ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I have formulated some ideas about weapons in the game. Please tell me what you think.

Flexible requirements
Right now, all weapons have minimum requirements to use, which are treated as absolute. I suggest these are treated as relative requirements to use these weapons efficiently instead. Not meeting the minimum requirements doesn't mean you can't use them, just not as well.

What does that mean? That means the base damage of weapons is adjusted by Suppose a mace needs 10 strength to use, and does 10 base damage. A character with 9 strength can still use it, but the base damage is reduced by (10-9)/10 = 10%. By the same logic, a character with 12 strength using the same mace would have a base damage of (12-10)/12 * 10 = 12.

Strength
Weapons are physical objects, so wielding weapons requires moving them around by strength. Therefore, each and every weapon should have a minimum strength requirement for lifting and moving it. Furthermore, physical damage is incurred by smacking a foe with a weapon. The more powerful the smack, the greater the physical damage. Therefore, damage done by a weapon should be primarily proportional to the strength of the character brandishing it.

Dexterity
Dexterity doesn't directly increase physical damage dealt by weapons, but the more dextrous you are the better you will be at pointing the business end of weapons at foes. So a higher dex should entail greater accuracy and greater critical chances. Which is the way it is, I think.

Cunning
Cunning doesn't directly increase physical damage either, but allows you to notice weak spots and vital areas of foes. Cunning, then, also increase critical chances and probably critical multipliers.

Using one-handed weapons with two hands
Allow characters who are not strong enough to use one-handed weapons with two hands give the game more flexibility and characters more options to consider. Assuming the off hand is 60% as strong as the main hand, this gives a lower strength bound of 62.5%. So to use a one-handed weapon with a minimum strength requirement of 35, the lowest strength a character needs to have is 35*0.625=21.875, or 22 (rounded up to the nearest integer).

Using two-handed weapons with one hand
If weak characters can use one-handed weapons with two hands, why can't brutally strong characters use two handed weapons with just one hand? Requiring a character to have double the minimum strength seems like a good place to start.

The current stat requirements are not intended for realism, but rather for playstyle differences. Your strength related suggestions would destroy weapon-using classes that use weapons but don't have strength as a primary stat (rogues being a primary one). In this game, you can max out three stats, and most classes invest in two primary stats (which don't always include Strength) plus Constitution.

Dexterity already raises accuracy and Cunning already raises critical chance, by the way.

This is not a bad idea, but there are already mechanics in place to improve weapon performance with strength (and other stats). At a minimum, your formula needs to have a cap at 100% effectiveness so that you don't double dip into weapon improvement from stats, and would need to take into account the stats required for the weapon (use dex, not strength, for daggers, for example).

As for using 2 hands to wield a heavy one-handed weapon, that seems redundant with your first suggestion since you could wield it (at reduced effectiveness) anyway.

I like your ideas regarding stat minimums. The other stuff is, I think, suggested without a full understanding of how statistics are treated in the game-- what you suggest for attributes is by and large the case already.

It's true that wielding a one-handed weapon in two hands would be redundant with changed minimums, but it could still be done. I think the challenge would be to make sure that it would be more effective to use an extra hand on the weapon rather than just deal with penalty damage and enable an off-hand weapon.

As for one-handing a two-hander, I think that's something that's most appropriate for prodigies, and I would approve of a prodigy that let one do so.