u/DJTilapia

In older, crunchier games, it seemed (at least to me) that it was reasonably common for skill-based systems to have quite a few skills related to various weapons, usually breaking weapons into different categories which PCs would then have different skill ratings in.

• Shadowrun 4th edition may be the undisputed champion of this, as it subdivides melee weapons into Blades, Clubs, Exotic Melee Weapons, and Unarmed Combat, and ranged weapons into Archery, Automatics, Exotic Ranged Weapons, Heavy Weapons, Longarms, Pistols, and Throwing Weapons.
• Hollow Earth Expedition had Brawl and Melee (weapons) for melee and Archery, Firearms, and Gunnery for ranged. It also split Brawl into two skills (Brawl and Martial Arts) in a supplement.
• Cthulhutech had Armed Fighting and Fighting for melee and and Marksman, Support Weapons, and Thrown Weapons for ranged.
• A Time of War (one of the BattleTech RPGs) has Martial Arts and Melee Weapons for melee and Archery, Artillery, Gunnery, Small Arms, Support Weapons, and Thrown Weapons for ranged, some of which have mandatory subskills (such as choosing the vehicle type for Gunnery).

However, it seems like this has fallen out of favor; most of the recent skill-based systems I've seen generally just have one skill to cover all melee combat and one for all ranged combat. If they subdivide any further, it's usually to split melee into unarmed and armed, and ranged into small arms and 'big guns' (everything from machine guns to vehicular weaponry). My current draft has multiple different weapon skills, but I'm re-evaluating whether that's actually beneficial or is just a holdover from an earlier, crunchier version of the game.

I feel like there are some pretty obvious pros and cons to dividing skills up this way. It aids in character differentiation; especially if you have a system with feats/talents that are specific to certain weapons, it can allow a duellist to feel very different from a bare knuckle brawler, a sniper to stand apart from a gunslinger. It gives combat characters something to invest in besides "the one skill I use," supports a more detailed weapon list, and makes combat characters less fungible (the gunslinger can't pick up a heavy machine gun and be exactly as capable).

The big downside is paperwork - it's more things for players to have to track and improve, and is less intuitive than "raise your Firearms skill to be good at shooting". It slows character improvement (if they want more than one skill), and can create feels-bad moments where a skilled character is forced to use an unfamiliar weapon and their master sniper is arbitrarily bad with a shotgun. I think it also might discourage experimentation or trying to branch out, since leveling a new weapon means you'll still be worse than your main weapon (unless there's clear reasons to use a different weapon).

Do you use multiple weapon skills in your game? Do you think they improve or detract from games in general? When, or in what types of games, would you use them?

I have a question about where the general consensus is on designing somewhat granular weapon reach as a factor in combat.

My sensibilities have made me go down the road of including granular weapon reach and measure even though I've had a nagging suspicion that this will almost certainly be a turn off for casual players, despite trying to make it be somewhat easy to implement.

My system has simulated real time combat, so in most cases, both combatants are assumed to attack at the same time, though there is a preemption window that may be won with an initiative contest, when attempting certain abilities, and there is a follow up window for attacks of opportunity, hesitations, etc.

It also has a dice pool composed of custom d6 dice, core dice being the most common. The process of awarding an advantage for measure is as simple as forcing the person who is out of measure to swap in a risk die in place of a core die in the pool when attacking. Risk dice aren't strictly worse, and they are even more explosive, but far less reliable, and have a side that generates an attack of opportunity from the opponent being attacked(and other potential complications). So the point of forcing this swap is to try to give some abstract level of simulation to being at a disadvantage and having to cross into or out of another person's measure.

Measure is determined as follows. 1)Combatants with equal reach ignore measure benefits. 2)If this is the first exchange, barring surprise conditions, the character with longer reach has measure in the first round. 3)if one character "won" the exchange on the previous round, meaning they struck and were not struck, they hold the edge, granting them among other things, measure this round. 4)past the first round, if nobody holds the edge, nobody holds measure. Exception: one weapon may reach an opponent 10 feet away and the opponent's weapon may not. this defaults back to the longer weapon holder having measure.

The only other thing weapon reach does - specifically related to who holds measure - is add to Dexterity rolls when initiative is being contested. the person who holds measure gets a bonus to their roll equal the reach difference.

So that sums up how it works in my game. it is a fairly intuitive to answer who does or doesn't have measure, but where do people stand on even implementing it, or implementing it the way I have tried to?

One thing I will say is I want my weapons to be differentiated and I'm not including different dice for them in the pool, and I'm not trying to inflate the dice pool either, so there are some reroll implications, damage types, some weapon specials, and then there's reach, as my only real defining levers.

Also, I find that as easy as I thought this was going to be, the downstream effect is when I create feat like abilities, there is an urge to have them adjust weapon reach because there is a logical reason for that, for say attempting to trip an opponent with a polearm or attempting to half-sword an enemy, etc. and not leaning into that is so far, hard for me to swallow, despite the headaches its causing the design process, and knowing the headwinds this could have at the table.

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By carefully managing my economy, and strategically attacking my neighbors, by 2350 I was at the top of the scoreboard, and at 11 K my fleet was roughly as powerful as the rest of the galaxy put together. Yay!

Then the Khan spawned, with a 52 K fleet, four ~20 K fleets, a few ~10 K fleets, plus whatever I couldn't see on the far side of their territory. I rush-built a dozen frigates, put everything I had in one system with a half-dozen defense platforms, hired commanders for the fleets that didn't already have one, waited for the attack... and I didn't even get to see the battle. Everything in the system was wiped out in less time then it took to pan across my empire.

I understand that the mid-game crisis is supposed to be a crisis. But if everything I have isn't enough to destroy a single Khan cruiser, then it doesn't matter if I can rebuild my fleet before they reach my capital, or even rebuild it ten times. It's impossible to whittle down their forces.

Is fighting the Khan supposed to be much more difficult than conquering the galaxy? Is the only option to surrender and wait for the Khan to die of natural causes? It's one thing for the Khan to be more powerful than any single force in the galaxy, but all of them put together, and by an order of magnitude?

For context, I'm writing an RPG and need a table listing the durability of various materials (softwoods, hardwoods, stone, copper, wrought iron, carbon steel, concrete, etc) for the purposes of resisting an attack.
i realize that there's a lot of factors that go into the question of a material's durability - it's hardness, tensile strength, compression etc., so a rating of "bulletproof-ness" or something, if it exists, would be helpful

Thanks!

After spending the last 3 hours with my nose in a spreadsheet, trying to balance my combat system and assign values for HP, attack modifiers, damage output, and difficulty scores, I am curious:

What do you use spreadsheets for when designing your game? How do you use those spreadsheets? Or do you have different methods for crunching the numbers?

(Btw, I was successful with my spreadsheet magic and my combat system is officially balanced!)

Players do not remember rules simply because those rules are clearly written.

They remember rules that repeatedly create decisions, produce visible consequences, and matter to what the game is actually about.

If a rule is constantly forgotten during playtests, it usually means one of four things:

- The rule is disconnected from the core loop.

- Its trigger is difficult to notice.

- Resolving it takes more effort than the result feels worth.

- Forgetting it does not meaningfully change the game.

That does not automatically mean the rule is bad.

But it does mean that rewriting the explanation may not solve the real problem.

Imagine a horror game with a detailed panic system.

If panic is supposed to make characters feel increasingly unstable, but players only remember it when the GM interrupts a scene to ask for a check, the issue may not be the wording.

The mechanic may not be connected strongly enough to the decisions players are already making.

Or consider a tactical game with facing rules.

If positioning is one of the game’s central challenges, facing may create valuable choices every turn.

If positioning rarely matters, the exact same rule may become bookkeeping that everyone forgets.

Before adding another reminder, reference card, or highlighted paragraph, ask:

- When does this rule enter play?

- Who is expected to remember it?

- What decision does it create?

- What changes visibly after it is used?

- What would the game lose if the rule disappeared?

That final question is especially useful.

If removing the rule changes almost nothing, the rule may not need a better explanation. It may need a stronger purpose—or it may not need to exist.

There are exceptions, of course.

Some safety procedures, unusual conditions, and edge-case rules are important precisely because they are rarely used. Not every forgotten rule should be cut.

But if a mechanic is supposed to be central to the experience and the GM must constantly remind everyone that it exists, then it is not yet part of the game’s rhythm.

It is part of the GM’s workload.

A rule players remember only because someone keeps reminding them is not necessarily a player problem.

Sometimes it is valuable playtest feedback.

What rule did your group repeatedly forget—and did you eventually clarify it, redesign it, or remove it?

Me and some friends have been working on a TTRPG for a while with a more tactical focus. It is also a crunchy system with inspiration from a large variety of system (with some heavy OSR influence).

Part of the design idea is encouraging player's to diversify their abilities to be able to respond to situations as well as investigating their foes to make plans, prepare gear, and set traps.

Are there any friction points in rules you have played or made that either made the game drag on, or didn't feel right, etc?

If you were making combat rules that focused heavily on what a weapon does, what distinctions would you make? The rest of this is just my ideas so you don't really have to read it to reply but some people will always ask for more qlinformation.

Plenty of games make the damage basically all function the same like kinetic damage, some give lipservice with damage types but never makes then mean anything (looking at you dnd 5e), but I thought it might be good to look at how weapons act and what jobs they do to make distinctions. A sword and an axe both have sharp edges by one chops while the other slices. Some swords are good for stabbing while others aren't. A puncture wound from a sword, and arrow, and a warhammers spike are all going to look different and might be caught by different Armors.

I can only think of a few and can't think of too many meaningful ways to have them pop up other than what is good against different armor. Some ideas so far:

Slicing (smooth movement with edge alignment, swords, knives and the such. Good on soft targets and leaving lingering injuries like laseration or seperating body parts.)

chopping (heavy forceful hits with a sharp edge. Axes come to mind but any weapon with heavy weight balance toward the blade could work. Works good for harder targets and getting through armor while still having the chance for lingering injuries.)

crushing (more weight then hardness. Fists, mallets, clubs, breakable improvised weapons. Good for non-lethal damage that puts people off balance instead of going for the killing blow.)

Cracking (hard concntrated force. Flanged maces, warhammers. Focused on doing lethal damage with blunt force trauma by breaking bones and caving in helmets.)

Piercing (sharp penetration. knives, arrow, swords meant for stabbing. Decent against some Armors but doesn't have anything special like the others. Almost a mid point between leaving Wounds like cutting and getting past armor like blunt)

Puncture (an unsharped edge meant to push in. spikes, maybe bullets. Leaves the least injuries but will tear right through armor. I know wound chambers are a thing but a bullet that passes through sound slide less than a broadhead arrow that passes through. Smae with a pointy spike and a sharped blade.)

Also possibly make a distinction between ranged and melee attacks as dispersing force is harder to do when a whole man is on the other end pushing a spear further in compared to the arrow that lost all force after breaking a ceramic plate.

I feel like some weapons would need tags to define how they work. A flexible weapon could be a flail, rope dart, or that nightmarish blade whip. Would let weapons have the way they fuctiona ND the damage they do be sorta distinct.

I've just been playing some systems that are rather rules lite as of recent and miss the depth that weapons can give and feel like it would be good to see what others like in a heavier martial combat focused game.