Battlevolf

 Battlevolf, +1 mace, +2 vs. Lawful: Smashes doors open on a 1-4 on 1d6. The mace’s head speaks with Chaotic creatures and bites Lawful creatures trying to wield it. It vomits acid as a Magic Missile once per day. The user suffers -1 on Reaction Rolls except with Chaotics.

The powers of Chaos give rise to many faces, many weapons of war. Battlevolf, an agent of Chaos, is one such weapon and its willingness to serve the cause is unquestionable. It will tell any who listen that it was forged a million, billion years ago and that it desires to wade through gore.

Wingsbane

Wingsbane, +1 battle axe, +2 vs. flying: On a Critical Hit vs. a flying target, the target is grounded for 1d4 rounds and must Save vs. Paralysis or their ability to fly is destroyed. The user can understand the languages of flying creatures.

Forged on the peak of Old Gnarly in the Rock Hardy Mountains, this axe was made for the purpose of killing wyverns. According to legend, the dwarfs at that time were engaged in a massive war with an army of wyverns lead by a cunning and powerful wyvern master. With the aid of Wingsbane, the wyvern master was brought down and since that day wyverns have not been prone to or receptive of organization and are merely flying, meat-hungry pests.

 

Sand in the Bone: Marks and Risk

In this post, I talked about weapons and weapon damage for Sand in the Bone. I said PCs would have "Mastery" they can spend on weapons. I've thought a little more about this and realized that I already have a thing called "Marks" which can easily cover weapon skills. So I'm folding the idea of mastery into Marks.

Characters begin with some number of Marks. A Mark is really just any special feature the Player wants to highlight about the character. Since this game doesn't have any traditional attributes, such as strength or intelligence, Marks allow you to customize however you like. So Mark could be a special skill, a relationship, a magical power, or even some kind of curse or negative trait.

Now, I do not want to go the positive vs. negative balance sheet route. In G.U.R.P.S., for example, you can gain points to buy skills and advantages by taking disadvantages. Need another 5 points? Give yourself a paralyzing fear of snakes. And so forth. This is a fine mechanic and I don't ever mean to give that game shit for what it does. It's solid. But I don't want that here.

So my idea is that there is a mix of creative and random elements to chargen. The random means you might get a negative Mark, such as a curse. That way we don't have to fuck around with making PCs that have intense coulrophobia in order to allow for extra perks. I want to be a better gymnast, so I'm making my dude a galaphobe!

Which leads to another concept I'm definitely working into the game: risk. Choices matter. So during chargen, Players have a baseline method for making a character and they can stick to the baseline and come up with something awesome. Or they can choose to take risks in the hopes of getting better results. This will manifest as multiple chargen tables you can choose to roll on. While there may be one basic table to roll on (A), you choose to roll on alternate table B or C, each of which have more potent results but also more drawbacks.

I want to carry that concept through the entire game. For example, the use of Sand, which I talk about here, is inherently risky. And not just in the random dice rolling way, but in the sense that you are making choices that increase or decrease risk.

ASIDE: I had flirted with the idea that you could play this game absolutely middle of the road. Making almost zero dice rolls, you could sort of coast through conflicts. But the tradeoff would be that you could never have amazing success or make incredible discoveries. You'd be living a boring life for a great adventurer. So I'm not sure if I want to include that or not.

Weapon Whoopin'

This is a post about my sword and sand game, Sand in the Bone - a work-in-progress.

There are many elements to this game that I wish to explore, such as the food and drink and how people in the city of Kanebok sleep. Not in a boring way, mind you. All of it is focused on play, not on me telling you all about my super-special world.

Weapons are one of the things I am focused on because I wanted to have a unique list and I wanted each item on that list to have it's own character. I had spoken before about how I disliked the idea of homogeneous weapon damage in old versions of D&D. Since this game started out as a bit of an OD&D hack, I very early-on started thinking about how to treat weapons in such a way that they weren't just interchangeable color.

The idea I settled on was to basically have two tiers of weapon skill. So tier one is just the base weapon. Anyone who picks up a sword and strikes you with it will have the same basic damage range. But Players will have the option of being Mastered with a type of weapon. So a PC who is Mastered with the sword will do the normal damage range plus they can access the sword's special properties, such as an additional damage die or long reach or whatever the case may be.

The resource that lets you become Mastered is probably just going to be called Mastery. Why complicate things? So at certain game increments you'll have the opportunity to allocate Mastery where you wish. Some will choose a weapon, others will chose something else. This is not going to be a class-and-level system, so PCs can be a mixed bag of skills and talents just like sword and sorcery heroes are always a mixed lot.

ASIDE: The basic weapon damage range is the d20 attack roll minus the target. So if your Prowess is 10 then you need to roll 10+ to strike a blow. A roll of 15 means you caused 5 points of damage. The target's armor absorbs that damage, with a minimum of 1 point getting through. That's the basic idea. Nothing new, nothing too fancy. I've seen this mechanic in a number of games over the years and it seems to work out pretty well.

OSR Weapon Damage

The topic of weapon damage comes up from time-to-time in OSR discussions. I think this is because we want that beefy fighter to be so very deadly with big-ass swords and we want that wee dagger to be more lethal than it is.

A lot of folks are in favor of straight 1d6 damage per weapon, as it was in OD&D. I hate that idea, but I get it. It means that the dagger is a better choice than it normally is and it allows players to be creative with their weapon choices since there's no mechanical penalty for those choices. But it also means - since all things really are even - weapon choice is virtually meaningless in terms of mechanics. Your skull-tipped mace and my super sharp scimitar both act identically in combat. I dislike this immensely.

Caveat: (Important caveat, no less) A good DM and player rapport will cause the nature of a PC's weapon to enhance play. My choice of a scimitar vs. your skull mace may mean that the Arabic-inspired setting has more respect/acceptance of my PC vs. yours. Perhaps your wicked weapon invites trouble everywhere you go while I can pass through markets and tea houses without excess trouble. Or let's say you choose a straight arming sword while I choose a staff tipped with 3 chains securing large iron hooks. A good DM would allow me to hook-and-pull targets on a good hit roll, but may also hit me with penalties when fighting in tight spaces. Meanwhile, your simple sword presents no particular advantages or penalties.

So yeah. Straight 1d6 can work as long as the group really embraces the narrative elements of weapon choice. I still don't love it, but I'm open to it.

Another idea is damage by class. My ideas below are in this vein, but I'm not a huge fan of the versions of this idea I have seen before because they never seem to leave the existing variable damage as-is for the "middle classes" such as Thief and Cleric. Versions I can remember seeing will apply something like a small-medium-large weapon category scheme and a die step for each based on class. I think this is perfectly logical but also kind of bland. To me, it robs weapons of their character.

Some people even go as far as limiting the Strength modifier in combat to only fighter types. I get that too, but I hate it.

I'm a B/X guy through-and-through because of the versatility of basic rules such as variable weapon damage (an optional rule but let's be honest... almost everyone uses it) and the universal ability modifiers. It means I can play a B/X Magic-User who has an 18 Strength and I can be potentially a better fighter than the party's actual Fighter - at least at very low levels. This bugs a lot of people because of class niches and what-not. I get that too. But I don't care. It lends greater diversity to characters in a game with precious few built-in bells-and-whistles.

Think of that B/X Thief who got lucky with a high Str, Dex, and Con. Give that guy a two-handed sword and you got yourself a bona fide sword-and-sorcery hero.

So yeah. Ideas. There are others too.

Here's a couple of ideas I had that I might drop into my next B/X game (maybe not both). These might have already been dreamed up by some other game nerd so please post a link if you have seen either of them before. That would be awesome. I certainly have not read all the reams of blog posts out there in the OSR-o-sphere.

IDEA #1: DIE-STEP WEAPON DAMAGE

Your character's class determines the die step used for weapon damage.

CLASS	DIE STEP
Cleric	Normal
Dwarf	1 die step higher
Elf	Normal
Fighter	1 die step higher
Halfling	Normal
Magic-User	1 die step lower (min. 1d4)
Thief	Normal

For general use, not necessarily specific to B/X, it would be like this:

Wizard types = 1 die step lower

Rogue/Cleric types = no adjustment

Fighter types = 1 die step higher

Race would probably be irrelevant since race in 1e or Advanced style games confers somewhat less advantage/disadvantage (or should) than in B/X where the class and race are the same.

IDEA #2: DAMAGE SCALES BY CLASS AND LEVEL

Some classes get damage bonuses as they level up.

CLASS	DMG MOD
Cleric	+1 per 2 levels
Dwarf	+1 per level
Elf	+1 per 2 levels
Fighter	+1 per level
Halfling	+1 per 2 levels
Magic-User	+1 per 5 levels
Thief	+1 per 2 levels

So Idea #1 I really dig because it doesn't mess with the existing damage values for weapons nor does it require new categories to be graphed on. You just have to go a die step up or down depending on class. It makes the dagger more serious for warriors and the sword less effective for wizards.

(I do allow wizards to use any weapon because it's fantasy. The downside is their to hit rolls suck and maybe I make them spend a round drawing or sheathing because of lack of expertise.)

Idea #2 seems like it would also go a long way toward addressing a big problem. Why is it that my level 1 fighter deals exactly the same damage as my level 9 fighter with the same weapon? It just doesn't FEEL right. It's heroic fantasy... I want to FEEL like I'm just god damn better at this shit than I used to be. So a fat +9 to damage with that dagger I picked up on the battlefield would do the trick. I dunno... I'm sure there are downsides but not sure the downsides outweigh the asskickery.

A Bit of Dead Wizards

Every time I circle around to noodling about Dead Wizards, I focus on the setting.

The idea was to make this a standalone game, not a D&D-style game. But I really haven't thought of any interesting mechanics for it. It feels like hacking the core OSR rules platform will work just fine. This might even be a setting for an existing OSR rules set, such as Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord, with tweaks.

The first tweak is magic. In the first city of Kanebok, where the setting is centered, magic is simultaneously queer and yet woven into daily life. Magic isn't a single thing. There are different kinds of magic. But wizards - those who master otherworldly powers and ancient spells - are not trusted. They are not natural. And hanging over the entire city is the belief that the four greatest wizards from the time of the wizard war still linger in some kind of quasi-living state, subtly affecting the living world with their unending machinations against one another.

(See, that last paragraph was meant to be a discussion of how the magic rules differ from standard OSR rules and yet all I talked about was the mythos of the setting.)

Wizards in this setting would not be limited arbitrarily by spell slots and number of spells allowed per level. Instead, they would acquire their magic however they can. It's an organic process. Players would seek out magic and once they find a spell and figure out how it works, they can cast that spell as often as they like. The limiters would be in the cost of the spell. Each spell would be described in a bit more detail in terms of how it is cast so that spell components, casting time, and other costs are baked right in. There is no need for spell slots when you have to sacrifice blood, treasure, money, or soul to cast a spell.

(Frankly, this is how I'd like to run ALL my D&D style games.)

Another tweak was with weapons. I did a couple of pages of notes and screenshots of various archaic weapons from Egypt and other African regions as well as Persia and some stuff from Southeast Asia. My idea was that each weapon would have it's own perks and maybe a drawback. So your basic d8 sword is the scimitar, for example. A great scimitar would do a d10 or d12 and would require both hands to use. If a weapon has a hook on it, then you'd be able to hook targets, disarm, trap, etc. This is all really just being very specific with the classic weapons list more than anything. Giving the battle options more color as well as more mechanical bits and bobs.

The only other rules tweak I had in mind was to use the attack values table as a basic rule for all mechanics. I posted about it here. I still think that's a boss idea, but I just don't know if it's boss enough to justify using it here.