Item Wear and Tear

[KiloGex]

I have a party that is about to embark on a long journey across uncharted yadda yadda yadda... Everyone knows how this goes. I'm running a Pathfinder campaign with a dash of Iron Kingdoms, and have a rules issue.

My predicament is being created by the fact that I want to give the players a little something extra to worry about during their travels: Armor ripping and denting, swords chipping and dulling, longbows stretching, and the rest of the issues that come with repeated and long-term use. The only problem is that I cannot find any rules or suggestions on how to calculate this type of item damage, how it should be dealt and how much it should be.

I've considered dealing 1 point of damage per battle encounter, or possibly only dealing damage with significant occurrences such as critical hits/misses. One other idea is just treating it as "non lethal" damage and not sundering the weapon once it reaches 0 HP, but rather lessening the damage that a weapon does or the amount of damage armor absorbs.

If anyone has any input on this (how to accomplish it, if it's even a good idea, where I might find info on already existing rules that I just missed) then please share!

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

My first question would be: how can they repair/stave off this weapon damage is they're in the middle of the Great Yadda Yadda? Does anyone have Craft (Weaponry) or some other applicable skill? Are there going to be places along the way to get things repaired? If not, then they're either going to have to scavenge/use improvised weapons or take numerous weapons with them.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, are your players down with this?

Thirdly, how many hit points does each weapon type have?

You could do it that each weapon has as many hit points as the player's full attack bonus, representing care of use during battle. Or maybe the player's full attack bonus plus the maximum number of hit points that a weapon does. For example, a great axe wielded by someone with a full attack bonus of 6 has 18 hit points (attack bonus of 6 + 12 = 18). This could work in the sense that a 1st level character might have an attack bonus of 4 and use a quarterstaff (1d6) for 10 hit points. Add magical enhancements to this number, so the quarterstaff has 10 hp, but if it's enhanced to +2, it suddenly has 12 hp.

For armor, you could use the character's AC score as the number of hit points the armor has. The problem I see is comparing how much damage does the armor take compared to the weapon. I hit your plate mail armor with my great axe doing 8 points of damage. Your plate mail has 18 hp (assuming no Dex bonus) and my great axe (using the above example) also has 18 hp. Whose weapon or armor takes more damage?

Personally, I would find this really annoying, other than a 'glossed over' sense. Granted, I'm not real rules heavy and I prefer just a 'beer and chips' kind of game, so this isn't the kind of thing I'm looking for. For me and my group, it's always been assumed that weapon care has been handled at night before bed or in the morning during prayers/breakfast/cleaning up. I can see that there would be the type of players that would enjoy this, though.

Good luck.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Shoes go quick, just look how many they find at dig sites.

Fumbles, are a way for things to go bad because it us under stress that things give out.

 

[broghammerj]

I like the critical hits/misses idea. The item loses something like maybe a point of AC for armor or perhaps a sword does -1 per hit.

The question I have is did you talk this over with the players? I'm not trying to tell you how to run your game, but for me personally, these things always sound cool but never seem to run well. There is an illusion that they make the game more gritty, but what thy really end up doing is creating a lot of book keeping of mundane items. Losing shoes...happens in the real world, but is that really that "fun" to track.

My suggestion is take the critical hits/misses idea and apply to major use items like weapons or armor. No one is mired down in bookkeeping and keeps the idea of a rough environment in everyone's mind when a bad outcome occurs with the roll of the dice.

Another idea is to assign some percentage chance of item failure with every critical use. Say you have to use a worn rope to climb down a well for water. Rather than track some sort of damage modifier for each day and keep track of rope hit points, give it a 5% chance of failure during this important use. Still gives a sense of wear and tear on stuff but doesn't require to track that his belt buckle is worn form miles and miles of walking.

 

[Dannager]

The question I have is did you talk this over with the players? I'm not trying to tell you how to run your game, but for me personally, these things always sound cool but never seem to run well. There is an illusion that they make the game more gritty, but what thy really end up doing is creating a lot of book keeping of mundane items. Losing shoes...happens in the real world, but is that really that "fun" to track.

This. These are DM ideas that sound cool in the DM's head because he isn't going to be on the receiving end of any of the negative implications of instating such a rule.

My advice is to just chuck this rule into the bin of discarded ideas. Unless your players have been clamoring for a grittier, more realistic game (and both of those things), they probably aren't going to be fans of the new rule.

Also, your thread tag says Pathfinder. If you're playing in a 3.5-based system, penalties for critical misses are a terrible idea. TERRIBLE. Because of the way iterative attacks work, the higher-level your melee character is, the more often he will critically fumble. This is paradoxical - it follows that a more experienced character would be more proficient with his weapon and keeping it under control, not less. It also serves as an asymmetric penalty; it significantly inconveniences non-caster characters (the ones who make the vast majority of attack rolls) while doing very little to inconvenience spellcasters. In a system where spellcasting classes are already significantly stronger than non-casters (especially at the higher levels where such a rule would have the biggest impact), this is doing nothing but increasing the power gulf between casters and non-casters. That's not something you want, unless you are striving for a game where non-casters play sidekick to Wizards, Clerics, and Druids.

To put things in perspective, a tricked-out two-weapon fighter could have (give or take) 10 attacks per round by the time he finises his adventuring career. Assuming zero attacks of opportunity, he will be fumbling his weapon every twelve seconds on average. Again, this is a master swordsman we're talking about. It doesn't matter whether he's fighting a demigod or a pack of kobolds, he will fumble his weapon of his own accord every other round. Every twelve seconds.

 

[MarkB]

Do they have any wizards or similar magic-users in the party?

I'm not too familiar with Pathfinder, but I presume it still includes the fundamental utility spells, such as Mending and Make Whole. A few castings of these will easily mend wear-and-tear. Heck, even Prestidigitation will help keep your items cleaned and maintained.

 

[amerigoV]

Make it very abstract. Give each player a cookie. Tell them they can eat the cookie, but they have to give up one piece of relevant gear for the rest of the session (or a general -1 to a type of roll, worse AC, etc).

The fun will be someone will eat their cookie early then plot to steal someone else's cookie when they are away from the table.

Later, players will plot to steal someone else's cookie and not eat their own.

This creates the type of bickering associated with a long, grueling journey without having any bookkeeping.

 

[Vascant]

We have a pretty simple system in place for this, I have a sheet in front of me for each player that has all their info with check boxes (If you want to know there are 50 of them). With each fumble they make or critical hit upon them I mark one of the boxes. The more damaged something gets, at some point it is going to fail and you work it into the description of what is going on.

Repairing, using the craft skill for the item roll a DC for the current check count. You can repair the number of checks for each additional point your roll was above that DC. Without using magic or some legendary craftsman this number becomes your base check mark now. (In other works you cant sit there and just repair repair repair until back to 0, some things just get damaged)

So if your part is in combat and someone shooting a bow has 40 or so checks and fumbles, I might drop a d20, if results are high nothing happens, if the results are pretty low.... string broke, if really low... bow broke.

I think I first took a bit of getting used to tracking but I think after 2 maybe 3 sessions it became seamless in the game.


From the comment below let me clear this up, there is only one set of checks for the char not each piece of equipment. This reflects the over all condition of his or her gear. The whole system is designed to be more flexible then rigid. We had to develop some kind of system because we do not do one shots or limited number of sessions per campaign, we run them until we come up with a new idea for a new campaign (or PC death, which means we are still running the same campaign just that person is running a different char).

 

[RainOfSteel]

The only problem is that I cannot find any rules or suggestions on how to calculate this type of item damage, how it should be dealt and how much it should be.

While this sort of thing is very high on reality, it is very low on playability. It requires lots of tedious paperwork that you just know some of the players will accidentally overlook (some will overlook it deliberately). Unless the GM is a stickler, the GM will overlook it some of the time.

Some players will argue that the daily care and maintenance of their weaponry and armor is a part of their routine. At night, the armor comes off and gets scrubbed and oiled, and in some cases put back on (there is an entire extra set of arguments). Weapons and are also scrubbed and oiled. Bowstrings oiled and/or replaced.

How exactly bows are explained as being limbered or unlimbered as needed has always been handwaved away in my experience (at least since I have been led to believe it isn't possible to keep a bow strung for very long periods as I understand it). It would take a round or three to string a bow when going from total non-combat to combat, with worse for crossbows, but most groups just handle them as always ready.

What you're proposing isn't a dash of extra realism, it's a barrel-size splash. If your group is all for it, then great. If they're not, or if they're for it and then later decide it is a pain, be prepared to abandon the plan.

 

[Nagol]

One of the simplest ways I've done this in the past has been to include "item is damaged/worn" on the random encounter chart as a relatively uncommon event.

Once the event is rolled, I roll to determine who, pick the top 3-6 items they use and inflict some form of damage (typically 1-3 hp). Have the character make a Spot check to notice DC = 20 - damage level. Search DC 10 - damage level if he goes over his gear in detail.

Once the party notices and assuming they have any real amount of acane or clerical spellcasting, the point becomes moot.

Mending and Make Whole pretty much obviate tracking damage. I usually negotiate the party reserving a Mending spell slot per character protected and ignore the first event that hits those characters each day.