MonkeezOnFire
Adventurer
So the other day I was paging through my copy of Odyssey of the Dragonlords that had recently been delivered. For those that aren't aware Odyssey of the Dragonlords takes place in a setting heavily inspired by ancient Greek mythology. There is a section that describes how weapons and armor are primarily made of bronze but function as well as their iron counterparts due to secret techniques, which to me just signifies to use the table in the PHB.
It further describes cultural weapons the xiphos, kopis, dorata, and makhaira but it just says to use existing PHB entries (short sword, short sword, spear, long sword respectively). It introduces one new weapon: the chakram which is a martial melee weapon with 1d6 slashing damage, thrown 60/120, light, finesse, special: it returns to you when thrown unless the attack roll is a nat 1. Typical ranged weapons used are javelins, slings, short bows and longbows but academy tinkerers have recently created crossbows. Great axes and glaives are called out as being looked upon with disdain for being barbaric. There are some magic great swords and plate armor mentioned. There are 0 mentions of rapiers.
So that leaves me a bit torn on whether or not I should ban certain weapons and armor to fit the setting. I want to encourage players to use the cultural weapons but at the same time I'm not sure if the more mechanically minded of them will really want to pick from a pool of weapons that is not exactly optimal for all types of martial characters. I'm aware the some folks here have shared their re-balanced weapon and armor tables but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with modifying the table in order to suit a different era. If so what did you do to encourage the fighting styles of that era? Can the game handle taking out some of the go to weapons like great swords and crossbows?
It further describes cultural weapons the xiphos, kopis, dorata, and makhaira but it just says to use existing PHB entries (short sword, short sword, spear, long sword respectively). It introduces one new weapon: the chakram which is a martial melee weapon with 1d6 slashing damage, thrown 60/120, light, finesse, special: it returns to you when thrown unless the attack roll is a nat 1. Typical ranged weapons used are javelins, slings, short bows and longbows but academy tinkerers have recently created crossbows. Great axes and glaives are called out as being looked upon with disdain for being barbaric. There are some magic great swords and plate armor mentioned. There are 0 mentions of rapiers.
So that leaves me a bit torn on whether or not I should ban certain weapons and armor to fit the setting. I want to encourage players to use the cultural weapons but at the same time I'm not sure if the more mechanically minded of them will really want to pick from a pool of weapons that is not exactly optimal for all types of martial characters. I'm aware the some folks here have shared their re-balanced weapon and armor tables but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with modifying the table in order to suit a different era. If so what did you do to encourage the fighting styles of that era? Can the game handle taking out some of the go to weapons like great swords and crossbows?