D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[AlViking]

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.

Isn't using different weapons depending on circumstances part of the logic behind weapon mastery? Because that to me feels like a better approach, a carrot rather than a stick. Especially when the stick only affects some classes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A fighter would likely look something like the following if the rule was used
View attachment 418120

Again, lots of hyperbole here. I see no problem with a character carrying a few weapons on them without having to look like this silly image.

 

[Umbran]

That's not at all the point. I think the angle here is to add verisimilitude without affecting game balance.

There was no "angle", or stated goal, in the OP for protecting game balance.

It was pretty much, "Break weapons, so people who build for having specific weapons don't get the benefits they built for." No consideration of how this changes balance between character classes was given in the OP.

If you have something constructive to add, great. Your post was not constructive though.

If, as you suggest, that the point was to not impact game balance, then noting how the OP fails to do that is constructive.

 

[AlViking]

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

By martials I meant people that use weapons. You know, the ones affected by the proposed rules.

 

[AlViking]

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.

I assume that unless specified otherwise it's D&D as published by WotC. I'm well aware that you consider many games D&D that I, and most people, would not.

 

[AlViking]

Again, lots of hyperbole here. I see no problem with a character carrying a few weapons on them without having to look like this silly image.

It was an attempt at humor. We don't have to be serious with every post.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its a hypothetical were you've got some sort of dedicated build and instead of having something that supports that, you get things that are useless to you. You can replace the katana in the example (i'd been playing limbus company, y'see. bamboo hatted kim has hands) with any other weapon. But, yeah, through sheer randomness you can't play your character the way you built them. That's what weapon breakage does.

Perhaps you're trying for a polearm build but oops, its Gibberling territory so all that's available are their shortswords due to their inexplicable shortswords in earlier editions. Or a bow build but you've stumbled into Crossbow Town

If you want players to look at those widely available other weapons to use, there needs to be an incentive to do so, otherwise its an incentive to isntead just, not build characters around those ideas.

Also, well, in the fantasy D&D emulates, people tend to stick with one weapon and don't tend to, y'know, smash them to pieces every fight and keep picking up new ones.

This is overstating your case in my opinion. First of all, hyper-specialzed builds where the player can only have fun if the one thing they put all their resources into is constantly available to them is a big part of what the OP is trying to combat I think. To me the "incentive" is playing a more versatile and well-rounded character capable of dealing with changing circumstances.

Secondly, I don't agree that said specialization is part if the fantasy D&D is designed to emulate. I've always seen the game and it's cousins simply as a method of playing a character in a fantasy world. What about that demands a pole arm fighter who immediately ceases to be fun if he can't use his pole arm right now?

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.


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.

I was just using the example given. In my opinion the concept works just fine generally. Sorry if my post didn't make that clear.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

What counts as "regularly breaking" for you?

Roughly a 0.5% or higher chance per attack roll.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Again, the realism applies to the caster and how they generate the spell effects, not to the fact that magic exists. And even that can be verisimilitudinous in the setting, because verisimilitude just means consistency within the setting.