Equipment Maintenance and limits

[mitchiemasha]

One thing to keep in mind...if you allow dual wield, and a hero wants to drink a potion, they have to put one
of those weapons down or away and then drink the potion, and then get the weapon again. In my games, putting
a weapon down or away and picking is part of a turn...either a move action or they give up their attack or something
like that. And, remind me...does the card say the bonus attack is on their next attack, or during their next turn?
Because it would make a big difference.

I use sacrifice a rolled movement d6 for a bonus action, such as changing weapons. However, taking a potion remains free as the original rules suggest.

[cynthialee]

I think if it was a mater of life or death a hero would just drop the offhand weapon to quaff a heal potion.
Rules say you can drink a potion without use of an action. Now in a more advanced house rules system I can see it being a thing. But I am so brutal on the heroes that I let them drink a heal potion to avoid death if they have one in inventory.

[Kurgan]

In Lone Wolf, you could carry two weapons. Many people adopted that as a house rule, I guess thinking of it like "you have two hands" so that must be it. Okay, I guess literally you could kick open doors (or charge them with your shoulder). How are you drinking potions? (the "Beer Hat" / Drinking Helmet)

You could stow a weapon. Shadiversity made an amusing video about overloading a hero. Many RPG video games limit carrying capacity, but essentially give you so much gear it would be more realistic that you have a porter carrying it for you.

You could introduce a house rule where you have to hire porters (squires?) that carry your extra gear, or rent a locker to keep it between quests. This issue doesn't come up until several quests in, unless you are giving away equipment like crazy. Many Heroes, if allowed to sell back their unused gear, will take care of the carrying realism easily enough to get more gold.

How many potions can you carry? Well.. how big are those flasks? I think you might be able to carry a lot of them if they are just little vials. You could be like one of those back-alley salesmen with an entire coat of them (hopefully they don't get broken when you're getting punched by goblins.... but if it's healing, I guess you can lick it up and heal yourself!). They could be glass (and breakable) but the flasks could be wood or metal too. They don't have to be stereotypical giant glass Christmas balls with a big cork in them.

On a typical game here is what I tend to see:

Helmet (on head), shield, battle axe, and crossbow or longsword, wearing armor (usually chainmail) and special boots (rabbit or elven). Obviously if you allow shield and battle axe at the same time, one would be stowed on your back, and probably introduce some switching penalty so they can't just subvert the "can't use at the same time" rule. Two big weapons or a big weapon and a shield seems reasonable. A backup short sword and a "bandolier of daggers" seems reasonable to me too.

Can spell scrolls be flattened out to carry a lot of them? Maybe they can. I don't see a problem with carrying those, and they're not exactly plentiful either. The magical artifacts tend to be pretty easy... small amulets or rings, a breastplate of armor, a cloak, a staff, a couple of swords, or a flask.

Can a wizard or elf carry two kinds of staff (staves)? I'd say yes. If Donatello in TMNT could, so can they. Having two, two-handed weapons doesn't seem like an issue to me.

Will you get a Hero that has 10 big weapons? You're Zargon, you decide. I agree that having at least two "good" weapons (not talking daggers here which are throwaway/holdout weapons) makes sense as time goes on and spells and certain monsters can easily deprive you of a weapon.

If you've got a lot of gear, you could say some of it is "stowed away" (can carry it, but not use it until the next quest) I guess. It would seem weird, but if the Wizard finds plate mail, can he haul it around on his back (slowing him down, I would think is fair) until he can get it to one of the other Heroes who wants it (or schlep it out of the dungeon to sell it at the Armory!).

Realism isn't everything of course. In real life, warriors often wore chain mail under their plate armor (maybe that's the Armory solution, the picture seems to show chain mail already included with the Plate, like it's integrated, so you can't wear a second layer with it). Bracers also seem to be part of the Plate "set."

[Kurgan]

If you can imagine it...

[Kurgan]

I toyed with the idea of having the Champions collect 200 gold coins after passing GO! (oops, I mean when getting ready for a new quest). I figured the Emperor is giving you your pay/benefits for being among his knights. Or maybe you're collecting tribute on his behalf (that might make you unpopular... donations?). Then I thought about how you'd use that money for food & drink, shelter, clothing, healing between quests, and upkeep on your gear. In the end it just kind of cancels itself out. In between quests you took care of what you needed and it works out that the extra stuff you found wasn't paid in taxes, it was pure profit and you'll use that to buy weapons/potions and armor and keep it simple. How does Mentor live? Maybe he partly finances your adventures (or puts his money into R&D)...

Adding that stuff might appeal to you, of course, to give the players more engagement in the world, I guess and delay them entering into the actual quest.

The heroes write everything on their character sheet. Zargon has the right at any time to ask (and get an honest answer) as to what each player has for their character at any given time. Having a spread of cards in front of them might make it a little easier, but then that means you have to have enough of those. If you set out card trays limiting the "slots" they could have represented by those cards might work. You could put one card in each slot, but put as many dagger cards as you want in the "daggers" slot. How do you make big weapons take up more room? Maybe say a battle axe is worth two cards? I guess you could come up with a solution. As long as your table is big enough and your card budget holds out...

I guess you could also have a little paper "counter" band of cardboard and give out chits, and maybe the big weapons could have wider chits that take up more than one "spot." I think I'd just spot check it and say "your character is starting to get overburdened with gear... how about selling/trading some of it?" You could start subtracting squares from movement each turn due to the "huge burden" or force them to start dropping gear I guess. Maybe the Armory shopkeeper would offer to take it off their hands for a little extra (to force them to slim down their backpack).

Or print up special character sheets that have little boxes and its 1 item to a box, rather than just letting them write small and cram everything together or write on the back or in the margins to add "infinite" items. There are many possible ways, I would just go with the most straightforward manner, and it's only to avoid making the game too complex and/or stop it feeling like "cheating."

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Some suggestions from me to try and slow down the accumulation of gear (and the too rapid maxing out of advancement)

Scrap the 50% sell back rule - we do use this rule but there is the option to scrap it which I have considered as it might encourage/force players to donate old kit to other members of the party (rather than sell it back to the ‘house’) which would be useful at the start and for replacement Heroes.

Reduce quest rewards – some of the Quest rewards seem very generous compared to others. Make them work for it! Incidentally, some advice that I found useful is the ‘rule of sixty’ i.e. use multiples of 60gc for the amounts of rewards for Quests as those are more easily divisible whether your party size is 1,2,3,4,5 or 6!

Reduce total treasure value – either through the treasure cards themselves - I think the US version removes the treasure horde from the treasure deck, by reducing the amount of gold found in chests in the Quests (see rule of 60 above) and if you are not doing so already restricting searching for treasure to once per room (not once per room per Hero) although I do allow certain specific pieces of furniture to be searched/looted separately from the room itself.

Increase prices of equipment – seems obvious…

Introduce carrying capacity limit – my house rules on this are below.

Stacked Armour – armour above and beyond your starting armour* is stacked on top so Helmet (120gc) +1 dice, Shield (100gc) +1 dice, Chainmail (450gc) +1 dice, Plate Armour (850gc) +1 dice takes you up to the maximum of 6 dice at a cumulative cost of 1520gc without any problems around having excess to sell.
*We refer to the armour that you start with as a 'Padded Jack’, but 'Leather Armour' seems a common name on here, not sure what it is referred to in the official version but no cost that I have found so I assume this can't be removed or sold - please correct me if I'm wrong.

Salvage rule – I use the following house rule.

Salvage – Any equipment taken from denizens of the dungeon that has not been acquired through Treasure or Artefact Cards or is specified otherwise in the Quest text, will only last for the duration of the Dungeon due to its shoddy condition. For example, if you kill an Orc equipped with a shield then you can take and use that shield subject to the usual carrying limit, but it will have to be discarded or will have fallen apart before the next dungeon.

Carrying Capacity

In terms of carrying capacity limits I’m not sure about the 2-weapons rule mentioned above as it seems to mean that I could carry two weapons and a shield but not three weapons without a shield?

We use the following house rules for each Hero.
• 2 Large slots that can be used to carry any size item (envisaged as being located on your back)
• 2 Medium slots that can be used for carrying medium or small items (envisaged as being on your waist/hip/thigh area)
• 6 slots for small items only

Items

Large: Battle axe, Broadsword, Crossbow, Shield, Spear, Staff, Bow (New Item)
Medium: Hand axe, Short sword
Small: Tool kit, Potions, anything else

We also have some additional item types like bandages and antidote vials that are stackable in that 3 of them take up a single small slot (S3)

In addition, each Hero can wear equipment subject to the following limits: ONE piece of HEADGEAR (including a Helmet), ONE AMULET or TALISMAN, ONE piece of BODY ARMOUR (stacked), ONE BELT OR GIRDLE, TWO RINGS (one of each hand) or ONE PAIR OF GLOVES, ONE PAIR OF BOOTS and ONE CLOAK.

Heroes will always find somewhere to stow gold coins, jewels and similar valuables so these aren't included

Anything else that cannot be carried must be sold back (if you allow that), given away or is lost. I don't allow my Heroes to have gear stashed away back at home as I always imagine them to be semi-nomadic types that travel light and sell anything that is not essential then drink or gamble the proceeds...

[Kurgan]

I try to keep it simple, but you can always hire "Oswald the Overladden" to porter your stuff for cheap!

Then there's this guy... (imagine those are daggers, talismans, potions, scrolls, etc)

[arntisdale]

Here's what I do to limit equipment:

Basic carry limit:
1 item each hand (or 1 2-handed item)
1 head
1 neck (talisman/necklace)
1 body/legs (armor slot - ever seen a barbarian wearing a torso breastplate and loincloth with naked legs?)
1 about body (cloak)
1 about waist (belt)
1 arms (bracers)
2 rings (1 per hand, magic rings on the same hand interfere with each other's magic, right?)
1 gloves
1 footwear
2 small items (potions/scrolls/other)
That's it, unless they purchase a weapons belt (3 additional weapons), a satchel (4 additional small items), or a backpack (1 additional armor)

It's also worth noting that my bracers are pretty much exclusive to the wizard, and most of the extra slots (necklaces, rings, gloves) are usually for special quest items/artifacts, a hero is practically never decked out with something in each slot

I also have (very) expensive equipment, actually, the crappy stuff is pretty affordable, but my battle axes cost 1200 gold

I have a system for weapon breakage as follows:

Breaking equipment – once equipment is broken it is useless and worth 1/10 of sell price – there is no repair system
Melee/thrown weapons: if #bs (defender) > #skulls (attacker) AND #skulls must be at least 1 (zero skulls considered miss), then roll 1cd6, if roll bs, weapon is broken (double bs for artifacts)
Ranged weapons: if #bs > #ws AND no skulls on attack roll, then roll 1cd6, if roll bs, weapon broke (double bs for artifact)(and double bs for sling – simple hardy design makes it much harder to break)
Armor: if MAX damage is done on an attack vs hero (monster got all skulls, hero got no shields) AND #skulls is at least half of defense dice rolled, rounded down, then roll 1cd6 – if get bs (double bs for artifact), then something broke – roll again – skull: broke shield/bracer, WS: broke head armor, BS: broke body armor – if nothing was equipped in that spot, then no equipment is broken - note - may need to modify this to include breakage of non-armor worn equipment

I've just recently been playing with a blacksmith upgrade system idea, which would let a hero sink some money into their favorite gear.
http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=5634

I also allow equipment to be sold back for 50% of it's value, but if you ain't got a spot to hold it, you can't carry it back to town!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I do find it interesting to compare and contrast rulesets, discover the differences and then have a think about them. I think we are pretty much aligned in terms of wearables

ONE piece of headgear (including a Helmet)
ONE amulet or talisman
ONE cloak
ONE stack of body armour
ONE pair of bracers
TWO rings (one of each hand) or ONE pair of Gloves - two rings limit for exactly the same logic, but rings and gloves (not major difference but I wouldn't allow both)
ONE belt or girdle
ONE pair of boots

But in terms of non-wearables we are quite different!

Yours
1 item each hand (or 1 2-handed item)
2 small items (potions/scrolls/other)

Mine
• 2 Large slots that can be used to carry any size item (envisaged as being located on your back)
• 2 Medium slots that can be used for carrying medium or small items (envisaged as being on your waist/hip/thigh area)
• 6 slots for small items only

So under my system a Barbarian could be armed with a short sword and shield and have a battle axe slung on his back or an Elf could have a hand axe and a shield and have a bow on his/her back but not under your system is that correct or have I misunderstood?

[arntisdale]

Your understanding is correct. If it's not worn or held you can't drag it around.
I do, however have a set of equipment available for purchase that can increase carrying capacity in specific ways.
It's also worth noting that I limit available equipment according to the cards, if there's only 1 card of a particular item in the deck, then there's only 1 of that item in the world (I know I know, but it does what I want it to... so I like it that way).
In any case, here are my equipment cards for carrying capacity improvement:
4 Satchel cards in the equipment deck

Satchel.PNG

3 Weapon belt cards in the equipment deck - even daggers count as weapons, and if they use ranged, they have to have ammo, which is also stored in the belt

Weapons Belt.PNG

2 Backpack cards in the equipment deck

Backpack2.PNG

These are also investment-style items, because the more you can carry out of the dungeon, the more you can sell in town.

So, it looks to me like our carrying capacity rules are pretty similar, we just went about it different ways!