weapon choice and fighting styles in D&D

[Wiseman]

The problem with giving certain abilities to weapons, or creating a weapons system is that being equipment based, it's avaliable to people who aren't entirely dependant on that. Yes, maybe the fighter gets +1 bull rushing when wielding a greatshield or whatever, but so does the cleric or some other caster.

If this were to work it'd have to be made into a class feature or limited as to who could access it in some way.

[OgreBattle]

Are there any existing systems which do it well?


Some thoughts of mine on the topic:

There's three main properties of a weapon
-Speed: how quick it is on the attack and defense, affects accuracy and avoiding hits
-Damage: how hurty it is
-Reach: yep

Having better reach means you can attack someone from a 5ft increment further, and you get a bonus to your defense against shorter reach weapons (until they close the distance by landing a hit)

So you have some weapon that specializes in one of those three points, like...

Sword, well balanced for battle
Spd: **
Dmg: *
Rch: *

Axe/mace/cleaver, top heavy impact weapon
Spd:*
Dmg: **
Rch: *

Spear/rapier, keep your foes at point
Spd: *
Dmg: *
Rch: **


So the sword lands the most hits (and is about as defensive as the spear), the axe hits the hardest but gets hit the most, the spear gets to poke people in a way where they can't poke back.

If this game has counter-attack actions then the spear gains more benefits from being outside the range of shorter reach counter attacks. How two weapon fighting and shields and great weapons interact with this, maybe something like...


small shield
Spd: **
Armor: +*

2nd hand weapon
Spd: +*

two handed weapon
Dmg: +*

Then there's more specific rules like how arrows are difficult to parry with swords and flails are difficult to parry with shields.

[Sashi]

You can't "encourage specializing" if specializing is not an option. This is why people should not be allowed to specialize.

I don't know how you can have Swordbreakers in your game without allowing specialization.

I literally do not know how you can do it. Even if there's no Improved Disarm feat or Disarm skill to pump up, because if a Swordbreaker is actively worse than other weapon options in return for bonuses to Disarm then the act of choosing the Swordbreaker over other weapons is specializing in Disarm.

The weird thing is that the choice between Swordbreaker or a Tanglestick isn't seen as as "specializing" in Disarm or Trip until the Longsword shows up. Despite the Tanglestick being actively worse at disarm in return for being better at trip it just looks like an either/or of which of these two options to I want to be better at". But as soon as there's also a Longsword, which is better than either except when disarming or tripping it's now "do I want to use the longsword, or specialize?".

If you make the option "longsword" vs "longsword with trip bonus" or "longsword with disarm bonus" a significant number of people will plonk their vote on "don't care" and pick up the longsword. And that's fine.

Or in other words, it's OK to have the options be "Vanilla" or "Vanilla with Sprinkles". It's also OK to have the options be "Vanilla" "Vanilla with Sprinkles" or "Vanilla with Marshmallows". But it's not OK to have the options be "Vanilla" or "Vanilla with Sprinkles and Shit" because the only people who choose the second option are those who like sprinkles way too much.

This is especially important if you're going to have magic enhancements also rattling around in your Golf Bag, just for practicality reasons. You don't want someone bitching about how a Flame Swordbreaker is objectively worse than a Flame Longsword because the majority of ice monsters don't carry weapons to be disarmed of. Ideally the characters don't care if they have a Flame Swordbreaker and Dancing Longsword or the other way around.

[Username17]

I literally do not know how you can do it. Even if there's no Improved Disarm feat or Disarm skill to pump up, because if a Swordbreaker is actively worse than other weapon options in return for bonuses to Disarm then the act of choosing the Swordbreaker over other weapons is specializing in Disarm.

Because you can put down a swordbreaker and draw a longsword. It's equivalent to like a disarming stance rather than like actually specializing your character. If the character with the main gauche fights a giant crab he is not boned, because he can grab a battle ax when enemies don't have weapons to disarm. This is a huge contrast with spending feats or weapon proficiencies or something into the main gauche, which you can't "get back" when the hook horrors come over the hill.

-Username17

[K]

You can't "encourage specializing" if specializing is not an option. This is why people should not be allowed to specialize.

I don't know how you can have Swordbreakers in your game without allowing specialization.

I literally do not know how you can do it. Even if there's no Improved Disarm feat or Disarm skill to pump up, because if a Swordbreaker is actively worse than other weapon options in return for bonuses to Disarm then the act of choosing the Swordbreaker over other weapons is specializing in Disarm.

When it's an easily changeable part of a character like a current weapon choice, it's more of an encounter tactic and not character specialization.

Being a 3.X character who spends four feats and 40K gold is specializing while pulling your dagger instead of your bow is just a tactical choice you made in an encounter.

If you make the option "longsword" vs "longsword with trip bonus" or "longsword with disarm bonus" a significant number of people will plonk their vote on "don't care" and pick up the longsword. And that's fine.

No, people don't do that.

Sometimes they will pick a mechanically inferior option for style or flavor reasons or because they're otherwise overpowered, but I've never seen someone pick the clearly inferior option because they didn't care unless they were the DM's girlfriend who clearly didn't want to be there at all.

The minimal amount of caring needed to sit down and make an RPG character means that you take clearly better options when they appear. Otherwise, you play some other game.

[ishy]

But is a weapon which only benefit over other weapons is +2 disarm, really worth the rule text in your rpg?

[...You Lost Me]

I think weapon specialization should be saved for a high fantasy combat game where your weapon is magic or you're the ultimate swordmaster and getting disarmed is either a laughable inconvenience or simply impossible. Other than that, players can just preferentially wield their desired weapon and still be good at whatever they pick up.

[crasskris]

Yes, maybe the fighter gets +1 bull rushing when wielding a greatshield or whatever, but so does the cleric or some other caster.

Well, the Fighter already has the implicit class feature of 'most competent at hitting things in melee'. That would cover that, as well.

And why not have other classes play with the same toys? taking a shield and getting in line should make sense for a wizard with depleted spells, too. He probably won't kill anyone, but at least he can protect those of his allies who can.

[OgreBattle]

If the character with the main gauche fights a giant crab he is not boned, because he can grab a battle ax when enemies don't have weapons to disarm.

-Username17

How about a system where the main gauche is also useful in the crab battle?

"+2 to disarm" just isn't very exciting, I've never used a disarm attempt in any RPG. But "+2 to parry" makes sense. If you google 'sword breaker' or 'main gauche' it brings you to the wiki page on Parrying Daggers.


So your +2 to parry means your main gauche can also be used to parry giant crab claws away. Disarming can just be something related to parrying, like "if you parry by X, you disarmed the dude! If it's a natural weapon then they are inconvenienced in some way"

[Josh_Kablack]

How much should it matter, and how to go about doing it so there's "variety" but also "balance"? Is there a particular game that does it 'right'?.

OH GOD NOT THIS AGAIN!

CAN WE JUST GO BACK TO ARGUING OVER WHAT ALIGNMENT HAS TO SAY ABOUT PALADINS AND BABY KOBOLDS!!!!!

[tenngu]

So your +2 to parry means your main gauche can also be used to parry giant crab claws away. Disarming can just be something related to parrying, like "if you parry by X, you disarmed the dude! If it's a natural weapon then they are inconvenienced in some way"

some inconvience like an AoO? I mean, that's the direction Frank took for the tomes.

On an aside, it still begs the question why you'd use a regular dagger. It's either one is just +2 parry and the other isnt (and the regular dagger doesn't get used), or the regular dagger has more damage (in which case people who don't care about defense dont use parrying daggers.)

[K]

So your +2 to parry means your main gauche can also be used to parry giant crab claws away. Disarming can just be something related to parrying, like "if you parry by X, you disarmed the dude! If it's a natural weapon then they are inconvenienced in some way"

some inconvience like an AoO? I mean, that's the direction Frank took for the tomes.

On an aside, it still begs the question why you'd use a regular dagger. It's either one is just +2 parry and the other isnt (and the regular dagger doesn't get used), or the regular dagger has more damage (in which case people who don't care about defense dont use parrying daggers.)

You want the differences between weapons to be situational bonuses and not important stats.

People stick to weapons with important stats like damage, initiative, reach, etc., but they are more loose with situational stats like "+2 to parry medium slashing attacks."

In the best of all possible designs, you'd give each weapon a situational ability like "swordbreakers damage slashing weapons when they parry," but that can get hard to keep track of when you have multiple weapons.

[OgreBattle]

On an aside, it still begs the question why you'd use a regular dagger. It's either one is just +2 parry and the other isnt (and the regular dagger doesn't get used), or the regular dagger has more damage (in which case people who don't care about defense dont use parrying daggers.)

If 'buckler' and 'dagger' are choices for an off-hand weapon, then I can see 'parrying dagger' that is a middle ground between them in offensive and defensive ability. Or 'daggers' are 'daggers' and all of them are X good at partying and Y damage so calling it a 'main gauche' or 'kukri' or 'katar' is just a matter of flavor.

[Saxony]

But is a weapon which only benefit over other weapons is +2 disarm, really worth the rule text in your rpg?

Absolutely. It is 1/5 of the maximum allowable bonus (+10) any character can just casually pick up. There aren't many +2 bonuses you can pick up before your character has fundamentally changed in ability.

Supporting arguments:

The entire RNG is only 20 units long.

If you are passing a certain roll with 50% success chance, that is unacceptably bad in some cases. Like "Sneak pass the armed guard". If you fail, the mission fails, you end up in jail, bad times. Add a +10 to that roll and you are now succeeding ~100% of the time. That is dominating the encounter now. You're a master thief. Someone who was succeeding 0% of the time, now succeeds 50% of the time with a +10 bonus. So a paraplegic cripple can now climb up the cliff at least some of the time. The entire character concept could be changed. So we know that a difference of 10 between different bonuses is enormous (depending on what exactly we are rolling d20s for). A +2 just handed out for picking up a weapon is literally 1/5 of the difference between royally sucking at something and completely dominating it. Add in a circumstantial bonus for using a correct tactic (+2), a spell (+2), another piece of equipment (+1), and now you have (2+2+2+1 = +7) a huge bonus to an activity, just by playing well and using the tools at hand.

So if we throw out +2 bonuses like candy, there is simply no way to predict how difficult to make encounters. If the players ever want to "dig deep", they can blow any encounter out of the water. If you start the arms race, and up the DCs of every dice roll by that +7 to counter their +7, then that just becomes the new normal.... except that everyone had to go through that stupid song and dance, accompanied by searching through rulebooks to squeeze that extra pair of +1 bonuses into the situation. If we allow for players to pick up bonuses whenever they want to (Go Super Saiyan as needed), we waste a bunch of time searching books for bonuses, and we get back right to where we started; The dramatic tension reliant upon an existing chance for failure has been reinstated.

The maximum bonus a player should be able to accrue for any d20 dice roll, by just activating options at hand, is probably about +5. That's a sizeable increase. A difference from 50% accuracy to 75%, or obviously 75% to ~100%.

Just flat bonuses to dice rolls are a bad way to increase character power. Increasing the variety of powers available (I can use swords, and now I can also sneak around), and qualitatively increasing existing powers (I can cast Dimension Door, and now I can cast Plane Shift too) are probably the way to go, in my opinion. Some amount of incremental quantitative increase (I can jump 20 feet, now I can jump 25 feet) is okay, but it shouldn't happen a lot. Small incremental increase isn't terribly exciting.

[echoVanguard]

'daggers' are 'daggers' and all of them are X good at partying

I prefer it when all of my equipment grants bonuses to partying.

echo

[Judging__Eagle]

Seeing as you're a "War Party" in most fantasy kitchensink heavy metal operas, any instrument of war that you carry is nominally giving you some sort of bonuses to "partying."

The fact that so many adventuring groups eventually become outright performing bands is beside the point.

I'm taking to calling the group of PCs an "adventuring band" that travels around the shadow war of After Sundown, and gets paid to cover music around the world, because musicians that can be in on the masquerade isn't a bad idea on several levels.

[Midnight_v]

Hmm...
I can't remember when this was last discussed but something like this has come up before.
I'm in the archaic group on this one I'm afraid, but specialization and how much it matters becomes pretty relevant depending on the setting and what the weapons are allowed to do.
I've been playing ....
Dynasty Warriors 8. A simple hack and slash game but the weapons all have these greatly varied attack styles. The people specializing in them have a "ex" attack with the weapon.
So there's that and it seems to work pretty well.
1. I end up using weapons that have a "style" that I like
and
2. I use some chars with weapons they aren't specialized in.

Still though, while some characters in the stories we vaguely emulate are TOTALLY defined by the weapon(s) they use. The variance of how important that is or can be allowed to be is kinda hinged on how much does a "Sword' actually matter?

[ishy]

But is a weapon which only benefit over other weapons is +2 disarm, really worth the rule text in your rpg?

Absolutely. It is 1/5 of the maximum allowable bonus (+10) any character can just casually pick up. There aren't many +2 bonuses you can pick up before your character has fundamentally changed in ability.

If you are passing a certain roll with 50% success chance, that is unacceptably bad in some cases.

If you start the arms race, and up the DCs of every dice roll by that +7 to counter their +7, then that just becomes the new normal.... except that everyone had to go through that stupid song and dance, accompanied by searching through rulebooks to squeeze that extra pair of +1 bonuses into the situation.

Small incremental increase isn't terribly exciting.

I'm specifically talking about the bonus you get from using a certain type of weapon. If you want people to really feel like the type of weapon matters, the change needs to have impact. Like you said, a small increase isn't terribly exiting. People don't really care. And if people don't care about the bonus, you might just as well not include it.

I'm not sure why picking up a weapon that allows you to break the RNG on disarm is a bad thing though. That would really feel like the weapon is a worthwhile choice.

And as weapons will do different things, there is no real arms race.
Though instead of giving a huge bonus to disarm, it may indeed be better if some weapons allow you to cleave, others to attack at reach, others to break shields etc.

[Saxony]

The +2 doesn't exist in a vacuum. It doesn't feel exciting by itself. But when you combine it with 5 other options to go Super Saiyan (as people do), then it becomes more effective and potentially a sudden imbalance. It's the total package we have to consider here.

+10 is pretty much the difference between completely different power scales (paraplegic cripple and average person with no training, or kinda bad thief and master thief). +5 is about the difference you can have before things get into that wacky territory of extreme competence variance.

So if you let weapons be +5, there's little room for any other kind of bonus and your combat rules can't have magical, tactical, or circumstantial bonuses. How much of the allotted bonus goes to equipment or other categories is a matter of preference. I'd like bonuses in combat to be more than just weapon choice, so I'd like a +2 or +3 for weapon choice.

+2 is worth tracking; I absolutely stick to that.

In DnD the problem of small bonuses is really bad for things like disarm or trip. If you lose the disarm or trip, you just fucked yourself by getting tripped or disarmed. Which is really stupid. So unless you have a +10 or more advantage over your opponents a large amount of the time, you will be disarming yourself a lot (though the enemies will be getting disarmed more, it's just not very empowering or heroic for the Disarm focused character to get disarmed a lot). So the way DnD 3.5 disarm rules are set up, +4 for spending a feat on Improved Disarm is kinda insulting (though the feat gives other cool things). If we made disarming less of a double-edge sword, then +4 for the feat would be more reasonable and +2 for a weapon would be okay. That's +6 for very basic specialization, and could easily get stretched into a +10 or +12 (maaaaybe +15) average advantage over opponents and that'd mean being pretty darn good at disarming. Which is cool. Disarming people kinda rocks when if you don't get counter disarmed.

Edit: Maybe a +10 for Disarm checks could exist for a super weapon. That seems fine. But not your normal weapon that gives a bonus to disarming.

[ishy]

+2 is worth tracking; I absolutely stick to that.

In DnD the problem of small bonuses is really bad for things like disarm or trip.

Can you make up your fucking mind please?

- Edit: I also don't give a fuck how big your RNG is when determining how big a bonus can be. Since many of your enemies are already flat out immune / don't care / are off the RNG anyway.
IMHO if picking up different type of weapon matters, it should really matter. Not some lousy bonus that you only notice if you voltron it with other bonuses.

[hogarth]

It's like forcing different sexes use different stat lines. It may be flavorful, but its a really primitive and lame idea that is not worth the cost of the flavor.

If you're going to have a class whose only ability is "you hit stuff with weapons" (which is a dubious proposition at best), then you're going to want rules that differentiate one weapon-hitter from another.

And if you're going to have a class whose only ability is "you have a gender" (and equally dubious idea), then you're going to want rules that differentiate one gender-haver from another.

[Saxony]

+2 is worth tracking; I absolutely stick to that.

In DnD the problem of small bonuses is really bad for things like disarm or trip.

Can you make up your fucking mind please?

You are quite bad at reading, aren't you? Go ahead and read my post. Strangely enough, it is meant to be read in order and in its entirety. It's almost as if things take on different meanings if you read them out of order or not in their entirety.

Perhaps the nuance will be lost on you, but go ahead and give it your best shot, slugger.

I believe in you.

- Edit: I also don't give a fuck how big your RNG is when determining how big a bonus can be. Since many of your enemies are already flat out immune / don't care / are off the RNG anyway.
IMHO if picking up different type of weapon matters, it should really matter. Not some lousy bonus that you only notice if you voltron it with other bonuses.

Well then you can expect any semblance of consistent party ability to vanish. If you had read my post, you'd know that leads to DMs incrementing the DCs up to counter-act that sudden increase in power, and thus leaving the party back at the exact same difficulty they started, except they wasted hours looking through books for bonuses.

If you want to fulfill your power fantasies and really fucking kill that orc so fucking hard with a sick nat-20 that the DM tells you just how super badass your sweet epic killing powers are, fuck you. This is a game, not your power fantasy. We don't design games for people like you.

That means you don't get to roll over everything like a car over a speed bump, and that certain player abilities are curtailed within reason so the antagonists don't become speed bumps. There isn't very much tension there.

Either that or you want rocker launcher tag where everyone dominates using their focused ability and initiative becomes the most important character property (unless any given character has +15 resist to literally everything, completely negating the entire point of every tactic having a readily available RNG breaking bonus). Rolling for initiative is not very exciting and combats where both sides don't get to use their tricks isn't either.

[MGuy]

@Ogre HAve you developed this line of thought at all?

Are there any existing systems which do it well?


Some thoughts of mine on the topic:

There's three main properties of a weapon
-Speed: how quick it is on the attack and defense, affects accuracy and avoiding hits
-Damage: how hurty it is
-Reach: yep

Having better reach means you can attack someone from a 5ft increment further, and you get a bonus to your defense against shorter reach weapons (until they close the distance by landing a hit)

So you have some weapon that specializes in one of those three points, like...

Sword, well balanced for battle
Spd: **
Dmg: *
Rch: *

Axe/mace/cleaver, top heavy impact weapon
Spd:*
Dmg: **
Rch: *

Spear/rapier, keep your foes at point
Spd: *
Dmg: *
Rch: **


So the sword lands the most hits (and is about as defensive as the spear), the axe hits the hardest but gets hit the most, the spear gets to poke people in a way where they can't poke back.

If this game has counter-attack actions then the spear gains more benefits from being outside the range of shorter reach counter attacks. How two weapon fighting and shields and great weapons interact with this, maybe something like...


small shield
Spd: **
Armor: +*

2nd hand weapon
Spd: +*

two handed weapon
Dmg: +*

Then there's more specific rules like how arrows are difficult to parry with swords and flails are difficult to parry with shields.

I'm taking another look at 'weapons' and considering 'weapon styles' for my game. At this point I am thinking that weapons having various strengths and weaknesses actually promotes characters getting a variety and actually discourages weapon specialization. I think weapons deserve to be thematic so that they are used in flavorful ways. Duelists should want to use rapiers because it fits their style both mechanically and thematically. Rogues should want to use something like (but not limited to) daggers, shuriken, etc because it fits instead of using flasks as the delivery method which just isn't as good. There has got to be a way to make it happen right?

[OgreBattle]

I've been working on it. Going with a system of "Roll d20+mod vs DC, measure degrees of success", pretty much FrankTrollman's 4 stat SAME system.

Degrees of success are in 2's.

I'm mulling over additional effects like "If you beat the DC by 5 with your dagger strike, you can initiate a grapple" and "If the attack fails by 5 or more then you counterattack him with your off-hand weapon"

[MfA]

I for one see no problem with allowing weapon specialization outside it's interaction with the magic item system.

All weapons can perform their primary function most of the time (do damage). Weapon types are not at all like spell schools, being limited to a single spell school is far more of a game changer than being limited to a single weapon type. A specialized weapon being weaker in corner cases, or forcing you to be weaker when you lose it is not really a problem.