[Gulnyr]

The Frodo example is an excellent "real life" fluff-text conversion of the mechanics of damage reduction. Frodo's low level, but wearing this fancy-pants armor. The spear would normally have killed him (or anyone, probably - spear through the chest, ouch. Even King Arthur died that way), but the damage was reduced so that he was only knocked out (zero hit points) and was able to recover.