I have been considering equipment and armor deterioration in a upcoming campaign I intend to run. I think such a system would encourage the craft skills and lead to challenges to the PC's when their armor fails them.
The system would work fairly simply. It would follow the rules for equipment breaking except that any attack directed at the player would deal half that damage to armor and any other equipment it would have hit IE: Fireball.
This would mean energy and ranged damage do 1/4 damage before saving throw.
This would have a major effect in large battles as the PC's equipment is likely to deteriorate, especially in a low magic setting and would have moments where the dragon slags armor or the Wizards lighting bolt leaves a gaping hole in chain mail.
I would be keeping extensive hidden tables of equipment to record all of this data and have practiced encounters with it a few times. It adds a lot of weight to the hits when you get the effect of them shattering armor. Yes I know sunder is a thing and this isn't to replace it, rather it shows the wear on equipment that comes from heavy fighting.
This wouldn't do that much in many fights only becoming an issue in fights of great scale and length or a great many fights.
The thing I was trying to figure out is how I would have weapons deteriorate in combat over time and how I would handle time and weather conditions effecting objects.
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You really want everybody to play full casters, do you? ;-)
Great for computer games, fiddly BS for tabletop games.
I'm almost positive you haven't given this nearly enough thought.
You're going to need this page for starters.
So, all player gear is basically going to be cloth (hardness 0, 2 hp/inch of thickness), leather (hardness 2, 5 hp/inch of thickness), metal (hardness 10, 30 hp/inch of thickness), or for a few specific items, wood (hardness 5, 10 hp/inch of thickness). That means on every attack, their clothes are destroyed. Same for stat belts and cloaks of resistance too. Oh, and backpacks, handy haversacks, bags of holding, basically anything that's not metal or wood. None of them are particularly thick and HP is explicitly based on thickness. The best case (an inch of solid leather) only needs 7 damage to destroy it. Even the metal and wood stuff probably won't survive (normal wood equipment is wands, normal metal equipment is rings and amulets, maybe headbands). Same reason the other stuff is destroyed, it's relatively thin and therefore doesn't have much HP. Only saving grace is hardness.
Second, this will not make craft skills important. This will make everyone find a way to make sure they have Mending, eventually leading to Make Whole. Crafting costs 1/5th the original cost and a @#$%load of time. Mending is free and at-will. Make Whole only costs a 2nd level slot.
Third, like the hungry bag said, this will push your players well away from playing anything that uses armor or weapons. Which basically means everyone plays full casters, as they're the only ones that can function if all their equipment is slagged every battle. This may be by design, but it definitely needs to be said (especially since you said low magic). And if your players are already going full wizard (probably sorcerer, just to prevent spellbook bs), they're going to use this system to full effect and every enemy combatant is going to end up naked and disarmed before they even get to act.
Fourth, if you keep secret information about stuff the players should know, you will have a revolt. Adventurers come in a range from "fish out of water" to "professional" and somewhere on the spectrum would be the ones who should know their equipment took damage and how to fix it. Because a soldier who can't recognize their gun is jammed isn't going to last long. Additionally, once anything hits half health it's "broken", and everybody should know it. So the secret tables may end very poorly.
Last, as you keep talking about armor, armor has the highest HP by a wide margin. Armor has 5xAC bonus HP. It's also frequently made of metal or even stronger special materials, so it usually has the highest hardness as well. Additionally, armor, weapons, and shields are the only thing that can get more HP (when you enchant them). So the amount of damage you need to do to armor to cause real damage would destroy all of a character's other gear. Probably even if it all the other items combined their health. That dramatic dragon breath or lightning bolt that damaged the armor would also destroy everything else they had.
While it's thematic when playing some games, it's also a bit of an annoyance, and I can imagine lots of questions. Also prepare for lots of downtime and 'I gotta fix this' if you're really going to do this. Honestly, I don't think it's a good idea. Don't forget you're also going to end up in arguments about how things are hit, where that sword really went, and so on. Add game mechanics and things can get sharply escalated past 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, for 10 hp' and into 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, and your breastplate loses 10hp' starting a heated row.
Don't do it. It penalizes non-casters.
They already suck.
Bob Bob Bob wrote: I'm almost positive you haven't given this nearly enough thought.
You're going to need this page for starters.
So, all player gear is basically going to be cloth (hardness 0, 2 hp/inch of thickness), leather (hardness 2, 5 hp/inch of thickness), metal (hardness 10, 30 hp/inch of thickness), or for a few specific items, wood (hardness 5, 10 hp/inch of thickness). That means on every attack, their clothes are destroyed. Same for stat belts and cloaks of resistance too. Oh, and backpacks, handy haversacks, bags of holding, basically anything that's not metal or wood. None of them are particularly thick and HP is explicitly based on thickness. The best case (an inch of solid leather) only needs 7 damage to destroy it. Even the metal and wood stuff probably won't survive (normal wood equipment is wands, normal metal equipment is rings and amulets, maybe headbands). Same reason the other stuff is destroyed, it's relatively thin and therefore doesn't have much HP. Only saving grace is hardness.
Second, this will not make craft skills important. This will make everyone find a way to make sure they have Mending, eventually leading to Make Whole. Crafting costs 1/5th the original cost and a @#$%load of time. Mending is free and at-will. Make Whole only costs a 2nd level slot.
Third, like the hungry bag said, this will push your players well away from playing anything that uses armor or weapons. Which basically means everyone plays full casters, as they're the only ones that can function if all their equipment is slagged every battle. This may be by design, but it definitely needs to be said (especially since you said low magic). And if your players are already going full wizard (probably sorcerer, just to prevent spellbook bs), they're going to use this system to full effect and every enemy combatant is going to...
Yes Im quite aware of that page I don't know how I would attempt this without it. You are forgetting that I am halving incoming damage meaning the 7 damage attack you bring up becomes 14 and Im possibly thinking of doubling the hardness for indirect attacks. The next thing is that I would only be attacking a certain amount of other gear at a time. As that page shows I roll for what gear to effect, I just do it when they fail not roll a 1.
Im really not sure how this benefits casters that much. All of a casters magical equipment would be just as much at risk as a fighters swords and weapons. If they use make whole thats great and honestly it would tell me they are reading their situation.
You seem to think this is going to destroy equipment every battle, but Ive already thought about this. It would take 40 damage to destroy even the weakest objects using this system using a fireball. You would need to do 320 damage to destroy plate using this meted. This is not a common thing this is reserved for large and grand fights, because nothing else is going to do enough damage.
The tables are only hidden to the point that in combat they aren't going to know what the hp off hand. As soon as something breaks or they attempt to use a broken object that would be hard to tell without trying they get to know. They also get to know when they inspect their gear. Also I doubt they want to be the one with the spreadsheet of equipment in front of them.
Also thats the point this is a two way street system, I don't get how thats a bad thing. It will effect the players more, because their equipment is persistent, but the system doesn't even require you to use it for it to work. It just works.
I already knew effecting everything was a dumb idea I'm almost using that wiki page verbatim with the change that all attacks do 1/2 indirect damage to armor and then most likely effected items.
Qaianna wrote: While it's thematic when playing some games, it's also a bit of an annoyance, and I can imagine lots of questions. Also prepare for lots of downtime and 'I gotta fix this' if you're really going to do this. Honestly, I don't think it's a good idea. Don't forget you're also going to end up in arguments about how things are hit, where that sword really went, and so on. Add game mechanics and things can get sharply escalated past 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, for 10 hp' and into 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, and your breastplate loses 10hp' starting a heated row. The tables are hidden and I will be using armor only for melee attacks. Plus that bite would need to do 20 damage to scratch plate mail.
choyer7 wrote: Qaianna wrote: While it's thematic when playing some games, it's also a bit of an annoyance, and I can imagine lots of questions. Also prepare for lots of downtime and 'I gotta fix this' if you're really going to do this. Honestly, I don't think it's a good idea. Don't forget you're also going to end up in arguments about how things are hit, where that sword really went, and so on. Add game mechanics and things can get sharply escalated past 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, for 10 hp' and into 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, and your breastplate loses 10hp' starting a heated row. The tables are hidden and I will be using armor only for melee attacks. Plus that bite would need to do 20 damage to scratch plate mail. I would only recommend doing this if all the players think it would add to the fun of the game.
Seriously, it would drive most non-casters bananas. Like being a fighter doesn't suck enough already, now you might wind up breaking your stuff while adventuring?
Back to town everyone, need to get another cartload of armor for me!
choyer7 wrote: Qaianna wrote: While it's thematic when playing some games, it's also a bit of an annoyance, and I can imagine lots of questions. Also prepare for lots of downtime and 'I gotta fix this' if you're really going to do this. Honestly, I don't think it's a good idea. Don't forget you're also going to end up in arguments about how things are hit, where that sword really went, and so on. Add game mechanics and things can get sharply escalated past 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, for 10 hp' and into 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, and your breastplate loses 10hp' starting a heated row. The tables are hidden and I will be using armor only for melee attacks. Plus that bite would need to do 20 damage to scratch plate mail. Sooner or later players will figure out a trend of how often stuff happens. And if you're trying to encourage Craft skills, bear in mind that you're also relying on someone with full ranks in Craft (weapon) having no way of telling her greataxe is falling apart until it's outright broken.
One other thing ... while I'm fond of having characters with a 'day job' skill (like I do in my current campaign), this may cause some problems down the line, especially if you've got fighters, clerics, sorcerers, or even paladins as your main characters. Or will you have them ICly dump the workload on one character?
What types of games do your players want to play? If they like gritty hardmode games, then go to it. Don't force it on them if it's not what they want.
Expect a lot of people to want to play monks.
Include carts and wagons in the treasure so they can carry their backup equipment.
Realize that this unbalances fights against creatures that don't use equipment and removes a lot of treasure from the game.
Qaianna wrote: choyer7 wrote: Qaianna wrote: While it's thematic when playing some games, it's also a bit of an annoyance, and I can imagine lots of questions. Also prepare for lots of downtime and 'I gotta fix this' if you're really going to do this. Honestly, I don't think it's a good idea. Don't forget you're also going to end up in arguments about how things are hit, where that sword really went, and so on. Add game mechanics and things can get sharply escalated past 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, for 10 hp' and into 'He sinks his fangs into your leg, and your breastplate loses 10hp' starting a heated row. The tables are hidden and I will be using armor only for melee attacks. Plus that bite would need to do 20 damage to scratch plate mail. Sooner or later players will figure out a trend of how often stuff happens. And if you're trying to encourage Craft skills, bear in mind that you're also relying on someone with full ranks in Craft (weapon) having no way of telling her greataxe is falling apart until it's outright broken.
One other thing ... while I'm fond of having characters with a 'day job' skill (like I do in my current campaign), this may cause some problems down the line, especially if you've got fighters, clerics, sorcerers, or even paladins as your main characters. Or will you have them ICly dump the workload on one character? They can tell as soon as they are out of combat. That is not what the hidden tables are for. They are to stop them from telling while in the heat of battle, and possibly not even that if they get enough ranks in craft. The campaign is currently set up in such a way where there could be quite a bit of time between combat. I am not running the usual multi-encounter sessions any more as my players dislike them. As such when encounters do arrive I wish to make them more challenging and thematic.
Philo Pharynx wrote: What types of games do your players want to play? If they like gritty hardmode games, then go to it. Don't force it on them if it's not what they want.
Expect a lot of people to want to play monks.
Include carts and wagons in the treasure so they can carry their backup equipment.
Realize that this unbalances fights against creatures that don't use equipment and removes a lot of treasure from the game.
A lot of the loot will contain lots of useable equipment as the campaign is based around island chains and ships, I'm ok with people playing monks. Creatures like dragons was a consideration and I'm not fully solid on how to handle them, but working on it. I already brought it up with the players and they are also not against the idea. I also wanted to use it in this campaign in particular as most of the current characters are dex based with little to no armor.
Now, back on to my question, but slightly rephrased. How can I improve/change this basic system to effect weapons, weather or make it better in your opinion? Im just looking for suggestions. If you think the system is to harsh, how would you ease it down?
So, PF is an abstraction in most everything. Rather than keeping a bunch of tables and exactly figuring damage, why not just tell the players up front that their gear, even magic stuff, will deteriorate through wear. Then, when they take a crap-ton of damage from a particular hit for their level tell them their armor/weapon/clothes are chewed up too. Make up an arbitrary number or just impose the "Broken" condition on said item.
So for example, at level 1 the PCs are ambushed by a tatzlwyrm. The ranger is hit from behind with a bite/successful grab/and 2 claws. The other PCs pitch in, tear her loose and end the creature. After the battle, announce that the ranger's studded leather has been fairly shredded and torn; it now has the Broken condition and is at half HP.
The party can stop for 10 minutes and cast Mending. Otherwise they can continue on the mission hoping they find some Medium armor that will fit the ranger or she can use Craft: Armor to fix her stuff.
Incidentally, this means hitting a DC 13 for studded leather, paying 5 GP and then having to take roughly 1 day (13*13 = 16.9 GP worth of work in a week; this results in a little over 5 GP work in a day) for the PCs to complete.
Consider that mechanic for a minute: fixing an item requires paying 1/5 of the items original cost, making a DC check equal to the original craft DC and then working to complete the GP cost of the repair. Simple repairs on average items will take an ENTIRE day.
To improve this you can either commit to only having one fight/day or modify the time it takes to effect repairs.
I'd suggest hastening repair time. What's more, I'd allow the PCs to just pay for those repairs with GP they already have on hand. PCs fight that tatzlwyrm, then find its lair and a buried chest containing 520 GP. However the ranger wants to make repairs to her armor.
In actuality the party only found 515 GP and the ranger just happened to have the spare hide, a few grommets and extra studs, and some resin in her pack for JUST such an occasion.
As for speeding things up, perhaps it takes 2 minutes/HP repaired to fix items.
Please ignore the complaints of "Meh fighters already suck, Wizards r so good".
The golden rule for this, and all homebrew rules in general, is to talk with your players beforehand and make sure everybody is on the same page. If they don't seem interested in it, you might want to reconsider the idea.
Personally I would not like such rules implemented. Not because I think it won't be interesting or balanced, but because there are enough factors slowing down combat without adding equipment damage. In a system where a 5 minute fight can take 5 hours, I disapprove of extra rules that slow down combat further.
Okay, so if I understand this you're using the same mechanic as rolling a 1 on a save but just doing it all the time. At this point I have to ask (as I probably should have at the start), why? As I've already pointed out, anything not made of metal or wood (which is probably half of that list) has at best 7 HP, or at worst 2. Even with the double halving an arrow or spell can pretty easily destroy the 2 HP one (hence why any hit would destroy clothes), and even a first level melee can destroy the 7 HP one (greatsword and 14 Str). That's not "wear and tear". That's "and my stuff just randomly explodes with no defense". Important stuff too, the belts, backbacks, bags, and cloaks. CMD exists for a reason, so players can have a defense against their stuff being destroyed.
The reason people are saying the spellcasters will be much happier with this than the martials... well, spellcasters don't typically use weapons and armor. Their magic gear is just as subject to breaking but they frequently supplement their magic items with actual magic, and thus won't be completely screwed when their boots of flying (or whatever) are destroyed.
Again, you don't need 40 damage. You need 44 damage to break through the hardness of metal. You need 4 to break through the hardness of cloth. You need 12 to break through the hardness of leather. And that's with halving it twice. Those are... well, pretty freaking small numbers. To outright destroy stuff is a little harder but not in the slightest difficult. A level 8 fireball does 28 on average, or enough to destroy a standard leather item. You can get those same numbers even earlier with bloodlines, wizard schools, probably some races, basically it's not hard to do.
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CampinCarl9127 wrote: Please ignore the complaints of "Meh fighters already suck, Wizards r so good".
The golden rule for this, and all homebrew rules in general, is to talk with your players beforehand and make sure everybody is on the same page. If they don't seem interested in it, you might want to reconsider the idea.
Personally I would not like such rules implemented. Not because I think it won't be interesting or balanced, but because there are enough factors slowing down combat without adding equipment damage. In a system where a 5 minute fight can take 5 hours, I disapprove of extra rules that slow down combat further.
Maybe the OP should ignore people who post condescending misquotes of other people.
If you have unique ideas, express them.
Making fun of other people only makes you look bad.
OP, you focus your thoughts too much on Armor and Weapons.
It is THE OTHER items that will get torn apart with these rules. they are leagues more fragile and will get outright destroyed by effects that scratch armor and weapons.
While the intention is good to give it a more gritty, realistic feeling - it will end in a bunch of bookkeeping for negligible ingame results. You bookkeep and calculate, taking time away from other DMing stuff while the players wait, so you can say a few times your equipment is now broken in-fight. For a minor malus on some actions. For like half a fight. - meh.
If i were to play under such rules i'd just load up on Mending and Make Whole later and dont really try to solve the wear-and-tear-problem with mundane meanses, when lowest level magic can remedy it easily. Or bother the group's caster to load it up if i werent it.
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On the topic of balance issues.
There will be a shift towards classes that do not strongly rely on the items that fall under deterioration. For example a Wizard with mostly trashed items is down to 80% combat ability (e.g. one of the effects: Casts Displacement and it still works fine for 50% damage avoidance). A Fighter in the same situation is at 20%. (e.g. AC now so low that non-trivial monsters hit with every attack all the time)
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In total i think your proposed deterioration houserules will be detrimental to your, and your players, enjoyment of the game.
I agree with the crowd that thinks this is a very bad idea. That said, if you are going to do this I strongly suggest implementing the automatic bonus progression, perhaps modifying the attunement rules to allow for at will item swapping.
alexd1976 wrote: CampinCarl9127 wrote: Please ignore the complaints of "Meh fighters already suck, Wizards r so good".
The golden rule for this, and all homebrew rules in general, is to talk with your players beforehand and make sure everybody is on the same page. If they don't seem interested in it, you might want to reconsider the idea.
Personally I would not like such rules implemented. Not because I think it won't be interesting or balanced, but because there are enough factors slowing down combat without adding equipment damage. In a system where a 5 minute fight can take 5 hours, I disapprove of extra rules that slow down combat further.
Maybe the OP should ignore people who post condescending misquotes of other people.
If you have unique ideas, express them.
Making fun of other people only makes you look bad. Sorry, I don't take well to people who frown upon the fun of over half of all classes. And if anybody took that as a serious quote...well than I'm worried about their mental state.
Also, I did, if you decided to keep reading past the first sentence.
A quick note to the guy that suggested a more arbitrary ruleset where I assume heavy damage breaks armor. I'll think about it. Also the reason I focus on armor and weapons is that I will only be affecting one non-armor piece per character per aoe.
Ok from what I can see the four largest problems that are being brought up: It will slow down combat, it could push the ball in favor of wizards, healing equipment will take too much time and certain objects will be destroyed too quickly.
Well I have thought about this a bit, its obvious at least to me that I would need to be quite quick in rolling for the item affected and subtracting from the armor. The best way I could think to do this would be at the end of combat where I just write down the damage amounts in the table and then total them up. If I notice a particular likely hood of object being broken I would total that in combat. I think this would quicken the process.
This is a very legitimate concern, however I would hope that magical armor progression slows this as that 28 damage fireball will do a lot less to +1 or +2 leather, but I am strongly considering not allowing equipment to go past the broken phase using this system which would help with many of the most valid concerns.
Im not actually worried about this one for this campaign as it features a lot of downtime in certain sections as this particular campaign is ship based and I feel that there is no problem the characters will face by this other than the inability to repair in the dungeon per se.
I think the broken condition rule may fix this and I am considering it now.
choyer7 wrote: Ok from what I can see the four largest problems that are being brought up: It will slow down combat, it could push the ball in favor of wizards, healing equipment will take too much time and certain objects will be destroyed too quickly. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this idea generally, my main concern is it adds more paper-work and slows everything down. Having said that, I'm not playing this game, so who really cares what I think.
My suggestion to avoid slowing things down in combat is to have a random-number spreadsheet somewhere (rolled ahead of time or whatever). That way you don't have to roll an extra set of dice every time someone gets hit, you just tick off the next number on your list and move on.
Also, remember that this whole system is supposed to be about long-term-ware on your items, so you don't have to go into detail: "that guy did 2d6+11 on that hit, minus the hardness of 10, and he rolled 2+5, so that's 7+11-10=8 damage, so the armour takes 8 damage from that attack."
Instead, have a series of d6 (or whatever) roles, and adjust accordingly: "Player got hit by a Barbarian using power attack, let's make that double equipment-damage. Next number on my list is 3, that means it takes 6 equipment damage, on to the next turn."
Sure doing all the math correctly gets slightly more accurate numbers, but since this is long-term damage, that being accurate really doesn't matter all that much, especially if they can just fix their stuff between battles.
1. Have your numbers pre-rolled.
2. Double equipment damage for a big hit.
3. Half equipment damage for a small hit (or ignore equpment damage altogether for small hits).
4. Profit!
MrCharisma wrote: choyer7 wrote: Ok from what I can see the four largest problems that are being brought up: It will slow down combat, it could push the ball in favor of wizards, healing equipment will take too much time and certain objects will be destroyed too quickly. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this idea generally, my main concern is it adds more paper-work and slows everything down. Having said that, I'm not playing this game, so who really cares what I think.
My suggestion to avoid slowing things down in combat is to have a random-number spreadsheet somewhere (rolled ahead of time or whatever). That way you don't have to roll an extra set of dice every time someone gets hit, you just tick off the next number on your list and move on.
Also, remember that this whole system is supposed to be about long-term-ware on your items, so you don't have to go into detail: "that guy did 2d6+11 on that hit, minus the hardness of 10, and he rolled 2+5, so that's 7+11-10=8 damage, so the armour takes 8 damage from that attack."
Instead, have a series of d6 (or whatever) roles, and adjust accordingly: "Player got hit by a Barbarian using power attack, let's make that double equipment-damage. Next number on my list is 3, that means it takes 6 equipment damage, on to the next turn."
Sure doing all the math correctly gets slightly more accurate numbers, but since this is long-term damage, that being accurate really doesn't matter all that much, especially if they can just fix their stuff between battles.
1. Have your numbers pre-rolled.
2. Double equipment damage for a big hit.
3. Half equipment damage for a small hit (or ignore equpment damage altogether for small hits).
4. Profit! Having pre-rolled numbers for fights would be useful and encounters would be useful. I will keep this in mind for far more than just this. I will have to be careful not abuse this however.
Item damage can be great if doing a full survival style game - but it will very much slow everything down. Another thing that should be sorted before hand, is if different damage types will damage things differently. Bludgeoning damage, for instance, should have no effect on cloth or leather. Slashing should have limited effect on metal.
Keep in mind, also, that the object damage rules are not balanced at all for this usage, and things will very much need to be fixed. Also - the mundane crafting rules, which would be used for repairing these items - are atrocious, and you can expect it to take a character about 6 months to repair some plate armor.
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