Hello all, I am a long-time 7th Sea 1e GM and this is my first forum post here. I had, in the past, written a very detailed list of different weapons and armor for my own 7th Sea campaigns because myself and my players enjoy the historical differences and quirks of arms and armor. However for 2e I wanted to create a simplified system to compliment the simplified, heroic mechanics of the new edition. In the new edition there really only seems to be three types of weapons: Melee, Ranged and Firearms. This is a big over-simplification!
What I have here is a WIP first draft of my new 7th Sea 2e Armory. Weapons have traits that influence the heroes weiling them: a halberd and a rapier are not the same afterall! I will be playtesting this, starting tonight with my group (some Old Guard 7th Sea'rs and a majority of new Lubbers). I would appreciate any input and would love if others tested it out as well! Thanks!
*Design note: I really tried to keep away from any flat +damage/+defense stats. Though well versed in the ol' R&K I am a beginner to the new mechanics. This is all narrative design theory!
Dagger Concealable, One Handed, Bite Carry, Close Quarters
Club/Cane One Handed, Bashing, Inconspicuous, Close Quarters
Hand Axe One Handed, Tool, Close Quarters, Thrown
Rapier One Handed
Cutlass One Handed, Close Quarters
Saber One Handed
Broadsword Heavy
Hammer/Mace Heavy, Tool
Battle Axe Heavy, Tool
Great Sword Two Handed, Heavy, Cumbersome, Piercing
Staff Two Handed, Bashing, Inconspicuous
Spear One Handed, Reach, Thrown
Halberd Reach, Heavy, Two Handed, Cumbersome
Pike Long Reach, Heavy, Two Handed, Cumbersome
Panzerfaust One Handed, Bashing, Blocking
Buckler One Handed, Bashing, Blocking
Body Armor Blocking, Cumbersome, Worn
Throwing Knives Thrown, One Handed, Concealable, Close Quarters
Bow Medium Range, Two Handed
Longbow Long Range, Two Handed, Cumbersome
Crossbow Long Range, Two Handed, Cumbersome, Reload 1, Piercing
Pistol Short Range, One Handed, Reload 5, Firearm, Concealable, Close Quarters
Blunderbuss Short Range, Two Handed, Reload 5, Blast, Firearm
Musket Medium Range, Two Handed, Reload 5, Firearm, Cumbersome
Grenado Thrown, One Handed, Blast, Firearm, Dangerous
One Handed- may be wielded in one hand.
Two Handed- Requires two hands to effectively use. (+1 Raise required for One Handed action.)
Short Range- Effective range is 10 yards, up to twice that costs +1 Raise. Thrice costs a Hero Point.
Medium Range- Effective range is 30 yards, up to twice that costs +1 Raise. Thrice costs a Hero Point.
Long Range- Effective range is 50 yards, up to twice that costs +1 Raise. Thrice costs a Hero Point.
Concealable- May be hidden on your person with the Hide skill.
Inconspicuous- May be considered not a weapon with a Convince or Preform risk.
Close Quarters- Easily wielded in tight conditions: tunnels, doorways, riots, etc. Other weapons may sometimes require +1 Raise to use.
Cumbersome- Large, heavy, long or bulky: carrying this item makes Athletics Risks lose 1 Die. May stack.
Reach- If you haven’t acted yet in an Action Sequence the first attacker suffers one Wound unless they are using a Reach Weapon or Ranged Weapon.
Longer Reach- Negates Reach of shorter weapons. Inflicts 3 Wounds to a mounted opponent for every 2 raises spent.
Bite Carry- May be held in mouth to free both hands.
Bashing- Defeated opponents are not killed just bruised and knocked unconscious.
Heavy- One Handed or Two Handed. Uses Brawn in most Weaponry Risks.
Tool- May be used to smash down doors, break open locks or chains, split wood, etc.
Thrown- May be thrown at Short Range. The weapon is lost until a Raise is spent retrieving it.
Firearm- Inflicts an automatic Dramatic Wound every time it wounds a target. LOUD when fired.
Reload #- Requires # Raises to reload the weapon.
Blast- Inflicts +1 Wound against Brute Squads.
Piercing- Spend 2 Raises to inflict an additional 3 Wounds.
Block- Spend 2 Raises to negate 3 Wounds just suffered from a non-firearm attack.
Dangerous- GM may spend 1 Danger Point to include a Hero close to the target in the damage after Raises are called.
Worn- The item is worn on the body and takes no hands to carry or use.
-Zach H
I....like it. In principle anyway.
I think Bash is a bit redundant given the rules. So I would rethink it. As is, it really doesn't do anything a sword doesn't do.
Also, Bite Carry, while flavorful, seems a bit fiddly to me.
Piercing. Not a fan. Because clubbing someone to death with a blunt object (a hammer or flail) or cleaving them in half with a heavy weapon should do just as much, if not more, than a pointy sword. I think you can come up with something better that doesn't break the "weapon = more damage" rule.
i like it in theory as well as an optional ruleset for those wanting more Weapon Flavors. I honestly think the list could be shortned a lot. I also think any given weapon should only have at most 2 Traits that define it. One that's about how many Hands it takes to wield and another that's the defining characteristic of using it. Generic Traits like "Thrown" and "Concealable" etc shouldn't be made more complicated, as it's pretty much covered in the rules or common sense can take over. I also think that Traits should always be 'positive' and offer some advantage for using them.
One Handed - May be used in one hand.
Two Handed - Requires two hands to effectively use. (+1 Raise required to use this item One Handed for a Risk)
After some thought I only came up with a few that I thought could provide a little bit of customization based upon general weapon categories.
Close Quarters - May be used with the Brawl skill
Reach - You may spend a Hero Point to go first when tied with a Villain's Raises in an Action Sequence
Quick - You are considered to have 1 extra Raise for determining who goes first in the first round of an Action Sequence though your number of Raises does not change
Heavy - You may add +1 to any 1 Die on a Risk made with this weapon
Exotic - The first Raise spent to damage an opponent with this weapon cannot be avoided in any way
=====
Here is my rationale on why the others are not needed:
Short/Medium/Long Range- Distance in the game is abstract and unless you're using battle mats, just use common sense. You could also define ranges in 'areas' so that a Pistol can be fired at someone in the same area as you but a Musket could be fired at someone 2 or more areas.
Concealable- Almost anything can be concealable and larger things could take need a Risk roll with consequences of being found, etc.
Inconspicuous- Common Sense and hero narrative can do this
Cumbersome- I don't like Traits that apply negatives
Longer Reach- One idea of Reach is fine in my opinion
Bite Carry- This is flavorful but not needed. I could describe how I carry almost anything 'small sized' somewhere other than my hand
Bashing- This is always in the player's control when they take someone out and not a weapon trait
Heavy- Shouldn't be dictacting the Trait to use all the time
Tool- This is narrative license
Thrown- Common Sense and covered by Aim really
Firearm- Already covered
Reload #- Already covered
Blast- Already covered by core rules and narrative
Piercing- Nothing special here. If armor was in the game, could negate a point of that
Block- This sounds like a maneuver available to anyone really if you wanted to add that
Dangerous- GM can always do this :)
Worn- Not sure what effect this has and is common sense
The reason many of these traits are "common sense" is to inform the players that this is the case. It's worth stating as we have all seen RPG characters carrying 6+ weapons and constantly sleeping in their armor.The traits are meant to be guidelines, suggestions for narration.
Range: The reason to include range is to create a difference between a musket, pistol and blunderbuss. In the vanilla rules these are all the same thing. As before this is a narrative tool to help make arms and armor have an influence.
My group wants a little crunch to their rules. They enjoy having a difference between different weapons as it makes their choices of equipment seem more important. Without any distinction a fist is the same as a claymore is the same as a crossbow. (You just use a different skill in your Risks) This was not satisfying for my players- they like making a decision to weild a ____ over a ____.
-Zach H
Zach
Fair enough on the 'common sense' part. I generally just bring up common sense concerns with my players as it comes up. To be honest, that list would be overwhelming to a new player to the game in my opinion, but if it's mostly "Keep these things in mind" then that is fine. It just seemed overly complicated when you had weapons with 5-6 Traits to remember.
As for range, that may be hard to do without a battlemat or tactical positioning. Who's to say that the distance between someone and the bad guy is 30 yards or 35 yards? However, if it works for your game and group, by all means!
John
Zach,
The thing I think would really set this off – something I've been considering doing myself – is adding some variation of Witch Hunter's Weapon Tricks. Essentially, each weapon has three tricks associated with it (rated at three grades of difficulty). These are special moves/stunts that can be performed by anyone skilled with the weapon at a penalty (a wager, a lot like 1st ed 7th Sea's called raises).
A fencing sword, for instance, has three tricks: Hmastring (basic), between the seams (greater), and riposte (heroic). Hamstring reduces the opponent's speed, Between the Seams ignores 1-2 points of armor, and riposte...is obvious.
Now obviously there is not a straight comparison here. But what could be cool, and might sooth the nerves of the "duelists rule, and the game droolz" crowd might be to give each weapon one "special" manuever. So a main gauche might have Parry, which would let you use the parry manuever. A hammer might have "crushing blow", allowing you to do your Brawn in damage or reduces your opponent's next dice pool once per round or by spending X raises (or a mix of the two, otherwise it gets messy). The more I think about it, it feels better to say that certain weapons grant heroes special opportunities.
I dunno. I think if you are going to make inventory mean something, something like this would be cool to do. Plus, there's no reason these opportunities couldn't be things other than wounds. A crushing blow that knocks your opponent prone once per round if you can do X, Y and Z (and thus costs your opponent 1 raise while he picks himself up off the ground) sounds pretty cool.
Further thoughts: Witch Hunter distinguishes between Quick (2/round) and Complex (1/round) actions in regards to Tricks. A simple conversion could be that Quick tricks cost 1 raise to accomplish while Complex tricks cost 2 raises.
Thoughts?
I like the idea of a unique weapon trick for 'categories' of weapons to help set them apart. I don't know if I would exactly copy the Dueling Maneuvers but something less but interesting would be pretty cool.
Taking a page from Witch Hunter...
Weapon Tricks: To perform a Weapon Trick, spend a Raise on your Action. You may perform one and only one Weapon Trick per Round, even if you switch weapons between Actions.
Bow - Pinning Shot: When you perform Pinning Shot, you pin the target's clothing to the nearest surface in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. On her next Action, the Target must spend 1 additional Raise in order to pull free and act.
Crossbow - Point Blank Shot: When you perform Point Blank Shot, you deal 2 Wounds to a target that is adjacent to you, in addition to any other Wounds dealt by Raises.
Musket - Hawkeye Shot: When you perform Hawkeye Shot, you deal no Wounds. On your next Action, you deal a number of Wounds equal to your Ranks in Wits, in addition to any other Wounds dealt by Raises.
Pistol - From the Hip: When you perform From the Hip, you do not deal an automatic Dramatic Wound but any Wounds dealt by Raises cannot be avoided or prevented. This Weapon Trick must be performed on your first Action each Round.
Axe - Hamstring: When you perform Hamstring, you hamper the target's mobility in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target suffers a 2 dice penalty on any Risk using the Athletics Skill for the remainder of the Scene. The target may spend up to 2 Raises on any Action to bind the wound and reduce the penalty by 1 die per Raise spent.
Club - Crushing Blow: When you perform Crushing Blow, you reduce the target's remaining Raises by 1. If the target has no Raises left this Round, she loses one Raise from the next Round's total.
Dagger - Between the Seams: When you perform Between the Seams, 1 Wound that you deal to the target with Raises cannot be avoided or prevented.
Gauntlet - Blinding Strike: When you perform Blinding Strike, you reduce the target's vision in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target suffers a 2 dice penalty on any Risk using the Notice Skill for the remainder of the Scene. The target may spend up to 2 Raises on any Action to clear the blood from her eyes and reduce the penalty by 1 die per Raise spent.
Hammer - Stunning Blow: When you perform Stunning Blow, you leave the target dazed momentarily in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target suffers a 1 die penalty on any Risk using the Wits Trait for the remainder of the Scene. The target may spend a Raise on any Action to clear her head and remove the penalty.
Javelin - Mighty Throw: When you perform Mighty Throw, you stagger your target in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target suffers a 1 die penalty on any Risk using the Finesse Trait for the remainder of the Scene. The target may spend a Raise on any Action to recover her position and remove the penalty.
Pick - Piercing Strike: When you perform Piercing Strike, you cripple your target's weapon arm in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. Target suffers a 1 die penalty on any Risk using the Aim, Brawl or Weapon Skill for the remainder of the Scene. The target may spend a Raise on any Action to bind the wound and remove the penalty.
Polearm - Set for Charge: When you perform Set for Charge, you deal no Wounds. The next target that moves adjacent to you suffers 1 Wound that cannot be avoided or prevented.
Spear - Stab and Bash: When you perform Stab and Bash, you batter your target with both ends on your weapon in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target cannot benefit from spending any Danger Points until she spends a Raise as her Action to recover.
Staff - Sweep the Legs: When you perform Sweep the Legs, you knock the target to the ground prone in addition to any Wounds dealt by Raises. On her next Action, the Target must spend 1 additional Raise in order to stand up and act.
Sword, Fencing - Flourish: When you perform Flourish, you make a show of your weapon skills but deal no Wounds. On your next Action, gain a temporary Hero Point that disappears at the end of the Round.
Sword, Broad - Pummeling Strike: When you perform Pummeling Strike, you reduce your target's effectiveness in additionto any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target is considered to have one less Raise for the purpose of determining order of Actions until the end of the Scene. The target may spend a Raise on any Action to catch her breath and remove the penalty.
Unarmed - Catch the Blade: When you perform Catch the Blade, you take one additional Wound and retain hold of your opponent's weapon. You retain your hold on the weapon until you release it or the Target spends 1 Raise as her Action to pull the weapon free. While you retain your hold on the weapon, the target cannot use that weapon for any Risks and you cannot use that hand for any Risks.
Whip - Snatch Object: When you perform Snatch Object, you deal no Wounds but you can steal one hand held object the target visibly has in her possession. You cannot steal the target's actively used weapon with this trick.
Comments and feedback are welcome.
John
God it's good to have some Witch Hunter players in here!
Witch Hunters represent! Any thoughts on the Trait conversion?
No, it looks good.
This actually makes me what to strip down WH and make these the sole "tricks" for those weapons. I think they'd get more use that way.
BTW...
Sword, Broad - Pummeling Strike: When you perform Pummeling Strike, you reduce your target's effectiveness in additionto any Wounds dealt by Raises. The target is considered to have one less Raise for the purpose of determining order of Actions until the end of the Scene. The target may spend a Raise on any Action to catch her breath and remove the penalty.
I'd probably change this a bit and let the hero choose, do her raises do damage or reduce the target's next dice pool. OR maybe they eliminate the target's pool of raises for that round. Yikes!
If it removed a Raise completely then that could work too. It 'roughly' equals out since it costs a Raise to use. Maybe with a stipulation that a Target can only be targeted by the Trait once / Round from any sources.
My only issue with these rules you are trying to add realism into a game of a historic fantasy. The game is meant to be very open to all sorts of creative quips. A person with high athletics skill can be just as dangerous as someone with a pointy sword. I think as people have echoed above, your rules are fine in theory. But to new players they just add a complex list of more rules rather than streamlined guidelines.
I am really sad they have no rules for Drachenesien and I hope they include rules in the upcoming books. As far as all other weapons go, I don't expect to see them add any additional rules.
I personally don't plan to implement this, but it was an attempt to show a simple way to do it.
Harliquinn said almost everything I wanted to say. A lot of these traits are common sense, covered or too restrictive for a game that is non-restrictive. There are a few things that could work but instead of adding traits that way to a weapon, I would give 1 or 2 traits to a weapon depending on how powerful it is. I tried to follow the first edition table of weapons (more or less) when I tried to make weapons different from each other
It is only a rough idea but... something among the lines of:
I have a problem with knives and fencing weapons... I don't want to give anything else to a fencing weapon but giving something else to a knife seems too much, and I believe that any edged weapon should have a +1 wound... so I don't know...
Long, short and longest ranges are something that I did to differentiate ranged weapons. I could write it in yards but I don't want to because I don't want to have to worry about movement or other things like that. If someone tells me "I want to throw this dagger because I want to hit that guy that is running two streets ahead of me" I could say no and be done with it but if the player wants to use a crossbow I would say yes. It is just a reminder, more or less.
I would be cautious about adding any type of straight extra damage to pistols/muskets, particularly that can't be prevented (without a balancing factor) since they are already deadly.
My Musket basically costs an Action to use and the Pistol removes the Dramatic Wound auto.
I did this because I changed the damage of a pistol and a musket. It does not add damage but changes its formula. No longer does 1 auto dramatic wound but does Aim+1/2 and half cannot be prevented instead. That way I think it might solve the problem with people using 4 pistols and killing anything that stands in their way because you may still spend raises to prevent part of that damage, like trying to avoid the bullet but not completely.
Asking myself "is this really necessary?"
Maybe I'm missing something, but this looks like it's adding a lot of extra complexity simply for the sake of adding extra complexity without providing anyting of real value.
Unless your players are completely clueless about what these weapons generally look like, that is. But I'd wager that most folks that are playing this game have at the very least seen one of the PotC filks or some version of Three Musketeers.
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/
I wasn't the initiator of this, but my guess is this was designed to provide a little variation in weapons mechanically. Under the rules, everything from a hair pin to a huge zweihander all perform exactly the same in the game. This (at least my suggestion) was to provide some mechanical differences in weapons without impacting raw damage much. It obviously is completely optional.
John
Fair enough, but I still feel that breaks away from the general spirit of the game, where what matters is not so much what weapons the character is using, but what how capable they are with using them.
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/
But if two characters are both masters of their weapon, the character with the superior weapon wins. I always remember Harrison Ford's epic combat maneuver against the swordsman in "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark". The better weapon won that scene. Not all players will intuitively get this move and may argue the swordsman should have prevailed. Even fictional worlds are still anchored by some rules of our reality.
TAJ-07: Technopriest And Justicar Of 7thSea2e
Except that the Indiana Jones movies really aren't swashbuckling films, but rather more of pulp/noir tales, which tend to skew more on the cynical side. Note that Indy doesn't really "win" per se in that particular film, but rather breaks even, getting the girl (for a while at least) but losing the macguffin and only winning because his enemies were too arrogant to consider that trifling with an ancient artifact could have disasterous consequences.
Of course, the reality of that particular scene is that the actors (namely Ford) were suffering from dysentari when the time came to shoot that particular scene, so they opted to scrap the big fight secquence they'd written in favor of the much quicker and easier to film sequence of Indy just shooting the guy.
Consider how droll a Zorro movie would be if our masked hero was gunned down in a hail of musket fire by the alcalde's men during the first encounter of the film. Or how different a film the Princess Bride would be if Westley had just shot Inigo and Fezzik with a pistol instead of engaging them one-on-one.
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/
I agreed with the "no weapons" feeling in the game, but I read something in the corebook that changed my mind.
If you check the backgrounds and read the pugilist's quirk, it states that the hero will gain a hero point whenever they fight with their fists regardless of the opponent's weapon.
Now, a quirk is supossed to pose a challenge and if you read other quirks you will notice that some of them are really hard to achieve or that the character must go out of their way to get that hero point. The pugilist's quirk is no challenge because of two things: It didn't matter what weapon you had before and it doesn't matter what weapon your opponent had before. Nothing changes so any character with that background will always get a hero point every session. This doesn't mean I disagree with them getting that hero point evey time but that it is not balanced in terms of challenge.
I disagree on the Puglist bit, and honestly feel you're reading far too much into it. Especially since a Quirk can only be triggered once per session (page 137, under Step 3: Backgrounds). A Courtier, Criminal, Hunter, Diestro, Mercenary or Scholar (just to cite a few examples) can all have their Quirks trigger quite easily if they're in their proper element.
And an adversary that's an honorable one (which can include Villains; not all of them adhere to the Giovanni Villanova school of Villainy) may well opt to not use their sword when faced with a Puglist; prime example is Westly vs. Fezzik in Princess Bride, where Westly willingly chose to put down his sword (it's possible he could have dodged the thrown rocks long enough to close with Fezzik and cut him to ribbons with his sword, and I suspect many PCs would try to do just that) and agreed to face Fezzik with his bare hands in spite of the clear disadvantage he was at.
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/
What I meant is that with Courtier, Criminal, Hunter and other backgrounds, even if it is easy to gain a hero point (Again... I'm not against it), the character has to think a bit, just a bit and will be fine but with Pugilist you only need to drop your weapon and nothing changes, nothing at all. You will get the same result if you fight with or without weapons whereas with the other backgrounds, you adapt yourself to these situations in order to gain that hero point.
And yes, there are honorable adversaries but not all of them are and I don't think every adversary should be honorable so the character can fight on even ground.
I read too far into it because to me, quirks feel more like personality triggers that when a character decides he is too proud or stubborn then they decide to do someone they wouldn't normally do. And yes, a Pugilist can still gain a hero point if they fight with his fists on 2vs1 or against brutes if we agree on it. I just think a pugilist does not have to do much compared to others
Quirks are just that: quirks. Some are positive, some are going against your nature, some are playing right into your nature. Hubrises are really where you get the personality triggers that can cause you problems. It's basically 1 Hero Point a session, which should not make or break anyone. The Pugilist is just easier to get than some. If there's no fight in a session, they won't get their Hero Point.
John