Now it’s time to turn out attention to equipment, and in particular to weapons and armour.

Weapons

We’ve already established a number of things about weapons: they’re mostly improvised, they have at least three statistics in close combat (damage, reach and speed), and they can be broken down into Scrapping weapons (for close combat and throwing) and Archery weapons (bows and crossbows).

Let’s concentrate on close combat weapons for the moment. One of the core ideas of this game is that characters probably can’t afford properly forged weapons – their costs range up into the gold pieces so the idea that city scum like the player characters will be able to afford them is hilarious. Therefore the majority of weapons will cost somewhere between a couple and a few dozen copper. They’ll mostly be improvised out of easily-available materials, and they’ll have a sort of vicious charm to them.

Because of this makeshift style of weaponry, I want to include a weapon creation system where players can build their own unique weapons out of rubbish and tools. You should be able to improve your chair leg by putting a nail through it, and you should be able to make your meat cleaver into a polearm by tying it to a broom handle. I also want weaponry to be flavourful, so I don’t want it just be generic categories of weapons that you then describe, but actual items that might get used.

Just to get the ideas flowing, here’s a list of common objects that might get used as weaponry: sharp rocks, sharp sticks, broom handles, sledge hammers, butchers knifes, hooks, scythes, rakes, shovels, cleavers, shivs, lengths of pipe, chairlegs, half a brick in a sock, a sack of doorknobs, blacksmiths hammers, and iron pokers.

In terms of the traits that weapons will possess, we already know they’ll have a damage, a reach and a speed. It also makes sense, I think, to have a minimum Muscle required to the weapon effectively, because that stops weedy guys hauling around huge sledgehammers. I could include an accuracy trait, but I think that’s probably something which should be reserved for proper weapons. Some weapons should also have special traits to represent their unique qualities. They also need a base cost in copper pieces.

Here’s a list of weapons then:

Weapon Damage Speed Reach Muscle Cost Special Shiv -3 +3 -3 -3 1cp Knife +0 +2 -2 -3 3cp Cleaver +3 -1 +0 -1 5cp Butchery Hook -1 +2 -2 -2 2cp Hook Rake +0 -2 +2 -1 2cp Two Hands Shovel +1 -1 +1 -1 3cp Two Hands Chairleg +0 +1 +0 -1 2cp Blunt Pipe +1 +0 +0 +0 2cp Blunt Rod +2 +1 +0 -1 4cp Hammer +3 -1 +1 +1 5cp Blunt Sledge +8 -3 +2 +2 10cp Knockdown, Blunt, Two Hands Brick -1 -2 -3 -3 free Blunt

The special traits are as follows:

Butchery: The weapon is particularly well suited for hewing bone and flesh. The cost to use the Cripple wound effect (a critical effect) drops by one (to 4).

Hook: The weapon is made to be useful for disarming your opponents. As long as you inflict at least one wound effect on your opponent with an attack you can also Disarm them for free.

Blunt: The weapon does not have a sharp edge. You cannot use the Cut or Bleed wound effects.

Knockdown: The weapon is incredibly heavy. As long as you inflict at least one wound effect on your opponent with an attack you can also use Knock for free.

Two Hands: You need to wield this weapon in two hands. If you wield it in one, the Muscle require rises by 3.

Now we need to look at how we can play around with these weapons. You can apply the following “processes” to a weapon when buying it to improve it. If you want to alter the weapon in play you can apply these processes using the Craft skill with a TN as specified in the description.

Sharpen: You hone the edge of the weapon, or sharpen it to a point in order to inflict more damage. You cannot use this process on a blunt weapon, but any other weapon so sharpened gets an extra +1 damage. This costs 1cp, or requires a TN10 Craft check. You can only sharpen a weapon once, and the sharp edge only lasts for a single combat (because the weapon isn’t intended to take an edge).

Spike: You attach spikes to the weapon which stab into your target when you strike them. You can only use this process on a blunt weapon and any weapon spiked like this loses the restriction on Cut and Bleed wound effects. This costs 1cp, or a requires a TN 10 Craft check. You can only apply one set of spikes to a weapon.

Reinforce: You add extra weight and structure to the weapon making it heavier and sturdier. You can use this process on any weapon, increasing the damage rating by 1, but decreasing the speed by one and increasing the Muscle requirement by one. This costs 1cp, or requires a TN 10 Craft check. You can apply this up to three times to one weapon, but each additional time requires an additional copper (2 for the second, 3 for the third) and TN 15 and 20 Craft checks respectively.

Lengthen: You attach a rod or pole to the weapon making it longer and giving it greater reach. You can use this process on any weapon with a reach of less that 3, increasing the reach rating by one but decreasing the speed by one and increasing the Muscle requirement by one. This costs 1cp, or requires a TN 10 Craft check. You can apply this up to three times to one weapon, but each additional time requires an additional copper (2 for the second, 3 for the third) and TN 15 and 20 Craft checks respectively.

Combine: You literally strap two weapons together in order to gain the benefits of both at a cost of speed. You first need both weapons you wish to combine and then you need a successful Craft check with a TN equal to the total cost of both x2. You cannot pay to have a weapon combined, you must do it with the Craft skill. When you combine weapons, choose one weapon to be the base weapon, and then replace any one of its traits other than speed with the trait from the other weapon (including a special trait). Then reduce the speed of the weapon by one.

Jamar wants to make a fearsome weapon for his brother. He has a hammer and a cleaver to hand so he uses the hammer as the base weapon and then fits the cleaver blade alongside the flat hammerhead. He removes the blunt special trait from the hammer and replaces it with butchery, before dropping the speed of the finished weapon to -2.

It’s worth just considering what the characters might feasibly be up against. Here’s a broadsword that a guard might carry:

Damage +6, Speed +2, Reach +2, Muscle +2; Forged (gives a +1 to all attack rolls with the weapon)

How much would you pay for such a thing? A few hundred copper at the very least…

Now let’s consider archery weapons. Archery weapons are going to be very expensive compared to scrapping weapons, and buying even the shoddiest of bows is probably going to cost a starting character almost everything.

In terms of traits archery weapons need the following: Damage, Penetration, Reload, Archery, Cost. Penetration measure how much armour they ignore when they hit, and reload is how fast you can reload one to fire with (in actions). Archery replaces Muscle as the requirement ability here, because firing a bow without training is pretty much impossible. Because of the focus on close-up combat, they don’t have a range trait – the GM should intercede if a shot seems improbable.

Weapon Damage Penetration Reload Archery Cost Hunter’s bow +0 0 0 +1 10cp Short bow +1 1 0 +1 15cp Long bow +3 2 0 +2 20cp Composite bow +5 3 0 +3 30cp Hand crossbow +1 1 1 -2 20cp Light crossbow +3 3 2 -2 30cp Heavy crossbow +5 5 3 -1 50cp

As you can see, these weapons are all pricey, but it should be affordable for a character to start with a bow assuming they have decent training in their background. Crossbows are pretty much off-limits for newcomers. A quiver or quarrel of 5 arrows is 1cp.

These statistics are all for the low-quality knock-off black market archery weapons that manage to make their way down to the lowest tiers. Actual bows and crossbows made my actual craftsmen for sale to the nobility or military probably have statistics double these ones, at the very least.

Armour

With weapons out the way it’s time to turn out attention to armour. Armour can be the difference between life and death, but unfortunately it remains far out of the grasp of the vast majority of city scum. Improvised armour is common, and well-made suits cost thousands of copper. Armour adds to the roll to absorb damage so most characters want to have at least some.

Armour has two major traits: Armour Rating and Resilience. Armour Rating is the value you add to the absorb roll when you suffer an attack which hits, and is expressed as a range usually from 1 to 5. Armour Resilience measures if an attack just simply punches straight through a suit of armour, or whether the Armour Rating does apply against the attack. If an attack is made with a weapon with a damage rating equal to or greater than the Resilience of the armour, then the Armour Rating is simply not applied to the roll to absorb.

The most basic suit of armour available is just a suit of heavy clothing. This provides Armour Rating 1, Resilience 0 and costs 1cp. You can then add to your armour by patching in heavier wedges of cloth, sections of leather, or even beaten metal plates. You need to have the Craft skill to do this in play, with the TN of the check being 10 + the existing Armour Rating. You can only have five additions to a suit of armour.

Cloth patches cost 1cp each and provide an extra point of Armour Rating each. They do not add to Resilience.

Leather patches cost 3cp each and provide an extra point of Armour Rating each. For every two patches added, Resilience increases by 1 too.

Metal plates cost 5cp each and provide an extra point of Armour Rating each and increase Resilience by one each too. They do however slow down the user, and for every two plates added you suffer a -1 penalty to all Athletics and Sneaking checks.

Grush wants a suit of armour to make sure his innards stay innards. He buys a heavy set of clothing and then patches it with two metal plates, two leather patches, and one cloth patch. This costs him a total of 18cp and gives him Armour Rating 6, Resilience +3, but he does have a -1 to all Athletics and Sneaking checks when wearing it.

Again those with actual suits of armour have a massive advantage. With a properly made, non-improvised suit of armour you don’t have a Resilience at all – you always apply the armour rating. A suit of castle-forged chainmail might have an Armour Rating of 12.

Shields are another important component of armour. You can improvise a shield by grabbing any rough circle or square of wood or metal and holding it in front of you. Shields give you a bonus to scrapping checks to defend yourself. A +1 bonus costs 3cp, a +2 5cp, and a +3 10cp.

Once more, proper shields are much much better than improvised ones. A proper wood and hide shield might grant a +5 bonus.