Weapon Styles, Basket Weaving, and Concept Obsolesence

[Fuchs]

You could very well rule that (some) artifacts are created when magic items are changed, fused and reforged. So, at the end of a campaign a character with a preference for swords would have an artifact created from the items he looted over the course of the campaign.

And to repeat: it's not about a character being defined by his weapon, it's about a player being able to define the weapon his character uses, without assuming that fighting with a weapon is all the character does.

[shadzar]

It's not about having a katana, it's about having the weapon of your choice for your character.

that is the problem. you dont get to decide the outcome of a Chance card on the Monopoly board, you have to do what it says. sometimes you collect money, other times you pay money. that is what makes it a game.

remove the game, and that is what YOU want. since you dont play to play the game anyway, you use it to make stories because you have no writing skills for your animations or whatever.

just go find HeroLabs or whatever that little character designing app is called now and make your pretty character images all day long.

part of the game of D&D isnt about playing dress-up or fashionista. it is about using the tools provided to overcome the obstacles provided.

there isnt a single fucking person at the table that gives a damn about you wanting to use a rapier and only that. it is only you, which makes you a problem in games you sit at.

i am getting so tired of this munchkin shit that 3rd edition brought in these useless "gamers".

also.. not only do the other players not give a shit about your want to play with a rapier, the NPCs in the world dont either.

if I was your DM i would have the first NPC you come across break your rapier in half and leave you without any to find throughout the entire game, because you are playing the wrong fucking game. a total disruption to the game being played, as well as the ideas behind the game.

just go buy a fucking barbie doll and be the 6 year old girl you always wanted to be.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You could very well rule that (some) artifacts are created when magic items are changed, fused and reforged.

The fuck would I do that for? What good would that do for the campaign? So after Wulfgar beats up Artemis and loots his gear, he's allowed to change his dagger into a axe but only that one time, no more backsies? Fuck that, the coolness was already ruined in the transition. The axe might become cool on its own again after it gets a new history--but then what was with the transition from dagger to axe in the first place?

And to repeat: it's not about a character being defined by his weapon, it's about a player being able to define the weapon his character uses,

That's the same goddamn thing. When someone makes a choice their choice reflects on their character concept. If they consistently make the same choice (such as always going with swords) then they're defined by using swords. And because human beings are a tool and visual oriented species that just increases the chance that 'sword user' will jump ahead of the list of 'barbarian king' or 'commands the elements'. Breaking people out of that pattern is hard as fuck so it's best just not to let them go down that path in the first place.

[Fuchs]

It's not the same thing.

Lago too seems to think that players are stupid and should be prevented from making "mistakes" - such as deciding what their characters wear and use - by the benevolent GM, who takes it up on him to define their characters for them.

God help if players would actually decide what they want to play, and how, on their own!

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I think I'm gonna let myself drop out of this. We've gone around and around, and frankly noone's made a good point in either direction. I do not exclude myself from this.

The people who are in favor of specialization and cherry-picked loot's arguments come down to "We like it, so it should be an option"; those against's argument comes down to "We don't like it, so it shouldn't be an option". Everything else rests on intense hyperbole and the assumption that someone's going to feel "wronged" and act like a dick because of it. None of these arguments add up to anything at all, so it draws me to one inevitable conclusion:

It doesn't fucking matter either way. Pick an angle and roll with it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's not the same thing.

Oh, it's not? So if I'm playing a warlock and mostly use illusion and mind-bending spells I'm not defined by using enchantment spells? If I'm playing a paladin with a summonable silver dragon that I use in almost every combat I'm not defined by magical flying mount combat? If I'm playing a sultan who routinely crushes foes with superior military planning and morale management I'm not defined as a kickass general?

If a player routinely interjects into the game that they're forging the Adamantium Ore into a Golden Axe or they're melting down the Excalibur into a Deathbringer Axe that means that they see wielding an axe as being important to them. Like it or not, they are to a major extent defining their character as 'uses Axes and only Axes'.

God help if players would actually decide what they want to play, and how, on their own!

We've been over this before. No game will or even can let you decide everything that may be of relevant interest to your character. Why are you trotting out that tired strawman yet again?

[tzor]

I guess, theoretically, so would I, but fencing relies on making really, really tiny scratches on the enemy, so an Olympic level fencer is seriously going to be less of a threat than an untrained guy with three feet of pointy metal, because that guy is going to swing it like a baseball bat, which will actually be potentially fatal if it connects and thus more dangerous than the Olympic level fencer who squanders the first five seconds of the fight inflicting a tiny cut somewhere on his opponent's arm and is probably dead or dying by that point.

You need to strip out the olympic crap. You also need to update weapons to their most advanced form. A well designed epee is clearly going to be far quicker than someone swining a baseball bat, and a thrust into the heart or even worse into the brain through the eye socket is going to be immediately fatal as well.

If you are against an opponent who clearly does not have the advantage of being able to strike first, the well trained (to kill) fencer will succeed on the first thrust, because the baseball bat wielder isn't either going to defend or because the bat isn't fast enough would be unable to defend the incomming strike.

[rampaging-poet]

Some items might be undervalued, some might be overvalued, but by and all the market works.

Say you're a fighter with a new +2 sword, after having spent 5 levels and a couple of close friend's lives on finding better than a +1. Some dude wanders up with a bunch of +1 swords and wants to swap them for your +2 sword. You say no. There is no number of +1 swords that make up for that hardship.

You're that same fighter, only rather than adventuring, you sell your three +1 swords and buy a +2 sword. Some dude wanders up with a bunch of +1 swords and wants to swap them for your +2 sword. You say no. But then who said yes to you in the first place?

You're that same fighter, later, you have a +3 sword now (many levels, many deaths), and a couple of +2's, and a bunch of +1's. Some dude wanders up with a bunch of +1 swords and wants to swap them for your +2 sword. You say no, as +1 swords literally hold no value to you, and your henchmen are using the +2's anyway.

You're the same guy with the +3 and such, some guy offers a mountain of gold for the +3. You say no. No one's selling better, you're not swapping hard-earned power for gold, that's offensive. You have a mountain of gold anyway, nothing useful to spend it on.

Or maybe you're looking for a +2 warhammer, and you met a guy who had one last week. There was no way he'd trade it for a pile of useless +1 swords, but he's been trying to find a +2 sword for some time, so you track him down and make a deal.

Or maybe you just found a +1 Frost sword, but you'd prefer to have a +1 Flaming sword. Knowing that someone else is bound to have found one that they don't particularly like, you spend some time talking to merchants and other adventurers in the big city the next time you're there, and after a few days you find someone who's willing to trade.

Or maybe you didn't find a magic sword, you found a flying carpet. There probably isn't anyone with a magic sword that wants to trade for your magic carpet, but there might be somebody willing to trade your flying carpet for a portable cottage, an amulet of water breathing, or mirror that lets you cast contact other plane. While none of these items directly improve your ability to stab things in the face, they are useful to different people under different circumstances, and there's no reason to assume they could never be traded around.


While trading magic swords for gold, gold for magic swords, and piles of weak swords for a single strong sword are all ridiculous results of 3.5's Wealth by Level, not every system of trade has to include them. The ability to trade magic items does not imply the ability to trade them up.

[Fuchs]

We've been over this before. No game will or even can let you decide everything that may be of relevant interest to your character. Why are you trotting out that tired strawman yet again?

If you can't pick the look of your character then your game is a pile of outdate, festering shit.

It's not the 70s anymore, people expect more control over their toons - and rightly so.

[Chamomile]

You need to strip out the olympic crap.

I didn't bring up the Olympic crap.

A well designed epee is clearly going to be far quicker than someone swining a baseball bat, and a thrust into the heart or even worse into the brain through the eye socket is going to be immediately fatal as well.

Fencers aren't trained to aim for the eyes or the heart. The eyes aren't even a valid target for a foil fencer. Trust me, I've seen Olympic fencing matches and I can fence at an amateur level, your primary target is the wrist, unless you're fencing foil, in which case it's usually the shoulder. I used to joke with the other sabre-fencers at the club about how if we ever got attacked by a mugger while armed with an actual sabre, we'd make a tiny little scratch on his forehead and then be disembowled by his switchblade, but we'd die satisfied that we won that match fair and square because we hit him first.

the well trained (to kill) fencer

These hardly even exist anymore and they were not the subject of the original discussion. Seriously, look at Winnah's original point and my response, quoted here:

Such as an Olympic fencer picking up Kali sticks and entering melee with 3 hammer wielding thugs and one dude with a spear.

An Olympic fencer attempting to do anything, anywhere that involves actually killing a fool is going to lose, unless his opponent has entered a gentleman's agreement not to violate the rules of fencing during the fight. Olympic fencers are a bad example of anyone who's trained to actually be effective in a fight in any way.

Fencers trained to kill and not to compete in sporting matches isn't relevant here, and even if it were, fencing is still a losing option, just not so terrible that any random guy who's been in a few barfights could probably beat you completely unarmed. Any kind of fencing is useless against enemies at range, useless against enemies with any kind of armor, useless against enemies who are at all agile, and useless against enemies in any kind of numbers. Fencing is designed to be a demonstration of skill, it should come as no surprise that it doesn't hold up in practical combat.

[Winnah]

So you're a LARPer? Good for you.

relevant statistical data

Guess why fencers use electric foils and significant body protection?

It may have something to do with numbers of elite fencers getting impaled through the head, neck and chest with blunt foils. We're not talking about amatuers here.

I swear the next time I hear someone say "attack the wrist" in relation to any kind of realistic combat, I'm going to get hostile.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you can't pick the look of your character then your game is a pile of outdate, festering shit.

How about if my game doesn't allow natural full-blooded orcs with horns? Or halflings that naturally have wings? Or human beings with catgirl bits on them? You going to tell me my game is shit after I tell you 'no, elf don't naturally have blue skin with white hair and antennae, pick another appearance'?

You know what? How about you stop persisting in this stupid gameplay brinkmanship and realize that there's nothing sacred in a TTRPG and there are allowable parameters of what a game is allowed to control and not to control?

[Chamomile]

I swear the next time I hear someone say "attack the wrist" in relation to any kind of realistic combat, I'm going to get hostile.

That's rather the point, Winnah. Fencing isn't realistic combat, it's a sport where nicking your opponent on the wrist half a second before you get impaled is counted as a victory. Seriously, did you read that link?

A summary of the distribution of the site of injuries in fencers is presented in Table 12.3. This table indicates that approximately one half of all injuries to fencers occur in the lower extremities, with the ankle and the knee being the predominant sites. The hand and fingers also account for a major proportion of the injuries. Fencing is an asymmetrical sport involving rapid lunges and retreats that put strain on the legs and lengthy periods of extension and quick movements of the weapon arm, wrist, and hand. The hand and fingers holding the weapon, as well as the nonweapon hand, also are vulnerable to lacerations and contusions from the opponent's weapon.

So the primary location of the injuries that result from the enemy's weapon (and not over-exerting yourself with insane fencing stances that are only practical in a world where you can't step to the side) are on the hand and fingers.

As is the case with most other sports, ligament sprains and muscle strains are the predominant types of injuries, accounting for nearly half the recorded injuries.

So the vast majority of injuries are sprains and not from actually being hit by an enemy weapon.

Olympic fencing and every other variety of sport fencing is about as useful in a fight as being really good at soccer. Sure, it can't help to have an athletic build and if you might get lucky trying to kick your opponent's head like it's a ball, but what you know is not directly applicable to a fight and only in absurdly specific contexts can you actually consider yourself a competent combatant for being a competent athlete.

[hyzmarca]

I must point out, and I know this from direct personal experience, a light tap on the or wrist hand from a live blade is likely to be permanently debilitating. Nine years later and I still don't have full range of motion in my hand. You certainly can't easily keep fighting right afterwards.

If the other guy can't hold his weapon that's a win for you.

I think you're underestimating exactly how sharp a live blade is, Chamomile and how easy it is to cut through human flesh. A solid hit to the arm with a real sabre won't cause a minor scratch, it'll slice through muscle, nerves, and blood vessels as if they were cheese. You don't need a baseball swing to do this, either.

Lethal injuries happen in fencing when the blade breaks and the jagged tip gets stuck into soft tissue. But the jagged broken tip of an epee isn't the same as the point of a live sword. All it takes to put an actual rapier through living human tissue is a gentle push. It's practically no effort at all. A thrust to the shoulder with a live blade means that you'll probably never have full use of your arm again.

What you consider to be blows that would only cause light scratches are, in fact, potentially lethal if done with a real weapon.

Fencing rules were originally designed to be as realistic as possible without killing anyone. They haven't changed that much since then. The Priority rule was created specifically because trading blows is suicidal in a real swordfight and every hit is potentially debilitating.

[Orion]

Actually, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I disagree with literally every poster in this thread. See, I'm of the opinion that to make magic items fun, the form and function should be related in some way. Here are some standard, minor magic items I've dropped into low level Tome games.

Golden Lance: A dwarf-made longspear with a birchwood shaft and a gold spearhead that shines like a Light spell at all times. (A leather casing can block out the light. When it is spun rapidly, flames trail and even billow from the tip, allowing the user to use Burning Hands at will.

Notes: Apart from tying in to setting lore where dwarves are sun-worshipping mountaineers, this has a cool idea in that a big weapon can generate a physically "big" effect. The range of burning hands is just slightly longer than longspear range so it feels more like an extension of the weapon and thus less overtly magic. The gold striking surface is cool but not something any PC would choose.

Clockstopper: This is the bronze pendulum from an enormous grandfaster clock, reinforced with riveted oakwood. It functions as a magic club and as a wooden weapon, but also forces targets struck to make a Will save or be slowed.

Notes: I thought time distortion was the coolest/most powerful of the minor weapon powers presented in the Tome, so I attached it to a "shitty" weapon type to give people an interesting choice whether to use it.

Graveneedle: this is a silver ghost touch rapier of Drow make. Notable features include an enormous silver handguard and a house sigil on the pommel.

Notes Drow in this setting are an arisotcratic society under siege by the undead. Rapiers are their traditional weapons and their weapons of honor, but almost entirely ineffective against skeletons and zombies. Therefore the Drow mass-produce ghost touch rapiers so that the cultural weapon needed to dueling and rituals also functions as a sidearm against incorporeals. They make them out of silver for no reason except that their other weapons are iron.

I think those items add a lot of feel to the setting, create memorably play experiences, and are generally just cool. I'm with Frank in condemning reforging. I don't want people to just suck the time powers out of the clockpiece and put them in their greataxe. For the same reason I don't want to make trading too easy, although eventually most of these items will be given away and someone who really wants a time axe can commission one from a crafter.

However, I'm against Frank in that I don't want to roll up treasure randomly. I'm dropping items based on what's culturally appropriate for the opposition or the adventure site, what I find cool and memorable, and what makes the encounter it drops in more interesting. (Golden Lance was invented because I needed to give an NPC Fighter a decent ranged attack.) I'm having trouble imagining what random table could generate better results than conscious placement.

[tussock]

I don't understand how a barter system works (paraphrased)

Yes, people trade things, including powerful and/or expensive things. I don't know how that's a difficult concept to grasp.

In the medieval world, almost everything was part of the murderocracy, not willingly traded in any way, shape, or form. Commoners traded food for the tools to grow and preserve more food, which they gained the right to grow by signing up to be slaves. Nobles murdered each other over land rights, in wars that lasted multiple generations, spending everything on personal safety, pleasure, and their immortal soul. Armies weren't paid, equipped, or fed, they just turned up with what they owned and looted as they went, all the way to Jerusalem if the Pope said it was cool.

I'll try to spell it out for you:
* Why would A trade his +3 sword for B's many +1 swords?
* Because he actually trades it for shoes of lava walking.
* Because B got the shoes from a warlord who had them and wanted to equip his knights with magic swords.
* And also A had another +3 sword anyway.

No one does that. A, B, and the Warlord are all upgrading their personal +3 to a +4, and the vendors feed their kids on the other trash, one tiny magical bite at a time. The Knights stay home, on account of not being level-appropriate.

4e skips the vendors and just has the trash dissolve into weapon upgrades directly.

In AD&D, where money can't buy magical power, there the PCs will give their spare +1's to some knights, and carry around a pair of fire-shoes. Those stories make no sense in 3e though, and players don't participate in them.

Or maybe they actually remember that currency exists and use/create one. Depends on how many people there are trading items and how stable the market is. But even by pure barter, people do manage to trade things.

In barter societies, people trade 3 calories of chicken for 3 calories of turnips, but there are no calories in a +3 sword. They accept other tokens if they trust they can use them to get more calories again (or burn less in the process by staying warmer, for instance) before they starve, and not otherwise.

"Things" in the modern world get "traded" for fiat currency, of which there is a thousand times as much "value" sitting around as there is actual things to buy with it. That's not going to end well, no matter how much more currency is issued, or how much of it people are forced to hold by law in "retirement" schemes.

[tussock]

The ability to trade magic items does not imply the ability to trade them up.

Direct swaps can deal with a lot of these theoretical trade problems, and if you're clever enough you might just swap your way from a paperclip to a house (or a house to a paperclip) over a few sessions.

But I think the game plays better if you avoid that too, or at least strictly randomise the available pool of swaps. Just because it's still a player begging the DM for items, and that's not much fun for either of them.

And to think, all the problems used to be with players fighting over the random drops.

[tussock]

I'm having trouble imagining what random table could generate better results than conscious placement.

Nice post, dude.

But random tables are about taking the load off the DM for some amount of time, not being better than creative DMs at their best. If you're up to making awesome thematically appropriate unbiased creative items for your party all the time, good for you. I can't usually be bothered though, and random tables are a nice backup there that can throw up some good things I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

[Chamomile]

Fencing rules were originally designed to be as realistic as possible without killing anyone. They haven't changed that much since then. The Priority rule was created specifically because trading blows is suicidal in a real swordfight and every hit is potentially debilitating.

See, that's just it. Sport fencing encourages suicidally stupid tactics. A sword is still a sword and all, but if you've sliced up your enemy's arm a bit and he just cut your jugular, your enemy might end up with a scar but you are dead. Even if your enemy dies from complications, you are still dead. And fencers, particularly the stabby types, have no answer for an enemy who sidesteps attacks. Or who brings a buddy with him and is even remotely coordinated. Or who pick stuff up and throw it at you. Or who can find anything reasonably solid to pick up and turn into a makeshift shield.

[Orion]

Tussock --

The point is that Frank Trollman claims that if you randomly roll your treasure, then nobody can complain about the fact that they didn't find a Katan or a Doublesword or a Flaming Mace. The MC is just impartially applying the will of the dice. But it seems to me that if you even once have a cool idea for a club and throw it in because you like it, you're forfeiting that objectivity and your player can now justifiably complain that you're actively hating on him by refusing to place a katana. Therefore, whatever benefits random tables might have, they don't have the fairness benefit he claims.

[Chamomile]

I'm dropping items based on what's culturally appropriate for the opposition or the adventure site, what I find cool and memorable, and what makes the encounter it drops in more interesting.

Oh, and I forgot to respond to this earlier, but I'm willing to sacrifice character customization in exchange for giving every single item that level of depth and history. But GMs can't be expected to be that creative all the time, nor can players be expected to enjoy lack of control over a character's defining attribute.

[Fuchs]

I'm dropping items based on what's culturally appropriate for the opposition or the adventure site, what I find cool and memorable, and what makes the encounter it drops in more interesting.

Oh, and I forgot to respond to this earlier, but I'm willing to sacrifice character customization in exchange for giving every single item that level of depth and history. But GMs can't be expected to be that creative all the time, nor can players be expected to enjoy lack of control over a character's defining attribute.

That's why I'd give every item that level of depth and history - but I'd only pick items I am reasonably sure the players will like. Creating items that won't be liked or even used is about as intelligent as creating mega-dungeons for a party that hates hack and slash, or creating detailed background histories for every Orc for a game where people just want to kill stuff, and forget why their characters are in that particular location 5 minutes after entering.

[Fuchs]

I'm having trouble imagining what random table could generate better results than conscious placement.

Nice post, dude.

But random tables are about taking the load off the DM for some amount of time, not being better than creative DMs at their best. If you're up to making awesome thematically appropriate unbiased creative items for your party all the time, good for you. I can't usually be bothered though, and random tables are a nice backup there that can throw up some good things I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

Which doesn't mean you can't randomly roll stuff, and then adapt it to fit your game and party better. That Axe you rolled becomes a Falchion, and the fighters is happier for it.

[Fuchs]

If you can't pick the look of your character then your game is a pile of outdate, festering shit.

How about if my game doesn't allow natural full-blooded orcs with horns? Or halflings that naturally have wings? Or human beings with catgirl bits on them? You going to tell me my game is shit after I tell you 'no, elf don't naturally have blue skin with white hair and antennae, pick another appearance'?

You know what? How about you stop persisting in this stupid gameplay brinkmanship and realize that there's nothing sacred in a TTRPG and there are allowable parameters of what a game is allowed to control and not to control?

Nice hyperbole. Picking your character's armor and weapon and clothes is what any sensible game allows. Just look at MMOGs.

We're not talking laser guns in middle earth, we're talking "that stuff is in game, you said so, we encountered it, I even have mundane versions of it, why can't I have some magic versions?"

And your only answer is "because I don't like you picking what you want, since you don't know what you like, you're too dumb to know better."

And that patronizing attitude towards players can go and join Gygax in his grave.

[Username17]

However, I'm against Frank in that I don't want to roll up treasure randomly. I'm dropping items based on what's culturally appropriate for the opposition or the adventure site, what I find cool and memorable, and what makes the encounter it drops in more interesting. (Golden Lance was invented because I needed to give an NPC Fighter a decent ranged attack.) I'm having trouble imagining what random table could generate better results than conscious placement.

First off: I actually believe that item charts should be regional and cultural and shit. You should be rolling on the "Dwarf Items" or the "Demon Items" or the "Exotic Items" lists and these should have pointers to one another. Dwarves are more likely to have Orc equipment than Lizardfolk equipment.

But regardless, there are two inescapable truths that make magic item systems feel shitty:

• Items are only "good" in relation to items that are not. For anything to feel special or desirable, trash drops are required.
• When items are placed by the MC, any unfairness between the items that different players receive will feel like it is something unfair that the MC is doing to the players.

Now old school AD&D got around both of those problems by having a magic item chart with a lot of crap on it and putting out prepackaged adventures with items that were placed without reference to the specific players. That worked. It had problems, and you'd want to change a lot of specifics, but fundamentally the two greatest problems that magic items have is when players don't appreciate them or when the players resent the DM because of them.

When 3e opened up the top end items to "not longswords" there was much rejoicing. In the first 2 years after 3e hit the shelves I was in three separate games under three separate DMs where there was a quest for a powerful magical Ax. But by the time people got to higher levels and started having loads of mandatory seeming bonus gear and really felt that this boring crap was what they needed and were entitled to, the bloom seriously came off the rose and what had looked so promising in 2001 turned to ashes in everyone's mouths.

-Username17