Today’s release of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia PDF reminded me of one of my favorite parts of the game: the weapon mastery rules. Fighters in RC D&D could improve their ability with specific weapons, increasing their damage dice and getting extra effects like AC bonuses, knocking opponents for a loop, and so on.
I know I’m a little late for Fighter’s Week, but…
When you defeat a worthy foe with your signature hammer, you may take this move the next time you level up:
Crack the Shell
When you hit a target with a hammer, you can choose to reduce its armor by 1d4 instead of doing your damage.
When you have “Crack the Shell”, you can take any of the following moves when you level up:
Bring the Hammer Down
When you use Crack the Shell, you deal 1d6 damage in addition to reducing the target’s armor.
Everything Looks Like A Nail
When you Bend Bars/Lift Gates using your hammer, you can choose to automatically succeed, but the item is always destroyed beyond repair and it always make a lot of noise.
Ring His Bell
When you successfully hack & slash with your hammer, you can knock the target for a loop in addition to doing your damage, making him unable to act for a few minutes until his head stops ringing.
Earthshaker
When you slam your hammer into the ground, roll +STR. On a 10+, you create a small quake that knocks everyone nearby off their feet. On a 7-9, people are shaken, but still up. Either way, the shockwave still knocks things off shelves, shatters fragile objects, and such.
Groundbreaker
Requires Earthshaker, level 6-10
When you use Earthshaker, spikes erupt from the ground doing 1d6 damage to everyone in the move’s range except yourself. This move tends to be rough on the local environment; walls will crack and ceilings will collapse.
This is a great concept for some custom moves. My only issue is with “Groundbreaker.” Since fiction is such an important piece of DW, spikes erupting from the ground on a non-magical melee attack seems odd.
Maybe the move could be situation-based on environment. i.e. (Dungeon) Slam your hammer into the ground at an enemy’s feet and the floor crumbles beneath causing them to fall to the floor below.
Either way, these are great custom moves. Well done.
yeah! I really like this idea.
And who says it isn’t partly magical?
Ha, fair point.
Sean Dunstan would you say this matches up with the Fighting Style moves i posted for fighterweek?
Tim Franzke I’d have to go back and check.
Tim Franzke It looks like we’re kind of going in different directions; I was approaching this more from the idea of “I am better at using my weapon than most people who use this weapon” over a formal style of combat.
The weapon mastery rules also appeared in the “Black Box” Masters Set for basic D&D. This one – http://www.retroroleplaying.com/cdnd/cdnd-masterset.php