Breaking the Other Guy's Weapon

Weapons break.  Battlefields are littered with broken weapons as well as broken bodies.  In my view, most breaks should be essentially random—the result of a critical miss, or some such—or should (sometimes) be the result of a successful kill—ramming that sword into the dragon’s belly was forceful enough to kill it, but also forceful enough to break the sword.

But some breaks are the result of intentional actions in combat using weapons designed to break other weapons.  In my game this would cover larger members of the axe family—the military axe, battle axe and halberd as well as the two-handed sword.

The mechanic would be the same as the disarm mechanic of the previous post, with these differences/exceptions:

The base to break a weapon is 16 (as opposed to the 11 of disarm).

Only average to large axes and the two-handed sword can be used to break a weapon.

Only wooden hafted weapons can be targeted.  (Metal weapons would break on random rolls.  In other words, you can't use that battle axe to slice the other guy's dagger in two, but dagger blades are still pretty vulnerable to being chipped or even snapped off during a turn of furious combat.)

The two-handed sword gets a +4 modifier.  (As I understand it, one of its main uses in Renaissance combat was in breaking up pike formations by lopping the heads off of the pikes.)

Defending with a two-handed weapon gets no modifier.

I’m still working on a chart for random weapon breakage that’s both realistic seeming and simple.  You want a rapier to have a much greater chance of breaking than a mace, but you want to use the existing stats (weight? length? the damage roll?) to simulate that.  You don’t want some extra number—breakability or whatever—fussing things up.  The armor of the defender should also be a factor.  If you're attacking a guy in plate armor with your rapier, there's a much greater chance you'll break the point.  And again there’s that balance question.  You don’t want weapons breaking all the time, but you do want them to break often enough to be something that should be factored into the give and take of play (as opposed to a totally rare and obscure random event).  So does that mean that breaks should on average occur in, say, 1 out of 100 attack rolls? 1 out of 500?  1 out of 1,000?  I’m not sure I know the answer to that.

Disarm Rules

As with any rules set, you want something that will appear realistic without being too complicated.  The particular problem with creating a disarm mechanic, or any mechanic that deals with special combat tactics or maneuvers, is you want to create options that can be attractive and useful (and thus meaningful) but not so attractive and useful that they completely disrupt or unbalance the general combat mechanic.

Let me offer a suggestion (the following is based on a “first three booklets only” OD&D rules set—thus hit dice are 1d6, among other things—and I will use 16^th-century English weapons in one of the examples, but I think it is easily adaptable):

After a successful hit, but before rolling damage, the attacker may elect to try to disarm his opponent.  If the defender is fighting with two weapons, the attacker may choose which weapon to target.

In my view systems that require maneuvers to be declared before rolling to hit add an extra level of unnecessary fussing.  In addition, many if not most “hits” in D&D are not actual weapon strikes but rather successful attempts at getting the advantage of the defender or wearing him down.  Thus, it seems appropriate that a disarm attempt would follow a hit rather than preceding it.

One might object, I suppose, that the fact that someone is wearing, say, plate armor shouldn’t make it easier to potentially disarm him.  I would say three things in response: 1. Combat in D&D is abstract.  That someone is wearing plate, makes them less vulnerable to actual strikes but also perhaps makes them more potentially effective at stopping their opponent from doing various things—their armor means they don’t have to worry as much about, say, using their arm to block a blow (or block a successful disarm).  2. I’m not sure I want a disarm mechanic that would make disarming the guy in plate armor the default attack (since its tough to get at him any other way).  It might be that this would be somewhat realistic, but I think it would change the general combat mechanic in a bad way.  3. It’s simpler.

The base chance to disarm is 11 on 1d20 (50%) with these modifiers:

-1 for every 3 hit points of the defender (what he has remaining, not his total).

This tracks two things: It’s harder to disarm powerful characters.  It’s easier to disarm anyone when they are fatigued.  The hit dice (though not hit points) of the attacker are taken into account in the initial to hit roll.  Again, the -3 is based on the “pre-inflationary” original three-booklets.  If one is using a Greyhawk, Classic or AD&D sort of mechanic, one could make it -1 for every 5 hit points.

+/- 1 for the difference in weight between the attacker’s weapon versus the defender’s weapon.

Given the weapon weights in my game, this is not as potentially radical a modifier as it might seem.  In my view, the weapon weights in all versions of D&D are too high.  For example, a two-handed sword is pegged at 15 lb. in Men & Magic and 25 lb. in 1^st Edition AD&D.  A halberd is pegged at 15 lb. and 17½ lb., a longsword at 5 lb. and 6 lb.  But I would make these weights much lower—8 lb. for the two-handed sword, 7 lb. for the halberd and 3 lb. for the longsword.  I believe this is more historically accurate.  See the excellent What Did Historical Swords Weigh? at the excellent ARMA site.  Or go to your local Target, buy a 25 lb. container of cat litter and imagine yourself effectively wielding something that heavy.

I understand that some rules sets choose not to track weapon weight.  I think this makes sense in terms of the encumbrance mechanic (I like and use James Raggi's system in his Lamentations of the Flame Princess), but I think tracking weight can have value for other purposes--such as disarm rules.  If keeping track of weapon weight bothers anyone, then one could just have the referee declare a modifier on the fly ("using a two-handed sword to try and dislodge that short sword?  You get a -5")

+4 if the attacker is wielding a weapon that is designed to be effective at disarming.  In my setting this would include the black-bill and forest bill—polearms with all sorts of nasty hooks and curves on their blades.

-4 if the defender is wielding a two-handed weapon.

If the disarm is successful, the weapon will fly in a random (1d12) direction and land 1d20 feet away.

Any thoughts on this?  Does it get the balance right?

Fighting with Two Hands

Here are the two-handed fighting rules for MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH--my OD&D/S&W Whitebox 16th-century knockoff, in progress:

For those trained in the martial arts (all player-characters, among others), combat always makes use of both hands.  Even a bare hand can be used to grab or deflect most weapons under the right conditions.  However, if you have a free hand, it’s better to have it wield some sort of useful item than not, whether it’s another weapon, a shield or another parrying item such as a cape, a torch or even a cloth hat.  Possible fighting styles include:

Two-handed weapon:  No combat bonuses or penalties.

One-handed weapon and buckler:  No combat bonuses or penalties per se, though the buckler will confer an additional armor point if you are not wearing plate armor or a breastplate.

One-handed weapon and parrying item:  Permissible parrying items include a cape, a leather gauntlet, a torch or a cloth hat.  (The latter only counts if opposing a dagger or rapier.)  Impermissible parrying items include a lantern or a pistol.  Permissible parrying items confer no combat bonuses or penalties.

One-handed weapon and second weapon:  If you are wielding an average or larger weapon (3 ft or longer in length) the second weapon cannot be longer than ⅔ the length of the main weapon.  Otherwise it can be up to the same length.  (Thus you can fight with a backsword and a ballock knife, or two ballock knives but not two backswords.)  On any natural roll of 7, the second weapon will do 1d3 of damage (whatever the usual damage of the weapon).  If this roll was a hit, then the damage will be in addition to the damage of the main weapon.

Case of rapiers:  Fighting with two rapiers gives you a penalty of -2 to hit but improves your armor class by 2.

One-handed weapon only:  If none of the above conditions apply, but your opponent does satisfy one of them, then he will be at +1 to hit.  The reverse also applies, of course.