A Simple House Rule for Recovering Thrown Weapons

[Malcadon]

Yes, another house rule for dealing with the issue of not loosing thrown weapons. (Sorry if this exact rule was covered before... I have seen this topic come up a number of times on Ye Olde Inn and on Old Scratch, that I forget who covers what and when.)

The rule is simple, if your Hero throws a Dagger, Hand Axe or Spear, you (as the player) drop a weapon token in the room or corridor the target is in. Once all the monsters in sight are defeated, you may recover all discarded tokens with a simple search action. Should the Heroes move out of sight from where the items were thrown, they are lost... Forever! (The Goblin Janitor swept them up — where do you think the bodies and gear of all the defeated monsters go?) The result would be that other Heroes can pickup and use other Hero's weapons, but items maybe passed between Heroes as a free action.

A weapon token could be a full-sized tiles or half-inch counters. With the UK set, you only need one Hand Axe or Spear Token per Equipment Card. With the US set, you'll need at least a dozen Dagger Tokens. If you are using a combined weapon set unbound by Equipment Cards, then you'll need about: x12 Dagger Tokens, x6 Hand Axe Tokens, and x6 Spear Tokens. (It is assumed that some Heroes, like the Wizard would pile on more Daggers then normal, and that on average, each Hero would carry three Daggers. And it is assumed that of the three Heroes able to use Hand Axes and Spears, that they would on average, carry two of each.)

If you want to add ammunition to the game, you'll have to figure out how the total capacity of a quiver (accounting for any special skills or items that can boost this) and times it by three. So if you (as the Evil Wizard Player) rule that the Crossbow only allows for 10 shots per Quest (not an issue, as you can reuse them in the same Quest), 15 with the Big Quiver upgrade, or x2 with the Wristband of Lorien artifact (an item I just made up for this), you'll have to make 60 Bolt Tokens (15 for two normal upgraded quivers, and 30 for the artifact upgrade). As I just noted, you'll have to recover all your lost ammo with a search action, and should you move out of sight from your ammo, they are lost for good. If you loose ammo, you'll have to buy more to refill your quiver (the cost of which is up to the EWP). In a games like D&D, you normally have to cross out the number of arrows and stones you just used, but the use of tokens make keeping track of ammo a whole lot easier.

So what do you guys think?

[Big Bene]

http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=307&p=5407&hilit=dagger#p5407
Somewhat similar

[Sjeng]

Thats how I would do it too. I think I added the rule in my expanded armoury too.

And malc? We do have a search function here

[Malcadon]

We do have a search function here

Trust me, that was the first thing I did. No matter how specific you can get, it buries you with a ton of unrelated topics.

[Big Bene]

Trust me, that was the first thing I did. No matter how specific you can get, it buries you with a ton of unrelated topics.

And malc? We do have a search function here

I have to second Malcadon here. Had a hard time finding a special post/thread more than once. No critic, however. I know how difficult these things can be, technically, and you guys do a great job with the forum.

Thats how I would do it too. I think I added the rule in my expanded armoury too.

Sorry, I don't anderstand what you mean by "that's how...". Would you do it like Malcadon or like me and the guys in the thread I linked?
Can you add a link to your Expended armoury? Again, the search funtion comes up with a heap of posts regarding other people's "armouries".

[Big Bene]

If you want to add ammunition to the game, you'll have to figure out how the total capacity of a quiver (accounting for any special skills or items that can boost this) and times it by three. So if you (as the Evil Wizard Player) rule that the Crossbow only allows for 10 shots per Quest (not an issue, as you can reuse them in the same Quest), 15 with the Big Quiver upgrade, or x2 with the Wristband of Lorien artifact (an item I just made up for this), you'll have to make 60 Bolt Tokens (15 for two normal upgraded quivers, and 30 for the artifact upgrade). As I just noted, you'll have to recover all your lost ammo with a search action, and should you move out of sight from your ammo, they are lost for good. If you loose ammo, you'll have to buy more to refill your quiver (the cost of which is up to the EWP). In a games like D&D, you normally have to cross out the number of arrows and stones you just used, but the use of tokens make keeping track of ammo a whole lot easier.

If you're interested in my opinion, I would use the system only to retrieve "throwing" weapons that would be lost by the original rules, i. e. daggers, axes, spears etc. For "shooting" weapons that use ammonition, I would strongly suggest to keep it simple and just make it a rule that a quiver holds enough ammo for one quest. You could of course make "special" ammunation available, like magic arrows or armor-piercing bolds. These would be "items" in the sense of the rules, i. e. there are item cards and players can purchase them one by one (and of course must keep track of them).
There also could be "special" quests where saving ammunation is part of the objective, but this should be part of the quest notes, not a general rule of the game. For example, there are several original and community quests where the heroes start by breaking from prison and have to find weapons first. You could include a quest not like "In this room, your weapons have been stored. You find, however, that all ammunation has been taken away. You have only seven arrows left from the quiver of the dead orc guard. Use them wisely. Take track of them on a piece of paper".

[Redav]

If you're interested in my opinion, I would use the system only to retrieve "throwing" weapons that would be lost by the original rules, i. e. daggers, axes, spears etc.

Agreed. I think those items would be of significant enough value to warrant wanting to retrieve them. Ammunition however is something I'd treat as disposable. I'm sure people would have been collecting fired arrows and bolts but I don't see heroic characters being frugal enough to say 'Hang on Bob, before we save the empire, I just need to get those two arrows out of this orc's hide. Won't be long.'

However...

For "shooting" weapons that use ammonition, I would strongly suggest to keep it simple and just make it a rule that a quiver holds enough ammo for one quest.

While I agree with keeping things simple and that a quiver would probably hold enough arrows for a single quest, I think I'd still list a limit for what a quiver holds and track their use. This would be more important for consecutive quests where it isn't possible to restock along the way. It means a character might have to change rolls or a party might need to adjust their strategy part way through a quest. I like the idea of things changing in a quest (I think this is a throwback to playing Gunship 2000 with the expansion where your mission might change part way through) and this is one method of mixing things up a little.

[knightkrawler]

We do have a search function here

Trust me, that was the first thing I did. No matter how specific you can get, it buries you with a ton of unrelated topics.

I third that. You'd have to remember at least three very specific words to find a specific topic. At least.
That being said, the houserule is good enough to have its own thread and discussion.

I'm right now wondering if the weapon markers could be dropped. I mean it would be more specific to give each room a name as per its coordinates on the board (the same for every quest, that is) and then put a marker for those coordinates on a hero's pice of equipment card if a piece of equipment is lost/thrown/stolen. Or write the coordinate of the room onto the sleeved card with an erasable marker.
It's a valid idea for those of us playing with custom cards, though not for the equipment cardless NA vanilla game.

Even with simple equipment markers, as Malc suggests, this is a great house rule.

[Big Bene]

While I agree with keeping things simple and that a quiver would probably hold enough arrows for a single quest, I think I'd still list a limit for what a quiver holds and track their use. This would be more important for consecutive quests where it isn't possible to restock along the way.

I agree, but as consecutive quests are not the norm, I would put this under "special quest rules" (or, in this case, "special quest pack rules")

There also could be "special" quests where saving ammunation is part of the objective,

You see, quest packs like KK, where quests are played consecutively, have special rules in their introduction to cover this (page 4 of the North American booklet of both KK and RWL). You could add a special rule at this place, like:

"Heroes have no opportunity to visit town and refill their ammunation between quests, so they must keep track of how many arrows or bolts they have left. Every hero that has a bow or crossbow, also carries a quiver with 20 arrows or 15 bolts, respectively. They may find more at certain locations in the quests. If you play with a rule that allows retrieving throwing weapons, you may apply this to bolts and arrows, too, but they have a chance of 1-4 on a red die to be broken."

But I would keep this a special rule to cover the consecutive nature of this quest pack, not make it an overall game rule.

[Malcadon]

You see, quest packs like KK, where quests are played consecutively, have special rules in their introduction to cover this (page 4 of the North American booklet of both KK and RWL). You could add a special rule at this place, like:

"Heroes have no opportunity to visit town and refill their ammunation between quests, so they must keep track of how many arrows or bolts they have left. Every hero that has a bow or crossbow, also carries a quiver with 20 arrows or 15 bolts, respectively. They may find more at certain locations in the quests. If you play with a rule that allows retrieving throwing weapons, you may apply this to bolts and arrows, too, but they have a chance of 1-4 on a red die to be broken."

But I would keep this a special rule to cover the consecutive nature of this quest pack, not make it an overall game rule.

With a marathon Quest like that, placing extra ammo to be found in a room search would be a great excuse to throw-in some Goblin Archers and Orc Arbalestier.