Weapons and Armour

Here's the last in the current series of posts about my wounds-instead-of-hit-points-combat-system. There are a couple of points to cover, so I'll dive straight in...

WEAPONS

Balanced but meaningful weapon choices
In RPGs there are often "better" weapon choices which conflicts with "in character" choices, or alternatively all weapons are the same. I want players to have a variety of weapon options with equivalent good but different game mechanics.

Weapons give you reach, so make it easier to hit someone. You can also keep an attacker at bay or parry their blows. Thirdly, weapons make it easier to kill someone. Hence each weapon gives you bonuses to attack, parry and kill, and since bonuses in my system are equivalent, you simply make each weapon give different bonuses but the same total bonus.

A shield, 2-handed weapon or two weapons?
Characters also have the option of a 1-handed weapon + shield, a 2-handed weapon, or a 1-handed weapon + dagger. I don't want characters with two weapons to make two attacks (for speed and for balance), instead they should get the same total bonus as a character with a two handed weapon.

The bonuses
1-handed weapons give you a total of +6, offhand weapons and shields give you total of +3, and 2-handed weapons give you a total of +9. They always give you at least +1 onto each of attack, parry, and kill. The weapons in brackets are sub-optimal weapons with lower bonuses.

Weapon	Type	PARRY	ATTACK	KILL	Length	Weight
Halberd	2-H	+3	+4	+2	7'	8 lb
Long Sword	2-H	+2	+4	+3	4’6''	6 lb
Flail	2-H	+2	+3	+4	4'6''	6lb
(Quarterstaff)	2-H	+4	+2	+1	7'	8 lb
(Spear)	2-H	+3	+3	+2	7'	6 lb
Battle Axe	1-H	+1	+2	+3	3’6''	4 lb
Sword	1-H	+2	+2	+2	3’	2 lb
Falchion	1-H	+2	+1	+3	3'	2 lb
Morning Star	1-H	+2	+1	+3	3'	4 lb
(Mace)	1-H	+2	+1	+2	3’	4 lb
(Club)	1-H	+2	+1	+1	3'	2 lb
Shield	Offhand	+3	0	0	3'	16lb
Dagger	Offhand	+1	+1	+1	1'4’’	4 oz
Short Sword	Small	+1.5	+2	+1	2'	12 oz

Why these particular bonuses?

Firstly, note that quarterstaff, spear, mace and club are sub-optimal weapons. A quarterstaff  is useful because you can pretend it's not a weapon, whereas a spear can also be thrown. On the other hand, a club is just not as good as a mace, and a mace is not as good as a morning star (a spiked mace).

The only offhand weapon - dagger - has to be 1/1/1.
Shields are simply +3 parry.

Swords are better than daggers in every way, so have to be 2/2/2.
A falchion or a morning star are deadly if you hit someone with them, and you can parry with them, but you cannot stab someone with them, so they are 2/1/3.
A battle axe is also deadly if you hit someone, they are more difficult to parry, but you cannot easily parry with them, so is 1/2/3.

A longsword compared to sword & dagger is easier to attack (better reach), but no better parry than a normal sword, hence is 2/4/3.
A flail is dangerous, but not great at parrying, so is 2/3/4.
A halberd is great at attacking as you can thrust and hack with it, and is good at parrying as you can fend off your opponent, so is 3/4/2.

Finally, we have the single small weapon - short sword. You can wield one of these in either hand. Hence they are +4.5. The half is rounded up. E.g. one short sword gives you 2/2/1, two short swords gives you 3/4/2 (the same as a halberd). Thus two short swords is no deadlier than a longsword, but gives you more attacking opportunities.

What about other weapons?
Minor variations of a weapon all count as the same weapon, so there's no long list of polearms as they all just varieties of halberd (though that's a cool link). Anyone else bugged by the weird insistence on arbitrarily changing the spelling of Poleaxe to "Pollax" in Wikipedia on the basis of that the OED says it derives from the Middle English Pollax or Polax which comes from Poll+Axe.

Pikes, warhammers, rapiers, sabres, cutlasses are all missing because they're from later historical periods.

There are potential other weapons to add such as the Trident (in case they meet Mermen), or improvised weapons (such as Scythe, Pitchfork, Chair, Bottle, Pitchfork, Spade). Whip and Net will need some special rules.

ARMOUR

Since weapons give +9, there are no prizes given for guessing that the maximum bonus armour can give you is +9.

Type	Weight	Armour Bonus
Leather	3lb	+2
Quilted (can be worn under Mail)	3lb	+2
Arming doublet (can be worn under Mail/Plate)	3lb	+2
Mail Hauberk	16lb (+ 3lb)	+2 (+2)
Scale / Segmented / Lamellar / Plate Armour	12lb (+ 3lb)	+3 (+2)
Steel Cap/Leather helm	1lb	+1
Steel Helm	2lb	+2
Full leather gauntlets & greaves	1lb	+1
Steel Gauntlets	1lb	+1
Steel Greaves	1lb	+1

Note that Mail is worn over quilted armour or an arming doublet, but Plate armour has to be tied onto an arming doublet - that's what all those strings hanging off them in the pictures are for!
You only get a bonus for leather gauntlets and greaves together.
I've not distinguished between different high grade armour types as it seems to be mostly about fashion/tradition or status, and note plate armour is not a full suit of armour..

MISC

Extra Damage for high attack rolls

If you beat the target to hit by 10 or more, you get an extra dice on your kill roll. 

If it's 20 or more then you get two extra dice etc.
This is for when someone has a massive attack bonus and the hit is almost automatic and they feel cheated. It's "beat by 10" because that's easy to spot. It also makes the calculation of the attack roll more interesting as you want to beat it by 10.

Ranged Attacks
We'll leave these for another day :-)

Future Features To Be Developed
Grappling
Mounted combat.
Rules for nets & whips.
Disarming?
Dismount?
Wound locations?
Descriptions for severe or incapacitation wounds? Thanks to Lloyd for this mine of ideas and links on the subject.

You could also have optional rules such as different shields, e.g. an offensive shield 2/1/0, or a larger shield 4/-1/0.
You could make heavier armour have a better armour value in return for a reduction on parry and attack. E.g. +11 armour with -1 attack, -1 parry.

These omissions in the rules at the moment are due to the way they get developed - it is on a need-to-know basis. That is, when I need-to-know I make up a rule. If it floats in play then it stays. If it sinks (or stinks) then it's thrown out. I try not to be too sentimental!

Combat Advancement

Back to Combat again to answer the question of  what rate characters progress at. I've got just one more post after this about this combat system, then it's on to pastures new. So here's the answer:

Parry, attack and incapacitated values go up by 1 every level. (Kill doesn't).

But here's the rub - this is true for every class not just Fighters! What differentiates the class is how much better the Fighter starts off at melee and parry. If they start off +2 in melee and parry, then they are always +2 in melee and parry, so they are always 1.5 times as likely to hit, and 2/3 as likely to be hit.

In addition, a Fighter also has several attacks (melee / bow / throw / unarmed), whereas other characters would only have one or two of these.

So how does this rate of advancement work out in practice? (If you get bored, just skip to the conclusion section at the bottom).

What are the stats for an nth level fighter?
Assuming a Fighter has Plate & Shield & a sword, then a typical value for 1st level would be

Sword & Shield: P17, A4, K5. 
11/14/17/20 (23)
Full Armour: 9

So at nth level a Fighter's stats would be

Sword & Shield: P16+n, A3+n, K5. 
11/-/-/- (22+n)
Full Armour: 9

Note that this also applies to level 0.

(The other wound thresholds are just averages rounded up, so at 3rd level the middle one W3 is average of 11&25 = 18. Then W2 is average of 11&18 = 15. W4 is average of 18&25 = 22).

How good at fighting is this monster?
Everything has a Fight Rating, which is

Fight Rating = Parry + Attack + Kill + W3 (i.e. the middle value)

Anything with the same Fight Rating is roughly the same threat. That is, bonuses on parry, attack, kill or armour are roughly equivalent, but bonuses on incapacitation alone are only half as good.

Thus every level you get +2.5 fight rating, plus every so often you'll find some magic item or other to improve you, so we take that +3 fight rating for a monster makes it +1 level. Our 1st level fighter above had 43 fight points, and we'll take 42-44 as level 1:

Fight Points	Level	XP
24	-5	8
27	-4	12
30	-3	16
33	-2	24
36	-1	32
39	0	48
42	1	64
45	2	96
48	3	128
51	4	192
54	5	256
57	6	384
60	7	512
63	8	768
66	9	1024
69	10	1536

I'm not talking about XP today, but you can see the XP gained from killing a monster is doubling every other level.

So how good is that Fighter?
A fighter battles a never-ending supply of 1st level opponents - how many can he slay on average before he is slain himself?

We want to see the fighter improving markedly every level, but not too fast.

I wrote a short Java program to test this, and to calculate the same values for AD&D for comparison purposes.

Level	Explore	AD&D
0	0.4
1	0.7	0.9
2	1.3	2.1
3	2.1	3.9
4	3.4	6.3
5	5.3	9.2
6	8.4	12.7
7	12.6	16.7
8	18.4	21.4
9	25.5	26.9
10	37.3	32.9

(I took the AD&D fighter to be d10 hp/lvl, AC2 (plate & shield), d8 damage, "To hit" smoothed out to be 19-lvl.)

As you can see, it's a fairly similar rate between the two systems.

In Explore the rate of improvement is about double per level, slowing down to about half that rate as you get far far better than your opponent.

In contrast AD&D is slightly more linear, as per the oft quoted criticism "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" which causes an issue at high levels.


How long do fights last?
How many rounds does the average fight-to-the-death between two fighters of the same level take?

We want to see the length of the fight increase a bit at high levels, but not too much.

Here's the output from the program:

Level	Explore	AD&D
0	4.1
1	4.4	6.7
2	4.9	9.4
3	5.2	11.6
4	5.6	13.3
5	5.9	14.4
6	6.4	15.4
7	6.8	16.2
8	7.2	16.9
9	7.4	17.4
10	8.1	18.0

Note that in Explore the duration increases linearly to about double, whereas in AD&D it starts higher, there's an initial fast increase before levelling off, and it ends up very high.

We could make our fights last longer by adding +1/+2/+3/+4 onto the wound categories, but I prefer shorter combats.

How much better do you get for going up one level?
We'll measure this by asking how many opponents of one level lower can you kill on average before you are killed.

Level	Explore	AD&D
0	1.4
1	1.3
2	1.3	2.2
3	1.2	1.5
4	1.2	1.3
5	1.1	1.1
6	1.1	1.0
7	1.1	0.9
8	1.1	0.8
9	1.0	0.8
10	1.1	0.8

Thus in AD&D, there's a big jump between 1st and 2nd level, and then it rapidly tails off. In Explore the improvement tails off only slightly.

Conclusion

We have the following useful rule of thumb:

You can convert an adventure between D&D and Explore by keeping the level/HD of the PCs and monsters the same.

The rate of improvement is roughly the same in both systems, but Explore is more smooth (particularly in the jump between 1st and 2nd level).

At high levels in AD&D improvements slow down, but in Explore it stays the same, so it scales up to high levels.

Since the exponential growth in Explore is similar to FASERIP I am interested at some point in exploring the possibilities of this as the basis for a Superhero game, or perhaps whether you could have characters going to super high level and being able to wrestle down a Storm giant barehanded.

As a final note, you may have noted I tend to over analyse things. At least I sometime think I do. Perhaps I should analyse less? On the other hand possibly it's just a feeling I've got. I'm going to have to go away and think about this one...