Shattered Kingdoms

If you are a class/race with toughness, wearing armor with a total AC low enough that toughness precedes it, would you receive AC granted from magical protection. What I mean to say is, does the AC from MP just raise the AC of your armor or your overall AC (if that makes any sense)?

On the same note, if your AC would be low enough for toughness to kick in normally, and then you were to have MP added to it, would it raise the armor value, and if this raised the AC high enough to surpass your toughness, would this override your toughness skill?

Toughness only applies if the armor value (including magic) is less.

I think toughness is related to the AC of your armor in some manner, for my griffon shaman would deflect far more blows off its hide when wearing a shield. I don't know how it exactly works besides that. The only thing I could think of is that the natural fur hide a griffon has for armor was affected when adding the AC from the shield making my griffon deflect more blows. Not to mention I did have SA up all the time, so I don't know if it played any roll in that as well.

My question I guess is what is the shield affecting, is it the griffons natural armor, or is toughness playing a roll in it as well?

Shields just add AC to whatever AC your char has(from armor or toughness). It's bonus AC and as it is discussed in other forums about 1/2 handed weapons, shield AC bonus is really nice to have(and kinda overpowered).

My centaur barbarian when he was levelling in CoH, with a full suit of tanso armor, he would deflect like 60% of the punches there when wearing a shield(in some slots hits were deflected from toughness roll/fur hide). Without a shield he barely deflected 5-6% of punches.