equipment skill requirements

[barthok]

Some will love this idea and some will hate it but here goes Weapons and armor should have skill requirements to wear. Weapons could require a certain level of weapons mastery, say 0 for the base weapons up to 4 or 5 for the very best. And armor should have a skill based on strength. The heavier armors require higher strength. Weapons could also just have higher strength requirements. As it is now any character can get just about the best gear within a couple levels of starting. Putting higher requirements on armor and gear will make it so that the character needs to progress and grow. This will lengthen the develeopment time of teh character and give the player much more to work for. Please feel free to comment

 

[okiN]

Strength requirements for heavy armor is a good idea. I don't see why you'd want skill requirements for weapons, though, that makes no sense. No matter how bad you are at fighting with something, that doesn't stop you from picking it up and waving it around like a halfwit. I think that the weapon skills' effect on combat effectiveness should be more pronounced, though. However, strength requirements for large weapons and strong bows are all I need in the field of weapon restriction.

 

[DaLagga]

Just so long as its not taken too far. I like how even a level 1 character can wield almost any weapon, and wear any armor. Its a refreshing change from most rpg's where even if you had a million gold you would still be wearing cloth or something at low level. So maybe something like...12 strength required to wear black armor. Nothing too constraining.

 

[corksacker69]

having to meet a skill req for even welding a weapon is kinda lame, but i like the idea of having combat penaltys because you dont have enough in a skill or somthing. i say make a bunch of new skills, and make each skill corespond to a weapon type, like swords mastery, maces mastery, or bows mastery. each different weapon has a minimum skill level required to weld the weapon without penaltys, and each skill point over the minimum gives you bonuses when you use the weapon. each skill point under the minimum gives you penaltys. these bonuses would naturally stack with the weapon proficenys.

for example, a dagger, requires 1 sword mastery point to weld without penaltys. each sword mastery point over 1 gives the welder a 2% swing speed increase and a +1 damage increase. that means, in the late game,
a dagger, which is currently a useless weapon, could be a force to be reckoned with when welded by a maxed out sword mastery character with a +14% speed bonus and +7 damage

this system would reflect character expertise in individual weapon types, while adding more distinticness between the weapons we have now. it would also extend the life of early weapons which would have a low wep req because they would get bonuses when welded by high level characters with the appropriate wepon mastery.

this wouldent be too hard to implement either, just define a category for each weapon(there would be quite a few), give them a skill level req between 0-skill cap, make the new skills, make sure the game regonizes the type of weapon that the characcter is holding and its skill level req, do some simple calcualtions based on skill level/wep skill req, and modify the damage/swing speed accordinly.

 

[Thucydides]

I agree with corksacker.

 

[Howzer]

Umm... next to the skills list... when you view your character info.... there this thing.... Weapons Proficiencies... Yeah I think that pretty much covers it.

Maybe just changing the Proficiencies a bit. Like
Sword Proficiency
Axe Proficiency
Mace...
Spear...(lances, spears, pikes)
Polearm...(poleaxe, scythe, staff, etc.)
Small Weapons...(daggers, sickles, knives, etc.)
Bow....
Crossbow...
Thrown Weapons...

I do think the proficiencies should stand out WAY more. Like maybe until you get your proficiency up to 100, you do under the normal performance for a weapon. So if you said says it has 25 damage and 90 speed, but you only have 50 proficiency, it does, say 18 damage, and 67 speed, or something around that.

This would make combat a lot more simple against low level baddies, like pirates, but when you got to fighting knights, combat is much more fast paced and difficult.


Also, I think the only requirement to use any weapon should be strength. Other than not being able to pick something up, you can use anything you want in real life, and I like the realism/historicies of M&B.

 

[Gilglaurad]

Yeah, anyone should be able to use a wapon, though if you don't have the skills/STR required to use it you should get heavy penalties to damage and speed - even a peasant who never used a sword can swing a One-and-a-halfer, after all - though he wouldn't use it very effectively, with flying change between one and twohand, pull-and-push with the hands, etc.
Maybe make parry also a little bit clumsier.

STR should propably have stronger penalties than Profiency, but you should be able use a weapon with a higher STr requirement - but if that sword needs 12 STR and you have only 7, your speed would be reduced to 20% or something like that.

 

[Narcissus]

My thoughts on it are this: If there is a requirement on an item and you don't meet that requirement ... you can not use the item.

STR requirements are for heavy items only ... those items that it takes a great STR to lift, wear, and/or wield. If you don't have the STR to use that item ... then the penalties for using it should be ridiculous if it is even possible.

Examples: 1.) A person has a STR of 5 ... it takes a STR of 13 to use a 'Heavy Longbow' ... that person wouldn't be able to effectively pull back an arrow to fire. Hence, not being able to use it. 2.) A person has a STR of 5 again ... it takes 12 STR to wear a suit of 'Heavy Plate' ... the person might be able to walk (maybe) ... but would not be able to move and act/react to a battle type of situation. 3.) Again, it takes a STR of 12 to use a 'Heavy Axe' effectively ... a character with 5 STR might be able to lift the axe but would never be able to swing it and control the swing in any way. If a requirement is on an item ... you shouldn't be able to use that item ... thats why its called a requirement.

The best way to do this, in my opinion ... would be to add requirements to items that would need them and leave it at that. The only other thing that would be good would be to drasticly change the bonuses and penalties that high/low proficiencies add to these items.

Just my thoughts,

Narcissus

 

[Ken Oh]

Hey, instead of making a new post, where I was going to suggest what corksacker69 and Gilglaurad stated, I'll just bump this.

Obviously, since this idea of weapon/armor requirements was suggested, it was adopted. I think it should be modified like how corksacker69 and Gilglaurad suggested, for the reasons that they brought up (i.e. the fact that any peasant can use a heavy maul, they just might use it poorly...another example being that if someone can ride one horse, they should be able to ride any other horse, but maybe not nearly as well). Also, I'd like to see it for gameplay reasons of every weapon being available to everyone as long as you're able to pay certain prices.

So let me list out my suggestions:

-First of all, keep the requirements label on everything, to show players where they would get penalties.

Armor:
-Anyone missing strength requirements for a piece of armor gets their effective strength reduced by the difference of each piece of armor. For example, someone with 7 strength wearing 8 STR requirement greaves and a 9 STR requirement helmet has an effective strength of (7-1-2=4). This probably would not effect current skills and hitpoints and would probably only have an effect in combat.
-AND/OR large movement penalties
-AND/OR weapon skill penalties
-AND/OR weapon damage penalties
-AND/OR weapon/shield speed penalties

Weapons:
-Anyone missing the strength requirements for a weapon gets large weapon speed penalties AND/OR proficiency penalties AND/OR damage penalties.
-Anyone missing the skill requirements (Power Draw, Power Throw) gets large proficiency penalties AND/OR damage penalties. In this case, maybe it would be the normal bonus for having the skill times the difference in lacking skill. For example, Power Draw gives you +10% damage bonus for each (I think), trying to wield a 2 Power Draw Nomad Bow with only Power Draw 1 would yield -20% damage (but still give you +10% for the initial Power Draw point).
-Most important would probably be a proficiency penalty.

Horses:
-Anyone missing the Riding requirement would get large speed and maneuverability penalties depending on the difference of the skill.

There are probably some problems with the idea (especially the armor part), but I'm just throwing it out there.

btw, first post here so lemme say this game rocks.

hard.

 

[Lost-Lamb]

Good job on the searching and proving how well digging up old threads works when done properly, bravo!

 

[SPD_Phoenix]

My thoughts on it are this: If there is a requirement on an item and you don't meet that requirement ... you can not use the item.

I agree with this.

However, I also agree with corksacker69 that strength should give a little bonus to weapon speed and damage to all weapons except crossbow. For crossbow, strength should reduce the load time instead. Strength should also help in shield speed. For armor, strength should reduce running speed penalty for wearing heavier armor.

 

[Merentha]

Good job on the searching and proving how well digging up old threads works when done properly, bravo!

Indeed. 

The only thing that I think needs to be changed about skill pre-reqs are bows and power draw.  Power draw reqs need to be much higher to use the larger bows, and the implementation for that skill drastically altered (but that is for another thread...)

 

[Ken Oh]

Here, lemme just illustrate the idea using this quote:

it takes a STR of 12 to use a 'Heavy Axe' effectively ... a character with 5 STR might be able to lift the axe but would never be able to swing it and control the swing in any way. If a requirement is on an item ... you shouldn't be able to use that item ... thats why its called a requirement.

Consider if there were proficienty, weapon speed and damage penalties for using weapons with STR requirements above your STR, and consider if the difference set the penalty, at, let's say, -10 proficiency/point, -5% weapon speed/point and -5% damage/point.

A Heavy Axe with 12 STR requirement, 60 weapon speed and 30 damage, is being attempted to wield by a dude with 5 STR.

The guy is missing the requirement by 7 so the actual stats for the weapon are:
Weapon speed 39
Damage 20
Plus 70 proficiency points penalty, which might even put this dude into the red.

It looks to me, with modest 5% penalties that Narcissus is right. With penalties in place, this person CANNOT use the weapon, or at least it would be much better for him to just use a hatchet.

A person with 5 STR trying to use something really heavy is out of the question in both systems, but what about the person with 11 STR not being able to use that Heavy Axe? How does one guy gain just a little STR and all of a sudden be able to lift and wield something they weren't able to wield just a day before? Penalties rather than cut-offs just seems to be a more flexible system.

Either way, this is just a thought. I'm sure the coders for the game have much better things to do with their time and I'm not sure the coding time-to-benefit ratio is even worth it. I just think that players should be able to use some weapons in a pinch, even though they aren't technically qualified.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Sorry, I'm not going to read all of this.

Anyway, there doesn't need to be any added penalty for not having a certain level of skill for a weapon, because it is already in place. You swing slow as hell and very badly with weapons you don't know how to use. That's penalty enough.