My weapon does nothing!

[Shevek]

I think taking a 10lb sledge to a skeleton would be more effective than sawing on it for a couple minutes with pointy knife.

 

[KateM]

But again, that's not because it's blunt/piercing/slashing, that's because it's heavy. A fireman's axe with a six-pound head would destroy it just as well. Are you going to take the weight of the character's weapons into account when determining damage against certain enemies? Seems pointless.

[Umberlin]

No. Bones are not made of steel. A spear point could cut through a ribcage (though that might not "kill" the skeleton, but that's not a discussion I feel is worth considering). You could also bash it with the shaft. There's also the silliness of confusing "blunt" with "heavy" when so few historical weapons are blunt. Look at a medieval mace and you'll see that it's covered in spikes and knobs. A three pound ax or sword would be just as suited to smashing a skeleton as a three pound hammer.

 

I think it's an interesting thing to discuss certainly.

 

I do wonder about to point force of a spear versus the larger area coverage of a mace. I don't think of it as, 'the spear can't pierce bone' it probably can, provided the bone isn't reinforced somehow. I'm thinking of it as, 'your spear pierces the skeleton's skull' versus 'a blunt weapon caves the skull in.' One assumes whatever is animating the skeleton needs it in a certain level of structure in order to mainain itself. So my view of peircing spear versus blunt smashing on that subject has always been that the point was to smash it into as many pieces as possible to prevent it from just going and going.

 

The hole through the skull with the spear? I'm not entirely sure it did as much as shattering it into many little fragments.

 

This is a point brought up in rulesets about various creatures that certain weapons are more effective/less effective than others. It's an interesting thing to consider because you do tend to have magical and elemental resistances and weaknesses in RPGs. If those are there then you also need to encourage the melee player with his weapons to prepare different weapon sets (of different weapon types) on their character as readily as a Wizard might need to prepare their spell book ahead of time. This is to ensure tactical play. If the fighter can just go in there with any ol' weapon and be effective no matter what . . . what's the point of tactics? And why would the Wizard be needed at all, since they have limited numbers of casts in addition to resistances and immunities to consider.

 

Tactical play is brought upon by several things, and one of those things are the limiters. A player should have to think about what they can do, what they can use, and what they can even bright due to carrying limitations because these are the things that make them enter an area carefully, thinking and planning, rather than just rushing in and bulldozing everything with that one weapon everything else is useless in comparisson to.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Umberlin

[Shevek]

But again, that's not because it's blunt/piercing/slashing, that's because it's heavy. A fireman's axe with a six-pound head would destroy it just as well. Are you going to take the weight of the character's weapons into account when determining damage against certain enemies? Seems pointless.

 

Ok, show me a 10lb dagger.

[KateM]

A 10lb dagger would be a particuarly heavy two-handed longsword, which would be just as capable of smashing a skeleton as a sledge- but for some reason it's less effective because it's a "slashing" weapon, and just as ineffective as the dagger. It's still a long, heavy piece of steel, but just having a sharp edge has somehow rendered it ineffective against skeletons. And even if you could accept that as realistic (I can't), why can't you just hit it with the flat of the sword?

 

It just seems like a lot of thought is going into making a system more realistic in a very unrealistic way. Just let the dagger kill the skeleton.

[KhaineGB]

I might be wrong in my assumption, but the OP seems to be pointing towards how BG and BG2 worked. You outright needed magic/silver/good weapons for some mobs or it did nothing.

 

These days, RPG systems tend to give their monsters Damage Reduction. By the time you're fighting the big, nasty demon, you'll probably be doing enough damage to flat out ignore it's DR. Ok, you might not do as much damage as if you had the holy weapon, wielded by a virgin or some rubbish like that, but you'll still bloody well hurt it!

 

I'd definitely like to see less "Immunities" so you don't need x character at y point with z skill, and more "resistances" so you can still get the job done, even with a sub-standard party. Reward experimentation with characters and party make-up... don't stifle it.

[Stun]

::: Opening post ::::

You're grotesquely exagerating. And doing so serves no purpose beyond "hey, it feels good to vent!" Consequently, your poll is not worth taking seriously.

 

Lets look at the Infinity engine games, (oh, and lets forget the fact that in each and every one of them, you could have a party of 6 people, and therefore, use them to cover all the bases here.) It was never that bad. Even if you didn't use a party. In Icewind dale, a basic +3 weapon of any type worked on EVERYTHING. At the very worst, it would be less effective against some creatures than it is on others. But that just means that the system was dynamic and allowed you to work within it to optimize the damage you do. (common sense dictates that if you're a warrior and want to quickly destroy that Frost Salamander, then you should use a flaming weapon, instead of, say, your axe of frost +3. But again, that doesn't mean you had to. You can still kill that frost salamander with your frost axe + 3. It would just take a little longer because you chose to approach that fight without employing even an iota of strategy. (ie. Know thy enemy.)

 

In BG2, you had Clay golems, which were 100% Magic Resistant and comepletely immune to slashing weapons. So what? Are you going to argue that they made the game unecessarily cumbersome? Did you need to carry around 15 different weapons? Were you unable to advance past chapter 2 because you encountered a Clay golem and didn't have a way to kill it? No, No, and lol No. Clay Golems simply represented a unique (read: uncommon) situation that the player had to overcome. And of course, this is BG2 we're talking about here. The game that loads you with piles and piles of everything you can ever need to get past every single situation in the game with ease.

 

I shudder to think of the alternative.... a game where all enemies are essentually the same from a defensive standpoint and you don't ever need special tools to defeat them <gag> No thank you. I believe there's a term for what you're asking for: Dumbing down.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Stun

[Stun]

I'll always remember preparing to fight Melissan and realizing that I only had one weapon out of the entire party that had any effect.

 

These are the memories of Baldur's Gate I will never relinquish. And will continue waking up screaming to in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.

I beat Mellisan (all 4 of the battles with her) without using any weapons or spells at all. In fact, aside from the first battle, I didn't even engage in combat.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Stun

[Shevek]

A sword should be less somewhat effective than a hammer against a skeleton since its weight is distributed along its edge instead of being focused at one point up top. Also, sword weigh 3ish lbs not 10. A dagger should be useless.

 

You're wrong but whatever. Go fight hordes of skeletons with a pointy knife. If that makes you feel ok, thats fine with me. I think it detracts from immersion but its a minor thing.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Shevek

[PsychoBlonde]

I generally like the idea that your one weapon can't do everything, and any system that ensures there's no one best thing for all situations. One of the divides that you don't see in many Console and PC RPGs is that a melee character can often just find one weapon to suit them and hack away with it non-stop.

 

I'd rather have this kind of variability come from different weapons having different situational values rather than a bunch of cheap immunities. For instance, switching between ranged weapons and melee can have great strategic and tactical consequence. Or switching between a sword and a spear for the extra reach.

[KateM]

That's why I specified a particularly heavy two-handed longsword. And the sword would be able to cleave bone, since its energy is being distributed along a narrow band, not over the surface area of the sledge's head. Yet for some reason it is able to cut through human bones, but not magical skeleton bones?

 

I'm sorry that I don't have as much experience as you do with fighting hordes of animated skeletons, I guess.

[Shevek]

You're forgiven.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'm sorry that I don't have as much experience as you do with fighting hordes of animated skeletons, I guess.

 

The idea of an animated skeleton being a viable threat to anyone is pretty absurd anyway. Best weapon for fighting skeletons ought to be a pushbroom.

 

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

Edited September 19, 2012 by PsychoBlonde

[Shevek]

I generally like the idea that your one weapon can't do everything, and any system that ensures there's no one best thing for all situations. One of the divides that you don't see in many Console and PC RPGs is that a melee character can often just find one weapon to suit them and hack away with it non-stop.

 

I'd rather have this kind of variability come from different weapons having different situational values rather than a bunch of cheap immunities. For instance, switching between ranged weapons and melee can have great strategic and tactical consequence. Or switching between a sword and a spear for the extra reach.

 

Or switching to a hammer when trying to stab a skeleton's rib cage is dumb.

[Stun]

 

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

LOL another straw man. Sheesh.

 

The argument you're making here speaks of the erroneous implementation of Dragons in crpgs, not of the viability of Daggers for effective combat.

[PsychoBlonde]

A sword should be less somewhat effective than a hammer against a skeleton since its weight is distributed along its edge instead of being focused at one point up top. Also, sword weigh 3ish lbs not 10. A dagger should be useless.

 

You're wrong but whatever. Go fight hordes of skeletons with a pointy knife. If that makes you feel ok, thats fine with me. I think it detracts from immersion but its a minor thing.

 

Define "effective". Effective at smashing a stationary target? Yeah. Effective at slicing muscles and arteries on glancing hits? Not so much. You have to get a serious momentum swing with a bludgeoning weapon to be "effective" in this manner. (Granted, if you train properly for "rabbit" style attacks, you can still do some nasty stuff even at extreme close range.) Even swords aren't used that much for cleaving people in twain (thousands of movies to the contrary), and you're quite likely to break or lodge the blade if you try using one like that.

 

The abstract system of a computer game does not in any way simulate real combat. What it does do is be fun or not fun, and having to interrupt an adventure or dungeon in order to run back to town so you can pick up silver weapons is generally Not Fun. If you don't actually need to be able to apply power in order to defeat the foe, then it's more of an Hilarious Gag Enemy than an actual challenge. (DDO has a number of what I'd consider to be Hilarious Gag Traps--in that you don't actually need to find and disarm them, you just need to know they're there so you don't spit yourself on them by accident.)

[Shevek]

I dunno, that seems like alot of cop out to me. Everything you are saying is skirting a very simple issue.

 

If I see a walking skeleton and I have two choices...

1. tiny dagger and

2. warhammer

...I choose war hammer. It makes sense. I would rather crush a skeleton than try to pierce its non-existant organs.

 

Please stop trying to cloak things in weighty rhetoric.

[PsychoBlonde]

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

LOL another straw man. Sheesh.

 

The argument you're making here speaks of the erroneous implementation of Dragons in crpgs, not of the viability of Daggers for effective combat.

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

LOL another straw man. Sheesh.

 

The argument you're making here speaks of the erroneous implementation of Dragons in crpgs, not of the viability of Daggers for effective combat.

 

I find the entire concept that you can have "realistic" combat in a CRPG to be so absurd that any arguments based on any kind of "realism" fail simply on those merits. You want to claim it's not realistic to do X? Well, I can point to a thousand areas where any would-be system is not realistic. The concept of having a *numerical representation* of damage is ridiculous from a "realism" standpoint.

 

That, and the fact that you could quite easily "kill" a skeleton with a dagger by using said dagger as a wedge to shove it up under the skeleton's jaw and lever the skull off. Or slide it in between a couple vertebrae and give it a twist. Presumably you're not dumb enough to sit there and try to chip away at its femur with the blade making "grr!" noises.

 

Or, heck, if it's an animated skeleton held together by magic . . . how can you "kill" it anyway? Shouldn't the bones and bits of bones reassemble themselves? You ought to need something like a disintegration beam or a really hot fire to take one down. Or, if the magic isn't that strong, you ought to be able to "kill" one by giving it a good shove.

[Stun]

What it does do is be fun or not fun, and having to interrupt an adventure or dungeon in order to run back to town so you can pick up silver weapons is generally Not Fun.

Of course not. Which is why just about every cRPG ever made generally makes sure that if you enter a werewolf den withoout a silver weapon, you'll quickly find one in that dungeon just waiting for you to loot it and equip it in time for your first werewolf encounter. This has been pointed out to you a dozen times on this thread. You're arguing against something that doesn't friggin happen

 

On a side note, Black Isle learned the hard way that you don't shaft players by not giving them the tools they need, when they need them. They took heat for making Arrow and bullet loot so rare in their massive dungeons. So what happened? They overcompensated in the sequel. In Icewind dale 2, just about every single enemy dropped whole quivers of arrows, bullets, darts and bolts. And that's aside from the multiple instances of Everlast Arrows, returning Darts, and slings that didn't need bullets that you found in chapter 1.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Stun

[PsychoBlonde]

I dunno, that seems like alot of cop out to me. Everything you are saying is skirting a very simple issue.

 

If I see a walking skeleton and I have two choices...

1. tiny dagger and

2. warhammer

...I choose war hammer. It makes sense. I would rather crush a skeleton than try to pierce its non-existant organs.

 

Please stop trying to cloak things in weighty rhetoric.

 

So, your *preference* for a big heavy phallic weapon is a logical argument how? You prefer it that way? Use the hammer. Nobody's stopping you. That's not a reason why you ought to FORCE other people to adhere to the game mechanics that are YOUR preference.

[Shevek]

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

LOL another straw man. Sheesh.

 

The argument you're making here speaks of the erroneous implementation of Dragons in crpgs, not of the viability of Daggers for effective combat.

I find it amusing that someone could be so irate over the idea of attacking a skeleton with a knife, but they're perfectly fine with the concept of someone with a knife going up against a FULL SIZED DRAGON and still doing damage.

LOL another straw man. Sheesh.

 

The argument you're making here speaks of the erroneous implementation of Dragons in crpgs, not of the viability of Daggers for effective combat.

 

I find the entire concept that you can have "realistic" combat in a CRPG to be so absurd that any arguments based on any kind of "realism" fail simply on those merits. You want to claim it's not realistic to do X? Well, I can point to a thousand areas where any would-be system is not realistic. The concept of having a *numerical representation* of damage is ridiculous from a "realism" standpoint.

 

That, and the fact that you could quite easily "kill" a skeleton with a dagger by using said dagger as a wedge to shove it up under the skeleton's jaw and lever the skull off. Or slide it in between a couple vertebrae and give it a twist. Presumably you're not dumb enough to sit there and try to chip away at its femur with the blade making "grr!" noises.

 

Or, heck, if it's an animated skeleton held together by magic . . . how can you "kill" it anyway? Shouldn't the bones and bits of bones reassemble themselves? You ought to need something like a disintegration beam or a really hot fire to take one down. Or, if the magic isn't that strong, you ought to be able to "kill" one by giving it a good shove.

 

You know, in a sneak attack, I could maybe see a rogue trying to snap off a skeleton's head with a dagger. But, sorry, taking a few thrusts a round in the middle of brawl, that ain't gonna happen. Please contextualize those examples.

[Shevek]

I dunno, that seems like alot of cop out to me. Everything you are saying is skirting a very simple issue.

 

If I see a walking skeleton and I have two choices...

1. tiny dagger and

2. warhammer

...I choose war hammer. It makes sense. I would rather crush a skeleton than try to pierce its non-existant organs.

 

Please stop trying to cloak things in weighty rhetoric.

 

So, your *preference* for a big heavy phallic weapon is a logical argument how? You prefer it that way? Use the hammer. Nobody's stopping you. That's not a reason why you ought to FORCE other people to adhere to the game mechanics that are YOUR preference.

 

Phallic? Wow, now Im a sexist pig because I disagree with you? Conversation over. Go troll someone else.

[PsychoBlonde]

What it does do is be fun or not fun, and having to interrupt an adventure or dungeon in order to run back to town so you can pick up silver weapons is generally Not Fun.

Of course not. Which is why just about every cRPG ever made generally makes sure that if you enter a werewolf den withoout a silver weapon, you'll quickly find one in that dungeon just waiting for you to loot it and equip it in time for your first werewolf encounter.

 

And, here's the thing--how is this an argument in favor of having this mechanic at all? It's just flavor. They put the tool RIGHT THERE for you, so it's not like you have to "plan ahead" or "use strategy" or even really pay much attention. Heck, they could have the Mystical Cleric Dude standing at the entrance to throw the special Silver Blessing on all of your weapons and it'd mean pretty much exactly the same thing. Granted, there's a small mechanical impact in that you can't use whatever mega-weapon is your current preference, however, the encounters are weighted with this fact in mind already. And if they don't do it this way, they're also using up your inventory space and possibly also making it so you have to reload an earlier save or go back to town. So, either it's stupid-easy, or it's stupid-annoying, and either way it's kind of stupid-pointless.

 

If you want to do something along these lines, why not make it more like the Blessed Crossbow Bolts and Rakshasa from the old gold box games, where your special item will insta-kill the enemy, but you only get so many shots, and if you miss . . . there's your insta-kill used up. Or, you have the very rare unique fight where, say, only the person wearing the Special Amulet (or with the Special Aura) can hurt the boss, and the fight becomes more of a challenge of keeping that person alive long enough to kill the boss rather than just a matter of "did you leave six inventory slots free".

 

There are a lot of ways you can do this kind of thing rather than making the mechanic a hassle that permeates the game, uses up your inventory space, and still probably lands you in situations where you have to do some kind of ridiculous jumping-through-hoops to progress.

[Stun]

That, and the fact that you could quite easily "kill" a skeleton with a dagger by using said dagger as a wedge to shove it up under the skeleton's jaw and lever the skull off. Or slide it in between a couple vertebrae and give it a twist. Presumably you're not dumb enough to sit there and try to chip away at its femur with the blade making "grr!" noises.

Wait. it's not up to you to decide how durable or frail an animated skeleton is. There's a level of open endedness in fantasy, and who's to say that all animated skeletons are the same? Corpses can be raised without all their bones in perfect fighting condition. I'd argue that a level 1 skeleton doesn't need to have its femur (or any of its bones) shattered in order to be 'killed' anyway. Any forceful strike should be enough to knock it down, disconnecting its bones and returning it to an inert state.

 

On the other hand, a perfectly crafted animated skeleton raised by a competant Necromancer can present something much more solid, even armored. And the swift removal of its head with a scythe or warhammer wouldn't necessarily "kill" it at all.

 

Short version: this aspect of the discussion is pointless.

 

 

Or, heck, if it's an animated skeleton held together by magic . . . how can you "kill" it anyway?

You don't. You don't kill undead. You destroy undead. The mechanics are supposed to be different. The fact that they usually aren't in crpgs is, again, a commentary about erroneous implementation of Undead, not the viability of certain weapons.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Stun

[Stun]

What it does do is be fun or not fun, and having to interrupt an adventure or dungeon in order to run back to town so you can pick up silver weapons is generally Not Fun.

Of course not. Which is why just about every cRPG ever made generally makes sure that if you enter a werewolf den withoout a silver weapon, you'll quickly find one in that dungeon just waiting for you to loot it and equip it in time for your first werewolf encounter.

 

And, here's the thing--how is this an argument in favor of having this mechanic at all?

Because it gives the player options. Or if you prefer, it lets the player roleplay the build he/she created - its the Developers' way of insuring that you can take any build and be viable with it without them having to dumb down their game and remove enemy resistances (or whatever you're proposing in your op.)

Edited September 19, 2012 by Stun