Weapon vs Armour type modifiers

[Henry]

weird, i have no problem with them using weapon vs armor type now.

but we are playing OD&D with the aid of Supplement I Greyhawk.

Supplements?

Powergamer. Stick with the three core books, where all weapons deal 1d6 - then you'll see variety!

 

[JustKim]

It's not like in 2e, where the longsword was just better than everything else.

This is mostly true, but then you get into weapons like the whip and shuriken which are very poorly balanced except for the one class that gets them free.

A lot of "exotic" weapons have no mechanical reason for being exotic, but instead a real-world rationalization of being unwieldly, Asiatic or simply obscure. In the exotic weapons category at least, some weapons are clearly better than others.

 

[BOZ]

one way to use this old rule would be to make a system similar to damage reduction (or, just work it into the DR rules). say that a particular armor type has 5/piercing, while another has 5/bludgeoning.

 

[The Lemon Merchant]

Here's what I came up with in my homebrew campaign. Instead of appling a tedious aspect to weapons, we developed a feat.

Weapon versus Armor [General]
You can exploit the advantage that certain weapons have versus armored opponents.
Prerequisite: Base Attack +1
Benefit: The listed weapons receive a +1 to hit against opponents wearing armor. You must be proficient in the weapon to receive the bonus. You receive the bonus with ranged weapons only in their first range increment. You receive no bonus versus opponents who are carrying a shield, have natural armor or magical defenses, etc. but are not wearing light, medium or heavy armor.
Qualified Weapons: Crossbow (heavy), Crossbow (light), Falchion, Flail (great), Flail (light), Flail (heavy), Halberd, Hammer (Gnome hooked), Hammer (light), Mace (heavy), Mace (light), Morning Star, Pick (heavy), Pick (light), Sling (bullet), Sword (bastard), Waraxe (Dwarven)
Special: A fighter may take this as one of his bonus feats

 

[Terwox]

My first inclination is to go, "what? I always thought weapons having an attack bonus versus certain armor types would be neat, and make people switch weapons against armor types."
My second inclination says, "oh... everyone else has lived through this system and says that it's really, really bad and slow. I'll happily live without it."

If you do do it, make sure it's something very simple, like BOZ's suggestion -- which is still possibly somewhat complex in practice.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Haven't used them with 3.5. I did like it in 1E but then again I also liked speed factors in 2E. I'd talk to your group and ask them if they want that much detail. To a point 3.5 already incorporates it somewhat. Piercing weapons generally don't do as much damage as slashing but they in most cases have a greater crit multiplier. If the combat system weren't so abstract the differences between weapons would work better. One system I liked was White-Wolf's COMBAT book. If someone beat you on initiative you pretty much had to decide then and there if you were going to defend yourself or if you wanted to take the hit and retaliate... you couldn't do both unless you had multiple actions. In some cases if the initiative difference was high enough you couldn't defend yourself even if you wanted to, your opponent's attack was simply too fast for you to get your guard up.

Okay, now I've inspired myself to create a hybrid 3.5/WW combat system.

 

[MerricB]

Let's see - am I using one of the two things that Gary Gygax says was one of his biggest mistakes in the 1E rules...

NO!

The other big mistake of Gary's was the Psionic rules. In both cases, his "friends" pleaded for their inclusion, but they were not a good addition to the rules.

This is D&D, yes? There's a lot of combat against monsters, yes? They don't have armour, do they? So the tables aren't useful!

Cheers!

 

[Aristotle]

Like BOZ suggests, I think the system for this is already in place. Weapons have listed damage types. Unearthed Arcana provides an armor alternative to use armor as DR. By simply adding a damage type to the right of the slash for that DR you give it a weakness to a specific type of damage.

I would do that in a game (in fact I've been considering it for a while). I wouldn't go ANY further than that though (it would be too complex for armor to have multiple DR ratings for various damage types).

 

[jmucchiello]

This is D&D, yes? There's a lot of combat against monsters, yes? They don't have armour, do they? So the tables aren't useful!

So change all the monsters, too. I am half serious. If you can have standard, flat-footed, versus attack of opportunity, touch, incorporeal touch and raging armor classes for standard monsters, why not add vs. blunt, vs piercing and vs slashing armor classes too? Not all natural armor is the same. Blunt tramua might penetrate a mammal's natural armor easier than it gets through reptile hide. Piercing weapons can slip between scales but skitters off carapace.

Also, where it would come up more often is in monster attacks against PCs. All monster attack types are listed as being b/p/s (slams are blunt, claws slash, etc.) so you can vary monster attack bonuses based on the armor the characters are wearing. And that adjustment will come up a lot. I think what this would do is diversify ARMOR far more than it would weaponry.

Wasn't there a thread about this a few months ago?

 

[Spatula]

For those folk who recall these from first, are you using them in 3.5?

No, and never used them in 1e (way to complex) or 2e (simpler, but still slows things down, and like Merric points out neither takes into account monster "armor"), either.

I am endeavouring to prevent everyone using the same weapon

This is generally not an issue in 3E, since the weapons are balanced despite their small differences. The average damage of a longsword is the same as a battleaxe, for example, even though they have different critical hit characteristics. This is a change from 1E and 2E, where the longsword ruled all.

It's not a major change, but to 'even' it up, I am considering allowing specialisation and focus feats to stack.

Um, they already do. Focus = +1 to hit with selected weapon. Specialization = +2 to damage with selected weapon.