What Is a Weapon?

Weapon represents an offensive device carried by a Being — a sword, axe, bow, dagger, staff, or any other instrument of combat. These are separated from natural weapons such as claws and teeth, which are Combat Techniques.

The weapon item is the physical object: its weight, value, quality, durability, and how awkward it is to carry. What the weapon can actually do lives in its strike modes — the distinct ways it can be used in a fight. A staff might have a swing and a thrust; a spear might thrust in the hand and be thrown; a bow has a single missile mode. A strike mode is not a separate item: the modes belong to the weapon and are edited on its own Strike Modes tab.

Where It Appears

Every weapon appears on the Being sheet’s Gear tab, like any other piece of gear.

A weapon appears on the Combat tab only while the character is holding it — gripping it with a limb (see Holding a Weapon). Held weapons are listed there by name, with a row per strike mode, alongside any combat technique the character has. That is where a weapon’s attacks and defenses are rolled from.

Weapon items are typically added from compendium packs.

Additional Properties

Along with the Standard Gear Properties (Quantity, Weight, Value, Quality, Durability, and Is Carried), a weapon’s Properties tab adds:

Encumbrance: If specified, this overrides the encumbrance based on weight while the weapon is carried — a weapon that is more awkward than its raw weight suggests.
Heft: How unwieldy the weapon is in the hand. It is shown as the HFT column on the Combat tab’s melee ledger.

The weapon’s strike modes are not on this tab; they have their own, described next.

The Strike Modes Tab

A weapon’s Strike Modes tab lists every way the weapon can be used. Unlike a combat technique — which has exactly one mode — a weapon may have as many as it needs, melee and missile together.

Each row shows:

Column	What it shows
Strike Mode	The mode’s name — Swing, Thrust, Throw
Shortcode	Its short identifier, unique within the weapon
Type	Melee or Missile
Impact	The damage formula, such as `d6+2e` (the trailing letter is the aspect)
⋮ menu	Edit or delete the mode

Add Strike Mode (the + control above the list) appends a new mode and opens its editor. A weapon with no modes says so, and cannot attack with anything.

The strike-mode editor

Editing a mode opens the same configuration window a combat technique uses; its fields are described once on Skill, under The strike-mode editor. A mode’s Type (Melee or Missile) is fixed once created — to change it, delete the mode and add a new one.

Three of those fields matter differently on a weapon than on a technique:

Associated Skill — on a weapon this is what supplies the mastery level. A weapon has no mastery level of its own, so unlike a combat technique there is no fall-back: if this does not name a skill the character actually has, the mode contributes only its own flat Attack / Block / Counterstrike modifiers and the character swings at little more than nothing. Set it to the weapon skill that governs the mode (see Shortcodes).
Min Parts — how many limbs must grip the weapon for this mode to be usable. A hand-and-a-half sword’s two-handed mode, or a longbow that needs both hands to draw, sets this to 2, and the mode is simply absent from the Combat tab until enough limbs hold the weapon.
Length (melee) — the weapon’s reach in feet before the wielder’s own body reach is added; the sum is the RCH column on the Combat tab.

Holding a Weapon

A weapon does nothing until the character is holding it. Carrying a sword in a pack is not the same as having it in hand, and SoHL tracks the difference: the weapon’s combat actions appear only while a limb grips it.

To pick a weapon up, open the Being sheet’s Combat tab and find the Held Items list, below the strike-mode ledgers. It has one row per limb that can hold something, with a dropdown listing the character’s holdable gear. Choose the weapon in a limb’s dropdown and it is now held; choose the blank entry to let go.

A two-handed grip is two selections. Select the same weapon in both limbs’ dropdowns. That is also how a mode with Min Parts 2 becomes usable.
Holding is not carrying. Both must be true for a weapon to be usable: the gear must be carried (see Carried Gear Only on Gear) and it must be held. Setting a weapon down with Toggle Carried takes its actions away even if a limb still names it.
An injured hand costs you. If a limb holding the weapon is impaired by an unhealed injury, the mode’s attack and defense tests are penalized; if a holding limb is unusable altogether, the test fails critically without a roll.

The Weapon Actions

Action	Shortcode	Where you meet it
Attack	`attackTest`	The Combat tab’s Atk cell; the item’s Actions tab
Block	`blockTest`	The Combat tab’s Blk cell; the item’s Actions tab
Counterstrike	`counterstrikeTest`	The Combat tab’s CX cell; the item’s Actions tab
Toggle Carried	`toggleCarried`	The Actions context menu; the row’s sack button

Toggle Carried belongs to every piece of gear and is described once on Gear — it behaves no differently on a weapon. Edit, Delete, and Output Description to Chat belong to every item and are described once on Base Item.

A weapon has no hidden actions: everything it can do is on the list above.

Where the three combat actions are offered

All three are gated on the weapon being held (and carried), so an unheld weapon offers none of them. When it is held, they are reachable:

From the Combat tab — click the strike mode’s Atk, Blk, or CX cell. This is the direct route, and the only one that already knows which strike mode you meant. Hold Shift while clicking to skip the pre-roll dialog.
From the weapon’s own Actions tab — open the weapon and use the ▶ button beside Attack, Block, or Counterstrike.

Known gap. The three actions are missing from the Gear tab’s ⋮ context menu, even on a weapon that is held and carried (issue #1132). That menu currently offers only Edit, Toggle Carried, Delete, and Output Description to Chat. Use the Combat tab or the weapon’s Actions tab until it is fixed; both run the identical action.

Attack, Block, and Counterstrike

	Attack	Block	Counterstrike
Shortcode	`attackTest`	`blockTest`	`counterstrikeTest`
Icon	`ginf-broadsword` (a broadsword)	`fa-shield` (a shield)	`fa-circle-half-stroke` (a half-filled circle)
Invoked	The Atk cell; the Actions tab	The Blk cell; the Actions tab	The CX cell; the Actions tab
API	`WeaponGearLogic.attackTest`	`WeaponGearLogic.blockTest`	`WeaponGearLogic.counterstrikeTest`

What they do and when to use them

Each rolls a d100 against the strike mode’s mastery level for that use of the weapon:

Attack — striking with the weapon. Swing the axe, thrust the spear, loose the arrow.
Block — turning an incoming blow aside with it.
Counterstrike — defending and hitting back in the same motion.

Reach for them whenever the table needs to know whether a blow landed or was turned. They are the same three tests a Combat Technique offers, on the same rows of the Combat tab — a weapon is simply a technique the character can drop.

What the roll is made against

The number in the Atk, Blk, or CX cell is the target, built from:

The Associated Skill’s mastery level — the base. A character with Melee 50 swings every melee weapon at 50 before anything else applies.
The strike mode’s own modifier — the flat Attack, Block, or Counterstrike adjustment set in the strike-mode editor. A mode with an Attack Modifier of +5 makes the target 55, and the pre-roll dialog itemizes it as Attack Modifier +5.
Anything else in play — impairment from an injured holding limb, effects, and the modifiers the dialog lets you add.

Hover any of those cells to see the breakdown without rolling.

What happens on screen

The strike-mode picker opens — but only when SoHL cannot tell which mode you meant: two or more modes on the weapon, and the action reached from the Actions tab rather than a Combat-tab cell. A single-mode weapon never asks, and clicking a Combat-tab cell has already said which mode you meant. The dialog is described once on Base Item, under The Strike-Mode Picker.
The standard test dialog opens — Target, the modifier breakdown, Situational Modifier, Success Level Modifier, and Roll Visibility, described once on Base Item. Cancelling it rolls nothing and posts nothing. Shift-clicking the cell skips this step.
The d100 is rolled against the target.
A test-result card posts to chat.

The test-result card

Part	What it shows
Title	The test’s name
✎ pencil (GM only)	Re-opens the dialog to correct the modifiers, without re-rolling the die
Target	The number the roll had to come in at or under
Roll	The d100 result, green on a success and red on a failure
Footer	The named outcome — Critical Success, Marginal Success, and so on

The GM’s pencil is described on Base Item, under Editing a Posted Test Result.

Known gap. Fate cannot be spent on a weapon’s combat tests — the card never offers the Fate button, even to a character holding a charged Fate Point, and even though the very skill the weapon rolls through does offer it on its own tests (issue #1106). Spending Fate is described on Fate.

Where they are unavailable

The weapon must be held and carried. Neither the Combat-tab row nor the actions exist otherwise — see Holding a Weapon.
A mode needs enough hands. A mode whose Min Parts exceeds the number of limbs gripping the weapon is not listed on the Combat tab at all.
Block and Counterstrike need a melee mode. You cannot parry with a loosed arrow, so the Combat tab’s Missile ledger has no Blk or CX columns, and a weapon whose only strike mode is a missile mode — a plain bow or sling — does not offer the two actions at all. A weapon with both a melee and a missile mode keeps them and blocks with its melee mode. If a block or counterstrike still reaches a missile mode some other way (a macro, say), SoHL says so on screen rather than doing nothing.

Assisted, not automated. These actions roll the test and report it. They do not move a combatant, spend an initiative, choose a target, or apply an injury to anyone. For the full combat sequence — declaring an exchange, resolving a strike against a defender, and turning impact into a wound — see Combat Basics and Combatant.

Weapon