My weapon does nothing!

[SirPetrakus]

I like collecting items. I like having one of each type of armor/weapon/accessory and all the unique types of gear. My characters in the Gothic games were mobile arsenals. Which is why I hate weight/inventory limits. I do hate immunities, though.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The poll brings to mind two very different games: Dragon Age 2, and Questron. I think there's a 27 year gap between them.

 

DA2 showed exactly how not to do this. On Nightmare difficulty, basically everything was immune to some type of damage, and for no good in-game reason. That was idiotic.

 

Questron (again, released 1984) offered a variety of weapons, with clear progress from one to the next. In general use, it was easy to say weapon A was superior to weapon B. But some monsters in the game were highly resistant to all damage, except that dealt by a specific weapon. The Phase Spider was resistant to everything except Whip damage. The Stone Axe Beak was resistant to everything except Sling damage. The Piercing Pungie was resistant to everything except Club damage. The Masher Whale was resistant to everything except Hammer damage (I just pulled all these from memory - what is wrong with my brain?). You could still kill these creatures with other weapons, but it was far more difficult. Thinking back, I would estimate that they took 10% damage from normal weapons, and 200% damage from the proper weapon. And the knowledge of which weapons to use could be gleaned from conversations with NPCs or reading lore.

 

This was a fun system, but it was a bit contrived (that sort of thing didn't bother me as much when I was 10). I would rather a system where weapons do different kinds of physical damage, and creatures were susceptible or resistant to different kinds of physical damage. Something as simple as piercing/slashing/blunt would do fine. Some weapons could perhaps do more than one type of damage, making them more versatile.

[Sylvius the Mad]

 

You misunderstand, I'd been playing D&D for 14 years before I played an IE game. But there were in the IE games, as I recall, times where it was possible to face monsters with resistances and you might have one +1 weapon as a random drop and nowhere near enough money to buy a magic weapon on your own, meaning one person could actually do damage to the creature.

Ahh, the Vampiric Wolves east of Beregost. Yes, those were cruel.

 

Encounters like that are why games should offer us tactical retreat (running away) as an option.

[LadyCrimson]

Going to go with the 2nd answer. I like it when there are some encounters/enemies who may need weapon switches, but either they should be limited in frequency or only have a few categories. I don't mind carrying 2-3 sets of weapons/gear to meet situations (whether it's slicing resistance/immunity or needing silver vs. iron) but I definitely don't want to have to gear up for oodles of that type of thing. Especially when you know inventory will be about as big as my little toe, even with a full party.

[pipboy2000]

I don't like the idea of carrying a special weapon just in case you encounter that one special enemy that is immune to almost everything else. But on the other hand it is somehow obvious, that a rapier would not be as harmful to a skeleton as a two handed sledgehammer...

 

Yet again, in my opinion this was solved rather good in the Witcher series. A steel sword for the normal enemies and a silver sword for the monsters, some weaknesses as well (fire -> archespore) and that's that.

 

But that does not mean, that I want PE to be exactly like the Witcher. It was just a good solution.

 

I think there is nothing wrong, if an enemy proves to be more resistant to a certain kind of damage and maybe has a certain weakness, but it should not lead into a situation where you can not kill an enemy, just because you did not bring the right weapon.

 

(This would, in my eyes, only be acceptable in a story related context: For example, you have the mission to kill the old vampire of Blablabla and the priest of XYZ told you three times that this ancient evil can only be slain by the silver garlic sword. If you enter his tomb without, it should be okay that he slaughters you like the idiot you are...)

[Nonek]

If it is formed of flesh then the scripture of steel mandates that my blade may master it, steel is stronger than flesh. Whether that means that I must hack away the scales of the thing to reveal the beating heart, or prioritise the creatures eyes or gaping maw to reach its brain. My steel should not be useless unless the creature is incorporeal, in which case I will need the blessings of faith, the fury of my awakened soul or the enchantments of a mage born to lay it low.

[Amentep]

You misunderstand, I'd been playing D&D for 14 years before I played an IE game. But there were in the IE games, as I recall, times where it was possible to face monsters with resistances and you might have one +1 weapon as a random drop and nowhere near enough money to buy a magic weapon on your own, meaning one person could actually do damage to the creature.

Ahh, the Vampiric Wolves east of Beregost. Yes, those were cruel.

 

Encounters like that are why games should offer us tactical retreat (running away) as an option.

 

I'd like tactical retreat ("Brave Sir Robin ran away..."). I don't mind walking into a video game situation where I'm clearly outmatched as long as its possible to extricate myself by means other than a reload.

[trulez]

Partial resistances are fine, full immunities are not.

[Jarmo]

Outright immunity should be really, really rare.

 

I can understand and approve some cases, like a fire elemental (but not dragon) being totally immune to fire,

or non-corporeal ghost being totally immune to normal weapons.

 

But let's say a werewolf. Immune to everything but silver?

 

So an elder dragon a mile long will always lose to a werewolf (unless it has proper attack spells memorized),

he can try chomping away with his pointy 10 feet teeths and burning with his million degree (non-magical) flame, but for no effect.

 

The werewolf cannot be harmed with musket fire, or cannon fire, or atom bomb?

 

I'd say something like 10 pts damage resistance would be better.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Jarmo

[Stun]

No, in some systems (including D&D), monster physical attacks are equivalent to silver, cold iron, adamantine etc, depending on the level of the monster. Thus a dragon could, in fact, do full damage to a werewolf using his bite attacks.

 

Also, afaik, werewolves are not immune to elemental damage, or mind effecting spells.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Stun

[Pidesco]

Resistances and immunities should be decided on a case by case basis. It's usually not a good idea to take a dogmatic stance on the subject of gameplay mechanics. Never say never and all that.

[Jarmo]

Also, afaik, werewolves are not immune to elemental damage, or mind effecting spells.

 

So.. you can kill it with a flamethrower but not with a machine gun?

[Stun]

Depends on what kind of ammo the machine gun is using lol

[Crom]

Resistances and immunities are fine if they're used sensibly.

-Don't make them too frequent so that you don't have to keep swapping weapons and party members all the time.

-They should make sense in the story, whether it be due to creature's natural habitat or well-known natural ability that player has been made aware of.

-They shouldn't completely stop player's progression if he has not had the foresight to avoid selling specific weapons 20 hours ago. For example, player could be given an opportunity to acquire weapons that would work, even if they may not be amazing quality. Let's say a village is used to dealing with certain types of monsters and player could be given access to some of the weapons they've developed for village militia if he helps out with other things.

-Lastly, I'd hate to sit out my favorite party members from the big fights just because they made an early career decision to swing a warhammer rather than broadsword.

 

Additionally, resistance and immunity rules could be made more punishing for harder difficulty levels.

[Shaewaros]

I just love how the OP tries to lead people to the "right" poll choices by overemphasizing the dullness of carrying 15 weapons around - and this many people still chose that option.

[TrashMan]

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have:

 

The Bludgeon weapon

The Piercing weapon

The Slashing weapon

The Adamantine sword

The Silver sword

The Cold Iron sword

The Lawful sword

The Chaotic sword

The Good sword

The Evil sword

The Epic sword

The Wood sword

The Crystal sword

The Adamantine and Good sword

The Silver AND Good sword . . .

 

Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane.

 

Since when do you need all that?

I don't ever recall "aligment" immunites or neededing to have a weapon of specific aligment.

Slashing/piercing/blunt are VERY rarely immunites and more often damage reduction effect.

Elemental immunites are rare and when they do happen they do make sense. A fire elemental?

 

Other than that I see no problem really.

A smart character will always carry a spare (and if he's smart of a different damage type), so there really shouln't be a problem.

[TCJ]

Sure. I found having to change tactics in BG2 because some monsters had immunities to be a nice alternative to using the same strategies over and over. Sometimes I'd find my non-fighters being the ones trying to deal out the damage while the usual tanks would have to satisfy themselves with taking the hits but not doing any damage. There were some flaws (which I found quite a bit) in that there wasn't a warning on a lot of the monsters on what could or could not damage them, and not being a lore geek, I didn't know all that stuff beforehand. But, as someone mentioned, having in-game hints to at least give some idea wouldn't be a bad thing to implement. Considering the lore will be entirely new and not based on some pre-existing setting, I think that would be somewhat necessary anyway.

 

I usually had one main weapon for each character and one backup weapon, or two main if they did dual wielding. Of course, I usually had a few dozen weapons stored in a bag of holding just in case I needed them (rarely did!), but that was mainly because I'm a pack rat in games. It wasn't nearly fifteen weapons per person, but it was plenty to get me through the game without using cheats.

Edited September 22, 2012 by TCJ

[Starglider]

IMHO outright immunity is a poor design choice, unless it's something ridiculous like trying to attack a dragon with a buffer knife. Attacks in the face of heavy resistances should do at least scratch damage, so that characters aren't rendered totally useless (even though they may be tactically ineffective). Even if the enemy can regenerate faster than the blocked character alone can damage it, they can contribute DPS to a group attack. In fact one of the nice things about CRPGs is that you can implement 'regenerates specific types of damage at different rates' easily without burdening a GM with bookeeping. That means that if say you're a low level party with no silver weapons, you can still take down werewolves by concentrating all your attacks on one enemy at once, and doing enough DPS to overwhelm their non-silver-weapon damage regeneration.

 

Similarly protective spells that grant X hp worth of damage absorbtion (for a particular attack type) are more fun than absolute immunity for a set time period.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Starglider

[Tychoxi]

No effect?! I need a bigger sword!

[septembervirgin]

I find weapon immunity in monsters to be a drag except where it's something I can share. I identify with what I can have. It wrecks immersion to require a mass variety of weapons for each fighter type. Four should be the most. Long range (bow), medium range (gun or javelin), melee (spear if they're closing fast, one handed weapon otherwise), wrestling (dagger). As to special immunity -- maybe to magic. I agree with immunity to magic.

 

Immunity to magic is good, lightning, fire, that sort of thing. But not immunity to a weapon. Conan would have a fit.

 

Unless it's a slime or a jelly. That rocks. Yes, slimes and jellies and such should be immune to almost all weapons.

Edited September 25, 2012 by septembervirgin

[TCJ]

No effect?! I need a bigger sword!

 

Minsc was in the wrong game. He needed to move over to WoW if he wanted a larger sword.

[Theomen712]

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have:

 

The Bludgeon weapon

The Piercing weapon

The Slashing weapon

The Adamantine sword

The Silver sword

The Cold Iron sword

The Lawful sword

The Chaotic sword

The Good sword

The Evil sword

The Epic sword

The Wood sword

The Crystal sword

The Adamantine and Good sword

The Silver AND Good sword . . .

 

Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane. Not to mention the fact that you can't REALLY build that Fire Specialist mage because, like, 1/3 of the mobs in the game are FLAT OUT IMMUNE to fire. And if you do a fire/acid specialist, there's still always gonna be some that are immune to both. And PLAYERS never get IMMUNITY gear.

 

Let's have resistances, sure. But I'd really prefer to ditch outright immunities unless they're extremely specific or only on unique boss mobs where it's pretty dang obvious. Let certain creatures be immune to Piercing weapons (and have weapons that do 2 or more damage types), maybe or have the Fire Dragon be immune to fire. But don't let's be crazy.

Well thats not entirely true. In BG2 there were so many elemental defensive rings, amulets, and armor that by mid game or mid/late almost everyone in the party wasnt phased by SOMETHING, be it fire or acid or lightning. It made it all the more strategic since if you walked into a room of fire salamaders companion A was the best choice to tank everything, while in a room of green slimes Companion A tanking the damage would result in a loss. I find this kind of strategic play fun and it keeps you on your feet. Players SHOULD be vary and constantly on their feet about walking into a potential Basilisk den and 6/7 party members are vulnerable to being turned to stone. But i understand your meaning. In BG and BG2 they kept it to purely elemental and good/evil dmg. No cold iron, adamantine, or mandatory elemental mixes.

[Theomen712]

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have:

 

The Bludgeon weapon

The Piercing weapon

The Slashing weapon

The Adamantine sword

The Silver sword

The Cold Iron sword

The Lawful sword

The Chaotic sword

The Good sword

The Evil sword

The Epic sword

The Wood sword

The Crystal sword

The Adamantine and Good sword

The Silver AND Good sword . . .

 

Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane. Not to mention the fact that you can't REALLY build that Fire Specialist mage because, like, 1/3 of the mobs in the game are FLAT OUT IMMUNE to fire. And if you do a fire/acid specialist, there's still always gonna be some that are immune to both. And PLAYERS never get IMMUNITY gear.

 

Let's have resistances, sure. But I'd really prefer to ditch outright immunities unless they're extremely specific or only on unique boss mobs where it's pretty dang obvious. Let certain creatures be immune to Piercing weapons (and have weapons that do 2 or more damage types), maybe or have the Fire Dragon be immune to fire. But don't let's be crazy.

Also this is the second poll where the options were written in a very biased(unfairly worded) way. There hasn't been a single CRPG i can think of that had me holding more than 3 weapons on a character. 1 Ranged, 1 Melee, 1 special situation. 15 on a single character is just too far fetched. More people would choose that option if it was worded better. I prefer multiple weapons for multiple situations. If i can make it through the whole game with one type of weapon something is wrong or i'm fighting the same thing over and over. WHICH IS WRONG.

[Theomen712]

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have:

snip...

 

Yes, and your biased trivial poll shows this. No one ever needs, so many weapons. It's basically silver for lycantropes and adamantum or magic vs anything else.

 

You've never played DDO, I take it. I have characters with all of those weapons + specific bane and debuffing weapons for use against specific bosses. Not to mention things like swap gear that grants specific debuffs. People will boot you out of groups if they find out you don't know what weapons work on what mobs.

 

You didn't use DDO as a reference i must be seeing things. That game was a spit in the face to real D&D and all it fans. Not to mention its an MMO and like ALL MMOs there is no Noob-friendlyness. the game Obsidian is making isnt DDO2. they are making a figurative successor to BG, IWD, IWD2, Planescape, and TOEE. You don't have to worry about it ending up like DDO cuz none of them were like DDO. They were fun.

[RosesandAshes]

Well, I don't want to have every member of my party become a walking arsenal, but that's why I bring a varied party with me. In icewind Dale, for instance, I have a fighter and a paladin who smash things and a thief who is an awesome shot with a bow, and I have two mages to dish out more ranged damage and a cleric who is, well, dead atm, but she's usually my healer. I don't feel prepared unless I have at least one melee weapon, one ranged weapon, and maybe one special magic weapon. If it turns out I need something else, I'll just run back to town and buy it.

 

I think having monsters that match up with the terrain would be helpful. If I'm wandering around in a volcanic area, I'd expect to find monsters who are immune to fire, for instance. The game wouldn't have to tell me to not bring weapons that deal fire damage. I can figure it out.