Weapon Types. What are they good for? Nothin!

[ChrisHaines]

I have always felt that the three weapon types [Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing] very rarley mattered. The only time it became a tactical decision as to what type of weapon you used was when you happened to be fighting a monster that had a DR that was vulnerable to a certain type. I realize that a GM could throw these monsters at her players more often, but I think it would get somewhat tedious fighting the same slew of adversaries just to make weapon types more useful.

There are also those rare occasions where you need to cut something. Like when one of your party members is being hanged and you need a frog tipped arrow so that it can do Slashing damage to cut the rope from a distance. These instances don't occur often enough for me to plan my characters arsenal to include a variety of weapon types.

Does anyone have any mechanical ideas to make the three weapon types more tactical?

 

[el-remmen]

We play that all armors have three ACs - slashing, piercing and blunt - some protect better (or worse) than other against certain kinds of weapon attacks.

So players (and I as DM) announce an attempted hit as follows, "I hit armor class 18, blunt. Does that hit?"

See this page on the aquerra wiki: http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Armor

Also, our crit tables are broken down by these categories:

Slashing Crits

Piercing

Blunt

And. . . Fumbles - All Weapons

 

[Meatboy]

I found that having 3 different AC made the game a tad complex, but as another option you could add damage specific DR to certain enemies, say bludgeoning for undead or slashing vs vermin.

 

[CRGreathouse]

It's very little work to keep track of weapon types, so why not? Even if it doesn't come up every session, it's not a big deal.

 

[Tonguez]

I found that having 3 different AC made the game a tad complex, but as another option you could add damage specific DR to certain enemies, say bludgeoning for undead or slashing vs vermin.

I decided to go with the Armour as DR variant and then apply 3 different DRs based on the weapon type I found it wasn't too much to work out since fights are resolved one attacker at a time the defender just needed to remember the one DR that applied per situation...

I also allow spells like fireball to be modified into different effects some of which are kinetic (eg a Hail of Thorns would do Piercing damage and have a piercing secondary effect (eg Wounding))

 

[Li Shenron]

We play that all armors have three ACs - slashing, piercing and blunt - some protect better (or worse) than other against certain kinds of weapon attacks.

So players (and I as DM) announce an attempted hit as follows, "I hit armor class 18, blunt. Does that hit?"

See this page on the aquerra wiki: http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Armor

It's an interesting system for those who want more focus on different armors.

But how did you figure out those AC? Why would Leather be useless against piercing for example? Why slashing weapons are always worse? (except with splint mail, and why this is an exception?)

 

[el-remmen]

It's an interesting system for those who want more focus on different armors.

But how did you figure out those AC? Why would Leather be useless against piercing for example? Why slashing weapons are always worse? (except with splint mail, and why this is an exception?)

I actually just converted the old armor vs. weapon type table from 2E.

 

[ChrisHaines]

Tonguez
I thought about doing something similar, but I didn't know what weapon types would be more effective against which armour. At one point I decided to make Bludgeoning the weakest, Slashing the second best, and Piercing the most effective type against all armour. The problem I saw with that set-up was that every player would most likey focus on Piercing weapons since they were the most effective. I wasn't sure how real that would be, but I favor balance over realsim sometimes.

el-remmen
I took a look at your system. Boy is it complex! I found myself liking it though. I did have issues with the values of AC for different armour like Li Shenron said. The critical tables are nifty, reminded me of Rolemaster. If I could get all of my players motivated to use something like it I think it would be fun.

 

[el-remmen]

Tonguez
el-remmen
I took a look at your system. Boy is it complex! I found myself liking it though.

We've been using these rules or some variant of them since 2E days with a variety of changing players and have found there not to be much of learning curve and everything runs really smoothly. Then again, I have phenomenal players.

 

[Vuron]

Tonguez
I thought about doing something similar, but I didn't know what weapon types would be more effective against which armour. At one point I decided to make Bludgeoning the weakest, Slashing the second best, and Piercing the most effective type against all armour. The problem I saw with that set-up was that every player would most likey focus on Piercing weapons since they were the most effective. I wasn't sure how real that would be, but I favor balance over realsim sometimes.

Technically speaking when you get up into heavy plate armors bludgeoning weapons often become more effective than slashing and in some cases piercing weapons. The reason for this is that even with rigid armor the impact of a heavy bludgeoning object can cause severe tissue damage and internal bleeding. Thus historically you saw the use of warhammers (which in truth are more like piercing weapons) and heavy maces in response to plate armor as a slashing stroke with a sword was not adequate to penetrate the armor.

In some ways the qualities of different weapon types are already factored into the base damage and crit modifier of various weapons.

Look at a handful of common medieval weapons of each type (longsword for slashing, battle axe for heaving slashing, spear for piercing and mace for bludgeoning). In comparison to the longsword (baseline weapon) the battle axe does more damage on a critical but is less consistent (this reflects the armor defeating purpose of a heavy slashing weapon-ie if it hits it tends to hit hard even if it's less accurate); the spear also defeats armor relatively effectively (thus doing more on a critical) but is less consistent of a damage dealer; finally the mace is less accurate than the sword and tends to do less damage overall.