Revising the weapon skills

[Kalmakka]

the skills cross-train? I mean, using a 2H weapon should share around 60% of the exp with the 1H one..

I remember in Morrowind, you could be an expert at wielding a long blade, but if for some reason you had to use a short blade you wouldn't be able to hit a thing. That was awful.

Ideally, you could have a matrix determining how much using a weapon trains your other skills. My reasoning is that using any weapon will give you a bit of fighting experience that can be put to use to wield any other weapon.
For instance, using a 2h polearm would give much training in 2h polearm (of course), somewhat less in 1h polearm (perhaps 50% of what you got in 2h polearm), a bit in staves (15%), small amounts in swords and blunt weapon skills (5%), and not a significant amount in the rest (1%)

[Dougy]

I remember in Morrowind, you could be an expert at wielding a long blade, but if for some reason you had to use a short blade you wouldn't be able to hit a thing. That was awful.

Ideally, you could have a matrix determining how much using a weapon trains your other skills. My reasoning is that using any weapon will give you a bit of fighting experience that can be put to use to wield any other weapon.
For instance, using a 2h polearm would give much training in 2h polearm (of course), somewhat less in 1h polearm (perhaps 50% of what you got in 2h polearm), a bit in staves (15%), small amounts in swords and blunt weapon skills (5%), and not a significant amount in the rest (1%)

One problem with this, I foresee, is that usually you get 1 weapon skill point for killing something. So every number would thus need to be scaled up by at least a factor of 100 so something could be increased only by 1%.

Also, I wouldn't want to see someone even theoretically capable of achieving mastery of swordfighting entirely from throwing rocks (or some other silly combination), possibly never even seeing a sword in his/her life.

The matrix idea sounds reasonable, although it introduces some arbitrary proportions. I believe some tricky questions would arise: (a) Would the matrix be symmetric? For example, would using a 1H-sword train your 2H-sword skill just as much as using a 2H-sword would train your 1H-sword skill? (b) Would using a 2H-sword train your 1H-sword skill as much as using a 1H-sword would train your dagger skill?

[Andur]

Glad to see the ever so mysterious 2-Handed Weapons category from Adom removed, it was never really clear what fell into that category and what didn't.

Splitting the skills into 1-handed and 2-handed is perfectly reasonable, as those are very, very different fighting techniques. Any cross-training between the 2 should be slow and perhaps have a hard-cap limit.

In addition to just hitting things with them to train, some weapon-master/trainer types in the game would be handy. I've never managed to reach grand mastery with a weapon in Adom, even in my ultra-ending games.

The Adom stat bonuses always seemed reasonable enough to me. It was neat that the different categories gave differing bonuses. Adding in critical hit modifiers sounds logical enough. Anything beyond that would be cool too.

Some kind of tie-in with the Tactics system and weapon skills could be neat (different stances).

The shield skill in Adom always seemed a little weird that it was based on the DV of the shield you are using. It seems to me, that the size of the shield, not the size+material (as is the case in Adom), should be the determining factor in how effective you can use it.

[Orion]

The matrix idea sounds reasonable, ...

I agree with that. If you train one-handed swords, it should rise your two-handed swords skill either (and maybe other skills). It is not realistic, that you know how to use one-handed swords, but you do not know anything about two-handed swords - the fighting technique may be different (for one- or two-handers) but sword is sword...

The second point is, that if you are a fighter and you train one type of weapon, it should teach you something general about weapons... It is not realistic, that you are a master of using swords, but you don't know anything about daggers...

[Grey]

I don't actually like the separation of two-handed types for each weapon, I must say. What's so different about how to use an axe one-handed or two-handed? It's an extremely similar style of combat - far more similar than say one-handed and dual-wielding two axes. It'd rather see a "two-handed weapon" skill in ADOM, like there is for dual-wielding. Thus anyone trained in swords would have a little trouble handling a big two-hander unless they're trained in the skill. One nice result of this would be that spellcasters would have a hideous time trying to use big weapons since they wouldn't start with that skill (whilst warrior types and trolls would).

To solve some of the problems I perceive in ADOM I think weapons types should give more dramatically different benefits so each one feels different. For instance:
-Daggers have very low DV, low damage, but more crits and bigger energy point reduction
-Swords give more damage, DV and to hit, but less energy point reduction
-Spears give loads of DV, more crits, but less to hit/damage and way less energy point reduction
-Crossbows give more to hit and criticals, but virtually no energy point and damage bonuses
etc.

The individual weapon effects like bleeding/stunning would be nice. Some other ideas might be armour damage, some natural armour penetration (say at level 10 axes always subtract 4 PV from the enemy), disarming, multiple attacks, paralysing (small chance when backstabbing say).

More racial effects might be nice to make the races feel different from each other. In ADOM gnomes get a bonus to crossbows. Other races could have similar bonuses - elves with bows, humans with swords, trolls with clubs, dwarves with axes, etc.

Shield skill bonuses also need to be dramatically reduced in my opinion. And what about armour skills? Some other games use this idea effectively, with separation between armour types. For ADOM we could have the following armour types:
-Unarmoured - naked, clothes, robes, etc
-Light - leather, studded leather, elven chain, furs, wrappings, shell
-Heavy - ring, scale, chain, splint, mail
(This could be separated out further with splint and mail as heavy whilst the others are medium, but overcomplication may be a bad thing.)
Armour skills would affect DV, PV and spell evasion, whilst also reducing negative modifiers to dex/speed/to hit from heavy armours.

Two Weapon Combat could be changed from a regular skill to a weapon skill, with the same sort of upgrade levels. This would mean characters wouldn't be able to just shove points in it to get better - they'd actually have to use it regularly. It would be running alongside the regular weapon skills, so you could technically be getting points in swords, axes and 2WC all in one round. It would give extra to hit bonuses (countering the negatives of dual-wielding) as well as bigger DV bonuses and energy point reductions.

[Nezur]

-- What's so different about how to use an axe one-handed or two-handed? It's an extremely similar style of combat --

Yes, I agree to a certain extent. Hmm... If you wielded one-handed weapon and no shield, wouldn't that mean you automatically used your both hands to swing the weapon? At least that would be the case for medium-sized and large arms.

-- Two Weapon Combat could be changed from a regular skill to a weapon skill, with the same sort of upgrade levels. This would mean characters wouldn't be able to just shove points in it to get better - they'd actually have to use it regularly. --

Shove points? The JADE page reads:

Experience levels also will play just a minor role. They will give you a very minor hitpoint bonus (+1 hitpoint per experience level) and only serve as a general guideline for your accomplishments... it has no other effects.

In fact I don't if this has changed since it was announced 12/24/1998... Well, anyway. All your skills will apparently only increase if you use them. So in that sense regular skills would be similar to weapon skills. Correct me if I'm wrong, however.

I have to chew on this matter a bit more... Right now I'm too tired to devise anything.

[bjarketp]

Mr. Biskup should be very careful with buffing the weapon skills too hard. First of all, it encourages using only one weapon for the entire game, which is kinda boring. Secondly, without no max cap on weapon skill one might be able to infinitely train his weapon skill on, say, breeders or a grimlin bomb or whatever. Of course each rank should take exponentially longer to achieve, I think that a cap on weapon skill is needed.

The cap in adom was big enough that you could easily complete the game with a melee character, yet not achieve grand mastery in your favourite weapon.

[Qui]

About cross-training

The matrix idea is a good one, but I propose to handle it differently. Weapon skill points should be added only for the weapon type you're currently using, thus no need to calculate any decimals or anything. A level reached in one weapon would make reaching that level in similar class easier.

Example:
L5->L6 advancement in swords needs 1000 points. But the PC already has L6 in 2-handed swords, correlation level is let's say 40%, so advancing to L6 in swords costs only 600 points.

Bonuses from each correlated classes should sum. It makes sense that if the PC is skilled in two similar skills he should learn even faster.

Example:
L5->L6 advancement in blunt weapons needs 1000 points. The PC already has L6 in axes (30% correlation) and in ball & chain (15% corr.), so L6 in blunt weapons cost is reduced by 45% and is 550 points.

There should be a hard limit on percentage of reduction. Let's say 20%. It allows to enter high correlation in the matrix without silly side effects.

Example:
L5->L6 advancement in 2H polearms needs 1000 points. The PC already has L6 in 1H polearms (70% corr.) and in staves (60% corr.). In total it's 130%, but due to hard limit the cost can't be lower than 20%, so L6 in staves costs 200 points.

I think it is a simple to implement solution which deals with both "he has level 10 in swords but never used one" and "he has level 10 in 2H polearms but stabs himself in the eye when given a 1H polearm" problems.

[Tannis]

Mr. Biskup should be very careful with buffing the weapon skills too hard. First of all, it encourages using only one weapon for the entire game, which is kinda boring. Secondly, without no max cap on weapon skill one might be able to infinitely train his weapon skill on, say, breeders or a grimlin bomb or whatever. Of course each rank should take exponentially longer to achieve, I think that a cap on weapon skill is needed.

The cap in adom was big enough that you could easily complete the game with a melee character, yet not achieve grand mastery in your favourite weapon.

I disagree and there's an easy solution for this. Unlimited weapon skills won't be game breaking provided that the advantages don't scale linearly; I think the logarithmic approach to weapon skills is a great solution, and while the benefits to things like DV and damage might taper, the advantages of high weapon skills could lie in the already mentioned special abilities that one can unlock.

The problem is, as you mentioned, someone could grind gremlins and get to level 25 in swords, and that seems unfair. I think its imperative that JADE avoid the ADOM solution, where monsters grow harder the more you kill them. This is counterintuitive and leads to the terrible uber-jackal effect.

The solution is simple: split monsters into three (or more classes), such as mundane, skilled, and legendary. The names don't matter. A mundane creature would be a rat, goblin, orc, or giant bat. It's common and not terribly threatening. There's only so much you can learn from them, so they should not get you farther than level 7 or 8 in a given weapon class. A skilled monster could be a gnoll warlord, ogre chieftain, or vampire knight. Mean monsters that pack a punch, and can train skills up to say level 15 or so. After that, increased weapon marks will only be obtainable from legendary creatures: dragons, gorgons, minotaur mages (ugh), gigantic hydras, etc. This way, getting your weapon level past level 20 will be a tremendous feat, since these monsters are rare and deadly. This way, the possibility for increasing your weapon skill exists, but it will be a challenge.

Another advantage of this system is you don't need a ridiculous scale for weapon marks. For example, level 15 could require 100K marks, and level 16 could require 120K; The scale isn't exponentially, but since marks can only come from legendary creatures it will still take ages without having to kill thousands of puny creatures like bats. Thoughts?

[Orion]

Both, Qui and Tannis, have great ideas - I like them.
Only thing is, that I'm not sure which scaling is the best - linear or logarithmic. Probably the best one is something between these two...