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Corporate M
2010-06-13, 05:51 PM
A little houserule I've been playing with to mix Diablo and other mmo's "breaking" mechanic when a weapon is used too much with the ability to nova basic weapons...

The gist of it is that each weapon has a reserve of damage dice it can use. After it's been used up, the weapon breaks and you have to use a different one. Criticals and multiplyers can remain the same.

Ranged weapons also do not require ammunition, but instead follow the same pattern.

Lightmace
Damage: (20)d8 Critical: 20 Multiplyer: x2

Crossbow
Damage: (25)d10 Critical: 19-20 Multiplyer: x2


Some blatant problems are that ceartain feats (like rabid reload) are worthless, and power attack becomes alot less useful. As well, adventurers who use weapons will have to probably pack a few extra weapons or head toward a shop all the time to get more.

But the upside is that if you're using a weapon, you can decide how much damage dice you want to use to fit the event. If you're going to be shooting down a dragon, you're probably going to invest all the dice it has to spare. Where as against a lowly goblin minion you'd probably feel it reckless to use even one.


Masterwork:
Masterwork now give +1 in attack roll for every damage dice you invested. So say I used 3d10 on my crossbow, +3 attack roll.



This sortof variant rule would be good for low magic campaigns. I could imagine Conan the barbarian using this houserule to explain how he's such a badass despite not being that high of a level.

Merk
2010-06-13, 06:43 PM
I like the idea of weapon usage (though I'd hate keeping track of it), the fact that power attack is nerfed, and that full attacks aren't really necessary. I also like the way masterwork scales with this idea. I worry that this might lead to adventurers who simply carry around multiple inexpensive weapons (clubs, quarterstaffs, and slings, which are all free), get handy haversacks and the quickdraw feat, and simply nova each weapon on every attack.

This also means you're essentially paying 300 G to cast True Strike (on a ~20d6 damage roll) as a free action per casting if you buy a masterwork club or staff.

The only way I can see to really circumvent this is to give more difficult monsters a version of DR that ignores damage on each damage die; enough to make using free weapons pointless.

That means that the only weapons that matter are enchanted or special material weapons, which are significantly more expensive (2300 GP at minimum for a +1 club). But if special weapons are the only weapons that matter and they are a resource that runs out, then martial characters have a huge WBL drain, because every time they do what they are built for (dealing damage) they are consuming a portion of that consumable 2300 minimum.

It also means that there's little reason to use anything but simple weapons as far as I can tell, because they're the cheapest and the difference between 20d6 and 20d8 or 20d10 isn't all that important.

Slings are free and weigh nothing, and under this system you don't need ammo. You can load up on a nigh-infinite amount of common ones for when you're not facing DR monsters, and get some masterwork ones for pulling out a True Strike. A 1st-level commoner with Quick Draw and arbitrarily many slings can do 20d4 damage from 50 ft. away every single turn.