I'd suggested making item cards for weapons a few times already in the past, and found myself with some extra time on my hands. So I decided to throw together some changes for the first couple of melee weapons that popped in my head.

I made a mockup of the dagger in SE, but nothing else. Just to sort of show what I had in mind. The rest of the weapons are below, in simple text.
I'm not sure yet if I want to give this to new characters, completely replacing the section Weapons on a character-sheet, or only give this out when somebody takes a specialisation. It might be cool to give this out instead of letting people take a single Fortune die on a roll perhaps.

The idea would be to each time play an action card on top of your weapon-card, combining their effects. I've tried to make the weapons distinct in feel, as well as give the player an option to really go into fully utilising the potential of his weapon, by playing with his dicepool before he rolls.

Caveats:

I did this without access to any books, don't shoot me if details are off (Dagger DR/CR/availability/price/... come to mind ) Put your comment below and I'll see what I can do.
I used Strange Eons Action-Card layout, since it had most of the fiels available that I needed. However, the Conservative/Reckless colouring is not applicable here. You can simply swap it to the side that is convenient for the action you place. I'd need a new image if I completely work this out.
All modifiers/bonusses/... are intuitively chosen. If you feel something is too weak or too strong, feel free to comment and tell me why it should be so or so

Questions? Comments? Think I'm making it too complex for my own good? I'd love to hear from you guys, before I really work this out further.

Dagger
Passive modifier
Piercing Fast
Active modifier
Shank Chaos Star Stuck
Stab Chaos Star In Harm's Way

Short Sword
Passive modifier
Piercing Edged Centered
Active modifier Stab Chaos Star Off Balance
Slash 2+ failure In Harm's Way

Long Sword
Passive modifier
Piercing Edged Centered
Active modifier
Stab 2+ failure Off Balance
Slash 3+ failure Open Defense


Bastard Sword
Passive modifier
Edged Cleaving
Active modifier
Hack 2+ failure Redirected Blow
Slash 2+ failure Open Defense

Staff / Cudgel/ Mace
Passive modifier
Blunt
Active modifier
Impact 2 banes Sprain
Put Down 2+ failure Reverberation

Morning Star / Flanged Mace
Passive modifier
Piercing Blunt Armour Breaker
Active modifier
Puncture 2+ failure Stuck
Impact 2 banes Sprain

Warhammer
Passive modifier
Piercing Blunt Armour Breaker
Active modifier
Impact 2 banes Sprain
Puncture 2+ failure Stuck

Waraxe
Passive modifier
Cleaving Slow Edged
Active modifier
Hack 2+ failure Redirected Blow
Slash 2+ failure Open Defense


Passive Modifier
Blunt Attack gains: target suffers 1 additional fatigue
Edged your attack gains Pierce 1
Piercing attack gains Pierce 2, Unreliable 2
Armour Breaker On Success: put a pierce token on this card. These stack up to your current training in Weapon Skill. Reset when current target becomes incapacitated.
Cleaving Your attack gains 2 boons automatically.
Fast Recharge 1 less
Centered gain 1 extra black on defensive action
Slow Recharge 1 more

Active Modifier
Shank Place 1 stance die on this card, ignore target armour soak
Stab Place 2 white dice on this card, Attack gains Pierce 1
Hack Place 1 expertise die on this card, gain 1 reckless stance die
Slash Place 1 black die on this card.
Puncture Place 1 expertise die on this card, attack gains Pierce 1 + target suffers 1 additional fatigue
Impact Place 1 expertise die and 1 black die on this card. Attack gains target suffers staggered 2

Bad Stuff
Reverberation suffer 1 fatigue, -1 total damage dealt
Stuck Must perform manoeuvre to free weapon, put 2 tokens on your parry
Sprain You suffer +1 recharge & +1 fatigue
Open Defense Gain exposed 2
In Harm's Way Gain exposed 2, suffer 1 stress + 1 fatigue
Off balance +2 recharge on dodge
Redirected Blow +2 recharge on parry

For my taste it is a bit too much (more cards, more rules...)

But if you have a group who likes more realism /flavor in weapons and, in general, in combat, then I think its great!

As a side note dagger is DR 4 CR 3

I can see that.
I'm putting this idea to the test together with my combined basic-actions card, so clutter is a bit less at my table already, but it might be decidedly different for others...

As for the stats: aw poop I'll definitly fix that when/if I start making the cards for real.

Thanks for your input!

I really like these, please show your finished rules and cards. I was thinking about doing something like this myself, but have not had the time to sit down and think about it.

Crimsonsun

Fast quality needs a boon to take effect.

Gallows:

Right, the errata... I'd read it a long time ago, but somehow forgot the fact that you need a boon to actually get the bonus.
Feels wrong to me, but I'll stick by it

I've done all the melee-weapons currently used in my group. Will need to make a version for the pistol, throwing knives & short bow by next weekend.
If I have the time, I'll do others, but want to try these out first in a real session before I commit

I expect the actual modifiers to be subject to a good deal of tweaking after the session

PS. I simply messed around with the internal structure of the WFRP module to overwrite the action-card layout. Anybody know of a good tutorial for making your own card from scratch?

cool looking cards, i'm keen to try these out myself. Be interested on any updates.

Thanks Crimsonsun

I've broken out the images from this thread.

You can find everything at

javascript:void(0);/*1328798902168*/

For the moment I have:

Dagger
Short Sword
Long Sword
Bastard Sword
Great Sword
Great Axe
Warhammer
Mace
Pistol
Short Bow
Long Bow
Throwing Dagger

Which is all I need for next session.
If anybody has any use for them, feel free to grab a copy. And let me know which ones feel too weak or too strong!

I feel like I should make a "paperdoll" character sheet, that allows you to actually slot these things
Meaning talent-like cards would be useful for armour & shield as well.
And the characteristics put in convenient reach of eachother, Soak & Fatigue together, weapon & agi/str together, etc.

Requiring a boon for the fast effect is actually an advantage. Sometimes you don't mind the extra token on a card and for some sets of cards the combos are balanced around having a normal weapon and either a fast or slow weapon will mess with the combo. So from the players point of view it's an advantage that it's optional

I agree, if I think of it from the point of: Nothing's forcing you to keep going at the speed you are. You can, but you also can opt to simply keep at your normal pace.

It's not so much the fact that it's optional, as the fact that it costs you a boon to activate this option. But then if you just barely succeed, no reason to be able to use the extra bells & whistles either, so I kept it. The idea in each case is to stick to official rules, just to offer a unique flavor to the rather general "hand weapons" section.

And you know if you make extra cards for 1 or 2 players at the table, you gotta have them for the rest as well, so...

Nisses said:

1) Handing out free boons - let alone 2!! is Increadibly powerful , on average there is only 1/10 of a boon on a reckless die! (1 single boon, 1 double boon, and 2 banes)

2) Why do you make a Great Axe ...just plain better than a 2H sword??

3) I dont understand the 'Hack' ability - you give up an expertise die to get a reckless die?? Who in their right mind would ever do this???

In general I dont feel the game means more incentive to min-max one stat .... so giving any weapons the ability to use ranged attacks on strenght or melee attacks on Ag I feel is a mistake ... sure there are a few actions cards which allow that, but then again they tend to be balanced in other ways ....

Personally I would much rather see cross skill effects ... ei. a rule for pistols & cross bow pistols (unlike other ranged weapons) allowing them to be used while engaged, unless trained in weaponskill suffer 1 extra difficulty die to do so ....

As a sidenote - do people in general feel the game (the PCs) arent leathal enough? most of the above rules suggestions I have seen have simply made all the weapons BETTER ...some just marginally ....some MUCH more powerfull ! - Also realize that given flexibility players (PCs, smart opponents) tend to pick a weapon which supports their fighting style - thus making it more effective ...

--> Thus relatively making weapon attacks more effective compared to non weapon attacks ie. Magic and Social & Support Actions (why try to impose a condition on your opponent if you can just kill him outright ....- I find that making combat more leathal and PCs and opponents more "glass- cannon"-like dumbs combat down significantly ...)

Aha feedback!

Allow me to clear up the specific comments:

As far as the throwing dagger goes... that's actualy as per RAW. You can use STR/AGI fortune dice for this already, no min-maxing going on.
For the pistol, that was a copy/paste error from the dagger-card (hence why it's talking about losing a dagger when you are wield a pistol instead)

Handing out free boons *is* powerful. However, my motivation is that if you're using a heavy weapon, and you manage to land a succesful hit, (challenges vs successes), you're much more likely to hit a serious wound. Perhaps a simple solution here could be to reduce the CR instead?

Why is the Great-axe so clearly better than the Great-sword? It's not, but you're only looking at 1 side of the card. On the other side of both weapons, the threshold for the bad stuff is only 2 for the great-axe, but 3 for the great-sword. Meaning you're somewhat better in control of the sword than the axe, which carries all it's momentum in the head. If you're only going to use the Hack-side of the card, you're likely to find yourself without parry a lot. Meaning you're down to Dodge as your only active defense possible.

The Hack ability says you drop 1 yellow die to gain 1 reckless die. It does not convert an extra blue into red, you replace the yellow by an extra red.

I don't feel the PCs are not lethal enough, I do feel that a lot of action-cards are unnecessary filler that just slightly modify a dice-pool. Changes that could very well be integrated on the weapon-cards themselves instead of having 6 action cards to specify how you're holding your weapon.

I fail to see how this is making them glass-cannon however. Stuff like armour-breaker is quite literally meant to build up during combat, so having it take a bit longer is your interest. And adding fatigue to a succesful hit is a way to make it clear that some weapons can be used in a non-lethal manner. And adding white dice, removing black dice is not really the biggest power-grab, only a way to thin your dicepool a little.

You feel that I'm taking the tactical aspect out of combat by allowing the players more options during combat, to play to their strengths? Or because I'm doing this only for the players that don't use magic, short-changing the magical players?

Players that think about their combat, using the terrain, obstacles or their weapon in an effective manner, can already gain white dice or have black dice removed by the GM if he feels it's appropriate. I'm only playing into that part, trying to give it a rough structure.

I do find the idea of the cross-skill stuff very interesting. Do you have any additional examples?
I realise there are abilities that are too strong/too weak in there. For the moment, I wanted to brainstorm, try out several ideas. They are very likely to need a good tweak. Those that have an ability that is too strong, could perhaps use a drop in DR to compensate.I'm open to ideas as to why they are overpowered, or suggestions on how to fix anything broken however. I'll fix the pistol & have a look at the great-axe asap

btw. I hope I didnt sound too harsh ... - I will give it a bit of thougth and try to give my own suggestions on disinquising weapons

but in general giving any weapon a crit rating of 1, is pretty much a no-no IMO (aside from certain spells) .... just like handing out auto-boons takes away a big part of the conservative vs. reckless consideration since one of the main differences here is the number of reliable boons ....

In general my take would be to NOT make any weapon simply better than it is now ...so only adding minor new qualities at the expense of some minor disadvantage:

New minor qualities

Heavy "unbalanced" weapons ('cleave') : Subtract a stat die (ie its pretty heavy - so only really good if you are strong and thus able to hit already!) to add +1 damage

Balanced weapons / bucklers ('Basket Hilt') : Add an extra misfortune die, when using the 'parry' / 'block' active defence

Spiked hammer etc ('Armour Piercing') : -2 damage, gain pierce 3 --> thus only doing extra damage vs. armour soak 3+

Sharp blade or Nasty Point: Reduce crit rating to 2 or if already 2, then +1 damage on any attack which scores 1 or more crits.

Precise (ranged weapon only): for each prepare manoevre spendt before action (max 2) reduce range penalty by 1 and add 1 fortune die

Exstended range (ranged weapon only): lets wielder perform the ' extreme shot' without possessing the action card, or to reduce difficulty by 1 if possessing it.

Disadvantages

* Slow

* Expensive (ie. a rapier is much more expensive than a hand weapon)

* Misfire

* Reload

New ideas

Unbalanced: A Chaos Star (on top of any other effects) adds 2 recharge tokens to an active defence

Stuck: A Sigmars Comet (good hit!) aside from other effects, adds 2 recharge tokens to an active defence unless a manoevre is immediately spend to free the weapon .. .- otherwise its assumed its done our of sequence

Blunt (Non-leathal, can also be a good thing!): Whenever inflicting a crit, draw two and apply the one with lower crit rating

Flimsy or small (rapier or dagger) : using the 'parry' active defence vs. an attack with a DR of 6+ adds a fortune die to the incoming attack. (ie. this works regardsless of using basic or advanced parry ... whereas subtracting a misfortune die, could not be applied to teh advanced defence card.)

Fragile (buckler or rapier) : using the 'parry' (or block for a buckler or shield) active defence vs. an attack with a DR of 6+ allows the attacker the option to apply the 'broken' condition on the item as a Sigmars Comet effect.

Anyway - thats just a few thoughts ....