The Dark Sun Weapon Breakage Rule - How do you feel about it?

[Mort_Q]

Hmm, I wonder if there are any defiling rules when it comes to rituals?

I certainly hope so.

Also, given defiling... what is Residuum?

 

[Otterscrubber]

In a nutshell, I don't like these types of rules. They overcompicate things and after watching an episode of mythbusters where they were unsuccessfully trying to break swords and stuff I find that it probably isn't all that common an occurance to warranty rules on it. If the PCs are using less than top notch gear perhaps, but I would still leave it to the DM to spring some type of equipment failure on the PCs in a way that makes for a good story rather than leaving it up to some randome dice rolling.

 

[Herschel]

But they ARE using less-than good gear. Weapon design is great, but only works as well as the materials used. There's a reason Steel replaced bronze which replaced stone and bone.

 

[possum]

This week, two of my fellow players in Encounters had this happen, and they both decided to risk it, IIRC. Phye was the first and lost her longspear as a result because the player rolled a 5 on the roll. He later got a better spear due to the treasure and had the DM actually show him the book due to the amazing coincidence.

The Thri-Keen also lost his weapon, I believe.

I like the mechanic, personally. Adds a nice bit of flavor to the game.

 

[samursus]

The only change I might make to the RAW is to have the result of choosing weapon breakage an AUTO HIT. In my group, that would get them scavenging for any weapon they can find and hoping for 1's.

 

[fanboy2000]

In a nutshell, I don't like these types of rules. They overcompicate things and after watching an episode of mythbusters where they were unsuccessfully trying to break swords and stuff I find that it probably isn't all that common an occurance to warranty rules on it. If the PCs are using less than top notch gear perhaps, but I would still leave it to the DM to spring some type of equipment failure on the PCs in a way that makes for a good story rather than leaving it up to some randome dice rolling.

I see what your saying about Mythbusters, but that was about using steel swords and seeing if they could break each other. This is about non-steel swords breaking when being pushed beyond their limits. In DS, a bone weapon could break because the PC tried to push it through the NPC's hide armor to hard.