Them Bones of Adventuring - XXIV: Wear and Tear

An ongoing exposition on table procedures for common exploration feats and rules, which began here with part one.

Introduction

Forgotten but not gone, this charred-out husk smolders still, the posting efforts proceeding at a pace quite unabated if solely within the sconced limits of my mind. The more prolonged my absence, the more for me to take to the belief that time and space cannot behave quite the same way for obscure weblogs tending to the roleplaying persuasion.

As proof that that which though dead yet still lies and that nature abhors a vaccuum let me kick and bend myself into a shape of some sort, perchance more pleasing to the eye; If the fingers can be snuggled deep enough down the back of my throat I'm certain this can still be made to work, and that with strange aeons even these house rules may somehow be brought to fruition...

On the Journey Fantastic Significant

Not for the last time, Tao of DnD came through with vital conceptualization of something that I’d long been grasping for but never quite reached.

I’ll self indict: opening the post, my jaded inner voice did not exactly peg “equipment wear and tear” as a rivetting matter well worth table time waxing on about.

That skepticism persisted for all of two paused nasal exhalations; Alexis’ post is exceedingly good. The takeaway from it – along with a slew of other ones in the same vein made by him at the time – being that the meaningful overland journey lies over a framework of iterative procedures that, having a real (even if marginal) mechanical consequence and not being handwaveable in the face of whim or whine, are fit to become the cornerstones of mentally simulated distance, aknowledging the prose only insomuch as it provides the oil amid all these shifting gears.

Following his efforts in this field as well as his online campaigns has effected profound changes to my thinking regarding the abstraction of distances, and how there needs to be something more to the matter than just stamping the passports and saying it’s done. Most casual DMs would think nothing of hopping past all the “boring bits”, diving straight into the trap of narrativism. Yet an arch is not all made out of keystones and so the costs levied by distance in more than just time are a matter to which this blog’ll doubtlessly return at a later point.

Of course, mechanically speaking, he sounds down to depths that I am completely unwilling to reach, my personal preference being for rules shoaled within the limits of the pen and the paper. As such I mean to drag this idea to the yellow-watered end of the kids’ pool, the better to suit my preferences and that being where this post comes in.

Aknowledgments where they’re due: the system’s rationale is all his and the link above is absolutely required reading. What follows is merely a watered-down adaptation whose sole concern is with averting the spreadsheet.

They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

The idea behind wear and tear is that characters won’t just buy their staples at the very beginning of their adventuring career and call it a day for the rest of their lifetime (or until such a time as the decision comes to make an upgrade).

Slow and accretional loss of equipment integrity and reliability is what’s intended, something that will have players feeling the need for acquiring better grade of equipment or mulling over replacements and spares when an expedition is being planned.

In addition to providing one more reason for characters to go back to market it presents an additional variable in the field, one more rude angle of surprise for how things can and will go wrong in a hostile environment, organically birthing adventure and drawing closer to effective immersion: a party reaches its fifth day into an expedition only to find their longest coil of rope is showing signs of fraying, the formerly trusty axe head is close to dislodging or that a barrel holding precious water has leaked out unchecked during the night. Do they fold and double back, forge cautiously ahead with their newly imposed needs in mind or improvise something else altogether?

The mechanic should be slow to take its toll but still have a meaningful enough impact over time to justify its existence, with an individual character able to go a long spell without experiencing the least bit of equipment wear but, as a whole group rolls and racks up some results, the idea that the party’s collective resources are being taxed nevertheless lodging itself on each player’s mind.

The Crunch

This system presumes both a die-roll based item breakage and the use of a slot-based inventory.

The Wear and Tear Roll

Every time a roll to determine wear and tear is called by the referee, each player rolls a d100 and compares the result to the character’s inventory:

On a 21-100 - No equipment deterioration occurs;

On a 1-20 - The item occupying the corresponding slot acquires a wear mark or notch and, if the result exceeds the character’s Wisdom score, the player immediately makes a new d100 roll;

- Rolls pointing to empty slots have no effect.

Worn Items

The limits of the slot-based inventory require that special attention be given to worn items. The system looks at “clothing” as a wholesale category, not feeling a need to further dissect it beyond separate consideration for footwear.

Thus, here's when a d100 wear and tear roll will carry additional results:

- A roll of “1” affects the character’s worn armour and/or clothing in addition to the respective slot;

- A roll of “2” affects the character’s footwear in addition to the respective slot;

- A roll of “3” affects the backpack (or other container) granting a character his slots in addition to the respective slot.

When to roll

Civilization: a standard of one roll per month or even less, depending on the character’s lifestyle.

(Taking civilization as a concept far from perfectly bounded at a city’s gates, but rather extending a'ways into the surrounding countryside and even to some well maintained routes amid otherwise hostile ground).

Wilderness or Underworld: one roll at the end of each day of travel or exploration (with more rolls callable if it is determined that an environment or stretch of ground is particularly demanding).

Breakage and Wear Marks

As previously established, objects may break when subjected to inordinate stress, be it a weapon’s fumbled attack roll, a rope supporting excessive weight or the entirety of a character’s inventory meeting with a hard fall or immersion in water.

Breakage is only called exceptionally though; for the most part things don’t just break while being carried and subjected to casual wear, instead slowly degrading into tatters.

- Objects have no hit-points but are assigned a breakage die by the referee, considering the item’s relative durability and condition.

- An object accumulates wear marks (or notches) that both signal how close the item is to breaking as well as its market value.

- Whenever breakage is called for, an item will break if a '1' is rolled on the breakage die or gain an additional notch if a '2' is rolled instead.

- Each notch halves an item’s base market value, the very first notch marking an item as “used” and impacting its asking price accordingly.

- Once an object accrues wear marks totalling up to the whole of its breakage die it meets structural failure as it comes undone from excessive use, transportation mishap or inherent vice.

Abstracted Interpretations

As can be surmised, the abstracted material degradation of equipment is a place fantastically rife with those rusty hooks dubbed judgment calls; the need for the process to be streamlined for ease of management seeing off most notions of detail, completeness or relative material durability.

Large and complex objects such as armour or clothing are usually not apt to run afoul of total structural failure, generally these either gaining notches instead of having their breakage die rolled (such as for clothes and fabrics) or, being objects especially suited to punishment and rugged use such as armour or a backpack, degrading much slower and in a piecemeal fashion.

Some sample durabilities

Sundry items will have a breakage die of 1d4 to 1d100, depending on their relative durability.

Weapons: as per the damage die.

Armour: durable by design, armour will sport a variable breakage die like any other item but even as it sustains a number of notches equal to the die this will mean downgrading the AC bonus by one and starting a new die afresh with an additional notch already etched rather than scrapping the item.

Objects at the extremes of durability

Fragile items that are not especially accounted for (meaning some protection or measure of padding that costs actual slots) will break immediately the first time their slot comes up on a Wear & Tear roll.

Victuals and consummables can either spoil, become the target of vermin or fall to mishap, usually wholesale if the slot comes up unless some mitigating factor presents itself.

On the other hand, solid objects such as gems, coins or sling bullets can degrade, rust up and tarnish to a point but won’t really break under mundane circumstances, though the containers carrying them might.

Containers and grouped objects

A group of discrete objects in a slot will prompt additional randomization to determine which among them has become worn.

If a slot with a container comes up, mundane wear and tear will apply to the container first. More drastic instances possibly dictating that both container and contents are worn down or, for the case of delicate objects such as arrows, ruined.

If a container fails, an ad-hoc call will be required to determine the consequences of its failure. If a backpack tears up items will fall to the ground; mending a container, if even feasible, might cost slot capacity.

For containers with fluids, a Wisdom roll to notice a leak on time may be called for and will imply the loss of a rolled percentage of the contents regardless as well as some rational thought given to the fate to the spilled liquid and what other items it might ruin. Having one’s possessions doused in lamp oil makes for a promise of fun.

Noneuclidean Inventories

Readers of even marginally pythagorian persuasion will no doubt notice that, speaking in terms of probability, this whole procedure is blasphemously flawed, being that it implies that characters with more possessions will experience wear and tear more often. The use of the daily d100 roll is meant to mitigate this, making it so that the odds, despite incongruously wobbly, won’t be excessively fazed by the number of filled slots, translating to an overally low percentile difference (depending on one's tolerance threshold).

Other inventory sizes will require a different wear & tear roll so as to keep the randomization notionally proportional to the 80/20 split between “safe” and “worn” results relative to a humanoid’s inventory, meaning a d200 for beasts of burden capable of holding 40 slots, etc.

T'is also worth nothing that five humanoid inventories will translate into five rolls per day to the one roll allotted to all the items carried by a beast of burden, though this can be either compensated for by multiple rolls or simply be considered a feature.