Weapons being damaged

[Mongoose Pete]

In your figures you don't take into account that some parries fail (or will not be made) - an attacking weapon will only damage a
defending weapon on a successful parry.

I think I tried to phase it such that I was only talking about successful parries, but yes, the total fighting time will be longer than the time when only successful parries are made. Even so, a starting warrior with barely 50% skill would merely double the durations.

And admittedly I did slightly bias the analysis by supposing that the warriors involved would have a 1d2 damage bonus, which personally I don't think is unreasonable. Historically, most warriors (pre-firearms) tended to be the bigger and/or stronger members of their culture.

But as you quite rightly pointed out, it all comes down to campaign style. Do you want cinematic, or do you prefer realistic?

Rather than a fumble damaging weapons I would say apply my 'critical' rules only on a natural 01 rather than a critical. I will certainly give it a try. I suspect though in actual play that may make breakage so rare that it will almost never happen.

Alas, it is very hard to model weapon breakage using RQ rules since mathematically most success levels occur too frequently. I think we'll be seeing a lot of varying house rules on this chestnut.

...Though honestly I have mostly run just combats - in a real game with multiple combats and no time to repair weapons between them breakage might become a problem.

As a side note for realism buffs, its actually impossible to repair something like a sword. Once the weapon's internal crystaline structure starts to fracture there is nothing you can do to repair the metal fatigue. You simply have to reforge it anew. Which in RQ terms means hoping the smith can match the weapon's previous Item Quality. :twisted:

Hmm, that brings up some new possibilities for you. You could use Item Quality to modify the chance of a weapon breaking.

 

[Rurik]

As a side note for realism buffs, its actually impossible to repair something like a sword. Once the weapon's internal crystaline structure starts to fracture there is nothing you can do to repair the metal fatigue. You simply have to reforge it anew. Which in RQ terms means hoping the smith can match the weapon's previous Item Quality. :twisted:

Hmm, that brings up some new possibilities for you. You could use Item Quality to modify the chance of a weapon breaking.

We always used the Repair spell to fix damaged weapons. Healing magic for the old sword so to speak.

And strictly speaking, using rules based on damaging weapons of equal or lower AP a finely crafted sword with 5 AP is going to be immune to all 'normal' swords.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Speaking of weapon quality and its effect on breaking...

In a long running Bushido campaign, the central plot line revolved about a famed family heirloom (a katana) which had been prophesied to slay the major Oni (demon) who of course threatened the entire land of Nippon.

About 8 years into the campaign (and I mean real world time here) the heroic samurai who had inherited the blade from its unfortunate succession of previous wielders, had a rather bad run of luck and managed to fumble - getting the 'Attacker treated as receiving a successful Disarm attack of the Break weapon form'.

Normally in Bushido an average quality weapon has to roll 6 or less on a d10 to survive. A good quality 7, a superior 8, etc.

Now since these were master quality blades, blessed and fated by the gods, the samurai had little fear that any harm would befall them. However, the GM stated that Fate had no effect on the katana's survivability and the roll should be made.

The Samurai rolled a 10 and the katana shattered, leaving an embarrassed master of kenjutsu facing the angry party, all of whom were wondering how on earth they were going to defeat that damnable Oni now...

It was suddenly the best cinematic moment in the campaign to that point. The players sickening realisation that the prophesy might be false, and that even after eight years of playing, the GM was ruthless bugger. Much headless chicken running ensued.

And all because of a broken sword!

 

[Rasta]

It was suddenly the best cinematic moment in the campaign to that point. The players sickening realisation that the prophesy might be false, and that even after eight years of playing, the GM was ruthless bugger. Much headless chicken running ensued.

And all because of a broken sword!

Awsome!