Primitive weapon & armour materials - help!

[CCamfield]

I was trying to come up with my own homebrew stats for weapons and armour made from weaker materials than iron. The DMG gives a guideline (-2 to attack and damage for stone and bone weapons). I figured I'd give it a shot...

However I feel really stuck. The trouble is this: clubs.

How do you justify assigning a -2 penalty to attack and damage to a stone weapon, if a wooden weapon gets by without penalty? Granted, a wooden club is a size level higher than a (metal) light mace, which does the same damage.

A stone mace should be better than a wooden club, actually... maybe it would be as big as a club, though?

Thoughts?


This is what I'd come up with:

Weapons

Stone
Stone weapons do -2 damage (with a minimum of 1). They are at -2 to hit targets in metal armour, and -1 to hit other armored targets. If used to attack someone wearing metal armour, they are at -2 to hit. If used to attack someone wearing other armour (such as leather), they are at -1 to hit.

Bone
Bone weapons do -2 damage (with a minimum of 1). If used to attack someone wearing metal armour, they are at -2 to hit. If used to attack someone wearing other armour (such as leather), they are at -1 to hit.

Wood
?

Copper
Copper can be used to make any type of metal weapon. Copper weapons are at -1 to hit and -1 to damage.

Bronze
If a bronze weapon is used to attack someone wearing metal armour, they are at -1 to hit. Bronze can be used to make any type of metal weapon.


Armour

Bone
Bone armour provides 3 points less AC than iron. The following types of armour are possible:

Bone scale armor (as scale mail, with the penalties for bone armour)
Bone breastplate
Bone splint armor

Wood
Wooden armour provides 2 points less AC than iron. The following types of armour are possible:

Wooden scale ?mail?
Wooden breastplate
Wooden splint
Wooden half-plate

Copper
Copper provides 2 points less AC than iron, and can be used to make any form of metal armor.

Bronze
Bronze armor provides 1 point less AC than iron. It can be used to make all forms of metal armor.

 

[Tonguez]

Just an interesting note on Nephrite Jade

Jade is so tough it has a greater strength than steel and was used in prehistoric times as axes, knives and weapons. Therefore Nephrite is also sometimes known as the "axe stone".

Well I think the idea of -n to hit vs Armour is good (and your numbers above look fine) I've never liked the idea of reduced damage on the basis that getting hit by a 1 pound rock is going to be just as painful as being hit by a 1 pound ball of iron.

IMC I use a critical failure rule instead giving primitive materials higher Failure ranges.
If the to hit roll is within the failure range then the weapon takes damage (reducing hardness first) on the basis that bone weapons (for instance) are more likely to break (chips, dents) and thus need repair

Stone 1-4
Bone 1 -5
Wood 1-4
Copper 1-3
Bronze 1-2
Iron 1

 

[Khaalis]

Quintessential Barbarian

Since I am not a big fan of reinventing the wheel, I present the following from the Quintessential Barbarian (Mongoose). I think they are pretty well done.


WEAPON MODIFICATIONS

Quality: Bone
Cost: -30%
Benefit: 50% lighter, -1 to attack and damage rolls, half the Hardness & HP, easily destroyed on a critical miss.

Quality: Bronze
Cost: 2/3 of base
Benefit: +50% weight, damage die reduced by one die type, (against other metals - min. 1d3), Hardness and HP are 90% of normal.

Quality: Iron
Cost: -20%
Benefit: +25% heavier, -1 to the Hardness, easily wear out without heavy maintenance.

Quality: Stone (limited weapon selection)
Cost: -50%
Benefit: 50% heavier, -2 to attack and -1 to damage rolls, 75% the Hardness & HP.

Quality: Wood
Cost: -90%
Benefit: 50% lighter, -3 to attack and -2 to damage rolls, half the Hardness & HP, no penalties to do subdual damage, all weapon types become Bludgeoning (20/x2).



ARMOR MODIFICATIONS

Quality: Bone Armor
(Scale, Breastplate, Splint, Banded, Half and Full Plate)
Cost: -30%
Benefit: Armor Bonus reduced by -2, Maximum DEX increased by +1, Armor Check Penalty increased by -1, Weight decreased by 50%. When struck with a critical hit, the armor bonus is permanently reduced by 1. Grants a +2 circumstance bonus to all Intimidate checks. Arcane Necromancy spells have 5% less chance of spell failure.

Quality: Bronze Armor
(Studded Leather, Chain Shirt, Scale, Chain Mail, Breastplate, Splint, Banded, Half and Full Plate)
Cost: -33%
Benefit: Armor Bonus reduced by -1.

Quality: Iron Armor
(Studded Leather, Chain Shirt, Scale, Chain Mail, Breastplate, Splint, Banded, Half and Full Plate)
Cost: -20%
Benefit: Weight increased by 20%.

Quality: Wood Armor
(Scale, Breastplate, Splint, Banded, Half and Full Plate)
Cost: -75%
Benefit: Armor Bonus reduced by -1, Maximum DEX decreases by -2, Armor Check Penalty reduced by -1, Arcane Spell Failure increased by +10%, Weight reduced by 40%. Reflex save (DC15) vs. fire attacks or catch fire.

 

[Aaron2]

Re: Quintessential Barbarian

Originally posted by Khaalis
Quality: Wood
Cost: -90%
Benefit: 50% lighter, -3 to attack and -2 to damage rolls, half the Hardness & HP, no penalties to do subdual damage, all weapon types become Bludgeoning (20/x2).

You have to be careful when dishing out penalties to damage. A wooden sword (bokken, waster, etc) should at least be equal to a club. Reducing the damage by -2 is equivalent of a 1d8 sword doing only (about) 1d4 points of damage. Plus, if a club doesn't have a penalty to hit, no weapon should.

I have no problem with a stone mace being exactly equal to a metal one. Even in weight since you would adjust the size of the stone head to match the balance of the metal mace. The only thing that would change is the hardness/hp.

When dealing with weapons of different materials, are we dealing with a weapon designed for the new material or one that is sized identically but is made of something different (such as a weapon that was polymorphed)? For example, wooden practice swords were much thicker than metal swords so that they would weigh as much as the real thing. Otherwise they would be useless for training. So, as long as the weapon is actually designed for use and not a weird ceremonial weapon used ad-hoc, it should weigh close to what a normal steel weapon does.

Aaron (likes this topic so asks for forgiveness for his rambling)

 

[CCamfield]

Hey Khaals, that looks pretty good! Thank you!

Going to do a cut & paste and look at it in depth later.

Tonguez - you have a good point there, but if you were considering piercing or slashing weapons, I wouldn't expect a stone weapon would hold as much of an edge.

I was thinking about creating some magic weapon modifiers to improve non-metal weapons to be as good as steel or better. In the Malazan Empire series, there's a race of undead that fight with huge heavily-enchanted flint swords, and another race that uses a special wood soaked in "blood oil", hardening it to the strength of metal. The question is whether these should be considered modifiers worth a +1, or just a modifier to the base weapon cost.

 

[Spatzimaus]

There are quite a few rules out there for this sort of thing. IMC we created a whole Materials system to replace both the Mithral/Adamantite/etc. type materials and the Masterwork system. I can think of at least two books that have their own systems.

Anyway, to the original topic: be careful not to make the penalties for primitive materials too large. A sharp wooden sword can still kill you pretty easily (see also: Aztecs). A dagger made of Bone or Wood isn't really going to do any less damage than an iron one if all it's hitting is flesh; after all, a spear is just a pointy piece of wood, and those can kill people just fine.

On the other hand, they shouldn't be as good, because clearly there was SOME reason for society to move to advanced metalworking. So, the penalties should be more of the durability variety and less of the "-1 damage" variety, IMO.

 

[tensen]

One suggestion. Only assume the minus to damage when the primitive weapon is being used against advance armor.

The game mechanic seems to be there because a blade other than steel isn't going to cut through armor well... But will still cut through the equivalent primative armor.

This said and done. If you are in a primative setting and most folks have the primative armor... treat any advance weapon (made of steel) as doing MORE damage.

 

[jkkat718]

Re: Quintessential Barbarian

Since I am not a big fan of reinventing the wheel, I present the following from the Quintessential Barbarian (Mongoose). I think they are pretty well done.

The Quintessential Barbarian II (Also by Mongoose) adds Ivory as well:

Cost: 125% more than steel.
Max Dexterity Modifier: The maximum Dexterity bonus for ivory armour is raised by +1.
Armour Check Penalty: Unchanged from normal armour.
Spell Failure Percentage: Unchanged from normal armour.
Speed: As per armour type.
Weight: 75% of the weight of equivalent normal armour

EDIT:
Sorry for necro-posting, I didn't check the post dates. This will be helpful anyway if, like me, someone searches "Bronze Armor stats for D&D."