Weapons & Attacks

When it comes to rules, my general approach with Legends of Alba has been to build up from a rules skeleton, rather than starting with a fleshed out template and cutting back. So anything that gets added has to earn its place. I'm looking at Weapons and Attacks today.

Celtic Weapons, Edinburgh (public domain)

Characters get Weapons (and Armour) from their Clan, and up till this point there's just been two attributes: Melee [M] and Ranged [R]. But as I've been writing up the Clans I've been kitting out some of them with great weapons, some get paired weapons, others start with a shield. Mechanically there's no distinction between these loadouts and this doesn't feel right to me. At the very least there should be some advantage from using both hands to hold weapons, since you have to sacrifice the potential for wielding a shield to do so. So I added a third Weapon attribute, Two-Handed [2H].

But what sort of advantage do you get for a [2H] Weapon? I thought about a couple of different options:

• A Special Bonus (e.g. +2) for Attacks made with a [2H] Weapon. I didn't like this because this would be in addition to whatever Talent Bonus you're using to make the Attack, and this is a very early stage to be introducing messy stacking modifiers.
• Similar to the above, but the Bonus is determined by a die assigned to each Weapon (e.g. a sword might roll a D6 and a warhammer might roll a D10). I didn't like this for the same reason as above, with the added niggle that you're already rolling a D20 for the Attack, so added more random variance seems bad.
• Attacks made with [2H] Weapons are considered to have Help (so roll to D20 and pick the highest). I didn't like this because now [2H] Weapons can't benefit from setting up creative advantages with terrain or their allies in combat, which is more what Help is supposed to represent.

Playing Break!! recently I was reminded that Attack Bonus in that game is essentially its own stat, which gave me an idea: What if Attack Bonus was defined by Weapon? Completely separate to Talent? I had to think about it a while because I'm changing the core rules of the game here to accommodate a Weapon attribute in a game where combat is not the main focus.

However it is important. There monsters both mundane and magical in Legends of Alba so fighting is going to be important and necessary. And I know for a fact that as a player I'd be baffled if my Character was actually at a disadvantage if they wielded a greatsword vs a knife and shield.

So here's how Attacks and Weapons are laid out now. As you can see a few more attributes have crept in, might delete later.

Attacks

A Character risks life and limb in an attempt to Wound an enemy. Attacks are resolved as Tests.

The Attack Bonus is defined by the Weapon.

The Challenge is defined by the enemy.

Success Wounds the enemy. A Wound is enough to kill or incapacitate most enemies.

On a failed Test, the enemy Wounds the Character (there's a separate procedure for this)

Weapons

Each weapon defines the Bonus to be applied when a Characters attacks with it (e.g. [+3]).

Bastard [B] weapons can be wielded one-handed, or with both hands to improve their Attack Bonus by 1.

Melee [M] weapons can only target enemies next to the attacking Character.

Ranged [R] weapons can target any enemy the attacking Character can see. Characters only suffer Fatigue or Wounds from failed Ranged attacks if their target also wields a Ranged weapon.

Two-handed [2H] weapons require two hands.

Thrown [T] weapons can be used as Ranged weapons but must be recovered before they can be used again.

Example Weapons:

• Dagger [+3][M][T]
• Battleaxe [+4][M][B]
• Spear [+4][M][B][T]
• Longbow [+5][R][2H]
• Paired Blades [+6][M][2H]
• Greataxe [+7][M][2H]