Near Broken Equipment

[Malcadon]

The idea of this came from Note A from Quest 1 -- The Trial were the Heroes encounter a Weapons Rack were everything is "chipped, rusted and broken." This gave me an idea for handing out equipment to fresh characters without giving them the actual equipment. Basically, place equipment as treasure that are nearly broken, that will fall apart by the end of the Quest. In this case, each Hero can search the Weapons Rack once for treasure, drawing a random Equipment card, with only Armor and Weapon cards in the deck.

The point of this is to tease the players with the good stuff, to show what they can work for, and give them a slight edge with such a though adventure. Also, players would likely throw damaged daggers and hand axes more if there is no point in keeping them.

If you have house rules for the recovery of thrown items, they will automatically brake. Near-broken shields maybe too weak to use the "Your Shield Shall Be Shattered" (sacrifice shield to negate all hits) house rule, but Evil Wizard Players may allow it.

There are any number of ways to approach this, but off the top of my head, when using near-broken equipment, the player needs to add a Movement Die to the normal attack or defend roll. If a 1 or 2 is rolled, it shatters and becomes useless. If the Evil Wizard Player is feeling more forgiving, it could just loose 1 Combat Die, being rendered useless at 0. It might also brake if three skulls or shields where rolled as it suffered too much force. Regardless, the item will fall apart by the end of the Quest and cannot be used in a later Quest.

Thoughts? Ideas?

[cardcardigan]

I do like the idea of letting heroes loot the weapon rack more often, and for that to be tangibly useful. The shattering shield rule you mentioned sounds neat too.

I almost wanna try basic equipment condition tracking now, and just have looted weapons come off closer to breaking. Let them loot monsters for low quality weapons, stack some into the treasure deck, etc. Take a Breath of the Wild approach and let the breakable weapons wash over the party in a relentless cycle of loss and renewal. Also let them throw the damaged weapons at monsters.

[Zenithfleet]

Nice idea! I've found rolling black shields useful for this kind of thing.

Heroes generally don't want to roll black shields anyway, because they don't help when attacking and they don't help when defending either. They're always a nuisance.

So how about a simple rule like: If you roll any black shields when using the equipment in combat, it breaks and you lose it.

That way it happens naturally during combat and you don't need to use an extra movement die or anything too fiddly.

If it's a weapon that affects how many attack dice you roll, it might only break when rolling to attack. If it's armour that affects how many defence dice you roll, it might only break when rolling to defend.

There's one black shield on a normal HQ combat die, so it's the same chance as rolling a 1 on a regular movement die.

If you want the weapon to be stronger, but still likely to break eventually, then you have to roll two black shields at once (double black shields) for the weapon to break.

If you want it to be reliable, but with a slight chance of failure, make it three black shields (very unlikely)... but have something go really wrong when it finally breaks, like exploding in your hands.

I've been experimenting with similar rules for gunpowder weapons (made by the Dwarves of course), so that they have a chance of jamming or blowing up in your face with a bad roll.

It also works for other situations like fighting on the edge of a cliff, e.g. the end of Kellar's Keep. You can treat black shields as a kind of 'fumble'. Roll too many black shields in an attack? Oops, you slip and fall to your doom...

[Malcadon]

Great feedback everyone.

Also, I just found out about Bone Weapons from the new Against the Ogre Horde Quest Pack. To my understanding, they are like normal metal weapons, but immune to Rust and have no gold value. This would be perfect for breakable weapon rules. There could even be Crude Armor that work the same.

The shattering shield rule you mentioned sounds neat too.

The shield rule is from a nearly 20 year old blog. Basically, the writer came up with the idea while thinking-up way to make using a shield, with its slim +5% bonus, a better option than a powerful two-handed weapon. He considered other options about it, but having the options to loose your shield to save your live is one of those things so simple that, in retrospect, one wonders why no one else came up with it 30 or 40 years ago.

[cardcardigan]

Great feedback everyone.

Also, I just found out about Bone Weapons from the new Against the Ogre Horde Quest Pack. To my understanding, they are like normal metal weapons, but immune to Rust and have no gold value. This would be perfect for breakable weapon rules. There could even be Crude Armor that work the same.

I forgot about these! Nice catch. I do recall versions of the shield breaking rule floating around a lot of old school dnd forums too. A very neat way to introduce some loss and flavor, and any small gold sink helps too.

Edit: Ah, I'm a good little gobbo at last.