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

[Mordhau]

Does the weapon shattering make the Fighter's abilities more unreliable?

Then you need to make the wizard's spells more unreliable. Do things by results more than analogy.

One option, since wizards don't generally make attack rolls would be to say that if the target rolls a natural 20 on a save there's some kind of backlash against the wizard, explain it as primal forces at work and magical science being less sophisticated or something like that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Since writing hasn't been invented "the wizard breaks" ends with a full stop.

 

[GMMichael]

Playing a fighter or a barbarian, it's a cool image to have your bone axe shatter against the hide of an Ankylosaurus, or your wood and leather armor torn to shreds by a pterodactyl. Then making new stuff out the Ankylosaurus and pterodactyl. . .

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?

How would you build the idea of breakable, prehistoric items into prehistoric spellcasters?

If I were playing a fighter who was fighting an ankylosaurus, and my bone axe shattered against its hide, that would mean that my spear had already shattered against its hide. And my bow had already run out of arrows. And it had already sprung, and survived, the traps that I had set for it. So no, not cool!

Prehistoric wizards had one spell: create fire. And they were pretty popular girls to have around.

Seriously though, I would expect wizards to have some pretty low-pizzazz spells and/or magic items, given the surrounding low-technology. Strangely, their tools have been seen and used as late as the 20th-century (?): animal bones, skins, and innards. These don't break, because wizards are smart enough to not go bashing their chicken ribs over the heads of ankylosauri. Instead, when the magic of one "fails," the wizard declares that its magic has run out, and acquires another chicken rib.

Alternately, magical implements are made of the softer animal bits, which "break" when the bit starts to decompose.

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.

Not what I'd call a simple rule, but a good one nonetheless! (Should the weapon rule read "can't use the weapon?")

 

[schneeland]

My initial thought was they might anger the spirits of the land/their ancestors/their totem that they draw power from. Mechanically something like the deity disapproval from Dungeon Crawl Classics might work.
Something like a magical mishap or backlash (as proposed already by @Mordhau) would probably also work.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Should the weapon rule read "can't use the weapon?

Yup. Translation error

 

[Eltab]

Your staff caught fire from the mis-cast spell.
DM see Heat Metal to work out what happens to the Caster next.
The spell doesn't do what the Caster expected, but he does get a cantrip-like effect.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Have all arcane casters utilize Wild Magic rules?

Modify cantrips to prior edition where you had X per day, not unlimited. Nothing breaks, but they have limits.

 

[Umbran]

Prehistoric generally implies pre-literate or a time before writing systems, so that kind of removes spellbooks (or even Wizards) from the equation.

So, that's an easy way to think of it. However, we can probably do better than that.

What does the spellbook actually do for the spellcaster? It is primarily a mnemonic device. The wizard has more arcane knowledge than can fit in their head at a particular time, and has to store that information elsewhere. But we could easily consider it being in a form other than traditional writing...

Some have mentioned paint on walls. But there are other forms - strings of beads, tattoos, carvings on bone or ivory - anything normally used for decoration can be used to hold information. So, maybe the furs the wizard wears are all edged with lacings and beads that remind them what is needed for a spell. Or maybe they have a series of small bags, one for each spell, the contents of which are each a set of stones and items that can remind the wizard what needs to be done for the spell to work.

 

[cbwjm]

Back when I created a tribal campaign setting, I don't think I even considered weapon breakage. I know I didn't have the wizard or monk as they didn't really fit the theme, though a wizard could probably be played as a sorcerer, adding new prepared spells as spells known instead. I didn't have clerics either, instead using druids to represent the faith of the people.

If I really wanted martials and casters to have breakage or spell failure, I'd probably make spellcasting require a spellcasting ability check, maybe 10 + spell level, failure might mean that a wild magic surge occurs instead.

Not sure how I'd handle weapon breakage. Maybe once per round, there's a chance for wear on the weapon. Roll another d20 with the first attack, a 1 marks off some durability. You could also have the player spend durability to reroll damage so they get a better hit in, but at the expense of the weapon taking damage.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Everyone focusing on the word "wizard" and ignoring how this applies to a wider range of spellcasters is making me sad.


Let use assume for a moment that you use a durability system for weapons, then I could say the following idea could work. The foci has a pool of durability, same as the weapon. Every non-cantrip spell, or leveled spell of X level, takes away a point of durability until it drops to 1. Then you roll a D20 for every non-cantrip spell, and on a low enough roll (1? 5 or less? your choice) the item is destroyed.

I feel like the durability is important, because generally the weapons only break when you roll a 1 on the weapon attack, so they are constantly under threat, but it is generally easier to switch weapons even mid-turn. Of course, you could have it that you have to roll a d20 for every spell and every cantrip, same as you do for every swing of a sword or shot of a bow.