I’ve decided to start my dive into my mad mashup of various D&D and OSR sources with weapons because they may give the broadest range of examples of rules I’m pulling from. The goal was to keep the math simple but also give reasons for picking one weapon over another. The inspiration was the fact that weapons are, in fact, tools for getting various jobs done.
Every weapon is designed to allow you to kill that guy
over there, when that guy over there has done things to keep from getting
killed. Maybe they’ve got their own weapons,
or they’re mounted on a horse, or they’ve wrapped themselves in protective
metal. Western Europe during the Middle
Ages saw an amazing flowering in the design of weapons and armour. And every single one of them was designed to
solve the problem of doing unto the others before they had a chance to do unto
you.
(If you want a deeper look into what I’m talking about
here, check out this guy’s videos. He
does a great job discussing the historical uses of weapons and spends a lot of
time talking about the context that lead to the individual designs.)
With that in mind, let’s take a look at what I did for my
B/X mashup game.
(This just didn't want to upload properly. If it's as unreadable for you as it is for me, go here for a Google Docs version.)
In original B/X, all weapons did 1d6 damage. That keeps things simple, but utterly flies in the face of my “a tool for every job” philosophy on weapons. Still, I like that simplicity, and just giving weapons different ranges in damage doesn’t really get where I want to go either. So I compromised.
If you’re wielding a weapon in one hand, it does 1d6
damage. If you’re using two hands, it
does 2d4 damage. Some weapons can be
used either way.
The next column is Oversized. This is for the LotFP encumbrance system,
where a single oversized item gives you a point of Encumbrance straight off the
bat.
The prices I’m pretty sure were taken from 2e
D&D. I love 2e’s equipment lists as
they’re just huge across the board.
Notes is where the magic happens. I gave most weapons a special ability. Under “arrows,” for instance, bodkin
arrowheads (narrow, stiletto-like heads designed for armour penetration) give
you a +1 to hit if the target is wearing armour or has a thick hide. Broadhead arrows, conversely, add +1 damage
per arrow shot.
And that brings up a thing with arrows. In traditional D&D, a round of combat can
range in length from 6 seconds to a full minute. And in all of that time, an archer can only
get off one or two shots. This is supported
by assuming that the targets are moving around defensively, so the archer has
to take their time lining up their shots.
I’ve always been meh on this. So
instead, I allow the archer to fire up to four arrows in my 6 second
rounds. All arrows are fired at the same
target, and every arrow after the first increases the likelihood of landing a
telling shot. So instead of doing more
damage, every arrow after the first gives the archer an unmagical +1 on the
attack roll (for a total of +3 from the arrows).
You still only roll one d20 for all for arrows to see if
the target loses hit points, and you still roll a single d6 or d8 to see how
many hit points are lost.
And so we can go down the list to see how weapons
differ. The bill, for instance, is good
at unhorsing opponents. Flails ignore
shields, hammers and maces give you a +1 on your attack roll if your foe is
wearing armour, shuriken only do a single point of damage but the target
suffers Disadvantage on whatever their next attack roll (because shuriken are
traditionally more about distracting people than killing them).
Advantage/Disadvantage is what I ported over from 5e, and
it works the same here: you roll an extra d20 and you take the higher if you
have Advantage and the lower if you have Disadvantage. You can’t stack multiple Advantages or
Disadvantages on top of each other, and if you have one of each they cancel
out.
The special abilities of the two-handed sword are based
on the montante bodyguard techniques.
And that’s all there is to say there. None of these are terribly complex and each
has its role. Also, since they are
individual to weapons, I can leave it up to the players to remind me of what
special thing their weapon of choice does during the fight.
3 comments:
This reminds me of my weapon mastery rules, which were predicated on my experience fencing ("I can use all types of fencing weapons about as well... and the same way", I wasn't good enough to take advantage of differences between sword types).
'Basic proficiency' gives everyone the same general results for weapons of the same size (d4 damage for light weapons, d6 for one-handed, d8 for two-handed). Dagger or hand axe, whatever, you're doing d4 points of damage, same chance of critical hit, same critical multiplier, and so on. Everyone has this.
If you're actually trained, you can get different benefits with different weapons (such as you describe here: these ones just generally do more damage, these ones avoid shields, these ones do more frequent or better critical hits, these are better at these maneuvers, etc.).
If you were even more trained (replacing Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization), you could further enhance your abilities with the chosen weapons.
This goes a bit beyond what you've described here, of course, but provides a framework that could be used for doing what you've done here. If I ever finish writing it out...
Keith Davies: I like it! I may include a variation on that in the final version if you don't mind.
And yeah, writing it up so others can understand it is the devil that constantly bedevils me too. ;p
I'll see if I can get my notes together. It's simple enough (and close enough to the weapon construction rules in Pathfinder's "Weapon Master's Handbook") that I mostly keep it in my head.
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