Collin Babcock: Blog 2

In the course of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, you’re going to run into a monster. Maybe even one of those titular Dragons. You’re going to need a weapon to do battle and save your own hide. So, what weapon? Why? Does it even matter? 

The way I see weapons in RPGs is that they are the mechanical expression of your character’s tactical combat philosophy. If your character likes to trade accuracy for damage? Maybe a big hammer. Trade damage for accuracy? Maybe a light, nimble sword. Do you want your sword curved for better cutting? Balanced for better parrying? Do you want it to deal slashing, bludgeoning, or piercing damage? Maybe your character carries a variety of weapons, to be ready for any type of foe. As your character answers these questions, their philosophy reveals itself. 

Since these questions are so important to your character, it comes down to me (or your game designer of choice) to ensure that the answers satisfy that philosophy and the fantasy altogether. I’d like to review a few examples here. 

13th Age - Your character class determines what weapons you use (usually a melee and ranged option) and sets their damage value. They don’t separate into physical damage types like bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing. This is almost no choice. 13th Age is a game that really let’s you dig deep on your character, including background points, mix and match class talents, and tons of feat upgrades. The fact that weapon choice is so restricted is sort of a bummer. Most of your character’s tactical choices are in class abilities, but a little extra weapon coolness would help. The Cypher System (Numenera, The Strange, and more) - Weapons are divided into light, medium, and heavy. Each does a fixed amount of damage determined by their size. Light weapons reduce the difficulty of attack rolls due to their quickness. There are special effects that can be added, but not really as a part of the weapon system itself. The Cypher System plays much more fast and loose with its fights overall, so they didn’t put a whole lot of stock in every little weapon swing. Could there be more? Of course, perhaps best in a Cypher variant that is themed more strongly around tense martial contests. Pillars of Eternity - I’m hopping out of the tabletop space for a moment, because I really liked the weapon system in the video game. Weapons deal crushing, piercing, and slashing damage, but each target has an armor value for each of those types. Every encounter is cause to think carefully about what kind of damage you are dealing. Dungeons and Dragons has traditionally used similar damage types for its weapons, so I will definitely be coming back to this. These three games span a spectrum from Weapon Choice Matters Little to Weapon Choice Matter Always. All of these design options are valid and fun in their own rights. So why would I want to make a weapon system more complicated, if its fun either way? 

This comes down entirely to personal preference. I enjoy games that really let me crunch those numbers at a tactical level, whenever possible. I enjoy having my characters express themselves through that crunching. 

I know that’s a lot of words to get to “personal preference” so I’d like to leave you with something that you can use in your own game. 

We’re going to use some lessons from the above games to play around with the weapon system of Dungeons and Dragons 5e. 

5e lists the damage types for its weapons: bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing. In some cases, the damage type is the only difference between two different, but mechanically identical, weapons. 5e wants damage type to matter. This simple variant rule makes these damage types matter with every swing. It’s called…Overwhelming Advantage - For every instance of Overwhelming Advantage, it requires at least two instances of disadvantage to cancel it out. Slashing weapons gain Overwhelming Advantage against Lightly Armored foes. Lightly Armored foes are those that have an AC of 12 or less before modifiers are added.Bludgeoning weapons gain Overwhelming Advantage against Medium Armored foes. Medium Armored foes are those that have an AC of 13 to 15 before modifiers are added. Piercing weapons gain Overwhelming Advantage against Heavily Armored foes. Heavily Armored foes are those that have an AC of 16 or more before modifiers are added.  

Using the right tool for the right job. Express your character through weapon choice. Give this a try in your 5e game and if it adds value, then Hell Yeah. My next blog post will still be on the topic of weapons, but this time I’m going to show you how I butchered Dungeons and Dragons 4e’s weapon system. It’s worthy of an essay all its own.