Basic Weapons & Armor

Topic starter 31/03/2025 9:39 am

My first attempt at this was.... too exhaustive to say the least. Most of you do NOT know the difference between a Dha, Kilig, Kampilan, Mameluke, Khopesh, Falchion, and a Wakizashi. Calling them all variations of "short swords," then, becomes really the better way to handle it. Add slight curves to the blade as thou wilt, they are still doing roughly the same damage per hit. As much as I love the physics of these minute differences, they do not factor on the scale appropriate to an rpg. As such, vastly simplified Weapon table:

1d4 - Improved Unarmed Strike (normal fist 1dmg), extremely light weapons (darts, shuriken, sai), whip, sling, most improvised weapons (hey, that "club" is just a stick!)
1d6 - Daggers, maces, tomahawk, cutlass, staves, javelin, chain whip, kama, nunchaku, foil, sickles, and the infinite variety of short swords
1d8 - Spears, rapier, long or broad swords, picks, spiked mace, flails, bows, war hammer, and battle axe
As the middle range, most 1d8 weapons fit comfortably in 1 hand but are still big enough to be used with both if desired, with some exceptions on both sides.
Any melee weapon wielded in two hands does double the base weapon damage (so 2d6 for a staff, 2d8 for a spear, 2d10 for a lance, 2d12 for a glaive) when wielded as such.
1d10 - Standard pole-arms (most long-hafted weapons), lance, kanabo, long and broad swords (bastard swords, katanas and scimitars), war axe, spiked flail
1d12 - Largest swords (claymore, flamberge), advanced polearms&largest axes (glaive, halberd, pole axe, bardiche, great axe)

Ancient armor only grants DR in this game, not avoidance. Armor can be done piecemeal if desired. A random bronze breastplate, some greaves but only leather, and a solid adamantine helm could easily be considered the equivalent of brigandine for example. The primary limitation to armor bonuses is one's rank in Armor, since one can never gain more DR than one has the training to optimize. One still rolls the die appropriate to the armor and rounds down, however. So someone with only five ranks in Armor but wearing full plate, is going to have a roll distribution that will effectively be DR 1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5.

Example DRs of some classic armors:
Leather 1d4
Chainmail 1d6
Brigandine 1d8
Scale Mail 1d10
Full Plate 1d12

Modern armor, when done "by piece," will often fall into the same partial rules as outlined above. However, fully environmental armor will actually completely cover and therefore prevent all damage to its occupant until its own SDC have been depleted. The idea of this being, you are typically not trying to destroy someone's full plate when you are attacking them. You are attempting to strike past/through the full plate to the occupant inside. With fully environmental armor, however, striking past/through is not an option any more than striking through a tank to hit its driver. In these stances, typically one must target and destroy the encasement instead. Hence, one will start inflicting damage on the armor as normal.