Malachite

On What a Weapon Is

What you must first understand about weapons is that they are tools. While it is true that stopping power varies between them, this is generally not the most important factor when comparing the performance of two dissimilar weapons in a given situation. The most important thing is the genuine differences in capability between them.

On Swords, Daggers, and Weapon Identity

From a player perspective, the difference between a "dagger sort of character" and a "sword sort of character" is extremely important. If a dagger and a sword carry no strong or meaningful differences except stopping power, the dagger character becomes at risk of extinction. When was the last time you saw a character in 5e who made regular use of one over the rapier or the shortsword? This is a tragedy.

Further, the different types of sword carry different identities. Outside of damage numbers, what does the difference between a greatsword and a longsword imply about how characters fight? How about a greatsword and a rapier? Do we really accept that the tactics of a greatsword and the tactics of a rapier are nearly identical?

Worse yet, it is common in games to treat swords as the "basic" weapon, which robs them of identity in the broadest sense. Nor should we rob the spear, the staff, the axe, the bow, the twinblade, the gonne, nor any other weapon. Combat is role-playing; it is player (and GM!) expression. Weapons should thus be expressive in this domain.

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On Shields

Shields are not armor; they are weapons. Their primary purpose is to create advantage, but this does not mean that you can ignore the damage they deal or the importance of their use as an active tool. What we can say is that they are always offhand weapons rather than main-hand weapons.

On Dual Weilding

I have posted about this before, but anyone who has ever used two weapons can tell you that weilding multiple weapons does not provide you with multiple attacks. The weapon in your offhand deals its damage right alongside your mainhand weapon in a single attack.

On "Attacks"

An attack is not one swing or shot or thrust but a whole play. The goal of an attack is to maim without being maimed; it is not armor that protects from being hit but the active use of tools. Most successful attacks wear down the opponent rather than wound immediately. When a character is wounded, they should consider resigning the fight immediately.

On Range

In a game like Lanthorn, where battles are done on a grid, it is important to limit the ranges of weapons so that their intelligent deployment can be felt. Furthermore, effective ranges should not be so long that the average user of a ranged weapon is effectively removed from the need to position themself well.

Since disadvantage stacks, it is reasonable to say that a weapon gains one disadvantage for each increment of its effective range that it travels. This allows flexibility while keeping ranges short (often shorter than a turn's movement).

On Stats and Attacking

My very first chost was about Lanthorn's stat system. It's important context here, at least the parts about physical stats. Important for us is this:

• Agility is a character's ability to move nimbly, carefully, and presicely.
• Power is a character's ability to move explosively and deliever force.

Unless otherwise specified, attacks are about finding the angle quickly, efficiently, and precisely. Thus, attack rolls fall into the domain of Agility. Similarly though, the damage dealt by an attack is driven largely by the force that the weilder puts behind it, even with ranged weapons¹. Thus, the damage dealt by an attack is augmented by power.

For ranged attacks, unless otherwise specified, the range is affected by the user's power, with differences by weapon type.

On Tags

Weapons should be described in terms of tags. This has several advantages:

1. It allows someone not familiar with a weapon to get a good idea of what it is like;
2. It allows you to assign consistent statistics to similar weapons;
3. It allows GMs and players to forge new weapons that are consistent with the rules of the game.

This is all to say, tags allow you to easily express an idea in the mechanics of the game. Some useful tags for this post:

• Melee: The weapon is effective in melee combat. Base damage die d8.
• Ranged: The weapon is effective in ranged combat. Base damage die d6.
• One-handed: the weapon requires one hand to weild.
• Two-handed: the weapon requires two hands to weild. Increase its base damage die one size.
• Small: The weapon is physically small and can thus be concealed. Decrease its base damage die one size.
• Big: The weapon is physically large. It takes up more encumbrance to carry and does not easily fit into any standard container.
• Light: The weapon's damage is especially rooted in precision over force. May deal damage with agility instead of power. Decrease its base damage die one size.
• Heavy: The weapon is physically heavy and requires a good deal of power to weild effectively. Makes to-hit rolls with power instead of agility. Requires a power of 10+ (D&D terms: str 16+) to weild. Increase its base damage die one size.
• Attached: the weapon is physically attached its weilder. Decrease its base damage die by one size.

On The Ability-Hand Method

When designing a weapon, this is key: its mundane version should have exactly one ability for each hand that it takes to weild. This ability should create tactical interest and should reflect how you expect the weapon to be used. It need not be "realistic" per se, but it should capture the vibes of using the weapon as well as the vibes of the person you'd expect to be weilding it.

On Weapon Ontology

The same weapon-- as in, literally the same object-- might act differently depending on who's weilding it. A sidesword to me might be a greatsword to a kobold; the weapon behaves according to the way it is wielded. How a weapon behaves in the hands of a weilder is determined by them at the moment they first pick it up with the intent to weild it. Weilding it in any other way puts them at a disadvantage.

Case-Study: Swords

The first thing to consider about swords is that they are the only weapon whose skilled weilders are inherently "masters". We imagine the swordmaster as someone who moves fluidly, cleanly, with intent. We look to historical sword manuals and see that many plays involve jumps and offline steps. Thus, the key ability shared by all swords:

Fancy Footwork. Before or after attacking with this weapon, you may move one hex in any direction.² This movement cannot provoke attacks of opportunity.

The difference between the types of swords is that second ability (or lack thereof). For sideswords³ and rapiers, we're basically done at this point. Just gotta tag 'em:

• Rapier: Light, melee, one-handed.
• Sidesword: melee, one-handed.

For longswords⁴ and greatswords⁵, we have to play a different game. What do we imagine each of these weapons to be?

When I imagine longsword combat, I imagine the bind, where two characters come at each other and get their swords stuck together. In historical longsword fencing, when swords get stuck and both fencers feel out and move their swords to find an opening, we call that the winding game. Narratively, I imagine a knight engaging in honorable combat; a swordmaster hunting someone down; a swordmaster who cannot be escaped. Fleeing is not an option. Thus:

Winding Game. When you hit⁶ a target with this weapon, they become unable to safely disengage. Gain an advantage on attacks of opportunity against the target until the end of their next movement.

When I imagine a greatsword, I imagine someone cutting through multiple adversaries in a single swing. (Or, since we all know that's not realistic, we imagine them taking on several adversaries at once.) We'll give it a cleave.

Cleave. When you attack with this weapon, you may target all charcters who are in front of you within range.

Now, some of you will note that cleave is very strong as written here. That is true! But it's also the case that there are smart and stupid ways to fight a dude weilding a sword as big as you are, and maybe you shouldn't fight him the stupid way. While I haven't talked all that much about Lanthorn's combat system, I'm much more interested in rewarding good positioning than, say, 5e is.

Finally, let's tag 'em:

• Longsword: two-handed, melee.
• Greatsword: two-handed, melee, heavy, big.

Case-Study: The Dagger

Daggers are easily-concealed weapons designed for surprsing people. I think that much is obvious. Let's slap that ability and tags on there right now:

Assassin's Choice. When you attack someone who is surprised with this weapon, you always deal a critical hit, and always cause an extra wound.

• Dagger: light, small, one-handed, melee.

What we see here is that, even though being light/small/one-handed are going to reduce stopping-power, daggers will still see use in surprise-attack scenarios, which is exactly what we wanted.

Case-Study: The Buckler and The Tower Shield

Shields are weird because people who haven't done martial arts essentially never know how to treat one as a tool. So consider: what are they actually doing in combat?

Bucklers are the little shields you hold in one hand (as opposed to strapping them to your arm). They're nice because they cut off lines of attack and are highly mobile; they make space for you to do what you need.

Spacemaker. As a secondary action, make an attack against the target with this weapon. On a success, make an attack of opportunity against the target with your main-hand weapon. Gain an advantage on this attack.

Tower shields are those big fuck-off rectangular monstrosities. They serve as mobile cover. Thus:

Wall. As a main action, provide full cover against attacks coming from the front for the rest of the turn. A character who attacks you from behind during this time is flanking you.

And the tags:

• Buckler: small, melee, one-handed.
• Tower Shield: big, heavy, melee, one-handed, attached.

Conclusion

Conclusions are hard to write but like. Yeah if you go a damage die size up from d12 you go straight to d20. I'm not fucking with zocchi dice here. There aren't actually any weapons that get that high at the moment.

There are a whole bunch of weapons that I didn't get into here because explaining their abilities would involve explaining game mechanics that a D&D player wouldn't be familiar with. Just know that the longbow is heavy, something like 5e's sentinel feat is the default for polearms, and I've included some real deep cut weird historical weapons from the early modern era like the axe-pistol and gunstock club.

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1. Consider the ability of a character to more fully draw back a bow, or to throw a rock really hard.

2. The actual rules text contains some (pretty major!) mechanical caveats and uses some rules jargon keywords. In general, I will be speaking in general terms/vibes rather than specifics to avoid getting bogged down and having to explain my whole combat system. All abilities explained in this chost will be like this, because I am here to talk about the bones of the design and not the minutiae, interesting as I think they are.

3. Sidesword, noun. Any one-handed sword which the commentator does not classify as a rapier, though historically many of them would be called rapiers; typically those sidearm swords which are focused on cutting. The term "Arming sword" is also often used for certain one-handers. These are not exact or strict categories.

4. Sword nerd's note: I'm including the swords you'd typically refer to as "katanas" in this category, though it could make sense to break them out into their own thing if the difference in fighting style is important to your game.

5. Sword nerd's note: As with all things sword, the difference between a longsword and a greatsword is not exact. For the purposes of fantasy fiction, a good rule of thumb is that a greatsword is any two-handed sword roughly as tall as its weilder or taller; a longsword is any two-handed sword smaller than that.

6. A "hit" in Lanthorn does not represent a wound, but rather the dealing of strain. Wounds start to accumulate once a character is past their strain tolerance.