Castle Mordha, Knave 2E and Magic Items

I'm quite enjoying noodling with Knave 2E and will be updating the old Castle Mordha old school dungeon crawl to Knave, with the goal of using it for one of the two games I'll be running for the kids at the library over the coming school year. (the other game will remain 13th Age and boy howdy will that be a dichotomy!) 

I've been working on Castle Mordha in one way shape or form for over a decade. Originally for B/X when I first got interested in the OSR, then ran it VERY against design for 13th Age before I realized that 13th Age is horrible for that, and now bringing it back to its original concept with Knave. Since there's so much work already done in and around this my goal here is a kickstarting a Zine for Castle Mordha as a Knave supplement. We will see if time permits. 

One of Knave's deliberate lacuna is magic items, not taking up space in the book for things that you can find in abundance in prior OSR and AD&D games. Still, given Knaves love of d% tables I am bookmarking these pages at 1d4 Caltrops for their d100 magic item lists. I do think I'm going to build something a little more Knave-like for my own use as well, but these are good to have. 

The one immediate hack I plan to add is that Knave gives you the option after a hit to do double damage but have your weapon break, as part of the resource management style of the game. But I don't like the idea of magic weapons easily breaking (and I think once players have magic weapons they will not chose this option for fear of losing them). So I think I'll apply the following rules: 

Magic Weapons have a bonus to hit (+1, +2, or +3) and do one die type higher damage than normal weapons (so one-handed weapons do d8, and two-handed weapons do d10). 

If you decide to Power Attack with a magic melee weapon, you lose the weapon for the remainder of the combat. There is a 1 in 6 chance that the weapon becomes embedded in the target being fought and will be carried off by it if it flees. Otherwise it is wrenched from your hands by the force of the blow, becomes stuck some element of the room, is knocked skittering in the darkness by a counterstroke, etc. You cannot retrieve the weapon until the combat is finished. 

If a monster is immune to mundane damage, the GM may decide that a magic weapon will break during a Power Attack. The GM should signpost this to the players beforehand so they are making a conscious decision. Such monsters include animate stone or metal, incarnate deities, and major demons. 

I like these for being simple, for not adding flat bonuses to damage (the average damage goes up by 1 point, the maximum damage by 2), and for evocatively keeping the idea of "you can double your damage if you lose your weapon".