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View Full Version : Bringing All My Stupid Ideas Together #1 - Making Weapons Cool



FreakyCheeseMan
2013-04-29, 10:26 PM
EDIT: So, in retrospect, everything that follows is way more wall-of-text than I should expect anyone to read.

Consider the entire topic shortened to "What are your favourite weapons, why, and how do you think that awesomeness should be represented mechanically?"

Feel free to be wildly liberal in your suggestions - weapons that can attack more rapidly than others, have free knockdown or disarm attempts as part of a normal attack, bonuses to sneak attack, parrying, whatever, you name it.

Attack and Damage Rolls, AC and DR
This system does not use standard attack and damage rolls - rather, you have a process (described in Stupid Ideas #3 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281492)) that determines the number of successes you get when you make an attack; based on the weapon's description, these result in a greater or lesser amount of damage being done, if any. Your opponent's defensive score - AC, essentially - is subtracted from that. Armour does not contribute directly to AC - rather, it acts directly as damage reduction. Certain kinds of attacks (in particular blunt weapons and precision damage) can bypass armour, making such very valuable.

Weapon Proficiency, Focus and Specialization
These work significantly differently than they do in 3.5. In my system, they're essentially treated as a weapon-specific feat chain - in order to get focus, you need proficiency, and in order to get specialization, you need focus. If that sounds brutal and unfair, here's the good news - they're re-programeable. With a few hours/days/weeks of training (depending on the level you went to) you can switch which weapons you have these feats invested in.

Additionally, Weapon Focus and Specialization do not give the same set bonuses - rather, they're unique to each weapon. For instance, Weapon Focus on a Longbow might give you access to an "Arching Shot" attack that fires over cover; weapon specialization in Spiked Chain might give you a bonus to trip attempts. On the whole, I intend for these benefits to replace a lot of the things fighters generally have to pay for with feats, which should make fighters more versatile - if they want to change their style, they can just re-train with a different weapon.

If you haven't guessed, I'm looking for suggestions on the specific benefits that come with Focus or Specialization (or even the penalties that come with lack of proficiency.)

Action Economy
Characters in this system get three types of actions - Physical, Movement and Thought. Depending on the specific build, characters may have more or less of each; fighters will generally be expected to have more Physical actions (or Movement, depending on their style), while Mages will have more Thought actions.

Specific options will take a certain number of each action type to complete - a five-foot step would be a movement action, a basic attack would be a physical action, and a charge would use one of each. Additionally, there are Stances and Trances, which "reserve" some number of actions, in exchange for a continuous benefit - for instance, a fighter might have a Shifting Defense stance that reserved one movement point, in exchange for making him immune to flanking.

It may be up to the specific weapons how many actions they require - feel free to suggest that extra-light weapons like daggers or rapiers can make "Flurry" attacks (say, spend 2 physical action points to make 3 attacks), while power-attacking with a warhammer might require two physical actions.

Weight
One last, small thing to consider is that I'm planning to make Carry Weight actually significant, as per Stupid Idea #2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281418) - thus, Being Very Small may be an upside for a weapon to begin with, as it could be feasibly carried as a side arm or allow a character to carry more of other stuff (armour, potions, etc.)

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-05-02, 04:05 PM
*Crickets*

...Huh. I thought a thread asking people to brag up their favourite weapons would get more attention...

Oh well. Simplified the question in the OP, giving this one more chance.

scarmiglionne4
2013-05-02, 04:22 PM
I would like to see something about dual-wielding light weapons. A person wielding a dagger in each hand actually being viable would be great.

And how about some sort defensive capability for double weapons?

But my favorite weapon is really more of a combination. Spear/Polearm and Shield. I think this setup should be much better than it is. I would love to see something done with this.

I want to see a heavily armor knight that fights with a polearm and a tower shield. I tried to make a paladin once that fought like that, but it sucked so hard I never gained much XP to see if he ever sucked any less.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-05-02, 04:38 PM
Hmm.

Dual wielding is gonna be... tricky, to make work in my system. (Using Action Points to describe what a character can do on their round - a basic attack with a medium weapon takes 1 Physical Action Point, heavier weapons might take two, lighter weapons might have a 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 deal going on... still haven't decided how I'll work dual wielding in, especially with the capacity for different weapons in each hand.

>_> I might make something where, instead of giving you more attacks, it lets you do sneaky things in terms of bypassing active defences. So, if your opponent parries your main weapon, you can spend another action point to attack with the other, and deny him the chance to parry. Or something.

Defensive capacity for Double Weapons, meanwhile, is easy - I already have "Parrying" as an option in this system, I can just give double weapons a bonus to such.

...hmm... elaborate? How do you see the spear-and-shield combo working, and what made it suck so badly?

Nightraiderx
2013-05-02, 07:54 PM
Been reading through alot of these and I have to say it seems to be an interesting premise, with my infinite amount of bull****ery I shall try to help and add stuff. As far as dual wieldng: you can have it in such a way that you use the weapon focus ability as prereqs (much like the complete warrior weapon styles) so that you can have cool effects and what not.

Bastard Sword:

Weapon Focus Ability: Switching from one handed to two handed during a physical action and back again. 1h - 2h increases damage and 2h - 1h can act as a sort of feint.

Weapon Specialization Ability: Able to draw from the sheath to increase power. (basically Iajutsu strike)

Shuriken:
Weapon Focus Ability: Able to bypass some defenses or get around armor reduction.

Weapon Specialization Ability: Able to throw two per one physical action.

Maul:
Weapon Focus Ability: Attacks initiate a bullrush

Weapon Specialization Ability: Any attack that hits you can forgo a point of damage against the con and instead damage the person's int score and reduce it.

Dagger:
Weapon Focus Ability: As a free action you may draw a dagger for a sneak attack, or a free parry.

Weapon Specialization Ability: You can attack with a dagger once per round as an extra attack that does not count against your physical actions.


Twin Dagger Style: Prerequisite Weapon Focus: Dagger
you may use both daggers together as a physical action it may grant a bonus to the following:
Sneak Attack damage
Parrying

Short Sword:
Weapon Focus: A short sword is best used to distract, when attacking with a short sword you may make an attempt to feint the opponent.

Weapon Specialty: You gain a bonus to feints as you know how to move
a short sword to deadly effect. Any attempt you use to parry or feint with a short sword you also have a chance to disarm them.

Cresent Moon Style: Prerequisites: Weapon Focus: Long sword or short sword Weapon Focus Dagger

Whenever you attempt to feint, parry or disarm an opponent and is successful, you gain a free attack with your dagger

Long Sword:
Weapon Focus: dedication to the long sword teaches balance, when wielding a long sword you are more resistant to being disarmed or parried and you gain a bonus to parrying and disarming others.

Weapon Specialization: With balance comes accurate cuts. A longsword
add the bonus to parrying to attacking and ignores a portion of a foe's armor.

Shield:
Weapon Focus: A shield's bonus now extends against parries and damage reduction. You can take a physical action to increase your bonus for a round

Weapon Specialization: You can choose to parry with your shield, if you succeed, the foe is considered off balanced and takes penalties to his next attack action.


Sword and Board Style Prerequisites: Weapon Focus: Long or Short Weapon Focus: Shield.
When you attack with a long or short sword, you may use the weapon focus abilities of the shield as part of that action.


Great Sword:
Weapon Focus: A great sword may cleave through armor reducing the effect armor by 1.

Weapon Specialty: You may make a lunging stab, increasing the greatsword's reach. You are also capable of wide swings, and can effect one more enemy with your attack instead.



Just some ideas for now.

scarmiglionne4
2013-05-02, 08:28 PM
...hmm... elaborate? How do you see the spear-and-shield combo working, and what made it suck so badly?

I was a veritable tank, but I couldn't hit anything. That and I kept having to drop my polearm and draw my longsword because I frequently ran out of room to maneuver.

I should be able to knock my opponents down with my shield with like a shoulder block since I cannot bash with it. I would just use my strength and the weight of my gear to knock them around. I see being able to sort of overrun but instead of running them over, I stop and give them a little stabbity goodness. Or just sit behind my shield and stab them like a 1-man phalanx.

If you get any weapon property info from the real world weapons question thread I would like to see it on this thread as I am looking for the same information.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-05-02, 08:46 PM
Okay, so a shield bash thing to knock people down/back into range, the capacity to deny your enemy the ability to advance if he gets stabbed by the AoO, and maybe some way to strike at closer enemies (shift your grip closer to the blade, perhaps?)

Nightraiderx
2013-05-02, 08:55 PM
Ah, now I can write a style for this kind of weapon style
Long Spear: (Range 3)
Weapon Focus: You get a bonus to attack those who enter within two or closer spaces of you.

Weapon Specialization: You can set your spear against an incoming enemy, dealing more damage.


Short Spear: (Range 2)
Weapon Focus: You do not take the penalty for attacking within a range one.

Weapon Specialty: You can increase it's range to 3 for a single attack at a cost of more physical actions, it also deals increased damage upon success.

Sentinal Style: Prereqiusites: Weapon Focus: Short or Long Spear. Weapon Focus: Shield

You repel enemy attackers with fervor, if you hit with an opportune attack you make a special bullrush attempt to keep them in place. If a foe successfully reaches within one range of you, you may take a special physical action to push back the enemy while damaging them with your spear. The bonus/penalty you would get from the spear is considered a bonus to the bullrush attempt and success means that they take extra damage from your spear.

Eldan
2013-05-02, 09:02 PM
Well. Personally, the crossbow. Relatively easy to use, quite deadly and, most importantly, you can be far, far away from the men with various sharp implements who want to kill you.

Then, out of a sense of patriotism, the halberd. The Swiss Army Knife of polearms. It can cut, hack, stab, parry, hook, trip, tear and all of that with more reach than most weapons. It's a spear, axe, hook and staff all in one. Plus, since it's such a versatile weapon, if one of your strikes misses, you can easily change into a different one. Your swing goes too short? Stab. Your swing goes too far? Rip back with the hook.

Spiryt
2013-05-03, 04:38 AM
There was fun project on here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278122) a while ago - pretty much about this.

Doorhandle
2013-05-03, 06:52 AM
Well. Personally, the crossbow. Relatively easy to use, quite deadly and, most importantly, you can be far, far away from the men with various sharp implements who want to kill you.

Then, out of a sense of patriotism, the halberd. The Swiss Army Knife of polearms. It can cut, hack, stab, parry, hook, trip, tear and all of that with more reach than most weapons. It's a spear, axe, hook and staff all in one. Plus, since it's such a versatile weapon, if one of your strikes misses, you can easily change into a different one. Your swing goes too short? Stab. Your swing goes too far? Rip back with the hook.

Put flintlocks up there too, with similar rules. Once they became economical to make, guns overtook bows because of ease-of-use compared to bows: Remember the old saying, "to train a good bowman, start with his grandfather." The armour penetration came a bit later.
Maybe weapon focus would increase it's range?

And I would agree the halberd was a flexible weapon. maybe related feats could play off that: allowing it to act as other weapon types, a few times/day? With a recharge, maybe?

More on the topic, I think most of your ideas have been pretty cool. for this one in particular
1) What stats determine how many actions you can get of each type? (I'd advise against tying it down to one, or else that stat's importance will be blown completely out of proportion.)
2) What are your general ideas about how much relative actions should cost? Like, what are the proportions of physical/movement/thought actions for swinging a sword, shooting a crossbow, and casting an average spell, exactly?
3)How does it interact with haste?

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-05-03, 07:40 AM
Well. Personally, the crossbow. Relatively easy to use, quite deadly and, most importantly, you can be far, far away from the men with various sharp implements who want to kill you.

Then, out of a sense of patriotism, the halberd. The Swiss Army Knife of polearms. It can cut, hack, stab, parry, hook, trip, tear and all of that with more reach than most weapons. It's a spear, axe, hook and staff all in one. Plus, since it's such a versatile weapon, if one of your strikes misses, you can easily change into a different one. Your swing goes too short? Stab. Your swing goes too far? Rip back with the hook.

Hmm... I'm uncertain what to give the crossbow for focus/specialization. Realistically, range is a wonderful feature of a weapon, but in a tabletop game it tends to fall short - either engagements are happening too close, in which case it's useless, or far enough away, in which case it's boring/frustrating to all the people in the group not using crossbows.

Halberd... hmm. I understand they're difficult to use... I might do something like give penalties even with Proficiency, and say that you need Focus just to be competent with them - then with Specialization give some sort of an option to re-try a failed attack with a penalty.


More on the topic, I think most of your ideas have been pretty cool. for this one in particular
1) What stats determine how many actions you can get of each type? (I'd advise against tying it down to one, or else that stat's importance will be blown completely out of proportion.)

Actually, I'm inclined to not connect it with stats, at all. Stats will have an impact on how well you can perform actions, but not what kinds. Characters will start with four AP at level 1 (one of each kind, and two of one), and then increase with level. (I may have something where at certain levels you increase two or even all three, so we won't always see characters with one type maxed out, and the other two staying at 1.)


2) What are your general ideas about how much relative actions should cost? Like, what are the proportions of physical/movement/thought actions for swinging a sword, shooting a crossbow, and casting an average spell, exactly?

Right now my thoughts are that a basic sword swing would be 1 Physical Action (possibly 2 for a power attack), Loading or firing a crossbow would be 1 physical action each, and an average (basic) spell would be 1 Physical and 1 Mental (or just 1 mental, with something along the lines of Still Spell.) "Concentration - spell durations in general, actually - would be handled by "Trances", where you reserve some number of thought actions to maintain the spell.

Movement actions would be a little counter-intuitive. Having more movement actions would not increase your base speed - if you could move 30 feet with one, you could not move 60 feet with two (though you could move 15 feet, attack and then move 15 feet back, or move 30 feet and then take a 5 foot step.) Certain attacks would also use movement actions - kicks, certain trip attempts, etc, basically anything you do with your legs.) Mostly, though Movement Actions would be reserved for stances- a fighter might reserve a movement point (and act as if he had one fewer) to hold a stance where he was impossible to flank, for example.


3)How does it interact with haste?
Haven't decided yet. Most likely it'll do the obvious thing and give bone physical or movement actions.

If some of this doesn't make sense, it's probably because I'm not intending Action Points to represent how fast a character is, more... how efficient - a character with four action points isn't taking 1/4 the time to do something, he's doing four things at once, or letting the things he's doing feed into and support one another.

00dlez
2013-05-03, 08:12 AM
White Wolf (specifcally Exalted) has a system similar to this with its weapons statistics (speed of attack, parry, damage, etc) - it might give you a good place to start with a lot of the most common weapons, especially in terms of balance.

Also for balance, Exalted also has a "create your own magic weapon" book (or perhaps its just some errata type publication) which outlines how much extra parry is worth relative to damage or speed etc.... I've forgotten the source but you might be able to find it, or someone else might know

Eldan
2013-05-03, 02:22 PM
I don't know how difficult to use halberds are, really. I've handled one a few times, if you don't really know what you are doing, you could just use it as a slightly awkward pike. Or like an axe with a long handle.