Weapons and Damage

[Rosisha]

Hey everyone,

So I've been thinking a lot recently and my brain keeps returning to something. I know that this game is meant to be an abstract - even in combat with hit points and all that representing just vague "vitality" or ability to remain in combat.

BUT

I've been playing around with some changes and came up with this idea for weapons.

1. Weapons are replaced by: Axes, Maces, Blades, Sticks, Spears and Clubs
2. Weapons can be small, one handed or two handed.
3. All weapons do 1d6 damage. Two handed weapons do 1d6+2 damage.
4. Small weapons get a +1 to hit.

So it would look like this

Axe Family: Hatchet (+1 To Hit), War Axe, Battle Axe (+2 damage)
Maces: Iron Knuckles/Gauntlet (+1 To Hit), Mace, War Hammer (+2 Damage)
Blades: Dagger/Knife (+1 To Hit), Sword, Two Handed Sword (+2 Damage)
Sticks: Belaying Pin (or Switch) (+1 To Hit), Walking Stick, Quarterstaff (+2 Damage)
Spears: Javalin (+1 To Hit), Spear, Polearm (+2 Damage)
Clubs: Billy Club/Short Club (+1 To Hit), Club, War Club (+2 Damage)

But right now, this leaves no reason to use the middle option. So I'm thinking that reach needs to come into play somehow. Or some other modification like that. Here are some of the ideas I have:

* When fighting a person with a larger weapon, when closing they get a +2 to hit bonus on their first attack roll against you reflecting that you can't effectively engage them while closing.

* Small weapons do +2 to hit, one handed weapons do +1 to hit/+1 to damage, 2 handed weapons do +2 to damage (I dislike this option a lot).

* Small weapons are +1 to hit, but -1 to damage (my favorite)

This could even work for ranged weapons:

Bows: Self Bow (+1 To Hit), Long Bow, Recurved Bow (+2 Damage)
Crossbows: Hunters Crossbow (+1 To Hit), Winched Crossbow, Pully Crossbow (+2 Damage)
Slings: Sling shot (+1 To Hit), Sling, AtlAtl with Dart/Javalin (+2 Damage)

Thoughts?

EDIT TO ADD: First attempt at something to help walk through this.

[Dimirag]

I think the idea here is to balance weapons against each other right?

1. Weapons are replaced by: Axes, Maces, Blades, Sticks, Spears and Clubs

What categories a Scythe, Whip and Flail would be?

2. Weapons can be small, one handed or two handed.

Aren't small weapons one handed already? I would go with Small, Medium, Large.
Small Weapons: +1 Attack & -1 Damage OR +1 Initiative & -1 Attack
Medium Weapons: No pros and no cons.
Large Weapons: +2 damage but require 2 hands.

Another take is to go with 2 category types:

First Type: Size: Small/Medium/Large.
Second Type: Weight: Light/Medium/Heavy.
Give it a plus and minus to each one, or let one category give the benefit and the other one give the penalty.

[Rosisha]

In terms of rebalancing weapons - kind of. The way I see it, if I stab someone with a knife or a huge axe, they are just as dead it's just the amount of damage to the body is going to be different. A huge gaping wound vs a stab wound or something. And frankly, a 12" dagger is going to cause some major pain. But a 12" dagger is considered inferior in most D&D games. Same with darts and slings (despite a sling having as much impact power as a .45 hand gun with insane range and accuracy).

Now, that said, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible - so there are some edge cases. As a DM, I would treat a flail like a mace. A scythe might be a polearm. For a whip, maybe that could be under rope weapons? Small: Chain, Medium: Whip, Large: Rope Dart.

As for the categories, I was building out from the sword - so dagger, sword, two handed sword. So kind of a small, medium, large which might make more sense. I'd be okay with that shift. I'm going to create a spreadsheet for this hahaha

Could you give me an example on your idea of how small/medium/large - light/moderate/heavy would work?

For example, what does a light, large blade look like? Or a heavy/small blade?

[Dimirag]

Could you give me an example on your idea of how small/medium/large - light/moderate/heavy would work?

For example, what does a light, large blade look like? Or a heavy/small blade?

Not necessarily every combination will have a weapon, a light/large weapon could be a staff or a lance, maybe a Shamshir could fit there (37 inches in length and 2lbs in weight compared to a 35 inches/3-5lbs two handed sword*)

A heavy/small blade could be a cinquedea or any "meaty" knife.

* this numbers are surely way off

[Seven]

A dagger might be fine against a human, but not so great against an owlbear.
Slings are cheap and it's easier to find stones than to make new arrows, but I don't think they're very accurate. During a siege, you're basically shooting at a barn, so accuracy doesn't matter.

Some weapons are clearly superior, but restricted and/or expensive.

It can get as complicated as you want.

[Rosisha]

I kind of like the idea of monsters either being immune to or at least taking significantly less damage from small weapons. So maybe something like "Certain creatures have thick hides or heavy layers that prevent small weapons from doing more than 1 point of damage" or something like that. You can eventually dig your way through to an organ - but it isn't the way you want to go about doing it!

[Rosisha]

Slings are cheap and it's easier to find stones than to make new arrows, but I don't think they're very accurate. During a siege, you're basically shooting at a barn, so accuracy doesn't matter.

In terms of accuracy, well trained slingers could take a bird on the wing. So they can be VERY accurate. Ranged weapons tend to be "OP" though, which is why they dominated battle fields.

But I get what you are trying to say. This is where culture could come in - swords could be restricted to certain classes. Or most heavy weapons are considered "military" and are restricted as such. Thus, if you're walking around with a winching crossbow, there are going to be some serious questions.

[Dimirag]

You can rule a die change (decreased/increased) based on size difference, there are games that use attacker size + weapon modifier against victim's size to base damage.
Or rule that creature of a specific size or bigger gets half damage from some weapons.
It depends how much complexity and granularity you want.

[Rosisha]

I'm trying to reimagine this but at the same time keep it simple! So I do like the size variance. I'll have to think about it. I want to it to be super simple though. I want people to be able to pick a weapon that suits what they want for their character and start swinging.

[AlMan]

One thing that many old style games forget is an entire set of swords meant for poking holes into each other. These include the Stiletto, Epee, Foil, and Bastard Sword. The use of these weapons is very specialized, many early books were treatises on the use of these type of weapons against each other or against other weapons.

A game I used to play in the early 80s was DragonQuest by SPI, weapons were put into three categories, A Type were pointy weapons the above mentioned weapons and arrows and bolts were included; B Type were cutting weapons normal swords, axes, other bladed weapons; and C Type were crushing weapons mace, flail and hammers were included here. The game also used a % basis for hitting, the mechanics of the game allowed each weapon to be specialized. If you got a low enough roll on the percentage roll (usually an 01 on percentile) it would cause either double damage or a roll on a specialized table that had a choice of grizzly wounds depending on the type of weapons used, (e.g. Type A weapons could poke out an eye or go through to the brain or stab the heart, Type B could take off the opponents leg or arm or beheading them, one entertaining one gave the opponent a scar that actually increased Physical Beauty, similar to Charisma in that game, Type C would cripple an arm or leg or brain the opponent). Nets and other entangling weapons were a class by themselves that didn't provide the double damage or specialized damage since they were meant for subdueing and not killing damage.

This is to just give you an idea of a of a game that treated weapons differently.