Weapon Proficiencies

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Weapon Proficiencies:

A weird lumpy limb that wiggled forth somewhere in d&ds many lives.
Often disdained, but generally forgotte.

 And not something I've seen anyone try to  "OSRify" . 


BUT TODAY

I will do something with its wretchedness. 

If you have spend anytime reading homebrew content you will have encountered numerous house rules for making weapons more complicated and differentiated . 
So that it matters that a spear is long and an axe chops and a warhammer is really good for punching holes in plate etc.

The other thing you might read is rules for people doing tactical stuff in combat like "full dodges", "suppressing fire"  , "shield bashes" etc

The trouble is these are often over looked, forgotten or neglected by players.

Which is BAD if you are perpetual tinkerer dm who wants to try out all these little mechanic options.

And you don't (and shouldn't ) want to have constantly remind the players about them.

However there is going to be some players that do care about it, and chances are they are playing a Fighter.

So making use of all this underused potential is give Fighters a form of Weapon Proficiencies.

Except I'm calling them Training Regimes , (Regime  for short) 

The Dempsey Roll might be known to a boxer , but unless they have trained , sparred , and keep themselves in condition they will be unable to apply it to its best potential. 





A regime means the fighter has studied and regular trains in the use of particular weapon, weapon technique, marshal strategy, special move, new foot work , esoteric stance , etc


A Regime will allow a fighter to , for example, not just use a spear like everyone else, but use it with those weird reach rules you came up with.

 
They have one per level actively undertaken and practiced enough for it to be as second nature to them as drawing breath.

They can know far more than this, but they limited on how many they have available in their muscle memory and reflexes.

More regimes can be learned from studying books, sifus, weapon masters , secret schools and sometimes their own experiments. It will take anywhere from a week to a month to learn one.

They can swap a regime over, but it requires a week to get up to speed again with the techniques involved.


Examples of Fighter Training Regimes:

Desperate Defense : The "shields will be splintered" rule

 The Long Stance : Always resolve your attacks first when you have longer weapon

Opportunity Knocks: Free attack with a shield bash if your opponent misses twice in a row

Cloud Step : If fighter does nothing but move and avoid attacks their base armour class is their dexterity instead of 10.

Le jeu de la hache : while using an axe 2-handed or axe type pole weapon , if this fighter reduces an opponent to zero or lower hitpoints , they can make immediate additional attack against someone/thing in reach . The benefits of this regime can only be used once in a round



Notes
This assumes any class can use any weapon or classes have a set list of weapons available to use. It's not another thing to spend proficiency on , but I guess it could??

Its also very similar to feats; however they can be swapped in and out in downtime and shouldn't stack or provide passive bonuses like feats. Some feats could be repurposed to this system though.


All Regimes don't have to be in equal in power, and some could even be better versions of more common ones.

 The time and resources it takes to learn a new regime is going to vary on how rare and/or powerful it is as well.

Let how much you make wizard players sweat to learn new spells be your guide for how expensive or difficult it is to learn a new regime.
 

scrap notes, system for equipment , skills and background

Print PDF Brendan  (http://www.necropraxis.com/) was asking about one roll equipment systems and asked if I should bother typing up one of mine and he was like yeah do that and I was like yeah cool and man if you don't like run on sentances you must be hating this blog

ANYWAY:

Been trying to jam as much of the character creation system together as I can and also keep it "new school" in the sense you get have a special snowflake but not in the way that requires 2 hours of creation.

This was my way of putting skills, starting equipment, and background together:

PAST:
Your past determines what stuff you have and any usefully capabilities you may have picked up.
When you are playing the game and you try something that requires an ability check and you think that your past might be relevant tell the g.m. If they are convinced you will get an Advantage to the roll. Make a note of this, because you will get Advantage any other time a situation similar to this happens. Then make a Intelligence check. If you succeed you can keep bringing up your Past in future. If you fail, that's it. That is all your character managed to get the hang off.

You may choose or roll a past from below. The weapon and armour description is mainly for how you picture your character, ignore it if it is not interesting. If you to have a Past not on here either talk to the g.m before hand and arrange something or just write it down and pick 4 items from any pasts equipment. HOWEVER you will have 5 seconds to do so. If pick something that is not actually there that counts as a wasted choice. You will need someone else to count out loud at you.

1. SCAVENGER:
Starts with:
Sacks, long hooked pole, protective mask, shovel
your weapons and armour is:
"scrouged and repaired"

2.HUNTER
Starts with:
dried meats, snares, calls, scent
your weapons and armour is:
"self made and simple"

3.REFUGEE:
Starts with:
esoteric cultural item, concealed jewellery,compass,trade item
your weapons and armour is:
"distinctive and unfamilar"

4.PEASANT:
Starts with:
domesticated animal, basic trade good, lard, homebrew
your weapons and armour is:
"repurposed tools"

5. PETTY CRIMINAL
Starts with:
bad drugs, stolen valuable, blinding dust, caltrops
your weapons and armour is:
"stolen and/or easily concealable"

6.DILETTANTE:
Starts with:
jewellery, weird drugs, reading material, clockwork toy
your weapons and armour is:
"gaudy and distinctive"

7:EXPLORER
Starts with:
lantern, maps, crowbar, chalk
your weapons and armour is:
"ancient and rare"

8:MYSTIC
Starts with:
divination tools, spirit cleansing incense, fireworks, blankets
your weapons and armour is:
"anointed and festooned"


Design notes:
There is only 8 because I'm having a lot of new people play soon and too many choices actually slows people down apparently. I love them myself but hey. The pasts are biased to ones that kinda lead to a life of being a wandering danger junkie as opposed to a general cross section of life.
If someone wants to be a broke blacksmith or a disgraced scholar that's fine though.
Need to rethink some of equipment .

No one has a tent or some other stuff but plenty of the Pasts have jewellery or trade goods and I figure trying to trade flour for a tent or trying to find a fence is a good way of meeting people and starting stuff.
Otherwise desperately ill equipped is fine too.

Still haven't worked out how I want to do weapons and armour and I might leave off the descriptors in the final version, as they might confuse beginners.

The schrodinger's skill system owes a debt to Zzarchov's excellent Neoclassical Geek Revival

it's wizard all the way down to a burning core of wizards harry everywhere even that lamp wizards

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These class ideas seem to be unpopular , (and.... no I don't have a bad socialist joke to put in here)
 so I will do just one more. Until I think of some more.

Here are some wizards that are just done by making the usual access to wizard stuff different

Blood mage: All spells with a duration you have cast are cancelled if lose consciousness or die. You get 1 extra spell of each level you can cast when you are at 1 hit point

Astrologer : Your spells are random determined, but include the cleric list. Reroll your spell selection (include % to know spells) each week. You may cast any divination spell as if it were a level lower.

Illusionist : You may cast illusions spells as if they were one level lower. Any non-illusion spell you cast has 50% chance of being illusionary. This is rolled in secret by the d.m.

Summoner: You have the levels of spell you can cast but do not cast spells. Instead you may try and summon and bind something. You spend a level of spell (like a first level spell)
The d.m then rolls on a random encounter table suitable. That thing shows up. The chance of it doing what you want is = your % to learn spell with the level of the spell being the creatures hit dice adjusted by the level of spell used. On subsequent rounds you can spend more spells to try and wrangle it.

Sawbones: you can't target a creature with a spell unless you have a bone of that species on you. If you have a bone of creature of more hit dice than you can burn that burn to get a spell of the highest level you know. Only once per species of creature.

Necromancer: You can cast necromancy spells if they were one level lower than they are. You do not reagin spells with rest and memorization. Instead you must ritually kill something(s) with a max hit point totally at least as high as the sum of all your spell levels.

Elementalist:  Elemental aligned spells are cast by you as your chosen element. (so a fireball would be lightning ball, cold ball or gravity ball for air, water, and earth elementalist respective)To regain spells you must rest submerged in that element. This does not effect because you do this trance preparation thing. Each time you get access to a new level of spells to regain that level you have to be exposed to a more intense expression of that element.

Hungry Ghost : you have to roll to hit with your spells. On the plus side you get fighter attack bonuses. You can also sacrifice a number of spell levels to reduce the damage done by attack by that amount.

"Mandrake gestures hypnotically: All the bullshit totally happens. Fuck you."

Prestigiator: Select 5 first level spells. You do not automatically cast them, instead you have % chance of them working as would a thief with their thief skills. You can assign which % goes where. You must explain how you are doing these things with gimmicks, flash powder ,sleight of hand and misdirection. Because you are not actually making magic happen you fucking lunatic. At 3rd level I guess you get to make a second level "illusion" happen and so forth. Up to 5 powers of each level. Like it would kind make sense if the % didn't automatically start at your current level but this class is pretty much batshit so just do whatever. You have the option of not taking a first level spell and having a thief skill instead.

Dread Bearer Of Ebon Blade: you have a dagger and one 1st level spell effect. Every time you stab something that spell effect happens. At 3rd level you get a second level spell effect etc. By "dread" I mean these are doomed assassin lackeys that are never going to make it past 3rd level and they totally brought into this bullshit because of the name.

Blight: you cast spells without memorization (if you do that kinda thing) . You may not learn spells from scrolls or books , but do so by eating brains. Any spell you cast on yourself has maximum duration. Any spell cast on you by someone else has a 50% chance of effecting the next person you touch as well. You may not go to sleep until you have cast your maximum amount of spells.


Witch: you have access to both cleric and wizard spells , but you may not effect someone with a spell unless you know their true name or having something personal of theirs like a lock of hair or a diary or something.

Fighterism+requests

Print PDF Sporadic posting might follow , depending on how long it takes to get my computer fixed.
It is getting fixed because it is broken.

Anyway here is a quick mechanic thing for fighters if you feel they need improved damage abilities or the like at higher levels. And/or you don't want them to need magical items to "keep up"

 Pretty much DCCs stunt die but diet version for less mechanical impact on your d&d fighter.
At level 4 you get 1d4 to add to damage , OR your armour class vs one attack, OR someone elses armour class if you can feasibly get in the way. At level 6 it becomes a d6 and at level 8 a d8 , etc.


Variations / complications:
Allow the die roll points to be split amongst the things it can be spend on.

Allow additional effects to be added on to damage at cost of a certain amount of points from the die.
SO blinding a foe for a round might worth 2 points, or knocking them back 10 feet 3 points or disarming them 4 points.

Possible (slight) risk of "oh only fighters can do stunts because of this"  like the "only thieves can sneak" rumoured rule emergent property. Why would you do that? Let everyone do dumb stuff as usual, and fighters can get to do dumb stuff as well putting the hurt on.

Add/spend the die roll on saving throw(s) as well.

Damage resistance? Nah I think this is too mechanically significant compared to damage and a.c bonuses.



ALSO:
Patrick has been doing blog post requests 
I NOW TOO AM DOING THEM FOR THIS BLOG RIGHT HERE BECAUSE HEY I DON'T ONLY HAVE THE GOOD IDEAS
SO post your requests on the comments