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JBPuffin
2016-08-10, 12:07 PM
I'm working on an alpha version of this game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?496413-Building-THAC0-The-Game), and I'm trying to make a baseline list of Proficiencies to go with it. An important group is Weapon Proficiencies, and since combat can be resolved just like any other obstacle in this system I want characters to be able to specialize without making more than one Proficiency mandatory.

Right now, I'm going with Brawl (unarmed), Crushing Melee (blunt things), Close Ranged (thrown weapons), Long Ranged (bows/rifles), Medium Ranged (long-distance thrown/short-distance propelled; need some better examples), Piercing Melee (things that stab), Slashing Melee (things that cut). The melee weapons are pretty easy to group, but dividing Ranged into distance groups is more difficult as I can't think of many weapons that fit it. Like, are slingshots Close or Medium? What about chakram, or boomerangs, or atlatl? I don't know, so if anyone things this setup is workable help defining Medium Ranged would be greatly appreciated. If you don't like this, how would you split medieval weapons into skill groups?

Note - I've seen several versions of this that I don't quite like - Spirit of the Century's Weapons/Guns/Fists split isn't granular enough, but RIFTS went too grainy for me. The above setup focuses on the weapon's general effect, which I want since weapons change your Effect Dice and I want to have some fun making, i.e., Swords and Axes feel different without making them different skills.

MrStabby
2016-08-10, 12:37 PM
Probably not thought out enough to be useful... but anyway:

How they are used:
1 handed
2 handed
light/finesse
ranged

Damage type:
D&D classic like piercing bludgeoning slashing
Also: torches for fire damage or similar

Distinguising features:
Flexible: whips, chains, flails, nunchucks vs Rigid weapons

Range/reach

Skill needed:
D&D of different versions did this with different proficiencies but this could be varied

LibraryOgre
2016-08-10, 01:04 PM
One thought, from a meta perspective: How many groups do you want? If you look at the Elder Scrolls games, they've reduced the number of skills every game since Daggerfall.

Weapon skills in Daggerfall
Archery
Axe
Backstabbing
Blunt Weapon
Critical Strike
Hand-to-Hand
Long Blade
Short Blade

In Morrowind? They lose Critical Strike and Backstabbing, working those into general mechanics and other skills. In Oblivion? Axe is gone, as is Short Blade... they part of Blunt and Blades skills, respectively. Get to Skyrim, and you have One-handed, Two-Handed, Archery... hand to hand is gone, and they've changed to basing it on how you hold it.

Mastikator
2016-08-11, 06:17 AM
How about having combat style proficiency and various combat styles may or may not include certain weapons (and shields). Styles that overlap with weapons use them differently and has benefits and drawbacks.

Having Archery proficiency would let you use all bows with proficiency
Having Fencing proficiency would let you use all rapier type swords and arming swords with proficiency, focus on parry and thrust, using swords with this style deals piercing damage and grants defensive bonus
Having Sword and board proficiency would let you use all one handed swords with a shield combo
etc

Someone with actual martial skill could probably say why this system is not practical :P

JBPuffin
2016-08-11, 08:25 AM
How about having combat style proficiency and various combat styles may or may not include certain weapons (and shields). Styles that overlap with weapons use them differently and has benefits and drawbacks.

Having Archery proficiency would let you use all bows with proficiency
Having Fencing proficiency would let you use all rapier type swords and arming swords with proficiency, focus on parry and thrust, using swords with this style deals piercing damage and grants defensive bonus
Having Sword and board proficiency would let you use all one handed swords with a shield combo
etc

Someone with actual martial skill could probably say why this system is not practical :P

I thought of this, but I couldn't figure out the list of styles I wanted to use. It's an idea I'll probably use at some point (it's kinda like FATE, skill lists come with setting), but I don't really know how to go about splitting these up.


One thought, from a meta perspective: How many groups do you want? If you look at the Elder Scrolls games, they've reduced the number of skills every game since Daggerfall.

Weapon skills in Daggerfall
Archery
Axe
Backstabbing
Blunt Weapon
Critical Strike
Hand-to-Hand
Long Blade
Short Blade

In Morrowind? They lose Critical Strike and Backstabbing, working those into general mechanics and other skills. In Oblivion? Axe is gone, as is Short Blade... they part of Blunt and Blades skills, respectively. Get to Skyrim, and you have One-handed, Two-Handed, Archery... hand to hand is gone, and they've changed to basing it on how you hold it.

I have played Skyrim, but not the others - that's kind of cool to see. I like 7 groups: Unarmed, then Melee and Ranged split into 3 groups each.

Thrown plus one for hand projectiles (bows and atlatls at least) and another for firearms (black powder in this setting, I think) is another option instead of the 3 ranges, but what do I call the middle group? Thrown, Firearms and...

Mastikator
2016-08-11, 10:02 AM
I thought of this, but I couldn't figure out the list of styles I wanted to use. It's an idea I'll probably use at some point (it's kinda like FATE, skill lists come with setting), but I don't really know how to go about splitting these up.

You could have it as a secondary thing even if you choose to go with the weapon proficiency groups. All martial classes get to choose between combat styles, each style has pros and cons, and periodically you get to improve existing and add new ones (like the 3.5e D&D ranger favored enemy thingy).

Combat style is very much a mechanical thing in real life, there's real mechanical difference between say jujitsu and karate and flavor difference, the same should be true for weapon martial arts. And since it's a fictional universe you could invent combat styles.

Hunter Noventa
2016-08-11, 10:36 AM
You definitely need to differentiate melee weapons a little bit more. There's a difference between wielding a mace and a warmaul, but both would be 'Crushing Melee'. Similarly, polearms are used very differently from non-reach weapons, and should be separated out.

Both 3.5's Unearthed Arcana and Pathfinder's Fighter had pretty good examples of some weapon groups that you could start with for classification.

LibraryOgre
2016-08-11, 10:51 AM
I have played Skyrim, but not the others - that's kind of cool to see. I like 7 groups: Unarmed, then Melee and Ranged split into 3 groups each.

Thrown plus one for hand projectiles (bows and atlatls at least) and another for firearms (black powder in this setting, I think) is another option instead of the 3 ranges, but what do I call the middle group? Thrown, Firearms and...

For 7 groups, then:
Unarmed
Melee One-handed Swinging (swords, maces, axes)
Melee One-handed Thrusting (daggers, spears)
Melee Two-Handed
Ranged: Bows
Ranged: Thrown
Ranged: Crossbows

Thrown would wind up including the sling and the atl-atl, as they're based on a throwing motion. Bows and crossbows are different in their use.

An alternate melee spread might be
Unarmed
Melee shafted (spears, staves, polearms, etc. Big stick)
Melee hafted (axes, maces, clubs. Stick with a bit at the end.)
Melee handled (swords, knives, etc. Stick that hurts to touch except for one part).

Anonymouswizard
2016-08-11, 11:10 AM
First things first, how important is each style of combat to your game? Because this changes how you should proportion your proficiencies. Seeing as you want a unarmed/melee/ranged ratio of 1:3:3, I assume that you want equal focus between melee and ranged. In addition, what tech level is this? Weapon groups can change drastically between medieval and modern.

Assuming a 'standard fantasy' game, and using your splits, I'm going to try and help.

Unarmed combat (1 proficiency): no need to split it up, just call it whatever you want.

Melee (3 proficiencies): there's several ways to go about this, the basic options being size (small/medium/large melee) and attack type (crushing/slashing/thrusting weapons). Mark Hall's examples are also good.

Ranged (3 proficiencies): forget short/ranged/long, there's no real them with how the weapons are used. The 'classic' trio is thrown weapons, bows, and crossbows/guns, but feel free to shake it up a bit. If you don't want crossbows then I'm not sure what your third might be, entangling weapons?

AMFV
2016-08-11, 12:12 PM
One thing you might consider is instead of splitting it up by proficiency groups, which doesn't always match training protocols, maybe you could match it up into different styles of training. Somebody trained to fight in a Greek Phalanx is going to have a specific set of proficiencies and a specific style that might not match the groups of weapons that things are organized into.

Martin Greywolf
2016-08-12, 09:07 AM
I'm going to base my suggestion on how medieval weapons actually worked, with the most important principles being taken from Fiore, Meyer and Silver, all of whom wrote their won comprehensive system of fighting.

1) Base skills

There is a lot of overlap between any coles combat style, no matter how exotic. Footwork, basic strikes and fundamental principles remain either exactly the same, or with only small differences - Fiore gives us 6 strikes with longsowrd and 4 with the dagger that collapse into eight attack directions, Meyer gives us 8 strikes in general, etc. Some weapon styles emphasize passing steps more or less than others, but they all use them when they are appropriate (yes, even rapier, and both Spanish and Italian styles at that).

For melee fighting, a base skill that gives you an ability to fight with all of these things would be best - DnD 3.5 solves this with having BAB.

With shooting, things get more complicated, since techniques for shooting with various weapons have a lot less overlap. A skill for every different category is more appropriate here, with base bonuses being handled by stats that represent, say, hand-eye coordination.

2) Weapon types

A sword is a sword. You can train Victorian sabre and then take any one handed sword, be it a katana, spatha or jian and do well with it. You won't do as well as with your weapon of choice, but the difference will be kinda small.

My suggestion is to have two kinds of bonuses, first one representing a general category, the second one representing what weapon the character is most familiar with. In Skyrim terms, these would be skills and perks.

Melee weapons have these basic categories:


wrestling and short weapons (knives, daggers, caestus)
nimble one handed (most swords, Zulu shortspear, falchions, messers, some knobbed maces)
heavy one handed (mace, warhammer, axe, some knobbed maces)
nimble two handed (shortspear, longsword)
heavy two handed (staff, halberd, pollaxe, greatsword/beidehander)


Where a weapon belongs is a function of two factors: length and balance point. There are some gray areas, of course - short messer can be used in swordy way (Meyer) or in a dagger-like way (Filipino MAs, probably Fiore).

With ranged weapons, you get these basic categories:


bows (composite, longbow, etc)
crossbows and guns
thrown (including sling and atl-atl)


Now, guns and every single type of crossbow are reloaded very differently, but the techniques used in aiming them are the same. Bows on the other hand are a bit more questionable, as there are several styles of archery, but, barring massive warbows at the top end of scale (160 lbs), you can use the technique you know to fire all of the bows you find.

3) Damage types

Damage types in DnD are done in a very, very stupid way. The question you should be asking is, what is the weapon in question designed to defeat. These are usually four things:


skin, flesh and bone, i.e. no armor (most swords, axes with long edge, spears)
soft armor, i.e. gambeson (spears, double-edged swords, broadhead arrows)
chain mail (maces, warhammers, heat-treated broadheads, narrow-tipped daggers, halberd spikes)
plate (warhammers, horseman's picks, pollaxes)


Some weapons may have a component for each armor type, a typical pollaxe has axe head against soft armor and hammer head and/or spike against plate. There are also some weapons that have techniques that make them better against armor type, namely half-swording with almost all swords (yes, even katanas). These all would fall under perks in most systems, IMO.

4) Horses

This is usually tangential for most TTRPGs, so I'll just briefly mention that horses can and did use all armor types, and were usually dealt with by making the weapons long so that you could make horse owner think twice before he threw the life of his animal (and perhaps his own) against a thick fence of cutty-stabby things.

JBPuffin
2016-08-14, 09:35 PM
To all responses - great feedback going forward. I imagine I'll have a variety of setups available in the end, so all these ideas might make it in.


First things first, how important is each style of combat to your game? Because this changes how you should proportion your proficiencies. Seeing as you want a unarmed/melee/ranged ratio of 1:3:3, I assume that you want equal focus between melee and ranged. In addition, what tech level is this? Weapon groups can change drastically between medieval and modern.

Assuming a 'standard fantasy' game, and using your splits, I'm going to try and help.

Unarmed combat (1 proficiency): no need to split it up, just call it whatever you want.

Melee (3 proficiencies): there's several ways to go about this, the basic options being size (small/medium/large melee) and attack type (crushing/slashing/thrusting weapons). Mark Hall's examples are also good.

Ranged (3 proficiencies): forget short/ranged/long, there's no real them with how the weapons are used. The 'classic' trio is thrown weapons, bows, and crossbows/guns, but feel free to shake it up a bit. If you don't want crossbows then I'm not sure what your third might be, entangling weapons?

The baseline is Pathfinder level, so you're spot-on. Range divisions are now with the dodos.


For 7 groups, then:
Unarmed
Melee One-handed Swinging (swords, maces, axes)
Melee One-handed Thrusting (daggers, spears)
Melee Two-Handed
Ranged: Bows
Ranged: Thrown
Ranged: Crossbows

Thrown would wind up including the sling and the atl-atl, as they're based on a throwing motion. Bows and crossbows are different in their use.

An alternate melee spread might be
Unarmed
Melee shafted (spears, staves, polearms, etc. Big stick)
Melee hafted (axes, maces, clubs. Stick with a bit at the end.)
Melee handled (swords, knives, etc. Stick that hurts to touch except for one part).

Aaaaand the first one takes the cake. Thanks Mark!