5e Weapon List

Ever taken a good look at the weapon list in 5e D&D? You should. It's a great example of negative design- that is, it's a great example of what you should not do.

Consider the handaxe versus the mace. The handaxe costs 5gp, does 1d6 damage, is light, and can be thrown. It's useful for two-weapon fighters, it does decent damage, and is a ranged weapon in a pinch. You can dual wield a battle-axe and a hand-axe, throw the hand-axe, and then two hand grip the battleaxe for extra damage afterwards. How cool is that?

The mace, on the other hand. It costs 5gp and does 1d6 damage. That's it. Can't throw it, by the rules, and it's of no use to a two-weapon fighter. Hmm.

Another, quicker example: Is there any reason a trident costs 5x as much as a spear despite having identical stats?

Even quicker: why does a scimitar cost 25gp when the literally identical (and on the next space down) shortsword cost the same?

Faster still: Why would anybody ever buy a flail?

I gotta fix this.

Masterwork Weapons

I've been playing around with an idea in my head- what if, instead of having a "plus" level and (maybe) a unique power to magical items, what if you did away with the plus altogether?

What if the big draw was the fact that it was magical, instead?

I haven't playtested it, but I can't imagine that there'd be any real problems simply porting it into a game. You could shift the bonuses to attack and damage on to the fighters' base values (so that a fighter who's "supposed" to have a +1 sword and armor could have an innate bonus to attack, damage, and armor class instead), and then have the occasional monster reduce damage if it was struck by a non-magical weapon. Something like how (as I understand it) certain monsters in OD&D simply couldn't be hurt by anything but magical weapons.

So there'd be value in a "boring" magical sword, for example- it'd still have the properties of a "magical" item (being constantly razor-sharp, resistant to breakage, resistant to magical destruction)... but you could have a normal smith create it. Hello, masterwork weapons. Nice to see you again. Why don't you take a seat.

You'd have to modify store-bought adventures and settings a little, sure, but it wouldn't be hard. Just take the boring swords and axes that don't get any cool powers and make them masterwork weapons. Now they're well-forged weapons with a certain value, but it makes sense that there's stacks of them lying around instead of being kept in a box while the enemy warriors are running around with mundane weapons.

In this scheme, there would be two categories of magical weapons and armor: the "regular" masterwork type that's a cut above regular weapons without contributing to power creep, and then "unique" items that are sentient, or return when  thrown, or whatever it is they do. And here's the real benefit: The items are important for what they do, instead of what stats they boost.

It's something to think about, anyways.

Grab and Go: The Ten Item Rule

One of the things I like least about Labyrinth Lord and any other Classic Fantasy Game is character creation. Specifically, buying equipment.

The rest of the game is so straighforwards and easy. I took my girlfriend, one of the people who's going to play Friday in my Aremorican Addendum playtest, and we made a character in just a couple of minutes. Hit points, armor class, weapons, everything. It took almost literally no time at all, thanks to one of the least controversial and handy house rules I ever forget that I have:

The Random Demon Generator?

I call it the "Ten Items or Less" Rule. See, you can get basic items and armor for free (that's up to light armor and any one-handed item) for free, because they're practically free anyways and I'm not really picky. I don't require dynamic encumbrance counts, for one. Math at the table should be limited to figuring out one's hit rolls by subtracting THACO from the die roll, or by figuring out how much gold goes where at the end of an adventure.

But for two, you get ten items from the equipment table for free. You can have a bedroll, two torches, waterskin (water), flask(rum), two 50' ropes, tent, blanket, and 10' pole. Or you could have a hammer, 50' rope, waterskin (water), two blankets, three days of rations, a bedroll, and a tent. For free. Seriously, don't even count them, it doesn't matter. I'm not looking over your math anyways, just take ten items, stick them in a backpack, and spend your gold on weapons, armor, ammunition, that sort of thing. When you're done, though, all your gold is gone. Instead of keeping it, you get 1d6x10 silver. That's 10-60, roughly a month's wages for a skilled laborer. 

See, this rule does a couple of things. Firstly, it means that players aren't agonizing over whether to spend their 5 silver on ropes at character creation. There are more interesting times to worry about gold, and that's at the table, not when we're trying to figure out who's bringing what and how. Second, it's essentially a starting package for you- you have some odds and ends, and it encourages creativity. So you've already got food, water, shelter, and light. You've got another item to bring. Should you bring parchment? What about a quill? Will we need pitons? That sort of thing.

Should have brought pitons.

And lastly, it means that characters start out kind of poor. You know, the driving motivation behind half of what Conan does (the other half being revenge), and all of what people do in Theives' World. It's the simplest, and easiest motivation in the world. If a night in an inn costs 1 gold, and you currently have roughly 1/6th of one gold peice, you're going to need to make back the investment you guys just now made into all of that shiny armor and weapons and stuff. Hey, night's falling. You'd better get moving, the town guard doesn't take kindly to vagrants.

All of these things are good things. You still have to spend money outside of character creation, of course, so that the rope and pitons and stuff you brought will be more expensive next time. With any luck, of course, you'll be coming back to town with 500-600 gold, so maybe it'll be time to upgrade that plate armor for once, and then spend time in town recuperating and training and all that. Without any luck, you'll come back into town broke and half dead, with the blood of henchmen on your boots, but that's neither here nor there. Come back with your shield or on it, as they say!

Houserule: Wounds

Lord Chivalrous suddenly wonders whether
he left the kettle on.

One of the things that's bothered me for a long time is the treatment of hit points in D&D; specifically, how hit points are simultaneously health and not-health. They represent your ability to not get killed, luck, divine intervention, and sheer pluck. They also represent your ability to take hits, roll with punches, and sheer stubbornnes.

And there's nothing innately wrong with that. There's no real reason that you can't be the final arbiter of your character's skill, that two Fighters with 10 hit points can't be narratively different, with one not even noticing the stab wound in his arm as he kicks the orc in the chest, and the other skillfully dodging under the minotaur's clumsy, overhand hack and body-slamming the brute. Mechanically, according to D&D, there's no difference. And that's pretty cool, actually.

But there is something innately dissatisfying with the idea that this abstract representation takes so long to heal up. 1 hit point a day? Seriously? What am I "healing", anyways? Conan famously requires nothing more than breathing room and a swig of wine to ignore his wounds, and that's the sort of thing we should emulate, not Final Fantasy time and money drains.

In short, I've been considering adding Wounds to Labyrinth Lord, and they'd work fairly simply. You keep track of your Wounds separately, with each one reducing your maximum hit points by one. You take a wound whenever you get damaged by something. (Alternately, you could take a Wound for every 4 damage you take. Or, if you like, damage equal to half the class' hit dice size- so every 2 points for wizards, 3 for clerics, and 4 for fighters. This helps your tougher classes stay in the fight longer, if you're so inclined.) In this way, a hit means a hit, and Wounds represent real, physical damage. Whether you get hit by a stray arrow, an orc's sword, or the like, Wounds hurt, and they need to be healed.

To make up for your rapidly dwindling health, you regain all of your Hit Points by simply catching a breather of a minute or two. But not your Wounds. Your Wounds disappear at a rate of 1/level every time you get a good night's sleep. So, in other words, your Wounds represent the very real scrapes, cuts, bruises, gashes, concussions, and other sundry ailments that a life of hardship and pain brings. It represents the fact that even a knife cut hurts.

Clerics and other sources of healing magic can heal Wounds at a rate of 1 Wound per 5 HP healed, if they so choose. Of course, their healing is still useful, as it keeps a man from dying in combat, and is extremely useful for bringing a man up from the prone position, so to speak.

So you're tougher, and you can fight for longer in a day, but you still can't fight forever like some adventurers in "other games" can. But you're not any stronger in a straight fight than generic LL, so it's not like you have to redesign fights, encounters, or any sort of adventures. It puts a higher cap on what you can accomplish in a day, and that's always a Good Thing.