Feature Specification: Weapon Breakage & Armor Damage

[Creslyn]

Unless you want to make crafting even more central to the entire gameplay experience, this is a bad idea. As an optional activity, crafting can add a lot to a world. As a necessity, it becomes a chore.

[White Warlock]

I disagree. It 'can' be a chore if it is a necessity, but it does not default to that. Bad design turns anything into a chore. Before i continue discussing the 'pc crafting' option, if crafting is not of interest to this community, repair of equipment could be setup via NPCs instead. However, NPC dependency has a likelihood of ending up feeling like a chore (as much as relying on others to be healed can be considered a chore) if implemented poorly.

Returning to the pc crafting option, whenever you interact with other PCs, you have a greater chance of obtaining entertainment. The 'reason' i brought up weapon/armor repair, as being a viable alternative to weapon breakage, is that it doesn't destroy the weapon or armor, it creates a 'motivated' means for a sink.

Nobody ingame cares about stupid "basic need" dependencies like food, shelter, and security, but fighting is a different story altogether. D&D revolves around fantasy combat. The entire game is geared for it. In order to provide a motivation for players to 'spend' their money, and to 'abandon' old weapons/armor, you need to create an expense to their upkeep. And, in order for this upkeep to be fun, you need to have it be a PC interaction. Crafting is the 'only' feature that provides this.

Here's how i see it going:

• When a weapon starts dulling, or an armor starts peeling (straps cut, etc), they obtain minuses to their effectiveness.
• Weapons and armor must be repaired by a qualified PC, via crafting. This may be with the existing crafting system, or one that provides sub-categories (as noted in one of the other crafting systems, found in NWVault, that i checked out).
• In order to encourage people to sell their weapons/armor, if it is too badly damaged, provide no depreciation to those weapons/armor. I.e., they can still sell them to an NPC for 25% of their actual value. Even at a 25% sell value, in some cases it will be 'cheaper' to sell the item than to repair it (just like real life... oooo).
• Items sold to NPCs are automatically purged, with possibly a log provided to detail the loss of said items (not sure of this community's other plans on setting up logs to moniter wealth, but this one can easily be added, if any plans exist on this issue).

[Joos]

This based on your perception of reality and not DnD 3.5 core rules. Since DnD applies its rules to an abstraction of reality, weapon breakage/dullness whatever, is as far as I see it already incorporated as an abstract form.

Just like the wizard is presumed to study magebooks and mageart between lvls/adventures and during adventures, it could be presumed that fighters and paladins has a passing knowledge about servicing their gear without putting skillpoints in a craft skill. Servicing items and making items is completely different.

You don't need to know how work a forge, how to use a hammer, what coal makes good for high heat, what color a furnace takes when its good enough to melt metal, how to harden steel after the shaping has taken place etc, to knowthat its good to put oil on the armour/swor/whatever to keep it from rusting, have the joints run smoothly and to keep the leather from hardening.

Moreover, this would only be appliable to mundane items anyway since magic items don't wear. The only thing they are vulnerable to, is the nasty feat Sunder. And that is not in the game at all. And if you want to add that, I think you need to learn to code.

Currently, we do not need a layer of reality in our abstract game.

EDIT: grammar and spellings

[psycho_leo]

Currently, we do not need a layer of reality in our abstract game.

+10

[White Warlock]

And that is not in the game at all. And if you want to add that, I think you need to learn to code.

Again, another uncalled for comment. Cipher posted here requesting input. I gave it. You insult me for it.

[Grand Fromage]

Quit restarting stupid arguments from last year, you jerks. >:|

[Joos]

And that is not in the game at all. And if you want to add that, I think you need to learn to code.

Again, another uncalled for comment. Cipher posted here requesting input. I gave it. You insult me for it.

It was not meant as an insult, merely pointing out the enourmous amount of work needed to implement proposed features. As I have percieved the situation, our coding resources are already thinly stretched. Thus implementing a well working system would need more resources than we currently have available.

So, if you feel strongly about implementing hitpoints and hardness for all weapons and armour as well as the Sunder feat, I thought it would be suitable that you learned how to implement it.

Just because I am doing my best to shoot holes in your ideas (because I really don't like them regarding this subject) doesn't mean I wish to insult you. Please grow some skin mate since you post a lot of ideas how to improve this place (well done), you just have to accept the fact that a lot of people don't like the ideas and will argue against you. You'll only end up hurting yourself if you take arguments to heart.

[ç i p h é r]

As AL just said, this is rather low on the priority list. Nevertheless, feel free to discuss it but I would ask that you please avoid arguing and rehashing old points already presented in this thread. If you're simply opposed to the whole idea and have nothing of value to add to the discussion, then don't bother posting here. This isn't the place to stake a position. The idea behind these threads is to get at a workable concept. We'll give ALFA a chance to vote once there is something to vote on.

Hitpoints and hardness are in the game and something we're going to try to adhere to as best we can when creating blueprints.

[White Warlock]

Oi, just noticed this was an undead thread someone dug up.

Anyhow, just to respond to your earlier thread Joos, the approach i posed was not about rust and maintenance, it was about 'damage.' These weapons and armors aren't left in the closet, they are used, day in and day out. Battered, beaten, bitten, and burned, these weapons and armors receive chinks, tears, dents and dulling. Even magicked armors are not immune to such things. Only 'artifacts' are immune, sans their single means of destruction (i.e., Mount Doom for the One Ring). Everything else is vulnerable, and alternative rules presented in one of the 3.0, or 3.5 books, provided examples of weapon dulling and lessening of armor effectiveness after failing S.T.s. Alternatively, the existing hitpoints and hardness, listed for weapons/armors, are a good gauge to dulling and armor slackening.

As a whole, i'm not keen to normal wear-and-tear causing a weapon to break, but a Sundering feat (the intentional act of trying to break the opponent's weapon), would be worth putting into effect, and could be posed as the 'only' manner in which a weapon could be broken (with armor never broken, logically).

Good luck with whatever you guys/gals decide to do.