Bash & Crush vs. Cut & Slash

[TwoBits]

Well, I tell ya', generally being unarmored myself most of the time, I'd still rather get hit by fist than by a mace...

[MaxWilson]

Well, the damage on small weapons is too high generally. A normal str 10 person hitting a person with 10 hp with his fist, or a small knife, does not have a good chance of killing the other person in real life. However, I think Dominions makes a good tradeoff here between versimilitude and playability; you could plausibly reduce the damage of a fist to -5 or -7 (probably won't kill anyone with one blow unless it's a giant doing the punching) but I don't mind the way it is currently.

Edit: I also think that aiming for parity w/ Prot 12 is setting the bar a little too high, since that's the "well-protected" range that a mace is designed to get through. Maybe Prot 6 or 8, which would put the mace at dmg 1 or dmg 0 respectively. If that seems unbalancing it turn out that maces also affect your attack and defense values more than was previously thought.

On the other hand, it might also be that maces are no more effective than swords at *penetrating* heavy armor, but the extra moment of inertia helps deal a little bit of damage against moderate amounts of armor. The current system models this quite well, because hammers etc. have a high damage (7). Really heavy armors are not affected, of course, except that there is a marginally higher chance of rolling high enough to do some damage. On consideration, I like the fact that blunt weapons are not AP.

-Max

[Taqwus]

...if I were rambling about what might be funky for weapon-modding capabilities in a sequel, it might be fun to see

- a way to affect how much strength matters, ex. a giant's
sword perhaps having both a high-magnitude negative base
damage but a high strength multiplier, and more length --
right now, Hoburgs and Titans are a bit too similar here

- a way to make a really, really slow melee weapon (does the
rate of fire code work on 'em? Hm.)

- a way to specify arbitrary spells as secondaryeffects

Being a weirdo, I'd be severely tempted to play around with a "Heaven's Hammer" polearm that took one or two full turns to re-ready, and enormous strength to use, but also invoked the wonderfully imprecise 'Gifts from Heaven' on attacking. Just for kicks.

[Saulot]

I can confirm that slower rates of fire do not work on melee weapons, I tried that for a shield bash type weapon in Urdheim.
It's a shame, because that polearm, amongst other examples is a nice idea.

Personally, I feel the main distinguishing factor between blunt weapons and swords is that blunt weapons should be far more common, and take far fewer resources.

[MaxWilson]

Well, vs. a unit with heavy armor (16), the mode for the hammer's damage (w/ a strength of 10) is 1 while the broadsword's mode is 0. Because of the random numbers the mean will work out to be more like 1.3 vs. 0.5, but the hammer is still more effective vs. armored opponents. The difference is IIRC more significant the more heavily armored the foe is. Of course, you could increase the difference by increasing the base damage of the hammer as well, but the thing is that there's no reason to think a hammer would be *good* against plate armor. It's just that it's better than a sword, because of the extra momentum. (And a broadsword is a pretty heavy sword, which you could think of as a club with an edge to it. The hammer is something like three times as effective as a shortsword in this scenario.)

Picks are a different story. I could imagine those as armor-piercing, because that's what they do.

-Max

[Folket]

Would it not be easier to lower the damage of blunt weapons across the board and add 1 AN damage.

[Frostmourne27]

Well, if this is to be modded, No. Aside from the 1AN+MR mode, I don't think there's a way to add extra, non-elemental, damage to an attack. If its a developer change, maybe. Not quite sure how much code would be needed for that. Not too much I don't think, but it could be quite a bit.

[Novi]

MaxWilson said:
Well, vs. a unit with heavy armor (16), the mode for the hammer's damage (w/ a strength of 10) is 1 while the broadsword's mode is 0. Because of the random numbers the mean will work out to be more like 1.3 vs. 0.5, but the hammer is still more effective vs. armored opponents. The difference is IIRC more significant the more heavily armored the foe is. Of course, you could increase the difference by increasing the base damage of the hammer as well, but the thing is that there's no reason to think a hammer would be *good* against plate armor. It's just that it's better than a sword, because of the extra momentum. (And a broadsword is a pretty heavy sword, which you could think of as a club with an edge to it. The hammer is something like three times as effective as a shortsword in this scenario.)

Picks are a different story. I could imagine those as armor-piercing, because that's what they do.

-Max

Ahh, I've never really delved into the game mechanics (I'm still not that devoted a player), but if your estimations are correct perhaps justice has already been served (Now, don't take that too literally - been excessively playing Baldur's Gate II lately. )
Anyway, that was referring to the comparison between the shortsword and the hammer. And on the second thought, you might be right about the broadsword as well though I have little idea how heavy it really is...

[Ygorl]

Maraxus, Obelisks don't wear armor. AP and AN only get through armor, not natural protection. Obelisks, sphinxes, anyone who's ironskinned or wearing the Marble Breastplate, all those guys will be well protected against AP and AN damage. At least, I'm pretty sure that's the way it used to work; I don't think it's changed?