While it sounds good, it punishes the players more than it helps them.

Nameless NPCs don't have any consequences, and supporting NPCs have a mild only. This means that only main NPCs will feel the brunt of the weapons rating—them and the PCs, of course.

Weapons ratings are how they are because they work on all NPCs and PCs alike, and they make the players feel more powerful. With your suggestion, when attacking a minion mob the weapon doesn't matter.

Considering that most NPCs encountered are nameless, your players might very well forget they have "special weapons" at all.

Also, just because a character takes a consequence doesn't mean they got hit. I could easily take a Winded mild consequence as my character tires after ducking and weaving a lot. No hit, but still a consequence.

True that stress isn't always damage, but success with a weapon also isn't always damage.

While I can't disagree with the "overwhelming" part, I don't agree that they don't make sense.

Take the typical action show fight - villain pops a knife, and suddenly the near-misses against the hero MATTER more.  There's a sense that she/she can't keep dodging forever...almost as if some intangible count of time before actual damage is being checked off at a faster rate than in hand-to-hand...

I'm not in love with your proposal because i feel it makes the mental math harder for not much benefit.  Also, if Weapon:2 means I can't use a Mild Consequence on it, I feel you've taken something away from the story rather than adding to it (Unless I'm misreading how that should work).  

It's got a certain elegance.

That said, players tend to avoid taking consequences unless they have no choice. This rule makes an under-armored opponent's consequences much less effective - if you go over your stress track, you go WAY over. Mechanically, it's almost like removing a character's minor consequence - most damage to it will just roll over it.

I would only apply the weapon value to the first consequence marked, otherwise weapons become REALLY deadly.

It definitely makes armor desirable, and it makes fights bloodier without it. More to the point, it means bigger consequences, so characters will spend longer in a wounded condition. It will also mean that players will have more motivation to spend fate points on an attack - the reward of rolling up on to a consequence is pretty high.

Those are my initial thoughts, anyway.

So, one thing I'd like to point out here is that there's two possible "baselines" to use when looking at this:

1) Not using any kind of armor/weapon differentiation/etc.
2) Using armor/weapon differentiation of another type (and I think the most appropriate comparison is probably armor/weapon ratings).

I'm not really thinking of this as a replacement for not using armor/weapon differentiation.  In most games, I don't, and I probably wouldn't change that.  I'm looking at this as an alternative to "straight" armor/weapon ratings.  Most of the critiques about fights being deadlier/etc. are true for standard armor/weapon ratings as well.

So, while it's true that this means that the minor consequence slot is less usable (per +David Goodwin's suggestion, if the weapon only impacts the first consequence taken per blow, it would mean that a hit tha twould normally require a consequence now wouldn't, as it would be absorbable by stress.

Hmm.

What if weapons, instead of just inflicting more stress, made success with style easier?

Like, any weapon (or serious unarmed combat style) allows you to get your boost without spending a shift of stress.

Serious weapons, swords, axes, hammers -- these cause you to get a boost if you succeed by 2 or more, of if they're very nasty, like guns in a fantasy setting, 1 or more.

Heavy nasty weapons? Bazookas, explosions, light sabers, chainsaw-chucks...get a boost whenever they hit.

Now the stakes go up when the blades come out, because the fight is shorter -- taking a hit sends you down a rapid death spiral.

I believe @Jessie cox idea is an interesting one. It is far less confusing and even less bookkeeping.

While I am fine with the way the rules are now, his idea is still an interesting one to consider.

All:  Sorry if my last post seemed snarky or dismissive - I appreciate all of the comments, but I just felt like some of them were getting into "having weapon impact vs. not having impact", where the scope for this is more like "if you've already decided you want weapons to have an impact, how about this?"  And I'm certainly a fan of, in most cases, not having weapon/armor impact for many of the reasons brought up.

+Taylor Hensley:
While I am fine with the way the rules are now

Which rules?  No weapon/armor rating, or 'normal' weapon/armor ratings?  (BTW, it's the + that tags people on G+, not the @ symbol)

+Jesse Cox:  What would armor do?

What would armor do?

That's actually an interesting question. Armor behaves differently in different fictions, and different armors behave differently in real life. I don't know what would be best.

It might do the inverse -- meaning larger and larger margins are required to get a success with style. This would make sense if you can batter someone in armor, but it leaves them less vulnerable to sudden effects -- plate mail against blades, or Kevlar against pistols. I'm thinking this might make sense for an "attribute" system.

It might add to your effective Physique for the purpose of stress and consequences. I like this one, for reasons I'm don't really have clarity on.

Heavy armor might make you harder to inflict stress on -- heavy armor adds one shift to defense rolls against physical attacks, possibly in addition to whatever light armor does.

Which is a long winded way of saying "I dunno". What do you think?

Symbols don't work if you are using mobile.

The rules that state that a success with a weapon adds stress.

That's actually an optional rule :)

+Taylor Hensley

If you look at my last fate post, you'll see I'm actually playing with removing stress and the attack action all together, which naturally pushes into playing with "success with style" more.

I think not using stress is called "don't use Conflicts, it's just overcomes :D)

One option for the SWS hack might be to have armor increase the successes required for SWS, while weapon ratings decrease it.

@robert

Wait, you include the "optional" rule in your initial post as the norm and as something to argue against, yet when it is stated as the norm (which you use in your initial post) you not dismiss it?

*you dismiss it

(remove the "not")

Another way to handle armor is what they do in fate Freeport. It is an invokable aspect on your character and each session it starts with a number of invokes based on the quality and durability. Heavy armor had three. Medium armor had two and light armor came with a single invoke. It was an interesting system. Preparing for battle often involved adjusting armor to get another invoke.

Hey hey guys. Tone is hard in text, and distraction easy -- especially on a mobile.

As for "not using conflicts" -- yes. Another way of looking at it is that I'm expanding the contest rules to do the things that conflicts do.

I like the idea as a concept, feels truer to what I think of weapons doing. I would only want to use it in a game with ways to handle consequences, like magical healing and the like. I might also use it in a fairly short campaign where after three sessions all the characters look like they've gone through hell.
As for multiple consequences, I would have the weapon reduce the total value of the summed consequences.

I would argue that all these changes are drawing the game further from from pulp adventure and more towards the combat sim end of the spectrum. Nothing wrong with that if that is what you want.

I'd say that there's nothing wrong with the system as is because it allows you the freedom to decide if combat is about bleeding your foe out or just wearing down their defenses till they capitulate without changing a single rule.

ANY weapons rules change the tone of the game away from pure pulp - so much so that I take it for granted that that's part of the point. 

In Unwritten, I removed the Attack action and stress entirely. Rather, to inflict consequences, you need succeed with style on a Creative Advantage. Then you can choose to make the aspect you place a minor consequence instead of your situation aspect + free invokes. +Jesse Cox's idea would mesh with that nicely: Weapons make SWS easier when attempting to place damage-style consequences.

+Scott Hamilton I have played a few games that are Stress free and have really enjoyed them. It really focused on the Story Telling aspect of Fate, which is what I enjoy most.

This may be of help
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?754094-FATE-CORE-SciFi-Help-with-Firearms-Armor-and-Squad-Assets

.

+Zachary St Lawrence I don't have Fate Freeport; can you elaborate on how they do armor? What sort of invokes would you use?

Also, I saw, somewhere, a way of doing armor that gave it stress. They were fighting on top of a zepplane (a big dirigible-thingy) and different armor had different numbers of stress boxes. But I can't recall where that was. Does anyone know?

Well, when you say "zeppelin" my thoughts go to Kriegszeppelin Valkyrie or SotC.

The zeppelin thing also "might" have been from "Romance in the air". It had zepplins and I remember special rules for duels. I don't remember armor but that example sounds familiar and I only scanned the book. (I was mostly focusing on the mechanics for the meta game of international diplomacy.)

As for fate Freeport it allowed gear aspects that did not take character slots. As I said earlier they started each session preloaded with a number of free invokes depending on the type if armor. The aspect was literally "light armor", "heavy armor" etc. But it is worth noting these aspects could also be invoked against you to hinder you when performing athletics, running, or even in social battles, "oh look, the good general thinks the dinner party requires field plate, I do hope he can defend us against the glazed duck snicker".

Note these uses are not stealing your free invokes, just note that invoking against them was an option available to the gm. They could also be compelled. Go to sea in heavy armor and you could expect a compel as the armor drags you down in the water and out of a scene. Light armor was pretty much a required downgrade at sea.

One last note. They also had shields which had a single free invoke per scene but I felt that was relatively too powerful if, like me, you get through a lot of scenes in a night.

That is the basics of the mechanics. Modifying it for vanilla fate. I could see them work either as aspects or even as a stunt that says you start the session with the "armored" character aspect and a number of free invokes usable against physical attacks. The aspect does not go away when a scene ends but can be used against you when using athletics.

Well, not sure if this helps any, pretty sure I'm just echoing what someone else already said, but I would consider dodging a sharp deadly weapon more "stressful" than dodging punches, at least in the psychological sense :)

+Sergio Le Roux That is the way I have always viewed stress. I sometimes also call if "flavor damage".

+Scott Hamilton
I'll need to look into Unwritten. It seems a little odd that trying to Overcome someone wouldn't potentially leave consequences.

I talk about my ideas about going stress-less more here -- https://plus.google.com/112234386288014033364/posts/9k2LEPKKr1a

I'd love to talk to you more about it.

+Jesse Cox, Unwritten is only available to the kickstarter backers at the moment. Give it a few months :) 

As for Overcome vs Create an Advantage, if you want to inflict a consequence on that roll, just say "I meant to say Create Advantage instead of Overcome. Totally. >.> <.< " The mechanics should follow the needs of the story, so change it as needed.