Broken Blades & Shattered Shields
Way back in 2nd Edition AD&D, me and my players were intrigued by non-weapon proficiencies. Having been primarily exposed to video games like Chrono Trigger and Diablo, it never really occurred to some of us that our heroes could be good at things other than combat. The ones I always gravitated towards were armorer and weaponsmith. I figured if a hero was wandering the wilds fighting monsters, he’d probably need to be able to repair his own gear. In fact, that was the warrior’s special ability in the original Diablo.
The problem is in most TTRPGs, weapons and armor never break or wear down. There are two primary options: track your equipment’s durability until it breaks or roll equipment maintenance into the cost of living. The former is a grotesque exercise in accounting that really pulls you out of the game. The latter still leaves me cold, because it doesn’t give me the option of being a self-sufficient hero that repairs their own kit.
From the sundering of Narsil in Lord of the Rings to the breaking of Rexor’s sword in Conan the Barbarian, arms and armor get damaged on screen and it’s often at a pivotal moment in the action. So I got to thinking, maybe critical hits could cause weapon and armor damage. At my brother’s suggestion, I scrapped that idea because it just makes critical hits worse against the players, since they tend to receive a lot more attacks than the monsters and monsters never live long enough to deal with the consequences.
I was doing groundwork for my sword & sorcery ruleset when an idea came to me. I was looking at magic items and deciding where I could place these useful mechanical tools into a setting where magic is less common. Run-of-the-mill +1 swords became masterwork equipment, so that was easy. Then I got to adamantine armor. In 5e, this magic armor allows the wearer the ignore critical hits. Just because the armor is unbreakable doesn’t mean you can’t be critically hit! What if I hit you in the eye?
And there it was: all armor CAN ignore critical hits, adamantine armor just doesn’t break. Inspired by the 5e rust monster and the DOT World concept of success at a cost, I came up with these rules for armor and weapons damage:
Armor Damage – Whenever a hero that is not incapacitated is critically hit, they can choose to treat the attack as a normal hit at the cost of degrading their armor. Their armor’s bonus to AC is reduced by 1 until it is repaired. If the armor’s bonus to AC is reduced to 0, it is destroyed and can’t be repaired.
Weapon Damage – Whenever a hero rolls a 1 on a weapon attack roll, they can treat the attack as a hit at the cost of degrading their weapon. A degraded weapon imposes a -1 penalty on attack and damage rolls until it is repaired. If the penalty is increased to -2, it is destroyed and can’t be repaired.
Conversely, if a hero that is not incapacitated is critically hit by a melee attack, they can choose to treat the attack as a normal hit at the cost of degrading a melee weapon they are wielding.
Now we have a neat tool that player’s have to mitigate critical hits and force through attacks on a critical miss! This gives a little boost to heroes who use armor and weapons (who have historically been given fewer tools and tricks than their spellcasting counterparts).
I debuted this house rule to my players with this campaign, and it has come up about a dozen times (about once every other session). Those 1s and 20s are now critical points in the action that cause us to pause for a moment in combat while the player makes a decision about the outcome.
A few adjudications have come up that I’ll share with you:
Magic Equipment – Magic equipment with an enhancement bonus built in (i.e. +1 sword) has the benefit of being a little extra durable. Magic armor can take one more critical hit before breaking and magic weapons can force through one more attack before breaking.
Unarmed Attacks – One of my players is running a classic wuxia monk. Almost all of his attacks are made with bare hands. So does he get to use these rules? Absolutely! When he rolls a 1 on an unarmed attack, he can choose to have it hit at the cost of taking the same amount of damage himself.
Darksteel Armaments – Armor and weapons made from darksteel (my setting’s name for adamantine) are much more resilient. When they reduce critical hits or force through attacks on a 1, they don’t degrade in quality. This benefit is ignored in the off-chance that a darksteel weapon hits darksteel armor or is blocked by another darksteel weapon.
Armor Repair – During a short rest (which are overnight rests in my rules), a hero can spend an hour repairing their armor. If they pass a DC 8 Wisdom (Armorer’s Pliers) check, they can remove a number of levels of degradation equal to their proficiency bonus.