Has anyone tried incorporating Dominions weapon system into 3.x?

[zlefin]

The Dominions videogame that is. I know in 3.x there's occasional complaints about the weapons not differentiating enough or not enough of them being worthwhile. I was playing a bit of dominions recently and wondered whether trying to import some of its elements into DnD might make things interesting; then I wondered whether someone on here had already tried doing so, and if they could offer any insights they found from the attempt.


If not, then any other thoughts are welcome. A particular possible thing to include would be how certain weapons are easier to hit with than others, and how certain weapons are good or bad for defense. From a technical perspective it's pretty easy to give +to hit or +to AC for certain weapons.

[PhantasyPen]

It would be very helpful if you explained what exactly this system does.

[Saintheart]

The Dominions videogame that is. I know in 3.x there's occasional complaints about the weapons not differentiating enough or not enough of them being worthwhile. I was playing a bit of dominions recently and wondered whether trying to import some of its elements into DnD might make things interesting; then I wondered whether someone on here had already tried doing so, and if they could offer any insights they found from the attempt.


If not, then any other thoughts are welcome. A particular possible thing to include would be how certain weapons are easier to hit with than others, and how certain weapons are good or bad for defense. From a technical perspective it's pretty easy to give +to hit or +to AC for certain weapons.

I admit I haven't actually tried to fix the weapons, but I've looked at enough of them to make some observations about why this is a trickier prospect than it first appears.

- Weapons - melee or ranged - are nothing more than a delivery system for a character's other abilities in combat. The only two such abilities that meet this criteria are damage, or debuff/battlefield control.

- If your weapon can't do either of these as well as another weapon available at the same opportunity cost, your weapon will not be used. This is why bows are not popular.

- Of themselves, damage dice do not make a significant difference in the task of damage delivery. The difference comes down to an average point or two over the course of a career. Weapon choice is primarily determined by whether you're taking Power Attack, Weapon Finesse, and/or Combat Reflexes. And in these areas, the only choice made is two-handed, one-handed, and/or light weapons. With the added choice of Reach weapon depending on tactics.

Giving a weapon bonuses to hit isn't enough on its own; it'll still come down to whether you can use it with Power Attack. If you can't, then it'll become used only by people utilising Weapon Finesse, since that feat simply doesn't keep up with PA on its own and invariably requires its wielded to spam attacks with TWF or something similar.

Giving weapons bonuses to AC is also not enough on its own or is deceptive: the idea of a combat is to end it by killing or disabling the opposition, and if there's a choice between PA which can end a fight a lot faster and a weapon that can't be PA'ed but which heavily increases AC, thus allowing you more rounds to wait on a natural 20 which makes said AC meaningless, it'll be PA every time. Outside very specific builds tanking doesn't work in 3.5 because there's no reliable method of gluing an opponent to yourself thus removing a source of damage from the fight.

I don't know what Dominions does with its weapons, but I would bet it doesn't have something akin to this setup of strategies. And the problem with tinkering with weapons is that unless you do something really funky, you are actually trying to rejig how melee weapons do their job and what melee weapons can actually do, what they're intended for in combat, against some very powerful feats that channel melee strategy in very defined courses. It's unlikely to be solveable by simple import of features.

[Eldan]

I once played with the idea of including a reach system that included a reach modifier for weapon length. Not just five foot increments.

The idea was to do away with battlemaps entirely and just reduce it to where your enemy got an attack of opportunity if you closed to melee with them and their weapon was longer than yours. Spear over other polearm over longsword over arming sword over dagger, that kind of thing.

Apart from that, I think part of the problem is that a +1 or +2 bonus to hit or to AC is a big thing at low levels, but kind of becomes pointless later, especially in higher ops games. That's always the problem with static bonuses. A +2 to AC for having a parrying weapon at level 1? Very nice when your AC is 14 otherwise. If your AC is 40 and you mostly deal with touch attacks and saving throws anyway? Meh.

[rel]

Scaling bonuses and bonus types can help with that.
For example, a +2 armour bonus to AC for having a parry weapon isn't much at level 20 but a (2 + 1/5 x BAB) circumstance bonus to AC is a lot more desirable since it will stack with everything, becomes noticeable when applied to a full BAB build and stops a touch attack.

A more interesting if harder approach is to have gear apply non numeric bonuses.
Your shield granting evasion or your spear stopping enemies from closing for example.

[Sneak Dog]

It would be very helpful if you explained what exactly this system does.

Dominions is a 4Xish turn-based strategy game about demigods fielding big armies with big magic going to war. Battles are automated, you give your orders in advance and then witness what happens.

Now for the weapon system. First off, a weapon deals only one of blunt/pierce/slash damage on a hit. If a weapon has multiple types, one is rolled for each attack. Armour is flat damage reduction and good armour can easily negate a human's weapon attack. It's also a game with giants capable of turning a human into mush...

Pierce damage ignores 20% armour.
Slash damage deals 25% more damage after calculating armour. It also counts as 50% more damage towards breaking shields and if it deals half your max hp in damage on an extremity, the extremity goes missing.
Blunt damage deals 50% bonus damage to the face after calculating armour. 10% chance to strike the face. It also counts as 25% more damage towards breaking shields.
Generally blunt is considered the worst damage type, but blunt weapons tend to either be cheap and simple or hammer-like things with big damage numbers. Hide-clad barbarians with mauls are notorious for slaying otherwise nearly invulnerable demi-god monsters. Even scarier than knights charging with lances with a charge bonus to damage, because the lances are discarded after one attack.

Second, there's weapon length.
Having a longer weapon lets you repel shorter weapons and if successful the attack either misses or the defender gets in a free attack capped at a measly 1 damage. A human has 10 hp.
If you wield more than one manufactured weapon (shields aren't weapons in Dominions), either by using two one-handed weapons or by having more than two arms, you take a penalty to all your attacks equal to the sum of the length of all weapons you wield.
It also reduces damage by fire shield and lets humans strike a giant's arms and torso or even head.

Thirdly, there's wounds you take. Probably not relevant to this thread? They depend a bit on the hit location and damage type, and the chance to get one is the percentage of hp lost by that attack. A human with a dagger will only be able to stab an ice giant's legs. When taking damage to the legs, I think you roll only the limp which upgrades into crippled wound. Considering giants heal every strategy-scale turn and can survive quite a lot of battles, you generally end up with all your giants either limp or crippled...


Lastly there's a bunch of weapon-specific effects which are basically special materials and weapon enhancements. They're covered.

[Glimbur]

Magic weapons that you deliberately make in dominions and use tend to be one of two things. One option is crowd control, frost brands that hit 3 humans at once with cold damage, snake bladder sticks that poison 3-9 people around you every swing (and also yourself), that kind of thing. These are handy for chopping through relatively normal units, like province defense. The other viable option is counter-thug, which is a weapon that gets past the defenses of someone using the first type of weapon so you can kill them. Armor Piercing great swords are the classic, but ice cream scoops that pop out their eyes and ignore armor are another option. There are niche weapons that do neither and they are generally ignored, except for repel strategies or something.

There are also "weapons" that make your magic better, increasing your magic paths directly or giving better penetration against enemy magic resistance or so on. Not great for actually hitting folks, but I bet a wizard would use a staff or mace or club that gives +2 CL versus SR.

How to apply that in d&d 3.5? Hard to say. Fighting hordes of weak stuff can come up, and tougher targets also exist. Most d&d weapons are what would be counter thug weapons in dominions. The value of a d&d sword that does 20 cold damage to all enemies within 10' when you swing it really depends on the kind of enemies you fight. I think this would just expand the golf bag of weapons fighters use. At least in 3.5 you can change weapons mid fight, in dominions you are stuck with your poison stick when your enemy surrounds you with summoned skeletons.

[liquidformat]

So sounds like maybe adding in pf Called Shots (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots/) and maybe adding some called shot bonuses to different weapons might be a good idea to implement this.

The main issue with DnD is the power difference between in scaling power between mundane and magic. It would be a better idea to look at cleaning up feats than trying to work in some convoluted new weapon system. For example feats like brutal throw, power throw, weapon finesse, power attack, power shot, point blank shot, track and so on should probably just be made into normal parts of the game that are accessible to anyone who say has 13 str and 1 bab for power attack and so forth rather than requiring a whole feat. Things like two weapon fighting chain should be rolled into one feat and weapon focus should at least scale with level rather than being a one time static bonus.

Another thing to look at are skills, for the most part any skill with over ~+19 (9 ranks, +4 ability mod, +4 Skill Focus, +2 tool) bonus should be getting into above human capability (if we take E6 at face value). So with that in mind we should start to be able to replicate low level spells with DCs around 45 rather than now where you need to be epic to replicate level 1 spells with skills. Also given that you are doing these 'feats' through mundane means should let them potentially affect things they wouldn't otherwise be able to.