I've seen one system like this which I've always liked. While I'm up on all the geek culture I have very little actual experience playing pen & paper RPG's, but the one game I did play with friends a few times way back in the late 90's called Palladium, a medieval fantasy offshoot of another sci-fi/multiverse one called Rifts.Abomination said:I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Non-enchanted weapon upkeep should probably require you to have some equipment that would be used for it. A whetstone, weapon oil, scabbard and... rag? Every night you'll use a bit of oil so I guess you could run out.
The mechanics surrounding proper weapon degradation requires a total overhaul of most games. It's not just weapons, it's also armour. Dents, rust, leather cracking... I want to see a game that when a poorly equipped enemy hits you in the chest you take ZERO damage, your steel breastplate absorbs the whole thing but the internal durability has taken a small immeasurable decrease to that region of your armour. Maybe your character staggers for a bit, loses some "endurance" but otherwise you're good. It'd open up to all sorts of situations - weapons that flat out penetrate armour, weapons that do a lot of damage to armour or maybe a weapon that does a bit of both.
Balance issues? Make the stuff as expensive as it always was. A full set of plate armour is supposed to cost more than 10 peasants could earn in their lifetime.
I feel games are missing some interesting concepts or considerations when engaging in combat in medieval settings.
Anyways how they handled it is every set of armour would have it's own durability HP and DC hit rating. So maybe Leather Armour would have something like a DC of 12 and 80 hp and full plate might have 18 dc and 250 hp. The DM roles the D20 for the attacker, you role the D20 to parry. If the attacker beats your D20+parry modifier with a roll that is over the armour DC then your character takes the damage, if it beats you but the roll is under your armour AC then your armour takes the damage.
I later got introduced to proper AD&D through Balder's Gate but I always liked and preferred the way they did things in Palladium. Much more involved than simply compiling everything into a single hit or miss number and it makes a whole lot more sense.