Weapons in stories are things of legends; if you possess a weapon which was once held by some fabled hero, you can be sure of victory. You have Excalibur, given to King Arthur from the Lady of the Lake (Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government), and its companion, the Sword in the Stone, which, despite its name, was drawn from the stone by the aforementioned king. You have Mjølnir, forged by dwarves who had forged other weapons for the gods in the bowels of the Earth and then given as a gift to the God of Thunder himself, Thor, who uses the hammer by throwing it and having it return to him so fast that it's seen as a lightning bolt. You have the sickle of Kronus, which was given to its owner by the personification of the Earth herself to slay her lover, his father. You have the Gáe Bulg, the spear of mortal pain which was made from the bone of the sea monster, Coinchenn, which died from fighting its enemy, the Curruid, and then was given to Cú Chulainn so he could slay his brother.
Weapons in D&D and many other games are "+1 Sword of Flaming Burst" and are tossed as soon as you can find a "+2 Sword of Flaming Burst". They hold no tradition, they aren't better when the wielder learns how to use them more efficiently, and they are often sold off long before they're used simply because spending feats on using them properly would hinder the progress and power of your character. This, in my humble opinion, is utterly stupid and degrades the roleplay value of weapons and the value of a good weapons system.
Please note that everything from this point on is subject to some pretty drastic changes as I figure out how to work with character concepts and all the options as I begin to define them. While I'll lay out the ideas I've got right now, I really need to understand exactly how to balance things so that no kind of character is too powerful and no kind of character is too weak. Characters who primarily use weapons to do damage must to be balanced with characters that primarily use class abilities to do damage. And pretty much the same thing for every other role. Each role and hybrid role needs to be satisfying to play, and needs to do its job, elsewise, I'll have to completely re-work it.
To help this, instead of giving a character a "base attack bonus" like one gets in D&D, a character will get a "Weapons Skill" score or something of the like (Name very subject to change). This may end up being incorporated into the perk system, but I'm not quite sure if I'll end up doing that. Anywhen, the idea is that the better your score gets, the more damage dice you get out of using a weapon. Accuracy is also going to be determined by the score. The basics for characters are that characters who need to rely on weapons to use their abilities won't be able to use their abilities as readily as characters who don't, but by using their abilities, they get extra extra damage out of it. In the end, it should all even out so that Constant Damage characters are putting out the same kind of damage whether or not their using abilites or weapons to do damage, and the same for Spike Damage characters. (I'll need to talk about character roles and how they play into the game in a later post.)
Now that that's out of the way, time to talk about Weapons themselves.
The number of traits you can use in a Weapon is determined on how high your weapon skill score is. And that's a horrible way to lead off this paragraph. Let's start again.
You can add traits to a Weapon when creating the weapon, or whenever you can add traits to them, such as when you gain a level and are able to use more traits. Traits are the main way for people with roles other than damage to power up their abilities. For example, a character in the role of Battlefield Controller can have a hammer that throws people back further when he uses it in conjunction with an ability that tosses people around when you hit them. You could have a whip that entangles people so they take penatlies when they try to use abilities and such. Basically, you trade damage for the supped up abilities. There are traits for everyone, though, but the traits for Spike Damage and Constant Damage are not as prevalent as other traits.
A weapon is built by allocating the points for traits or damage. The number of points you are able to use is determined on how high your weapon skill score is. For example, at level five, you might have a weapon skill score of 5. You then can use a weapon that has up to the number of points that you can use at 5 weapon skill. If you use a weapon that has a higher amount, you gain only the first number of traits/damage allocated to it equal to the amount of points you could use at 5 weapon skill. This is because you are not skilled enough to use all of its traits together. Different traits are actually considered differently when choosing which traits you can use when a weapon is outside your point range. First are permanent traits, things that the weapon just has. If you make a weapon out of mythical golden steel it will still be made of mythical golden steel no matter who is using the weapon. Second are magical traits, enchantments and spells placed on the weapon. Using an enchanted weapon doesn't actually take much skill, but most enchantments require activation or something of the sort, so if you are not skilled enough to use the weapon and keep the enchantment active at the same time, then you can't use the enchantment. Third are skillful traits, things that the weapon can do, but it takes knowing how to do them. A scythe has its blade at such an angle that you could loop it around someone's ankle and trip them quite easily, but that's actually not the easiest thing in the world to do, and it actually takes training with a scythe to do properly in battle. Lastly, there are damage traits, which is basically just the points you allocate to damage. The better you are with a weapon, the more damage you can do.
Hopefully, this way a character doesn't get some way super powerful ancestral weapon and is suddenly much better at everything than his companions. No, his weapon might be completely different than the steel and wood weapons his comrades are using, but he's just as inexperienced as they are.
Well. I think I'll talk a bit about classes next time and then come back for some talk about armor, which is somewhat similar.
Song of the Post: "Tooth and Claw" by Animals as Leaders
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