[.11] Weapon/Armor Duration (split from Packet Color Thread)

I feel my poor word choice may have distracted from the point I was trying to make. Let me try again.

Magic items get one thing on every phys rep: item number. To say weapon tags were designed with a spot for when the magic expires, but not with a field for the item number, seems like faulty logic unless items didnt always have the item number on them in the past.
 
I feel my poor word choice may have distracted from the point I was trying to make. Let me try again.

Magic items get one thing on every phys rep: item number. To say weapon tags were designed with a spot for when the magic expires, but not with a field for the item number, seems like faulty logic unless items didnt always have the item number on them in the past.

That’s easy to explain away. In Seattle and Oregon, the ID # is on the phys rep itself. If a chapter puts weapon tags on magic items (we don’t, the ID# is sufficient) because they want it to be more obvious that it’s a PC weapon and not a monster weapon, there’d be no reason to also have a field for the ID#, assuming that the number is elsewhere on the rep.

Sometimes tags get wet, damaged, or just fall off.
 
I feel my poor word choice may have distracted from the point I was trying to make. Let me try again.

Magic items get one thing on every phys rep: item number. To say weapon tags were designed with a spot for when the magic expires, but not with a field for the item number, seems like faulty logic unless items didnt always have the item number on them in the past.

Again, things were done differently back then. We had cornstarch soaked packets so that it "poofed" when it hit you. Real bows with boffer arrows. Slays and parries were separate skills. The same for weapon smithing and armor smithing. Shoot, I remember needed pieces of Mythril to strengthen weapons.

So it's either that it was made for expiring magic weapons or weapons always expired and the 9 chapters I've played in have been doing it wrong for over 20 years. Logic tends to point to the first.
 
The question, as always, is what it the objective of the mechanic of the game? And these need to be answered before going forward with the solution to carry it out.

To make play easier?
To add immersive elements into it?
To give other people who aren't straight up combatants another facet to make them feel they have a bigger part in the story?
etc.

And to what degree? At what point do you sacrifice ease of play for immersion (requiring a potion vial to drink a potion instead of just miming it with the tag)

There are a lot of ways things could be implemented to change the system in one direction or another. I played in one game that after every encounter people had to have their weapons sharpened and armor tended to else next encounter they all did less damage/absorbed less damage. It could be that after every slay or massive damage carrier, the weapon loses a point of damage ability due to the stress on the weapon. You could make it that if armor was breached by a slay, it required more than a refit to fix. All of this would add a change making blacksmithing a much more immersive and valuable skill other than 'get to 20 so you could refit a broken suit back up tp 50 in 30 seconds'.

However, it becomes a lot less like other games that are about sending as much damage downrange and stopping as much coming uprange. Never saw Legolas tell the party that they had to stop so he could make a few dozen arrows or Gandalf having to tape smaller pieces of paper onto larger ones.

To follow that pursuit, it would make sense to simply remove arrows from the game. Blacksmiths may or may not take a hit (seems the jury is out as it is a anecdotal experience to people). Have them more involved in the creation of magic items other than just making the base weapon. Have them specialize in an element or magical enhancement to weaponry. The actual forging of a powerful piece of amor can be more involved and immersive than taking a sheet protected piece of paper with a handful of popsicle sticks to a marshal to roll on a ritual table. But again, it's a balance of ease over investing.

Same with degradation of armor and weapons. Played in a game where after a shield made of X material took enough damage, it fell apart. Not that you had to count every single blow and have a running tally not only of your body as well as that of your shield but estimate, realize it's getting close and find someone able to repair it back to health.

As for resource management, we already are taking players at their word that they're not casting too many spells, have enough containers for all of their potions, have all their scroll tags taped to properly sized pieces of paper. Yes, there is a tag system that can be used to check but if there are players that require this level of monitoring to make sure they don't chronically cheat, maybe the issue isn''t the tag system. Over the years I've witnessed people 'drinking' from a potion tag and not a bottle a plethora of times and never saw a marshal nor player call them on it. although I was once recently called on an elixir that I used tic tacs for and did the three count, pouring them out onto his hand and saying "Take two of these and get up and start killing again," to which he said, "Don't you have to pour it down my throat?" Fair enough.

But if we are looking for ease of play overall, then why bother with bottles, strips of scroll paper and so on? Much easier to strap a chain of cure light damages to a bracelet and tear them off as used.
 
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I'm backing David on this one. I have been playing this game since 1993. The expiration lines were on the weapons even back then, despite the fact that weapons didn't expire (only magic items did). I even remember having a conversation in NPC camp during my first year playing where we wondered why the line was there, when people who literally invented the game were present to tell us that weapons didn't expire. In 25 years, I have only seen that line filled in with a number when the weapon was attached to a magic item tag with the same expiration date (one magic sword a year, at every single tournament).

And this really was the old, old days, when you had to pay in-game money at the end of the event to get half your potential build points, when the spell Magic Key existed, and when a Proficiency specified both a hand and a weapon type.

-MS
 
The question, as always, is what it the objective of the mechanic of the game? And these need to be answered before going forward with the solution to carry it out.

To make play easier?
To add immersive elements into it?
To give other people who aren't straight up combatants another facet to make them feel they have a bigger part in the story?
etc.

And to what degree? At what point do you sacrifice ease of play for immersion (requiring a potion vial to drink a potion instead of just miming it with the tag)

There are a lot of ways things could be implemented to change the system in one direction or another. I played in one game that after every encounter people had to have their weapons sharpened and armor tended to else next encounter they all did less damage/absorbed less damage. It could be that after every slay or massive damage carrier, the weapon loses a point of damage ability due to the stress on the weapon. You could make it that if armor was breached by a slay, it required more than a refit to fix. All of this would add a change making blacksmithing a much more immersive and valuable skill other than 'get to 20 so you could refit a broken suit back up tp 50 in 30 seconds'.

However, it becomes a lot less like other games that are about sending as much damage downrange and stopping as much coming uprange. Never saw Legolas tell the party that they had to stop so he could make a few dozen arrows or Gandalf having to tape smaller pieces of paper onto larger ones.

To follow that pursuit, it would make sense to simply remove arrows from the game. Blacksmiths may or may not take a hit (seems the jury is out as it is a anecdotal experience to people). Have them more involved in the creation of magic items other than just making the base weapon. Have them specialize in an element or magical enhancement to weaponry. The actual forging of a powerful piece of amor can be more involved and immersive than taking a sheet protected piece of paper with a handful of popsicle sticks to a marshal to roll on a ritual table. But again, it's a balance of ease over investing.

Same with degradation of armor and weapons. Played in a game where after a shield made of X material took enough damage, it fell apart. Not that you had to count every single blow and have a running tally not only of your body as well as that of your shield but estimate, realize it's getting close and find someone able to repair it back to health.

As for resource management, we already are taking players at their word that they're not casting too many spells, have enough containers for all of their potions, have all their scroll tags taped to properly sized pieces of paper. Yes, there is a tag system that can be used to check but if there are players that require this level of monitoring to make sure they don't chronically cheat, maybe the issue isn''t the tag system. Over the years I've witnessed people 'drinking' from a potion tag and not a bottle a plethora of times and never saw a marshal nor player call them on it. although I was once recently called on an elixir that I used tic tacs for and did the three count, pouring them out onto his hand and saying "Take two of these and get up and start killing again," to which he said, "Don't you have to pour it down my throat?" Fair enough.

But if we are looking for ease of play overall, then why bother with bottles, strips of scroll paper and so on? Much easier to strap a chain of cure light damages to a bracelet and tear them off as used.

I am a conditional yes to removing arrows from the game, and that is to rework the blacksmithing system. I know it's being looked at due to other parts here, and hope that the arrow change is part of it.

For what it's worth, I'm much more spirit than letter of the rules, and hope I wasn't the marshal in question with the tic tacs.
 
I am a conditional yes to removing arrows from the game, and that is to rework the blacksmithing system. I know it's being looked at due to other parts here, and hope that the arrow change is part of it.

For what it's worth, I'm much more spirit than letter of the rules, and hope I wasn't the marshal in question with the tic tacs.

I'm with you on this. If Blacksmith gets a rework and is given other cookies, the primary support for arrow-tracking falls away. Other weapons don't degrade through simple use and it seems odd that arrows amount to a "blacksmith consumable". But, at current, arrow-consumption is a major source of income and activity for Blacksmiths and that bulwark shouldn't be removed.

Now, assuming Blacksmiths get crafter-love, one possible solution would be a relatively cheap "Quiver" item, perhaps 15 PP so it's on par with short weapons and bows. It can hold any number of arrows, but must be a certain volume for representational purposes. It could be Shattered with all standard consequences and defenses which would deprive the archer of all arrows (until replaced). The Quiver would serve as the platform for Coatings, Silvering, Formal Magics, etc. (all of which would be lost if the Quiver is shattered, just like other weapons). An archer could carry multiple Quivers, just like carrying multiple weapons, so long as the archer follows all pertinent rules. While it might seem fantastic that a single quiver could hold all the arrows an archer would want to use, it's no more fantastic than weapons which never break or armor that never rusts.

While this system might give archers an advantage since they could have augmentations on both the Bow and the Quiver, given the other inherent challenges posed by archery in Alliance, this advantage wouldn't be game breaking. Simple mechanics could also be imposed to limit unbalanced combinations, e.g.: Coatings can only be applied to a Quiver; Reavers/Slayers can only be applied to a Bow. This advantage might also support rise of the "Arcane Archer" concept which some folks have called for, but is mechanically challenging.

The Quiver would recognize the consumption aspects of archery while equalizing archery with other melee systems in terms of degradation. The physical-quiver would keep the representational and roleplay aspect of archery while removing the unbalanced and difficult to marshal aspect of arrow-tracking. Finally, it might offer some versatility and benefit to those players who want to play archers but are hampered by the current system.
 
That’s easy to explain away. In Seattle and Oregon, the ID # is on the phys rep itself. If a chapter puts weapon tags on magic items (we don’t, the ID# is sufficient) because they want it to be more obvious that it’s a PC weapon and not a monster weapon, there’d be no reason to also have a field for the ID#, assuming that the number is elsewhere on the rep.

Sometimes tags get wet, damaged, or just fall off.

So tags on the weapon aren't even required for magic weapons. Is this newer or does it go way back?


Again, things were done differently back then. We had cornstarch soaked packets so that it "poofed" when it hit you. Real bows with boffer arrows. Slays and parries were separate skills. The same for weapon smithing and armor smithing. Shoot, I remember needed pieces of Mythril to strengthen weapons.

So it's either that it was made for expiring magic weapons or weapons always expired and the 9 chapters I've played in have been doing it wrong for over 20 years. Logic tends to point to the first.

Or maybe its not an either thing, not a right/wrong thing. Both ways can be right.

I'm backing David on this one. I have been playing this game since 1993. The expiration lines were on the weapons even back then, despite the fact that weapons didn't expire (only magic items did). I even remember having a conversation in NPC camp during my first year playing where we wondered why the line was there, when people who literally invented the game were present to tell us that weapons didn't expire. In 25 years, I have only seen that line filled in with a number when the weapon was attached to a magic item tag with the same expiration date (one magic sword a year, at every single tournament).
-MS

Cool story. Did they write it down anywhere for us?

I get that this is the way most chapters do it, and have been doing it for a long time. I'm saying its not codified anywhere which gives chapters the ability to treat it as they wish without being some sort of deviant LCO or illegal tag thing, and the more people that have been chiming in, from different chapters, who have been playing for a long time, really drives that home for me.
 
My first character was an archer/sword build and I would regularly run out of arrows and my bow became a shield.
I am also never afraid to have my characters killed off, so I am still in the same stance as Krystina in that dealing with resource management is part of the game. But I can see how a starting archer getting only 12 (or 24) arrows is just silly and the logistic start should be closer to 90).
I had blacksmith skill, but under 1.3 I could only replenish if someone had arrows or next logistic period. Under 2.0, I can now spend the coin and replenish whenever.
If there are no blacksmiths in a chapter, then Plot should make an NPC blacksmith available (addressing some early posts that sometimes no blacksmiths are around).

Ideas I kicked around for a while :
Buying a quiver at the 1st logistic period that holds an unlimited quiver. This would mean cost change would have to be changed accordingly. I kind of see this as overbalancing personally.

Each quiver purchased gave a full logistic period of arrows. This would allow blacksmiths to still need to make quivers at each period. Making it 3 silver seems too low, so maybe 1-3 Gold.

Reintroduce weapon expiration dates on all standard weapons. If standard weapons expire in 6 months, bows could be the same. This would mean costs can stay the same, blacksmiths would have to either make replacements or stock up regularly, and everyone would look at similar replacement of standard weapons.

The final change would be make each bow limited to similar pros/cons as melee weapons. Things like allowing assassinates from any direction goes away.
 
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The solutions that require spending a good amount of gold per logistic period to have a quiver don't really work for people who dabble in archery. Paying 1-3G to throw 5-10 arrows seems unreasonable to me.

(For context, my partner & I each started new 2nd level sword&bow characters at the last SF:Maelstrom event. She ended up mostly doing sword with bow as shield, and used probably 10 arrows. When I could, I mostly stood behind her or other front liners, and probably used 4 or 5 quivers of arrows. But whatever solution we come up with should support both our play styles.)


I'm with you on this. If Blacksmith gets a rework and is given other cookies, the primary support for arrow-tracking falls away. Other weapons don't degrade through simple use and it seems odd that arrows amount to a "blacksmith consumable". But, at current, arrow-consumption is a major source of income and activity for Blacksmiths and that bulwark shouldn't be removed.

Now, assuming Blacksmiths get crafter-love, one possible solution would be a relatively cheap "Quiver" item, perhaps 15 PP so it's on par with short weapons and bows. It can hold any number of arrows, but must be a certain volume for representational purposes. It could be Shattered with all standard consequences and defenses which would deprive the archer of all arrows (until replaced). The Quiver would serve as the platform for Coatings, Silvering, Formal Magics, etc. (all of which would be lost if the Quiver is shattered, just like other weapons). An archer could carry multiple Quivers, just like carrying multiple weapons, so long as the archer follows all pertinent rules. While it might seem fantastic that a single quiver could hold all the arrows an archer would want to use, it's no more fantastic than weapons which never break or armor that never rusts.

While this system might give archers an advantage since they could have augmentations on both the Bow and the Quiver, given the other inherent challenges posed by archery in Alliance, this advantage wouldn't be game breaking. Simple mechanics could also be imposed to limit unbalanced combinations, e.g.: Coatings can only be applied to a Quiver; Reavers/Slayers can only be applied to a Bow. This advantage might also support rise of the "Arcane Archer" concept which some folks have called for, but is mechanically challenging.

The Quiver would recognize the consumption aspects of archery while equalizing archery with other melee systems in terms of degradation. The physical-quiver would keep the representational and roleplay aspect of archery while removing the unbalanced and difficult to marshal aspect of arrow-tracking. Finally, it might offer some versatility and benefit to those players who want to play archers but are hampered by the current system.

This honestly sounds like the best solution I've seen proposed so far. It integrates with other systems. It works for low level characters and high level characters. Its consistent with how other weapon types work.
 
Adding weapon expiration will only escalate players to quickly slap rituals on all their weapons to not deal with the hassle.
 
If it went to quiver per logistics period, How would weapon coatings work?
 
If it went to quiver per logistics period, How would weapon coatings work?

Either:

  • The next N arrows you pull from this quiver are poisoned.
  • Arrows you throw from this quiver are poisoned for each attack until one of them resolves in the same way that melee weapons resolve poison.
The first is similar to the intent of the current poison rules but would add back another resource to track, which seems counter to the intent of the proposed change.

The second makes it work just like melee weapons. It doesn't make realism-sense, but does simplify things. And RP wise, "The poison I poured in the bottom of my quiver ran out just then" is probably good enough. Making poison work the same potentially opens the door to putting the cache/trigger/potion trio on quivers.
 
Then Blacksmithing becomes only slightly more valuable than 1.3 Trapmaking.

I think you are deeply underestimating how the demand for armor tags is going to change in 2.0. It may be difficult to get journeyman/master blacksmiths to even make arrows for the next year or so.
 
I suspect that we'll just see more rendered armor.
 
We have expiration on our weapons in Denver but plot also drops a decent number of production tags. There are large stockpiles of spare weapons and armor floating around. Most people gobble extra swords to have spares. I don’t see our demand going up with 2.0 and no one really renders weapons just so they don’t have to deal with expiration dates. People render their gear so they don’t have to deal with shatters in combat (true in 1.3 and 2.0).

We may see a slight need of large suits of armor (over 100 pp) but even that will be rare as most peeps use AA and I don’t see that changing.
 
We have expiration on our weapons in Denver but plot also drops a decent number of production tags. There are large stockpiles of spare weapons and armor floating around. Most people gobble extra swords to have spares. I don’t see our demand going up with 2.0 and no one really renders weapons just so they don’t have to deal with expiration dates. People render their gear so they don’t have to deal with shatters in combat (true in 1.3 and 2.0).

We may see a slight need of large suits of armor (over 100 pp) but even that will be rare as most peeps use AA and I don’t see that changing.

No offense, but that seems like a thing that needs to go to the ARC. Players in your chapter are getting less utility out of their production skills and spent coin than in any other chapter in the alliance because of it. That is a game balance and customer service issue.
 
Muir - Just to be clear, the only items that have a duration are weapons/armor that are given out through treasure policy within our chapter.
 
Muir - Just to be clear, the only items that have a duration are weapons/armor that are given out through treasure policy within our chapter.

Treasure policy travels outside your chapter; ergo, it affects the rest of us, too.
 
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