Tolras - OD&D weapons

 For Tolras I want a pseudo bronze age/early iron age/primitive aesthetic, and part of achieving this is going to be shown through the weaponry available to characters.

That means adding/removing/changing the name of things as OD&D is fairly decidedly medieval. Changes are all very subjective I might add, I will be ignoring any commentary of the WeLl AcKcHuLy nature.

My end goal is, to some extent or another, have weapon choice be meaningful and for there to be tradeoffs. This post is mostly for aesthetics and getting a rough idea of what I might could do.

Melee weapons first:

The list of melee weapons in the 3LBB is as follows:

Dagger

Hand Axe

Mace

Sword

Battle Axe

Morning Star

Flail

Spear

Pole Arm

Halberd

Two Handed Sword

Lance

Pike

The first thing I want to tackle is two handed swords, pole arms, and halberds. (What I am going to consider "devastating" weapons, this is not a mechanic just a thought category)

Spears aside, the main types of "pole weapon" found in the historical periods I am drawing inspiration from are a form of Halberd and the two handed Falx (run Romans, run). For game purposes, I am going to divorce "polearms" from the ability to attack from the second rank, giving that only to spears. "polearms" in Tolras are going to be the class of weapons meaning "holy shit that warrior is going to cleave the fuck out of me with that big two handed sword/axe on a stick."

The second thing I want to tackle is Morning Stars and Flails. In my mind, these names heavily evoke a medieval aesthetic, and I am just going to essentially merge them or remove and replace them with the "War Club."  As it turns out, the entry for Cavemen in Monsters & Treasure supports me in this, they wield "weapons equivalent to morning stars." Neat.

Related, the "Mace" is quite in line with the aesthetic of what I am going for, but I want Clubs in there too. Clubs historically have throwable variants, and "Mace" just doesn't elicit that visual for me, so at the very least the Mace entry is going to change to Club/Mace. I'm not going for 6000 weapon varieties each with specific qualities, I am quite fine lumping things together into types that are close enough for the sake of ease and simplicity.

Third are outright additions to the list. Short Sword and Javelin.

For me, I'd have a hard time lumping Dagger/Short Sword together and Sword/Short Sword together I think. They were so ubiquitous and separate from longer swords during the periods I am inspired by, though I wonder if I don't get too in the weeds with how I end up doing combat, perhaps Sword/Short Sword isn't that bad. idk.

Got to have Javelins, there were very much around and widely used, and not just for throwing. They were very capable of being used toe to toe if you needed to, so I will list them under Melee Weapons and they will have thrown ranges and all that like the regular spear.

New working melee weapon list for Tolras as follows:

Dagger

Short Sword

Hand Axe

Club / Mace

Javelin

Sword

Battle Axe

War Club

Spear

Polearm (Halberd / Falx)

Lance

Pike

I like it.

Melee (Thrown)

Dagger

Hand Axe

Club

Javelin

Spear

Now for Missile Weapons, list from the 3LBB as follows:

Short Bow

Long Bow

Composite Bow

Light Crossbow

Heavy Crossbow

Looks good, just add the Sling and we are good to go, all this stuff was around.

***Special weapons/items for consideration that probably won't be governed by standard opps and that I don't care to have fleshed out at the moment or necessarily available to PCs at chargen to begin with so who cares.***

(knee jerk/impulse/not thought out thoughts in brackets, theres probably simple mechanics for all this stuff in AD&D or something, I just don't care to look at the moment and am spitballing.)

Blowgun (not deal damage, or only 1 damage, delivers poisons)

Net  (no damage, save to avoid like a trap?)

Bolas (no damage, save to avoid like a trap?)

Atlatl (increase the range of javelins)

Alrighty that's it for the general aesthetic direction I'm pulling towards.

*Self Notes: mechanical considerations.

        -Important to maintain AC as type, not "how hard to hit" (dex will not modify AC)

        -d6 damage, probably do some form of 2d6 take higher for some stuff

        -some form of weapon type vs AC, either in table form a la SVoZ or "simpler" general bonuses/penalties.