GameDesign: Weapons traits

[Vault Dweller]

In many games the choice between an axe and a hammer, or a bow vs xbow is purely cosmetic or based on a knowledge of a specific uber item like Holy Avenger or Mace of Some Serious Asskicking. Now, if you had to pick a medieval weapon based on its traits, what those traits might be? What additional (other then damage) effects would you associate with different weapons? For example, crossbows were always more powerful, so they could have higher penetration (vs armor) value. Swords could be used effectively to parry attacks, daggers - critical strike, hammers - knockdown (Fallout-style), etc.

A list of suggested weapons is: dagger, sword, axe, hammer, spear, bow, crossbow, throwing. Opinions?

 

[RGE]

Apparently the point of warhammers was to dent plate armours that swords couldn't slash through. Knocking people down sounds more suitable to a shield bash to me.

Good idea with the dagger. I imagine that daggers would mainly be good for slipping between cracks in plate armours. Aside from the obvious benefit of being small enough to get into areas where 'real' weapons might be disallowed.

Spears could perhaps offer a defensive bonus until the enemy has scored their first hit? That would simulate that the spear is useful for keeping enemies away. Maybe the spear might even receive attack penalties after that first hit, to simulate the the enemy is too close for the spear to be truly effective? This would mean that weak enemies, like ordinary foot soldiers, would have great use for spears, since they can't take that many hits anyway.

Axes should be one of the few weapons that can be used to break through a door and such. I suppose they could also be used to punch through (or put dents in) armour in the way that warhammers would.

Throwing weapons seem to be good mainly because they allow the use of a shield, but I suppose that in a game that limits the amount of large weapons the character can haul around, they would be good for those who don't have enough space on their body for a bow. They could also be used in melee without penalty, and be quite hard to block without a shield.

 

[Spazmo]

Spears are good because they let you attack farther from yourself than a sword might.

 

[Elwro]

A special trait of hammers could be that, like in ADOM, you can use them during smithing.

 

[errorcode]

Hammers and maces - blunt trauma, kinetic force generally blew through plate and chain armors. Spiked maces could put that kinetic force behind piercing armors.

Axes - penetrating force of the blow could generally push through plate armors and shields if it could get a solid hit.

Swords - various swords were created for various purposes. Scimitars and sabres were perfect for use on horseback and had a more effective cutting surface. Falchions combined the chopping aspect of an axe with the balance of a sword.

Daggers and shortswords - were used for up close fighting when a soldier lost there pike, bow, etc. no more effective at getting into creases of armor, but light enough to always be carried as a backup.

Spears, pikes, etc - really useful against keeping enemies at bay and highly effective against Cavalry charges. Primarily defensive weapons.

Military pick - Used to pierce chain and plate armors. more likely to pierce than an axe due to it being easier to connect a solid blow.

Morningstars and flails - useful for disarming opponents and getting around shields.

Crossbows - point and shoot. Even untrained peasants could use it. Only draw back is slow reload times and shorter firing ranges than longbows

bows - long range striking capabilities, but took alot of training to be proficient.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Few ideas:

Spear - Interrupt ( Let's say you have an opponent who's several hexes away, when he attempts to close the distance, you get an interrupt attack (works like AoO) which, if successful, forces him to keep the distance.), but penalty at close range.

Bow - I treat bows as sniper rifles (crippling, long range, penalty at close range)

Crossbow - I treat them as shotguns (short range, but bonus and knockdown at close range)

 

[chemchok]

A heavy javelin could easily negate whatever defense bonus one gains from "form fitting" armour like scale or chainmail. Ideally, it could also be reused after combat.

Spears and pikes might also allow an attacker to disarm or trip their opponent before they are able to land a blow.

Morningstars, flails, maces and other blunt trauma weapons have a better chance of incacpacitating limbs, either by shattering bone, numbness, or crushing armour.

 

[Elwro]

I thought that crossbows didn't have shorter ranges then bows.

 

[Vault Dweller]

And you may be correct. It's been awhile since I used my crossbow....Hmm, come to think about it, I don't even have a crossbow. Anyway, so you think crossbows shouldn't have a short range (half of the bow range)?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I think crossbows should be faster to use than a longbow but possibly take a penalty in range.

Daggers should be faster than any other weapon due to their lightness and size, and should give a bonus to criticals, but should cause less raw damage.

Warhammers should stun and take advantage of kinetic force as errorcode pointed out.

 

[Claw]

I thought bolts were shorter and had worse aerodynamic abilities than arrows, thus shorter range.
I could kinda imagine a crossbow for long arrows to be impractical.
This page says that crossbows evolved from lower to longer range so it depends on quality.

The main advantage of the bow is firing rate. I think that is how most games do it anyway. Crossbows have more power, but are slower. Role-player, why do you say crossbows should be faster? Maybe for the first short, but reloading should definitely be slower.
So I'd say crossbows should be stronger but need an extra action/round for realoading while bows can be reloaded and shot with one action. Something like that.

Otherwise, hammers could stun and, daggers cause more criticals as role-player said. Weapons could use damage types so armors could have different protection values, generally less protection against blunt and piercing damage and more against slashing.
Axes would compensate by having high damage, while some Swords could be used both piercing and slashing, and have higher accuracy since I imagine actually scoring a hit might be easier with most sword types compared to an axe, better balance and all.
Spears might have a higher range, but I am really uncertain how well a spear would fare against a sword.
A hablerd could combine advantages of spear and axe with different attack types.

 

[crufty]

You might check out some of the Osprey books on medieval warfare. Axes were very good at dehorsing knights, but left the wielder fairly defenseless...so sometimes an axe guy would be flanked by two guys each holding a shield.

Crossbows were pretty lethal, but had miserable reload times. I forget which battle it was, but one time the Church stepped in and said that crossbows were not to be used--too many people would get killed. So that would be an interesting trait -- can't use a weapon vs a given faction.

Bows aren't as lethal, and had nice reload times...but then ammo was an issue. The standard practice back in the day wasn't to carry a whole bunch of arrows. Instead, after you shoot, the enemy shoots...and then you run around and pick up all the enemies unbroken arrows. In one battle, the otherside didn't show up with arrows and after a few initial salvos, that was it for the bowmen.

Beyond speed, reach and armor penetration, an intimidation trait might be cool...your big axe might not cause more damage than a normal axe (a chopped off head is a chopped off head), but it might make someone hesitate to come at yah.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

What you really need to do is come up with a model based on some physics, VD. Melee weapons have several attributes:

1.) Mass - How hard they can make an impulse on the target.
2.) Level arm - The more of a lever, the more range the weapon has and the more impulse.
3.) Impact type - Blunt, bladed, piercing, etc.
4.) Variance - the +/- value of the impact force.

With those, you should be able to determine the values you need for everything. For example, the level arm and the mass would determine things like how easily something can be blocked and how much force is put in to the damage types.

The variance would be the random range for the hit based on the difference between a REALLY GOOD HIT and a grazing. Grazing someone with a rapier might not do much whereas grazing someone with a heavy flail probably would.

The impact type could also include a grapple effect. You could use a 32bit int for a series of four types - blunt, piercing, slicing, and grapple so you have 16 levels of each type contained within one parameter. That way, you can have weapons which can have piercing damage as well as blunt damage such as a spiked mace. You can also have a bladed whip, which would have slicing damage, a small amount of blunt damage, and a fairly good grapple ability because it's a flexible chain.

So, to determine what happens when a weapon hits, you have (mass * lever) affecting a parry roll after the successful hit roll, because a lightweight dagger won't do much versus a claymore. After that, you determine the damage if the parry fails. You'd have lever * mass * each damage type. Then weight those damages versus the armor's resistance to each damage type.

If you're going with the grapple model, you could have a check after a successful parry as to whether or not the attacker grapples the weapon itself. If the hit is successful and unparried, a grapple weapon would need to see if the enemy is grappled.

 

[Sarvis]

The impact type could also include a grapple effect. You could use a 32bit int for a series of four types - blunt, piercing, slicing, and grapple so you have 16 levels of each type contained within one parameter.

You mean 64 bit right?

Not to mention that four 8-bit ints would be better, you'd get 255 possible levels without all the nasty bit manipulation and obfuscated code.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The impact type could also include a grapple effect. You could use a 32bit int for a series of four types - blunt, piercing, slicing, and grapple so you have 16 levels of each type contained within one parameter.

You mean 64 bit right?

Not to mention that four 8-bit ints would be better, you'd get 255 possible levels without all the nasty bit manipulation and obfuscated code.

Actually, I mean 16bit int, which would be four nibbles, ranging from 0-15. You really wouldn't need damages as high as using char values, since you'd be multiplying mass, lever, and the damage field per type.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Thanks, Saint, good idea, it deals with some of the issues I had. I like the mass thing, as obviously blocking a great sword is not the same as blocking a dagger.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I never can resist making a knight who's good with the old sword, flail, dagger, lance combo.

Just more or less agreeing with others here. A big problem with most RPG systems as far as realistic weapon use is how relatively non-deadly combat is and how "tough" guys can really take a beating regardless of the source. A group of 20th level mounted knights trained from birth at combat should just mow down a group of 1st level militia with pikes, right? Well, it didn't quite work out that way. And bows in the hands of peasants not being lethal enough to pierce heavy armor? Ask the guys at Agincourt.

Just from what I've experienced, crossbows would probably be easier for the less skilled to use, and they'd also make good sniping weapons, not that sniping was terribly popular at the time. You can't load a crossbow as quickly, but you can also aim it as long as you want and pretty much where you want, whereas a bow will tire you out pretty quickly if you don't shoot pretty soon after you draw. There's no way in hell you're going to hide in the window of the 3rd floor of a library or under a bush waiting for the perfect shot on your target with a bow, but it would be quite doable with a crossbow. I could see crossbows being a hit with castle defenders, but for a pitched battle you'd want a bow. Supposedly crossbows had a shorter effective range, too, even though there was more force behind the shot, because their flight was less predictable, I guess because of all the moving parts. The church outlawing crossbows probably had more to do with whiny knights getting upset that their era was passing and poorly trained peasant militias were handing their asses to them on an increasingly regular basis through "unchivalric" means rather than dutifully marching up with the clothes they farmed in and poor quality weapons they barely knew how to use to get mowed down by the score than anything.

 

[Sarvis]

Just from what I've experienced, crossbows would probably be easier for the less skilled to use, and they'd also make good sniping weapons,
*snip*

...flight was less predictable, I guess because of all the moving parts.

Generally you want your sniping weapon to have a predictable projectile, otherwise there's not much point in being able to take forever aiming.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

That's sort of like saying a pistol is useless for assassination. In fact, that's probably not a bad analogy, since that's the same reason pistols don't have the same range as rifles given the same ammunition. I'm thinking more short-range ambush kind of sniping, not 1/2 mile kills.

 

[Lemon]

And bows in the hands of peasants not being lethal enough to pierce heavy armor? Ask the guys at Agincourt.

The English archers at Agincourt were professionals. Bow's took great strength and trained skill, the uppity peasant was far more likely to wield the said crossbow.

Quoting from John Keegan's The Face Of Battle

Calvary vs Infantry

"...four clouds of arrows would have streaked out of the English line to reach a height of a hundred feet before turning in flight to plunge at a steeper angle on and among the French men-at-arms opposite. These arrows cannot, however, given their terminal velocity and angle of impact, have done a great deal of harm, at least to the men-at-arms. For armour, by the early fifteenth century, was composed almost completely of steel sheet, in place of the iron mail which had been worn on the body until fifty years before but now only covered the awkward points of movement around the shoulder and the groin. It was deliberately designed , moreover, to offer a glancing surface, and the contemporary helmet, a wide-brimmed 'bascinet', was particulary adapted to deflect blows from the head and the shoulders."

He suggests that the calvarly was destroyed by the "hedgehog" line of stakes, there many were killed in the impact or shortly after having been thrown to the ground, victim to the dagger or hammer. He does agree that the foot soldiers must have taken casualties, first through luck and the mass of fire, but then second as the distance closed and the archers shot flat with little elevation, at that point the arrows would break through the plate.

I use The Face Of Battle as its considered the definitive accounting of Agincourt.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Cool. I guess that was an urban legend, then.

 

[Lemon]

It was the common assumption for ages, perhaps a bit of victors history. It would have riled the French.

Keegan posits the French were so tightly packed that they could not manuever to fight. Waves of soldiers marched in shoulder to shoulder with bare room between each rank. They would be helpless, unable to find enough space to swing a sword or raise an axe. Their corpses would also become a serious obstacle, first matting the ground then rising well past waist height. Then there was constant pressure on the men-at-arms from the row behind them, as in any crowd its difficult to slow or redirect movement. Soldiers were unable to stop and break attack as the line behind them kept pushing them forward. On the flanks archers would tag anyone who had broken rank. One soldier distracts the armoured footmen while the other lays in an axe from behind.

 

[Stark]

well, do you have jelly monster in your game? supposedly only clubbing weapons work on them, and they split into two if you hit them with piercing weapons...(bad memories from playing ToEE).

do you also model weapon drawing time? (the amount of time (or action point) to draw out your weapon during a surprise confrontation).

It's play out differently depending on your weapon too. you can draw out a dagger in no time but need to spend more AP on an axe or hammer.

 

[Vault Dweller]

No monsters, no weapon drawing, but daggers are obviously faster (less AP) then 2-handed swords.

 

[Stark]

in that case the final thought I can bring to the table is weapon reach (one tile or two tiles away).

but I'm sure you've had that covered.