Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Beginning Armor and Weapons for Joy

First things first, Joy starts-out in her family's mostly abandoned Farm-house, a type of fortified manor-baserri in the Old South region of the Low-Lands. Before she goes anywhere, she'll want to sort out what armor and weapons she might want to claim...



Armor Options
  1. Leather armor. Waxed, with elaborate knot-work along seams. Wearer gains +1 to all Saves versus acids or other contact-damage substances. A pair of thin gloves and heavier mittens are attached to the sleeves on red cords. The hood can be pulled over to serve as short-term face-protection, but the breather-kit is missing.
  2. Bruthem-Hide cuirass (+2 to AC against all piercing/slashing attacks).
  3. Woodrunner Leather. Wearer gains 20% bonus to Move Silently and Hide in cover while in the woods, all year-round--the stuff changes with the seasons.
  4. Silk Cord Armor. Very lightweight. On a successful DEX check (gains +1 bonus), any attack not hitting on a natural 20 gets re-rolled. 
  5. Wicker and hive-paper apiary-armor. Wearer gains +4 to Reaction Rolls with Bees and related creatures as well as a +2 bonus to all Saves related to stings.
  6. Quill-reinforced ladies' field corset with razor-lace and six hooks for attaching a variety of skirts and the like. Three pairs of fish-scale gloves and a shield-parasol are included.
  7. Gram's old-fashioned fighting gown. Wearer gains ability to spend 1 hit point to effectively 'dodge' any attack that would otherwise score a hit so long as it was not a natural 19 or 20.
  8. Full-set of man-sized chain-mail in Jasqueni-style; octagonal links of iron-bound bronze. Heavy, won't respond if you can't address it properly.
  9. Crab-chitin and velvet armor. Wearer takes one less point of damage from all blunt attacks and can move freely in water. They also receive a +2 bonus to Reaction Rolls with aquatic/amphibious things.
  10. Morlock Scalp-and-Hide war-harness. Grants -4 on Reaction Rolls with all non-morlock humanoids. Spontaneously casts Dispel Magic once per day, but requires contact.
  11. Half-plate armor, custom-fitted to a young boy. The leather-bits are all rotted or crumbled into dust. The main torso-covering armor could be made to fit with some work.
  12. Reinforced Carpet armor. Exceptionally well-made suit all decked-out with a variety of tassels in a style that hasn't been popular in over a hundred years. It looks as good as it did the day it was purchased and seems to resist stains. Wearer gains +2 to all Saves involving Stains or similar unsightly blemishes. Prone to water-logging, all movement reduced to 1/4 normal if the suit becomes soaked or soggy.
  13. Bone-studded leather armor. Wearer gains +1 to Saves versus all immaterial attacks.
  14. Antique Gloomleather item.
  15. Lamplighter Armor. Wearer gains +2 to all Saves versus fire.
  16. Fishscale Leather. DEX bonus to AC is doubled.
  17. Badger-pelt armor. CON bonus doubled, suffer -2 to Reaction Rolls with woodland beasts.
  18. Blackened Leather Armor. Wearer gains +2 on Saves versus Black Smoke or other aerial/gaseous/miasmic attacks. Also grants +20% bonus to Hide in Shadows.
  19. Studded Leather. The inside is lined with three layers of wermsilk.
  20. Spider-Carapace Armor. Leather +1. Wearer moves through webs freely, but incurs a -2 on all Reaction Rolls with arachnids until they forge a proper pact.

Weapons
  1. Dozens of daggers, knives and assorted cutlery. (10% chance of finding something with a +1 bonus to hit or to damage for every half-hour spent sorting through it all.)
  2. Scores of Short Swords, the preferred weapon of choice for most of your family.
  3. Bastard Sword with half-basket hilt or a child's training flamberge.
  4. Short Bow. Composite, and rigged for winter-use. +1 to damage.
  5. Long Bow. Suffers no 'to hit' penalty out to extreme range despite weather, smoke, or other conditions.
  6. Hand-Axe. Well-balanced, can be thrown (+2 to hit) or used as a parrying weapon (all incoming attacks suffer -1 penalty to hit and damage). If used to bludgeon opponent the blunt-end does double subdual damage.
  7. Light Prod-style crossbow with thirty hand-made 'bullets,' and an assortment of stones. Yes, marbles will work as well.
  8. Short-hafted window-trident.
  9. A large random selection of spears, javelins and pole-arms. Name it, you'll find it in the stacks, piles, racks and so on.
  10. Slingshot. Dozens of varieties.
  11. Wire-garrotte loop-staff.
  12. Mooring pins, make-shift clubs, furniture legs, other bludgeons and spiked weapons. (30% chance of a Jentil spiked-club or a Basagun heavy morningstar.)
  13. Man-catcher. The left-tine sticks.
  14. Maces, hammers, military picks of all sorts, types and sizes.
  15. Hunting bows of all types.
  16. Caltrop-flinging sling with three dozen caltrops of varying sizes.
  17. Brass-plated Fighting Syringe.
  18. Puffer/Lobber. (Hollow tube fitted with air-bladder and bellows, used to loft clutches of small darts, needles, powders, fluid-filled sacs, etc.)
  19. Long Sword or Airship Cutlass in battered scabbard, neither look like much but inflict +2 bonus to damage, with normal chances to hit.
  20. Trench-Knife that has been in the family for generations.

Special (1d10)
  1. Jelly-Jabber. Spatulate spear with splash-guard meant for use against Jellies. Immobilizes all blobs on a natural 19 or 20 for 10 rounds. Jellies suffer -2 penalty to hit wielder.
  2. Climper. Beetle-shaped dagger with a bifurcated blade that snaps closed when triggered--this causes double damage, but the weapon remains attached to the victim and the wielder must then grapple or release the thing. It will inflict an automatic 1d4 damage per round for next 6 rounds unless it is removed prior--tearing it loose inflicts 3d4 damage. If you know the whistle command, it can be made to release without doing further damage.
  3. Rosgin's Petard. A relic left-over from one of your ancestor's brief stints in an engineering battalion. This bomb has six legs and will walk toward any designated target if you give it proper commands in Low Kaznik.
  4. Jory-Bottles. (2d4) heavy glass bottles fitted with strange assemblies of needles, tinsel and vanes. They explode causing 2d4 damage within a 20' radius per level of spell they capture.
  5. Long Rifle. Ivory-inlaid, with richly engraved barrel--a presentation piece given to your great grandsire for some heroic feat no one ever told you about. The rifle is extremely accurate (+4 to hit, out to extreme range), but not particularly powerful (inflicts 1d4+2). The case, powder horns, and other gear altogether make this a very valuable antique and perhaps some collector might make you an offer for it.
  6. Heavy Flail. Three-headed, each one a screaming gargoyle-figure. Once per day the wielder can command the figurines to attack an enemy out to medium distance. Each figurine can make up to three attacks as a three HD monster inflicting 1d4+2 damage per claw, then they revert back to bronzish figures. They remain chained together the entire time and if 'killed' they cannot be animated again for one week.
  7. Glass Scimitar. One any natural 20, the wielder gets an additional attack at +2 to hit. Yes, the effect stacks. If exposed to moonlight, the blade will become insubstantial for the next month.
  8. Kenril's Prodd. A goatsfoot-style Prodd-crossbow that is +1 to hit. Three times per day the weapon can cause any projectile fired from it to burst into gray flames causing double damage, triple versus all shades/shadows.
  9. Iron-Fist Hammer. Does 3d6 plus double STR bonus against all undead, otherwise it's a normal heavy war-hammer.
  10. Brace of three pistols with all necessary gear and ammunition. Taken off of the corpse of a bandit-chieftain by one of your uncles. If visible, will incur a -2 Reaction penalty with bandits. 


Joy in Wermspittle

9 comments:

  1. Nice tables. There's a fair amount of world-flavor packed in there.

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    1. Thanks--that's the idea; deliver the world-building via the tables as much as possible. Saves on boring lectures, box-text and all that. It seems to be working. She made some interesting choices based on what was available...

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  2. Lots of options! I would have expected to send her packing down the road with a some hard-tack and a half-eaten jar of jam in a holey bag, a rusty kitchen knife, and wearing a pot on her head.

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    1. Oh yeah...lots of options, but the longer she takes to dig around in all this stuff, the more encounters, wandering monsters and Uh-Oh-rolls I get to make. Also, taking a few things lets them be more special than if she loads herself down with a ton of crap--the idea is to give her a lot to choose from and make the decision making process a challenge by presenting her with some pretty good options to consider and a very finite amount that can be carried, even with her Pack Goose.

      Your suggestion is one of the outcomes that could still happen, depending on how she handles her investigation of the Farmstead. There are nasty things in the cellar that she nearly ran afoul of, and she is in the process of deciding what to take, what to leave and where to go next...after a bit of a wash-up, some hard-tack & jam, and a light nap behind a barricaded door.

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    2. Pack goose? My Greyhawkian halflings favor the pack goat but a pack goose is new to me.

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    3. Yep. Pack-Goose. There are about a dozen of the things still waddling about on the farmstead, since there's plenty of water, grazing and it is well-protected. The geese have been bred to be very sturdy, if waddlesome beasts of burden used for various chores, but generally they serve best as pack-animals. sometimes the kids try to ride them, but the geese make lousy mounts. They are also too noisy and clumsy to be used for hunting, but they can be brought out to drag large carcasses back and to help pull travois or sleds stacked with wood and so on. We'll have a Beast of Burden/Pack Animal table to go with the armor, weapons, equipment and such like in the player's guide.

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    4. Pack-geese? Why, in the Old Country, we used draft-turkeys!
      http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/bjju8powggcjwl55sgyq.jpg

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    5. Yep. They breed Pack-Geese in the Old South. They also make use of Dodoes as working animals at times, despite the rare talking one that shows up to make trouble . Turkeys are hunted for food, but so far no one had used them as draft-beasts yet...but maybe they ought to consider doing that!

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