Clubs - maybe a solution?

So I was taking a shower, and as always all great Ideas comes when you shower, and I thought of a way to balance the near to infamous Club, without affecting the cost. The reason for keeping the cost is that a stick of wood surely can't be worth more than 3 GC, still the rules doesn't, as many have experienced, reflect this low cost. So I thought, what does define the great difference between a wooden club and say a sword or hammer – durability:
Club 3 GC
Strength: as user
Special rule: concussion, crude (this is my additional rule, which comes in two versions)


Crude (1):
A club is a crude weapon, and brakes easily, especially when battered against though steel and gromril.
A club may only be used one game, after a game it loses its strength and is therefore discarded

Crude (2):
A club is a crude weapon, and brakes easily, especially when battered against though steel and gromril.
If a 1 is rolled when rolling to wound with a club, it brakes a part and can not further be used.

Ok so the first version is a little crueler, and might be to harsh. Now you might wonder why the second version has the negative affect when you role to wound, and the reason for this is that I really couldn't see how swinging air would destroy a piece of wood.
These rules would also apply to the staff (as long as it was wooden) though, the Hammer and Mace would not use these rules. Instead I suggest a slight raise of cost, considering the more expensive material - say 8 gc perhaps?

So what do you think? Solution, or just mad thinking?
- Popmouth


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Didn't anyone find this interesting?

Wouldn't just upping the price for clubs/maces/hammers to 5 gold be sufficient and be less complicated?

Personally, I like the idea (and thought of the exact same solution as crude (29 a while ago).

The reason for not just raising the cost of a club is the fluff for me... a club can be a makeshift piece of wood, a leg of a chair, etc... and I think it would be a little weird to pay 10gc for a random piece of wood... Rather, you can buy the cheap version which is likely to break, or you spend as much money on it as on other weapons to get a nice iron mace etc.

I like the idea of taking concussion away from clubs altogether. Just make the 3g club the basic hand weapon with no bonuses or penalties. Then add like a 5-7g hammer or mace or what-have-you that has concussion.

Might be a good idea as well – though the biggest problem is not the concussion, it's the cheap extra attack... So I thought that making it even weaker might help.
Which one of the rules would you prefer?

hero wrote:

I like the idea of taking concussion away from clubs altogether. Just make the 3g club the basic hand weapon with no bonuses or penalties. Then add like a 5-7g hammer or mace or what-have-you that has concussion.

I'd go for this one - I always forget the extra rule anyway!!
The simpler, the better at my age.

Well I agree also – though that still doesn't solve much of the problem, as said earlier.

I think I'll throw my 2 cents into this interesting topic:

I stick with Paluke: 5gc.
Also, Popmouth, i think the problem is that the extra attack is cheap, not that it has Concussion.

Clubs can be as crude and cheap as a knotted wooden stick, but like you noted, this means they'll need quick replacement... The standard cost, although increased to 5gc, in my mind represents the effort to replace or "patch" the weapon without the need of a new special rule.

Also, I think that all in all Concussion weapons shouldn't be cheaper than an axe, as the axe's usefulness is highly volatile (it depends on the type of enemy you are facing), while a club is "less useful" in general, but it is "useful more often" (except vs undead which have No pain).
It gives the right feeling of a poor weapon, good enough but not specialized.

EDIT: If it was me designing clubs, but am not as this game is pretty much set, I'd simply make them just like axes (-1 enemy AS), but with bludgeoning criticals... and trust me, I tell this from experience against roman shields and lorica segmentata...

Cheers!!!

Well, my argument was that the extra attack is the problem and not the concussion... 5 gc is still cheap for an extra attack – though if the weapon has the chance of braking, the cost is somewhat more balanced IMHO.
Hopefully I'll get around playtesting the rule sometime – or I'll render it useless (though right now i believe it has potential).
And in my post I wrote that the other concussion weapons (such as the mace) should be pumped up to say 8-10 gc.
I really don't want to be rude or anything, but did you really read my post, or did you kind of decide what I had said?

In the end doesn't it balance out? 3-5gc is cheap for an extra attack, but (almost) every warband has access to that same, or similar, source of extra attack (don't quote me on that, i don't feel like researching the assumption).

The only real problem is people min-maxing their warband lists to play the odds by rolling a bucket of dice... and then i just refuse to play with them! (this coming from the guy writing a night goblin warband were you can buy 5 gobbos with shortbows for 100gc! )

Perhaps. Though I would like to stimulate the usage of two-handed weapons, morning stars and other weapons.

Paluke wrote:

Wouldn't just upping the price for clubs/maces/hammers to 5 gold be sufficient and be less complicated?

qft

Why?

Hum... it's clear i used really poor words and haven't been able to go to the point i intended (and no probs u'r not being rude!), sorry!

Of course u noted the problem is the cheap extra attack and all, i wanted to warn u not to go too far adding new rules and new weapons, not to open new landscapes... while that is possible i think the game is still quite solid and throwing too many news in would be an infinite source of debates and (legitimate) possibilities. Each weapon could be different, but is that needed? I think the current "style" should be taken into account... or else why not rewriting the whole game?
I'm not liking the idea...

My point is best express by Path Dub's reply (thank you!), as i think that as long as that advantage (extra attack) is shared the problem is not that big and maybe another path should be chased in improving dual wielding (well, "nerfing" it, actually...)...
On the other side, yes, 2 handers might need something, but not a complete revolution (again). I think this is the key for a proper and needed revision of the game in many of it's aspects.

My only concern with clubs, as of now, is that they are cheaper than axes, which are seldom chosen in alternative even with modded armour rules.
EDIT: Not to mention the usual swarm of skaven verminkin wielding club+dagger+sling for a mere 25gc each... 4 shooting and dual wielding warriors for a mere 100gc, which doubles to 8 for 200gc... but that's just a useful example here.

I'd like much more this "hand weapon" assett:
Dagger, 1st free, 2gc, as is (maybe 3gc?)
Axe, 5gc, as is
Club, 5gc, as is
Spear, 5gc, as is
Sword, 10gc, as is

Cheers!!!

Well, I agree that you shouldn't add to many extra rules – it gets quite fast a maze, and this is really not a darling, I just wanted to see if it was a solution.

I think that the most important solution to the extra attack problem is still -1 to hit on both weapons – I just thought this as an interesting idea for the club, both giving it more fluff, and balance...

Thanks Mat, i think your readjusted price list is just fine, except maybe the spear should be 7-8. First strike can still be very good at times and with the right warrior even after the last rules review. This is based strictly on game value though, since an axe costing as much as a mace just bugs me, and not everything is coasted on power level alone... see armor and black powder for compelling examples of background driven pricing strategies (the marketeer in me is creeping out a bit).

Popmouth: -1 to hit on one or both weapons is my favored solution to duel wielding's overuse as well, but i have yet to try it out. It is just the most simple alternative out of all the great ideas i have read.

I like the original crude idea also, and to contradict myself, i like thinking up new rules too; sometimes very complex rules i never use. I have another alternative to your crude special rule derived from the description you gave, not that there is anything wrong with yours, i just want to throw some more ideas on the table in case someone finds them useful...

Crude (3):
A club is a crude weapon, and brakes easily, especially when battered against though steel and gromril.
If an armor save is higher than the highest wound roll caused by a club that club is shattered against the armor and lost.

Using this alternative makes it so clubs remain are inferior against armored troops. You could even divide the weapons into two by keeping the mace as the 5gc with the regular rules and giving poor quality wooden clubs the crude rule at a cost of 3. Warbands that can buy clubs may now buy either.

That is indeed an interesting version of the "crude" rule...