My understanding of how clothing protection against damage functions is as such:
The location of the damage is taken (to take your example, the torso)
Then the percentage coverage of each clothing item covering that location is rolled (ie 90% coverage will, on average, block 90% of incoming attacks on the designated locations)
Then every item that did block the attack will have the it’s values added together.
So that is to say that your example has an overall torso protection reaching as high as 72/96, but the amount that you are protected from each hit is a weighted random discrete variable determined by the coverage and protection values of each piece of armour.
