido eventually learns how to do this with her Quirk, creating a Blob Monster covering around her body that melts anything that touches it.
• An infamous Deus ex Machina from Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire had Ash command Pikachu to fire a Thunderbolt into some clouds while riding Swellow. The blast returned as a solid column of lightning, which somehow gave Pikachu and Swellow a golden coating apparently made of electricity. This "thunder armor" drastically increased their speed and attack power, allowing Ash to pull off a complete turn around from a losing battle against Tate and Liza. Gets lampshaded in the dub when Liza says that she can't believe that worked.

Comic Books

• X-Men:
  • Iceman could create a coating of ice armor on his body.
  • Magneto's suit works like this in some adaptations - Though it sure looks manufactured rather than improvised, he can form one from whatever metal is available. At one point when He's Just Hiding the base where he was supposed to have died is found and his suit is still there - upright despite being empty and (judging by the neck line) about half an inch thick.
• A minor Great Lakes Avengers character is named Debris, and she can control junk to create armor in the form of a giant junk monster around herself.

Literature

• In Jim Butcher's Codex Alera novel series, highly skilled metalcrafters can go full on Chrome Champion, hardening their skin and clothes into nearly indestructible steel armor.
• Super Powereds has several examples:
  • Michael Clark is An Ice Person, who can form an ice shield around his body. While ice is hardly a strong defense, he's able to continuously reinforce it with more ice as it's damaged or melted. He later learns to leave the joint area more cracked than the other areas to avoid reducing his mobility. Unfortunately for him, the ice only helps to conduct Vince's Shock and Awe blast.
  • Thomas Castillo can project and control some kind of orange energy from his hands. He learns to be able to shape it into armor for himself. Then Vince uses his Energy Absorption powers to drain him completely, leaving Thomas unable to perform in combat effectively until he learns to cope with the fear.
  • Angela Desoto has Hard Light powers and can manifest an armor of light around herself. She uses it to trick Chad during their match, making him think she's still inside the armor, when, in fact, the armor is empty.
  • Stella Hawkins is a Chrome Champion, capable of turning her skin into steel.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons codified the stoneskin and ironskin spells. The games also include the spell fireshield, which doesn't so much protect as it does exact pain on anyone who strikes the person "protected" by it.
• Flaming Armor and Lightning Armor from GURPS: Magic.
• Forgotten Realms has spell "Rainbow Shield" allowing to use any attack spell this way (Fireball to more or less fire shield, Lightning bolt to lightning shield, etc).
• Exalted: Some Charms and Martial Arts (especially Dragon-Blooded ones) can create them (Fire-Aspects are appropriately Wreathed in Flames). Solar Exalted can create shiny awesome armor made of sunlight, while Abyssal ones can create similar armor made of darkness.
• Magic: The Gathering has a few examples, notably Armor of Thorns◊ from the Mirage expansion.
• Changeling: The Lost has the Contract of Elements, which has a clause (read: sub-power) allowing the changeling to wreath themselves in an armor of whatever element he bought the Contract in. Not only does it protect against attacks, it damages anyone who tries to touch him.
• Pathfinder kineticists have a defensive ability based on their primary element: aerokineticists surround themselves with a whirlwind to protect from ranged attacks, geokineticists get a form of stoneskin, pyrokineticists are Wreathed in Flames, etc.

Video Games

• DC Universe Online: Using some ice powers five times in a row generates ice armor.
• Baldur's Gate: stone skin and iron skins spells.
• Genshin Impact: Some characters have as an elemental skill or burst that creates a shield of their element, with those that make Geo shields like Zhongli or Noelle being the best for dealing with other elements, especially in that they might also trigger a Crystalize reaction which makes an additional shield against the element that Geo reacted to.
• Elementalists in Guild Wars can do this - a well designed, earth-oriented elementalist averts Squishy Wizard big time.
• Diablo II had three Frozen Armor spells, which allowed to create an ice armor with several extra effects.
  • Similarly, Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor that absorb physical and elemental damage respectively.
• Dragon Age
  • Dragon Age: Origins and its sequel both feature a "Rock Armor" spell to do this.
  • The third game gives mages Ice Armor instead, and gives rogues the new Tempest specialisation that involves doing this with potions of fire, ice or lightning.
• zOMG!: the Rock Armor ring
• Kratos in God of War has Wrath of the Gods, which grants him a full set of Greek armor made of lightning.
• There are a bunch of powersets in City of Heroes which allow for elemental armors, including Stone, Fire and Ice, as well as the more exotic (Dark, Energy and Electricity). Each powerset has multiple types of armor with different effects; for example, Frozen Armor protects against physical damage, Glacial Armor protects against energy, and Wet Ice helps against status effects. In the old days, you could only have one active at a time; that quickly changed.
• "Stone skin" and "Metal skin" spells in Heroes of Might and Magic.
• A third BioWare example. Jedi Shadow tanks in Star Wars: The Old Republic have "Kinetic Ward" which manifests as a cluster of rocks surrounding them and absorbing incoming damage.
• Sub-Zero's Unbreakable variation in Mortal Kombat X gives him the ability to create a layer of ice armor around him, eliminating chip damage while active.
• Warcraft III:
  • Frost Armor gives increased armor and slows melee attackers.
  • Lightning Shield doesn't increase armor, but it does damage all units nearby, be they friend or foe (and can be cast on friend or foe).
  • Inner Fire increases armor and damage dealt.
• Zigfrak: Based on the five main damage types respectively: Kinetic, Thermal, Electro, Nuclear, and Strange.
• In Dungeon Crawl, Ozocubo's Armor is a spell that temporarily encases the caster in ice, increasing armor class but also freezing the caster in place so that it is impossible to flee without losing the AC boost.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Earthbenders can cover part or all of their bodies with rock (or crystal, if there's enough of it around), as Toph demonstrates in the page picture. (According to the art book, the hole was meant to go over her mouth. Being placed as an eyehole, despite Toph being blind, was an animation error.) She takes this even further by doing it with metal in "Sozin's Comet". Metalbending was supposedly impossible, even for the best Earthbenders. Toph only achieved it in late season two through an extension of her Disability Superpower.
• Invincible (2021): The mob enforcer Titan can cover himself in a protective layer of stone, gaining Super-Strength and Super-Toughness in the process.
• Inverted in The Legend of Korra, when Toph's daughter Suyin turns her metal armor into a projectile to wrap around P'li's head just as she's firing off a combustion beam. The dramatically effective results are not shown.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Frosta can use her Fractal Flake connection to form an armor out of ice.

---