Are there rules for breaking swords, shattering shields, or damaging armor? It seems like these items are pretty indestructable. I like the idea of at least some gear getting messed up, at least the shield. I'm thinking of a house rule where a player knight can sacrifice their shield to get at additional 1d6/6 points of armor (not sure which yet, leaning towards straight up doubling it. This of course assumes they succeed on their combat skill.)

Am I missing any rules that already exist?

Search the forums from the Home page for "Shield" you'll find lots of house rule options and discussion.

The game itself doesn't address this level of granularity in combat much, but on a Tie swords break non-swords. Also, all weapons (except swords and great swords) break in combat when the combatant Fumbles.

Of course, lances break on an odd damage result.

Hope that helps.


T.

Having shields destroyed when the Axe vs. Shield roll comes up at 1 is one popular houserule.

We use in one campaign that every 6 in the damage roll means that a piece of the shield is lopped off, reducing the protection by 1 vs. subsequent strikes. If the shield is destroyed by this (reduced to 0) or the shield is not interposed, every full 2 rolls of 6 causes 1 damage into the armor. This generally tends to mean that the shields are reduced to like 4 in a battle and become a much more of a one-time-use item, as people tend to rearm with a new shield when they can.

Your suggestion of sacrificing the shield for some extra armor points has been brought up before, too. I am sure you can find the discussion if you search for it; I don't recall off the top of my head what the consensus was there. I think it was generally thought to be 'balanced': save 6 damage points now but take 6 more in subsequent hits...

There was another houserule suggestion of rolling a 1d6 each if the swords tie, and on a certain roll (4+?) the sword in question would break. Another less dramatic variant of that could be to give -1 damage to represent nicking the blade, until resharpened after the battle?