I had an idea about melee weapons.

[TonberryJam]

The idea was to design weapons to have more unique mechanics. To make them more interesting. To make switching weapon types less wanted. And, to give aptitudes a little more depth. Mostly inspired from how these weapons were actually used, which made them different from each other.


I'll give an example about pole-arms. Different head pieces can be attached to a pole-arm, and we see this mechanic in game with piercing, chopping, slashing. Most pole-arms had a component to pierce heavy armour at the top or on the side of the head piece. Many types used the side spike to snare a mounted foe and drag it to the ground.

My idea was to envision a mechanic for that, which would be suitable for the game. I was thinking that piercing types could have a type penetration effect. So any monsters in the full range of the weapons area could be pierced. It would make sense for the pierce to rely on the strength stat to occur. And the less armour worn the more likely it would happen. Chopping types could have a cleave effect. Maybe the tile you choose to send the blow, and the two tiles adjacent to that tile.

Then I had a thought about slashing weapons. When I think about them, I envision a lot parrying with the weapon and thought. Hey it would be neat if short swords and long swords added to AC, EV or SH based on weapon skill.

Another thought was about quaterstaves. People fighting with quaterstaves had two ends of the weapon to fight. That would make it a nice weapon against small groups. So why not let quaterstaves hit two opponents at a time?

And then I ran out of amusing thoughts. The End.

[duvessa]

This seems like a lot of complexity for little gain.

[Tiktacy]

This seems like a lot of complexity for little gain.

Exactly this.

[DracheReborn]

A lot of your specific proposals have been brought up before

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... pon_reform

See impale for polearms, blocking (parrying), double attack for staves. Also new weapon types that combine different effects. Sadly a lot of these proposals have died on the vine.

[dpeg]

From time to time I mention "glancing" as a Long Swords weapon move: if you move, and some monster is adjacent before and after moving, you make a free attack on it.

There is a stronger version, which replaces "move" by "move or attack", making it a little bit more cleaving-like.

On these things in general: I think it is better to discuss weapon ideas one by one.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

The glancing move seems pretty elegant. It wouldn't slow down the game and being able to do damage while moving is kind of rare (poison, sticky, clouds, summons, well maybe not).

I'm not convinced it would come up as useful a lot though. In most situation the player doesn't want to move past the monster they are fighting, because that's the direction where the danger is. So it would mostly be good In cases where enemies are on the retreat path. Or maybe to get to the summoner, but it risks getting bogged down.

[Lasty]

The problem with the glancing move is how to handle move speed/attack speed disparity. If your attack speed is slower than your movespeed, can you attack faster by glancing, or do you have to avoid accidentally glancing to avoid moving slower than normal? If your move speed is slower than your attack speed, do you speed up while glancing or do you lose DPS?

The best solution I came up with last time this was proposed is that when glancing you have a (move speed / attack speed) chance to perform a glancing attack; that yields a chance greater than 1/1, you use the extra attack speed to have a chance to perform a second attack. It doesn't exactly seem simple or elegant, but it does more or less resolve the glaring issues.

Edit: corrected formula

[Shard1697]

To make switching weapon types less wanted.

? It's already not wanted almost always.

[dpeg]

The problem with the glancing move is how to handle move speed/attack speed disparity. If your attack speed is slower than your movespeed, can you attack faster by glancing, or do you have to avoid accidentally glancing to avoid moving slower than normal? If your move speed is slower than your attack speed, do you speed up while glancing or do you lose DPS?

The best solution I came up with last time this was proposed is that when glancing you have a (attack speed/move speed) chance to perform a glancing attack; that yields a chance greater than 1/1, you use the extra attack speed to have a chance to perform a second attack. It doesn't exactly seem simple or elegant, but it does more or less resolve the glaring issues.

I was not aware of the problem, but your solution looks very good to me.

Out of curiousity: which version do you prefer? The original one (moving only), or the other one (glancing attacks on move+attack)?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Instead of using a ratio for attack chance or number of attacks, it might be an option to scale something like damage and/or hit chance by the move/attack speed ratio. That feels more spoilery though. You could also just restrict it to max 1 attack per move. You get to move after all. Does the damage / aut need to be strictly preserved?

[Shard1697]

What happens to weapons that are currently slower than 1 aut then? Does it need to also keep track of "how long ago did you swing this weapon", and if it's less than that weapon's delay, don't let it attack on move?

[duvessa]

I prefer the idea of a "charge attack": when you move adjacent to a monster from a non-adjacent square, you get a free attack. It's fine for it to be at your movement delay because you'd have to move back again to get another charge attack. There would likely need to be a damage bonus though.

[milski]

I prefer the idea of a "charge attack": when you move adjacent to a monster from a non-adjacent square, you get a free attack. It's fine for it to be at your movement delay because you'd have to move back again to get another charge attack. There would likely need to be a damage bonus though.

As long as we're allowed to sacrifice all of our AC for extra damage that turn.

*ubercharger intensifies*

Spoiler: show

[TonberryJam]

It did seem like a large project. This is mostly thoughts i don't expect to be developed. Seems like my ideas would make the game more difficult.

Since piercing is designed to puncture armour, how about having it ignore AC rolls?
Crushing is designed to break your body. How about giving it a chance to reduce stats?
Slashing is designed to cut your skin and bleed a person to death. Maybe a bleed effect and chance to reduce total hp(limps) if the part has no armour.

Speed is good for offense or defense. If something can move faster than an attack can land, then it should miss. Attacking something that enters a square after it enters, could lead it to dodging an attack if it's move is faster than your attack. This would require you to attack a spot as it enters a tile.

[duvessa]

Since piercing is designed to puncture armour, how about having it ignore AC rolls?
Crushing is designed to break your body. How about giving it a chance to reduce stats?
Slashing is designed to cut your skin and bleed a person to death. Maybe a bleed effect and chance to reduce total hp(limps) if the part has no armour.

This just sounds like your goal is to stop players from meleeing monsters with weapons altogether.

[Hurkyl]

Glancing is a free but tedious win against any melee monster you're faster than.

I suppose that's already true with a ranged weapon, though, so I dunno how to think about it.

[crate]

Ignoring monster AC is not very interesting except maybe for short blades (where it is out-of-place anyway since they have a gimmick that works fine); monsters do not actually have much AC and it doesn't vary a whole lot, so you get nearly the same result more simply by just increasing damage a little bit.

It would matter a lot for monster-vs-player (players have lots of AC), but I don't think that this is a thing you should give to a large number of monsters.

[Shard1697]

Glancing is a free but tedious win against any melee monster you're faster than.

I suppose that's already true with a ranged weapon, though, so I dunno how to think about it.

How so? It exists in Brogue with flails, and it doesn't let you get free kills.
To be clear the idea is you're next to the monster, and then you move to another tile that's also next to the monster(not one that's not next to it) to trigger the attack. So the monster still gets to hit you, just like if you were standing still and attacking-the only difference is that you get to reposition(but only to a square that is within melee range of that monster).

[HardboiledGargoyle]

The problem with the glancing move is how to handle move speed/attack speed disparity. If your attack speed is slower than your movespeed, can you attack faster by glancing, or do you have to avoid accidentally glancing to avoid moving slower than normal? If your move speed is slower than your attack speed, do you speed up while glancing or do you lose DPS?

The best solution I came up with last time this was proposed is that when glancing you have a (move speed / attack speed) chance to perform a glancing attack; that yields a chance greater than 1/1, you use the extra attack speed to have a chance to perform a second attack. It doesn't exactly seem simple or elegant, but it does more or less resolve the glaring issues.

Edit: corrected formula

That's a problem equally present with aux attacks, with a similar solution.

Say: any individual aux attack triggers 100% when attacking with dark maul and no m&f skill, and 10% of the time when attacking with a quickblade at mindelay. Or 100% with unskilled bardiche and 15% with mindelay quickblade. It's possible but bad to further modify that chance, using stats.

[ion_frigate]

Glancing is a free but tedious win against any melee monster you're faster than.

I suppose that's already true with a ranged weapon, though, so I dunno how to think about it.

How so? It exists in Brogue with flails, and it doesn't let you get free kills.
To be clear the idea is you're next to the monster, and then you move to another tile that's also next to the monster(not one that's not next to it) to trigger the attack. So the monster still gets to hit you, just like if you were standing still and attacking-the only difference is that you get to reposition(but only to a square that is within melee range of that monster).

Assume that you get ten moves for every nine the monster makes. On the ninth move, you glance-attack it, and because it doesn't get to move this turn, you get away scot-free. This process is easily repeatable if you carefully track your moves.

This isn't a problem in Brogue because virtually everything is the same movement speed as you, and against slow attackers (like ogres) it provides no advantage. Pretty certain you could kill an underworm this way, but those are pretty rare, and tend to appear in groups which makes getting the required space difficult. Not to mention the fact that they take off like 40% of your health in one hit, leaving very little margin for error.