Equipment

You can't have a fantasy game without some nod toward equipment. Well, you can, but it's no game that any of my friends would want to play, and I'll need playtesters eventually. That said, I wanted a way to include equipment to make its presence noticeable without it overshadowing the rest of the game. Call it a backlash from playing a lot of D&D and Shadowrun.

Weapons
In many games, weapons either set your damage, or increase your ability through a static modifier or bonus dice. In this case, given that Heroes of Destiny is diceless, the static modifier seems to be the way to go. In game terms, it gives bonus effort.

I don't want to create a giant list of weapons with individualized stats, however. First, it's just not appealing to me from a design perspective (i.e., I don't want to do the work), and second no matter how big that list is, someone's going to want something that's not on it. Add to this the fact that my friend John, who requested this game, is a fan of the riddle of steel school of thought (that skill with the weapon is more important than what's in your hand), making a big list feels like emphasizing the wrong thing.

Instead, I'm creating three broad bands of weapons and placing them into these categories. These bands are melee ranges. If you're in that range and using that weapon, you get the bonus. If not, you don't, but you can still use the weapon. Bonuses can apply to defense, attack, and/or damage, and will be by weapon type. So close weapons get a bonus to defense and damage, for example.

As for ranged weapons, for now I'm thinking they get no bonus, but they have the advantage of being usable from behind cover and being able to hit people who may not be able to hit you back.

Armor
I'm thinking armor's going to be a very simple affair. It soaks damage, period. No piecemeal stuff, no cover ratings, just a flat number that shows the number of points of damage it negates from every hit. In addition, it'll be simple categories: light, medium, and heavy. No need to get more involved than that.

Shields
Shields work similarly to weapons; they grant bonus effort to defense rolls. There's nothing stopping you from making an attack with a shield as well, but it doesn't get the bonuses of weapons in their proper range.