Erechel
Explorer
Hello, people. As you may know, there are plenty of complex systems for adjudicating damage and wear to the weapons, armor and clothes that the adventurers' use. Most of these systems are very complex and bothersome to use, as they don't abstract enough this feature and make it difficult to track. The vast majority track items individually, asigning them damage based on specific use or maneuvers, such as Sundering, or complex tracking of every missed hit by a margin enough to hit armor or shield.
And that kills the possible interest on a system that tracks item attrition. And the system don't get used.
But, nevertheless, adding this type of attrition can be very interesting, and has a lot of potential, as you can add things like weapon quality without necessarily messing with combat. You can also give an answer to the eternal "looting the bodies of the enemies" without messing too much with the economy of the adventurers, cotrolling the influx of new weapons that characters can sell. You can also increase the value of certain items, and degrade the costs of others: those pesky dwarves have a great equipment, but those filthy orcs have miserable armors.
Of course, I'm not claiming that my system is overall perfect nor realistic. It isn't. It is a necessary abstraction to make the duration rules playable. And the numbers are fairly simple (eg: a common plate armor has 18 duration points, the same as the AC provided; and a common longsword has 8 DP: equal to its maximum damage. Other equipment, such as shields, haven't that "easy" value, but they generically last for 7 fights unless they are of better or worse quality.), although they add a whole new level of (fairly simple: you only need to count the number of battles the characters fight and substract it from the Duration Points of every item) bookkeeping . But the DM can also complicate things, and adjudicate ad hoc duration loss.
Give it a try. It has been playtested with novate players, and it works fairly smooth. You only have to download the pdf (you can download it for free, although 50 cents would be very appreciated: I have a son to feed). You can also use it on earlier versions of D&D or even Pathfinder, as it is fairly generic.
Link
And that kills the possible interest on a system that tracks item attrition. And the system don't get used.
But, nevertheless, adding this type of attrition can be very interesting, and has a lot of potential, as you can add things like weapon quality without necessarily messing with combat. You can also give an answer to the eternal "looting the bodies of the enemies" without messing too much with the economy of the adventurers, cotrolling the influx of new weapons that characters can sell. You can also increase the value of certain items, and degrade the costs of others: those pesky dwarves have a great equipment, but those filthy orcs have miserable armors.
Of course, I'm not claiming that my system is overall perfect nor realistic. It isn't. It is a necessary abstraction to make the duration rules playable. And the numbers are fairly simple (eg: a common plate armor has 18 duration points, the same as the AC provided; and a common longsword has 8 DP: equal to its maximum damage. Other equipment, such as shields, haven't that "easy" value, but they generically last for 7 fights unless they are of better or worse quality.), although they add a whole new level of (fairly simple: you only need to count the number of battles the characters fight and substract it from the Duration Points of every item) bookkeeping . But the DM can also complicate things, and adjudicate ad hoc duration loss.
Give it a try. It has been playtested with novate players, and it works fairly smooth. You only have to download the pdf (you can download it for free, although 50 cents would be very appreciated: I have a son to feed). You can also use it on earlier versions of D&D or even Pathfinder, as it is fairly generic.
Link
