23 réponses à ce sujet

[henesua]

I have modified weapon proficiencies, and weapon stats for Arnheim, and am interested in feedback on these changes. One special addition includes "tool" groupings so that certain weapons can also be used as crafting tools - you don't need a skinning knife for example to skin an animal, any knife will do. Tools are also required for hacking up or dismantling certain things: axes work for wood, knives for cloth, hammer for stone or metal or thin wood (doors, chests).

Simple Weapons:
short bow, dart, sling, club, quarterstaff, mace, light flail, light hammer, dagger, handaxe, sickle, scythe and longspear.

Martial Weapons:
light and heavy crossbows, longbow, throwing axe, battleaxe, greataxe, greatsword, longsword, short sword, rapier, scimitar, halberd (and various polearms), trident, shortspear, heavy flail, morningstar, warhammer, and maul.

Exotic Weapons:
bastard sword, dire mace, dwarven waraxe, double axe, kama, katana, kukri, shuriken, whip, and two-bladed sword.

class Based Weapon Lists:

• Druids: dart, sling, club, quarterstaff, sickle, dagger, light hammer, scimitar, trident, shortspear, and longspear.
• Monks: short and long bows, shuriken, sling, club, light hammer, quarterstaff, light flail, heavy flail, dagger, kukri, and kama.
• Rogues and Bards: light crossbow, shortbow, sling, dart, club, quarterstaff, mace, light hammer, dagger, short sword, rapier, handaxe, and whip. 
• Wizards: light and heavy crossbow, club, quarterstaff, light hammer and daggers.

Bonus Weapon Proficiencies:

• Elves: Longbow, Shortbow
• Dwarves: Dwarven Waraxe
• Clerics: favored weapons depending on deity/religion

Tools

• Knife: dagger, kukri
• Axe: hand axe, battleaxe, great axe, dwarven waraxe, scimitar, kukri
• Hammer: light hammer, warhammer, maul

Notable Changes to Weapon Status:

• Short spear and trident may be used one handed. Long Spear requires two hands.
• Whip can be equipped in either left or right hand
• Scythe d6 20/x4  (and typically has penalties to hit)
• club d4
• quarter staff functions as a double weapon
• light crossbow is a small weapon
• light flail 2d3
• heavy flail 2d4
• war hammer d8 20/x3
• maul 2d6  20/x3 bludgeon
• shuriken d4
• rapier slashing and piercing damage. Situational benefits if character knows fencing (alternate combat pheno etc..)
• Halberd damage type is slashing but each specific polearm has different bonus damage types and benefits

Notable Changes to Armor:
All armor has some damage resistance versus one or more of the base physical damage types. Heavy armor is substantially more protective than light and medium armor. Light armors also allow substantially more benefits from high dexterity. The maximum protection versus bludgeoning is 3, the max versus piercing or slashing is 6.
Light
AC 1   Dex 15  ACCheck 0  Arcane 5%
AC 2   Dex 12   ACCheck 0   Arcane 5% 
AC 3   Dex 8   ACCheck -1  Arcane 10%
Medium  
AC 4   Dex 5   ACCheck -2  Arcane 25%
AC 5   Dex 4   ACCheck -3  Arcane 25% 
Heavy
AC 6   Dex 1   ACCheck -6  Arcane 50%

AC 7   Dex 1   ACCheck -8  Arcane 50%

AC 8   Dex 0   ACCheck -10  Arcane 50%

AC 9   Dex 1   ACCheck -9  Arcane 50%

Modifié par henesua, 25 août 2012 - 04:24 .

[Shadooow]

The dwarven waraxe bonus for dwarf makes no sense. So dwarven wizard will be able to wield exotic axe but not be able other axes? DnD says that what dwarf can is to wield dwarven waraxe as martial weapon. Of course its almost impossible to make this possible in NWN - I tried that and had issues with weapon feats.

Anyway, my advice: either give dwarfs all hammers and axes (maybe except twohand) or try to implement the waraxe by the rules.

Also what i did was to allow quarterstaff and shuriken to rate monk UBAB.

[henesua]

How did you get the quarterstaff and shuriken to work for monks according to their unarmed bab?

Re: Waraxe. All dwarves in my setting belong to militarily organized clans, kinda like early mongols or scythians or the later cossacks (only without horses). Regardless of what a dwarf does in their life, they know how to fight with their waraxe. I considered giving dwarves all axes, and may do so. Hammers is not as appropriate since they are not the standard dwarven crafters.

[Shadooow]

nwnx_cool allows this possibility, also you can set feats for custom weapons (so you can set dagger feats for assassin dagger from CEP/DOA) and set weapon to be finnesable

also whats great is that you can set this possibility anytime and for any player so for example you can allow katana to be finessable only to certain prestige class etc.

EDIT: Oh one remark to the scythe. There is difference between scythe as a farmer's tool and scythe in nwn which is war weapon. Farmer's scythe shouldnt be so powerful and since you set scythe to be simple weapon I guess you are thinking of it this way - the 2d6 20/x4 is quite much for simple tool. But its more like that the famer's scythe is not appropriate for combat and is susceptible to break.

Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 22 août 2012 - 07:53 .

[henesua]

blast... I was afraid of that. I'm not using nwnx.

Thanks for the reply.

[Pstemarie]

ShaDoOoW wrote...

EDIT: Oh one remark to the scythe. There is difference between scythe as a farmer's tool and scythe in nwn which is war weapon. Farmer's scythe shouldnt be so powerful and since you set scythe to be simple weapon I guess you are thinking of it this way - the 2d6 20/x4 is quite much for simple tool. But its more like that the famer's scythe is not appropriate for combat and is susceptible to break.

Having used a "farmer's" scythe on many occaisions - and one that was made in the early 1900's specifically (wooden handle and steel blade) - I can vouch for the toughness of the "farmer's" scythe. I've used it shred thick brush and small diameter (1" - 2") saplings and never had the handle break, let alone crack. 

When I read this I went to the market and bought a fair-sized water melon, which is roughly the same density as a human, and chopped away at it several times. For such little effort in the swing, the damage was quite impressive. Granted my watermelon wasn't wearing armor...

Modifié par Pstemarie, 22 août 2012 - 09:13 .

[henesua]

I have made the scythe damage d6 rather than 2d6. I did keep the x4 critical. Perhaps I should up the damage to d8.

The problem with a scythe as a weapon is that you need to pull through your opponent. This would make you vulnerable to attack as the scythe could not be used like a sword to keep your enemy at bay.

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to reduce the wielder's AC by 5, but keep the damage at 2d6.

[Pstemarie]

I think you could quite handily keep a person at bay with a scythe. It has excellent reach and is designed to swing in a downward arc, sweeping up as it bottoms out in the mid-point of the swing. A good swing with a scythe basically sweeps a 120 deg to 180 deg arc from roughly shoulder to shoulder, bottoming out at the feet. Changing the grip on a scythe allows you to swing it across the midsection in a sweeping arc. More than likely you swing a scythe at someone and connect - usually below the knees - they'll be the one's off balance and stumbling.

As for the blade design itself - its very much a reverse scimitar. Its designed to slash - it doesn't need to "pull through" to do damage. With the watermelon, the scythe sent the melon rolling away a few feet, but not until after it had delivered a good slash into it. Furthermore, with the proper trajectory I was even able to impale the watermelon with the blade. Keep in mind also that this was done with a fairly dull blade. I don't spend a lot of time honing something that's more designed to cut grass.

2d4 damage is fair for something that's dull by design and probably does a fair amount of blunt damage as well as slashing. I'd drop the critical to 20 x2 to represent the simple fact that although its big, the scythe was never designed as a weapon. At best its an improvised weapon.

Modifié par Pstemarie, 22 août 2012 - 11:47 .

[ffbj]

Yeah that seems reasonable for the scythe. The Grim Reaper, the havester of souls, is often pictured with a scythe. Probably almost always.

[Pstemarie]

ffbj wrote...

Yeah that seems reasonable for the scythe. The Grim Reaper, the havester of souls, is often pictured with a scythe. Probably almost always.

That's a logical association too when you think about the grim reaper from the pov of a farmer. Afterall, what is harvesting crops, but essentially killing them - and nothing was better at it than the scythe which can chop anything from wheat or rye to bamboo with relative ease compared to a sickle.

[ffbj]

Seems reasonable, though in modern depictions he seems to more vindicative, or even gleeful, as opposed to grim.  As in reticent.  It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

http://www.bing.com/...story&FORM=IGRE

[WebShaman]

The Scythe is a horrible weapon - instead, it is a great tool, doing what it does very well.

As a weapon, it is horribly predictable as to which direction the blow is coming from, and slow (as weapons go, because you need to get it back in direction, and swing it around). A shield user will not have any real problems with a Scythe user. And any blocked Scythe attack will result in the user getting totally pwned as they will not be able to recover (and will probably end up losing their Scythe in the process, assuming they survive).

Against a Spear user...or Polearm, Staff, etc where one has more reach, the outcome is basically lopsided in favor against the Scythe.

All the above speaks against the Scythe as a weapon - which is probably why one did not see large-scale implementation of Scythes as weapons in medieval armies.

The Grim Reaper doesn't have to worry about the drawbacks of using a Scythe - he can't be killed

[Pstemarie]

Good points WebShaman. Although the scythe is a light weapon and fairly easy to get back into position, this really only applies if your opponent doesn't lock up the weapon in some manner. Something I hadn't considered in my op. Taking that into account, once you've followed that scythe swing to its full trajectory, you leave yourself open to a nasty counter-attack or binding maneuver that can take you completely off balance. However, one's opponent would have to get into the weapon's arc to do so. Makes me wonder if they ever made double-edged scythes...

[ffbj]

Drastic modifications were made to make them more useful in combat.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/War_scythe

As the article indicates they have there drawbacks, weight, unwieldiness, fatigue inducing, slow.
One thing mentioned in the ariticle was their psychological effect on  enemy forces, a realy horrific weapon.  Maybe you should give them +5 to intimidate just for that class of weaponry.

Lord Bosworth: "My liege the peasants are revolting."
The King:            "My good Bosworth.  You have a wonderful talent for stating the obvious, has not anyone told you  so?"
Lord Bosworth:  "My liege, well said, but you mistake me.  Not only are they revolting they are actually in revolt." 

Modifié par ffbj, 23 août 2012 - 10:04 .

[Pstemarie]

I'm always kind of wary of Wikipedia, but I was able to confirm the information. Note however, that the blade was rotated 90 deg making it look more like fauchard. This would also change the way the weapon was wielded, thus can you even think of it as a scythe anymore? IMO, certainly not!

As for the reference made to its intimidation value - sheer speculation and assumption. IMO you can't base a rule change such as a +5 bonus to a skill on just that. Indeed, polearm equipped infantry were used with devastating effect throughout history - from early Greek Hoplites armed with pikes or long spears to the Swiss Grenadiers armed with halberds. If you're going to do an intimidate bonus, I'd extend it to all polearms.

Modifié par Pstemarie, 23 août 2012 - 10:47 .

[ffbj]

Yeah that's would be possible saying all polearms could give a bonus to intimidate.  I just think the scythe could be considered as a special case. I wouldn't call it a scythe anymore either. In fact the article says it is more like a fauchard. As Web Shaman was saying too. As a standard weapon of warfare the traditional scythe was not good, but it's ready availability in the ever possible peasant revolt, made it weapon that did show up in battles. Interesting history. So the 5,000 man peasnt army probably had real traditional scythes.

The psychological effect is intertwined with the grim reaper idea. I mean they could have depicted him, the reaper, with a sickle instead, another tool for harvesting, but the scythe is a more threatening looking weapon. So it's not sheer speculation nor assumption. It's more like a conjecture from historical knowledge an representations of the particular weapon and it's associations with death, which would have such an impact.

Modifié par ffbj, 24 août 2012 - 06:20 .

[Pstemarie]

Good point ffbj, I had neglected to consider the grim reaper/ death when I was assessing the point about the scythe's psychological impact. That argument is a considerably more solid foundation to build a ruling upon.

[henesua]

Well this has all helped me sort through my choice of including the scythe as a simple weapon.

But what about any other ideas I have put out there? Are they all so much crap, that they are beneath notice?

EXAMPLES:
I've made crossbows rarer weapons to have proficiency in. They are martial weapons, and of the specific class weapon lists only the Wizard class is granted both.

Meanwhile the Shortbow is a simple weapon as it is a hunting tool, and the longbow a martial weapon.

Since tools are important in my setting (knives, hammers, axes) I've also made at least one of those classes of weapons available to each charater class - except wizards don't get an axe weapon since I don't see them chopping up firewood or through wooden doors all that often.

The break down of type of damage a weapon deals and how that interacts with armor is fairly signifiant as well. So this makes bludgeoning damage more important, as that is harder to defend against. Max DR versus bludgeoning damage is set at 3. While heavy armors range up to 6 DR versus piercing and/or slashing. This makes a maul (two handed hammer on a pole) a nice weapon when dealing with someone in a suit of plate which has the following DR break down: B3 P6 S6.

Modifié par henesua, 24 août 2012 - 09:28 .

[ffbj]

Usually when people don't get all up in arms about changes it means they find them acceptable or reasonable. Historically there where the famous Zulu warriors who carried a short spear and shield, and making crossbows more rare and martial seems ok. Though crossbows did not require the hours of training a day that were required to stay proficient with,  like the longbow, as a mechanical devise they had higher construction requirements, i.e. better technological prowess was required to construct them.  Thus the rarity factor, but later once mass production came in they were all over the place, and steadily they supplanted other bows, since any dolt could use them and they packed quite a punch and could also piece plate armor, as could the long bow.
So the demise of plate resulted from the piercing power that eventually drove plate armor from the battlefield.
For instance Agincourt.  So it's all about time and place.  At one time piercing weapons were inferior against plate and then plate was gone because of it.  Most people surmise, incorrectly, that gun powder was the end of plate, but it was already on the way out,  but that development, gunpowder/muskets sped it's dissapearance from the field. Though the fully armored knight was gone plate still lingered, but mostly just as a breast piece, like the conquistidors.  Though in modern times soldiers still wear helmets,  flack jackets , vestiges of the past.  And now we have kevlar, and ceramic armors, which could be viewed as the resurgence of plate.

I like the 2d damage changes on say the flails, since it offers a higher based damage, while the quarterstaff was a much more versatile weapon as you suggest.
I think the focus on the scythe is due to the fact that it is such an outlandish and unusual weapon with much less mass adaptation in actual warfare, and combat in general.

In a fantasy setting the idea that all types of armors and weapons, which were developed over the centuries and went in and out of favor as armor became better and tactics changed, are somehow to reasonably coexist at the same time and same place, is quite a stretch. So if your setting is France around the time of the musketeers, you are not going to see many people walking around in plate mail.
You treatment of plate is reasonable: slash/pierce do less damage than blunt, but maybe when they do critical, at least the piercing,  they do more damage, as above regarding xbows vrs.plate. I think the blunt extra damage is fine though as the counterbalance to the fact that blunt cannot be keened. Except remember plate is not real plate as it was. It does not slow you down for instance, and most worlds don't have fatigue systems, though no one is going to run around in plate armor for any length of time. Heck they even had to put knights on their horses with wenches, and not the kind that serve beer. It is really an insoluable problem, so all you can do is something like you have done. Come up with an approximation of how things might have worked. I'm no expert but your approach seems accurate.

Fanatasy is just that, derived from fantastic, as in unusual or unbelievable, not our current take as something wonderful, though that is part of it too. So you just have to construct your fantastic world, with a tad of verisimilitude, which is what you are trying to do.

Modifié par ffbj, 25 août 2012 - 03:20 .

[henesua]

ffbj wrote...
... and making crossbows more rare and martial seems ok. Though crossbows did not require the hours of training a day that were required to stay proficient with, say like the longbow.

With regards to using them effectively in a unit however, crossbows did require training. And they are harder to create and manage as opposed to the longbow whose advantage is largely economics (easy to make) and rate of fire. Longbowmen were often trained peasants as well... anyway. Thats the thinking that lead me to those changes to bows.

ffbj wrote... 
I like the 2d damage changes on say the flails, since it offers a higher based damage, while the quarterstaff was a much more versatile weapon as you suggest.

Yes I have trained (some) in the use of the staff along with rattan sticks and swords. I am impressed by staves. Very good weapon. In the hands of a master I think you can match any swordsman. One nice bonus is that it is not normally considered a weapon.

ffbj wrote...  
Except remember plate is not real plate as it was. It does not slow you down for instance, and most worlds don't have fatigue systems, though no one is going to run around in plate armor for any length of time.

I've made a suit of plate very expensive, custom tailored/sized to the wearer, and all heavy armor is indeed heavy. I've also done my best to approximate mobility issues with terrain effects. Muddy ground will seriously slow down PCs with heavy gear (reducing AC, speed, reflex saves etc...), and send swimmers to the bottom. Climbing and squeezing through gaps are also affected. So in a small way I try to keep the downsides of heavy armor in play. Its not been heavily tested in game yet though. Most of my players have not been able to acquire a suit of plate.

[ffbj]

Yeah, I agree about crossbows. Sometimes I will not go into every aspect such rate of fire, versatility, training, as these aspects pretty much come with the territory. Plus you have regionality for instance the English Yew longbow. I have a couple of friends with real swords and boy are they heavy, or rather they get heavy real quick. Gives you some perspective on the conditioning that would be required to be a combatant. Oh and on bows just speculating here, but you have the fatigue aspect. While most crossbows would require a mechanical assist or be foot-cocked, there's the training part, I would surmise they required less of an expenditure of fatigue than say the longbow with it's high pull weight.

Regarding the staff, yes, I always associate  that with trasping around the countryside with your longstaff, like Little John, or maybe some martial chinese monks walking the roads with their staffs as protection against bandits or animals, and you could openly carry it, unlike most weapons which would be frowned upon, for you were identifying yourself as a bandit. Yes a light, versatile, decent defensive, high impact weapon that has gotten short shrift in the fantasy gaming setting in general. The focus seems to be on larger and more outlandish weapons,as in who can create the most impossible weapon to wield.
I get sick of stuff like that.

Without a fatigue system it's difficult to really represent plate as it should be imho, since you run as fast in plate as you do in your knickers.  One thing I did was to make boots of speed which are affected by your armor.  Guys in metal armor don't run as fast in them for example.  My buddy tells me not to think of it as real plate, or other metal armors, but as a representation of a particular armor type.  Thus while you don't get all the real benefits you would have from actual plate, conversely you don't suffer all the negative consequences.  I can live with that, up to a point.  One thing I do is only put soaks/%immunities on metal armors, but I add additional penaties to them,  more minus to tumble and use magic device.

Modifié par ffbj, 25 août 2012 - 04:02 .

[henesua]

Made a few more tweaks to armor. I thought the lighter armors needed more benefits from high dex since dex based characters get short shrift.

[henesua]

Considering issues of balance with clerics, and flavor, I decided to take heavy armor away from them as an automatic feat at level 1. So if a cleric in Arnheim wants to wear heavy armor they need to use up a feat.

Any thoughts? Does this make a difference? Keep in mind that all heavy armor in Arnheim has significant damage resistance against the basic damage types (up to 6 against piercing and slashing 3 against bludgeoning).

[Rolo Kipp]

<whispering...>

I like this.

Heavily armored Knights Templar were *not* the norm for clerics and heavy armor (and some of those martial weapons) *should* be specialized rather than inherent.

Chain mail and maces, yes. Full plate and zweihanders? Um, no, please.

Not without training in a martial order...

<...so the dwarf doesn't hear>

Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 17 novembre 2012 - 02:59 .