How to Adapt the Palladium Book of Weapons & Castles to Fudge

The Palladium Weapon series of books is a resource requiring a bare minimum of effort by the GM to adapt to Fudge. As it states on the cover of every book in the series, it is "For use with any game system" and as such, it seems perfectly suited for Fudge. Even the game-related abstractions can be used with little or no conversion necessary.

Weapons & Castles

The information presented in this article will enable you to use the Palladium book of Weapons & Castles, compiled by Matthew Balent and published by Palladium Books, in your own Fudge game. Weapons & Castles is required to make use of this information.

The first section of the book deals with the subject of ranged weapons prior to the era of gunpowder. The main categories are Bows and Crossbows and require little work for adaptation to a Fudge game. The remaining sections, Castles and Sieges, require no modification at all and can be used as is. Skills such as Weapon Use (Siege Engine) or Engineering (Siege Engine) and the determination of Ranged Combat Difficulty Levels are all that need to be added.

The terms used in the first section (and their Fudge interpretations where appropriate) follow.

Missile Weapons

TYPE: For bows, the categories are: Self, Built, Backed or Composite. For crossbows, the categories are: Wood, Composite, Backed, or Steel.

LENGTH: Use the metric measurement or convert as desired.

MASS: Use the metric measurement or convert as desired.

PULL: This is a measurement of the force required to draw the bow.

EFFECTIVE RANGE: This is the typical range limit of the weapon's accuracy. Hitting a target beyond this range is possible only if firing en masse at a target.

MAXIMUM RANGE: This is the absolute range limit of the weapon.

DAMAGE: Adjust this number by +1 to account for the sharpness of arrows, bolts, and darts. For blunt projectiles such as rocks, stones, and lead bullets, leave the listed number unmodified.

Arrows and bolts have two types of damage factors: offensive factors and penetration factors. Offensive factors consist of the listed damage +1 (to account for sharpness as noted above). Penetration factors are identical to offensive factors except for Scythian bows, Turkish bows, and long bows. For these bows, the penetration factor is calculated by doubling the listed damage and then adding +1 for sharpness.

The offensive factor is the ability of the projectile to cause injury to a target. The penetration factor is the ability of a projectile to penetrate hard substances such as armor. If the penetration factor is lower than the defensive factor of a piece of armor or other substance, the projectile is deflected by or embedded in the armor or substance even if the projectile's offensive factor is higher. If the penetration factor is higher than the defensive factor, then the projectile uses whichever factor is higher to determine damage: offensive factor or penetration factor (plus relative degree). The defensive factor of the target is then subtracted from this number.

In cases where armor is described as possessing a variety of defensive factors, the penetration factor of hunting arrows and hunting bolts are compared to the armor's thrust defensive factor, whereas the penetration factor of military arrows and military bolts are compared to the armor's impact defensive factor.

SHOTS PER MINUTE: The typical length of a round in Fudge is pi seconds long (or approximately 3 seconds), so the rate of fire becomes the following:

SHOTS/MIN	SHOTS/INTERVAL OF ROUNDS
.67	1 per 30 rounds
1	1 per 20 rounds
1.5	1 per 15 rounds
2	1 per 10 rounds
4	1 per 5 rounds
12	1 per 2 rounds

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net in 2007.]