D&D 5E In a Prehistoric Setting, a fighter's bone axe shatters. A Wizard's _____ breaks how?

[Crimson Longinus]

I would say in a prehistoric setting, spellcasting focus “technology” hasn’t been developed yet, so you have to rely on material components, and without the robust supply lines of a more developed society you can’t safely assume that your lifestyle expenses cover the cost of maintaining your supply. Sometimes, you just run out of a component and have to find some more.

This is what I basically did for my late stone/early bronze age setting. The spell foci have not been invented. Granted, it is more for flavour reasons, messing with material components makes the magic feel more ritualistic and primal to me.

My weapon breaking rules for non-magical stone/wood/bone weapons are just that if you roll natural one on attack, you roll a d20 and on 10+ your weapon is fine, otherwise it breaks. There are bronze weapons available though, so it is not really that big of a deal. And of course as this will happen in combat, there often are weapons of fallen foes you can readily loot. Hilariously this weapon breaking has actually happened only twice... for the same character in one combat, breaking both of their bone short swords against a gibbering mouther! They invested in bronze blades after that!

 

[Shardstone]

I would say in a prehistoric setting, spellcasting focus “technology” hasn’t been developed yet, so you have to rely on material components, and without the robust supply lines of a more developed society you can’t safely assume that your lifestyle expenses cover the cost of maintaining your supply. Sometimes, you just run out of a component and have to find some more.

There's nothing more simple then having the bone of some Old Great God Beast serve as your conduit to the spirits beyond.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's nothing more simple then having the bone of some Old Great God Beast serve as your conduit to the spirits beyond.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to express here.

 

[Tonguez]

This is what I basically did for my late stone/early bronze age setting. The spell foci have not been invented. Granted, it is more for flavour reasons, messing with material components makes the magic feel more ritualistic and primal to me.

My weapon breaking rules for non-magical stone/wood/bone weapons are just that if you roll natural one on attack, you roll a d20 and on 10+ your weapon is fine, otherwise it breaks. There are bronze weapons available though, so it is not really that big of a deal. And of course as this will happen in combat, there often are weapons of fallen foes you can readily loot. Hilariously this weapon breaking has actually happened only twice... for the same character in one combat, breaking both of their bone short swords against a gibbering mouther! They invested in bronze blades after that!

Did your breakage rules apply to bronze weapons too? Bronze swords were notoriously brittle and often broke on impact - even more so than flint and stone weapons.

Flint and stone might loose points and become dull though

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Did your breakage rules apply to bronze weapons too? Bronze swords were notoriously brittle and often broke on impact - even more so than flint and stone weapons.

Flint and stone might loose points and become dull though

No. And it is an abstraction to show that bronze is more advanced than stone or bone*. And of course in reality iron and even steel swords can break too, yet in the game they don't (unless specifically targeted.) Also bronze is not brittle, iron is more brittle (but obviously much harder.) Bronze swords often bent, but you could just bent them back in the shape.

* And there is no iron in this setting to compare bronze to. If I was running some sort of late bronze/early iron age game where there were both bronze and iron weapons, I would give bronze these weapon breaking rules and iron would be unbreakable.

Which actually brings me to the point that if the setting has only stone and bone weapons, I'm not sure there needs to be any additional rules to reflect their quality, as there's nothing they need to be worse than. Just treat them as normal weapons.

 

[Voadam]

Does the wood wand shatter? The stone tablet spell book? Wouldn't a character just make or purchase 30 wands? Wouldn't a spell book breaking be much more consequential than an axe or armor?

If you want spell foci wands to break dramatically similar to stone weapons use the same breakage rules for spellcasting with the foci wand that you do with the weapons.

If warriors generally have only one weapon and you want the spellcaster to be similarly temporarily hobbled after breakage, impose an attunement requirement on a wand so it cannot be instantaneously replaced with a backup.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

For weapon breakage, I'm a big fan of a simple rule:

• You can choose to sunder your weapon when you take the attack action, if the attack hits, you maximize the damage of the weapon for that turn and then you can use the weapon until it is repaired.
• You can choose to sunder your armor, when you do so, you reduce de damage taken by the amount of AC granted by the armor (ie: 13 for an hide armor) then the armor's AC becomes 0 until repaired.
• You can sunder your shield to turn a critical hit into a normal hit. The shield becomes unusable until repaired.

 

[Shardstone]

I’m not sure what you’re trying to express here.

That the technology could in fact exist, since its pretty much just picking up some maybe-magic thing and acting like its the hottest mystic ish ever invented.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Warlock patron: The Black Monolith.

 

[Charlaquin]

That the technology could in fact exist, since its pretty much just picking up some maybe-magic thing and acting like its the hottest mystic ish ever invented.

Well of course it could. It’s made up, so anything could exist or not exist. I’m proposing that, if the goal is to have an equivalent rule to weapon breakage for casters, reliance on material components could suit that purpose nicely. Lack of spellcasting focus “technology” is merely a fictional justification for the desired rule.