Quote from: LordVreeg;510787we do need to talk more. while I take this to extremes, this is thge way my mind works.

I can PM you my email, if you want to send me anything you want thoughts on, or you could always put up a section of your RPG here for discussion...

Quote from: LordVreeg;510788Really?

curved
Short Sabre
Manople
Sabre
Scimitar
Falchion
Great Shamsheer
Whizzle (2 blade sword)
Grand Shamsheer


straight
Short Sword
Patar
Gladius
Broadsword
Bastard Sword
Great Sword/Claymore
Two Handed Sword
FlameBurg

dress swords
Sword Cane
Foil
Epee
Rapier


but that's just me....

Not to sound like a douche (which I am), but do you really need different stats for all of those weapons?

Short sword should cover short swords, gladiuses, and patars.  Rapier (which I have) should cover epees and foils.  Greatswords should cover two-handed swords, claymores, and flamberges.  Yes, they're all slightly different, but do you really need mechanical distinctions between all of them?  

I mean, if you really wanted to do so, you're looking at dozens of different weapon properties to distinguish them...or you're looking at stats that are near identical.  It just seems redundant to me.

QuoteWith Heavy I guess I'd be inclined to use more dice (like going from d8 to 2d4), or just a + to the roll.

I know you can get 1s on the reroll, but this is going to happen fairly rarely, so I'm just going to cheat and just use the values for if 1s on the reroll weren't possible.

i.e. d8, always reroll 1s would be a range of 2-8, average 5;
same range and average as rolling 2d4. The distribution does differ (v-curve vs. linear) but shouldn't matter unless you have some specific reason to prefer one over the other.

The scythe, at roll 2d4, reroll 1s gets twice as much benefit from Heavy, a whole extra point of damage almost, but you end up rerolling a dice almost half the time (actually 7/16ths of the time). It has a range of 4-8 points, average 6. Comparatively rolling 2d4+1 would give you 3-9 damage, slightly more at maximum and less at minimum, but still average 6.

The greataxe that did 2d6, reroll 1s is 4-12 damage, average of just under 8 damage; using 3d4 would give you 3-12 and average 7.5, but maybe just 2d6 without the heavy property is big and bad enough already. Even without heavy its already slightly better than the greatsword (d12 being average 6.5, rather than 7).

Nah, it's not boring.  I love math discussions in RPGs.  I considered allowing Heavy weapons to add their wielder's Constitution bonus in damage in place of rerolling dice (hey, there's gotta be a reason that dwarves love axes and hammers, right?).

Rapier is nothing like foil, I'm afraid.

I'm just not seeing the necessity of differentiating between one kind of long, thin fencing sword and another long, thin fencing sword.

Rapiers were usually

A) Short
B) MUCH, MUCH thicker and heavier
C) You could actually slash with a rapier, while foil is only good for poking.

Basically, Rapier was a weapon designed with an idea that your potential foe could still be wearing armour, while foil was a weapon designed mostly for ceremonial duels, and combat against melee opponents without armour.

I'd say that you could distinct the weapons rather easily - give them bonuses against certain armour types, specific crit ranges, and rerolls on low scores - or rerolls on high scores, if the weapon isn't great design.

Hrm, I might ponder about this myself.

Quote from: Rincewind1;510991I'd say that you could distinct the weapons rather easily - give them bonuses against certain armour types, specific crit ranges, and rerolls on low scores - or rerolls on high scores, if the weapon isn't great design.

Hrm, I might ponder about this myself.

Infinite rage.

Tis a poor day for trolling, B.T, when I have to quote your post to see the image you tried to insult me with, as thee hath failed thy "Insert Imageth Into Post" check.

As to the bolded part - well, a greatsword or greataxe'd be much better against armour generally, because little armour could stop it ;p. Heck, if in DnD you don't roll to hit, but to puncture armour (It's called TO HIT ROLL, dammit, but sod it), bonuses to AB on specific weapons are perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, we play with a bunch of CSA types and 2 people who fence pretty seriously.
Part of the peeps I bounce my shit off of.  Trust me, shields in our system are much, much more powerful and meaningful than in most.  Most PCs find that they have a lot of one and two hand options in our system, and don;t look past that for a whiel...then they discover shields...and that a fighter with weapon and shield and skill with armor and shield realy is a friggin fortress...

but I digress...

the stats for the different dress/town swords...and please note, in many towns and cities, without a very special license, in most of Celtricia carrying anything but a dagger or a dress sword can get you thrown in the gaol.
Remember to toss in the dividing die when looking at damage, it changes the normal bell curve to a tailed probability curve...  I tend to use in my game the slightly earlier, 2 edged heavier version...or in other words, rapiers are very fast and are not totally suck in Guildschool...
and for those who think them the same...

"Despite the rapier's common usage in the 16th–17th centuries, many films set in these periods (many starring Errol Flynn) have the swordsmen using épées or foils. Actual rapier combat was hardly the lightning thrust and parry depicted. Director Richard Lester and fight choreographer William Hobbs attempted to more closely match traditional rapier technique in Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.[10] Since then, many newer movies, like The Princess Bride and La Reine Margot have used rapiers rather than later weapons, although the fight choreography has not always accurately portrayed historical fencing techniques. Rapiers are also often featured in various video games, in particular Role-playing games set in the medieval and Renaissance periods."

Quote from: B.T.;510983Nah, it's not boring.  I love math discussions in RPGs.  I considered allowing Heavy weapons to add their wielder's Constitution bonus in damage in place of rerolling dice (hey, there's gotta be a reason that dwarves love axes and hammers, right?).

4E sorted of tried doing that in places  - there's a couple of fighter axe or hammer powerz that do that IIRC, along with feats that deal damage equal to CON mod on a miss. They tried to encourage crossbows for dwarves as well with feats like Steady Shooter (+3 bonus to damage if you don't move, requires 15 Con).
It could have worked, except that 4E half-elves got a Con bonus as well, making them also super hammer fighters.

I'd have liked a system that gave dwarves a reason to use hammers and things but never got that far with designing one...I have a Lord of the Rings weapons book at home, and a couple of other documents that goes into some of the physics involved: basically force of a blow is based on the mass of weapon * radius of the swing. For a dwarf your radius is smallish (arm length = about half of height) unless you have a particularly long lever to amplify it. Swords and the like are also long of course, but the mass is distributed  across the weapon rather than being at the end, so the leverage increase  is less.
Without a long weapon, the dwarf is also probably going to be at a reach disadvantage.
Halflings have sort of the same problems, but presumably don't have the muscle to try to swing the big axes or hammers.

I think dwarves build is going to hamper their Dex also, making swords and things harder to use.

Something I've also considered is doing weapon damage and properties based on the level of the attacker, somewhat in the vein of the 1e weapon proficiencies.  Ignoring for a brief moment the mess of iterative attacks and feat interactions in 3e, let us consider how this might work with the longsword:

Level 1: 1d8 dmg, 19-20 crit (x2).
Level 4: 2d6 dmg, 19-20 crit, bleeding.
Level 8: 3d6 dmg, 19-20 crit.
Level 12: 3d10 dmg, 19-20 crit; disarming.
Level 16: 4d8+4 dmg, 18-20 crit (x3).
Level 20: 4d12+4 dmg, 18-20 crit.

The warhammer, on the other hand, might have the following progression:

Level 1: 1d10 dmg, 20 crit (x2).
Level 4: 2d8 dmg, 20 crit, stunning.
Level 8: 3d8 dmg, 20 crit.
Level 12: 3d12 dmg, 20 crit; crushing.
Level 16: 4d10 dmg, 19-20 crit (x3).
Level 20: 5d8+4 dmg, 19-20 crit.

To elaborate on the properties:

Bleeding: on a crit, the opponent must make a Reflex save or take damage on his next turn equal to your base weapon damage.

Crushing: on a crit, the opponent is bull rushed.

Disarming: on a crit, the opponent is disarmed.

Stunning: on a crit, the opponent must make a Fortitude save or lose his next action.

Thoughts?

Quote from: B.T.;510619Because this is D&D and this is what battleaxes look like in D&D:

:::image removed from reply for Pundit:::

If you don't like it, use the normal axe.

Holy crap.

I wish your whole post could be my signature. That's awesome.

Quote from: B.T.;511297Something I've also considered is doing weapon damage and properties based on the level of the attacker, somewhat in the vein of the 1e weapon proficiencies. Ignoring for a brief moment the mess of iterative attacks and feat interactions in 3e, let us consider how this might work with the longsword:
 
Level 1: 1d8 dmg, 19-20 crit (x2).
Level 4: 2d6 dmg, 19-20 crit, bleeding.
Level 8: 3d6 dmg, 19-20 crit.
Level 12: 3d10 dmg, 19-20 crit; disarming.
Level 16: 4d8+4 dmg, 18-20 crit (x3).
Level 20: 4d12+4 dmg, 18-20 crit.
 

Basic D&D did that with weapon mastery and 2E had something similar in Combat & Tactics.
As an idea it looks OK. A character I guess only needs one of the damage values on their character sheet which works, but obviously it adds more complexities since each weapon (or related set of weapons) needs one of those stat block thingies in the rulebook.
Most systems will I guess add extra damage to characters somehow; your system at least is giving roughly proportional increases based on weapon damage (unlike say +10d6 sneak attack) so two weapon fighters don't get crazy bonuses. As a way of adding damage to fighters its perhaps less complicated than Power Attack as well. Also good for keeping special weapon-based damage relevant with level (the bleeding was a good example, it'd also be good for stuff like rending).
 
It might end up slightly overcomplicating things in places since you need to specify if e.g. stuff like spear traps scale with level, and if yes to that spear traps need a defined level to determine their base damage. You may also need to think about how weapon size increases (e.g. Giant warhammers) increase the damage ranges?
 
Most of the special effects seem OK. Dunno that increasing critical threat ranges or crit multipliers is a good idea (particularly at the same time). Would disarming do damage as well as disarming? The bleeding works well with the increasing base damage.
 
 
Of course if you want weapon damage to stay relevant to characters, its much simpler to have fixed weapon damage & fixed hit points than to have both scale separately.

QuoteIt might end up slightly overcomplicating things in places since you need to specify if e.g. stuff like spear traps scale with level, and if yes to that spear traps need a defined level to determine their base damage. You may also need to think about how weapon size increases (e.g. Giant warhammers) increase the damage ranges?

I was considering this and that is what struck me as problematic: monsters need to have their damage values increase.  There are a couple of ways I thought of dealing with it.

1. Just give monsters more attacks (not my favorite solution but fairly easy to implement).
2. Create a simple scaling system that monsters and PCs use so that there aren't individual entries for each weapon (my preferred solution but more difficult).

The first solution does have its merits--allowing the NPCs to have four attacks doing 2d6 + 2 damage rather than a single attack doing 5d8 + 10 damage allows them to split up the damage among the party, for one, and iterative probability ensures that they are more likely to hit with their attacks (and score critical hits).  However, the goal is to speed up combat rounds so that one character isn't making seven attacks and thus slowing the game down.

I'm thinking on it now.