Item Durability Houserule - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 CateranEnforcer77 Aug 31, 2010 12:27:27	I am just starting a Dark Sun game for my group. I really like the survival aspect of the setting and I wanted to place some greater emphasis on the troubles you face in Athas. Here's my proposal. Goal of this houserule: I like the concept of survival days. Easy to track and they come in a 'kit' of sorts that you can simply tally up. However, a part of me thinks that they are just a touch too easy to manage, but buying individual supplies for everything seems too complicated. Rather, I would like add something else that is also easy to track and manage, that doesn't deplete at the same rate as survival days. I also wanted to give incentive mechanically for aquiring metal weapons and armor. The first draft houserule: Each weapon and armor has 6 points of durability. Light and heavy shields add an additional 1 or 2points respectively to armor's durability. When you critically miss with a weapon it loses one point and when you are critically hit your armor loses one point. You can lose no more than one point of durabilty per day. When an item reaches zero durability, weapons recieve -2 to all attack rolls and armor recieves -2 to AC. Repairing them requires a ritual, martial practice, or trained NPC and costs 10gp at heroic teir, 100 gp at paragon, and 1000 gp at epic. A repaired item regains all its durability if done at a properly supplied location and requires no check. A check will be required in the wilderness. Metal weapons and armor have double the durability and double the cost to repair. Possible changes/concerns: -Cost: Players won't find much money but also won't have many expensive things to buy. Cost might need to be adjusted. -The once per day limit: I added this so a player wouldn't get screwed by bad rolls but I could see my party potentially adjusting resting habits based on whether their weapons have broken yet that day. -Light vs Heavy armor: There is no metal equivalents for a light armor user wanting more durable materials for their use. Thanks for reading, any input would be appreciated. EDIT: I forgot to mention. I am already making use of the reckless breakage rule as well, so for a weapon to be made totally broken, someone would have to go for the reroll.
#2 FlashbackJon Aug 31, 2010 13:03:09	Not a bad system! I'm not a fan of arbitrary penalties, but your rules seem to mitigate most of the random harshness. Suggestions/thoughts: Limit the loss to one durability per item per encounter. Not a big change, functionally, but it might prevent "strings" obliterating a player. Instead of -2 to attacks, consider just removing proficiency bonus. Again, not a big change, but cleaner to write and easier to understand, IMO. I had a couple other ideas, about masterwork and light armor classes, but I'll have to review them again later.
#3 CateranEnforcer77 Aug 31, 2010 23:23:57	I considered making the durability loss be limited to once per encounter, but I made it once per day after some thought. The idea being, worse case scenario, the PC's can break all of their items only after 6 days of travel. If I have 2 or 3 encounters on a single day, or the PC's are ending their journey at a dungeon site with 3 or 4 encounters in it, then they won't be totally broken when they arrive or shortly after. Still worth considering if I up the durability values a bit.
#4 Duke5150 Aug 31, 2010 23:49:12	I did something similar, but I don't mess with armor at all and I don't really put any penalties on the players with my houserules, beyond losing a weapon. Basically, you break your weapon and roll to repair it. One can only make a single weapon repair check during an extended rest. A result of 5+ repairs a non metal weapon and a result of 10+ repairs a metal weapon. This is an alternative to simply saying, you can repair a single weapon during an extended rest. Which is also a fine method. I like there to be a bit of chance involved. But, because things wear out, I decided to toss in a limited durability rule which places a penalty on repair checks. These penalties get worse the more you break your weapon. This means that eventually, that weapon will be beyond repair and become "ruined." I also decided that rolling a natural 1 on a repair check indicates that the weapon is beyond repair and considered to be ruined. This lead me to ask myself, wtf am I suppose to do, as a player, with a ruined weapon? So I put in a salvage rule. You can salvage parts and pieces from ruined weapons and use that salvage to help repair broken weapons that aren't ruined. Mechanically, using a salvage part gives you a bonus to repair checks. I'v also got a limited use repair kit that also grants a bonus to repair checks and which also stacks with the bonus from a salvage part. Depending on the type of weapon, you can salvage more parts and pieces from it. Salvaging a functional weapon yields the most parts possible to salvage. If interested, you can find a link to the pdf download of my houserules. I actually need to update the pdf with a few corrections to spelling and a nicer layout. [edit] the link is in my sig.
#5 moxcamel Sep 01, 2010 17:31:02	Nice system, and just to flesh it out a little bit more, maybe allow a Field Repair option: WIS or DEX check once per day vs DC15 + (missing durability points) to add 1 temporary durability point a damaged item. The temporary durability point goes away at the end of the day. No item can have more than 1 temporary durability point at any time, and it can only ever have one field repair per day. You can't make a field repair to an undamaged item.
#6 Pord Sep 02, 2010 5:41:51	Im looking to using this in a Dark Sun campaign as sounds like a nice idea. Gives the chance of them eventually breaking without making the PCs take massive penalties of them breaking with one bad roll.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

CateranEnforcer77

Aug 31, 2010 12:27:27

I am just starting a Dark Sun game for my group. I really like the survival aspect of the setting and I wanted to place some greater emphasis on the troubles you face in Athas. Here's my proposal.

Goal of this houserule:
I like the concept of survival days. Easy to track and they come in a 'kit' of sorts that you can simply tally up. However, a part of me thinks that they are just a touch too easy to manage, but buying individual supplies for everything seems too complicated. Rather, I would like add something else that is also easy to track and manage, that doesn't deplete at the same rate as survival days. I also wanted to give incentive mechanically for aquiring metal weapons and armor.

The first draft houserule:
Each weapon and armor has 6 points of durability. Light and heavy shields add an additional 1 or 2points respectively to armor's durability. When you critically miss with a weapon it loses one point and when you are critically hit your armor loses one point. You can lose no more than one point of durabilty per day. When an item reaches zero durability, weapons recieve -2 to all attack rolls and armor recieves -2 to AC. Repairing them requires a ritual, martial practice, or trained NPC and costs 10gp at heroic teir, 100 gp at paragon, and 1000 gp at epic. A repaired item regains all its durability if done at a properly supplied location and requires no check. A check will be required in the wilderness. Metal weapons and armor have double the durability and double the cost to repair.

Possible changes/concerns:
-Cost: Players won't find much money but also won't have many expensive things to buy. Cost might need to be adjusted.
-The once per day limit: I added this so a player wouldn't get screwed by bad rolls but I could see my party potentially adjusting resting habits based on whether their weapons have broken yet that day.
-Light vs Heavy armor: There is no metal equivalents for a light armor user wanting more durable materials for their use.

Thanks for reading, any input would be appreciated.

EDIT: I forgot to mention. I am already making use of the reckless breakage rule as well, so for a weapon to be made totally broken, someone would have to go for the reroll.

FlashbackJon

Aug 31, 2010 13:03:09

Not a bad system! I'm not a fan of arbitrary penalties, but your rules seem to mitigate most of the random harshness.

Suggestions/thoughts:

Limit the loss to one durability per item per encounter. Not a big change, functionally, but it might prevent "strings" obliterating a player.

Instead of -2 to attacks, consider just removing proficiency bonus. Again, not a big change, but cleaner to write and easier to understand, IMO.

I had a couple other ideas, about masterwork and light armor classes, but I'll have to review them again later.

CateranEnforcer77

Aug 31, 2010 23:23:57

I considered making the durability loss be limited to once per encounter, but I made it once per day after some thought. The idea being, worse case scenario, the PC's can break all of their items only after 6 days of travel. If I have 2 or 3 encounters on a single day, or the PC's are ending their journey at a dungeon site with 3 or 4 encounters in it, then they won't be totally broken when they arrive or shortly after. Still worth considering if I up the durability values a bit.

Duke5150

Aug 31, 2010 23:49:12

I did something similar, but I don't mess with armor at all and I don't really put any penalties on the players with my houserules, beyond losing a weapon. Basically, you break your weapon and roll to repair it. One can only make a single weapon repair check during an extended rest. A result of 5+ repairs a non metal weapon and a result of 10+ repairs a metal weapon. This is an alternative to simply saying, you can repair a single weapon during an extended rest. Which is also a fine method. I like there to be a bit of chance involved.

But, because things wear out, I decided to toss in a limited durability rule which places a penalty on repair checks. These penalties get worse the more you break your weapon. This means that eventually, that weapon will be beyond repair and become "ruined." I also decided that rolling a natural 1 on a repair check indicates that the weapon is beyond repair and considered to be ruined.

This lead me to ask myself, wtf am I suppose to do, as a player, with a ruined weapon? So I put in a salvage rule. You can salvage parts and pieces from ruined weapons and use that salvage to help repair broken weapons that aren't ruined. Mechanically, using a salvage part gives you a bonus to repair checks. I'v also got a limited use repair kit that also grants a bonus to repair checks and which also stacks with the bonus from a salvage part. Depending on the type of weapon, you can salvage more parts and pieces from it. Salvaging a functional weapon yields the most parts possible to salvage.

If interested, you can find a link to the pdf download of my houserules. I actually need to update the pdf with a few corrections to spelling and a nicer layout. [edit] the link is in my sig.

moxcamel

Sep 01, 2010 17:31:02

Nice system, and just to flesh it out a little bit more, maybe allow a Field Repair option: WIS or DEX check once per day vs DC15 + (missing durability points) to add 1 temporary durability point a damaged item. The temporary durability point goes away at the end of the day. No item can have more than 1 temporary durability point at any time, and it can only ever have one field repair per day. You can't make a field repair to an undamaged item.

Pord

Sep 02, 2010 5:41:51

Im looking to using this in a Dark Sun campaign as sounds like a nice idea. Gives the chance of them eventually breaking without making the PCs take massive penalties of them breaking with one bad roll.