D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[AlViking]

Not in my game. Are you having this problem at your table?

If you want to start up a thread about how to apply "verisimilitude" to all classes go ahead. Except is there is no verisimilitude when it comes to magic because that works however the fiction says they work, just like equipment in most fiction. It's only with weapons and similar that we assume they must break or take damage.

 

[mixmastashizz]

I'm down with item saving throws and the like and circumstances under which they must be made. Who says otherwise? IMO you just have to use the logic of the setting to determine when these things can happen.

I was countering the idea that item breaking was super common in older editions thats being tied to other opinions of having it happen on natural 1s on attack rolls.

The saving throws were never tied to the user of the weapon, always against the user based on the circumstances and affected magic users and fighter types equally

 

[loverdrive]

I see what the OP is going for: realism. Is the proposed implementation the best way to go about this? I don't think so. And I agree with you that this can't come at the cost of increasing the divide between casters and martials in 5E.

What? No. I'm not particularly concerned with realism. Or at all, frankly.

(It's also not realistic by any stretch — while weapons are more fragile than fantasy literature would made one believe, and a heirloom sword that was forged a hundred years ago is mostly a pipedrea — they certainly don't break several times per a single fight)

I'm concerned with forcing players into using all the options in the game, and considering counterplay against bad options that one would be unlikely to encounter if everyone is always using their best.

 

[TiQuinn]

I don't remember ever using that rule, but then the rest of my arguments remain. Where are the penalties for the characters that don't rely on weapons?

Like I said, depends on the game. If you’re talking about 2e, a spellcaster has a tough time getting their spell off at all because any physical damage wrecks their spell. If they’re hit by an area effect spell like a fireball, those scrolls and spell books they have are going up like kindling.

Again, my point is this rule is a bad fit for modern D&D. 5e D&D is not a resource management survival game. It’s a heroic fantasy game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, naturally! They do magic, magic isn't real, so it isn't bound by any notions of "realism"!

That in IMO unnecessarily hyperbolic. The magic might not be realistic in the sense that it works at all, but the caster is still a person who lives in a (hopefully verisimilitudinous IMO) world who can fail.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is it really helpful to accuse people of "getting worked up" when they have an opinion you disagree with? This is a rule I've experienced in person and yes, it did feel like the DM going out of their way to abuse martials. It's something I really don't understand but something I've seen time and again. Weapons breaking or fumbles, heavy armor coming with extra penalties, regularly setting up situations where armor and weapons are forbidden but spell components and holy symbols are not.

It's a pretty common theme for DM to want to nerf fighters in ways they never do for casters. I'm not upset about it, I'm not getting worked up about it. I'm just pointing out that I've seen clear bias from some DMs over the years and it is annoying when similar penalties are never ever applied to casters. Or am I not allowed to admit annoyance?

I think the issue there was how that opinion was expressed, not that it was at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you also have casters constantly scrounging for spell components? Make that monk risk bruising their knuckles or that cleric's god demanding proper sacrifices or obeisance in order to receive spells? Not a game I would be interested in but the issue is only one type of character having to pay extra to do what their character is supposed to do.

Where has anybody in this thread posited that this concept should only apply to martials?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I assume we're talking D&D on a D&D forum and the game has no encumbrance rules. I care about verisimilitude to a certain degree but not when it is only ever applied to martial characters.

This is D&D general. Plenty of versions of D&D have encumbrance rules, as do many D&D-derived games to which this thread topic would similarly apply.

 

[Mecheon]

I think every creature in the setting should suffer those beatings, martial and caster, PC and NPC. Like I said above, bring on spell failure!

Is it realistic though? A well made, high quality sword isn't just going to snap all of a sudden or the unlucky 1/20 time the dice don't go your way.

Requiring regular maintenance, sure, undergoing regular wear and tear, yeah, but its not like its undergoing atypical stress and the weapon should suddenly go from "Perfect fine and usable" to "Useless and unfixable" in the span of a single attack roll.

Where has anybody in this thread posited that this concept should only apply to martials?

Very first post is wanting to implement this because of Great Weapon Master specifically. Casters aren't going to be picking GWM for obvious reasons.

Its also where the 'have multiple weapons break in a fight' thing comes from which, frankly, I think is well outside of realism.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Depends on the DM. If magic weapons don't break then the rule is pointless once the characters affected get magic weapons.

I said tougher to break, not impossible (although unbreakable could easily be a weapon quality some magic weapons have).