Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Castles and Crusades Arms and Armor House Rules

There are a lot of things I like about TLG's Castles and Crusades RPG. However, the Arms, Armor, and Equipment writeups are not on that list. I find them cludgy, over-padded, and in some cases, just nonsensical. I've griped about them a few times over on Dragonsfoot (you can see the original thread here, and another later thread here).

I've been doing some fiddling on my C&C campaign setting (which I might elaborate more on with another post or three down the road), and I figure I'd share my weapons and equipment list. Since blogspot isn't so good with the formatting and whatnot, I'll provide it as a fairly high-quality JPG.


Just a note - under the weapon sizes, you'll note that some weapons (mostly polearms) are listed as "L+" and there's a note about looking at other rules. "Extra-large" weapons are especially long or unwieldy weapons that cannot be used by Dwarves or Gnomes. Halflings and small humanoids like Goblins can't use Large weapons, and treat Medium sized weapons as Large (meaning that they have to use them two-handed if they aren't already). I consider Dwarves and Gnomes as large/strong enough to use weapons like spears or staves or large crossbows because, even though they are short, they aren't so puny that they can't handle one of these weapons, but they aren't able to handle weapons that require significant height to weild properly, like halberds, great swords, long bows, and the like.

Anyhow, I'd like some feedback and see what people think, especially other Castles and Crusades players. One thing you won't see on purpose is item weights - I tend to treat encumbrance as "ignore it until it becomes unreasonable, and then we'll deal with it". I caution players against carrying too much gear, and if it becomes a problem, I advise them that maybe carrying six long swords, a heavy crossbow, a spare suit of plate, and that anvil might not be such a great idea...

Ok, comments, questions?

2 comments:

Zachary Houghton said...

I'm gonna have to try this out in my game! I like the basic premise, but will discuss it with my group.

Solid work!

Jack Badelaire said...

Cool, thanks. I mean, it's nothing that special, but I was just so unhappy with their published lists, I figured I could bang my own together easily enough. Actually, the Basic Fantasy RPG armor and weapons list was a big inspiration for my own list.