Arnheim Weapon Modification

[Legacy_henesua]

               I have modified weapon proficiencies, and weapon stats for Arnheim, and am interested in feedback on these changes. One special addition includes "tool" groupings so that certain weapons can also be used as crafting tools - you don't need a skinning knife for example to skin an animal, any knife will do. Tools are also required for hacking up or dismantling certain things: axes work for wood, knives for cloth, hammer for stone or metal or thin wood (doors, chests).

Simple Weapons:
short bow, dart, sling, club, quarterstaff, mace, light flail, light hammer, dagger, handaxe, sickle, scythe and longspear.

Martial Weapons:
light and heavy crossbows, longbow, throwing axe, battleaxe, greataxe, greatsword, longsword, short sword, rapier, scimitar, halberd (and various polearms), trident, shortspear, heavy flail, morningstar, warhammer, and maul.

Exotic Weapons:
bastard sword, dire mace, dwarven waraxe, double axe, kama, katana, kukri, shuriken, whip, and two-bladed sword.

class Based Weapon Lists:

• Druids: dart, sling, club, quarterstaff, sickle, dagger, light hammer, scimitar, trident, shortspear, and longspear.
• Monks: short and long bows, shuriken, sling, club, light hammer, quarterstaff, light flail, heavy flail, dagger, kukri, and kama.
• Rogues and Bards: light crossbow, shortbow, sling, dart, club, quarterstaff, mace, light hammer, dagger, short sword, rapier, handaxe, and whip. 
• Wizards: light and heavy crossbow, club, quarterstaff, light hammer and daggers.

Bonus Weapon Proficiencies:

• Elves: Longbow, Shortbow
• Dwarves: Dwarven Waraxe
• Clerics: favored weapons depending on deity/religion

Tools

• Knife: dagger, kukri
• Axe: hand axe, battleaxe, great axe, dwarven waraxe, scimitar, kukri
• Hammer: light hammer, warhammer, maul

Notable Changes to Weapon Status:

• Short spear and trident may be used one handed. Long Spear requires two hands.
• Whip can be equipped in either left or right hand
• Scythe d6 20/x4  (and typically has penalties to hit)
• club d4
• quarter staff functions as a double weapon
• light crossbow is a small weapon
• light flail 2d3
• heavy flail 2d4
• war hammer d8 20/x3
• maul 2d6  20/x3 bludgeon
• shuriken d4
• rapier slashing and piercing damage. Situational benefits if character knows fencing (alternate combat pheno etc..)
• Halberd damage type is slashing but each specific polearm has different bonus damage types and benefits

Notable Changes to Armor:
All armor has some damage resistance versus one or more of the base physical damage types. Heavy armor is substantially more protective than light and medium armor. Light armors also allow substantially more benefits from high dexterity. The maximum protection versus bludgeoning is 3, the max versus piercing or slashing is 6.
Light
AC 1   Dex 15  ACCheck 0  Arcane 5%
AC 2   Dex 12   ACCheck 0   Arcane 5% 
AC 3   Dex 8   ACCheck -1  Arcane 10%
Medium  
AC 4   Dex 5   ACCheck -2  Arcane 25%
AC 5   Dex 4   ACCheck -3  Arcane 25% 
Heavy
AC 6   Dex 1   ACCheck -6  Arcane 50%

AC 7   Dex 1   ACCheck -8  Arcane 50%

AC 8   Dex 0   ACCheck -10  Arcane 50%

AC 9   Dex 1   ACCheck -9  Arcane 50%
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 25 août 2012 - 04:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               The dwarven waraxe bonus for dwarf makes no sense. So dwarven wizard will be able to wield exotic axe but not be able other axes? DnD says that what dwarf can is to wield dwarven waraxe as martial weapon. Of course its almost impossible to make this possible in NWN - I tried that and had issues with weapon feats.

Anyway, my advice: either give dwarfs all hammers and axes (maybe except twohand) or try to implement the waraxe by the rules.

Also what i did was to allow quarterstaff and shuriken to rate monk UBAB.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               How did you get the quarterstaff and shuriken to work for monks according to their unarmed bab?

Re: Waraxe. All dwarves in my setting belong to militarily organized clans, kinda like early mongols or scythians or the later cossacks (only without horses). Regardless of what a dwarf does in their life, they know how to fight with their waraxe. I considered giving dwarves all axes, and may do so. Hammers is not as appropriate since they are not the standard dwarven crafters.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               nwnx_cool allows this possibility, also you can set feats for custom weapons (so you can set dagger feats for assassin dagger from CEP/DOA) and set weapon to be finnesable

also whats great is that you can set this possibility anytime and for any player so for example you can allow katana to be finessable only to certain prestige class etc.

EDIT: Oh one remark to the scythe. There is difference between scythe as a farmer's tool and scythe in nwn which is war weapon. Farmer's scythe shouldnt be so powerful and since you set scythe to be simple weapon I guess you are thinking of it this way - the 2d6 20/x4 is quite much for simple tool. But its more like that the famer's scythe is not appropriate for combat and is susceptible to break.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 22 août 2012 - 07:53 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               blast... I was afraid of that. I'm not using nwnx.

Thanks for the reply.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...

EDIT: Oh one remark to the scythe. There is difference between scythe as a farmer's tool and scythe in nwn which is war weapon. Farmer's scythe shouldnt be so powerful and since you set scythe to be simple weapon I guess you are thinking of it this way - the 2d6 20/x4 is quite much for simple tool. But its more like that the famer's scythe is not appropriate for combat and is susceptible to break.

Having used a "farmer's" scythe on many occaisions - and one that was made in the early 1900's specifically (wooden handle and steel blade) - I can vouch for the toughness of the "farmer's" scythe. I've used it shred thick brush and small diameter (1" - 2") saplings and never had the handle break, let alone crack. 

When I read this I went to the market and bought a fair-sized water melon, which is roughly the same density as a human, and chopped away at it several times. For such little effort in the swing, the damage was quite impressive. Granted my watermelon wasn't wearing armor...'>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Pstemarie, 22 août 2012 - 09:13 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I have made the scythe damage d6 rather than 2d6.  I did keep the x4 critical. Perhaps I should up the damage to d8.

The problem with a scythe as a weapon is that you need to pull through your opponent. This would make you vulnerable to attack as the scythe could not be used like a sword to keep your enemy at bay.

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to reduce the wielder's AC by 5, but keep the damage at 2d6.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               I think you could quite handily keep a person at bay with a scythe. It has excellent reach and is designed to swing in a downward arc, sweeping up as it bottoms out in the mid-point of the swing. A good swing with a scythe basically sweeps a 120 deg to 180 deg arc from roughly shoulder to shoulder, bottoming out at the feet. Changing the grip on a scythe allows you to swing it across the midsection in a sweeping arc. More than likely you swing a scythe at someone and connect - usually below the knees - they'll be the one's off balance and stumbling.

As for the blade design itself - its very much a reverse scimitar. Its designed to slash - it doesn't need to "pull through" to do damage. With the watermelon, the scythe sent the melon rolling away a few feet, but not until after it had delivered a good slash into it. Furthermore, with the proper trajectory I was even able to impale the watermelon with the blade. Keep in mind also that this was done with a fairly dull blade. I don't spend a lot of time honing something that's more designed to cut grass.

2d4 damage is fair for something that's dull by design and probably does a fair amount of blunt damage as well as slashing. I'd drop the critical to 20 x2 to represent the simple fact that although its big, the scythe was never designed as a weapon. At best its an improvised weapon.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Pstemarie, 22 août 2012 - 11:47 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               Yeah that seems reasonable for the scythe.  The Grim Reaper, the havester of souls, is often pictured with a scythe. Probably almost always.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

ffbj wrote...

Yeah that seems reasonable for the scythe.  The Grim Reaper, the havester of souls, is often pictured with a scythe. Probably almost always.

That's a logical association too when you think about the grim reaper from the pov of a farmer. Afterall, what is harvesting crops, but essentially killing them - and nothing was better at it than the scythe which can chop anything from wheat or rye to bamboo with relative ease compared to a sickle.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               Seems reasonable, though in modern depictions he seems to more vindicative, or even gleeful, as opposed to grim.  As in reticent.  It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

http://www.bing.com/...story&FORM=IGRE
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               The Scythe is a horrible weapon - instead, it is a great tool, doing what it does very well.

As a weapon, it is horribly predictable as to which direction the blow is coming from, and slow (as weapons go, because you need to get it back in direction, and swing it around).  A shield user will not have any real problems with a Scythe user.  And any blocked Scythe attack will result in the user getting totally pwned as they will not be able to recover (and will probably end up losing their Scythe in the process, assuming they survive).

Against a Spear user...or Polearm, Staff, etc where one has more reach, the outcome is basically lopsided in favor against the Scythe.

All the above speaks against the Scythe as a weapon - which is probably why one did not see large-scale implementation of Scythes as weapons in medieval armies.

The Grim Reaper doesn't have to worry about the drawbacks of using a Scythe - he can't be killed '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               Good points WebShaman. Although the scythe is a light weapon and fairly easy to get back into position, this really only applies if your opponent doesn't lock up the weapon in some manner. Something I hadn't considered in my op. Taking that into account, once you've followed that scythe swing to its full trajectory, you leave yourself open to a nasty counter-attack or binding maneuver that can take you completely off balance. However, one's opponent would have to get into the weapon's arc to do so. Makes me wonder if they ever made double-edged scythes...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               Drastic modifications were made to make them more useful in combat.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/War_scythe

As the article indicates they have there drawbacks, weight, unwieldiness, fatigue inducing, slow.
One thing mentioned in the ariticle was their psychological effect on  enemy forces, a realy horrific weapon.  Maybe you should give them +5 to intimidate just for that class of weaponry.

Lord Bosworth: "My liege the peasants are revolting."
The King:            "My good Bosworth.  You have a wonderful talent for stating the obvious, has not anyone told you  so?"
Lord Bosworth:  "My liege, well said, but you mistake me.  Not only are they revolting they are actually in revolt." 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ffbj, 23 août 2012 - 10:04 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               I'm always kind of wary of Wikipedia, but I was able to confirm the information. Note however, that the blade was rotated 90 deg making it look more like fauchard. This would also change the way the weapon was wielded, thus can you even think of it as a scythe anymore? IMO, certainly not!

As for the reference made to its intimidation value - sheer speculation and assumption. IMO you can't base a rule change such as a +5 bonus to a skill on just that. Indeed, polearm equipped infantry were used with devastating effect throughout history - from early Greek Hoplites armed with pikes or long spears to the Swiss Grenadiers armed with halberds. If you're going to do an intimidate bonus, I'd extend it to all polearms.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Pstemarie, 23 août 2012 - 10:47 .