iron fragility and lead scarcity

the idea that i am gonna talk about came up in the bastionland discord, it was regarding fragile weapons in a dark sun sorta setting. this was brought up again today in the discord based on a stalker-based hack, so now i am gonna put it here for posterity. these rules are for into the odd and its offshoots wherein there are no to-hit rolls.

i can probably hit something with that old thing

in my mini dungeon i am writing this week, the players will be able to discover some aged and fragile swords and other medieval weaponry. these are really neat, but they are essentially artifacts. they may have historical significance and may be worth money to the right buyer, but they are also weapons. say there's this gorgeous claymore, corroded but still sharp, gemstones since pried from its handle, but a decent looking beast of a weapon.

ancient claymore, d8, bulky, fragile

fragile in this context turns the damage die into a usage die. say you swing this weapon at a grave wight and roll a hefty 8 for damage, what a show, but the darn thing is so old it can't take that sort of beating. clang!  the tip of the blade breaks off, dang, no good. bump that damage die down to d6.

might be interesting to a back-alley museum

later you are facing off against an annoying wrencher trying to steal your gear while sleeping. roll damage. a nice clean 6 and the damaged old thing cuts through the wrencher's stinking yellow coat but gets stuck, with a yank you come away with a handle and just a bit of blade left. d4 damage, and not really all that bulky anymore probably. might be worth a bit of coin, maybe 20 silverbucks from an avid collector, but probably not, just a rusty hunk of metal at this point. this would also be great for any sort of cobbled together weaponry, a bone club, a chair, wine bottle, any sort of weapon that could be considered fragile.

gotta show them ghouls what for

this is also something i think works well for automatic weapons with regards to ammo. i like how this worked with the corrosion cannon from the iron coral, but make it granular. say you got yourself set up with a neat little gatling as those pesky orchard ghouls are planning to overrun the cidery, again. you tried to negotiate with them to no avail and now it's fucking lead'o'clock.

gatling gun, d10, blast, automatic, stationary

this bad boy can do some damage, and say you roll 10 on damage, yeah that mows down a bunch of em, but still they come. your ammo is running low, d8 damage now. it sure is fun to fire a hundred rounds a second, but bullets don't grow on trees, at least round here. keep bumping the die down when rolling max damage until you are all out. d10>d8>d6>d4>0

so that's the thing. i tend to like elegant solutions, the fewer rolls the better, so if you have some sort of automatic weapon or a fragile boy, why don't you usage die the damage die. i really like doing the max score because that way it feels good before you lose some power, yeah you did a critical hit, but physics, yeah good shooting, kid, but you kind of held that trigger a bit longer than you should have.