Hi,
First thing:
did you ever ask yourself why Backstab is best done with an arquebus or a great sword? Because obviously those are the weapons with the highest base damage, and since Backstab's bonus is only applied to the first swing/shot it's best to use a weapon that hits as hard as possible.
Now imagine your superstealthy rogue sneaking up on people with his great sword *sneaky sneak sneak* "nobody sees me while I take a biiig swing".
Or even worse, how he holds his arquebus, point blank, to the head of an enemy... Erm, yeah.
Then this:
Flames of Devotion is a nice ability, right? It gives you a good damage bonus but is quite limited in use. So in this case you'd also want to bring the heavy hitting weapons with high damage per hit in order to get the most dmaage out of FoD. But it's a Full Attack, so you can use heavy one handers and get two swings with FoD - or you use a great sword or an arquebus or even dual pistols or whatever. Anything that does the most damage with one or dual swing/shot.
This is the situation with every ability that has limited number of uses and derives its damage from your weapon (and which is primarily used to deal damage).
You don't want to use light, fast weapons for those attacks. Because they suck with Backstab, FoD and other similar abilities like FInishing Blow and whatnot.
Why on earth is a Full Attack not implented as a series of blows/shots that takes the speed of the weapon into account? This would make light weapons a competitor for Backstabs, FoD and so on.
At the moment the quickness of a weapon doesn't matter for Full Attacks. If you're holding two war hammers or two daggers: you get two swings for your Full Attack ability.
Imagine if a Full Attack was balanced in a way that it would end up with roughly the same amount of damage dealt (generally speaking, has to be balanced around base damage and PEN):
- Full Attack with dual light, fast one handers: you get 4 strikes (mainhand-offhand-mainhand-offhand)
- Full Attack with dual heavy one handers: you get 2 strikes (mainhand - offhand) - Full Attack with a light one hander and a heavy one hander: 3 strikes
- Full Attack with a light two hander (think of estoc with low base damage): 2 strikes - Full Attack with a heavy two handed weapon (like great sword): 1 strike
- Full Attack with a bow: maybe 2 shots or only one - depending on the damage and speed - Full Attack with guns: 1 shot
That would make light weapons viable for all those abilites as well. And it also makes sense that you can place some more hits with a light weapon when executing a special ability.
So, a Backstab coul be a series of quick stabs with a dagger or stiletto OR one mighty swing with a great sword.
What Do you think?