Please understand, I have no problem with the
idea of a War Maul type implement.
I only have a problem with the idea that any shmuck with an exotic weapon proficiency can pick up
and wield successfully in combat a hammer with a thirty-pound head.
With that said (and now that I have both my CCCBs and my book in front of me) - this is what
I would do (your milage may obviously vary.)
War Maul: An eight-ten pound hammerhead on a stick. Adapted for war from implements used to pound in stakes, split firewood and crush rocks.
System: should probably be an exotic weapon. There is already a "honkin big blade on a stick" weapon - the Bardiche. If you take the Bardiche stats and adjust them for "warhammer"ness similar to the differences between a Battle-axe and a Warhammer, you ought to get something pretty close to good enough. So, let's see:
A Warhammer is: 7sp - 1d6 - x3 - AP7 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP4 - 4 lb - B or P - Martial One-Handed
A Battleaxe is: 5 sp - 1d10 - x3 - AP4 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP5 - 3 lb - S - Martial One-Handed
For my own part, I know that *most* warhammers, qua warhammers, (that is, things like this:
)
are actually *lighter* than axes and many maces. The all-steel warhammer I have hanging on my wall weighs a little more than two pounds - well, around two-and-a-half, actually - so
I would lower the Warhammer's weight to three, or even two, pounds. Not that that's really here or there for this discussion, mind ... where was I?
Oh, yeah, Warhammers, right.
Anyway, my
point was going to be that a "War Maul" - essentially a large sledgehammer - is not really going to have the same characteristics as an actual eight-pound version of the picture I just linked to.
So, to actually make a point here someday,
I would stat out a new weapon called a "Sledge", or possibly a "Warsledge", made to depict an actual, y'know, sledgehammer in combat.
New weapon:
Warsledge - 5 sp - 1d8 - x3 - AP5 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP5 - 4 lb - B - Martial One-Handed.
Note that you will generally prefer either the battleaxe, for damage, or the warhammer, for AP, in general useage - but as few people ever actually used sledgehammers in melee, this does not bother me.
Anyway - back to the Warmaul :
A Battleaxe is: 5 sp - 1d10 - x3 - AP4 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP5 - 3 lb - S - Martial One-Handed
A Bardiche is: 8sp - 2d10 - x3 - AP5 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP10 - 7 lb - S - Martial Two-Handed
The only problem I would have with the Bardiche's stats is that it is a Martial weapon, whereas I would think that something that heavy would be Exotic, but whatever. Now the differences between a Battleaxe and a Bardiche are: 1 - doubled damage, 2- +1 AP - 3 - Doubled HP, 4 - greater weight, and 5 - two-handed instead of one-handed. Applying these changes to the "Warsledge" I just made up would give:
New weapon :
Warmaul - 8sp - 2d8 - x3 - AP6 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP10 - 8 lb - B - Martial Two-Handed.
If we apply the Battleaxe-Bardiche changes to an actual
Warhammer referenced above, we get:
New weapon :
Freakin' Big Warhammer - 10sp - 2d6 - x3 - AP9 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP8 - 6 lb - B or P - Martial Two-Handed.
(Notice that I've reduced the weight a tad.) Edit: Also, the AP should be pumped up, as AP8 is the same as a Pollaxe (below) which should logically be a little poorer at that job, to make up for its extra flexibility. So AP9, instead of AP8.
We can also delve into medevial history and come up with a weapon called a
Bec-de-corbin (or "crows beak") which also seems to be unaccountably missing from the weapons tables in Conan OGL. It's basicly an only-slightly-heavier Warhammer (like the picture) on a longer stick. The similarity here is Battleaxe - Pollaxe.
A Battleaxe is: 5 sp - 1d10 - x3 - AP4 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP5 - 3 lb - S - Martial One-Handed
A Pollaxe is: 8 sp - 2d6 - x3 - AP8 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP10 - 7 lb - S or P - Martial Two-Handed - Set vs. Charge.
(Which, quite frankly, looks an awful damn lot like a bec-de-corbin already, but ....)
Anyway, applying the differences to a Warhammer gives you:
New weapon:
Bec-de-corbin - 10 sp - 1d8 - x3 - AP14(!!) - 0' - Hrd7 - HP8 - 6 lb. - B or P - Martial Two-Handed - Set vs. Charge.
(Whether you want to unleash an AP14 weapon into your campaign I couldn't say. Since the primary use for - and reason for the development of - the Bec-de-corbin was shucking fully plate-armored knights out of their steel shells it
almost makes sense. A different reading of the Battleaxe-Pollaxe translation would make it AP11, if that's any better. Heh.)
Anyway, back to your original point, which was to simulate the uber-weapon of a movie badguy - a thirty pound mallet-thingy.
Since we're talking about a weapon that should only be used by uber-characters anyway here, I have no difficulty with making it not merely Exotic, but Exotic and requires-a-feat-or-two-anyway - this is not something that any random Barbarian should be able to pick up and use well.
I note that my private notes indicate that raising a size Medium weapon to a size Large usually doubles the weight, and increasing a size Large to a size Huge can range between 2x and 4x the weight again. Going by the note above that the two-handed-sledgehammer Warmaul weighs eight pounds if it's made for a Human, it would seem that the same weapon made for an Ogre would weigh around 16 pounds, and the same weapon made for a Hill Giant would weigh between 32 and 64. If, then we conclude that whatisface's mallet shared the statistics of a Warmaul built for a Hill Giant (and figure out how he was swinging it around later) , we can advance the Warmaul stats to size Huge and see what they are.
My private notes indicate that a single level shift in size raises damage codes by two die-types or 2-4 points of average damage, depending.
A Medium Warmaul (as above) is: 8sp - 2d8 - x3 - AP6 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP10 - 8 lb - B - Martial Two-Handed.
2d8 average damage is 9, so adding 4-8 points would give between 13-17. This encodes to, mmm, 3d8 really, which seems a little low. raising the die-type by four would yield mmm 8-10-12-14=2d8 or so, which would give us 4d8, which is 18 average damage, which seems reasonable anyway.
AP - what to do about AP? The diff between the Battleaxe and the Bardiche approximates a size jump, and that adds 1 AP, so 2 AP would seem reasonable, except that that would put the the total AP at 8, which seems very low to me. Hmm. Let's bump it to 10, what say? That should be scary enough.
So a Huge Warmaul would be: 14sp - 4d8 - x3 - AP10 - 0' - Hrd7 - HP40 - 40 lb - B - Martial Two-Handed (Special).
It's going to brush aside almost any armor, since it will be getting AP14-16 or so, and will do, on average , between 22 and 24 hp per hit, drawing a massive damage save, assuming it's being used by a chanacter of STR18 - 22, which should be kinda minimal for a highish level bruiser.
Now to apply drawbacks.
First off, I really wouldn't want too many PCs taking this monster, so I would rather make it kind-of un-appealing. Second, I would like to maintain a nodding distance with realism, if for no other reason than that it keeps down the amount of extrapolation I, as GM, have to do in-game. So, if you just pick this thing up and started trying to whale away I would rule like so:
A character attempting to wield a weapon equivalent to one built for a being one size class larger than the character concerned suffers the following penalties:
1 - the weapon is considered an Exotic Two-Handed weapon for that character,
2 - the character suffers a -2 Circumstance penalty on attack rolls,
3 - because the weapon is so slow and difficult to wield, each attack the character makes with the weapon draws an automatic Attack of Opportunity after the Attack roll, as the character attempts to recover from the swing and return to guard position.
(optional) 4 - the character wielding the weapon suffers a circumstance penalty of -4 to Parry.
A character attempting to wield a weapon equivalent to one built for a being
two size classes larger than he or she is suffers all of the above penalties, and also the following:
1 - another -2 Circumstance penalty to Attack rolls, the penalties stack,
2- in addition to the AoO
after the Attack roll, the wielder also suffers an Attack of Oportunity
before the attack roll as he attempts to set for a blow.
3 - the character may not Parry with the weapon under any circumstances.
4 - the character may not make Attacks of Opportunity with the weapon.
The "Dodge it, you Moron!" rule: a character attempting to Parry a weapon wielded by an opponent one or more sizes larger than himself, or an opponent wielding a weapon built for such a creature, suffers a Circumstance penalty to his DV of -2 per size class difference. The penalties (obviously) stack. (In the ROTK movie, Eowyn didn't try to bnlock the Witch King's god-awful huge Flail, she just got out of the way. Sensibly.)
Now we add a pair of feats:
Massive Weapons Proficiency (General, Soldier)
The character may use weapons made for, or equivalent to weapons made for, beings one size class larger than himself as if they were ordinary weapons of their type, suffering no additional penalties. The character
does however, suffer a Circumstance penalty of -1 to his Attack rolls with such large weapons.
Normal: the character suffers penalties when attempting to use a weapon built for a being of larger size than himself.
Huge Weapon Proficiency[/u] (General, Soldier)
Prerequisite: Massive Weapons Proficiency, Proficiency in the selected weapon., Weapon Focus in the selected weapon.
The character may select a single weapon with which he has Weapon Focus. The character may use a specially made version of that weapon which is equivalent to a weapon of that type made for a being of twp size classes larger than the character in question. With this weapon the normal penalties attendant upon using such an oversized weapon are replaced with the following:
1 - the character suffers a Circumstance penalty of -2 to attack rolls with the weapon, and
2 - the character not Parry with the weapon, and thus may not Parry at all if he has no other readied weapon or shield, and
3 - the character may not make Attacks of Opportunity with the weapon.
The latter two penalties are justified by saying that the fighter is not capable of keeping the weapon moving at all times like a warrior wielding a more sensibly sized weapon can - rather, the character must strike in ferocious bursts of speed, which he must plan ahead of time. The temporary opening left when someone draws an AoO is insufficient time for him to set and swing without leaving himself open in turn.
The effect of these two feats will be that: A - Barbarians will not get them, so Conan will not go around snarfing Thorgrim's big hammer, and
B - dodging will be the appropriate response to this beast, which will probably kill any character of less than 6-8th level it hits straight off, and
C - high level barbarians will go first, streak in using Mobility, hack the bruiser a couple times, and then streak back out, and
D - the best defence of a Soldier-type (who is the class most likely to carry this thing) is reduced or negated, meaning
E - PCs are not likely to use the thing.
Which is what we wanted to begin with.
As a special bonus, in addition to Thorgrimms uber-hammer, these rules can also be used to smack down ^H^Harbitrate^H^Hsmack down people who want to wield Cloud Strife's Buster sword. If, that happens to be, like, a thing for you. Or something.
Here endeth the post.
