Weapon & Armor Damage

[Urlord]

Hi Folks - I hope everyone is having a great day!

 

In setting up my realistic, gritty, street level, fantasy campaign, I was wondering if anyone had a simple way to handle Weapon and Armor Damage... or just plain Equipment Damage in general?  We are using the Hit Locations optional rules.

 

I don't want to the game to get too bogged down, but for this campaign where any gear at all is going to be very important, I thought it may be appropriate. Character's would use skills to repair damaged gear.

 

Thanks,

[JohnnyAppleseed098]

I used a system where swords and armour became less effective when used more. I rolled a separate 3D6 and used...

 

13-3D6

 

If greater than or equal to 0, no wear.

If less than 0, remove a DC or 1 PD or 1 ED from it.

[Outsider]

Any time you're hit, but not damaged, make a hash mark.

Any time you're hit and take body, make three.

 

Every (X) hash marks you accumulate, your armor moves down a step on the activation roll table for that location.  (no roll, 15-, 14-, Etc)

 

Set (X) to suit how fast you want wear to accumulate.

[Urlord]

Here is what I am thinking of so far...

 

Armor Damage

Armor has BODY equal to three times its resistant PD.  The armor takes damage equal to whatever the wearer takes after armor is applied. The armor is destroyed for a particular hit location when its BODY is reduced to 0.  Optionally, the resistant PD of the armor can be proportionally reduced as the armor takes damage.

 

Damaged and destroyed armor may be repaired with the appropriate skill and requires 1 hours per BODY repaired.  A crafting skill roll is required to successfully repair the armor piece.  Armor pieces may only be repaired so many times before they become less effective or useless.  Every third time an armor piece is repaired, lower its rPD by one due to a quality reduction.  This means that cloth armor pieces (1 rPD) become useless after three repairs.

 

Weapon Damage

All weapons have DEF and BODY values. The DEF is resistant (rPD & rED) and is based on the primary material the weapon is crafted of:

• Leather weapons have 2 DEF
• Wooden weapons have 4 DEF
• Light Metal weapons have 6 DEF
• Heavy Metal weapons have 8 DEF

For simplicity, the BODY value of a Weapon is equal to half its weight in pounds (rounded up). All my weights are in pounds (crazy Americans).

Weapon damage may occur under two circumstances:

1. A weapon is specifically targeted by an attack. - The Attacking Weapon does damage to the target weapon per normal rules.
    
2. A weapon is striking an inanimate object (boulder, wall, etc.) - See Breaking Things.

Destroyed weapons may not be repaired, but damaged weapons can with the appropriate Weaponsmith skill and requires 1 hours per BODY repaired.  A crafting skill roll is required to successfully repair the weapon.  Weapons may only be repaired so many times before they become less effective or useless. Every third time a weapon is repaired, lower its Damage Class by one due to a quality reduction.

[Urlord]

Any time you're hit, but not damaged, make a hash mark.

Any time you're hit and take body, make three.

 

Every (X) hash marks you accumulate, your armor moves down a step on the activation roll table for that location.  (no roll, 15-, 14-, Etc)

 

Set (X) to suit how fast you want wear to accumulate.

 

Simple - I like it. 

Let me think on it and I may change what I have.

 

Thanks Outsider!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I built the defense and body of items into their construction.  They're like little characters, players keep track of their gear and I just estimate damage when items are recovered.  It helps set items and armor apart as well; this sword is just tougher, this one sucks and breaks easily, etc.

[Outsider]

You could also have the armor's DEF reduce each (X) instead of getting an activation roll.  That would require less rolling, and speed things up.

[bigdamnhero]

The weapon tables in FH list DEF & BODY for all weapons. FH6 p215 has rules for weapons & shield breakage, which basically say whenever an attack's DC exceeds the weapon's PD, it takes 1 BODY; when it reaches 0 BODY, the item is worthless. Seems like you could easily scale it so a weapon that's X% damaged loses a DC, or loses 1 PD/ED. Although those rules only cover Blocks or attacks specifically targeting weapons; it doesn't cover "routine" damage from pounding on other people's armor all day.

 

FH6 p225 similarly has armor breakage rules, which boil down to: armor's BODY is 3x its PD; BODY from attacks that get past the armor also do that much BODY to the armor; reduce damage armor's PD/ED proportional to what % of its BODY it's taken. If using Hit Location, I might go with each section has BODY equal to 1x its PD?

 

The Weaponsmith & Armorsmith sections in FH (also in Ultimate Skill) list times for creating new weapons & armor from scratch. For repairs, I'd probably just take how damaged the item is (ie % of BODY taken) and say repair times are that percent of how long it would take to build a new item; so repair time for a sword that's 50% damaged is half the time it would take to create a new one. Not sure how realistic those times are.

 

I've never actually played with those rules myself; we usually just handwave it. (I also haven't played a lot of fantasy lately.) I kinda like Outsider's hash mark system for simplicity.

[bluesguy]

I run and play FH a lot.  This seems like a lot of extra book keeping for minimal gain in 'realism'.  I would go with a hand wave that states after X fights weapons and armor must be replaced due to damage.  After that point any weapons lose 1 DC and will lose another DC for every fight at "X fights" until they are useless.  Armor will lose 1 PD/ED after that and will lose another for every fight after "X fights".  Better equipment gets to be used more often.  A successful weapon/armor smith roll only keeps weapons and armor working until X fights.  Lack of a successful roll after a fight means an additional 'fight' is taken off the total.

 

So a weapon like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnjtQQQaDKo this one might have 1000 fights available before it totally fails vs. a cheap machete which you might get 20 uses from.

 

In my games we don't get into equipment damage.  I just tell the players, time to replace your equipment it is falling apart.  Then they go shopping for new weapons and armor.

[Urlord]

I run and play FH a lot.  This seems like a lot of extra book keeping for minimal gain in 'realism'.  I would go with a hand wave that states after X fights weapons and armor must be replaced due to damage.  After that point any weapons lose 1 DC and will lose another DC for every fight at "X fights" until they are useless.  Armor will lose 1 PD/ED after that and will lose another for every fight after "X fights".  Better equipment gets to be used more often.  A successful weapon/armor smith roll only keeps weapons and armor working until X fights.  Lack of a successful roll after a fight means an additional 'fight' is taken off the total.

 

So a weapon like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnjtQQQaDKo this one might have 1000 fights available before it totally fails vs. a cheap machete which you might get 20 uses from.

 

In my games we don't get into equipment damage.  I just tell the players, time to replace your equipment it is falling apart.  Then they go shopping for new weapons and armor.

 

After further discussion with my players, we have decided that this is method will work the best.  It was an interesting conversation though, about half the group wanted to do the extra book keeping.  Personally, I don't.  Between this method and the occasional "UNLUCK", I think it will all work out.

 

Thanks for all your comments.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There are four reasons I like and used weapon damage in my games, back when I actually used to be able to play

1. It enforces the genre - weapons get banged up and armor gets damaged in battle.  Having to go back to get repairs gives trade skill characters something to do and drains money out of PCs
2. It limits use of weapons - yes, you can cut through that with your axe, but its going to be damaged in the process
3. It allows characters to target weapons - you can cut that sword in half!
4. It emphasizes differences in weapons - the weapons by that blacksmith are just stronger, that material makes weapons less likely to break, but those break easier

So it was worth a little bit of book keeping for a lot of benefit and flexibility.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Heck I might do something as simple as giving weapons and armor Charges. Everytime youngo through a battle, you mark off one charge. When the charges are gone, the item needs repair and has its effectiveness reduced until it gets fixed. Higher quality items have more charges and thus can go through more battles before needing repair.

 

Weapons shouldnt break under normal circumstances unless they are put through extraordinary stress. Such as successfully parrying a critical hit or some such. Or from a maneuver specifically meant to break the weapon.

[Christopher R Taylor]

They won't generally shatter (although, who knows, might be an unseen weakness?) but the will degrade, especially edged ones.  Notches and dulling will happen every time a blade is used unless its made of some magical super-alloy or something.  Reducing DC as items take body is reasonable.  Or just reducing DC as damage gets through the defenses and breaking at 0 DC.

[Markdoc]

Actually, swords are made of hard steel, and like anything made of steel will break if you press them enough. Modern fencing weapons are made of very high quality steel, by historical standards, are relatively light and yet they still break in use. We have contemporary Japanese accounts of sword breaking in combat, and the user being forced to use a back up weapon. Sir Kenelem Digby wrote a detailed account of a swordfight in renaissance Madrid, where not one, but two of his companions broke their swords. Of the first, he wrote:

 

but he, ... struck the foremost of them such a blow upon the head, that if it had not been armed with a good cap of steel, certainly he should have received no more cumber  from that man; yet the weight of it was such that it made the Egyptian run reeling backwards two or three steps, and the blade, not able to sustain such a force, broke in many pieces, so that nothing but the hilts remained in Leodivius’s hand.

 

There are many other such accounts, and it is notable that the writers express no special surprise: having your sword break in your hand was certainly a disaster, but not one that was unprecedented, rather a known and accepted (if unfortunate) consequence.

 

So bending and yes, breaking are both realistic outcomes. One of the reasons we have so few real medieval or renaissance blades left, despite the fact that they were churned out in the hundreds of thousands is that they eventually broke if they saw much use, and were either abandoned or, if collected, melted down for reuse.

 

cheers, Mark

[Christopher R Taylor]

Actually, swords are made of hard steel, and like anything made of steel will break if you press them enough.

 

 

Well, a good sword is a mix of hard and soft, in various areas, to protect from shatter, give flexibility, and yet retain an edge.  However, that said, it was not unheard of for a sword to break, and we know of at least a few historical instances.  Generally speaking, a well-forged weapon used properly won't break but that's the rub: well-used.  Someone who uses a weapon poorly will tend to break it (the blade of a sword, the haft of an axe, the chains of a flail, etc).  If you know what you're doing, you won't be doing the stuff that causes this: block with the flat of the blade and slide it along rather than direct contact, etc.

 

Which brings up an interesting point.  How would you simulate that in Hero terms?  I think the easy way would be to have people using a weapon they are unfamiliar with cause double damage to their weapon.  Thus, if they swing, hit something, and 1 body gets through its defenses, it takes 2 instead (or two check marks, or what have you).  I prefer this kind of thing very much over OCV penalties, which are a bit overstated in the rules, in my opinion.

[Markdoc]

Well, a good sword is a mix of hard and soft, in various areas, to protect from shatter, give flexibility, and yet retain an edge.  However, that said, it was not unheard of for a sword to break, and we know of at least a few historical instances.  Generally speaking, a well-forged weapon used properly won't break.

 

According to contemporary accounts, even a well-used sword of high quality will break: many of the instances in real-life accounts were swords in the hands of extremely skilled combatants. It's not a question of whether a sword will break - it's just a question of how long it will last. I hesitate to speculate how long that is, though, given the spotty evidence that we have - people mention swords breaking, but they don't tell us how long they lasted, on average!

 

We do know that swords with destroyed blades were often preserved after battles as evidence of martial valour - the 14th century Spanish knight, Don Pero Niño, for example went through three expensive swords in three battles. Of the first of these it was written "The sword he used was like a saw, toothed in great notches, the hilt twisted by dint of striking mighty blows, and all dyed in blood ". The reason for this, it is stated, was the damage sustained from striking shields and armour. The sword was useless after that and he sent it as a gift to his lady . In Heimskringla saga from the 13th century, King Olaf Tryggveson (Gentleman Adventurer!) carries a chest of swords in his ship to replace weapons with blades ruined in combat and passes them out to his followers during combat as their own swords lose effectiveness. All of this suggests that destroying a sword in combat wasn't a rare event.

 

It's worth noting too, that in medieval times, steel - even steel from master smiths - often contained tiny impurities that could weaken a blade, no matter how carefully forged. Even today, international level fencers break blades in use, though the quality of steel is far better (and more consistent) than that of medieval blades. It's not frequent, but it certainly happens. The commonest way for a blade to break in modern fencing (and in medieval accounts in real fights, apparently) is not in a parry (though I have seen that happen, once) but in a strike. A slash designed to cut open someone's head, as in the example in my post above, strikes a helmet. A cunning  thrust aimed at the heart strikes through to the spine and the point sticks. A slash aimed at a opponent is caught on his sword hilt (you can see someone breaking off the blade of a broadsword like that here). It's actually not that difficult to bend a sword blade with a thrust, when the point and the line of attack are not aligned (novice fencers break epees like that all the time, which is why fencing schools often bulk-buy them). Sword blades are not designed to flex too much - if that happens, they can break, or be so badly damaged that even if straightened, they won't last long.

 

As to how to model this in a game? I have no idea, to be honest. If we aimed for historical accuracy, my best guess (and it is just a guess, even if based on much reading and study) would be that after a few serious fights, the blade would be too damaged to be reliable. You have to recall that a month's adventuring often contains more combat than most professional medieval soldiers saw in a decade. But I suspect that players would revolt if you made them replace their sword every adventure or so. Tracking potential damage to blades point by point seems like needlessly finicky paperwork. Personally, I ignore the issue in-game and just tell the players every now and then that their blade (and/or armour) needs replacing or repairing, after a combat-heavy session. If you really want to have an in-game mechanism, then I would ask the player to roll a d6 any time they roll maximum damage, and the sword sustains damage on a 1, losing d3 DC. Since max damage will happen less frequently with larger, heavier weapons, and they can take a 'hack" or two this will reflect their slightly more sturdy construction, while still allowing lighter swords to be broken in one good hit. This also reflects the dulling/damage of the blade which is frequently described in contemporary manuscripts. I really have no idea how accurate that is, but at least it does not seem grossly out of line with historical accounts

 

regards, Mark

[Urlord]

In my gaming group, we are still having this discussion too.  I think we all find it a fascinating topic.

 

First a bit of background material:

In our games, we have a house rule for Criticals and Fumbles...

•  3 = Critical Success (0.46%)...Typically Maximum Effect.
•  4 = Success (1.38%)............Always a success, regardless of target number.
• 17 = Failure (1.38%)............Always a failure, regardless of the target number.
• 18 = Critical Failure (0.46%)...The GM gets to really screw with the character.

 

One of the ideas we came up with is all gear has a Quality Rating with Standard being the default.

Each Quality/Condition Rating has a value modifier and an Unmodified Burnout Roll associated with it.

We even added a 3d6 roll to determine random quality/condition.

 

 3d6        Quality/Condition (Value Mod)           Roll To Avoid Breakage

  3.........Junk (x0.25 or less)................................8-

 3-5........Shoddy (x0.50)......................................9-

 6-8........Poor (x0.75) ......................................10-

 9-12.......Standard (x1.00) ..................................11-

13-15.......Good (x1.50).......................................12-

16-17.......Great (x2.00)......................................13-

 18.........Masterwork (x3.00 or more).........................14-

 

Whenever a Failure or Critical Failure is rolled (1.85% chance) when actively using a piece of gear, the Quality/Condition must be rolled to check for breakage. This avoids keeping track of any damage, tick marks, etc., and adds the randomness of breaking things into the game.

 

This works fine for actively used gear, like weapons, but for passively used gear, like armor, we're still tossing ideas around.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It's not a question of whether a sword will break - it's just a question of how long it will last.

 

 

Well yeah, that's true of everything.  But as you note, we have a few mentions of swords breaking and tons of non broken swords from the era, which suggests battle damage but not shattering like a lockpick in Skyrim.

[Steve]

I'm wondering if a critical hit on armor could be an immediate "armor breakage" moment.

 

Should armor wear out faster than weapons?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Again, its going to depend on the quality of the armor and the tactics used.  Almost all armor has vulnerable points that can be attacked, not to harm the wearer, but to weaken the armor's support and cohesion.  Chopping a few straps off that breastplate will make it sag, slip, and even fall off.  And a poorly constructed suit of armor will have more of those kinds of weaknesses than a very well made suit.

 

For example, here's an early suit of armor, roman style with visible exterior straps that can be attacked

 

And here is a much later extremely high quality plate armor style with rivets ad almost no gaps or places to attack

 

The construction and quality really makes a difference.  For simplicity's sake, I use adjustments to weight (to represent poor distribution and awkward wear), defense, and body of armor if its not made very well or is a really quality piece.

 

Armor I'd guess - I have no practical experience or hard info - would be less likely to wear out than weapons simply because its designed to take blows and is more durable by its nature.  Weapons are thin and light as possible while still retaining function to make them more useful.

[Urlord]

How Come I cannot include pictures in my posts?

Am I not worthy?

[Lucius]

First, hit the "More Reply Options" button, which you will find to the lower right when you start a post.

 

Then look down and you should find below the window you're typing in a place that says "Attach Files" and a button saying "Browse." Hit Browse.

 

This should take you to your own computer. Find the picture you want in your own files and hit "open."

 

That should bring you back to looking at the window you type in. Look down again and further down than the Browse button is one that says "Attach This File." Hit that. A version of the picture should appear on a new line over where it says "Attach Files" and under the typing window. To the right, it says "Add to Post." Hit that.

 

 

 

You will see a line appear in the typing window that is enclosed in [] and says "attachment=" etc. This is your picture, and if I remember correctly, it will appear in your post in the same position that the line appears in the typing window.

 

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

[Urlord]

First, hit the "More Reply Options" button, which you will find to the lower right when you start a post.

 

Then look down and you should find below the window you're typing in a place that says "Attach Files" and a button saying "Browse." Hit Browse.

 

This should take you to your own computer. Find the picture you want in your own files and hit "open."

 

That should bring you back to looking at the window you type in. Look down again and further down than the Browse button is one that says "Attach This File." Hit that. A version of the picture should appear on a new line over where it says "Attach Files" and under the typing window. To the right, it says "Add to Post." Hit that.

 

 

Abstract Composition 1.jpg

 

You will see a line appear in the typing window that is enclosed in [] and says "attachment=" etc. This is your picture, and if I remember correctly, it will appear in your post in the same position that the line appears in the typing window.

 

 

roleplaying.jpg

 

Lucius Alexander

 

palindromedary photograph.png

 

Testing...

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

You can hit the button that looks kind of like a square window that has a mouseover label of "image" and just type in the URL to a picture somewhere else and it will show up too, which is what I did.

[Markdoc]

Well yeah, that's true of everything.  But as you note, we have a few mentions of swords breaking and tons of non broken swords from the era, which suggests battle damage but not shattering like a lockpick in Skyrim.

 

Oh true enough - obviously the vast majority of swords made it through a fight or two, otherwise nobody would have used them. But we have more than a few references to swords breaking. We have very many of them. Sword breakage features in almost every contemporary account where combat is described (I could find you dozens, if not hundreds from the sagas alone), and the description of carrying backup weapons is not uncommon, so it clearly was not a rare event. We also have very, very few non-broken swords from the era, especially when you were considered that they were manufactured in the hundreds of thousands, or low millions over the centuries. And we have even fewer that show signs of having been used in combat. Of course, we have very few non-broken artifacts of many kinds from that era: that's inevitable due to the effect of age and use. Lots of unbroken swords got melted down into other things, once they had lost their use, for example.

 

I guess the take home message is that swords were pretty lethal, but also specialised tools that could be (and were) routinely destroyed in use. Modern fantasy/historical movies and books have desensitised us to this: you routinely see people clashing blades together, hacking at solid armour, chopping through chains and bonds, prying open chests .... all things that would probably destroy a period sword in short order. 

 

cheers, Mark