Designing Weapons
Through play and when creating a character, you may be asked to select a weapon. You can use one of the Example-Weapons or design your own. Perhaps your character hales from a distant land which uses a unique weapon, or a blacksmith has an idea for a specialized weapon for your character’s fighting style.
To build a weapon:
- Choose the Quality.
- Choose a Size.
- Select a Damage Type.
- Spend any Crafting Points.
- Calculate Damage
Quality
Weapons come in a variety of qualities based on the skill required to craft.
Basic
Basic weapons are simple tools, improvised items, rudimentary weapons or other implements not built intentionally for harm.
Artisan
Artisan weapons are properly built tools of war. They require some training to use properly and have unique advantages over using a basic weapon.
Exotic
Exotic weapons have additional complexity over basic artisan weapons. Their mechanisms are more complex or their chance of self injury is higher. They require additional training on top of the training required for artisan weapons to be used successfully.
- +1 Damage Bonus
- 2 Crafting Points.
- To wield an exotic weapon, you need Exotic Expert or other narrative justification.
Master Work
A masterful blacksmith can do a lot to imbue an item with additional power and versatility.
- A masterwork weapon has +1 Crafting Points.
- It must be made of materials of similar quality to an Exotic weapon.
Relic
Strange or enchanted weapons, these can be anything you want but should have special rules for crafting or acquiring.
Size
Weapons, like all items, come in various sizes. However, in the case of weapons, an item’s size has more effect than just the required storage space.
- A weapon’s $size \times 2$ is added to its Damage Bonus
- Weapons of size 1-2 have the One-Handed trait.
- Weapons of size 3-4 have the Two-Handed, and Threatening traits.
- Weapons of size 5 have the Impossibly-Large, and Very-Threatening traits.
Examples of weapon sizes are as follows: Size 1 - Dagger, hammer, knife Size 2 - Arming Sword, Mace, Truncheon Size 3 - Long sword, Warhammer, Spear Size 4 - Lance, Great Sword Size 5 - Giant Weapons
So, for example, a long sword is a size 3 weapon. This means it is two-handed, gets +6 damage bonus.
Damage Type
Material
Generally, weapons material isn’t particularly important. Cheap materials will not be usable for artisan weapons, simple but quality materials will not be usable for exotic/master worked weapons. Costs Of Materials has details on the crafting capacity and cost of different materials.
One benefit to exotic materials, however, is their potential for harming monsters. A sword made of silver might be known to harm werewolves, a spear made from elven wood is effective against wraiths, etc. In some exceptional cases, a material may provide a trait for free, increase damage bonus, or provide some skill bonus.
Crafting Points
Can be spent to add either Weapon-Traits or Weapon-Templates to your weapons. Traits must be negotiated with the Game Master, but Weapon-Templates are designed to be added to weapons directly.
Damage Bonus
This is a way to Calculate Damage for a weapon.
Calculate Damage
The choices made while building a weapon will give it damage bonus. Including templates.
Weapons by default count their Size and Weapon-Templates.
This damage bonus can then be converted into a damage:
| Damage Bonus | Damage | Extra Damage Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | (-2) |
| 1 | 1 | (-1) |
| 2 | 2 | (-2) |
| 3 | 2 | (-1) |
| 4 | 3 | (-2) |
| 5 | 3 | (-1) |
| 6 | 4 | (-2) |
| 7 | 4 | (-1) |
| 8 | 5 | (-2) |
| 9 | 5 | (-1) |
| 10 | 6 | (-2) |
| 11 | 6 | (-1) |
| 12 | 7 | (-2) |
| 13 | 7 | (-1) |
| 14 | 8 | (-2) |
| 15 | 8 | (-1) |
| 16 | 9 | (-2) |
| 17 | 9 | (-1) |
| 18 | 10 | (-2) |
| 19 | 10 | (-1) |
A Size 3 Artisan weapon, with the Lethal Weapon-Templates would have a damage bonus of 8, 6 from Size Matters, 1 from Artisan, 1 from Lethal. This means it does 4 damage with an Extra Damage penalty of (-1).
Crafting
A character looking to craft a specific weapon first requires the size + 1 worth of materials and Craftsman training saying they are able to make what they want.
So, a silver sword of size 3 would require 4 size worth of pure silver, or 40 silver coins.
Other bits, unless narratively relevant, are a negligible portion of the cost. Then, the character, as Production Work, may spend a day crafting. If they succeed on the Application test, the item is created successfully. If not, they must try again in the future, however materials are not lost, just time.