Melee weapons

[Omega Blue]

There are a few types of melee weapons but there is very little difference between them, so I am wondering if something can be done.

First of all, melee weapons can be divided into three categories:

A. Piercing - weapons with nastily pointed business ends, which include daggers and tridents
B. Slashing - weapons with sharp edges that cut, which include swords of various sizes and axes
C. Crushing - weapons that are, well, blunt. Sticks, maces, great mauls and staffs are of this category.

Crushing weapons are the easiest to use. There aren't any sharp edges or pointy ends that you need to aim at the enemy. All you need to do is just bash away. In game terms it means crushing weapons are all strength based, and they have very little armor penetration to speak of, if at all. They are also excellent at knocking foes back and stunning them

Slashing weapons are a bit more difficult to use, because you need to make sure a sharp edge is more or less perpendicular to the surface you want to hit, which means you need a bit of dexterity and somewhat less strength. Even though both axes and swords are of the same category, swords are long and slender while axes have a big metal wedge at one end. This seems to mean that axes are good at cutting through armor, while swords can go through weaknesses in armor with greater ease. So for axes, great armor penetration, good at sunder armor, good at crippling. Swords, on the other hand, are better at causing criticals, better at disarming and parrying, and causing bleeding.

Finally, the piercing weapons. These are on the other end of the spectrum, requiring mostly dexterity and just a little bit of strength to use. These weapons have the best armor and physical resistance penetration but do the least amount of damage. They are also great at doing all kinds of fancy moves, such as disarming, parrying, or even poking your enemy's eyes out (if there's such a thing in the game).

[Frumple]

... I, uh. You do realize that blunt force weapons were traditionally one of the things used specifically against armor, right? Force transference, yadda yadda. Swords were also generally not for dealing with armor at all from what I recall, unless it was the larger/heavier ones (and that was primarily via blunt force trauma, again). Even axes basically do their work that way; not so much armor piercing as putting a lot of force into a small area. Don't need to go through the armor if the bones under it done broke. Also staves as a weapon arguably involve as much dexterity as strength. They're very versatile things.

And, uh. The conceptually piercing weapons we have in game wouldn't be much for parrying and wotnot, either. Tridents, maybe, but not daggers. Those are usually more of getting under the guard and poking until movement stops, not silly fancy crap. The stuff made for going into armor gaps and fancy junk generally, ah. Weren't combat viable for much else.

General point to be made, I guess, if any, is that if you try to differentiate things more along those lines you'd be better off doing something specific for each sort of weapon instead of trying to break it into broader categories. If there's really any reason to do something like that at this point.

Also addon, yadda yadda. Could try doing the changes and seeing if it makes things overall better.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

You forgot rapiers, which were deliberately designed to slide through the holes in chain-mail, rendering that armor moot.

[nate]

No matter what, there's going to be some amount of abstraction.

The game already does differentiate between crushing/slashing/piercing (well, mace/axe/sword) via small modifiers to base damage and crit rate (maybe crit damage as well), as well as different stat scaling for different weapons.

You could certainly make an add-on that makes these differences more pronounced; it wouldn't be difficult, and would be a great starter project.

[lukep]

I had been thinking a bit about this myself, with axes, maces, and swords being practically identical, and here's what I came up with:

Changes to Weapon Mastery:
Give small bonuses to various weapon types based on talent level, something like 2-10% crit rate on axes, 3-15 base power on maces, and a combination for swords

Change the APR calculation:
Make each point of APR reduce armour hardiness by 1%. As it is, APR is strictly worse than damage, and this would allow those 60 APR mindstars to actually damage bulwark rares. It would also nerf high armour classes a bit, but probably not too much.

Another way would be to give each base weapon a special effect on hit, like 10% sunder armour for swords, 10% bleed for axes, and 10% off-balance for maces.

[Planetus]

I like the idea of different weapon damage types, but I think it should be coupled with different armor types. Basically, replace armor as a whole with piercing, crushing, and slashing resistance (or armor if we don't want three more types of resistance). Crushing weapons should be purely strength based, but leather armor should have high crush resistance, as it basically acts as padding. Slashing weapons should be a blend of strength and dexterity, but chainmail and plate armor should have high slashing resistance (plate higher). Piercing should be most if not all dex based, and leather and plate should have a little piercing resistance, but not much (probably more for plate).

Maces and mauls would of course be crushing, as would staves if the melee damage is physical. Arrows, daggers, and tridents would be piercing damage. Swords, however, make this more complicated. Sabers are primarily slashing weapons, like what's presented in the higher tier sword picture, but the prototypical 'longsword' would be a mix of slashing and piercing. What's more, greatswords were historically used for all three, as well as grappling and disarming. What makes this worse is that, in reality, plate armor didn't have much in the way of drawbacks. Both the weight and limited field and ease of motion have been greatly exaggerated by games for balancing purposes. In fact, because of the weight and distribution thereof, chainmail limited mobility more than plate. In reality, the only limiting factor that kept plate armor from being used by everyone was cost. Leather armor was only minimally useful, even if finely crafted. Chainmail was great against slashing attacks, which were common in early days, but nearly useless against many piercing and any crushing attacks. If you could afford plate, especially the later articulated plate, there's no reason to settle for anything less.

If we were to do this, it would basically render chainmail obsolete, and severely limit the usefulness of plate armor. What's more, axes, and to a lesser degree greatswords, present another quandary. Though technically the mechanism involved is slashing, the sheer amount of force behind the impact renders it into an entirely new category: cleaving. Only plate would have any resistance to cleaving damage.

One idea to handle the armor problem, at least, is to merge chain and plate, with chainmail being the lower quality form and plate armor being the higher quality form. Another idea is to include inherent elemental resistances, though this again leaves chainmail out in the cold. Leather armor conducts heat (and thus cold) and electricity much worse than metal, and better quality leather armor could reasonably resist acid better. Other elemental types, of the myriad we have in this game, are less clear. Would plate reflect light damage? What exactly is darkness damage? Nature? Time? Gravity would go through everything. And how does blight work, or arcane, or mind? It seems a tad unfair to make all armor at least partially resistant to the primary damage types of wyrmics arcane blades, alchemists, and archmages, but leave psionists, cursed, doomed, celestial, and shadowblades and necromancers basically untouched.

In short, this would be complicated. The system is already complicated with armor, defense, and physical damage resistance (does elemental damage dealt through a melee attack hit armor? why don't spells that are projectiles face ranged defense?).

[Omega Blue]

The conceptually piercing weapons we have in game wouldn't be much for parrying and wotnot, either. Tridents, maybe, but not daggers.

Parrying dagger

[Omega Blue]

The problem with axes, swords, and maces in the game is they are almost the same. Either do away with the difference and have only one kind, or make them more different so as to make the choice more interesting.

[belcrane]

I agree with you if they change the weapons and make they shapes and make a unique skills will make the and the game play is 8/10 though so thumbs up.

[Atarlost]

Weapons are the same because ToME tried making them different and it made the ratio of useful to useless loot too low. Reavers used to be axe only and they aren't now for a reason.