Blood & Iron Weapons and House Rules

This document presents variant rules for Blood & Iron, from rules for non-steel weapons to modifications of Players Handbook rules being used in the game. For variant rules on spells and classes, see those documents.

Weaponry in the Wildmarches

The Wildmarches exist largely in the technological period of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and, as such, the most common form of material for making weapons is bronze. Other types of materials are available, of course, but are far less common. Men have discovered the secrets of iron, but the process of turning it into steel is still a little known science.

Wooden, Stone, Leather, and Bone Weapons

The weakest composition for weapons is out of natural materials freely available in the environment. In general, any weapon composed of these materials suffers penalties. A weapon forged of these materials that is not designed with these materials in mind does one die size less damage than what is listed, and breaks beyond mundane repair abilities on a critical hit (after dealing damage) or a critical fumble. The Mending and Make Whole spells can fix this destruction, however, for different size weapons. These weapons are cheap to make, and cost between one and ten percent of the normal cost for such a weapon (reduce cost to copper or silver pieces, depending on demand). Some weapons are made out of these materials in the most advanced societies, and so gain none of the above penalties (or cost reductions) from being made of primitive materials.

Standard Weapons (Can be made of Wood, Stone, Leather, or Bone without penalty): Club, Quarterstaff, Sling, Sap, Greatclub, Shortbow, Longbow, Nunchaku, Whip, Net

Primitive Weapons (Can be made of Wood, Stone, Leather, or Bone with penalties): Dagger, Light Mace, Halfspear, Shortspear, Dart, Javelin, Throwing Axe, Light Hammer, Handaxe, Light Lance, Longspear, Arrows

Bronze Weapons

The most common form of weapons in the Wildmarches is a bronze or similar soft alloy. Weapons made of bronze are better than their primitive counterparts, but still suffer some degree of penalty. Whenever a character wielding a bronze weapon suffers a critical hit or a critical fumble the weapon gains a –1 attack and damage for all successive attacks. The DM may rule that a bronze weapon that suffers a particularly bad fumble while currently under a penalty breaks entirely. Any character can reduce a bronze weapon’s penalty by one as a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity (stepping on the blade to straighten it), but only one such point of the penalty garnered in any given combat can be so fixed. (e.g. a sword reduced to –5 in one combat can only be reduced to –4 before real repairs are done).

A character with access to a forge and arms-smithing skill can make a crafts check at a DC equal to the weapon’s current penalty + 10 to fix the weapon, for one to three hours of work. Most town or village smiths will charge 10% of the cost of the weapon for every point of repairs done. Weapons repaired multiple times become weaker, and more prone to breaking entirely. A broken weapon must be completely reforged, but will usually result in a break in the cost of doing so. Mending can fix tiny bronze weapons (e.g. daggers) if broken, and Make Whole can fix any size weapon from breaking, but neither spell has any real effect on the penalties because they do not fix warping.

Some weapons have solid or small enough metal parts that warping and bending is not a big problem, and so suffer reduced negative effects from bronze manufacture. These weapons break on a fumble if dramatically appropriate, but do not gain penalties from fumbles or criticals. Bronze weapons all cost the standard prices.

Standard Weapons (Can be made of Bronze with reduced penalty): Light Mace, Halfspear, Morningstar, Shortspear, Dart, Javelin, Light Lance, Light Flail, Longspear, Arrows, Shurikan

Bronze Weapons (Can be made of Bronze with penalties): Dagger, Sickle, Heavy Mace, Throwing Axe, Light Hammer, Handaxe, Light Pick, Shortsword, Battleaxe, Heavy Lance, Heavy Pick, Scimitar/Khopesh, Warhammer, Falchion/Great Khopesh, Scythe, Kukri, Kama, Siangham

Bronze Armors (Can be made of Bronze for –1 AC and max Dex bonus, same other stats): Scale Mail, Breastplate, Half Plate

Iron Weapons

Made by men, the new iron weapons have many advantages over bronze weapons, primarily in that they are harder and thus break and bend much less readily. In general, a particularly bad fumble may impose a slight penalty on an iron weapon, but this will be rare. The major problem with iron weapons is that they must be cleaned very carefully after bloody combat, submersion, or heavy use on a wet day or they will rust, gaining a –1 to –3 penalty on attack and damage rolls. In general, assume that proper iron-maintenance oils and cloths are needed, and around 10 minutes per weapon size category must be devoted to keeping iron weapons free of rusting moisture per day of use in all but the driest conditions, with more time required in especially damp conditions. Nearly any metal weapon can be made of iron and wind up better off than being made of bronze. See the chart below for which weapons are available in the setting. Iron weapons typically cost slightly higher than the listed prices.

Masterwork

Assume that masterwork weapons generally cost ten times the cost of normal weapons to make and buy, rather than a flat +300 gp. Aside from its +1 attack and enchantability, a masterwork weapon transcends some of the weaknesses of its material. Masterwork primitive weapons ignore the first two criticals or fumbles that would cause them to break. Masterwork bronze weapons can critical hit without penalty, and ignore the effects of the first fumble between repairs (yet repairs will prove to be more costly than with a standard weapon if it is not looked at right away). Masterwork iron weapons are effectively steel, and thus require much less maintenance to keep from rusting.

Enchantment

A weapon that is enchanted with at least a +1 bonus ignores the penalties of its manufacture (save that primitive weapons still do reduced damage), and does not bend, break, or rust on critical hits or failures. However, a sub-standard enchanted weapon is still sub-standard in other ways. A bronze or primitive weapon subjected to Sunder from another magical attack is more easily broken, and a character that smacks soft weapons into hard surfaces (other than armor and other weapons) may find the weapon weakening.

Weapons and Armor Table

This chart lists which weapons and armor are available in the Wildmarches, or will be within the likely scope of the game. Items marked with an asterisk are not available at the start of the game. Items listed as flawed gain all the applicable penalties for the material used (see above). Items listed as poor gain a reduced version of the penalties (again, see above). Items listed as standard are not significantly reduced in game effects from the basic rules, but may suffer intrinsic penalties (like the tendency of iron to rust) that are not inherent to the manufacture. Items with nothing listed cannot be made from the material or gain no benefit from being so made.

Other House Rules

These are the other house rules for Blood & Iron. This list will likely grow through the course of the game. Remember that the rules listed in the revised classes and spell lists documents are also in effect.

Money Matters

Until I think of a better rules change, we will be using pretty much standard D&D money rules for most things. The Feral nations have had thousands of years to mint coinage and thus coins have moved all over and can be reduced to their base metals to determine value. A character who got a lot of coins in one city and then tries to spend them in a warring city might have slight problems, but generally copper, silver, gold, and platinum pieces are universally accepted.

Item creation rules are as D&D standard for personal-use items, save for the modified cost of masterwork items (10 times base cost, generally, instead of +300). Creation of items for general use will usually be abstracted into the craft rules for making money, unless there is some specific in-game reason not to abstract for-sale production. Most items and services will cost around the PHB values unless otherwise noted or there is a good reason to change it.

In downtime, characters that work at a job are assumed to take 10 on their rolls and work for an average of 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (i.e. all of them). Characters who work more or less will have more or less money but hard workers may find their social standing dropping for their monetary gain. With taking 10 a Craftsman makes half of (Craft Mod + 10) every week in GP, for an effective (Craft Mod x 24) + 240 GP every year, and a Professional makes the same amount (substituting Profession for Craft, obviously). A character who does a job not directly tied to a Craft or Profession will make a comparable income, but will usually wind up with less money than a character that actually spent skill points on a money-making skill. If the character does a job that is, for in-game reasons, less profitable, then he will get less money, but this will be rare. In general, assume that about half of the resulting downtime income after paying for lifestyle (see below) is in job-related resources and the rest is in cash.

Characters will pay for food, shelter, and other comforts as a flat Lifestyle expenditure. This cost covers room, board, clothing, and general home equipment, and involves more and more comforts at the higher levels. Funds from adventuring or from downtime jobs can be spent for Lifestyle. These costs are listed by day, week, and year. The day and week columns are for use in play to determine with broad strokes how much it costs to stay in inns or buy adventuring supplies, while the yearly column lists the cost of maintaining a home or other long-term lodgings. A character that gains patronage, an untaxed home, or other similar benefit will get a cost break on these values. See below the table for explanations of the different levels.

Adventurer – This entry covers the cost of trail rations and miscellaneous expendable gear replacement: new arrows, oil, ink, sacks, tent repairs, and various other cheap equipment. A character may make Wilderness Lore checks to reduce this cost slightly by hunting in appropriate areas. A character that lives the life of an adventurer gains no specific bonus or penalty in social dealings with the general populace, but may piss off or impress individuals. Living as an adventurer for periods where the Yearly cost becomes necessary may begin to give the character social penalties, though, as well as a bad back from sleeping on the ground all the time.

Pauper/Destitute – A character living on nothing is in for a hard time of it. Paupers experience a –8 to most social rolls to deal with anyone civilized that knows of the character’s status. Additionally, long periods of pauperdom will result in the character having reduced healing rate, reduced fortitude save, and even, eventually, temporary ability damage to various ability scores until conditions can be improved. A character may attempt to use Bluff to panhandle, but should keep the social penalty in mind.

Poor – A poor character spends the bare minimum to buy bread, ratty clothing, meat and cheese often enough not to starve, and a dump to sleep in. Poor people have a –3 to most social rolls with civilized folk. Malnourishment is likely to set in (more slowly than being destitute, though), and a character that is poor for extended periods will have a reduced healing rate and potential other problems from this fact.

Lower Class – This lifestyle provides the character with enough food, clothing, and shelter to not be seriously vulnerable to detrimental effects, but not much more. The character has a –1 social penalty amongst civilized folk. Sometimes the character can afford a nice meal, but usually he has the bare minimum to get by in life.

Middle Class – A middle class character is dead even in the social landscape. Most Craftsmen and Professionals will eke by at this level while supporting families. No penalty to social rolls is accrued by being middle class.

Decent Living – The character is upper middle class, and gets a +1 social bonus with those who would be impressed by this.

Upscale – About the limit of what an honest and unambitious person is likely to achieve, an upscale individual has a +3 social bonus against the impressed.

Wealthy or Better – Politicians, merchant lords, and adventurers reach these levels, with a +5 or better social bonus.

Combat Rules

Unarmed Strikes and Subdual Damage – A character can not deal normal damage with an unarmed strike or subdual weapon without taking the martial arts feat that allows this. However, a character that takes 10 more subdual damage than current HP takes further subdual damage as normal damage, and an unconscious character can be Coup de Grace’d (strangled) for normal damage with bare hands (this will generally do 1d6+Str normal damage for the Coup de Grace).

Flanking – We will be using the book standard Flanking rules with a slight variant. As per standard rules, characters do not lose their Dex bonus to AC when flanked, simply suffer from being easier to hit (attackers get the standard +2). However, any character with Sneak Attack can get their bonus on a flanked character as if the character had lost his Dex bonus (i.e. sneak attacking characters do not have to be the ones doing the flanking). A character with Uncanny Dodge 2 must still have a higher-level Sneak-Attack-capable character involved in the flanking attempt to be considered flanked.

Ranged Weapons – Ranged weapons will generally only be fully effective at two range increments, and will start doing less damage on the third, and will run out of enough momentum to do any significant damage by the fourth or fifth increment. Strong winds will reduce this even further. Enchanted bows and other ranged weapons continue to bestow their enchantment on their ammo and ammo enchantment stacks with this, but, unlike the normal rules, both stack for bypassing DR (e.g. a +3 bow with +1 arrows bypasses DR X/+4).

Critical Hits and Instant Kill – Characters will only roll single critical hits. There will be no double or triple criticals, no matter how wide a weapon’s threat range gets. This also applies to Instant Kill; a twenty followed by another twenty is simply a critical hit, not a threat for instant death. On this note, vorpal weapons that critical hit will be treated in all ways as casting Finger of Death on the subject (allowing a Fort save to take damage instead of death).

Spell Like Abilities – As listed in the PHB, most spell-like abilities (like Lay on Hands) and some supernatural abilities require the same concentration and AoO provocation as casting a spell. I may rule that specific abilities are free actions, move equivalent actions, and/or don’t provoke attacks of opportunity, but most will follow the standard rule.

Armor Check – I am not applying armor check penalties directly to the character sheet, for ease of my calculation and your memory. If I feel that wearing bulky armor is especially harmful in a given situation then I will give you a circumstance penalty to the roll at that point.

Other Rules Changes

Skill Checks – There will be no skill checks in B&I, as the new skill level rules already account for downtime skill growth.

Domains – The modified domains from Church & State are in effect.

Experience – I will be using the standard D&D experience levels system, not my point-buy rules. All experience awards will be ad hoc, but I will use combats and CRs as more of a guideline than I do in C&S. I don’t wish to discourage combat, but I also don’t want to make it the only solution.

Spell Research – Wizardry is a new art in the Wildmarches, and thus there are no libraries to study spells. In order for an Arcane Preparation caster to gain new spells, other than the two gained for free each level, special steps must be taken to learn the spells from another wizard or create them independently.

For pre-existing spells the percentage chance of someone in a city having that spell is equal to the number of wizards divided by the spell level (thus a city with 100+ wizards is guaranteed to have any given first level spell). The DM rolls this secretly, and the Wizard makes a Gather Information check (DC 10+desired spell’s level) every 4 days of searching. When the check succeeds the character finds out which Wizards have the spell or that the spell is not available. Even if there are no other high-level casters, some Wizards might have old spellbooks that contain spells that they cannot use, so knowing that there are no high-level casters in the city does not preclude some chance of finding high-level spells. The Wizard can then attempt to copy the spell. Assume that most Wizards willing to loan spellbooks for copying charge (1d6 x Spell Level) in gold pieces for every day that they will be without their spellbooks (typically 1 day to attempt to understand the spell, then Spell Level +1 days to copy the spell), with a slight reduction for friends or a good Diplomacy roll. Copying spells requires the standard number of pages per spell (PHB p. 155) but only costs 20 gp per page instead of 100 gp. All other rules for copying spells are as per the PHB.

Researching a new spell has all the costs and requirements on the DMG p. 42. This does not involve research at a library, so much as paying other wizards as consultants and buying components and test subjects.

It becomes much harder to gain new spells in Feral cities, where Wizards must remain hidden. Assume the Gather Information check DC is twice as high as it would be in a city of men, and then gaining the trust of the other spellcaster must be roleplayed out.

Magic Item Creation – Creating magic items works the same way as the core rules, but with one major difference. Even with craft feats, a spellcaster must have access to instructions and recipes for the item before it can be made. Most of the standard items in the DMG are available somewhere as instructions. A character gets two free recipes of the appropriate type whenever a craft feat is taken.

In order to obtain other standard recipes, find the caster level of the item and convert that to a spell level (a CL 13 item is a level 7 spell, for example) and roll the percentage chance as with Wizard spells (above), and the same Gather Information chance. It typically costs (CLx10) gp to copy another caster’s recipe, with no chance of failure. Researching a new recipe is as spell research, but also with no failure chance.

Level Training – In Blood & Iron leveling up will not be anywhere near an instantaneous process. Instead, the process of benefiting from practical experience involves periods of training, study, and growth. In practice the character must find a mentor or group of teachers for the training, and the mentor must have a character level equal or better than the level the character is training to become. Additionally, the mentor must have as many or more levels in the class the character is seeking to become than the character will have. (e.g. a Warrior 5, Holy Warrior 4 could train a Warrior 5, Holy Warrior 3 in the next level of Holy Warrior but not the next level of Warrior.) In human cities there will usually be academies or guilds for any conceivable training requirements, at least at low levels, but in Feral cities finding a mentor will be a much more difficult process. A higher character level mentor and a higher class level mentor can team up to train a multiclass character in a pinch, but will both require payment. (e.g. a Warrior 7 could team up with the mentor in the above example to teach the character level 6 of Warrior.)

Training usually involves a couple of hours a day for a number of weeks equal to the character level being obtained. Other jobs can be pursued around this training, and most mentors will charge (their level x character’s desired level) in silver pieces for every week of training. If a character can find a mentor willing to drop everything and train the character during all waking hours, the training process only lasts days equal to the new character level. However, this level of intense training usually costs the character (new level x mentor’s level) in gold pieces for every day of training.

If a character cannot find or afford a mentor, the gradual process of living will allow the character to develop the new class level. This process takes a number of months equal to the level being obtained times 1.5 (effectively 6 times as long as training weekly would have taken) before the character’s new level is active. This costs the character nothing in time or money, but the player should assume that the character is doing some tasks, study, or exercise towards the new level in his free time.

The character can mix and match training times by percentage completed. (e.g. a character working towards level 8 could spend six months of gradual growth, then take two weeks of light training, then two days of heavy training to achieve the level.) A character that has this process interrupted for an adventure should figure out what percentage of training has been completed and then pick that percentage of the new level’s benefits for the adventure. (e.g. a character working towards level 10 who is interrupted from light training after five weeks can pick half of the benefits of level 10 to enter the adventure with.)