Weapon Bonus vs OB

[jowe01]

When creating a new weapon, I can give it a bonus. There are two entries possible there, "Weapon Bonus" and "OB". I am not sure, what is the difference between the two? For me they are the same thing, but apparently, they are not.

[Dakadin]

Weapon Bonus is for the item's bonus. The OB is the final total that is used in the combat tracker for the attack. The weapon bonus will not show up for the players if the item isn't ID'd.

[jowe01]

Thank you for the fast answer Dakadin.

I do not really get the logic. Why should there be a field in the ITEM definition which specifies the entire OB, i.e. the OB of the wielder has with this kind of weapon if it is a variant without bonus PLUS the magic/ material/ quality bonus that the weapon gives to the wielder? The former differs from wielder to wielder, it does imho not make sense to put it into the weapon definition. I will often define a particular weapon type (eg table leg to be used as an improvised club, which I derive by duplicating and renaming the standard “club”item but adding a -20 on attack rolls) and then distribute it to several NPC who have different skills in this kind of weapon. How / why could / should I define the total OB in the item definition?

[Dakadin]

Hi jowe01,

Basically it was setup that way so an item could have a magic bonus that could be hidden from the PCs. That value gets added to the skill bonus to set the OB for PCs but won't be shown to them. This was so a PC could equip different weapons and use the same skill for the skill bonus. Otherwise they would have had to manually change the skill to add the modifier for the weapon. NPCs can just use the OB field.

So for your improvised weapon if a PC is using it, set the weapon bonus to -20 and then if there is a skill associated with it the PC would select the skill and it will fill in the skill bonus and calculate the correct OB.

Hopefully that helps explain it but please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Dakadin