Weapons and Armor¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.4 Draft¶
This document covers weapon and armor choice for Characters. It assumes Class alone sets Hit Range (see core-rules and character-creation); neither a weapon nor a piece of armor ever changes what a die succeeds on, only what happens once it hits, and how much a Character can carry that hit.
The Principle¶
A Character's Hit Range always comes from Class, never from weapon. Two Characters of the same Class hit exactly as often as each other regardless of what they carry. Weapon choice instead governs three things: how much damage a Hit deals, what optional effect a Hit can be spent on instead of dealing damage, and where a Character can effectively fight from.
This mirrors how Retainers already work, with one difference. A basic Retainer's role (Archer, Halberdier, Blade, Shieldbearer) sets their Hit Range directly, because a Retainer has no Class of their own to set it instead. A Retainer is their gear. A Character transcends theirs.
The Four Weapon Types¶
One-Handed Weapon¶
The baseline. On a Hit, deals 1 damage. No further effect. Most Characters default to this without needing to think about it further.
Two-Handed Weapon¶
On a Hit, deals 2 damage instead of 1, at the same Hit Range the Character's Class already provides. The cost is real but not a dice cost: both hands are full, so a Character wielding one cannot also carry a shield, and has no access to the Weapon and Shield type's Guard option.
Weapon and Shield¶
On a Hit, the Character may bank it as a Guard token instead of dealing damage. One Guard token negates one incoming Hit on the Character's next turn as defender; unused Guard expires at the start of that next turn. This is an either/or choice made each time a Hit lands, not a bonus stacked on top of full damage.
Bow¶
Same Hit Range as any other weapon; adds Range (no adjacency required to contribute a Hit). The cost is positional, not statistical: a bow does not function at melee range. A Character caught adjacent by an enemy must retreat, switch to a different weapon, or fight at a real disadvantage. This mirrors the existing Archer Retainer's rule exactly ("loses effectiveness if disarmed; Range is irrelevant with no weapon").
Dual-Wielding¶
Fighting with two one-handed weapons is the Twin Blades Kit, chosen free at creation. See kits.md for the full Kit system.
Note that Twin Blades no longer grants a die. Its current perk, Twinned Edge, converts a natural 6 on the wielder's own die into 2 damage instead of 1. No Kit grants a personal die. Personal dice come only from a Character's class Level ladder and are capped at 3; nothing bought, found, or worn adds one. A Named Weapon is a found relic that carries a signature property rather than a die (see Named Weapons below).
Named Weapons¶
A Named Weapon is a relic found or won beyond the Mists, never bought and never forged. This matches the setting's own rule that true magic items are discovered, not commissioned, which is why a Named Weapon is a reward the GM places in play rather than an Advancement purchase. Wealth and items cross the Mists, so a blade won in the lands beyond can be carried home to the Known World, where a relic may matter far more than it did in a place where death is not yet final.
A Named Weapon does not grant a personal die. Pool size comes only from a Character's Class Level ladder (see character-creation, Advancement), and carrying a relic never changes it. Instead, a Named Weapon holds one signature property, tuned to the blade rather than to raw output. The full treatment of relic properties is deferred past the first release; the framework below is provisional. [PROVISIONAL]
A signature property takes one of three shapes, chosen for the specific weapon.
- A read the wielder would not otherwise have. The weapon lets its bearer spend a pattern already sitting in the banked dice, a Triple, a Straight, a pair of sixes, for a signature effect, governed by the one-die-one-purpose rule (core-rules, Part Eighteen): a die spent on the weapon's effect is not also spent on a Class Combo or on damage. A sword that looses a pillar of fire when its wielder banks a Triple is this shape.
- A keyword on the wielder's hits. The weapon lends its Hits one of the monster attack keywords (core-rules, Part Fourteen), so a Hit may be spent as Rend 1 or carry Piercing, rather than always dealing its flat point of damage.
- An uncanny, always-on property. A wound the weapon deals may not close between fights (core-rules, Part Thirteen names weapons of renown as exactly this kind of source); it may glow near the fae, refuse to be dropped, or bind itself to one hand. These are fictional edges, not Pool math.
Because a Named Weapon reads or spends dice the wielder already rolls, it feels powerful without adding to how many dice hit the table. That is deliberate. Raw output stays a function of Class and Level, which the progression schedule controls, while a relic competes for the dice a Character already has.
Armor¶
Armor is a choice separate from weapon, and separate from Kit if a Kit system is ever built on top of this (see open-questions). A Character picks one of four tiers. None of them touch Hit Range; a weapon decides what happens once a die hits, armor decides how much of that a Character can absorb before it costs them, and what wearing it costs in return.
Armor trades Hit Points for Speed. Baseline Character Speed is 5 (see character-creation, Axis One). Armor Hit Points are added on top of the Class Hit Points placeholder (currently 6 for every Class but the Warden).
| Tier | Hit Points | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| None | +0 | 5 |
| Light | +1 | 5 |
| Medium | +2 | 4 |
| Heavy | +3 | 3 |
None. No armor at all, whatever clothing the fiction calls for. No cost, no benefit.
Light. A real gain with no real cost, the tier any Character can take without a second thought regardless of what their Class needs from Speed.
Medium. The first genuine trade. Enough extra durability to matter, enough Speed lost that a Character leaning on mobility, Fluid Footwork, a Blade-flavored fight, outrunning something, will feel it.
Heavy. The steepest trade in either direction: the most durability on offer, and a Speed of 3, at parity with a standard Retainer rather than faster. This is the Knight's natural tier, not because the rules say so, but because a Knight's kit was never spending much on personal Speed to begin with, so the cost lands lighter on them than on anyone else. Nothing stops another Class from wearing Heavy armor; it simply costs that Class more of what its own kit actually needs.
Armor is chosen at character creation and changed only as a downtime activity between fights, the same way a Named Weapon isn't swapped mid-combat. This keeps a Character's Speed and Hit Points stable for the length of a fight, not a lever pulled turn to turn.
Retainers Are Unchanged¶
None of the above touches Retainers, weapon or armor rules alike. Their roles (Archer, Halberdier, Blade, Shieldbearer) keep the exact Hit Range, Hit Points, Speed, and Range already defined in companies-and-command, Part One. A Retainer with a polearm is simply a Halberdier; a Retainer with a greatsword still resolves as whichever basic role fits closest. The two-damage-per-hit rule above is Character-only, since Retainers were never variable on that axis to begin with; a basic Retainer's Hit already deals exactly 1 damage, full stop. Armor is nearly the same story: a Retainer's Speed is fixed by its role, and its armor is fixed too, at the Light default every Retainer is issued as standard kit (1 base Hit Point plus 1, for the 2 shown in companies-and-command, Part One). A Retainer does not choose its tier the way a Character does, and one turned out with none sits at the 1-Hit-Point floor. Whether a Retainer can be issued heavier armor is logged in open-questions.
Changelog
- 2026-08-09: Removed "quickstart" framing in line with the project scope reframe; the first release is a lean, playable slice of the full game, not a quickstart.
- 2026-08-06: Named Weapons no longer grant a personal die or come from the Advancement menu. Recast as found relics carrying a signature property; added the Named Weapons section and its provisional property framework, and retuned the die-source line.