Micro-ing Weapons
I'm continuing on my adaption of Microlite for my own evil purposes.
Originally I thought that weapons would be a matter of copy and paste, but as I looked at the weapon tables, a couple of things struck me.
The first was that even in Micro form, D&D clung to an esoteric assortment of weapons for what I could best attribute to nostalgia. The original D&D was derived from war-gaming, and that pedigree shows in the variety of weapons. But when was the last time someone used a pick? How about those various flavors of polearm? In the interest of keeping MicroZ micro, I started dropping weapons.
The other thing I noticed was that simplification made certain weapons in each category more desirable than others. Why use a scimitar for d6 when you can use a bastard sword for d10? Why use a dagger for d4 when you can use a shortsword for d6? So I began looking at the weapons in the various categories and tried to balance them. It meant adding a little more detail, but hopefully I'll do so without encumbering the system.
In some cases it meant tweaking damage values... the scimitar, longsword and bastard sword in one hand all do d8. A flail only does d6 but is +2 vs. shields, a shortspear does d6 but can be thrown and a rapier does d6 but subtracts 2 from the DR of armor.
DR of armor? That's another post.
Originally I thought that weapons would be a matter of copy and paste, but as I looked at the weapon tables, a couple of things struck me.
The first was that even in Micro form, D&D clung to an esoteric assortment of weapons for what I could best attribute to nostalgia. The original D&D was derived from war-gaming, and that pedigree shows in the variety of weapons. But when was the last time someone used a pick? How about those various flavors of polearm? In the interest of keeping MicroZ micro, I started dropping weapons.
The other thing I noticed was that simplification made certain weapons in each category more desirable than others. Why use a scimitar for d6 when you can use a bastard sword for d10? Why use a dagger for d4 when you can use a shortsword for d6? So I began looking at the weapons in the various categories and tried to balance them. It meant adding a little more detail, but hopefully I'll do so without encumbering the system.
In some cases it meant tweaking damage values... the scimitar, longsword and bastard sword in one hand all do d8. A flail only does d6 but is +2 vs. shields, a shortspear does d6 but can be thrown and a rapier does d6 but subtracts 2 from the DR of armor.
DR of armor? That's another post.
Labels: d20 UTH, games, MicroZ, Project 39
posted by Oz at 2:40 PM
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