Venom combinations and overall Knight Combat Techniques

Aerek

Trey said:

In that scenario, except for hardcore disembowel setups everyone still goes for rapier. Would kill for 1.8s dsl without frenzy.

@Trey Initially, my idea was for rapier to be at 2.0, but knowing that every Infernal prefers his at LUDICROUS SPEED, I figured I'd get an outcry over it so I dropped it down. Like I said, I'm not good enough with numbers to really offer balanced details, I just threw out what seemed fair from my somewhat-limited experience. I really only understand Disembowel setups, with only a mediocre understanding of "perfect" Vivisect scenarios.

Tanris said:

@Aerek: interesting concept. You couldn't have bonuses like faster/slower writhe and faster/slower lunge, because there'd be no penalty to just switching weapons to get the bonus you wanted in those specific instances, but something of that nature could be interesting.

@Tanris I tried to account for that with the SPECIALISE bit, if you missed it. A knight could only get the "perk" from one weapon; the others could be used for the damage/speed bonuses, but not the perks they offer. The ability to switch weapons has always killed these sort of "weapon perk" proposals in the past, but when we all got to be Demigods, I found the Bard instrument specialization mechanic, and it gave me this epiphany.

Trey said:

In that scenario, except for hardcore disembowel setups everyone still goes for rapier. Would kill for 1.8s dsl without frenzy.

Also, by making weapons for knights perform independent of stats you are flat -murdering- forging as a tradeskill.

If I have to choose between varied and interesting gameplay or a monotonous, barely-profitable trade skill, I'm okay with axe'ing that trade skill.

Antonius

I think most Paladins and Runewardens would take the scimitar specialisation and then use rapiers to prep, only switching to scimitars for the disembowel itself to benefit from the additional damage.

A 1.8 second doubleslash is pretty extreme (much faster than I think Knights -need- to be in most cases, in truth), and a chance to bypass parry isn't something you're going to risk your setup on. It will get the most use when you try to work around parrying and fail for whatever reason, then get lucky because the attack that would have otherwise been parried isn't; depending on the chance it's likely going to be faster to just use venoms and breaks to bypass in the first place.

Antonius

@Trey: There'd be the potential to completely change Forging in to something much more interesting, though. Add abilities to create statless, purely cosmetic items for various armour pieces (greaves, sabatons, bracers, etc). Add the ability to submit designs like tailors, jewelers, etc so you can forge weapons that are uniquely yours.

Not to mention that if stats no longer matter every item you forge is worth the same amount, and forgers - rather than customers - would be able to set the prices. I don't think it would be that bad, honestly.

Arador

Well you can change and you can fiddle but as @Mizik said, it comes down to what you want in the end.

1. If it is is just cosmetic, then simply give the rapier stat pack to other weapons like longswords, scimitars, axes, bastard swords etc. and just make sure they can all duel attack. Now you can wield whatever you want without too much rebalancing. Of course now when you look for great weapons, you might find one but it is not the type of weapon you wanted so it might not be a perfect solution unless forging was tweaked a bit to yield better weapons. Alternatively you could forge for stats and at the end decide what weapon it should be so the buyer can specify in what shape he wants that 80/160/231 blade he just bought.

2. If you want different options in strategy you face a very big issue. You can do sword and shield, you can do two handed sword but all this means a vast rebalancing of how Knights work, massive changes to the skillsets to accommodate all these styles and the sad part is that out of the 3-4 options you give Knights, one might pop up again as the best option and everyone would do that. So much for all that effort. Because Knights are limb breakers, speed will always be king. Not just for the actual breaks but for holding your opponent in place while you do it as well.

I think asking for new fighting styles is unrealistic. Every class has their fighting style and while they may use the styles in different ways it is still the same method for the most part. Sure you could give Knights a shield and a sword and have them do single slashes and Striking type attacks with the shield, but that would just be a bastardised Blademaster. I believe it would be much better, much simpler and much more interesting to simply do a cosmetic make over of the weapons we wield, giving them the current rapier stats and giving rapiers to the bards.

No-Nos:

*Do not suggest slow weapons. I do not care what effects they have (Bleeding, faster limb prep, whatever) No one will use them. Unless you can slash two different limbs at once they will be too slow to make the breaks work with current kill methods. And if you make them damage two limbs, congrats, you have made them BM wannabes again.

*Do not try and and bring in any high damage weapons. Apart from the fact that straight damage as a kill method is boring, it is also hugely hard to balance. How do you balance damage to be fair against a Dragon as well as against a squishy opponent? How do you balance artefacts that boost damage? Balancing damage is probably one of the hardest things we have had to do. Look at artefacted Monks, Magi, Runewardens. Classes who are able to do insane amounts of damage the moment they walk into a room is not only very unsatisfying, it makes it harder to balance in groups where that insane damage burst right off the bat will have the opponents screwed in no time. Most of the rants over the years have been about these damage dealers. I am sure there are other that feel the same as me when I say I hate losing a fight simply because the damage was just overwhelming from the start. I surely hate my opponent just dying while I am busy setting up breaks. And even if you are smart about it, having to heal, shield, run, heal, shield, hit once, heal, shield, heal, shield etc does become boring fast.

So my vote goes for a cosmetic revamp with different weapons around current rapier stats. Actually I think those stats should be slightly changed. Drop the damage dealt so you can not just DSL anything to death. Increase the limb damage so you do not have to take 10 DSL's per limb to prep high health opponents. If you do this, the issue of parrying would not be such a sore point any more. And lastly, hardcap speed at 240 (runed or not). Anything over that just becomes insane.

That is what I would like to see. Others might want something else but I believe this is the maximum amount of Milk for the minimal amount of Moo.

Trey

Aerek said:

Trey said:

In that scenario, except for hardcore disembowel setups everyone still goes for rapier. Would kill for 1.8s dsl without frenzy.

@Trey Initially, my idea was for rapier to be at 2.0, but knowing that every Infernal prefers his at LUDICROUS SPEED, I figured I'd get an outcry over it so I dropped it down. Like I said, I'm not good enough with numbers to really offer balanced details, I just threw out what seemed fair from my somewhat-limited experience. I really only understand Disembowel setups, with only a mediocre understanding of "perfect" Vivisect scenarios.

Tanris said:

@Aerek: interesting concept. You couldn't have
bonuses like faster/slower writhe and faster/slower lunge, because
there'd be no penalty to just switching weapons to get the bonus you
wanted in those specific instances, but something of that nature could
be interesting.

@Tanris I tried to account for that with the SPECIALISE bit, if you missed it. A knight could only get the "perk" from one weapon; the others could be used for the damage/speed bonuses, but not the perks they offer.
The ability to switch weapons has always killed these sort of "weapon perk" proposals in the
past, but when we all got to be Demigods, I found the Bard instrument
specialization mechanic, and it gave me this epiphany.

Trey said:

Trey said:

In that scenario, except for hardcore disembowel setups everyone still goes for rapier. Would kill for 1.8s dsl without frenzy.

Also, by making weapons for knights perform independent of stats you are flat -murdering- forging as a tradeskill.

If I have to choose between varied and interesting gameplay or a monotonous, barely-profitable trade skill, I'm okay with axe'ing that trade skill.


Considering that even factoring in credit purchases I'm still ahead about 600 dollars, not counting my toys, maybe the words 'barely profitable' aren't the most appropriate

Trey

@Antonius brings up some neat ideas, if I could make custom weapons, like a single signature design for each type, and they were otherwise the same stat-potential? Sign me up. Still leaves profitability with the added bonus of cool weapons, and if it allowed a design for armor too, so much the better.

Mizik

I still think stats should be variable

Sena

I'd like variable stats too, but with far less variation than we currently have. All forged weapons should have usable stats, at least.

Zeon

The argument that variation shouldn't be implemented because players will always pick the strongest of x options is a bad one.

Even competitive games with no sense of story (where people often fall for things that serve only aesthetic purpose) have characters, weapons, and tactics that are objectively worse/bad, all there with good reason.

They serve a few purposes the two most important of which (the ones i remember off the top of my head) are to add variety and content (thus complexity) to the fighting system and to give experienced players a challenge and means of proving themselves by succeeding with something not so good.

Iocun

Zeon said:

They serve a few purposes the two most important of which (the ones i remember off the top of my head) are to add variety and content (thus complexity) to the fighting system and to give experienced players a challenge and means of proving themselves by succeeding with something not so good.

I think that part here is actually one of the central problems with weapons. The issue we have is that rapiers/speed are both the best choice from a power-gamer's perspective, but at the same time also for an experienced player who wants to try out more unconventional tactics and prove himself by succeeding at them.

The problem is that fighting with slow-but-damaging simply offers way fewer alternative options at combat strategies in Achaea's combat environment than speedy weapons. They almost only offer the relatively easy option of brute force hack-and-slashing - yet are even there clearly outshone by rapiers, making them neither appealing to the powergamer, nor to the top combatant who wants an exciting new challenge.

Arador

But we already have that at the moment. Knights have a ton of "worse" options at this moment in the form of almost every other weapon and I have yet to see any one use them.

In fact it us because of this meaningless variety that we are having this discussion.

People go for the best option. Sure some might toy around with worse ones but put them in an important fight and they will always reach for the rapiers.

I am not saying thay variety is bad, just that I would rather have variety that will actually be used, like with simple cosmetic changes rather than inferior variety just for the sake of flavour as that will not get used.

Aerek

Trey said:

Considering that even factoring in credit purchases I'm still ahead about 600 dollars, not counting my toys, maybe the words 'barely profitable' aren't the most appropriate

And maybe implying that you are the rule and not the exception isn't the most appropriate, either. Without meaning any offense, the majority of the game doesn't have the amount of time you appear to have to waste. I'll toast to your success and reputation, but I still consider any "downgrade" to Forging to be of secondary concern to balancing and re-energizing actual combat and gameplay.

Zeon said:

The argument that variation shouldn't be implemented because players will always pick the strongest of x options is a bad one.

 Even competitive games with no sense of story (where people often fall for things that serve only aesthetic purpose) have characters, weapons, and tactics that are objectively worse/bad, all there with good reason.

They serve a few purposes the two most important of which (the ones i remember off the top of my head) are to add variety and content (thus complexity) to the fighting system and to give experienced players a challenge and means of proving themselves by succeeding with something not so good.

The only reason that games should have "bad" weapons/abilities/equipment is to give you something to look forward to as you grow. Anything other than that is just bad game design or wasted potential. Shortswords are fine as "bad" weapons that newbies start out with, but rapiers being the only sensible option upon trans'ing Chivalry is just wasted potential.

Zeon

My comment was to justify your proposal on the last page of this thread, in response to others saying it was a bad idea because it would result in all knights specializing in x (scimitars iirc, on my phone right now).

Giving newbies something to grow out of is a big part of what makes for a fun pve environment and we already have that in achaea with classes that get steadily better bashing skills as they trans their abilities. It has no bearing in pvp or what i'm referring to.

Iocun hit the nail on the head when he said the problem is that alternative/inferior tactics in achaea are less complicated and thus fail to fit into their niche role.

And no having inferior choices isn't bad game design, it's an industry standard found throughout all triple-A games and implemented by people who are paid to design fun and complicated pvp systems.

Edit: The problem is when those inferior choices don't add complexity or viable means to engage in pvp. An example of something viable put unnecessarily complicated in achaean combat would be a monk truelock or an occultist madness lock. They can work but there will always be something easier and more effective.

I'm also not advocating against having multiple equally powerful tactics. I agree that there being one objectively strongest tactic is a boring pk model. I just don't think people dismissing ideas because they introduce inferior options is productive.

Trey

Aerek said:

Trey said:

Considering that even factoring in credit purchases I'm still ahead about 600 dollars, not counting my toys, maybe the words 'barely profitable' aren't the most appropriate

And maybe implying that you are the rule and not the exception isn't the most appropriate, either. Without meaning any offense, the majority of the game doesn't have the amount of time you appear to have to waste. I'll toast to your success and reputation, but I still consider any "downgrade" to Forging to be of secondary concern to balancing and re-energizing actual combat and gameplay.

Shut up. I hate you. You're ugly.









Having said that, I work an 8am-8pm shift. I'm not sure how much time I have to waste, but it isn't a lot. What most people don't realize is that the decent money for forging isn't getting 10k steel together and hoping for paydirt, it's the steady commission jobs at x gold/item. Making all weapons stat-identical would negate half of what knights can do for a steady profit. Downgrade is not a strong enough word. I will, however, grant you that I am decidedly the most extreme example, but am by no means alone in having provided most of my characters wealth in an in-game fashion through forging. I'll post a more coherent muse on ©Antonius's idea when I get home from work. Phoneposting is a bitch

Mizik

I still think my idea > all of your bad non-solutions combined.

"I wish" doth not combat balance achieve.

Trey

Mizik said:

I still think my idea > all of your bad non-solutions combined. "I wish" doth not combat balance achieve.

I'm on board with your base concept, but I'd like to broaden it a bit. My classleads that Tagg submitted were rudimentary for the most part, but I was trying to get stuff out there for cosmetic variety before submission period was over. What do you think about....

- Keep forged stats the way they are for every item when you're doing normal forging. We'll see why later down.

- Give chivalry a two-handed version of DSL. Make it absolutely mechanically identical, where having one broken arm has you doing only one slash/venom, two broken arms nixes the attack entirely, and damage and limb damage calculated the exact same way, using the damage of the weapon you are wielding as both 'hand A' and 'hand B' for figuring out limbcounters. This would require next to nothing in the way of balancing. Besides, sure, it means that knights need not search for two identically awesome weapons, but I don't think that artefact sales would take that big a hit, and the people who want to dual-wield can still do so.

- Add something into Forging for a wide variety of weapons, AB FORGING WEIGHTING.

- - FORGE FOR <item> SWIFT - Anything in the list below can be the item in question. Causes the process to immediately disregard normal base stats and number of refines and instead makes the forged item identically equivalent to rapier for potential stats. FORGE until formed and refined fully as normal.

- - FORGE FOR <item> DEFT - As above, except identical base stats/refines to scimitar.

- - FORGE FOR <item> TRUE - As above, except identical base stats/refines to longsword.

- - FORGE FOR <item> STOUT - As above, except identical base stats/refines to broadsword.

- - FORGE FOR <item> MIGHTY - As above, except identical base stats/refines to battleaxe.

Doing any of the above puts a flag on the weapon, much like Songbless does for rapiers, where only a Runewarden, Paladin or Infernal may wield the weapon. This way, it will allow for a wide variety of (purely cosmetic) flavor for knights who might want swift battleaxes or stout scimitars while keeping things like 190 damage rapiers out of the hands of a bard. Normal versions of all these weapons can be tweaked now without the need for a three class collateral (a valid point brought up by @Mizik). I do recognize that most people will disregard almost everything but the SWIFT and MIGHTY versions of the ability. This is, I think, fine, but I left the other stuff in because there's always that asshole who wants to try out longswords (or longsword stats!) out to be different, and who are we to deny him that opportunity for style? List of weapons is as follows -

1-handed

-----------------------

Rapier

Scimitar

Longsword

Broadsword

Battleaxe

Spear

Trident

Dirk

2-handed

-----------------------

Longspear*

Falchion*

Bastard

Halberd

Bardiche

* = denotes a new weapon type. I figure some people might want a two-handed scimitar or spear. (I'm aware that falchions are not two-handed scimitars. Blame DnD for the term. Weapons in Achaea already don't conform to norms in most instances).

If a weapon on this list is not one of the original knight weapons, they will not work with DSL or its two-handed equivalent if they are not 'flagged' by the WEIGHTING ability in Forging. Sorry guys, I know, but no knights with dual Thoth's. Offer artefact alternatives under one of the five WEIGHTING category weapons, in levels 1, 2 and 3 as normal for each of the weapon types listed above.

Make weapon proficiencies still cost 100 lessons. It's a fairly trivial cost after one buys the more essential things, and I don't want to devalue the lessons anyone who has a wide variety of proficiencies has spent. Instead of forcing Knights into an arbitrary proficiency, allow them to SPECIALISE IN one of the weapon types listed above, denoting what they favored when they first learned their skills.

I realize that everything in the above list likely isn't perfect, but everyone's throwing their two cents in, and I thought that Mizik's idea was great, but a wider selection of things won't hurt people. If the above changes were even considered by @Tecton, @Cardan and company, I'd also suggest that Knights who already possess at least one artefact weapon be given -one- free tradein at full value -only- for another artefact weapon. (i.e. A given person could trade an Eagle's Scream for a level 2 Battleaxe with the SWIFT, DEFT, TRUE, STOUT or MIGHTY category of stat ranges). I do however also recognize that revenue is revenue, and that could potentially stifle sales that the artiewhores among us might be responsible for.

Jules

I *really* like some of what I'm seeing here, and surprised to see things that would have been shot down out of the gate in years past being seriously discussed by some of the top combatants in the game.

I would love it if forging weren't probability based, making it so that anyone willing to spend the cash could easily get fine forged weapons.  Then there are artefacts.  I'm glad I got good gouge, and held off on purchasing Soulpiercers for now - both because the whole system might change, and because even level 3s can't quite compete with forged.  Most other artefacts give you something you wouldn't otherwise have access to at all, and that's probably why it's so difficult to make artefact weapons worth their big pricetag, but not obscene.  Artefact weapons don't decay, but if they aren't "great" to begin with, that's not a selling point.  The level 1s and 2s are particularly "meh" in comparison to what you can buy forged.  No one (especially admin) probably thought that people would "tink tink" away as much as they do, literally beating the odds of the forging system through sheer persistence.  Over time, it's created much higher expectations for weapon stats. 

I do think that you could make some of the big changes being discussed and make forging *more* profitable.  The real change would be players' access to weapons of similar (even identical) quality, given their willingness to pay, and forgers no longer needing to spend so many hours at the forge.   

The game economy runs partly on players who make at least part of their game income by providing services.  Say you could forge for at least 3 tiers of weapon quality (who knows, maybe there'd be more).  Only trans forgers with a hammer could make the best ones.  The stats would either be set to a certain standard stat for that weapon once you started forging, or you might have the chance to move stats around a bit if that's a suggestion that pans out (total of all stats would remain the same, of course).  Removing all probability means that if you want to maintain the current gold sink, you do have to account for that.  So you'd use an obscene amount of comms to produce each weapon, with the amount increasing in relation to the level of quality you were forging for.  "Okay" weapons and all levels of shortswords should be fairly cheap to produce (but still a lot more than forging a single weapon costs now), and would all be of far better quality than is normally available to newbies at the moment.  It would also hopefully mean that all classes would be more likely to have access to high quality armours and weapons, because forgers' efforts wouldn't be so focused on producing that next set of Trey rapiers.    

I'm a little concerned about creating extreme "runs" on comms, due to using a high number of them to forge a single weapon.  Overall, the goal is to use the same amount of comms that forging does now, but forging as it is now tends to shape behavior so that comms depletion is relatively steady.  Both introducing a new commodity (like some sort of "template" for swords with different degrees of quality which would be used instead of crazy amounts of steel and leather) or just drastically increasing the amount of comms available change the market fundamentally, though.  Maybe make the comms markets recover back to base price and full stocking much more quickly after a buyout?  That's the best I can think of. 

Oh, and also maybe make swords not last as long (in the interest of creating more work for those who do forge)?  Maybe cut the decay time in half, maybe even a lot more.  It would also allow you to lower the cost in terms of commodities per weapon, so that the sticker price of each weapon wasn't so staggering, and since you would always be able to procure more weapons that were the same in every way, it wouldn't be such a pain when they do decay.  In a house like mine (Wardens), I imagine plenty of forgers like me would be willing to make any weapon for housemates at cost (they'd still be expensive due to comms), but I hope that there wouldn't be so much "free labor" that we'd kill those who are trying to make a living.  Removing probability seems like it has to impact the way the market works though.  I think it would be dishonest to not say that, as much as I'd like it to happen.  It means you can go to a forger who isn't the sort who's willing to spend hundreds of hours at the forge, and he can forge you exactly what you ordered.  For a certain kind of player, that does hurt.  But I do think people would be much more likely to deal directly with forgers - sort of like it is with herbs and such now.  Plenty of shopkeepers stock herbs and concocts, but there are also plenty of people who make their living providing them directly.  The overall goals would be to keep the cost of weapons upkeep reasonable for people and to maintain the current economy in terms of the game's gold sink, city coffers - and maybe even improve it a little for forgers who work for a living.

Jules

Speaking of rapiers, they have the highest overall stats, period.  Is this part of why they are so uber compared to other weapons?  They have amazing speed and higher to-hit than any other non-newbie dual wield weapon, so part of it is that their stats are "min-maxed" for our game (which isn't good or bad), but they also just have more points overall.  I wonder if say, a scimitar, got a few more points added to speed and to-hit (so that its overall total was equal to a rapier), would it be more competitive?  Totally OP?  Still irrelevant?  A rapier in scimitar's clothing?  Shortswords have higher overall stats than any other dual-wield weapon, but it's all in to-hit... Scims actually tend to be a bit low in to-hit (which makes sense since the base to-hit is low), so it would actually be putting stat points in a place that is meaningful to the non-newbie player, and of course, scims are just a *tad* slow, so a bit of speed maybe would give them that extra "kick" without essentially becoming a rapier?  I don't mind the idea of making weapon differences purely cosmetic, just curious.

Tvistor

Speed is always going to be amazing once you have enough to-hit to connect with any consistency, because once you've prepped someone and want to start breaking limbs, the further ahead you are of salve balance the more likely you are to squeeze off the kill, damage on the weapons aside.

Rakon managed to make artie scimitars work though.

Avto

I like Aerek's idea. If not the exact numbers, but the design itself is pretty good. However specialization would depend on normal specialization. From then on for chivalry only reduce damage, speed, limb break and others down to the level, where each specialization puts you back up to what it is now (perhaps some boost in the area of battleaxe damage, or it could be compensated by defence ignoring which is unique). also bump each weapon stats to the level where they come on par with lvl 1 rapiers in dps and limb breaks, but not to it's to-hit level.

This could give us variety, without overpowering or underpowering anything. You want damage go for axes, you want afflicting go for rapier, you want disembowel go for scimitars but prep slowly, you want to prep fast broadswords are your best friends. Longswords could have added to-hit instead of raze/lunge, to bring it no par with almost no dodge but the most dex stacked.

Stats of the weapons should be high enough to compensate for no variety in forging. Adding in artefacts is quite complex.


I don't really like the idea of weapons getting stat packs, Say I fight an infernal and I have scimitars of 225 speed, but infernal is dsling me with axes of 245 speed  dealing 300 damage.


Also very much like Antonius' idea of different armor parts.

Trey

Avto said:

I don't really like the idea of weapons getting stat packs, Say I fight an infernal and I have scimitars of 225 speed, but infernal is dsling me with axes of 245 speed  dealing 300 damage.

You've provided a scenario, but haven't really laid out why it's not desirable.

Cahin

Trey said:

I don't really like the idea of weapons getting stat packs, Say I fight an infernal and I have scimitars of 225 speed, but infernal is dsling me with axes of 245 speed  dealing 300 damage.

You've provided a scenario, but haven't really laid out why it's not desirable.

That's because he didn't think through what he said enough to elaborate any further.

Halios

Anyone can make something work, but it doesn't mean that it's generally balanced.

You shouldn't have to be disadvantaged because you actually want to be a rough and tumble lumbering knight.

Avto

Trey said:

I don't really like the idea of weapons getting stat packs, Say I fight an infernal and I have scimitars of 225 speed, but infernal is dsling me with axes of 245 speed  dealing 300 damage.

You've provided a scenario, but haven't really laid out why it's not desirable.

What I said didn't require any more elaboration. It's simply imagage breaking.

Trey

Wat

Tvistor

Are you saying that you think it's immersion breaking for battleaxes to be faster than scimitars regardless of mechanical effect, or what?

(would be interesting if different weapons had different finishers)

Tesha

Antonius said:

@Trey: There'd be the potential to completely change Forging in to something much more interesting, though. Add abilities to create statless, purely cosmetic items for various armour pieces (greaves, sabatons, bracers, etc). Add the ability to submit designs like tailors, jewelers, etc so you can forge weapons that are uniquely yours.

Not to mention that if stats no longer matter every item you forge is worth the same amount, and forgers - rather than customers - would be able to set the prices. I don't think it would be that bad, honestly.

@Antonius for president. With that, I would not need fullplate to have violet rose armour! @Cooper will be thrilled. 

That is unfortunately all I really have to contribute, except I would be sad if I learned forging and then it was made useless. Could we have some warning if everything is going to get turned over and suddenly 249 speed rapiers are bad? Just so we do not spend too much time or money on getting them? 

Aerek

I don't know, I guess I'm not into purely cosmetic changes, such as @Mizik's and @Trey's ideas. If all that's different is the text-weapons in my hand, and everything else is the same, I don't really see the point. While every knight using rapiers isn't my ideal scenario, it's not exactly immersion breaking, and it would be more immersion breaking for me to see broadswords and rapiers functioning identically. I guess it boils down to the fact that we want different things. Some of us are happy with the way knight combat works, and just want other options than rapiers for flavor. But I feel that if we're going to go through the trouble to re-write the systems, I'd rather take the opportunity to add more variety in combat tactics, not just the flavor of what I'm holding. Re-writing the whole Weaponry/Forging skills just to change the names of our text-weapons seems like a waste of effort and potential.

@Trey Aside from that, the only thing that bugs me about your proposal is the "needing only one weapon to DSL" bit, especially if weapon stats aren't tweaked at all. You can call it ineffective, since everyone seems to be packing ridiculous weapons anyway, but the fact that you do have to find 2 ludicrous weapons to achieve ludicrous speed/damage is a balancing factor. Averaging the two weapons helps even out the playing field, making sure that one fluke of chance doesn't automatically make someone a overpowered for a RL year. Take that away and give one absurd weapon its own DSL time without being averaged, the minor problems we have with absurd rapiers will get bigger and more common, as more people can get their hands on them. As Antonius said, the speed that everyone wants on rapiers isn't really necessary, and I don't want to cater to that "must be faster!" mentality.

It should be said, I don't mind the idea of a single-weapon-DSL for two-handed weapons, and I don't mind if we brought all weapons into a closer range of performance so they can all play in the same league as rapiers can, but that's why I proposed the idea that I did, because it's the only way I can think to do that and still preserve a feeling of variety and and different functionality (and dare I say realism?) across the range of weapons that we have.

Nim

One possible way to make weapons seem more realistic, and rapiers less usable super-awesome, is to make lighter weapons less usable against armored opponents. I think that was originally the reason heavier and heavier weapons were invented and used, after all!

One way to do this might involve giving armor a chance (based on either the damage stat of the weapon, or maybe a new stat altogether, and the armor's protection value, plus maybe any resistances that affect the weapon) of blocking any venoms attached. I dunno how many classes rely on venoms other than knights or serpents, but you could keep this from affecting serpents in particular that much by letting their skills bypass it (because they're that good at getting around armor), or something - or maybe not, but I doubt serpents would remain effective if they couldn't even effectively envenom people.

That way rapiers would still be effective, but only against poorly armored opponents. Against another knight, you might need to resort to heavier weapons to get past their armor properly.

Naturally, weapon stats would still need to be rebalanced around a change like this, and all it really does is add damage as a factor to how quickly a knight can envenom people, but I personally think it might add a bit of realism and complexity to the system. Right now, the reason knights use rapiers is because there's no reason not to, but historically I assume armor was that reason.

Sidonia

Basically give everybody shrugging? No thanks.