Rules on Breaking Things

[LastCenturion]

Anyone else feel like items shouldn't be indefinite? Per RAW, you can hit a wall of diamond with a club as much as you want and it won't break. You could ruling it, sure, but I want to make RULES for it. So I'm doing that. I relish suggestions, so please, criticize away.

ARMOR
Armor takes half damage from damage types to which it has resistance. Armor takes no damage from magical attacks. Weapons take damage equal to the armor's damage value 50% of the time when missing an attack on one wearing the armor. Natural armor has a damage score of 1d3. Armor Hit Points do not regenerate. When armor reaches zero hit points, it breaks; it takes eight times as long to repair, and no longer provides an armor bonus. Broken armor must still be doffed. Magic Armor takes one third damage from all sources.

Armor	Resistance	Hit Points	Damage	Material
Padded	Bludgeoning	50	-	Cloth
Leather	Bludgeoning	55	-	Cloth
Studded Leather	Bludgeoning	60	1	Cloth
Hide	Piercing	70	1d3	Cloth
Chain Shirt	-	80	1d4	Link
Scale Mail	Piercing	90	1d6	Metal
Breastplate	Bludgeoning	100	1d6	Metal
Half Plate	Piercing	100	1d6	Metal
Ring Mail	Piercing	150	1d6	Link
Chain Mail	-	200	1d6	Link
Splint	Slashing	225	1d6	Metal
Plate	Slashing	250	1d8	Metal
Shield	Weapon damage	200	1d3	-

WEAPONS
Melee weapons can take damage whenever they are attacked with and miss. When they take damage, they deal damage to the armor of the target they miss. Melee weapons neither take nor deal damage on a natural 1 roll. When a ranged weapon is attacked with, it has a 50% chance of taking 1 damage. On an natural 1, a ranged weapon takes 1d4 damage instead, with 100% certainty. Resistance applies to armor of certain materials. Weapon Hit Points do not regenerate. When a weapon reaches zero hit points, it breaks; it takes eight times as long to repair and cannot be used. Magic Weapons take one third damage from all sources.

Weapon	Resistance	Hit Points
Club	Cloth	20
Dagger	Cloth	25
Greatclub	Cloth	65
Handaxe	Cloth	50
Javelin	Link	35
Light Hammer	Metal	55
Mace	Metal	60
Quarterstaff	Cloth	40
Sickle	Cloth	45
Spear	Link	50
Battleaxe	Cloth	50
Flail	Link	50
Glaive	Cloth	45
Greataxe	Metal	80
Greatsword	Link	70
Halberd	Cloth	50
Lance	Cloth	50
Longsword	Cloth	50
Maul	Metal	55
Morningstar	Link	55
Pike	Cloth	40
Rapier	Cloth	55
Scimitar	Cloth	50
Shortsword	Cloth	50
Trident	Link	30
Warhammer	Metal	50
Whip	-	25
Light Crossbow	-	45
Dart	-	3
Shortbow	-	45
Sling	-	25
Blowgun	-	35
Hand Crossbow	-	50
Heavy Crossbow	-	60
Longbow	-	55
Net	-	10

Weapons made of different materials can be more durable, according to this table:

Material	Health Value change
Mithral	x2
Silver	+10
Adamantine	x5
Bronze	x1.25
Bone	0.25
Gold	0.5
Glass	1

REPAIR
Fixing items requires certain tools and certain training. You can only make a check to repair items if you are proficient in the relevant tools and have them on hand. To repair an item, make a check with the primary tools, or with the secondary tools at disadvantage. The check takes one hour of strenuous work and restores a number of hit points equal to the check result. You must not be wearing or wielding an item while you work to repair it. Magic items take eight times as long to repair and gain one half as many hit points. A broken magic item that is repaired loses its magic. The Mending cantrip can repair armor or a weapon if cast as a ritual, and when you cast it on an item you make a check as if you had the appropriate tools and were proficient in them, using your spellcasting ability instead of the normal ability associated with the tool. You restore a number of hit points to the item equal to the check. Magic Items cannot be repaired this way.

Item	Primary Tool	Secondary Tool
Cloth Armor	Leatherworker's Tools	Weaver's Tools
Link Armor	Smith's Tools	Mason's Tools
Metal Armor	Smith's Tools	-
Weapons	Carpenter's Tools	Smith's Tools

Spoiler: Edit History

Show

18 Aug 2016: Added data on materials @Ramsus, added the Mending cantrip to the Repair section.
18 Aug 2016: Revised the Mending cantrip in the Repair section to be cast a ritual instead.
18 Aug 2016: Added Bronze, Bone, Glass, and Gold materials.
19 Aug 2016: Revised durability on many ranged weapons @miinstrel.

[Ramsus]

Not sure how I feel about magic items being able to lose their power if broken since in 5e they're normally supposed to be pretty rare.

Also a little confused about weapon's repair setup. It seems like some weapons would require one as primary instead of the other. For example swords are a lot more metal than anything else.

Overall it seems interesting, though I think GMs would need to be a bit lenient when allowing what can work for what.

Also wondering how Ademantine and Mithral and Silvered weapons fit into this system.

I think Longbows and Shortbows should probably have a bit less HP and Light Crossbows should have a bit more if this is supposed to be a realism thing.

I'm sure it would be a bunch of extra work, but it'd be interesting to see maybe a base increase or decrease for HP for things made with different materials/wholly out of one material or another. Like wood, giant spidersilk, bone, stone, iron, bronze, steel, dragonscale, etc. Maybe dealing with Ademantine, Mithral, and Silvered items would fit in with this.

As a side note, this kind of makes me want to see a magical weapon made out of glass with a low number of hitpoints that fixes itself a bit after it breaks. (For hilarious/epic cinematic feel you could really ratchet that up to have 1 HP, but fixing nearly instantaneously so you'd be breaking a glass sword against foes with every swing for a constant clash of shattering glass against steel or such.)

[zylodrizzt]

Well i guess its a good thing im a primary spellcaster with natural armor

[JeenLeen]

It sounds like if we have Mending, then repairs become rather simple. Was I misreading that? Is there anything stopping us from just casting Mending multiple times to maintain our gear?

I could see saying you have to cast Mending as a 1-hour ritual, to make it more on par with using tools and to keep the time restraint in.

EDIT: I missed that Mending doesn't work on magic gear. That explains the importance of tools.

NEW QUESTION: does armor take damage equal to the damage a player takes, if it lacks resistance? For example, if my PC is wearing Chain Shirt (which has no resistance) and I take 10 damage, does that mean my armor took 10 damage?

It seems weird that weapons only take damage when they miss. I can get that as it was a glancing blow (since often a 'miss' is not really that your attack didn't hit, but that it was deflected from doing harm by the armor) or you missed and scuffed it on the dirt or wall, but feels odd.

[Ramsus]

I like those numbers for the three materials. When I find a bit of time I think I'll make some suggestions for the other possible materials I mentioned. Just because I think it'll make games more interesting to have that little bit of extra flavor knowing that someone has a bronze shortsword or a bone club and such. I might include a few funny suggestions specifically for magic items too.

Mending rules are nice. Good job.

[miinstrel]

Agree with magic items immune to damage. Can easily be explained as that's part of the magic they're imbued with.

Also for ranged weapons (like my shortbow), I have 50 attack rolls before it's destroyed (25 HP, 50% chance of 1 damage). When I pick up a second or third attack, that means I will be making 10-15 attacks per combat assuming 5 rounds. So in 3-4 combats (or rather, a SINGLE DAY's adventuring), my bow will break. And bows can't be made of fancy materials to increase HP.
Melee has it a little better, but repairs will still be needed every couple days at most. Blades don't get worn out THAT quickly. These minor dings and chips are what sharpening stones and polishing rags are for.

I appreciate the realism aspect you're going for and trying to make us feel constrained on resources (which are nigh limitless what with the very few outlets for GP in 5e), but buying a new bow every day is a bit extreme. God forbid we go on a journey away from town!

Not opposed to a system like this, I just think it's unnecessary bookkeeping for the amount of realism it provides. Personally I'd prefer an "X GP and Y hours required for maintenance of your equipment 1/week" system or something like that.

[Ramsus]

miinstrel has a point... well two. It certainly is unnecessary bookkeeping. Not saying I'm against it, just that it's extra work and it may or may not really add a better sense of realism. But if we're going to use it, they're also right that these numbers mean weapons break down way too quickly (and it is kind of weird that whetstones haven't been given any purpose). A simple fix might be just multiplying the current numbers by 10?

[LastCenturion]

Fair. I was thinking along the lines that weapons aren't all that likely to be damaged, but you make a fair point about the bookkeeping. If none of you want to use it, then we won't use it.

[DeadpanSal]

I'm pretty against the idea of having such rigid rules on weapon breaking like this. First of all, it's tedious bookkeeping that doesn't really add anything to the game, unless you negate the possibility of Mending as a spell. Because as it works right now, it's a dull threat. Applicable knowledge of weapon durability makes it to where breaking a weapon is telegraphed and, ultimately, a minor challenge.

Think about the way this would play out in that case. In session one, you grab a steel sword (50 HP) and with a little bookkeeping, know that it takes an average of 5 HP damage per battle. In roughly 10 combats, or 3 sessions, you run the risk of having it break. So in the second session you have it Mended in an hour and run zero risk throughout your career. In the end, you've instead wasted an additional 15 seconds a turn keeping up with it and maybe costing the table a cumulative hour with rules padding.

So, sure. Good idea. Maybe. But why the transparency? Why would this be something so clearly defined and public? If used, I wouldn't ever tell anyone about these rules nor give them specific quantifiable tallies. To me, roleplaying is about stress and the drama that comes from rules seamlessly impacting character. Before 4E introduced the Bloodied status, we'd institute hit point ranges for enemies, with yellow and red for diminishing health. We'd never know how many hit points something had, but we'd have some general feeling of the current state of attrition. Yellow meant we were getting somewhere, red meant it didn't look good. When it stopped moving, we tended to stop attacking it.

Something like that might be a much better application for this. Take these rules, secret them away. Then when your players hit that first third of the HP damage to their weapon, give them a minor audible note. "You smack away the sentinel's attack, catching his broadsword against your weapon with a rough clang that leaves a deep gouge in your scimitar's edge." When it reaches the last third, lay it on thicker: "You don't really connect with the attack, his tower shield makes your onslaught pointless... but you hear a PLINK as your weapon lands. Now you can feel a wobble as your second attack meets the shield again. You had better end this fight soon."

That's seamless, immersive and - done right - incredibly effective. You've changed upkeep from something that's a passionless exercise in tallies and castings into something that's got some gravity to it. No one should know how many swings it'll take to break their weapon, and something like this would only encourage metagaming. For me, I would be against this almost entirely, with the exception at the DM's desire. And then I'd only institute it if it was done without disclosure.

But ultimately, I would definitely discard it entirely. There is no better way to simulate the surprise of a weapon breaking than random chance. I'd leave it to the whim of a storyteller and cruel irony, or failing that, a dice roll you keep hidden away from everyone. Every session, maybe roll a chance die for something to go wrong as the hand of god's intervention. I'd much rather have everyone be surprised when it comes up.

EDIT: And for that matter, think of how a session would go? Ygmirntor and Tim both get swords in session 1. They both fight every combat at the same pace and their weapons break at the same time. Unless a weapon comes newly forged, what is to say they would have full hit points to start with anyway? Has anyone ever started their characters with weapons on their last 10 durability? No one should really be at the start of their career when the DMG opens, and if they are, they probably didn't buy a weapon hot off the forges.

[miinstrel]

Great points to consider, Master. Agree something like this should be a bit less predictable. LC, I'm down to keep weapon breakage in still, but maybe with you secretly rolling and deciding when dramatically appropriate.

[Ramsus]

I'm fine with that too, though hopefully us actively keeping our equipment in good quality will mitigate chances of complete object breakage.