Weapon Properties

[Gulnyr]

I was thinking about weapons today, specifically NWN and D&D weapons. I understand the need to simplify things in a pen-and-paper setting, and I understand that NWN was built on that concept, but computers can handle a lot of the details for us. As NWN goes, there really is no difference between a dagger and a greatsword or even a whip except for the damage range of each one. That's missing a lot of cool potential.

Instead of giving different weapons vastly different damage ranges, it would be nice to have weapons of similar quality have similar damage ranges plus bonuses based on the particular weapon, or maintain the large difference in ranges and only apply special bonuses to the 'smaller' weapons (since the extra damage would be the bonus for the 'bigger' weapons).

So, for the second option, imagine a short sword, a light mace, and a greatsword, each of the typical quality that may be found among the militia in Averageton. The greatsword is a big weapon with a lot of damage possible, and that's what you get. Just to give it some numbers, let's give it a range of 6-12 damage. The short sword and mace have less mass so they do less damage, let's say 3-6 for the mace and 2-7 for the sword. That makes the mace (and possibly its family of weapons) give more consistent damage than the sword, while the sword may have some lows and some highs that make it a little more unpredictable. The mace also has a chance to cause stunning blows, a big ding on the head now and then, at some small percentage chance - 10% maybe, on the high side. The short sword has a chance to parry attacks at the same rate. So the bonuses are occasional automatic parries for the short sword, occasional stunning hits for the light mace, and extra damage for the greatsword (only double the others in this example, but constant rather than only a 10% chance - probably not great balance here, but I'm only explaining the idea).

These would be bonuses on top of the skills the character has already learned - skills like those here. Maybe any character can learn the Parry skill (or Defense Stance or Stone Wall or whatever it would be called) and use it with most weapons, but the short sword would allow an extra chance to parry, and would even do so outside that skill's use. The same with the mace and the Stunning Blow skill (or Skull Smash or Beaner).

Obviously, some skills shouldn't function with some weapons. You can't parry with a whip, y'know? And maybe certain skills only work with one weapon, or one weapon family, like Set with spear and pike weapons.

Also, and I'm adding this for completeness, since it's hard to imagine this hasn't already been worked into the package yet, the best 'Magic Weapon' spells/prayers/skills for certain weapons should come from the god whose combat consideration is high enough to warrant such a blessing. So, for example, the best axe blessing should come from Vorax. No Lucindite should be able to make an axe more dangerous than a priest of Vorax can, heh. On the other hand, Prunilla isn't really much for fighting, so maybe she doesn't have a sickle blessing of the same quality as Vorax's axe blessing. Still, some weeds can be pretty tough, so who knows, hehe.

I hope this isn't too jumbled. I guess the basic idea is to have weapons be more than a damage number. Let's make the weapon type matter a little more.

[Skywatcher]

I like the idea. I also like the idea of being able to customize a weapon by adding enhancements. I have seen in other games where weapons of various quality allowed adding fewer or more enhancements by say the addition of magic jewels in the hilt. Weapons of higher quality might have more slots for enhancements or something. Being able to customize the weapon to the fight and also to the character lends much more variety to the fighter classes and gives them a little bit of magical variety to work with. Maybe you would have to take skill points in magicking weapons to be able to make such enhancements and more points for more enhancements on better weapons. Sort of a variation on the spellsword. Just some thoughts. I think there is lots of room for allowing individuals to make weapons vastly different from one another.

[Script Wrecked]

I don't know whether this is actually implemented in NWN, and/or whether it would be worth the hassle (outcome for your development zots), but it seems to me that the different size weapons have a different striking distance or reach.

Consider the distance that two opponents with daggers would stand from each other in comparison to two opponents with greatswords. Now, consider the dagger guy fighting the greatsword guy. Clearly, the dagger guy starts combat outside the reach of his weapon, and would have to get "inside the guard" of the greatsword guy before he can strike. Also, once the dagger guy gets "inside the guard", the greatsword guy would have to "push back" him before he could strike. I guess it depends how detailed you want the combat to be.

Weapons with a longer striking distance, and "thrusting" (piercing) attack style/mode would facilitate attacks from behind the first rank of attackers, cf. spears and pikes.

Weapons with a longer striking distance, but a "sweeping" attack style (basicly, all the non-piercing attacks, i.e., blugeoning, cleaving, slashing, although most slashing weapons are slashing/piercing, i.e., pointed) would not be able to attack from anywhere but the first rank.

Also, as a bit of flamebait, can anyone really shoot a bow while in close, hand to hand, combat (as opposed to standing on the periphery and shooting into combat)?

Regards,

Script Wrecked.

[stragen]

different striking distance or reach

I think reach is important.

For example in NWN very few players use pole arms (or even spears) are they mechanically less useful then an axe or a sword. However, pole arms have a clear advantage in combat where the swords man must close into the reach of the pole man (?). Thus, the pole man gets a strike before the swordsman.

I also like the idea of using coordination (dexterity?) for how accurately a character strikes and muscle power (strength) for how much (bonus?) damage the character does. This needs to be coupled with minimum strength and size requirements to use a specific weapon. Still allow a character who doesn't meet the requirement to use the weapon, but with reduced skill.

This would allow the game to simulate both: the hulking giant who doesn't hit that pesky little target very often, but when he does it's devastating, and the fencer who may not hit very hard but can skewer an eyeball with precision.

[Faldred]

If you want to dig for inspiration, go back to AD&D 2nd edition and review weapon speeds.

Even without that, quite simply, a greatsword is a much "slower" weapon than a dagger, which can be represented several ways, such as:

1) Adjustments to initiative -- a creature with a "fast" weapon is more likely to act first than a creature with a "slow" weapon

2) Number of attacks -- a dagger may have low damage output, but could be used more frequently, whereas a greatsword offers a slower rate of attack, but deal much more damage (this works really well when using armor as damage reduction -- a light weapon may offer more attacks, but it takes a slower, heavy weapon to penetrate the armor)

In general, tying speed adjustments to weapons is a royal pain in terms of bookkeeping in PnP play; probably one of the main reasons it was removed in 3rd edition. However, a computer can calculate and track that information quite easily, so it would be something to consider for "realism".

[miltonyorkcastle]

Right on. To everything discussed here so far.

-special properties
-speed
-reach/range
-damage amount/type
-customization

All things to consider.

[lonnarin]

Perhaps striking speed could be a factor of not only the size and weight of a weapon, but the relative size, strength and stamina of the character. So that dwarven berzerker with two morningstars is only slightly slower than a weakling character with two shortswords or daggers. A beefed up ogrekin with the strength of 3 humans could swing a greatsword with the ease that a human could swing a short sword, etc.

As for the range of weapons and the like, I always liked the way the Gothic series had "higher lvl" weapons too heavy to weild until you hit a certain threshold str score. So you'd have to go lift weights and slaughter dinosaurs for awhile before you got to use that big doublehanded orc axe.

In a sense, the overall attack damage could not only be a factor of the attacker's skill with the blade, but the weight of the blade too adding to piercing power. Now keeping in mind that D&D's old ruleset that we're used to always had a hit-or-miss policy with little variation in the severity of damage, a more realistic approach would be to have armors soak damage as much as they do avoid it. Of course if the attack rolls are automated, there would have to be some "miss-factor" considering that you can't dodge or avoid damage manually as in Oblivion or Gothic. Perhaps a toss-up then... where lighter armors don't soak as much damage but they can dodge the attack more easily, while fullplated fighters really can't dodge well, though stabbing them with a dagger and an 8 strength is mostly fruitless. Of course that same fullplated fighter is a sitting turtle for magical touch attacks and the like. I'd like to see armor weight factors play a role along these lines, would make for some interesting builds. The sneaky acrobat vs the hulking juggernaught.