I've long been mulling reducing the number of weapon skills. I've reduced a few already, by ditching Main Gauche and making it just Knife skill, and by getting rid of Two-Handed Flail as seperate from Flail, and Shield and Buckler as two different skills.
He is what I've considered doing. I haven't implemented this yet . . . but it's under consideration.
Broadsword and Shortsword become One-Handed Sword. Fencing weapons could go under here, but that might cause a bit of confusion and they're rarely taken in Felltower, anyway.
Spear and Polearm and Staff become one skill. Wizards can use spears and halberds but won't because of the restrictions on the Staff spell. And their low ST.
Kusari gets merged into Flail, because why not.
Everything else would stay as-is. But that should get rid of some false choices and odd decisions.
Thoughts on this?
I've had similar thoughts while I should be doing other things (though I didn't think of combining Staff with Spear and Polearm). Extra stuff from all that:
ReplyDelete* Rapier, Saber, and Smallsword become the old Fencing skill from earlier editions. It's all Rapier anyways.
* Main-Gauche becomes a Hard technique that can be based off Fencing or Knife, and defaults to the original skill at -2.
* Flail/Kusari becomes a Hard technique for Axe/Mace, Two-Handed Axe/Mace, and Whip, and defaults to the original skill at -2.
* All melee weapons default to others at -4 at worst. Sword and Axe/Mace default to each other at -3; Two-Handed Sword and Two-Handed Axe/Mace default to each other at -3; Sword and Knife and Fencing default to each other at -3.
It would make sense to do something like Hans-Christian Vortisch's alternate guns skill system where he reduced guns to three skills and and a few dozen familiarity penalties. Say, Sword, Axe/Mace, and Polearm, and penalties for bladed/unbladed, one-/two-handed, short/long, etc...
ReplyDeleteI looked at his work, and it was inspirational. But I'm not a fan of familiarity penalties. Too much character sheet clutter. Especially in a DF game, it's binary - you have a skill that covers the weapon, or you do not and must default. No extra penalties on top of that really fit.
DeleteBeing generally in favor of reducing skills, and thinking that hand-to-hand combat skills should have more overlap than they do, I'm in favor of it. I've thought about wrapping all armed melee into one Wildcard skill or similar, with individual weapons as specializations, but I bet that's a bridge too far for your DF games.
ReplyDeleteYeah. The real issue is this is an ongoing campaign with existing characters. Folding weapons into existing skills is quite different than having to re-jigger everyone's skill choices and costs and possibly levels.
DeleteI like this! One-Handed Sword makes a lot of sense as a simplification, and I'd probably join Saber, Rapier and Smallsword into a single Fencing skill. They feel different enough to me to be separate, but they'd default to each other.
ReplyDeleteI'm OK with having "Knife" as an Average skill that has the same advantages as Main-Gauche. I understand why the base game makes them different, but every time I made a "serious knife expert" PC I went with Main-Gauche. And those single points spent in plain Knife as a backup melee skill never saw any use in my experience.
I really like merging Spear, Polearm and Staff into a single skill, because I've often felt that a PC who was good at one of the first two would also benefit from having Staff. Big point savings here :).
Kusari and Flail feel very different to me, but then again I've very rarely seen a PC with either of them. I think I like the idea of making Flail a technique of the Axe/Mace skills, and keeping Kusari as its own (it's for weapons that are _mostly_ chain).
Having Flail just be Axe/Mace-1 would make a lot of sense, and I've considered that. But for a DF game, without techniques, you'd end up needing to add a "Flail Expert" Power-Up to cover it. That's fine, but was a non-trivial change to existing characters. Merging in a rarely-used skill (Kusari) and long ago ditching the need for a separate two-handed flail skill made it much easier to just merge those.
DeleteI like these changes a lot. One-Handed Sword makes a lot of sense and, to me, is a no-brainer. I just don't think it makes sense to have Shortsword and Broadsword be such different skills when Two-Handed Sword basically covers all swords used two-handed. I do think that fencing weapons *can* be included here, but they lose the fencing benefit of +3 to parry (you can use an Edged Rapier with the Broadsword skill, IIRC). I always thought Kusari was covered by Flail anyway, so that should be included (I didn't even realized Two-Handed Flail was merged with Flail, but that also makes sense).
ReplyDeleteI think there's enough overlap with Spear, Polearm, and Staff that they make sense to put them together. At least Polearm and Staff, since all of those are used two-handed. I see from scholagladitoria videos (Matt Easton) that a lot of polearm use incorporates staff techniques. One-handed spear use is probably different, but I can't see it as having a different skill.
I think Throwing (Harpoon) and Throwing (Spear) as two separate skills is a little silly, or perhaps too niche.
Insofar as Flail and Axe/Mace, suggested in the comments ... maybe lower the defaults to each other, but otherwise, I don't really see combining them.
I've always been a fan of ditching fencing skills and making that a technique based off of the normal skill - e.g., Broadsword Fencing (A) Broadsword-2. If a player wants only Fencing Broadsword, I'd allow it but not make it the default (fencing weapons were largely civilian affairs not intended for piercing armored monster hides).
ReplyDeleteI've also been tossing around switching to wildcard skills for weapons: Blade!, Bludgeon!, Fist!, Throwing!, and Archer! for generalist skills and specific Martial Arts style bang skills for 'weapon master' types. Of course that just makes DX an even better bargain. I still havent figured that one out, but I like Monster Hunters-style vang skills as a way to simplify things like DF.
I love the reduction of skills to 1h sword, 2h sword, knife, pole-things, 1h axe, 2h axe, and flail.