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It's worse than that, even. At least with your example, one could argue that the katana is a direct, if distant, descendant of the jian. The last common ancestor of the lance and the estoc is probably the stone knife.

If you can afford the cost at that point, the best time to make custom party members is right after you make Level 2. This will result in an XP gap of a little over 1000, which is large early on, but fairly small in the late game. Creating them later than this will result in a larger and larger gap as the XP required per level gradually increases.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your first question, but I can help with the second and third. Lore is a skill, so the Lore-Giving enchantment doesn't count as an attribute enchantment. You would still be able to add +2 Might or what have you to the armor. Weapons and armor have a maximum of 12 enchantment slots, but most enchantments cost 2-4 slots. The Superb property costs 6. Lore-Giving and Second Chance only cost 1 slot each. You can see how many slots an enchantment costs in the Enchant menu, which can be accessed by clicking the button on the item's description window (right click the item in your inventory to open up the description window).

You can see a character or creature's current target by hovering your cursor over its selection circle (or by selecting it, if it's a member of your party). The selection circle of its current target (which may be itself in the case of buffs or heals, or self-centered AoEs) will animate with a split X. Note that if you both select a party member and hover your cursor over another creature, both of their targets will have animated selection circles. The same applies if you have multiple party members selected. If you ever play Baldur's Gate or one of the other Infinity Engine games, they use the same method to indicate current target.

There's a button with a dialogue bubble icon on the right side of each NPC's quickbar. You can use that to start a conversation with them, though that might not solve your problem if the quest truly bugged out on you.

The listed interrupt value is applied to the target being struck by the weapon or spell.

Does anybody else think it strange that Brigandine and Plate Armor appear to have the same Recovery Penalty (50%)? I thought Josh Sawyer said at one point that Brigandine was going to have a smaller Recovery Penalty, in exchange for being less protective than Plate Armor. This would have been consistent with all of the other armor types in the game. As it is, Plate Armor seems to be a somewhat superior choice compared to its closest competitors. For the same Recovery Penalty, it is 2 points better than Brigandine against most damage types, and trades one major weakness for two major strengths as compared to Brigandine's one minor weakness for one minor strength. For only an additional 5% Recovery Penalty, it is 3 points better than Mail Armor against most damage types, and again trades one major weakness for two major strengths versus Mail Armor's one major weakness for one major strength. Every other armor type in the game more or less follows a pattern of 5% Recovery Penalty per point of Damage Reduction, even Robes and ordinary clothing. A couple of armor types might deviate slightly more than the others with regards to their relative strengths and weaknesses, but Plate Armor is the only one that simply breaks the pattern, and encroaches on the usefulness of Brigandine and other heavier armors in doing so.

I'm having the same exact issue as hydronaut. As the boys proceed to Clyde's backyard, the game crashes to desktop. I've tried reinstalling the game twice (once from disk, once via Steam download), but neither attempt fixed the issue.