5.1 Melee Weapons

Weapons deal physical damage and can be used as part of the attack action. Every weapon has three primary stats: Attack DC, Damage, and Range.

• Attack DC. An attack hits if the d6 attack roll result is equal to or greater than the weapon attack DC.
• Damage. How many points of health damage an attack deals on a hit.
• Range. To make an attack the target must be within the weapon range. By default melee weapons have a range of 1”, unless otherwise stated.

Weapons are grouped into three general categories – Light, Medium, and Heavy.

Light Weapons
Light weapons are easy to wield and conceal. They are the easiest to hit an attack with, but deal the least damage. All light weapons have a 3+ attack DC and deal 1 point of health damage on a hit. Making an attack with a Medium weapon costs 1 point of Fortitude or Reflex.

Medium Weapons
Medium Weapons are more difficult to use, but deal more damage than light weapons. All medium weapons have a 4+ attack DC and deal 2 points of health damage on a hit. Making an attack with a Medium weapon costs 1 point of Fortitude or Reflex.

Heavy Weapons
Heavy Weapons are large and unwieldy, but deal the most damage on a hit. All heavy weapons have a 5+ attack DC and deal 3 points of health damage on a hit. Making an attack with a Heavy weapon costs 2 points of Fortitude or Reflex.

Weapon Traits

Weapons have additional traits that modify how they act. Traits will always be stated in all caps and brackets, e.g. [TRAIT]. Every weapon will have a damage type trait.

Damage Types

[BLUDGEONING]
Bludgeoning weapons pummel your foes. When you hit an attack that deals bludgeoning damage against a target of the same size or smaller that target is dazed which increases the target’s dodge check DC by a number of points equal to the damage dealt to a maximum of 6+. This applies for the triggering attack.

[PIERCING]
Piercing weapons can inflict grievous wounds. On an unmodified result of 6 on an attack roll, the attack deals an extra point of damage.

[SLASHING]
Slashing weapons attack in large arcs and are easier to hit with. Slashing weapons have passive reroll 1’s on attacks.

Other Traits

[FINESSE]
Melee weapons with the [FINESSE] trait may use Reflex or Fortitude to make attacks.

[OFFHAND]
This weapon can make an offhand attack as if you are dual-wielding as part of the same attack action. Making an [OFFHAND] attack still requires you to spend points per usual.

[PARRY]
Weapons with the [PARRY] trait reduce your dodge check DC by 1.

[RELOAD]
Ranged weapons with the [RELOAD] trait require ammunition and a reloading action to fire again. Reloading requires spending fortitude and the total point cost is listed with the trait tag. For example a [RELOAD 2] weapon requires two points of fortitude to reload in a single action.

[REND]
Weapons with the [REND] trait reduce the effectiveness of armor. On a hit the target increases their Health Check DC when rolling to mitigate damage by the [REND] value. For example [REND 2] increases the health check DC of the target by 2 points. Rend cannot increase a Health Check DC above 6+.

[SWEEP]
Melee weapons with the [SWEEP] trait can be used to make a special attack against every target in a 180 degree arc as a single action. Choose a direction for the [SWEEP] and roll one die per target to determine if the attack hits. Spend one additional point of Fortitude or Reflex per additional target. Allocate hits to targets in order along the direction of the [SWEEP]. Using Fortitude to increase the weapon damage applies to all targets.

[THROWN]
Weapons with the [THROWN] trait can be used to make a ranged attack within the [THROWN] range. [THROWN] attacks always use Reflex.

[LARGE]
Weapons with the [LARGE] trait require two hands to use and cannot be used by [SMALL] creatures. [LARGE] weapons cannot be stored in your inventory and must be carried.

[VERSATILE]
Weapons with the [VERSATILE] trait can deal multiple damage types. When making an attack within a [VERSATILE] weapon, choose one of the listed damage types. For example, a longsword is [VERSATILE (P/S)] so the attacker can choose to make an attack using piercing damage or slashing damage.

Melee Weapon Table

Weapon	Traits
Dagger	[LIGHT], [P], [THROWN (4”)], [FINESSE]
Staff	[LIGHT], [B], [RANGE 2], [LARGE], [FINESSE], [OFFHAND], [PARRY]
Shortblade	[LIGHT], [VERSATILE (P/S)], [FINESSE], [PARRY]
Handhammer	[LIGHT], [B], [THROWN (4”)]
Handaxe	[LIGHT], [S], [THROWN (4”)]
Mace	[LIGHT], [B], [REND 1]
Javelin	[LIGHT], [P], [THROWN (8”)]
Spear	[MEDIUM], [P], [RANGE (2”)]
Battleaxe	[MEDIUM], [S], [REND 1]
Longsword	[MEDIUM], [VERSATILE (P/S)], [PARRY]
Morningstar	[MEDIUM], [P], [REND 2]
Rapier	[MEDIUM], [P], [FINESSE], [PARRY]
Saber	[MEDIUM], [S], [FINESSE], [PARRY]
Warhammer	[MEDIUM], [VERSATILE (P/B)], [REND 1]
Greatsword	[HEAVY], [LARGE], [VERSATILE (P/S)], [SWEEP], [REND 1]
Greathammer	[HEAVY], [B], [LARGE], [REND 3]
Greataxe	[HEAVY], [S], [LARGE], [SWEEP], [REND 2]
Glaive	[HEAVY], [S], [LARGE], [RANGE (2”)], [SWEEP]
Halberd	[HEAVY], [VERSATILE (B/S)], [LARGE], [RANGE (2”)], [REND 1]
Pike	[HEAVY], [P], [LARGE], [RANGE (3”)], [REND 2]
Scimitar	[HEAVY], [S], [LARGE], [FINESSE], [REND 1], [SWEEP]

Special Conditions

Dual Wielding
Wielding an additional weapon in an offhand allows a character to make an additional attack as part of the attack action. An offhand attack still requires you to spend stat points as normal. Only light weapons can be wielded in an offhand.

Melee Weapons with Range
Melee weapons with range larger than 1” may make attacks against targets within their stated range. Attacks against targets closer then the weapon range have -1 to hit.

Multiple Parry Weapons
Dual wielding two weapons with the [PARRY] trait reduces your dodge DC by two to a minimum of 2+. A character cannot benefit from more than two [PARRY] weapons.

Weapon Mastery
Some classes allow a character to select a weapon mastery. A weapon mastery reduces the attack DC for that weapon by 1. Characters with multiple weapon masteries cannot select the same weapon more than once.

5.2 Ranged Weapons

Ranged weapons are used to make attacks against targets at a significant range. Most ranged weapons require ammunition to fire, and require an extra action to load before they can be fired again. Ranged weapons will always use Reflex to make attacks.

Ranged Weapons Table

Weapon	Traits
Sling	[LIGHT], [B], [RANGE 8”]
Shortbow	[LIGHT], [P], [LARGE], [RELOAD 1], [RANGE 15”]
Longbow	[MEDIUM], [P], [LARGE] [RELOAD 1], [RANGE 25”], [REND 1]
Crossbow	[MEDIUM], [P], [LARGE], [RELOAD 2], [RANGE 20”], [REND 2]
Arbalest	[HEAVY], [P], [LARGE], [RELOAD 2], [RANGE 30″], [REND 3]

Ranged Attacks

Attacks at Long Range
Ranged weapons can make attacks against targets at a distance up to double their listed range. Attacks made at distances greater than their listed range have -1 to hit.

Attacks in Melee Range
Making ranged weapon attacks in melee range with an enemy incurs opportunity attacks.

Design Note – Balancing ranged and melee combat styles
In any game containing both ranged and melee combat styles, ranged combat will often be better as it allows you the opportunity to deal damage while mitigating the risk of taking any damage in return. Here I am attempting to balance this by incurring a larger action cost for ranged attacks (loading) and allowing Fortitude based character to increase damage on melee attacks.
Ranged characters will still need to invest somewhat in fortitude to be able to effectively use loading weapons (anyone who has tried to fire a longbow knows this is true), but they will be able to land shots more reliably using stacked rolls.

5.3 Armor

Armor increases a character’s durability by decreasing your health check DC, but makes dodging more difficult. There are three types of armor – Light, Medium, and Heavy.

Light Armor
Light armor decreases your Health check DC by 1. To use Light armor your maximum Fortitude must be at least 2.

Medium Armor
Medium armor decreases your health check DC by 2, but increases your Dodge check DC by 1 to a maximum of 6+. To use Medium armor your maximum Fortitude must be at least 4.

Heavy Armor
Heavy armor decreases your Health check DC by 3, but increases your Dodge check DC by 2 to a maximum of 6+. To use Heavy armor your maximum Fortitude must be at least 6.

Shields

A character can use a shield in their offhand which reduces both their Health check DC and Dodge check DC by 1.

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4.5 Math – Weapons & Armor

Let’s look at how effective these weapons will be against different targets to inform some design goals. First some predictions:

• Piercing damage should synergize best with Light weapons where the additional damage on a critical attack doubles the total damage.
• Slashing damage should benefit Heavy weapons the most due to the passive reroll 1’s, where it is most difficult to hit attacks (5+ attack DC) .
• Bludgeoning damage should be best against high dodge targets where the reduction in dodge will make it more difficult for the target to avoid damage.
• Weapons with [REND] should be most effective against targets with high armor (i.e. a low health check DC).
• High armor (i.e. a low health check DC) should be most effective against many attacks with low or no [REND] since it passively reduces the likelihood of damage.
• A high dodge (i.e. a low dodge check DC) should be most effective against single attacks with high damage since a successful dodge reduces all of the incoming to zero.

To test the effectiveness of each of the weapons I built a Monte Carlo simulation that tests 500k attacks for each weapon against various targets to calculate average damage for each attack, while respecting the basic rules surrounding damage types. Additionally, each simulated attack takes into account the type of attack and tracks bonuses for each. Weapons that rely on FORT add an additional point of damage, while weapon attack that rely on REF make a stacked roll with two separate d6 rolls to hit. The simulation doesn’t account for point economy, simply assuming that the attacker has the points to spare.

Damage Profiles

Let’s look at a few damage profiles for assumed targets starting with the easiest target possible – a 6+ health check and a 6+ dodge check. Weapons are sorted in groups from highest average damage to lowest average damage.

Some trends are immediately evident here:

• Taking a weapon mastery is inherently better for FORT based weapons and is more beneficial for Heavy and Medium weapons than it is for light weapons.
• Against an extremely “soft” target, bludgeoning is actually worse than both slashing and piercing, which makes sense because the target dodge check cannot be increased above 6+.
• For Light weapons, FORT based attacks deal significantly more damage, up to double the amount of damage of REF based attacks.
• For Medium weapons, FORT and REF based attacks are effectively equivalent for a user without a weapon mastery.
• The Scimitar is the best Heavy melee weapon against soft targets because it combines stacked rolls and reroll 1’s, even through it doesn’t benefit from directly increased damage like a FORT weapon does.

So we see here that different weapons are serving different purposes somewhat, but against a soft target they are pretty equivalent. I think the design intent is that each weapon should serve a slightly different purpose and no weapon should be best in class for all situations.

Next let’s look at a heavily armored target. Assuming the target is wearing heavy armor with a shield they will have a 2+ heath check DC and 6+ dodge check DC.

So against a heavily armored target our conclusions have changed:

• Average damage has dropped significantly, sometimes as much as a full point.
• Unsurprisingly our best performers are weapons with [REND]. When faced with a can, bring a can opener.
• REF based attacks have dropped to the bottom of each weapon type group, which tracks since heavily armored targets will be able to shrug damage more easily without the effects of [REND].
• Once again, bludgeoning doesn’t provide any benefit against a low dodge target.
• There is not a significant difference between slashing and piercing damage here, so really it’s player preference on if they prefer to hit more often (slashing) or get crits (piercing).

Let’s also look at the inverse; a high dodge, low armor target.

So clearly dodging is very effective across the board with a low dodge DC, even too effective. Here are some observations:

• Heavy weapons are not more effective against highly mobile targets vs. Light weapons or Medium weapons. This is intuitive and satisfying. Big heavy weapons should be less useful against highly mobile targets.
• Against such a high dodge target, the benefit of bludgeoning weapons is noticeable, but significantly reduced.
• Light weapons actually offer a hidden benefit here. By dual wielding we can double the amount of attacks in a turn. The clear strategy against high dodge targets is to maximize the number of bludgeoning attacks to force them to spend heavily on dodging an increase the chance of reducing their ability to dodge.

Clearly high dodge is very strong, however, the tradeoff is that it is highly resource intensive. Unlike a low Health Check DC which provides a passive benefit without expending resources, dodging requires a point of REF for each separate attack so I think the effectiveness of dodge is actually fine. That being said, we will clearly have to be cautious about giving bonuses to dodge and making highly mobile monsters. In general, high armor targets should have poor dodge, and vice versa.

Finally we can look at expected damage against an average target – consider a guard in medium armor with a 4+ Health check DC and 6+ dodge check DC.

Here we start to see a bit more spread in the numbers from weapon to weapon. In general these damage plots provide some useful guidance for further weapons/monster designs. If an attack is expected to deal more then 2 points of damage in an action be careful because that is already off scale in comparison to the mundane weapons available to players. Keep in mind that all of these plots assume that Fortitude based weapons are increasing damage by 1 point and Reflex weapons are making 2d6 stacked rolls, so the actual average damage stats are likely somewhat lower than portrayed above.

Also included in the above plots are ranged weapons which I haven’t touched on yet. For some instances the ranged weapons are the best in class for single attack damage. Specifically in the case of targets with some armor, the heavier ranged weapons really out perform. However, they come with a significantly higher cost to operate them with the reloading action, so I think this is a decent balance.

These plots are interesting and provide some good guidance, but the averages don’t tell the whole story as far as gameplay. Let now look at peak damage – e.g. the highest possible damage for a single attack – per weapon.

Clearly Fortitude weapons will allow you to fish for greater maximum damage on a single attack, but at the burden of significantly increased point cost.

Point Efficiency

The last part of the balance equation is what I am going to call “point efficiency”; i.e., how many points of damage can we expect per point spent to make an attack?

I won’t look at each weapon individually, but instead I have selected representative weapons for useful combinations of class, type of attack, and type of damage, where point efficiency (PE) is generalized as:

Note that this calculation does not take into account any target attributes (dodging, health saves, etc.) for simplicity so it is just the raw expected damage for a given attack. Keep in mind that spending more points for Fortitude attacks directly increases the attack damage, while spending points of Reflex on a finesse weapon increases accuracy via a stacked roll. Point efficiency plots are provided in the gallery below for a selection of weapons.

Here is direct comparison for slashing reflex weapons, since we already have the data in separate plots above.

Here’s some observations about point efficiency across the many different weapon combinations:

• Point efficiency is generally static for Fortitude based attacks. As you spend more points of Fortitude to boost damage on a single attack, you can expect the same return for each point spent.
• Point efficiency decreases to an asymptote for Reflex based weapon attacks. This makes senses because spending additional points of Reflex only shifts the probability of hitting a single attack with diminishing returns but doesn’t increase damage.
• Point efficiency for slashing weapons is better than other damage types when using Heavy weapons and Medium weapons, but is less beneficial for Light weapons where the probability of scoring a hit is already high.
• When using a Fortitude piercing weapon, spending additional points on extra damage actually marginally decreases point efficiency due to the potential free damage on a critical not scaling past the first point spent.
• In general, Medium weapons are more efficient than both Light and Heavy weapons. As expected Heavy weapons are the least efficient since you must spend an additional point to make attacks.

These plots give us some useful guidance for designing other features. Point efficiency for all weapon attacks ranges from about 0.5 to 1.2 without spending additional points to utilize the special features of the weapons. Any feature (attack, spell, etc.) that outside these bounds needs to be circumstantial or otherwise limited to prevent them from being overly efficient.

Let’s also look at some special cases. First up is ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are penalized in point efficiency by requiring the [RELOAD] action that typically (except for the sling) carries a Fortitude point cost. Let see how they stack up against melee weapons.

Point efficiency shown here takes into account the additional points of fortitude that must be spent on the reload action, so spending additional points of Reflex on the weapon attack roll actually increases point efficiency at first by significantly boosting accuracy. Eventually additional point of Reflex face diminishing returns as we expect from the analysis of melee weapons. In general the point efficiencies for the ranged weapons are significantly lower than the melee weapons, but I think that is a reasonable tradeoff for the inherent benefits of ranged combat. I also like that it really incentivizes ranged weapon users to spend reflex on those attacks since they don’t get as many.

Now we can look at some particularly impactful weapon traits that will likely incentivize certain playstyles. First up is [SWEEP] weapons. All sweep weapons are large, heavy, slashing, fortitude based weapons and we can expect they will have a similar point efficiency against a single target as the greataxe (plotted above). Against multiple targets, we would expect the point efficiency to increase dramatically, since making an attack against multiple targets does not carry additional point cost. Here is a point efficiency plot for a generic, heavy slashing sweep weapon ignoring other weapon traits.

Clearly when faced with multiple targets the point efficiency of sweep weapons is quite exceptional. However, to maximize the efficiency of sweep weapons the user is sacrificing defensive traits (no shield for example) and needs to intensionally put themselves in highly risky situations where they are surrounded by targets. This feels like an adequate tradeoff to me, since it just represents a higher risk /reward playstyle and is very situational.

The two remaining weapon traits of interest, [REND] and [BLUDGEONING], interact directly with the targets defensive abilities, so we have to take a different approach by incorporating the relevant defensive stats into the probability of success. First let’s consider [REND] weapons which directly reduce the effectiveness of the target’s AC. The point efficiency is now evaluated as

where the probability of target failure is based on their assumed Health Check DC and the interaction with [REND]. The plot below presents point efficiency for three [REND] weapons representing increasing [REND] values.

We can see that [REND] just statically improves your point efficiency until the target’s Health Check DC becomes too low for [REND] to increase it to 6+.

Lastly we can look at [BLUDGEONING] which is significantly more complicated. Bludgeoning attacks effectively increase the value of future attacks, and since the reduction to the target’s Dodge Check DC is reduced by total damage dealt, the benefit of bludgeoning attacks scales with attack DC, weapon damage, target Dodge Check DC, and target Health Check DC. Modeling this interaction in a explicit statistical form is beyond my abilities, so we return to the Monte Carlo method. To make a meaningful comparison we need to carefully track each time the target attempts a dodge but fails do the effects of bludgeoning damage from the previous attack. We can then tally up the extra damage from missed dodge attempts and compare it to the total damage to get a sense for effect of each attack on the future value the next attack’s point efficiency. The plot below characterizes all the bludgeoning weapons in terms percentage additional damage dealt over the Monte Carlo simulation as a function of target Dodge Check DC. The target is assumed to have a Health check DC of 3+ to maximize the interaction of [REND], [BLUDGEONING], and weapon damage on the future value of the next attack. The percent additional damage is effectively a scalar for the expected damage of the next attack, thus increasing the point efficiency of that next attack.

We can see that there is a strong interaction between damage, [REND], and [BLUDGEONING] where the most effective bludgeoning weapons combine high damage and high [REND]. Keep in mind that these are percentage based scalars for the weapon’s unaffected point efficiency, so the Light and Medium weapons will likely be slightly closer to the Heavy weapons due to their higher point efficiencies. Additionally, most high dodge target will likely have poor Health Check DCs, so the multiplicative beneficial effect of the additional [REND] on Heavy weapons will likely be reduced in comparison to the Light and Medium weapons.
I suspect that facing a high dodge target will be a tradeoff between gambling on landing that one devastating Heavy weapon attack that flatlines their dodge check vs. making many Light weapon attacks to attempt to completely fatigue the target.

Here’s my thoughts on general strategy when it comes to picking a weapon:

• The damage plots above don’t tell a great story when choosing between slashing and piercing weapons, but averages don’t tell the whole story. Slashing weapons significantly reduce the point cost to make attacks by giving you access to free rerolls, which is especially punchy for medium and heavy weapons. Pairing slashing weapons with REF based attacks really ensures the most consistency for damage output at the lowest cost. Piercing weapons on the other hand will have much higher damage spikes when you do land a crit, especially when paired with rend. Really it will come down to choices in playstyle since over the (very) long term the performance is largely the same.
• Bludgeoning kind of exists in between. If you really hate getting your attacks dodged, take a bludgeoning weapon.
• More attacks is likely more better against a highly mobile target because they will likely run out of REF and stop being able to dodge at all, leaving them at your mercy.
• Heavy weapons deal great damage, but they are more swingy. A FORT focused build with high recovery and access to a weapon mastery will be best suited for heavy weapons, but you also give up the ability to hold a shield or other items in your free hand.
• In general, if you have access to a weapon mastery a heavier, FORT based weapon is probably the right choice.
• Some of the heavy weapons, such as the halberd and glaive, seem pretty lackluster on the damage charts, but their higher range and access to sweep attacks give them unaccounted for flexibility.
• Keep in mind that these numbers are somewhat inflated by the lack of point economy constraints, so actual averages without spending FORT/REF on every attack are likely lower.

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3.4 Summary

• Weapons have an attack DC, a damage characteristic, and often a few weapon traits. They are divided into three groups, Light, Medium, and Heavy, with increasing damage and attack DC for each group.
• Damage types carry their own special rules which change how the weapon acts.
• Ranged weapons are limited by design to attempt to balance the disparity between ranged and melee playstyles.
• Armor reduces incoming damage by decreasing your Health Check DC, but makes dodging more difficult.
• No one weapon is the best in class option for every situation

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