This is the premise on which I’m currently operating. This is predominantly for a low-fantasy medieval setting, but it will carry over (at least in principle) to a modern setting on which I’m also working. Originally, I was going to have individual skills for each weapon, but it didn’t make a lot of sense for two reasons. First, what you learn on one weapon can apply to others. If you learn to use a staff, you can probably do some stuff with a spear. It’s just staff with a pointy end, right? Second, you never really learn how to use weapons just for the heck of it. It’s usually for a reason. For example, if you’re a hunter, you’ll probably know your way around a bow, and maybe a dagger or hatchet.

My plan is to group weapons together into groups, though I have two different ideas on how to do it, so far (and I’m looking for more). One is to group them functionally. So staves, spears, and javelins would be Staff Weapons. Maces, Hammers, Clubs would be Impact Weapons…you see where I’m going. The other method is to group them thematically. So, you’d have “Hunter Weapons” which could be Bow, Spear, and Dagger. You could have Footman/Militia Weapons which could be Short swords, shields…and so on.

I should also mention that I’m having another designation for weapons, Light, Medium, and Heavy, which is going to affect other mechanics. I considered just using this for categories, but it didn’t jive well. Sword fighting and axe fighting using the same skill didn’t really fit functionally or thematically.

I’m looking to hear opinions on either method, or maybe another method entirely. Thanks.

What do you do with the stuff, in-game?  Is it exclusively about fighting with weapons?  Why are the distinctions important?  Just some questions to answer.

I think it's reasonable to group weapons by function - although some (like a hatchet) cross over from hunting to fighting easily.  Weapons designed to injure and kill heavily armored men, for example, are not much use for hunters.  I'd imagine anyone trained at a specific job - woodsman, infantry soldier - would be comfortable with the tools of the trade - knife/bow/hatchet, sword/shield/spear.  A good woodsman will be good with all of his tools, a bad soldier will be bad at all of his.

I vote for by type, but it would depend heavily on your character creation system and the goals of your game.
For example, the average foot soldier in many armies would know how to use a sword, shield, and spear. Cool. But a random person who trains only with a sword will also know how to use a sword. By allowing that level of granularity, you're allowing for a more flexible character creation system.
However, if you're just doing class-based character creation, then you may as well group weapons by profession rather than type.

I also second Jason as far as it being good to consider the specific purpose for dividing weapons in this manner rather than using a generic "melee" or "fighting" skill.
Dividing weapon skills up by type can be useful if you're trying to force combat-centric characters to burn extra build points or to reinforce a sense of isolation in a setting (Oh no! I lost my sword in that river and don't know jack about spear-fighting. The only weapons these people have are spears. I am screwed!).

Well, if combat is important, and the nitty-gritty bits are important (which from your post I think you're saying they are), then you will want weapons split up. I like the idea of profession-based weapons in principle, but I think a grouping like 'soldier' could be too all-encompassing. A soldier might know how to use a sword, spear, javelin, shield, axe, bow, sling... it could go on and on. I guess the question is this: how nitty-gritty do you want to get? If you want to get very specific, you could group them by a specific type - Spears, staves, swords, axes, bows, crossbows, etc.

Alternately, you could do a simpler breakdown - pole weapons, edged weapons, basing weapons, thrown weapons, archery. You could go even simpler to melee/ranged. It depends on how important to the game this is.

Additionally, are you considering fighting styles in this? Could a character learn multiple type of sword combat? I'm not sure how specific you're trying to get here, so having many styles for each weapon could easily be going a bit over the top. I'd say off the top of my head try to break them into broad types - pole/edged/bashing/ranged seems fine to me.

Hope that helps,

John

Hey, Fig:

You might want to check out the weapon skills system in The Riddle of Steel. It's a game that's pretty into being a good fighting simulator, and there's a lot of interesting ideas. One of which is how the weapon skills work with each other.

In short, each weapon skill in the game (there are about 12) "defaults" to every other skill at a certain base level. So, for instance, Case of Rapiers (two rapiers) defaults to One Rapier + Dagger at -2. That means that if you have a 6 skill in Case of Rapiers, you automatically have a 4 skill in "One Rapier + Dagger." Does that sort of thing strike you as interesting or useful?

yrs--
--Ben

What do you do with the stuff, in-game?  Is it exclusively about fighting with weapons?  Why are the distinctions important?

However, if you're just doing class-based character creation, then you may as well group weapons by profession rather than type.

I like the idea of profession-based weapons in principle, but I think a grouping like 'soldier' could be too all-encompassing. A soldier might know how to use a sword, spear, javelin, shield, axe, bow, sling... it could go on and on.

Additionally, are you considering fighting styles in this? Could a character learn multiple type of sword combat?

You might want to check out the weapon skills system in The Riddle of Steel...

I'm writing a setting which is a kind of mix between Dune, Transhuman Space and medieval Europe/Middle East, and various forms of combat (close combat, space combat, social combat, small unit firefights) is going to be a fairly large part of the game. Close combat and social combat in a political game, firefights and close combat in a scavanger type game, space combat and close combat in a pirate or rogue trader game, etc.
Anyway, I've been doing a lot of thinking backwards and forth about close combat (because it's really hard to get right in a system), particularly concerning fighting styles. Consider this: In most game systems where you have fighting styles, at least those that I've played, you have a close combat skill (or several), and then you have a couple of styles which complement this base skill. The styles (or fighting schools or martial arts or whatever) are a complement to your combat skill (or skills), which gives you access to a bunch of additional maneuvers (and some may impose limitations, like an aikido practitioner getting a penalty to offensive maneuvers or a renaissance fencer not being able to use his style without a rapier). What if you played it in a slightly different way: You can't learn to fight without picking up the particulars of a style. Even if you're just an ordinary guy whose only reason to have a fight-related skill is having been in a couple of bar brawls, you'd still have Fighting Style (Street Fighting) or (Dirty Tricks) or something. If you're playing a knight, he might have Fighting Style (Horseback), Fighting Style (Infantry), Fighting Style (Duelling) and/or Fighting Style (Wrestling), depending on the time period.
How you handle the fighting styles can vary: You might have a couple of special maneuvers, and each style gets a couple, or each style gets to use every maneuver, but you get bonuses to some and penalties to others. Some styles would require weapons (kind of hard to use Archery without a bow :P), and some styles would not.

I think you're better off having broad weapon groups or no groups at all, even in a medieval setting. You might want to split the soldier category though. A thing to consider when having professional categories like hunter, knight, etc, is that there's going to be times when your hunter will want to pick up a sword and use it with his skill, because the Hunter skill gives him proficiency in the use of axes or knives, or times when your knight will want to use a spear because it's essentially the same thing as a lance. And I mean, it's going to be pretty... I don't know, wierd, if someone whose skill with a sword is legendary, yet he can't use a quarterstaff. On the other hand, niche-protection seems to be a pretty big thing in fantasy. So either you let these situations arise and explain to the players that that's just how the rules work, or you have some kind of system where you can use weapons you don't have training in, with some kind of penalty.

How about a generic fighitng skill that the higher it is the more weapons you know. So if you've got a Fighitng skill of 2, you're crap and you maybe only know one weapon, whereas at 10 you're a master with several weapons. Yeah that doesn't really allow the "sword specialist" but if you look at legends and fiction Robin Hood was also a don with the quarterstaff and sword and pretty much anything, not just his. Maybe you prioritise your weapons. So Robin Hood:

Fighting +10 (arbitrary number for example)
+10 Bow,
+9 Quarterstaff,
+8 Sword,
+7 Brawling
etc...
etc...

the higher number the more stuff you can get jiggy with and the better you can potentially be. Obviously Robin's +1 with his worst weapon is equal to the 1 of goon number 3's ONLY weapon but thems the breaks.

You could do the same with categoraries. Remember that knights were also hunters (they used bows/crossbows for hunting but not in war). Soldiers could break down into Archer, Men At Arms, Crossbowman, Halberdier etc...

Then you'd have bigger jumps between values:

So Sir Lancelot gets:
Knightly (Lance, Sword, Shield, Armour Fighting, Shield Use and Mounted Combat) +10

Hunting (Bow, Crossbow, Dagger, Javelin) +5

Barbarian (Axe etc...) +0

Stuff could belong to more than one categorary, you'd just use the highest ranked categorary you got it in (so LAncelot also has Javelin from Barbarian weapons but he uses the higher "Hunting" cateorary.

Make sense?

Another possibility would be to use only fighting styles and make no difference which weapon a character is used to fight with.
For example a character could have "horseback-fighting" +8 and would gain +8 if he's using a "typical horseback weapon", for example a lance. If he'd be using a club, which is not a very wise choice for this fighting skill he'd get a penalty of for example -3 so his horseback-fighting with a club would be +5.
You'd need a lot of different fighting styles, and depending on the combination of the style and the used weapon you'll get the effective skill.

A typical fighting style could look like this:
Fighting Style: Dueling (took that example from above)
using rapier, shortsword, etc.. -0
using longsword, bastard sword, .... -1
using ..., ..., .... -2
using axe, club, staff -3
using bow, crossbow - impossible

This would make the chars fighting with "their style" and knowing that the style doesn't work effectively with a staff for example.
Just a quick thought, i hope it's useful ;)

While I like really crunchy combat systems, in AP it's been my experience that the more choices you give players often the *less* they take.  What I mean is that once they see 'what is best' in terms of damage, etc. they will gravitate towards it.  Unless each weapon / weapon group has a compelling reason to use it they will not be the ones chosen.

For example, if swords are the 'best' weapon in your game you'll find that everyone finds a reason to take that skill.  Probably they won't take battle-axe skill because it puts them at a disadvantage in combat compared to the rest of the characters, regardless of if it's in character to use the axe or not.

One alternative that I've found useful in 'D&D style games' was to make all damage class / level dependent and not based on weapon.  Conan with a toothpick is more deadly than Walter Mitty with a Halberd, right?  Thus all "x level y's" did the same damage, no matter if they used a sword or axe or knife or whatever.  That way the swashbuckler who uses a whip and dagger could compete with the barbarian and his sword and shield in combat, each deadly in their own way, as opposed to one doing twice the damage of the other simply based on arbitrary weapon selection.

All the best,

Pete

What I mean is that once they see 'what is best' in terms of damage, etc. they will gravitate towards it.