My group was becoming of late a bunch of Rapier and Spear lovers. I was getting tired.

I thought of possible solutions:

1) Allow players to wield spears and rapiers and just rename the weapon in each case for a matter of flavor

A troll slayer dual wielding rapiers? -> rename the rapiers to Battle axes (same stats)

warriors with spear and shield? -> rename it to Sword, Mace and shield (same states)

etc..

2) Rewrite the whole specialization rules of the game and grant weapons some effects due to specilazation: Nice but far too much work

3) Create some new weapons to "compete" with the Rapier and Spear

For some time we where playing option 1, fine. Although, I have move to option 3 now, and I have added a few more weapons to the game; I have also worsen the spear since U2 is definitively not a serious set back, I have ruled that if you use the parry active defence with the spear you add 1 recharge token to the card.

For those interested, I have put them on a table in my house rules.

Cheers,

Yepes

I would add subcategories as you first suggest:

"Dainty axes" would have a fast capability for example

I would also recall that fast weapons are also easily broken. For your chaos-star-riddled games, make sure you have 'damaged" come up more often.

Another thing is to have players NEVER find superior loot that is a spear or rapier. You're probably not "handing out" superior items as loot anyways, but you can lead them away from min-maxing through simple experiences finding other items that are good. Obviously the most common SUPERIOR item that would be found is going to be a hand weapon.

Then, gear it towards NOT being a catch-all superior weapon, but only superior in certain circumstances: Examples:

• Hand weapon: axe that is superior against unarmored foes
• Hand weapon: trident superior in water and against water creatures
• great weapon superior when you are the only person in an engagement because of the space required to swing the dang thing
• Dagger that is superior during use with a couple specialized cards (sudden knife or something like that)
• Bow superior for first shot in a combat
• hand weapon that is superior for the first hit in combat (then it is dulled until sharpened again)
• Hand weapon that is paricularly brutal to opponents who are already critically wounded (barbed, or stinging or something)
• main gauche superior against smaller opponents

Anyways, just throwing out some ideas…

jh

I am also thinking of creating rules for amor / clothes / weapons wearing.

I'm going to create a thread (no jokes intended ) on this subject.

Rapiers should break quite easily. And spears can be forced down and broken if strong/lucky enough.

I doubt you could parry with a rapier against a two handed sword could you?

Rapiers and Spears both have the "Fast" trait. Seems likely the revised Fast rules were pulled out of thin air in a hurry when FFG was confronted with the error in the book (as printed it did nothing). I kinda doubt the errata got any playtest before being thrown at us. I'd look at revising Fast before making any more complicated changes to the weapon lists or other game elements.

Here's three possible alternate versions for Fast:

"Attacks made with weapons with the fast quality gain:
Boon Boon: Place one fewer recharge token on this action"

(Costs 2 boons instead of just 1, so it's less frequent and more likely to conflict with your other boon effects)

or

"Attacks made with weapons with the fast quality gain:
Boon: -1 damage. Place one fewer recharge token on this action"

(Still costs just 1 boon so it's still very reliable and frequent, but it reduces damage by 1 when activated so there's a bit of a trade-off.)

or

"Attacks made with weapons with the fast quality gain:
Comet: +1 Critical. Place one fewer recharge token on this action"

(Costs a comet instead of just a boon so it'll happen a lot less. Added the bonus critical to keep it competitive with other comet effects.)

I'd let them have at it..and then on chaos stars have frequent use of the damaged condition

jh

Funny - after waiting since the game released, I'm finally going to start GM'ing a game tomorrow, and the Spear (and Rapier to a lesser extent) is the one thing I still haven't quite come to grips with.

By the RAW, the Spear is a handweapon that can also be thrown, is Fast, gains a 2H damage bonus, and is cheaper. All at the cost of a drawback that almost never procs. The Rapier is just a spendy handweapon with a very nice bonus and no drawbacks.

Anyway, part of my solution, I think, is to allow the 2H damage bonus (of +1) to apply to handweapons, sabres, and morning-stars as well (not just the spear). This would not apply to the rapier, giving it a slight disadvantage against some other weapons under the right conditions. Sound resonable, or will this cause some future headache I'm not aware of?

Beyond that, I was going to remove the rapiers fast quality if wielded with anything other than a buckler, dagger or maine gauche.

But then there's the spear, which I'm not quite sure what to do with while at the same time mainting the 'flavor' of the weapon. I do like Yepesnopes idea of adding an extra recharge to the Parry action, but am still not quite sure.

Yes, this is kind of silly to worry about - especially with what I've read about things like Reckless Cleave and Fortune Dice added to Characteristice - but this has literally bugged me ever since first reading the core set rules.

El Hefe said:

I was going to tell you something, but then I read this last sentence and I thought, "he is so much right".

Play the game a few times with the minimum or no changes (put the effort somewhere else, like on preparing the adventures) to see if you like the game, and then see if you like it enough to spend the time and energies doing some changes to it.

Cheers,

Yepes

I have solved the problem of spears being OP by deciding that they cannot be used to parry - which makes sense, considering that your typical spear is just a wooden shaft more durable than that of a rake, which wouldn't be able to stand in the way of anything sharp and made of metal.

As for dwarfs using rapiers, that's just wrong, and especially if we're talking about a slayer. Heck, fighting with some feeble and foppish manling blade should be enough of a reason to become a slayer in the first place. Any self-respecting GM should veto that desicion.

My group was becoming of late a bunch of Rapier and Spear lovers. I was getting tired.

My personnal rules:

Rapier: can't parry 2 handed weapons, -1 damage against metal armor

Spear: can't parry 2 handed weapons, base damage 4 (instead of 5)

In feudal Japan, the spear was considered ineffective against the katana because the swordsman could use the blade to avoid the point of the spear, getting closer to the spearman and cutting him in two. The spear is only a menace for opponents that are further away from it's "pointy end".

I think this is the translation to adding one extra recharge if using the spear to parry. I like this idea a lot.

I also like Jay's idea of using the damaged condition a lot more with weapons that seem more likely to get damaged (I don't think that's the case with a dagger, so I'm not describing it happening with "fast weapons"). What I would do is split the two Chaos Stars needed to trigger the Unreliable 2 quality in more than one roll - in the case of non-blackpowder weapons. It makes sense not to use it with blackpowder weapons, since they cause wounds if their Unreliable is triggered.

That would work giving the Damaged condition on the first Chaos Star, and breaking the weapon on the second. Unreliable doesn't count on Damaged, and there are so many of those cards that this seems a shame...

That could also happen if this fragile weapons are used to parry: it could be an effect of two boons in the attack. That would work against a Rapier as well.

I would leave it loose, though. Just use it if it makes sense (would a rapier be fragile against another rapier? I think not). It could also happen even if not used for parry, because an attack could be described as a messy series of blows, and one of them could get the weapon. I would require a Sigmar's Comet or more than 2 boons in this case, though.

Last, one thing I liked a lot about second edition's Old World Armory was that it gave specifications for weapons if they were of good quality. So a Sword would stop being just a Hand Weapon, and it would get the Defensive trait. I like it because I do think equipment should be really a kick in a dark close-to-medieval environment like Warhammer. It should make a lot of difference. And maybe it would get things a little more balanced, to have other weapons having extra traits. And, in the case of the spear, a good quality one would have a minor change, like making it Unreliable 3 instead of 2.

What do you think?