ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

At the moment there isn't much to distinguish one- and two-handed weapons in terms of stats. The main difference is the ability to equip a shield, and the allowance of certain talents. The actual item stats are almost identical, with slightly more APR on the two-handers and a 20% higher damage range.

What's bad about this? Well, weapon availability for one. A Cursed can find a perfectly nice waraxe but not be able to grip it in both hands. Another problem is designing artifacts - to properly balance the game you need twice the number of artifact weapons to make sure each weapon type is covered. Even when it comes to making tiles twice the number are needed.

What I propose is getting rid of the distinction between one- and two-handed weapons. All swords/maces/axes are two-handed unless you're wearing a shield. Wearing a shield means you're in one-handed mode. Whilst two-handed you get 20% more damage and 40% more APR. Talents that restrict to two-handed weapons would then simply check whether or not you're wearing a shield. Daggers would always be one-handed, staves would always be two-handed, and perhaps certain artifacts and egos would force two-handedness. This ultimately gives the same situation at present, but makes more weapons available to every player.

Hmm, I made a mistake - one-handed weapons currently have higher APR. Why this is I don't understand. Otherwise the only difference between one and two-handed weapons is that two-handers have a 20% higher damage range, though this effectively translates to 10% more damage as far as I can tell. So overall a two-handed weapon is a stupid thing to wield, and the only reason to do so is for certain talents that require it.

Edit: I've been corrected on this. Taking into account both base weapon damage and higher stat scaling, two-handers do about 40% more damage than one-handers. Otherwise no real difference. So, going back to what I suggested before, weapons should simply have a higher damage amount when not wearing a shield.

I would keep them separate... what would be easier would be to do something like heavy and massive armors... (ie, have one handed weapons follow the same standard as heavy and 2 handed follow the same standard as massive... though I think tridents should be the same as heavy.

shoob, that makes absolutely no sense to me. I just don't understand what you are saying. Heavy is a prerequisite of massive... how is that related to weapons? 1h weapon skill required for getting 2h weapon skill?

Shoob wrote:I would keep them separate... what would be easier would be to do something like heavy and massive armors... (ie, have one handed weapons follow the same standard as heavy and 2 handed follow the same standard as massive... though I think tridents should be the same as heavy.

So I think what he is suggesting is that 2 weapons categories are created.

1-Handed Weapons
2-Handed Weapons

With Tridents classed as a 1-H weapon.

I think he means (lol @ me trying to decipher it):

• Light (daggers)
• Medium (most 1-h weapons)
• Heavy (most 2-h weapons)

So in terms of weapon combat skills have separate ones. Currently there is this "exotic" weapon, which isn't covered under the weapon combat skills.

Whilst if you have Light, Medium, Heavy, you can have tridents fall under one of them (not sure which one he had in mind, probably heavy, but possibly medium), so you don't need this extra skills that can only be obtained from escort quests. Also things like maces and hand axes will fall in one category, and 2h maces (mauls) and axes (battleaxes) will fall in differing categories.

Perhaps also, wielding a mace/axe/sword 2h will result in the one set of skills being active, and wielding it with something else, will result in the other being used.