Right now I'm thinking about how weapon skills will be handled in JADE. There will be some similarities to the skills in ADOM and some differences. Similarities include:
  • Weapon skills will be improved by practicing with weapons (e.g. fighting with them).
  • Weapon skills provide bonusses to hit, damage and DV.
Additionally there will be some additions:
  1. The most important first: Weapon skills in JADE (like attributes, standard skills, etc.) will be open-ended, e.g. there is no limit of 15 levels like in ADOM. As a consequence effects of weapon skills will need to be smoothed out a bit more to prevent game-breaking effects.
  2. Weapon skills will increase the probability of critical hits: Each weapon in JADE has a critical hit probability (a percentage) that determines if a hit is critical. Critical hits provide a damage multiplier (either constant or variable depending on the weapon) that increases the total damage.
  3. Weapon skills might increase the critical hit multiplier (see above).
  4. Weapon skills might provide "other" special effects (e.g. a chance for stunning opponents when using blunt weapons or a chance for increased bleeding effects for piercing weapons) which become available at high weapon skill levels.
What I am right now really interested in is some input on how to model a new weapon skill system without the flaws perceived in the ADOM system. Please note that this mostly refers to the points #1, #2 and #3 above. Right now I'm not really interested in a discussion of "cool" weapon skill special powers - that's something for a later point.

Thanks for any input!