Let’s be honest – throwing weapons are sort of a crappy little niche. Even with the buff to the throwing talent, they are still… not great, for many reasons. They feel mostly like an afterthought that serves to make enemies more annoying and dangerous than to be a tool for the player to use. The best throwing item, the net, doesn’t even receive a boost from throwing mastery and can’t be reloaded!
So let’s think about how we could fix that, and make javelins, throwing axes and bolas worth using!
First up:
Let throwing weapons be used as subpar melee weapons! Let javelins have all the abilities of a spear, let throwing axes have all the abilities of an axe, let bolas have all the abilities of a flail… but with a penalty to hit, since they are not balanced for melee use.
Secondly, special “attached” debuffs! All thrown weapons should have a chance to cause the a debuff, when hitting… but also when blocked by a shield (although the specific debuff would change). We already this is possible, because it’s exactly how nets work! You can even do the same thing and give the victims an extra ability to remove the thrown item. Embedded (body) would would reduce the enemy’s move speed, accuracy, and max fatigue. Embedded (shield) would reduce the shield’s defense bonus and increase it’s fatigue cost (and make shield wall cost an extra AP). You gain the ability to remove the object, but doing so causes damage. (Javelins do more damage when removed and have a greater debuff strength). For bolas, this is flavoured as tangled rather than embedded, and deals no damage when removed.
Third, Make nets reloadable instead of having to be constantly repurchased and requipped.
Fourth, improve Throwing Mastery. Rather than increasing damage, have it increase accuracy and throw range, something that benefits nets as well and let’s players focus on the debuffs that are the throwing weapon niche.
Fifth, add another tier for each type of throwing weapon.
Finally, vary the damage output calculations. Let javelins do significantly more damage against health (along with stronger debuffs) and have higher armor penetration, and let axes significantly more against armor and shields but have very little penetration.
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