Shattered Kingdoms

Ever since the implementation of the weapon subtype system, the largest complaint has been the uselessness of the majority of weapons out there. There's a small set of clearly superior weapon types, and everything else is either mediocre or downright worthless.

While some attribute balancing would certainly go a long way, I think an ever better solution would be to apply specific traits to each archetype. These already exist on a smaller scale - axes tend to sever limbs, certain weapons are harder to parry. But there needs to be more, IMO.

Ex1: Maces and flails will partially (or completely) bypass AC. Traditionally, maces and flails were the weapon of choice against any heavily armored opponent. A good hit didn't even have to crack the armor to break an opponent's bone.

Ex2: Hammers and warhammers could have a chance-per-hit to stun the opponent for one round, an effect that cannot occur more than once every 10 rounds. These might also have a smaller AC-ignoring effect.

Ex3: Pole-arms could have an increased chance to parry special openers, such as cleaves and charges (but not backstabs). They could also have a chance to dismount a mounted opponent (especially halberds).

These are just random ideas that I pulled while reading through an encyclopedia on weapons.

YES.

yes.

YES.

yes.

...Wow.

Dude, yes. I had come up with a bunch of ways to develop ideas like this and they involved adding new skills that were entirely weapon-reliant, and you got automatically if you either had the weapon or had mastery in them. I had chosen a skill like "armor penetration" to be for daggers and maces, for example, "impale" for some polearms and spears, so on and so forth.

Clever [REDACTED], really.

*is all for giving lesser subtypes small perks*

Sounds like a potentially good idea. But in the meantime, I wonder if I should do something slightly easier. When there was a lot of suggestions for tuning the freqency of gaining improvements on skills, I created a google spreadsheet and asked anyone interested to give each weapon a rating. Who would be interested in me doing the same for weapon tuning?

I'll do it - and I'll sit quietly after you tweak it to your satisfaction again!

I'll participate as well.