My house rules for weapons and skills

[jacar]

Hello all,

It's been a loooong while since I've posted. I've got a hankerin' to play some whitebox solo and have devised a few (untested!) house rules to make weapons and armor more interesting.

weapons are classed as light (D4 damage), 1-handed (D6 damage) and 2-handed (D8 damage).

There is also damage type. Blunt (+2 to-hit vs metal armor) Ax (+1 to hit all armor) Pole weapons (+1 damage when charged [first strike] or charging) Blade weapons (Resistant to breaking see below)

Beak checks occur when a natural 1 is rolled on to-hit. Roll again, if it is a miss, the weapon breaks. Metal weapons gain +4 on a break check. Magic weapons gain +4 on break checks. Thus a magic blade gets +8 for resisting breaks.

Instead of having shields do a meager +1, I have buckler (+1 AC), medium shield (+2 AC) and tower shield (+3 AC). The tower shield can't be used on horseback and may be a hindrance in a dungeon.

As well, I am going to use 1D6 skill checks similar to thieves in some editions of 0D&D clones. Roll the target or less to succeed. Appropriate attributes may increase the target number.
6 (Trivial) 5 (Easy) 5 (Moderate) 3 (Hard) 2 (Very Hard) 1 (Impossible). 1 is also the default for untrained attempts. No modifiers will apply to unskilled checks. A character gets a bonus of 1 for every 3 levels of experience. They get a bonus of 1 for a 15 or better in the relevant attribute.


The whitebox clone I plan on playing is Beneath the Sunken Catacombs by Paul Bantock. The author did a really goo job of modernizing the game, adding ascending armor classes and adding plenty of character classes and subclasses without going overboard.

I hope to play a game or two in the coming weeks. Any comments or criticisms welcome.

John

[hamurai]

WB!

House rules are always interesting to read. My two cents for the kind of game I tend to play:

1.) I'd power up 2-handed weapons to a d10, or even 2d6. Personally, I'd rather get a medium shield for +2 AC than a chance to do 1-2 more damage.

2.) Depending on how long you'll play, skill checks will probably become too easy on higher levels. At 6th level, a hard task would already be easy (not counting attribute bonuses) - unless you're aiming for a heroic game at higher levels? It also depends on how often you'll use these skill checks. If you roll often, higher bonuses are necessary to ensure you don't fail too often.

Just my thoughts when I read your ideas - let us know how these rules work in your game!

[jacar]

Thanks!

re: 1) One of the interesting things about vanilla Whitebox is that the two-handed damage was simply D6+1, normal damage was D6 and light weapons are D6-1. The D4/D6/D8 thing are statistically equivalent. To your point, detailed shields might change one's mind on what kind of weapon to take. It's worth testing either way.

re: 2) Characters top out at 10th level. Also skills are specific to class. +1 per 3 levels will would let a character top out at +3. That means an "impossible" check would be medium. 4/6 chance to succeed. So I suppose a hero (someone who is 9th level who has been adventuring for years) might be that good. But it is only with skills that make sense for his/her class. If it does end up seeming too easy to make a skills check, I'll switch to every 4 levels.