D&D 5E Equipment Damage and Duration Rules

[Bawylie]

This has problems of its own, namely the amount of attacks of fighters. An unskilled fighter has lesser opportunities to break its wooden staff than a fighter with its quality steel! Also, quality of weapons is never an issue, which is something that I care about

Well it's not a completely thought out deal. It's an idea.

So number one, you'd account for High Quality implements which would resist breakage to whatever degree. Special materials. Maybe an HQ can take two 1s and a special mat can take two 1s and an HQ special mat implement can take 3 1s before breaking.

Number two, might give different durabilities by material. Wood vs metal.

Number 3, with the low level fighter vs the high level fighter, it seems to me the guy getting more hits in is going to wear out his metal faster than the guy getting fewer hits in.

But that's all down the line. If the basic premise works, you build up from there. If the basic premise doesn't work, you look at something else.


-Brad

 

[MechaPilot]

Have you considered that we already have an equipment degradation rule of sorts in 5e? The weapon and armor damage of the oozes and the rust monster. If I were to design an equipment damage system, I'd probably try to design it so that it merged seemlessly with the ones in the monster descriptions.

 

[Erechel]

Does this also include ripping, burning or otherwise destroying spell book pages when a Wizard gets hit with damaging spells? And will that necessitate that spell not being useable until that page is re-written at a specific gold and time cost?

Because that reminds me of AD&D failed saves, when you had to make a save for every magic and mundane item you owned when you failed a save vs., say, a Fireball. Let's just say we had spare equipment back in camp, being guarded by our men-at-arms, and the DM generally gave out more stuff because more stuff got destroyed.

A few of these rules, and the balance of where you spend time substantially changes.

No, not really. These rules are an oversimplification of most equipment damage rules, and I don't bother to track damage types on this. Keep in mind that i count 1 point per fight -or dangerous encounter-, not per hit, spell, etc. A spellbook is mostly keeped safe, not directly "in harms way", nor carried around. If you use the book as an improvised weapon, it will eventually break, but that is more a DM's call -you can say that a spellbook has 1 duration point, and loses a spell every time that's used on a fight-. About breaking them, they are already rules in the DMG for specific damage. Here I apply the same damage (1 point) to every item normally involved on a fight, no matter the actual effects of the fight itself. It doesn't even matter if the item was actually used or not. As long as you don't take precautions to saveguard them, all items will receive damage. And also, I think that is unfair to the wizard, who has to study every day for his spells, whereas the cleric has all the list available without a "prayer book", and also armor and shields, and the sorcerer or the bard can fast-talk and use their spells without preparing them.

Of course, if a wizard is careless about its spellbook, I would assign some damage or penalization to him.

 

[Erechel]

Have you considered that we already have an equipment degradation rule of sorts in 5e? The weapon and armor damage of the oozes and the rust monster. If I were to design an equipment damage system, I'd probably try to design it so that it merged seemlessly with the ones in the monster descriptions.

The effects of the damage to armor -not to their duration, the actual damage they receive when the duration is over- is the same as the corrode metal of the oozes. I've used the rules of the monsters to model my own -although I've forgotten about the -5 rule= broken beyond repair, and used the "no numeric value" as broken beyond repair stage-.

 

[schnee]

A spellbook is mostly keeped safe, not directly "in harms way", nor carried around.

Then how do Wizards re-memorize or switch around spells if they don't have their spell books with them?

Why are you adding more fiddly damage and bookkeeping and 'gritty realism' to the fighter, while hand-waving the same things away from the wizard?

That's what people forget about 3.x - by 'streamlining', they eliminated every balance mechanic that kept wizards in check. Oh, they automatically get the spells they want. Oh, changing spells around takes minutes. Oh, re-memorizing takes a few minutes. Oh, they can cast while a fighter is literally beating them with a hammer. Oh, when they take damage they can roll to keep the spell. Oh, they can take a feat to make that roll even easier.

This is more of the same. Oh, the fighter has to pay for equipment damage, the mage doesn't! Oh, the bread and butter possessions of a fighter that let them do what they do will eventually fail, the mage's doesn't! Fighter has to bookkeep his 'grim and gritty' rules, the mage's important thing is *out of harms way*!

IMO, my feedback is you need to balance this. Everything gets wear and tear for every character or just (like now) hand-wave it away. Otherwise, you're adding 'item dependency and cost' burden to classes that have the worst of it now.

 

[Erechel]

Then how do Wizards re-memorize or switch around spells if they don't have their spell books with them?

Why are you adding more fiddly damage and bookkeeping and 'gritty realism' to the fighter, while hand-waving the same things away from the wizard?

That's what people forget about 3.x - by 'streamlining', they eliminated every balance mechanic that kept wizards in check. Oh, they automatically get the spells they want. Oh, changing spells around takes minutes. Oh, re-memorizing takes a few minutes. Oh, they can cast while a fighter is literally beating them with a hammer. Oh, when they take damage they can roll to keep the spell. Oh, they can take a feat to make that roll even easier.

This is more of the same. Oh, the fighter has to pay for equipment damage, the mage doesn't! Oh, the bread and butter possessions of a fighter that let them do what they do will eventually fail, the mage's doesn't! Fighter has to bookkeep his 'grim and gritty' rules, the mage's important thing is *out of harms way*!

IMO, my feedback is you need to balance this. Everything gets wear and tear for every character or just (like now) hand-wave it away. Otherwise, you're adding 'item dependency and cost' burden to classes that have the worst of it now.

Look, I'm a big fan of the fighters and martials in general. I even homebrewed a non-caster Intelligence class, the Wanderer. I'm not saying that the spellbook can't be damaged. There is no "fiddly" damage to the Fighter's equipment: every character in the group take the same amount of equipment damage all the time.

I wasn't a player of 3.5, and keep playing AD&D until 5ed came out, precisely for the caster supremacy. But I see more broken potential in clerics and druids than wizards, because it's easy to "lock" them stealing/breaking their spellbooks, but the cleric or druid can cast all day in armor without flinching and using weapons to attack (CoDZilla was a thing back then, or so they say). Of course, if the wizard don't take care about its spellbook it's going to break. I even fast ruled something for you (every fight the wizard don't obsesively protect its spellbook it's going to miss a spell), but then, this doesn't happen to clerics or druids, that ALSO has other tools to contribute to the party. Wizards are something of One-Trick ponies: they cast spells, or they suck. But they are affected sameway for broken staffs (that mostly are their arcane focus, so forget about material component spells) and clothes (the Bare-Assed Wizard is going to take a cold with that puny Constitution stat) and even weapons (they have to defend in some way in melee). Wizards aren't tier 1 this time, as they are very, very vulnerable if they expose their spellbooks. I didn't "take away" fighter's potential (in fact, if you revise the file, you can see that heavy fighters are the less prone to damage their equipment, because the most durable items are the heavy armors and weapons).

In fact, I clearly see that you didn't understand how it works the document. EVERY character in a fight is on harm's way. EVERY character receive the SAME equipment damage at the SAME time, no matter if they are in the rear or in the front ranks, no matter if they only received 1 point or as much as 54 points of damage on the fight: no matter how dire the fight was, they only receive 1 equipment damage to every item. It's not fiddly at all! It's even a gross simplification that you could easily keep track of every session or every 2-3 sessions.

A normal staff is going to break fast, the wizard clothes are going to tatter and its magical ring is going to break. The cleric's holy shield is going to break. The rogue's rapier is going to break. If the wizard keeps its spellbook unprotected, is going to break. Otherwise, it don't. But if someone purposefully attacks a spellbook to break it, THERE ARE ALREADY RULES for it in the DMG. Also note that a spellbook is much more valuable and fragile than a sword. A fighter can carry two or three swords, and a backup dagger in its backpack. A wizard only has 1 spellbook with all their spells available. If it becomes wet, it's ed. I even do such things.

I appreciate feedback, nevertheless. Just don't take me as a stupid, munchkinesque person who wants to up the fighters. I've playtested this, and I can say that the fighter was the least affected overall, because of the duration of its equipment. The aaracockra (Stolasi, owl-folk in our world) cleric, with its holy symbol embedded on its shield, was the most affected one, as its armor was broken, its weapons were broken, and its spells were casted with less effectivity.

 

[schnee]

I appreciate feedback, nevertheless. Just don't take me as a stupid, munchkinesque person who wants to up the fighters.

Yeah, I wish I could have edited that to be a lot less accusatory. I didn't mean it to be. I was trying to be complete with the argument so you 'got' the line of thinking, because from everything I've seen the results in 3E were well-intentioned from the game creator POV, that led to completely unforeseen results.

So, I came across as harshly pedantic, but I was honestly trying to be helpful. I don't think you're a munchkin at all. I only thought I saw a set of house rules that were repeating (well-intentioned) mistakes I've seen in my own groups and elsewhere, and wanted to be thorough. And granted, I didn't read the PDF - I only went with what I saw in the thread - so I was seeing only a partial picture.