Reply To: weapon specific skills

[Wargasm]

All three of those actually sound more like they should just be regular skills available for anyone bearing the weapon (like Spearwall, which isn’t a perk). But perhaps, just as there’s a Shield Bash perk that makes the shield-based Knock Back skill more effective, there should also be a Pikewall or Pikezone perk that makes the Spearwall skill more effective (i.e. less fatigue) if using a spear, and that also extends the skill to two tiles (so that a Pikewall can be formed if armed with a pike), as well as making the pike-based Knock Back skill more effective (i.e. less fatigue to the user and some to each enemy struck). If a Trip skill was also unlocked, it would need to be restricted to contexts in which only one non-fleeing enemy is present within the weapon’s zone of action (just as Spearwall is only active so long as there is not another enemy already within the zone). Obviously, a Trip skill would only work with billhooks, not regular pikes, and Pikewall might only work with regular pikes and not billhooks (just like the pike-based Knock Back skill at present – although it’s always seemed odd to me that the billhook can’t be used for the same purpose) …

There are already some weapon-specific perks … it’s just that they’re not that enticing compared to other perks. For example, Crusher (extra 50% damage to shields) is one of the least sexy perks, since you still end up needing to use just as much fatigue and action points to break the typical shield when using a hand axe, and the smaller hatchets just go from needing 16 action points (and 80 fatigue) to needing 12 action points (and 60 fatigue) – still too inefficient. Crusher is intended to be the offensive equivalent of Deflect (50% less damage to shields), but Deflect actually halves damage, whereas Crusher doesn’t double damage. If you had Crusher and were armed with a hand axe, and your enemy had Deflect and was armed with the typical large round shield, the shield damage done would be 3 (i.e. Deflect does more than cancel out Crusher). However, even Deflect isn’t so sexy a perk, since you can just choose Bags & Belts from the Utility tree and carry a back-up shield with no fatigue cost (in addition to so much more).

One really cool skill-specific perk I’d like to see is something along the lines of Precision Strikes (extra 10-15% chance to hit with certain attacks that usually have 10-15% deducted from their chance to hit – i.e. Puncture, Decapitate and Destroy Armour … probably not Round Swing as well, since that gets covered by Bloody Harvest). But maybe I should make a new post about this …