I'm sure we've beaten this dead horse far long enough, but I find it's useful to come back to this topic again and again.
The more stuff people have to remember, the more likely they are to mess it up.
In game design, we often try to add interesting elements to a game without thinking of the most basic consequence - that it's something else people have to be aware of.
The WAR Rules council is finalizing the local policy for 2012 at this moment. While some of the policies they've used in the past have added options to the game, those options were rarely, if ever, utilized by the players.
Since these are extra rules to remember, particularly for traveling players, I'm always in favor of dropping anything that isn't amazing and useful to the game. Is the Archery Modification playtest going to stay in effect? Of course, because florentine with a bow is crazy awesome and really should be a part of the core rules (as it is in that other game). On the other hand, do we really need a policy indicating how a smith can make a weapon out of bone or build a portcullis? I think not.
Here's an idea - you can be a smith and bring a portcullis to game, or make your weapon look like bone and you can tell people you made them. Done.
What do you think?
I thought the point of being able to make a portcullis was for their estate system (with which I am not familiar) and I had assumed there were certain creatures/areas where Bone would have different effects. Were those assumptions wrong?
ReplyDeleteAll the enhancements for the estates were covered under the estate package. So the portcullis there is actually different from the one in the smithing package.
ReplyDeleteAs to the alternate materials, while a minority of creatures could be weak against special weapons, all but the "cold iron" weapons actually had the same call as a normal weapon. And as it stands, if your character wants to make a weapon out of bone, and it looks like it's made of bone, congratulations! It's a bone weapon.
You shouldn't need a special rule for any of those weapon types, and I'm sure plot can handle the few that want to make cold iron weapons by being good plot members.