Weapon Variety Discussion

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Iceborn
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Iceborn » Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:51 am

SwampFoot wrote:
Durvayas wrote:. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen anyone above lvl 4 using a dagger(as anything more than a stat boosting item) in the entire time I've played here.
My level 16 Ranger uses daggers. No one ever notices. I think they mistake them for kukri.
My rogue/ranger used daggers, as well.
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Irongron
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Irongron » Mon Sep 04, 2017 12:08 pm

There are really 3 ways of approaching this (or 4 if we did nothing!)

1. Direct Adjustment. Balance the stats of all weapons. HAK/Override required.

- I personally do not like this option at all. I do not feel that NWN is a game that should be 'fairly balanced' between all classes and weapons. Small tweaks here and there are okay, but I would quickly lose interest in the game if every difference was purely cosmetic.

2. Indirect Adjustment. Give weapons different 'areas of use', and/or feat support.

Weapons that can be used in subdual, weapons that can be used with either 2 or 1 hand, more enemies with resilience to slashing, racial/class perks etc.

We've seen a bit of this, and I think it a far nicer approach than the 1st. There is only so much one can do though before it feels like an artificially long way to get around the underlying problem.

3. Adjustment to the Game World

This is absolutely my preferred approach, and while I am creative lead it is the one we shall follow above all. It stands to reason that staple weapons like longswords, halberds and axes would be more common than the more exotic options; showing up more often in loot, more commonly having a runic variety etc.

In such games as this finding an unusual or rare weapon should be a real thrill, and can be a dynamic way of approaching one's character development based upon events in game.

There is something of an arena mentality whereby people expect to be able to plan out their character totally form the outset; what levels they take, what skills they will invest in, and what weapons they will use. The numbers are available to plan this exactly and many still stick to this formula.

For me this is exacerbated by the iron-steel-greensteel-damask progression of crafting, where the same numbers are applied throughout and irrespective of the weapon type. The mere presence of uniform masterly damask recipes means that any improvements to loot or any improvement of existing recipes must, by necessity, pitch themselves against this tier. This often makes treasure weaponry redundant at the point of creation.

Power creep is currently partially avoided here by making such weapons reliant on rare components as well as race/class/level restrictions, but even so still remains an issue.

I love a degree of unpredictability when playing, and I would like to see more unsual weapons enter the game, either as rare recipes, interesting loot, entries in the 'boon system,or DM quest rewards. I do not like it that one can still fully almost predict what options will become available to a character as they progress.

A great aspect here is that with recipes, loot and boons we can change things up in the world when see fit, without needing to constantly adjust and balance classes or items. These can reflect changes to the narrative of the isle, individual character stories and be part of a larger story, and for me, as I said above, just makes for more nuance to the game as a whole.

I get that there are those that do not like this, and would prefer a more inclusive and eclectic approach where everyone is offered the same uniform (and predictable) bonuses. There have been plenty of suggestions that I make items such as Mithril Dust and Dwarven Incantations freely available to every player without the need to discover them. While I understand why people may prefer that, it is not the direction I will be taking.

We can expect to see more and better loot weapons, more unusual recipes, and likey some boon locations crop up where a PC discovering it may obtain certain bonuses when using a particular weapon. Perhaps its just because I'm making the world, but I would much prefer discovery play a far larger role in the Arelith experience.

If/When we do go the HAK route I would nevertheless expect to make some adjustments to the core stats of certain outlying weapons, as we have done in the past, however nobody should expect Arelith to be 'flattening' all weapon types. It's simply not a game I wish to play (and therefore won't be making)

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Mr_Rieper
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Mr_Rieper » Mon Sep 04, 2017 1:45 pm

The trouble is, if you specialize in a particular weapon early on (which you should, since it makes leveling easier), then you can't change what your character's preferred weapon is. For example, my character hit level 30 with scimitar feats. I had my levels removed to fix a lot of my poor feat choices, and really wanted to take spear feats instead. But I thought about the future PvP I would inevitably get into, and took rapier instead. A balance, I thought, between what my character would prefer and what was mechanically viable.

I regret that. Again. I wish I could've taken spear, or axe, or even just an arming sword. But I'm not prepared to roll back to level 4 to do it all over again.

I think that's why people plan their builds from the beginning. Because sadly, we aren't playing WoW where we can just respec our talents after getting that shiny new weapon drop, or afford to specialize in multiple weapons.

I'd like to see a unique take on weapons/armor on this server. We're pretty only competing with ourselves, at this point, so we can modify whatever is deemed necessary to modify. Would be great if we had things like gambesons and weapons that reflected their actual uses, in game (Maces vs full plate, for example).
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by viper92225 » Mon Sep 04, 2017 8:27 pm

Mr_Rieper wrote:The trouble is, if you specialize in a particular weapon early on (which you should, since it makes leveling easier), then you can't change what your character's preferred weapon is.
Honestly, I think this is the single largest problem facing any situation that touches on "build". The current situation leaves players in a bind, if we want our characters to be mechanically strong, they have to be planned from the start. If we want to play a dynamic character that is mechanically influenced by their time in the world, they will always be mechanically inferior to a decent planned build.

That dilemma is also compounded any time an update is applied that changes some part of our build. I personally played a feylock back in the days of the warlock staff. When the warlock update that introduced set spells at levelup came into being, my lvl 1 feat of conjuration focus and level 3 feat of greater conjuration focus instantly felt like a weight around the character's neck. The devs made a change, that I happen to agree with, that invalidated my previous choices with no means to correct it. Even if I had been granted a rebuild as the most recent feylock update provided, one of those feats was at level one and could never be changed by me. As a separate example, take the appraise skill change that happened early this year. The devs again made a change that is intended to improve the server in the long run, but they also left players in a position of their characters being built in a certain way based on the world that character lives in. The world changed and as a result the players would have made different choices if they had it to do over again, but were stuck with choices that reflected a different environment.

The quick and obvious suggestion to correct this is a change in server rules about granting rebuilds, and I think that could have some merit depending on how it was implemented. If I was going to change that policy/script a utility, my plan would be to grant x rebuilds per character and allow players to "spend" epic sacrifice awards to gain more. A rebuild console command would allow the player to select what level they wanted to drop back to and all the missing xp between their current total and that level would be added to their adventuring pool before deleveling them, to aid in the speed of their relevel without allowing overnight rebuilds.

As much as an improvement as that would be, it still would not address choices made at level 1. The actual solution I would like to see is something akin to the retraining rules from pathfinder. For a cost of time and gold, a character with access to a relevant trainer, can replace portions of their build. I think that a system that allowed us to pay gold to change feats and skills IC would be FAR better then an automated rebuild system as outlined above. The specifics of this could be tricky, but for a start lets say that any feat that has you make a selection (weapon focus, spell focus, skill focus, ect) would let you pay to change the choice you made (replacing weapon focus rapier with weapon focus spear in Mr_Rieper's example or spell focus conjuration with spell focus enchantment in my feylock example). Additionally, let players spend time and gold in the same way to move skillpoints from one skill to another at an appropriate trainer.

After making the selection, the feat(s) or skillpoints would be removed from the character and the information of which new ones they wish saved behind the scene to the character. They would then have train in the new selections to have them slowly added to the character. If you changed your weapon focus for example, you need to spend time in combat with that weapon in hand, possibly even restricted to an arena. Changing a spell focus would require you to spend time casting spells from that school, again possibly in an appropriate place (arcane tower/sorcere for arcane, temples for divine casters, wild magic areas for wild mages) that applies to some part of your character's classes.

Skills would be a bit more tricky, but could be broadly split based on their relevant ability modifier.
  • Str and Dex based skills (with exceptions) require time in a training facility (arena).
  • Int based skills require time in a library.
  • Wis based skills require time in a place of contemplation and learning (druid groves/monistaries).
  • Cha based skills require time in places of performance or social interaction (fastest in theaters, slower in taverns or council meeting chambers).
To this broad list, specific exceptions would be applied. Skills that enable an action, could instead require that action (disable trap, open lock, pick pocket, set trap, UMD, ect) to progress your training.

This would certainly require some careful coding to handle the various situations. You would need to account for class skills vs non class skills, make sure only those with ranks already in certain skills can apply them to trained only skills such as UMD and Animal Handling. On the feat side of things, you would have to handle the choices made in feats that have prerequisites together (changing weapon focus, weapon spec, epic focus, epic spec and weapon of choice together for example) to prevent invalid builds. In the case of multiple dependent feats being changed, the character would have to train them back, one at a time, in order. A level 30 fighter that completely changed their weapon (Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Weapon Spec) would lose all of the selected feats at once, and then slowly earn back the new choices without the benefit of the old ones.

I realize that this suggestion is VASTLY more complicated then either doing nothing or even something like the rebuild solution I mentioned, but it provides the player with tools to bring more of their character's development from OOC to IC. Your character got their butt handed to them by someone using parry? They can spend money on lessons and time in the arena studying the art of sword play, but as a result they don't spent as much time focusing on how to scare people with their raw presence (trade intimidate ranks for parry ranks). Merchants are not as easily persuaded by your haggling as they used to be? Maybe its time for your rogue to buy some training manuals and learn to pick pockets to make ends meet (retrain from appraise to pickpocket).

Wow, I think that is the longest post I have ever made.
TL:DR I suggest introducing IC retraining of feats and skills, to requiring your character spending time and money actually learning the new skills and feats to replace the old.

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Aero Silver
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Aero Silver » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:50 pm

Just a suggestion,
I will not claim that i understand all the fundamentals. But i noticed that NWN punishes characters for realism when it comes to fighting.

In real life, fighters, soldiers, police officers, duelists, etc. use one handed weapon and leave the offhand free. Police and military do not dual wield hand guns. Even gunslingers from the Wild West never went Akimbo. Even in honor dueling, the main-gauche and poinard were used to parry and deflect attacks, and the occasional sneak attack on the guts, only. Maybe Roman gladiators did train in dual wield gladiuses, but they also trained with fishnets and tridents and blind helmets. These were for show business only.

In NWN, there is reason to leave the offhand empty. Get a board or light/tiny weapon or use a two wielder. Why would a bookworm mage carry a tiny dagger when a staff offers better bonuses?

Suggestion: make one handed weapons work like NWN2. If the offhand is free, the character gets half the Strength or Dexterity modifiers added, Just like great swords and axes.
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Sockss
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Sockss » Tue Sep 05, 2017 6:36 pm

Part of the problem is that many people believe weapons aren't viable when they are (E.G. Spears (Albeit the modified version), Warhammer etc. are as viable as Scims and Rapiers)

Higher multipliers are more viable than greater range - so long as something doesn't have atrocious AC (Which most PvE content on Arelith is). They may not as good in PvE, but they're not going to make you lose, just win each encounter a tiny bit slower.

I wholeheartedly disagree with the approach of adjusting the game world, especially balancing around 'discovery' and 'rarity', all you do is create more grinding to be optimal with no benefit - you certainly don't increase variety. You also can't reasonably expect to be creating things to be discovered faster than people are discovering them!

Some examples:

Introduction of racial armours / weapons:

You push races into certain, specific, optimal build types, which is further exacerbated by the removal of the old gift system, hello sun-elf longsword-wielding brycers.

Rare loot weapons:

Step 1) Unknown at first, no one builds for them. (No increased variety)
Step 2) They're found.
Step 3a) If they're superior, people will build specifically for them (No increased variety)
Step 3b) If they're not superior, people won't use them, as you add an extra level of grinding which people won't want to do if they don't get any benefit.

You also have the problem that, if they are superior, then you alienate more casual players - who don't have the time to loot hundreds of chests for rare loot to become optimal.

There will always be people who want to make the strongest thing, moving the goal posts every so often doesn't increase variety, it just moves it.

The only way to increase variety is to make other options viable - which is technically ;flattening; them. Though, that certainly doesn't mean you make them the identical.
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Astral
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Astral » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:11 am

There's this reality where people who got time to invest and enjoy grinding will ALWAYS have stronger characters mechanically. Be it by powerbuilding or by trail and error but eventually have better gear and better builds anyway. There's no way around that. The player base has to understand that in every game you play, the reward of time investment and practice is always that you are stronger than the next guy. You can a) change to it's not like that but than, as Irongroan said, it's going to be boring and all differences between characters will be more and more cosmetic, the more you prioritize "balance". Or you can b) accept it. Invest time and practice if you want to be strong or be weak and enjoy being weak because it's a RP server and there's place for weak characters too.

If we take option B. You really don't need to change much in how weapons work. Sure you can just throw away scimitars and rapiers entirely but then the next optimal weapon will be kukri lol. It's just the natural selection.

Also, if more unique loot drops are in play, they will fill the shops, and the general value of gear will drop accordingly, making them more accessible for casual players with dumb builds, low lvl and 5 figure bank account at lvl range of 10s for example.
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Baron Saturday
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:36 am

Personally I'd like to see more variety in the racially crafted weapons, for example: shortsword and greatsword versions of the lesser moonblade; mace and warhammer versions of the svirf rune hammer; battleaxe and greataxe versions of the dwarven rune axe... and so on. Half-orcs already (sorta) have this in the form of the three orcish blood weapons, though I imagine some orcs would like non-double weapons. As it stands, these races feel like they're being pushed towards a single weapon and, in some cases, build. (I'm looking at you, non-finessable moonblade!)
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by cptcuddlepants » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:10 am

Baron Saturday wrote:greatsword versions of the lesser moonblade
YES

Please make this a thing ;-;
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Cortex
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cortex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:11 am

Yes, an orc greatsword would be great, wouldn't it?
:)

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Invader_Nym » Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:03 am

Irongron wrote:There are really 3 ways of approaching this (or 4 if we did nothing!)
...
A couple of us suggested preventing keen and improved critical from stacking as a solution. Does this not seem like a viable option?

I've been searching for three or four months for a crafter for one of the special items, and many of the special items have requirements that preclude many characters/builds. Wouldn't it make more sense to apply a solution that is slightly more accessible and that applies universally to everyone rather than make extremely rare difficult to obtain specialty items that are only accessible to certain builds and races?

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Baron Saturday
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:43 am

Invader_Nym wrote:
Irongron wrote:There are really 3 ways of approaching this (or 4 if we did nothing!)
...
A couple of us suggested preventing keen and improved critical from stacking as a solution. Does this not seem like a viable option?
This doesn't actually change the balance much, if at all. For one thing, masterly damask is better than greensteel no matter your build, and there aren't that many keened masterly damask weapons floating around that I know of, which means that most WM builds will already not be stacking keen and improved crit.

Secondly, applying this to all weapons is just a universal nerf, it doesn't actually equalize the playing field. Rapier and scimitar would still be better than longsword.
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Cortex
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cortex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:50 am

Baron's post is quite correct.
:)

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Invader_Nym » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:15 am

Baron Saturday wrote:
Invader_Nym wrote:
Irongron wrote:There are really 3 ways of approaching this (or 4 if we did nothing!)
...
A couple of us suggested preventing keen and improved critical from stacking as a solution. Does this not seem like a viable option?
This doesn't actually change the balance much, if at all. For one thing, masterly damask is better than greensteel no matter your build, and there aren't that many keened masterly damask weapons floating around that I know of, which means that most WM builds will already not be stacking keen and improved crit.

Secondly, applying this to all weapons is just a universal nerf, it doesn't actually equalize the playing field. Rapier and scimitar would still be better than longsword.
I think one of the reasons that masterly weapons were changed was to eliminate the combination of keen and improved critical, which would seem to suggest that it has been acknowledged that their stacking is a problem.

How can this be a universal nerf if by your own account nobody uses a keen+improved-critical combination anyway? That is to say, it would seem that the only way this could be a universal nerf is if your premise that nobody uses keen + improved-critical is false.

The way that it was intended to work balance-wise is that rapier and scimitar are meant to suck in the beginning due to their 1d6 base damage, but then do a little better (under certain conditions) in the end due to the increased threat range. That's actually reasonable: you pay a little bit up front to get a bit back later. The problem is that when keen and improved crit stack, what you get back later is more than was originally intended when the weapon stats were devised.

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Cortex
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cortex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:22 am

Masterly damask was changed to be more uniform with material scaling, nothing to do with keen.

And by nerf he means, it reduces the damage to all weapons across the board, but rapier and scimitar are still better than longsword, Imp Crit/Keen stack or no.
:)

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Invader_Nym » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:31 am

Cortex wrote:Masterly damask was changed to be more uniform with material scaling, nothing to do with keen.

And by nerf he means, it reduces the damage to all weapons across the board, but rapier and scimitar are still better than longsword, Imp Crit/Keen stack or no.
The point you are deliberately evading is that his argument is that nobody uses keen and improved critical anyway, because the most ideal scenario according to him is a masterly damask weapon, which is now very difficult to keen.

Well, if everyone is using non-keened masterly damask weapons anyway, how is there a reduction in damage across the board? Isn't the scenario he's describing exactly what I'm proposing? The reason he's calling it a nerf is that he knows that there are people out there using a keen+improved-critical combo.

It seems disengenuous to argue both that there are no keen + improved critical builds, and that making it so that there are no keen + improved critical builds would be a nerf across the board.

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Cortex
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cortex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:32 am

Hard does not mean impossible, there are also runic weapons now.
:)

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Invader_Nym » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:36 am

Cortex wrote:Hard does not mean impossible, there are also runic weapons now.
I'm simply trying to point out that arguing how uncommon the keen+improved-critical combo is undermines the claim that what I'm proposing is a nerf to everyone.

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Lorkas
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Lorkas » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:54 am

By universal nerf, I think Baron meant "nerf to all weapon types" rather than "nerf to all characters".

It wouldn't affect all weapons equally, though. Preventing keen and IC from stacking would reduce a scimitar WM's damage by about 15%, while it would only reduce a longsword WM's damage by abbot 7%.

What it would really do though is nerf the keen racial weapons that have been put into the game. Suddenly that item property becomes useless on any build that already took IC, unless some kind of little perk other than extra crit range is given to characters that have IC and equip a keen weapon.

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Astral » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:59 pm

I love spears. I think they are underrated. I played a lasting inspiration WM build with a spear and boy, the damage was delicious and the crits were frequent enough. I know the Herbald also has a cool interaction with DR and immunities as it has two damage types and bastard sword can be two-handed.

Sure, rapier is still better... than anything. Period. But what if you go to a dungeon where everything is 70% piercing immune or something. What if it were possible to put on some AI Crit-immunity but damage type specific hm? What if Hins get +2 ab with a dagger? What if all the 18-20 weapons get their str bonus to damage nerfed by 20%? (because they relay on precision, rather then strong impact, even when str based? or something) What if....... I could go all day. Point is its not bad that some weapons are stronger than others, as long as the others still find use they will always be seen occasionally. blunt weapons should totally have some +1 damage against undead or something.
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Sockss
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Sockss » Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:56 pm

Astral wrote:The player base has to understand that in every game you play, the reward of time investment and practice is always that you are stronger than the next guy.
This is undeniably true for a game that has infinite content. Unfortunately NWN is not that game.

This is also true for games that rely on twitch mechanics / muscle memory and/or very deep tactics. NWN is not that game, it's low skill cap. (Note that even in complex games and, due to plain biology, there is a theoretical cap to this, however depending on the complexity it's unlikely to be reached)

There are also major problems with any approach that accepts this, albeit flawed, premise that you would work towards. "The more you play the better you are" as it has no cap - you widen the gap infinitely over time between those that play more with those that are more casual.

Making casual players irrelevant.

Casual players which make up the majority of the player base.
Astral wrote: Sure, rapier is still better... than anything. Period.
This is not the case.
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cerk Evermoore » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:21 pm

I don't know, I knew a couple people with keen M.damasc weapons and they didn't have many problems murdering tons of folks. I think it's even pretty accepted in a lot of power building circles that your build isn't complete until you get that sweet 5% roll on your main hand weapon.


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Ambigue
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Ambigue » Wed Sep 06, 2017 9:46 pm

In my opinion, the weapon variety is good. There are a lot of options that have, on paper at least, valid strengths and weaknesses. The more potent a weapon tends to be, the more feats you have to invest to get it. That does mean something.

Irongon's approach is the fundamentally correct one: In order for weapons to be viable, they need to be the situationally best thing to use against a monster or set of monsters. At least, better than what you'd normally use.

There are two parts to that. One is having things like damage types really matter when designing monsters (among other things). Two is having players willing to swap melee weapons in order to deal with new situations. The former should reward the latter. The latter should shape the former.

Mechanically, there are few things I'd consider changing in terms of weaponry. MAYBE tweaking whips so that they bypass biteback damage if possible. They are a low-damage weapon that is treated kind of like a melee weapon at times and kind of like a ranged weapon at others. That would give dexy, low-damage types something to switch to if they encounter an elemental shield or whatever.

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Cortex
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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Cortex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 9:55 pm

While I enjoy the idea of having specialized weapons and armors that work better in X situations, it's also important to keep in mind not a lot of people will enjoy carrying around a dozen swords and five pairs of pants.
:)

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Re: Weapon Variety Discussion

Post by Ambigue » Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:03 pm

Cortex wrote:While I enjoy the idea of having specialized weapons and armors that work better in X situations, it's also important to keep in mind not a lot of people will enjoy carrying around a dozen swords and five pairs of pants.

Yeah. I think most folks should get by fine with their main weapon and something very different to use as a backup should things not work out, but that's about it. Two melee and a ranged/spells should cover most situations.

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