All Shall be Splintered!

 

The Problem(s)

    Breath of the Wild's durability mechanics was something I hated at the time. The constant need to go and find new weapons was a pain. I couldn't just use all my cool weapons all the time, I needed to take care of them, pick my battles, and employ strategy. Fighting that big scary looking thing with a stick was not a risk I wanted to take. BotW thrives on emergent gameplay like this, that's why it comes up in OSR discourse.

    I've always had the idea of adding durability to weapons in my games. It was appealing to have equipment fail and need to have to improvise, fall back on secondaries, etc. in order to survive, especially when you're deep in a dungeon. However, systems for things like this were cumbersome and often too crunchy for my kind of easy, fast gameplay (and ADHD-riddled players). So, buried it in the part of my mind meat dedicated to fun but impractical ideas.

    I've dredged this idea back up after reading over part two of this post by Apotheosis of the Invisible City, which talks about the low-quality swords that non-specialized village blacksmiths would have made. It made me think of how many OSR systems brush off the quality and type of weapon as simply flavor, simply because easy-to-understand rules are often wanted in these systems. Of course, this was also dredged up from the depths of my mind dedicated to "rpg things that bug me but I couldn't be fucked about fixing them.

    So, I think marrying these two needs with the often praised "shields shall be splintered" rule of many old-school games could bring some good results. I'm hoping that they will add a new angle of tactics and agency while also adding the need for restocking on weapons. Listed below in as much brevity as possible:

All Shall Be Splintered!

1. Everything has a number of charges based on its quality. I would recommend a standard range of 1-3, but this could use some tweaking.
2. Everything can use a charge in order to get its maximal usage.
3. Almost everything that can be spent can be repaired, although it is very possible to "total" equipment. The price is at the referee's discretion.
• Field repairs can be made, but if not done by a specialist with their tools, there's a high chance of it breaking. See the below rules or just have a 1-in-x chance.
4. (Optional) Every time 1 is rolled, the piece of equipment loses a charge. The sublist is just my ramblings on how this could be used.
• Maybe just this on its own, as opposed to using the shattering rules.
• Instead of using 1, use 13, like UVG's ammunition rules.
• Make it so that only the player's decision can shatter the weapon. For example, a quality spear user rolls three ones at various points, but only the decision to take max damage actually makes it unusable.
5. Examples:
• Wooden shields have one battering in them while metal ones have three.
• Ancient bronze swords might be able to crack one carapace before snapping while a finely crafted steel one may be able to push through three.
• A mule might have only 1 hard push before it's exhausted, while a purebred warcrab could have 4 full tilt charges before it's spent.

Always wondered what those things at the front were. Anyway, this is just here for visual interest. Just imagine his crossbow is about to snap in half or something.

    Just so you all know I pulled all of this out of my ass and none of it has been play tested.

    Anyway, these are my barebones rules to add some flavor and more risk to game tables. Tell me if you liked them, or if they made you vomit a little then swallow it back. And let me know if my prose is weird, been trying to work on my technical writing skills.

        - Isaac