I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

- William Blake

Wednesday, July 03, 2019

DARK HACK: weapons and armor

So, expanding a bit on this idea, just for fun... Let's have a little brainstorming session.

Here is what I'd like weapons and armor to be:

* I'd like armor to be more or less "bounded", meaning that if you roll 10 or more on the dice (but under your stat), you'd basically hit anybody, AND maybe get a critical hit.
* Heavy armor is less useful if you have high Dexterity, and vice-versa.
* Bigger weapons are more useful if you're strong.

There are lots of ways to do that...

Don't worry, this ain't real
Armor

One I like is having armor go from 1 to 9, for example (maybe the maximum armor you can carry without penalty is half your Strength), but when you get attacked you can make a dodge roll (roll under Dexterity), and pick the best result (either you roll or your amor)...

This is somewhat similar to my Dark Fantasy Basic. Works well enough - the lower your Dex, the higher the chance of missing and using your armor value instead.

A different idea would be putting a soft cap if your AC gets too high. For example, say you get your dexterity and then add two point for each "weight unit" of armor you're wearing, then compare the total with this table:

TotalAC

11 or less+0
12–13+1
14–15+2
16–17+3
18–19+4
20–22+5
23–25+6
26–29+7
30–34+8
35–39+9
40...+10

The downside is that it requires both sides to roll, unless I use some workaround.

Weapons 

I'm tempted, as always, as make things simpler. No weapon restrictions. No strength bonuses. BUT I'd like bigger weapons to be more useful if you're strong.

Maybe your roll is equal to damage, limited to your weapon type. So each weapon has a "maximum damage". One less roll, I like it. But not something that scales well when you're fighting titans, dragons, etc. Maybe fixed damage would be better.

AND if you beat your target by 10 or more, you get a crit, and add some extra damage.

How does it look so far

Warrior with Strength 15 walks around with a two handed axe (max damage 12). By rolling a 12, 13, 14, or 15, he deals 12 points of damage.

When fighting someone with AC 1, any roll of 11 or more is a crit.

When fighting someone with AC 6, there is no chance of a crit.

One caveat

Someone with heavy armor (say, AC 6) would only get hit by significant blows. Which is not that bad, per se. But probably armor should add something OTHER than AC: some extra HP, damage reduction, etc.

And you might have dragons dealing one point of damage... I dunno. Probably weapon damage would be something like min/max/crit: for example, 4/12/18 for a greataxe. The upside is that it adds lots of possibilites: a dagger with 2/4/10, for example, is nasty when it crits, while a club could be something like 5/10/15, dangerous even in the hands of unskilled folk.

Maybe just min and crit would be enough.

And maybe this is adjusted by Dex in some weapons.. Using the table above... Or just combine strength and dexterity...

Well, that is more complex that I'm willing to accept for this project... So let's leave it at that for today.

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