Golden Xan
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Mallius Odium
Immemorial
Ageless
OG 2020
Grim Scribe
Magus
Vampire Scholar
- Mar 30, 2019
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Hey everyone,
@Varik Keldun previously made a thread about Weapon Types that generated quite a few ideas. I'd like to expand upon some of them and contribute with suggestions, and initiate discussion on this topic.
Concept
From the little we know of the gameplay so far, we can tell there will be various types of enemies to face, they will vary in size, equipment, attributes, capabilities, likely movesets and behaviors as well. It may even come to the point that two units equal to each other might have different "personalities", depending on how far they take things. And we also know that weapons will each have their own associated movesets. We don't know whether weapons will be restricted to certain classes, or if the movesets will be different in relation to the wielder's class as well as the weapon type, but it is safe to say that weapons, as every other item, will play an important part in the game and will need variety.
One such way to increase variety is for weapons to have multiple attributes. Real weapons have weight, length, damage potential, specific materials they are made from, flexibility, integrity, etc., and these characteristics will influence how you wield them. Since this is also a fantasy game, we can also take into consideration that weapons may have other kinds of unnatural attributes, influenced by the nature of the wielder as well as that of the environment, in the presence of Magick, Essence and other elements that we yet do not know.
Getting far too complex can be more of a hindrance, as players will have a harder time understanding the mechanisms, balancing becomes more difficult, and there may be little use for so much information. As such, I suggest a simplified concentration of attributes that represent typical gameplay elements.
Item Attributes
Melee Weapons
Damage Types
Why "types"? All physical attacks are just forces being applied, but there are different ways that you can apply forces, and different weapons focus differently on specialized ways of applying these forces. Having multiple damage types, in an attempt to be as close to real life as possible, makes getting inspiration and balance easier while also adding enough diversity that you can make each of them unique, and it allows for a wide range of weapon types as well.
Not just weapon types, having specific kinds of damage makes it even more interesting to design and fight enemies, as every unit may have certain strengths and weaknesses related to some or all damage types. A Vampire may be more prone to suffer from piercing damage. A skeleton may be weaker against blunt forces. Players and enemies may use a variety of equipment that protects them best against certain kinds of attacks, yet not so much with others. The whole thing adds to the dynamic of the gameplay.
There are three major types of physical weapon damage that has been effectively used in gaming:
Physical Damage Types
Damage Types are determined by the weapon's category, variant and form. A halberd, for instance, may have both cutting and piercing damage in its attacks, depending on which part of the weapon you use. A spiked mace may have its main damage as blunt, yet have some added piercing damage due to the spikes. Different attacks can also result in different Damage Types inflicted. Thrusting with a sword will result in a piercing damage, and slashing with it would result in cutting damage.
Damage Types are also very relevant for armors. Different kinds of armors focus on different kinds of damage types. Leather armor provides greater cutting protection, while chainmail offers greater piercing protection. Some items are combinations of various technologies, making them effective against various kinds of damages, yet having a greater weakness to some and demanding more from the user. More on that later.
And since Nogosaua is a world with its own forces, we definitely need to consider otherworldly Damage Types:
Magick & Essence Damage Types
I cannot speak extensively about these two. I still do not fully understand what Essence is and Magick can simply be unnatural ways of influencing the physical world. Many magickal attacks may very well result in the application of physical damages, such as using magick to crush someone (blunt damage), or make sonic blasts with your screeches that effectively cut the enemies. Essence may be its very own form of damage. They may or may not have multiple Damage Types. You could classify any sort of elemental attack as magickal, but that would not necessarily fit the action.
For all intents and purposes, Magickal Damage could be damage that is delivered to the Mana pool, instead of Vitality, and Essence could be damage delivered to the Essential pool, instead of any other meter. Holy Water could be a form of Essential damage against Undead, for example.
The issue with this lies in the fact that each House will be different from one another and not all of them will have magickal capabilities or even Mana and Essence. Other Houses may have characters that don't even have health (Vitality) as we know it. In which case, magickal or essential Damage Types would either be converted or have a differentiated effect, if any.
Another alternative to this is to consider Magickal damage, when not delivered already as another form of special damage, as "True Damage", something that cannot be defended and disregards any defensive capabilities. This creates a somewhat universal damage type that can be used by other Houses and characters, but also take away their uniqueness and can create balancing complications.
I will wait to see more about these two elements before making further suggestions in this regard.
Special Damage Types
Special Damage Types can be anything that would not otherwise fit a regular physical attack or, that of a magickal/essential nature. These are things that you cannot easily protect yourself from, such as getting hit by lightning, or being caught on fire.
A fire sword would deal fire damage, on top of any physical damage it may have, and it could also have a burning special effect, for example.
Speed & Weight
Speed is what determines how fast you execute your attacks. Your character has a base speed that is influenced by how you've been specializing it. Focusing characters on skills of a physical nature gives them greater speed, making their attacks faster, allowing more time to react, making the execution of combos quicker.
Speed is also influenced by the weapon and armor equipped. Certain weapons are less weighty and are more easily wielded. Bladed weapons are lighter and have a greater dynamic, thus making their attacks faster and more balanced. Maces and war hammers have greater mass, their attacks are slower and leave you more open to being attack while delivering blows. As such, small bladed weapons like swords and daggers have a greater Speed attribute than large weapons like maces and hammers.
Armors have Weight, which slows down your Speed, influencing your movement speed and attack speed both. Additionally, may also affect skill cooldown. Weight may also have a relationship with your character's force when falling on top of something, or when fighting underwater, and be affected by the location's current gravity.
For weapons, Weight is converted into Speed for simplicity and for encompassing other real life attributes, such as flexibility.
Force
Force is how much power is applied into the enemy when delivering your strikes. This serves only for the purpose of knockback and physics.
A weapon with greater force will send enemies' bits flying further away when delivering a killing blow, or will cut them more cleanly.
Force in a mace would be a representation of how far a body would fly away when being hit. Force in a sword would represent whether you could cut someone in half with a powerful and final strike, such as in an execution. A staff's Force will determine how far enemies will be driven back when being hit. The applications of Force may differ depending on the Damage Type of the attack.
Range
You may have noticed in the gameplay videos that, when attacking from a large distance, characters quickly approach the enemy before delivering their strikes. This is the case with the Vampire and Revenant revealed so far, in any case. This capability of delving forward to strike is dependent on how the class has been specialized, but it is also influenced by the weapon's range.
Weapons with greater length have greater effective ranges, allowing you to leap forward from greater distances. More than that, when already within attack distance, the weapon's effective range also gives you the possibility of engaging without being as close to the enemy. If you have a spear, your effective range will be greater than an enemy with a sword and you can keep him at bay my making use of Force.
Having a greater effective range also allows you to hit more enemies when dealing slashing attacks.
For ranged weapons, range determines how far away can the projectiles get without suffering falloff in damage. As the range increases, most projectiles lose force. Supernatural weapons may behave differently.
Special Effects
This is where unnatural attributes come in. Burning, poison, chilling, corruption, soul-reaping, life leeching, regeneration, special defenses or anything else that makes items even more unique.
Reload Speed
Straightforwardly enough, this represents how fast you can reload a ranged weapon's ammunition. It is influenced by the weapon itself and the character's overall Speed. In the case of a bow, that would be how long it takes to ready another arrow. In the case of a firearm, that would be how long it would take to ready another projectile or clip.
Accuracy
Accuracy is the weapon's inherent nature of firing its projectiles in the location it is being aimed at. Accurate weapons will always hit where you are aiming, inaccurate weapons will sometimes deviate.
Stability
This is how hard it is to maintain your aim when readying a weapon. Larger weapons will give you a greater sway when aiming. Small and light weapons will be more easily aimed without swaying, and would take longer to tire aiming.
I do not know how these ranged weapon attributes would be handled in the case of Undead, but they may be just as relevant then.
Traps
With Damage Types being introduced, it is also possible to use them on other features, such as environmental damage and traps. Wood stakes apply piercing damage on those forced onto them, as well as portcullis cause piercing damage when dropping on top of units. Giant boulders cause blunt damage.
Other environmental objects cause their own respective Damage Types, such as explosive, fire or water damage depending on what is happening. Some Damage Types are irrelevant for most units, but mortal to others.
Enemy Variants
With the advent of Damage Types, you can also create variants of the same enemies. You only work on making an enemy's AI, model, voice, etc. once, but you add equipment to them that change how characters need to fight them. Giving them bigger weapons will slow them down, but give them a stronger single damage output, or allow them to throw the players away with a single hit, potentially aggravated by environmental damage.
Non-human enemies might have their own weaknesses to Damage Types that players will have to figure out, or make use of. Creatures can be furred, carapaced or else to be resistant against certain kinds of damage, or be equipped with various armors. Certain attacks would cause a combination of Damage Types. An attack with a claw may cause both piercing and cutting damage, beyond potentially already having a considerable force.
This can also be combined with or be an intrinsic part of combat puzzles.
Crafting
When you combine crafting mechanics (@Livin) with molds, special materials and magickal infusions, you can further increase the value in the whole concept of crafting by adding Damage Types, as players may be able to craft weapons that are specific to their play styles, or special for fighting against certain kinds of enemies.
If weapons' damage available Damage Types are dependent on their form, as they should, you could use molds to purposely create weapons with combined damage type potential, such as the head of a halberd, except in other kinds of weapons.
Weapon Category Examples
The numbers are meant to be representative of the differences between each category, and they use generic hypothetical metrics.
Weapon Variants Examples
Influences
Other games have already used multiple Damage Types for their own settings and they can serve as inspiration. I will cite some that I think have done good use of this feature, to be explored and provide new ideas:
If the system used for the items proves to be lacking in depth or if you want to further improve its complexity, there are always more attributes that can be added over time. For the sake of developmental ease, it would be good to add some additional attributes in the background (not revealed to the players) that can be later simply turned on when definitely implemented.
More attributes could include:
I hope to have made a good case as to how damage types can be implemented for good effect. I believe in the potential of adding attributes to the items in an Action RPG with loot such as this one, and damage types can be integrated with many other features that would further improve the game's depth.
Feel free to make critiques and suggest your own improvements below.
@Varik Keldun previously made a thread about Weapon Types that generated quite a few ideas. I'd like to expand upon some of them and contribute with suggestions, and initiate discussion on this topic.
Concept
From the little we know of the gameplay so far, we can tell there will be various types of enemies to face, they will vary in size, equipment, attributes, capabilities, likely movesets and behaviors as well. It may even come to the point that two units equal to each other might have different "personalities", depending on how far they take things. And we also know that weapons will each have their own associated movesets. We don't know whether weapons will be restricted to certain classes, or if the movesets will be different in relation to the wielder's class as well as the weapon type, but it is safe to say that weapons, as every other item, will play an important part in the game and will need variety.
One such way to increase variety is for weapons to have multiple attributes. Real weapons have weight, length, damage potential, specific materials they are made from, flexibility, integrity, etc., and these characteristics will influence how you wield them. Since this is also a fantasy game, we can also take into consideration that weapons may have other kinds of unnatural attributes, influenced by the nature of the wielder as well as that of the environment, in the presence of Magick, Essence and other elements that we yet do not know.
Getting far too complex can be more of a hindrance, as players will have a harder time understanding the mechanisms, balancing becomes more difficult, and there may be little use for so much information. As such, I suggest a simplified concentration of attributes that represent typical gameplay elements.
Item Attributes
Melee Weapons
- Damage Types
- Speed
- Force
- Effective Range
- Special Effects
- Damage Type
- Reload Speed
- Accuracy
- Stability
- Effective Range
- Special Effects
- Armor Types
- Weight
- Special Effects
Damage Types
Why "types"? All physical attacks are just forces being applied, but there are different ways that you can apply forces, and different weapons focus differently on specialized ways of applying these forces. Having multiple damage types, in an attempt to be as close to real life as possible, makes getting inspiration and balance easier while also adding enough diversity that you can make each of them unique, and it allows for a wide range of weapon types as well.
Not just weapon types, having specific kinds of damage makes it even more interesting to design and fight enemies, as every unit may have certain strengths and weaknesses related to some or all damage types. A Vampire may be more prone to suffer from piercing damage. A skeleton may be weaker against blunt forces. Players and enemies may use a variety of equipment that protects them best against certain kinds of attacks, yet not so much with others. The whole thing adds to the dynamic of the gameplay.
There are three major types of physical weapon damage that has been effectively used in gaming:
Physical Damage Types
- Piercing Damage
- Perforation, thrusting attacks, pointy ends. Common with spears, tridents, spikes.
- Blunt Damage
- Bruising, crushing, smashing. Common with maces, hammers, fists.
- Cutting Damage
- Lacerations, slashing attacks, blades, edges. Common with swords, axes, daggers.
Damage Types are determined by the weapon's category, variant and form. A halberd, for instance, may have both cutting and piercing damage in its attacks, depending on which part of the weapon you use. A spiked mace may have its main damage as blunt, yet have some added piercing damage due to the spikes. Different attacks can also result in different Damage Types inflicted. Thrusting with a sword will result in a piercing damage, and slashing with it would result in cutting damage.
Damage Types are also very relevant for armors. Different kinds of armors focus on different kinds of damage types. Leather armor provides greater cutting protection, while chainmail offers greater piercing protection. Some items are combinations of various technologies, making them effective against various kinds of damages, yet having a greater weakness to some and demanding more from the user. More on that later.
And since Nogosaua is a world with its own forces, we definitely need to consider otherworldly Damage Types:
Magick & Essence Damage Types
I cannot speak extensively about these two. I still do not fully understand what Essence is and Magick can simply be unnatural ways of influencing the physical world. Many magickal attacks may very well result in the application of physical damages, such as using magick to crush someone (blunt damage), or make sonic blasts with your screeches that effectively cut the enemies. Essence may be its very own form of damage. They may or may not have multiple Damage Types. You could classify any sort of elemental attack as magickal, but that would not necessarily fit the action.
For all intents and purposes, Magickal Damage could be damage that is delivered to the Mana pool, instead of Vitality, and Essence could be damage delivered to the Essential pool, instead of any other meter. Holy Water could be a form of Essential damage against Undead, for example.
The issue with this lies in the fact that each House will be different from one another and not all of them will have magickal capabilities or even Mana and Essence. Other Houses may have characters that don't even have health (Vitality) as we know it. In which case, magickal or essential Damage Types would either be converted or have a differentiated effect, if any.
Another alternative to this is to consider Magickal damage, when not delivered already as another form of special damage, as "True Damage", something that cannot be defended and disregards any defensive capabilities. This creates a somewhat universal damage type that can be used by other Houses and characters, but also take away their uniqueness and can create balancing complications.
I will wait to see more about these two elements before making further suggestions in this regard.
Special Damage Types
Special Damage Types can be anything that would not otherwise fit a regular physical attack or, that of a magickal/essential nature. These are things that you cannot easily protect yourself from, such as getting hit by lightning, or being caught on fire.
- Toxic Damage
- Electric Damage
- Explosive Damage
- Fire Damage
- Cold Damage
- Sonic Damage
- Light Damage
- Water Damage
A fire sword would deal fire damage, on top of any physical damage it may have, and it could also have a burning special effect, for example.
Speed & Weight
Speed is what determines how fast you execute your attacks. Your character has a base speed that is influenced by how you've been specializing it. Focusing characters on skills of a physical nature gives them greater speed, making their attacks faster, allowing more time to react, making the execution of combos quicker.
Speed is also influenced by the weapon and armor equipped. Certain weapons are less weighty and are more easily wielded. Bladed weapons are lighter and have a greater dynamic, thus making their attacks faster and more balanced. Maces and war hammers have greater mass, their attacks are slower and leave you more open to being attack while delivering blows. As such, small bladed weapons like swords and daggers have a greater Speed attribute than large weapons like maces and hammers.
Armors have Weight, which slows down your Speed, influencing your movement speed and attack speed both. Additionally, may also affect skill cooldown. Weight may also have a relationship with your character's force when falling on top of something, or when fighting underwater, and be affected by the location's current gravity.
For weapons, Weight is converted into Speed for simplicity and for encompassing other real life attributes, such as flexibility.
Force
Force is how much power is applied into the enemy when delivering your strikes. This serves only for the purpose of knockback and physics.
A weapon with greater force will send enemies' bits flying further away when delivering a killing blow, or will cut them more cleanly.
Force in a mace would be a representation of how far a body would fly away when being hit. Force in a sword would represent whether you could cut someone in half with a powerful and final strike, such as in an execution. A staff's Force will determine how far enemies will be driven back when being hit. The applications of Force may differ depending on the Damage Type of the attack.
Range
You may have noticed in the gameplay videos that, when attacking from a large distance, characters quickly approach the enemy before delivering their strikes. This is the case with the Vampire and Revenant revealed so far, in any case. This capability of delving forward to strike is dependent on how the class has been specialized, but it is also influenced by the weapon's range.
Weapons with greater length have greater effective ranges, allowing you to leap forward from greater distances. More than that, when already within attack distance, the weapon's effective range also gives you the possibility of engaging without being as close to the enemy. If you have a spear, your effective range will be greater than an enemy with a sword and you can keep him at bay my making use of Force.
Having a greater effective range also allows you to hit more enemies when dealing slashing attacks.
For ranged weapons, range determines how far away can the projectiles get without suffering falloff in damage. As the range increases, most projectiles lose force. Supernatural weapons may behave differently.
Special Effects
This is where unnatural attributes come in. Burning, poison, chilling, corruption, soul-reaping, life leeching, regeneration, special defenses or anything else that makes items even more unique.
Reload Speed
Straightforwardly enough, this represents how fast you can reload a ranged weapon's ammunition. It is influenced by the weapon itself and the character's overall Speed. In the case of a bow, that would be how long it takes to ready another arrow. In the case of a firearm, that would be how long it would take to ready another projectile or clip.
Accuracy
Accuracy is the weapon's inherent nature of firing its projectiles in the location it is being aimed at. Accurate weapons will always hit where you are aiming, inaccurate weapons will sometimes deviate.
Stability
This is how hard it is to maintain your aim when readying a weapon. Larger weapons will give you a greater sway when aiming. Small and light weapons will be more easily aimed without swaying, and would take longer to tire aiming.
I do not know how these ranged weapon attributes would be handled in the case of Undead, but they may be just as relevant then.
Traps
With Damage Types being introduced, it is also possible to use them on other features, such as environmental damage and traps. Wood stakes apply piercing damage on those forced onto them, as well as portcullis cause piercing damage when dropping on top of units. Giant boulders cause blunt damage.
Other environmental objects cause their own respective Damage Types, such as explosive, fire or water damage depending on what is happening. Some Damage Types are irrelevant for most units, but mortal to others.
Enemy Variants
With the advent of Damage Types, you can also create variants of the same enemies. You only work on making an enemy's AI, model, voice, etc. once, but you add equipment to them that change how characters need to fight them. Giving them bigger weapons will slow them down, but give them a stronger single damage output, or allow them to throw the players away with a single hit, potentially aggravated by environmental damage.
Non-human enemies might have their own weaknesses to Damage Types that players will have to figure out, or make use of. Creatures can be furred, carapaced or else to be resistant against certain kinds of damage, or be equipped with various armors. Certain attacks would cause a combination of Damage Types. An attack with a claw may cause both piercing and cutting damage, beyond potentially already having a considerable force.
This can also be combined with or be an intrinsic part of combat puzzles.
Crafting
When you combine crafting mechanics (@Livin) with molds, special materials and magickal infusions, you can further increase the value in the whole concept of crafting by adding Damage Types, as players may be able to craft weapons that are specific to their play styles, or special for fighting against certain kinds of enemies.
If weapons' damage available Damage Types are dependent on their form, as they should, you could use molds to purposely create weapons with combined damage type potential, such as the head of a halberd, except in other kinds of weapons.
Dagger | Sword | Mace | Spear | Bow (Arrow) | |
Damage Types | C: 3 | B: 0 | P: 4 | C: 6 | B: 1 | P: 3 | C: 0 | B: 11 | P: 0 | C: 2 | B: 1 | P: 7 | C: 0 | B: 0 | P: 6 |
Speed | 8 | 5 | 1 | 4 | Reload: 5 |
Force | 0 | 3 | 12 | 4 | 0.5 |
Effective Range | 1 | 1.7 | 2 | 5 | 100 Accuracy: 2 Stability: 2 |
Special Effects | Poison | Bleeding | Cripple | Pin | Burn (Flaming arrow) |
Weapon Variants Examples
Bastard Sword | Two-handed Sword | Flamberge | Hooksword | |
Damage Types | C: 6 | B: 0 | P: 3 | C: 8 | B: 0 | P: 2 | C: 7 | B: 0 | P: 1 | C: 4 | B: 1 | P: 4 |
Speed | 5 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
Force | 3 | 5 | 1 | 7 |
Effective Range | 1.7 | 2.5 | 1.7 | 1.5 |
Special Effects | --- | --- | Bleeding | Grappling |
Influences
Other games have already used multiple Damage Types for their own settings and they can serve as inspiration. I will cite some that I think have done good use of this feature, to be explored and provide new ideas:
- The Mount & Blade series
- A game in great part focused in medieval battles with a simulation of damage based on equipment.
- Vampire: The Masquerade
- An RPG game made on top of a Narrative RPG system with supernatural damage types, beyond the regular physical damage types.
- GURPS Narrative RPG System
- The most complex Narrative RPG system there is, with detailed information for those who seek it, in so far as taking gravity, penetration, wind, and more into account in combat.
- Warframe
- Though I don't play Warframe, it seems they implemented a similar concept a year ago in their game, and some DHS players will be able to help talk about it.
- Silent Storm & Silent Storm: Sentinels
- A WW2 game with additional weapon attributes, such as familiarity, penetration, projectile velocity, etc.
If the system used for the items proves to be lacking in depth or if you want to further improve its complexity, there are always more attributes that can be added over time. For the sake of developmental ease, it would be good to add some additional attributes in the background (not revealed to the players) that can be later simply turned on when definitely implemented.
More attributes could include:
- Familiarity/Proficiency
- Fending potential
- Deflection
- Flexibility
- Durability
- Penetration
- Projectile velocity
- Charge (for magickal effects)
- Sockets (for crafting potential)
- Material
- Quality
- Rarity
- Etc.
I hope to have made a good case as to how damage types can be implemented for good effect. I believe in the potential of adding attributes to the items in an Action RPG with loot such as this one, and damage types can be integrated with many other features that would further improve the game's depth.
Feel free to make critiques and suggest your own improvements below.
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