More combi-weapons and the random Renaissance bionic arm

I spent some time in a local museum the other day and snapped some photographs which had possible relevance to games and the blog!

Axe-gun, like in this post.
I think in order for this to be good in games, you'd need a
game that has drawing a weapon as a slow action.

I find the idea of a blunderbuss with a bayonet hilarious for some reason.

"Ha ha! You thought I had a gun, but actually it's ... a knife ..."

OK, so those are my flashbacks. On to the meat of the post. I also saw this prosthetic hand -- there were actually two, but I don't think my photo of the other came out well enough. As you can see, this is an iron prosthetic from the Renaissance, and it's pretty cool-looking. From the description on the card, it doesn't sound like it was actually very functional, but we can beef it up for gaming a little bit. But we don't want bionic hands to just work like replacement hands; how boring would that be? 

First off, obviously the fantasy replacement hand is made of metal, so it has some good points: great for opening poison-needle traps with, for instance. Probably not great on the ol' dexterity, though, so you probably don't want to be trying to open traps that work by explosives or deadfalls. I assume they probably take Dex penalties for tasks performed with that hand? I'll think of it when I get to it.

Anyway, I like the idea that these things are made individually by local smiths, so no two of them are the same. With that in mind, I have created the Random Mechanical Hand Table. It is designed for my home D&D game, which is like d20 but I ignore the complicated bits. I think that PCs should be able to try to influence the outcome -- maybe you can get a second roll on the table, but it costs extra? Anyway:

Random Mechanical Hand Table

Roll d10 once for each section.

Advantages

1. Decorative inlay. Looks really cool. 
2. Knuckle spikes. Unarmed strikes do an additional d4 damage. 
3. Integral multitool. Saw, screwdriver, pliers, little knife, etc. Gives +2 bonus on crafty skills, handy for cutting ropes, etc. 
4. Hidden finger compartment. Secrete one small object -- a note, a few gems, some lockpicks. 
5. Joint lock. Set to hold hand in one position. +2 to resist disarm, but needs to be reset before you can do anything else with it. 
6. Integral dart launcher. Compressed-air charge fires a single dart; provide your own poison. Reloading takes several minutes, tools and removing the hand. 
7. Armoured plating. Counts as a buckler in combat. 
8. Exotic construction. Double base cost. 1-2: Silver. 3-4: Meteoric iron. 5: Bones of a saint / cursed relics. 6: Bamboo, whalebone and exotic hardwoods. 
9. Magnetised plate. Good for attracting small metal objects. Can be inconvenient. 
10. Cable reel. Works like a grappling hook. 

Disadvantages

1. Decorative inlay is highly offensive in a randomly-determined language or carries symbols of hated cult/insurgency/noble house/whatever. 
2. Joints squeak unless regularly oiled. -2 on stealthy stuff unless regularly maintained. 
3. Loose fit. If you land a critical hit with this hand, roll d6. On a 1, the hand falls off. 
4. Tight fit. Bites into the arm, causing irritation. -2 to any rolls involving remaining calm (like resisting Rage spells). 
5. Evil. 
6. Shoddy construction. When putting high pressure on the hand (e.g. carrying a heavy object, clinging to a cliff edge), roll d6: 1-3 no effect. 4-5 minor damage; -2 on all rolls with this hand until repaired. 6 catastrophic failure. 
7. Rough finish. Wears away at ropes. Apply a penalty to skills using ropes or 10% chance of snapping rope when used with this hand if skills aren't your bag. 
8. Non-retractable spikes: not bad as a weapon, but don't shake hands with people, as this hand is covered in jagged blades and spikes. 
9. Crooked smith concealed valuable information/stolen goods in hidden compartment; dangerous people and/or the law are desperate to retrieve it. 
10. Unpredictable lock. As with grip lock above, but roll d6 when trying to unlock the hand: on a 4-6 it remains stuck and has to be opened by painstakingly dismantling the lock mechanism. 

Gamers like weapons, and gamers like mashups. It's surprising, therefore, that you don't see a lot of combination weapons in RPGs or wargames. I think it may be because most fantasy games take their inspiration from medieval settings and combination weapons, which include both a hand-to-hand weapon of some kind and a firearm, are really a Renaissance phenomenon.

Let me show you the kind of thing I'm talking about. These two examples are from Poland, where pistol/axes seem to have survived particularly late as cavalry weapons. I guess the idea is that you do that one-shot charge thing that 17th-century cavalry were so fond of, then shift your grip down to the handle of the axe and start busting heads. The first one in particular seems like a pretty robust piece.

I think it wouldn't be hard to get gamers hyped for this type of thing -- in particular, I can see it as something that you'd see in WHFRP, either as just a particular local specialty or as the kooky invention of some weirdo. Of course, mechanically in WHFRP (2nd ed, anyway) hand weapons aren't distinguished, so there's not much point. Still ...

 Anyway, most combination weapons, as far as I can tell, are not like this. They're more like wealthy people's playthings. Take a look at this example from the Tower of London.

This is an example of a charmingly brutal Renaissance polearm called a "holy water sprinkler," and for added comedy value it's got three pistols built into it, the idea being, I guess, that if you really don't like somebody you can shoot 'em three times, stab them with the pointy bit, and then bash them round the head with the mace part. It's known as "Henry VIII's walking-staff," which is pretty good. But somehow it seems kind of impractical, or at least impractically expensive. It's not clear what advantages it really has over a plain head-beating club and a couple of pistols. 

I do like the idea of weapons designed along these principles -- or, heck, not even weapons, anything. An old D&D joke is "a wizard did it," but I think "a rich idiot did it" is equally plausible. I know my players have recently spent a lot of time looting the homes of rich idiots, and I do sort of like the idea of giving them some comically implausible weapon that's so valuable they can't pass it up but so distinctive they can hardly fence it: "oh yeah, it's a halberd, but it's got, like, a crossbow built into it and then when you push this button knives pop out...". 

Likewise, I can legitimately see characters wanting one of these gun-shield things. People used to think these were just another armourer's fancy, but there is some new thinking that suggests they were actually used -- the examples in the V&A, for instance, have some powder burns and stuff, so they must have at least been test-fired. 

Some of them were probably intended for naval use, the idea being that you run up to the gunwale, slot the shield over it, and bang away, which I guess is fair enough. Others were probably for hand use, which is less practical-seeming. Might have been hard to aim. I can definitely see this in the hands of a WHFRP character. 

If you look at the modern version of this, of course, you can see the problem -- once you have relatively modern technology, there's not much point in having a gun-shield rather than a gun and a shield if you happen to want it. But more broadly, I think these combination weapons are actually really well-suited for gaming because they have all the problems that games typically don't account for -- clumsy, unwieldy, a pain in the ass to carry everywhere, and expensive. 

I suppose if you're really committed to the idea of emphasising the clumsiness and so on, you could do it Paranoia-style, and have the PCs be issued a bunch of clumsy, malfunctioning combo-weapons by some head-in-the-clouds R&D jagoff. "Hey guys, we've attached a chainsaw to this plasma generator. Now you have a mixture of close-combat utility and ranged firepower."

Obviously, that isn't a joke in all games.