New Martial Weapons

While I like the list of martial weapons in the book (I use martial because conflict covers other things in addition to fighting), I was wondering what other ones we could all come up with, you know, just for fun.

My quick list would be: improvised weapon, mace/club/hammer (all the same?), sickle, whip, bolas (same as sling?), short spears (for throwing), and a greatsword (requiring 2 hands to use).

So, stat 'em up!

I’ll start:

Improvised weapon (not ideal):
-1D for attack versus opponent with a non-improvised weapon
-1s for maneuver, and cannot disarm

Add yours…

Maces are here.

In terms of weapon stats, I’d say whip is the same as hook & line, and greatsword is the same as axe.

I’m not purposefully trying to be unimaginative, but I can’t think of anything for those others you listed. I’d say try to find equivalents and then modify those to keep balance and not reinvent the wheel.

Improvised weapon should really be the baseline. No bonus, no penalty. Counts for teeth and claws and rocks.

And, as Rafe notes, the weapons are meant to be general in Mouse Guard. Too much parsing will bog the game down.

Carry on!

Actually, I think there’s a simpler solution.

  1. There’s no need to put up a list of “commonly found weapons” … that list already exists.

  2. This isn’t like Final Fantasy or D&D where every single expansion adds another list of exotic weapons.

  3. If a player wants something special, they can use the crafting rules to some degree. I think there’s another thread in here where I kinda went over how I’d implement crafting in the game (in summary: grab resources, grab tools, make the skill roll).

I should’ve been more specific about improvised weapon. I was thinking if someone wanted to hit someone else with a chair, or mug, or something else on hand, not use claws or teeth.

But using the baseline makes sense…

I’d be tempted to let the first guy who whips out a chair during a fist-fight an extra 1D to a single attack just for amusement, but not if the opponent is using a proper weaponry, and not past the one attack (improvised weapons would tend to break rather cinematicly, and as soon as you do it everybody else will grab one and negate the bonus).

Of course if you do this very often you aren’t going to get much respect from people who don’t appeciate the art of chair-fu…

Have you even fended off a chair? It’s really quite spectacular for removing swords from hand.

I’ve hand-parried a modern school chair (weilded by a psycho 10yo…)… cracked my wrist, cracked the chair, and prevented a broken back (of another 10yo).

If you don’t have a shield, that chair is JUST FINE as a weapon, at least until the weilder takes a couple of good hits from an axe or mass weapon on it. But any cudgel would suffer similarly.

It may be crude, but there is NO reason to treat it as anything less than an unweildy but massive club.

Aramis makes a good point, but I don’t want to decide different bonuses in a conflict depending on what type of improvised weapon is being used, since that would get overly complicated.

Stormtower: if you don’t want to participate in the thread, fine, but don’t shoot it down just because you don’t want to add weapons because it’s “too much like D&D”. I did, after all, say this was just for fun. If it’s not fun for you, fine, then just stay out of it.

Regarding the “cannot disarm,” remember that in Mouse Guard a disarm isn’t necessarily removing the weapon from the opponent’s hand–it can also be rendering the weapon ineffective through circumstances. For example, see the way long weapons and knives interact.

In our games, we’ve used thrown rocks and other improvised weapons/environmental cues to color the conflict actions.

Since there is no rearm, a disarm can’t me much other than removal of the weapon or disabling of the ability to weild it on at least a combat-long basis.

Well, it seemed like a better answer than “just rule-of-thumb it.” In my last session, one of the players Maneuvered and “disarmed” a badger by getting it stuck in some roots and brambles, blunting its claws in the escape attempt.

Probably, re-arming falls into the same category as escalating from one conflict to another: it’s beyond the scope of the conflict rules. Or use the fiction as a guide. I had a player re-arm himself with a spear after losing his sword, but only because 1.) the players had confiscated some bandits’ weapons in a previous conflict, and 2.) the player in question had made a point of distributing the spears to the mice defending the caravan upon entering the new conflict against some crows. So when he wanted to pick up a spear, I just said Yes. It didn’t break anything and made him feel as if what he did mattered.

Rules-wise, I’d agree with you.

Reality-wise, I think I would allow the player to “recover the weapon” himself by having them spend sacrifice an action. Maybe if I was feeling nicer, I’d have them “re-arm or reload” by using manuever. Either way, they would not have the benefits of the weapon for at least one round of the combat. The weapon would need to be “re-picked” at the beginning of the 3-action cycle, once it was “recovered”.

Oh … and Slate – I apologize if I sounded like I was shooting your idea down. You’re free to do whatever you want with your game. I had somehow missed the fact that this thread is in the Hacks section. My earlier comment was really aimed toward people who are only playing with the RAW (Rules As Written) game.