Equipment Suggestions (in General)

The Heavy Crossbow change has added some new life to the game. I see an opportunity to roll out a couple other changes throughout the coming months to keep things interesting.

Ranged Weapons

We now have ranged weapons with splash damage, str/dx drain, and vorpal. I would like to see a ranged weapon with MM effect and one with drain life as this would add more variety.

I think the Compound Bow would be great for attacking the back minion. It already has decent base damage and fairly inexpensive + to hit along with useable with archery.

A new Sling or upgrading the Staff Sling to have life draining would be nice as well. Since it drains life it shouldn't do as much damage as other ranged weapons anyway.

For fun we could have a 3rd ranged weapon similar to MoD effect of double damage vs. AS and ignore PL. Maybe the Light Crossbow?

Melee Weapons

We have at least 2 fairly useless rares. 3 if you count the Elven Stiletto. Elven Stiletto could probably use a boost higher than 50% AC/Endurance.

The Katana and Executioner Sword really should receive some sort of effect to add variety and warrant rarity. In addition, since I have 3 effects in mind I think the Two-Handed Flail should be made rare.

Not sure which should do what but my ideas are that one should receive MM effect (Executioner Sword?), one should receive splash damage (Two-Handed Flail?), and the third should receive STR/DX gain/regen (Katana?). The one I like the most is the idea of a melee weapon with MM effect. I think all three would continue to add variety and mix things up more though.

Armor

The logical suggestion would be some armor that reduces the drain effect of exbow/axbow. Something that works similarly to how NSC works with AMF. It should also not provide much AC at all, if any. The problem with that is additional damage would increase the drain so we would have to figure out a way to balance this.

It could be an individual item. Body Armor makes sense. You could not wear TSA or Adam so you'd lose STR/regen or high AC to benefit from the reduced drain. In addition it could not be worn with a tattoo.

The other option is to make it a set of armor. One option is a set where each piece gives a small % reduction but can add up to a good amount. A second option is a set that becomes more effective the more items from the set you have. .1% per + for 1 piece, .2% per + for 2 piece, etc.

The advantage to a set of gear would be the variety of mixing and matching that could take place as people try to find their own balance between the trade offs of item effects and AC for larger reductions in drain reduction.

These are just some thoughts I decided to post to create discussion. I would not mind seeing something like a change a month to keep mixing things up. I chose to focus on equipment, in particular weapons, since it sounded like after redoing the weapon system it would be much easier to make these changes/additions than previously.

Overall great ideas!!!

My critique:

Ranged Weapons:

Having a ranged weapon with HP leech ability would be very powerful, likely too powerful for the game.

I love the idea of a MM missile weapon and really hoped the heavy xbow would be that weapon.

The compound bow should be changed to a Boomerang which with a base damage of 5 round be a perfect addition to CB.

Melee Weapons:

Going after the back minion would be kind of hard to see in real life unless it is a flail of some sort (THF?). A katana of lightning could do "splash" type damage.

Overall melee weapons are utter crap due to the massive damage the DD does in melee rounds and auto hits.

Armor:

I would like to see the MC give Str and Dex protection. Or at least the EH.

Sets of armor would be great, but all dex armors could give too much of a benefit.

Agreed. You used to e able to use VA with Ranged weapons back in CB1. This was changed.

Ranged Weapons are still too powerful currently, in a system where ranged goes first and can kill you before you get the chance to act. Adding leech to them would break CB.

Great ideas!

.. a suggestion to the overall prob. that 'ranged are too powerful' / 'it's not worth to upgrade melee-weapons',
i could imagine a change that you only add nw to your weapon, and then both, one ranged and one melee-weapon would have the according stats ..
(somehow like the added + from the ToA)

but probably this would be a bigger change ;) but sounds like a possible solution to this specific prob to me ..

I agree on giving a ranged weapon a Magic Missile targeting effect. I vote the Light Crossbow, and raise its base damage to 4 (not 5, it's still light).

Doing the same for a melee weapon makes no logical sense. It doesn't "fire" in the same way a ranged weapon does. It only hits what you can reach with a swing.

I do think we should give whip-like weapons including the Two-Handed Flail a Sling of Death style splash damage effect. Mainstream RPGs like Dragon Warrior/Quest already do this.

Give the dagger and the scythe a poison effect that builds with each successive hit.

The Executioner's Sword needs something cool. With a name like that, it's just screaming for some attention. But I'd like to see it get something new rather than a rehashed effect already on another weapon. Maybe extra damage vs. zero AC opponents?

On Armor, two words: Elven Circlet. 2 AC, high upgrade curve, every upgrade adds accuracy (+) to weapon accuracy.

Since it's an executioner sword, then perhaps for each % of life that is missing from the opponent, you do that % more damage to them. The max hp would count trained and AS max hp?

Chance to kill per hit? Would have to be smallish though.

This sounds awesome, cept i don't know of any minion that has 0 AC XD.
You could have it deal extra damage if the opponents AC is less than the + to hit on the weapon or (along similar lines) is less than 1/100th of the weapon X.

Or have it the opposite of the SG/EF.

At armor of 571 it does regular damage. For every point of armor lower it does .2% more damage. So vs an AC 0 minion it will do 114.2% more damage.

AP cuts this extra damage in half.

SS counts towards the 571 number.

Too random. I'd rather not leave battles up to chance.

I pulled that right out of my butt as I was writing that and it's probably a really bad idea. *grin*

I... what like 5th this motion?


Again I completely agree.


Please sir, I'd like some more! My favorite idea yet, it would give me a legit reason to use a scythe and not just put them on my character as placeholders because I like the name >_>

I'd like to see the Elven stiletto to do something similar, something like a vital stab that makes the target bleed out (some % hp lost per turn even after the ES holder dies, based on damage done up to a cap) or lose a certain % of HP recovery from TSA/VA/MH. Reminds me of Rogue like weapon with a Rogue like ability.


Killing Blow? 30% extra damage to targets under 25-40% HP. Kind of like a BL type deal, except its supposed to be.. for the killing blow.

I'd like to see the Katana get something cool, but I can't even think of anything worthwhile right now.


I would like to see this as well, but then again giving old weapons that no one uses completely new abilities (and changing base stats ie: hxbow) in a way is essentially the same, at least IMO.

Hitting the last minion should be a new weapon - A Boomerang :)

I figured when I mentioned melee attacking the furthest back minion that would cause a problem for people concerned about realism. I was less interested in that and more interested in continuing to mix things up. Though I'm sure if a ranged weapon got this most would not even bother equipping melee. Though we should still give the option to those that want to use melee in their strategy. We can cheat the realism if we wanted to by giving the melee weapon a special name and saying it grants teleportation or something if that is super important.

I picked the THF for splash intentionally because it made the most sense. It does make sense for an item that could hit the back minion too now that you mention it.

I intentionally said the life leech ranged weapon would be a sling. It would have a smaller base damage than other ranged weapons with a reduced base to hit and terrible CTH in melee forcing a melee weapon as well. It's not designed to kill so much as to extend the life of the minion wielding it. I'm sure it could be balanced.

Definitely have to say no to giving something a % chance to kill. We'd just be giving a weapon Finger of Death which was intentionally removed from CB1 because it could not be balanced. I would just make a 4 minion team wielding these designed around survival.

I considered the idea of a Boomerang. I think it should work like FB or CoC though.

I was thinking that all items should be as they are, but when they are paid to be named an ability or trait becomes active for that period(an incentive to name)

my one idea for now would be to give the Dagger an ability of poison where every melee round it will do 1pt of damage regardless of x /+ for a total of 50 damage per fight. of course this leads the way to take out 20hp minions.

I think as far as boosting items goes; anything low should have a fixed bonus and on the other end we have current percentage based bonuses.

Way too underpowered.

What I was thinking:
Every hit adds 10% of the damage inflicted to a poison effect variable. This is cumulative. Then the poison damage is inflicted at the end of each round (target's side, like TSA regen).

Example:
A dagger hits for 100 measly points of damage per round, and hits once per round.

Round 1:
Dagger hits for 100.
Add 10 to victim's poison.
Poison does 10 damage.

Round 2:
Dagger hits for 100.
Add 10 to victim's poison.
Poison does 20 damage.

Now because the dagger is a quick yet weak weapon, it relies on many hits to rack up the poison damage, because it does no damage on its own. The scythe is strong (well, stronger) and slow(er) so it relies on damage to get stronger poison rather than successive hits.

could make decay increase the poison somehow too

Changes being made. We need more discussion taking place. :P