D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[Micah Sweet]

Soldiers are trained to keep their gear well maintained. It becomes as automatic a routine as breathing. Now, you might think it would be fun to track breathing “it’s been 5 minutes since you said you take a breath, you fall unconscious.” But that’s not my idea of fun.

There is a computer game about putting one foot in front of another if you like that sort of thing: Behold, the most intimidating demo I’ve had in 12 years of covering video games: playing "literal walking simulator" Baby Steps in front of Getting Over It mastermind Bennett Foddy

You don't think you've just generated a ridiculous straw man here? Breathing and walking? Can we look at the topic seriously please?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wounds should also get infected whenever a weapon cuts you but we rightly handwaved that away as being boring for play. D&D has never been about realism, it's about verisimilitude. It's not about truth, but truthiness.

I can definitely see allowing for the possibility of infection. Realism is often part of the verisimilitude of the setting, if it has any resemblance to our world (which it very often does).

 

[Micah Sweet]

And healing should never heal you fully but often leave lasting damage even when the wound is fully healed. In fact, without full surgery avialable, there should be much more amputated limbs or people bleeding out.

As I've said many times, lasting injury should IMO be a thing in D&D-like games. However, I feel it works best as a possible consequence of falling to zero hp.

 

[Maxperson]

To be fair, a better magic item would be you could add 2d6 fire to your damage with any weapon as a bonus action for, say, a minute. Give it 7 charges, recharging per day and you're pretty good to go.

OTOH, I find straight damage bonus items to be the most boring things in the game - and I find them largely pointless. If the non-casters in the group are all doing extra damage per attack, then the DM just gives the baddies more HP and it winds up a pointless number.

I'd MUCH rather an item that actually does stuff in a fight. Your amulet causes the target to teleport 15 feet in a random direction (including straight up) is a MUCH more interesting item.

I'm sure some DMs do that. I don't, though. It's 1) too much work, 2) adversarial, and 3) takes away the meaning something fun for the player.

If I give that item to a player, it's going to be a true bonus for him.

 

[Maxperson]

That was the problem in 2e. People talk about interupting casters, but, that was incredibly difficult to do in 2e. Your initiative was modified by the casting time of the spell, typically 1-3. A medium creature started at a +3 mod for initiative. The wizard beat the monster almost every time. A large monster was +6. Let's each roll d10's. I roll a d10+1- my Dex bonus, you roll a d10 +6 . Guess who wins pretty much every time?

The whole, "Oh, well casters lost their spells all the time" thing is such an overblown myth of early edition play. Never minding any reasonably tactically minded group had the casters in the back line where they simply couldn't be attacked at all most of the time. That was the point. You lined up your three fighters and the cleric on the front line, the rogue and whatever sixth character you had was in the next line and the wizard was in the back safe as banks. Virtually no monsters had ranged attacks and, as soon as the fighters engaged in melee, even those that did have ranged attacks could no long use them.

I've never understood this myth of wizards always losing spells. Sure, it happened once in a blue moon, but, otherwise? It almost never happened.

A lot of enemies were humanoids with weapons, and they frequently won initiative over wizards casting spells. I played and DM'd during 2e and interruption of spells happened a lot on both sides of the screen.

 

[Morrus]

Simple enough in D&D, just have weapons always break on a fumble/crit fail. Like, every, single, time. Fumble? Weapon breaks. Also house rule in some armor damage rules so armor is also something that needs to be replaced on the regular.

Weapons breaking every 20 swings is pretty harsh.

 

[AlViking]

even if BM manoeuvre were incorporated into base fighter, there would still be ways to play a big dumb fighter wouldn't there? nothing stops you from functionally just taking precision attack and using nothing but that one manoeuvre when you miss a big hit.

From a complexity standpoint I'm adding in tracking superiority dice, when to use it, what die to use. From a story perspective I'm relying on what I consider a metagame mechanic unrelated to the in-game story of the character. I see no reason in fiction of the world for my BM to only be able to do that precise strike 4 times per rest. It's better than 4e's fighter encounter powers but it feels much the same.

On the other hand I'm playing a barbarian, I have a supernatural ability to connect to a primal power, I accept that my rage is a supernatural buff. It's part of the story of what makes a barbarian a barbarian. But a fighter? Sometimes I just want a mundane Joe who has dedicated themselves to being really good at fighting. I acknowledge that kind of stuff doesn't matter to a lot of people, it does to me.

 

[Stormonu]

One of the more common results on our fumble tables is "weapon breaks". If it's a magic weapon, it gets a save to not break. If the weapon is part of the wielder e.g. a creature's claws or a Monk's fist then it just hurts itself.

Good point about armour damage, though. Use in combat should have a very small but not zero chance to damage armour; maybe I should incorporate that into the fumble tables somehow (though how to account for unarmoured creatures or combatants could be a headache as the nice simple fallback "it hurts itself" doesn't really apply).

If a fumble could break the attacker's weapon, perhaps a critical could damage the defender's armor? As for unarmored, perhaps a DEX modifier reduction (or for Monk/Barbarian the ability associated with unarmored defense as a sort of fatigue that can be recovered with a Short/Long rest)?

 

[Maxperson]

we asked for BM to be core part of the class, and in playtest they said that they even tried that option, but decided against it.
I guess WotC thinks that all D&D players are idiots.

No. It means that they understand that there is a not insignificant number of people out there who play the game to relax and not have to worry about managing a bunch of resources.

You can't unring the bell. If the core fighter were more complex, those players would be screwed. If you make a simple fighter and have a more complex subclass addon, both those who want a simple fighter and those who want a more complex fighter can be happy.

 

[Maxperson]

guess what you can do with BM maneuvers?
Hit more and better.

if there is a need for a "simple" class, it should be the barbarian.
1 button: Rage.

Not everyone wants to be a rural rager. Fighter is the better class to be simple at the core and more complex with subclasses.