Complete the knight's rather dramatic diary entry.

But for his newly polished fireproof armor, Sir Reginald ______ essentially a piece of burnt toast right now.

The correct answer is would be.

The phrase "But for..." acts as an implied conditional, meaning "If he hadn't had his armor." The phrase "right now" signals a mixed conditional, where a past hypothetical situation has a present hypothetical result. Therefore, we use the present conditional "would be" instead of the past conditional "would have been."