This article contains affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you make purchases using these links, at no cost to you.Remember the wounds hack I wrote? That cool system where you get called shots and cool effects from a single die roll? Well go read it if you haven’t or don’t remember it, it’s one of our most popular articles. Chris McDowall over at
said it was “a brilliant system for wounds that kinda makes me regret writing up a giant wound table recently.”Today we’re upgrading weapon types by integrating them into the wounds hack.
Like how weapons in Symbaroum (if you haven’t read Symbaroum please go read it) have these cool properties that make them unique. Mythic Bastionland has also played with this (which you also need a copy of, it’s the best rpg released this year).
Can we do this in a simple but fun way that fits with the wounds hack? Yes - in fact, it might be one of the coolest ways to make weapons unique. Because instead of +somethings to this and that, they become mechanically distinct.
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Simple twists = cool effects
Weapons should have a property. These should be simple, always active, and provide a twist or effect on the wounds table. You want to provide something that covers both minor and major wounds.
Mace (d8): When you knock a target prone, they are also dazed. When you concuss a target, they have disadvantage on mental checks for a month instead of a week.
Dagger (d6): When you attack a prone or unaware target, roll damage twice and take the highest result.
Greatsword (d12): When you roll a glancing hit while another target is in melee with you, roll damage against them as you direct your swing into them.
Longbow (d10): When you roll lost senses or permenant damage to senses, choose which sense to harm instead of rolling.
Warpick (d6): On a roll of 6, bypass any worn armour.
Polearm (d10): If you inflict bleeding on a target, they are skewered by the polearm and are held in place. For critical internal blood loss, they are pinned to the ground.
Longsword (d10): When you inflict bleeding on a target, they gain two wounds. When you sever a limb, you choose how much to cut off instead of rolling.
Flail (d8): When you make a target drop an object, you grapple them. When you permenantly damage senses, roll twice and damage both.
It’s pretty easy to construct these for your given weapon list and combat vibe.
Variants
You can get players engaged with some creativity here. If there’s a specific property of a weapon they want to focus on you can design around it. As an example, lets imagine a player wants a polearm that’s going to enable them to grapple.
Hooked Halberd (d10): When you roll a glancing hit, you can use the hook on the halberd to snag onto the target and grapple them.
I recommend not overloading these twists on the wounds tables to keep combat fast e.g. don’t take the hooked halberd and apply the general polearm property we wrote above. Keep it to one core idea.
News
The latest version of the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) Quickstart is now available on DTRPG, Chaosium’s generic rpg system basis they use for pretty much all of their games. Anyone interested in game design should check this out as a blueprint for toolkit type systems, especially if you haven’t played any BRP games before!
This is pretty cool. Take this and add the history from Nate's post how to make weapons not suck and you would have some truly unique weapons with a story behind them.
I love the sound of all these, the wounds and weapon abilities. When GMing, do you have a preferred method to track what's going on with who when effects get applied?