ABS12: Weapons and Armor reevaluation and changes

All the changes from this page will be added to the master game page at A Basic System 12 (ABS12).

New version number

If you haven't  noticed, I upped the version now to 1.01 including everything changed or added last week. The current version is much larger than the first page written down in the first post of this series.

Change in focus this week
The project will switch now to more analysis and comparison to other systems for a while. This post will address the weapons and armor. Is the numbers accurate for damage and defense in the order presented originally. I don't want to develop the system further without reexamining the balance of offensive and defensive weapons.

Prior information
Here is what I had made prior to today for weapons, damage, and armor.

WeaponsStaff - +1 PL damage
Mace - +2 PL damage [or maybe 1d12/6 ]
Dagger - +3 PL damage [or maybe 1d12/4]
Sword - +4 PL damage [or maybe 1d12/3]
Scaling Damage1 damage = 1
1d12/6 = 1 or 2
1d12/4 = 1 to 3
1d12/3 = 1 to 4
1d12/2 = 1 to 6
(1d12*3) /4 = 1 to 8
1d12 = 1 to 12
1d12 + (1d12/2) = 2 to 18
2d12 = 2 to 24
3d12 = 3 to 36
4d12 = 4 to 48
ArmorCloth - +1 PL defense
Leather - +2 PL defense
Chain - +3 PL defense
Plate - +4PL defense

Running the numbers through the Open Systems presented in my black bear post, I will make some weapons changes.

Dagger according to all the games, should be the lowest. The other weapons very in different systems, especially staff and mace. So I will make those two my own order. I also decided to stick with the scaling damage instead of the static damage number - so I remove those static numbers except for the lowest weapon.

The changes in the dagger may make me reevaluate the thief's stats, choice of weapon, and covert attack damage.

But I will do the definitions reevaluation another day.

Revised Weapon 

Weapons

Dagger - 1 PL damage

Staff - 1d12/6 PL damage [or 1d2]
Mace - 1d12/4 PL damage [or 1d3]
Sword - 1d12/3 PL damage [or 1d4]

Defense

The  armor looks good enough so no changes will be made. Most of the systems had cloth at 0. For now I will let cloth give some protection. I think that cloth would help protect against some forms of scrapes and scratches - very minor type wounds. As well as some temperature type damage from the cold or wind.

Future modern and magic weapons on the damage scale

Keeping the damage for ancient and medieval weapons allows for expansion for modern and futuristic type weapons. I am going to reserve the next three damage scale levels for more modern weapons such as guns or magic. And then the highest ones for futuristic such as lasers and high magic 

Next post in this series

The next post will probably reevaluate the PL Life system, now that I have a little more accurate and variable weapon damage system.

A Basic System 12 (ABS12)
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