anthon
2021-01-07, 04:49 PM
I've been toying with a new mechanic for an old homebrew game abandoned some time ago until now.
I got into thinking about stuff like a man swinging a heavy mace like hammer or trying to pick up speed with a big long Bo staff.
A light weapon can be accelerated quickly, and draws its damage/momentum mostly from how fast you make it go.
A heavy weapon, or a weapon with a lot of required torque to fight the leverage disadvantage (like trying to swing a 6ft rod of iron an inch or 2 thick from the end), doesn't go very fast even on impact, but it has a lot of momentum, and most of its damage comes from that.
You can throw a super light object, like a hollow plastic ball, at someone, even really fast, and something like a winter coat or 2 layers of flannel and a plastic button can be sufficient to reduce the "damage" to zero. This is the principle of nerf weapons.
Likewise, you can be Graceful, or accurate and precise, and find your blade tip between the cracks in armor, or in the slits of a helmet, whereas a big fat hammer is going to be doubly difficult to pull that off, since the giant surface area wont fit through the crack without some mad skills of repositioning points,
and the momentum of the big fat hammer is so heavy that zipping it back and forth in dart-like motions akin to a humming bird just isn't happening.
So it seems the accuracy attribute should be better at modifying criticals, but methinks big heavy clunker weapons don't benefit as much, if at all from this.
Likewise, truck-like momentum from a razor sharp stiletto doesn't seem to make any difference against a well positioned attack. Like, your thin blade doesn't seem to benefit in terms of damage, if it goes all the way through someone's shoulder fast, or all the way through someone's shoulder slow, or all the way through someone's shoulder while flexing huge muscles.
If its going all the way in, without some raking or modification to how it's wielded, the hole isn't changing size.
With bullets, i typically think of them as tiny hammers which smoosh their way through a target, with the exception of perhaps flechete fragments and pointy AP rounds, which seam to have more cutting or piercing power. I don't want to bother with Hydrostatic effects of an exploding lung,
because frankly, who has Speeds so high that tissue explodes on impact? Generally, your weapons would snap like twigs, the blade still hovering in the air at 100,000 frames per second slow motion. Making such considerations only useful for gods and superhero stats using alien and magical weapons (Beskar?)
So what really got my goat in this redesign of weapons/stats theory, was the notion that whole categories might only benefit from SOME attributes, and in some cases, the way in which the attributes benefit classes of weapons might be different.
Like, if you slash a blade faster, it probably chops more for more damage.
But if you poke a rapier into a pig, once you reach the other side, faster doesn't make a bigger hole.
but if your weapon is designed to penetrate resistant targets, like thick hide or steel plates,
then poking faster with something like a reinforced tri-edged trench knife might have better Penetration...
and the bonus to damage wouldn't be from the speed itself, but from the amount of extra depth penetrating the armor granted?
spoiler: trench knife
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Model1917_knuckle_duster.jpg
I got into thinking about stuff like a man swinging a heavy mace like hammer or trying to pick up speed with a big long Bo staff.
A light weapon can be accelerated quickly, and draws its damage/momentum mostly from how fast you make it go.
A heavy weapon, or a weapon with a lot of required torque to fight the leverage disadvantage (like trying to swing a 6ft rod of iron an inch or 2 thick from the end), doesn't go very fast even on impact, but it has a lot of momentum, and most of its damage comes from that.
You can throw a super light object, like a hollow plastic ball, at someone, even really fast, and something like a winter coat or 2 layers of flannel and a plastic button can be sufficient to reduce the "damage" to zero. This is the principle of nerf weapons.
Likewise, you can be Graceful, or accurate and precise, and find your blade tip between the cracks in armor, or in the slits of a helmet, whereas a big fat hammer is going to be doubly difficult to pull that off, since the giant surface area wont fit through the crack without some mad skills of repositioning points,
and the momentum of the big fat hammer is so heavy that zipping it back and forth in dart-like motions akin to a humming bird just isn't happening.
So it seems the accuracy attribute should be better at modifying criticals, but methinks big heavy clunker weapons don't benefit as much, if at all from this.
Likewise, truck-like momentum from a razor sharp stiletto doesn't seem to make any difference against a well positioned attack. Like, your thin blade doesn't seem to benefit in terms of damage, if it goes all the way through someone's shoulder fast, or all the way through someone's shoulder slow, or all the way through someone's shoulder while flexing huge muscles.
If its going all the way in, without some raking or modification to how it's wielded, the hole isn't changing size.
With bullets, i typically think of them as tiny hammers which smoosh their way through a target, with the exception of perhaps flechete fragments and pointy AP rounds, which seam to have more cutting or piercing power. I don't want to bother with Hydrostatic effects of an exploding lung,
because frankly, who has Speeds so high that tissue explodes on impact? Generally, your weapons would snap like twigs, the blade still hovering in the air at 100,000 frames per second slow motion. Making such considerations only useful for gods and superhero stats using alien and magical weapons (Beskar?)
So what really got my goat in this redesign of weapons/stats theory, was the notion that whole categories might only benefit from SOME attributes, and in some cases, the way in which the attributes benefit classes of weapons might be different.
Like, if you slash a blade faster, it probably chops more for more damage.
But if you poke a rapier into a pig, once you reach the other side, faster doesn't make a bigger hole.
but if your weapon is designed to penetrate resistant targets, like thick hide or steel plates,
then poking faster with something like a reinforced tri-edged trench knife might have better Penetration...
and the bonus to damage wouldn't be from the speed itself, but from the amount of extra depth penetrating the armor granted?
spoiler: trench knife
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Model1917_knuckle_duster.jpg