Equipment Destruction and The Benefit of Skills and Magic

#1

I’ve been thinking about long term play and the attrition system.

First, I love Attrition and think it’s going to make some really great stories as characters lose the ability to use skills and equipment. But as I have been making some various character concepts, I’ve come to a character concept that is at a serious disadvantage. That is of a character that wants to have a very powerful weapon.

Because all equipment is “bought” using Hero Points which are used to show character power progression when a character’s equipment is destroyed (as in cannot be repaired) this comes as the equivalent of losing levels in other systems. So, a character that invests most of their Hero Points into skills and magic is much more likely to hold on to their power compared to characters that invest into equipment.

While I love the idea of using the hero points to build equipment it just seems like it would be something to only invest the minimum of Hero Points in so that you have eventually have 10 equipment items, that if destroyed are not too costly to replace. For example, rather than invest large amounts of hero points into creating a magic sword, it would be better to use to hero points to create a magic spell that you cast to enchant your weapon.

If you don’t want to go the route of investing in magic investing in skills also allows characters to recover their strength easier and to be honest everyone is going to work to get at least 30 points invested into skills at some point in order to improve survivability.

This might be addressed somewhere in the players guide that I missed or maybe it is part of the full book, but would it be overpowered or unbalanced to return the hero points invested in the destroyed item back to the character? Doing that seems like it just basically seems to be the equivalent of just making the equipment unusable till it’s repaired.

#2

If you really want to go all in, basing your character concept around a very powerful weapon

I would take a page out of the custom spells section: “Lasting: Make a spell’s output permanent, with GM approval, for a cost of 15 points”

and for the cost of 15 make that weapon “Lasting”/indestructible, it can still be crossed off, disarmed, but never fully destroyed.

Maybe even give the character a custom skill “Recall weapon” on a successful roll; it flies back like Thor’s hammer or a Jedi’s lightsaber, so it’s never truly lost to a thief or being thrown into a volcano.

Alternatively I would go hardcore mode and have skills being susceptible to destruction as well (maybe being lowered by 1 value each time it is crossed off)
and make spells have the requirement; of always being tied to an inventory slot: in a spell-book, orb, druidic talisman, infernal gemstone… the caster never being able to just learn it; so it’s just sitting there invulnerable in the notes section on your character sheet.

#3

Easy, give the mighty weapon it’s own character sheet. The mighty weapon can lose some skills while being damaged or attacked in certain ways, maybe even destroyed if the player does not take care of it. But it will be a slow grind before it loses everything. To add a mystical level of understanding to the weapon though make it so that it does not gain back it’s skills the same way a character does.