Weapon Familiarity, normal weapons and weapon upgrades

[Pintash]

Pintash those were two fine posts, I hope you'll stick with us for a while longer

 

I'm not sure how I like your concept of tying soul power to familiarisation, but I think it's an excellent part for magic enchantments. So you know every magical weapon has a soul attached to it, which lore-wise makes every magical weapon Actually magical And understanding the soul bound to the blade could over time unlock more features. (so, magical weapons which grow with you as well)

 

It's a slight tweak, I'm curious what you think.

Thank you.  I've only been very interested in P:E for a short time, but I've read up on basically everything there is to read up on.  Wish I had of heard about it while the kickstarter was still going, would have liked to contribute.  Not sure how I missed it to be honest.  I'd like to become a vocal member of the active community! 

 

Honestly I'm not sure I like the familiarisation mechanic in any form.  It just seems like it would be too abusable, unless restricted by strict boundries that would probably make it a pointless mechanic in the first place.

 

I think I prefer your tweak as my biggest concern would be punishing a player everytime they switched weapon.  Perhaps a legendary weapon starts of as little more than a mid-tier magic weapon and once fully unlocked releases a type of legendary effect unique to that weapon.

 

This example may have been used before but I'll use it again:  Weapon starts off doing minor fire damage (say 1d6).  First unlock becomes 2d6 fire.  Second unlock add a burning DoT effect.  Third and final unlock splashes the fire damage and the DoT in a cone behind the target.

 

If a mechanic such as this was implemented there should probably be a feat to allow for souls to be understood at a quicker rate.  It should probably be more easily attained by the fighter type classes.

[ShadowTiger]

I came to this thread a little late and while there is really good discussion about the weapon familiarity mechanic I feel like it dances around the core issue.

 

Weapon Familiarity is a mechanic based on realism. In the modern age, we have mass production, but even that isn't perfect and you can get small quirks (such as a gun that jams frequently in certain environments). 

 

So, does your game universe have a reason why you might need a period of time to get familiar with your weapon, for the sake of realism?

 

Should you be putting a mechanic in purely because it is realistic, therefore adding immersion, or do you have to balance its addition with the amount of coding work, UI work, and how fun it actually is? 

 

Does adding in the mechanic add interesting choices for players to make that will change how they play the game?

I think its very important to separate weapon familiarity from weapon progression, in my mind they are unrelated. You can have a system where weapon progression is linked to familiarity with the weapon, but that really is a coincidence, and doesn't really matter. Weapon familiarity really only has one mechanical purpose, and that is to provide players with a numerical indicator of how attached they should be to a particular item. Rather than simply dump your weapon on the ground and pick up a new one, the item has value because of the time you invested into it. This creates a conflict in player's minds every time they upgrade, a new piece of information to factor in when they decide to upgrade. The mechanic encourages people to stick with past choices they make rather than adventure into new territory, if a weapon is a "side grade" that offers different stats but not really better ones, you may decide to skip experimentation in favor of whatever familiarity bonus you currently receive.

It really depends on how you want players to interact with items and combat for you to decide if this mechanic adds anything meaningful to the game. If it was really easy to disarm foes and pick up their weapons, you could argue that having a penalty to using someone else's weapon that you have never seen before would make sense and at the same time weaken a potentially overpowered ability. So if you are solving problems with the game design or adding in new options for players while also being realistic, I think this mechanic works pretty well. 

 

The core question is are there major game design problems that weapon familiarity can solve, and can it solve it better than other game mechanics? I think the answer to that question is probably not. I personally like the idea just for the sake of realism and but I have to admit most players would probably just ignore it if the effect was small and would probably get frustrated by it if the effect was large. Finding a middle ground where it makes you like your items more but not be afraid to switch to new ones would be really difficult. 

Edited March 13, 2013 by ShadowTiger

[TrashMan]

You're saying you don't want to be punished or have a mechanic that doesn't hurt you as much for making a choice that, in almost all games of this type, would normally punish you mechanically.

 

 

Nope. I'm saying I want to have a world that operates more on principles on common sense, so things that shouldn't logicly punish you too much don't. And tings that should, do.

 

 

 

I guess the forging (etc.) arguement comes down to personal preference.  If I was to use one weapon though-out the entire span of the game I'd prefer any improvements to be my own.  It's my weapon and everything about it resonates who I am and what I've accomplished with this weapon.  Not just: 'Hey dude, I really like this weapon, I'm attached to it so... can you make it so it's actually good!'  As I said though that's just how I'd prefer it to play out.

 

I'm completely against the notion that hte PC is super-capable in every job. If adventurers can do the work of master blacksmiths, why are they in the adventuring buisness?

 

No, high-quality work should be left to specialists. The idea that the improvement isn't your own because you comissioned somone else to do it is kinda silly. It's liek saying the house isnt' your own because the workers built it, and not you.

After all, who will be the one gathering ingredients and forking the money?

 

Speakign of which, weapon improvements can take may forms, so it's not impossible for the player to have some impact there.

 

 

 

 

By ShadowTiger

The core question is are there major game design problems that weapon familiarity can solve, and can it solve it better than other game mechanics? I think the answer to that question is probably not. I personally like the idea just for the sake of realism and but I have to admit most players would probably just ignore it if the effect was small and would probably get frustrated by it if the effect was large.

Finding a middle ground where it makes you like your items more but not be afraid to switch to new ones would be really difficult.

 

Then that mechanic was not mean for them, but more RP oriented players.

You'll never have a mechanics that will please everyone anyway, since different poeple put different value in different things.

The whole point of a familirization mechanic isn't to balance late-game weapons with early ones. It's there more for realism and as a small thank you to players who RP.

[ShadowTiger]

I agree that this mechanic would mostly help with people who care more about story telling than min maxing the combat system. You are forgetting that realistically, it doesn't take a long time to familiarize yourself with a mundane weapon, maybe an hour or so... maybe a few sessions of combat. A magic weapon might take much longer, especially if there is no identify spell and you have to figure out the properties by trial and error (like in angband and other roguelikes).

I think if it were to be implimented it should be a very short learning curve, as I said, which would only prevent you from changing items in the heat of the moment. The main thing it could do is change up the difficulty curve in the game.

 

Most RPGs give loot drops at certain intervals, which creates a graph where the difficulty gradually increases as you fight tougher and tougher foes and then suddenly drops sharply as you get a new item. This can get boring at times, especially when games share the same difficulty curves. Finding ways to spice things up can be as simple as changing the ways monster encounters are designed but can also be helped by something like weapon familiarity where you have to tough out a few battles every time you switch weapons.

 

For example, lets say you are fighting an undead area next, and you know this ahead of time. You have everyone switch to blunt/holy weapons but they aren't used to it yet. They also might not have fought undead before. You could have them go and fight some basic zombies and skeletons to get familiar with their gear and then go and kill the lich or skeletal dragon when they are ready. Normally in games they force you to fight through the minions to get to the boss, but if they designed the game so you get to choose the order, it could make the game way more fun, realistic and challenging. There is an issue though... because it means that people can blunder into battles they have no way to win, and that means either having a very difficult game, encouraging people to save/reload, or building in escape mechanisms into most or all encounters.

 

Again, the familiarity system is not in itself a strong game design mechanic, but rather a tool that when combined with other mechanics, philosophies, etc can produce interesting results. I would like to see it added, but it really depends on how the game works as to whether its worth the effort of adding it in. For example, in Baldur's Gate EE, where your items break because of the item shortage... all it would do is make battles more chaotic since you could suddenly get a penalty because your weapon broke and you have to pull out a new one. On the one hand, yeah thats kind of cool, it makes the item breaking mechanic more poignant for the first few hours of the game (until you get magic weapons for everyone). On the other hand, it is interfering with the ability to balance out combat encounters, depending on how strong the penalty is for a non-familiar weapon. I am fairly conflicted on the issue, especially since nobody has actually tried it in a game before (AFIK). 

[TrashMan]

I agree that this mechanic would mostly help with people who care more about story telling than min maxing the combat system. You are forgetting that realistically, it doesn't take a long time to familiarize yourself with a mundane weapon, maybe an hour or so... maybe a few sessions of combat. A magic weapon might take much longer, especially if there is no identify spell and you have to figure out the properties by trial and error (like in angband and other roguelikes).

 

Oh, I like that idea. Identify makes it way too easy.

This way it takes time and there is risk (cursed weapons). Altough there should probably be a way to tell if the weapon is cursed or not, but necesarily know what the curse is.

 

 

 

Most RPGs give loot drops at certain intervals, which creates a graph where the difficulty gradually increases as you fight tougher and tougher foes and then suddenly drops sharply as you get a new item. This can get boring at times, especially when games share the same difficulty curves. Finding ways to spice things up can be as simple as changing the ways monster encounters are designed but can also be helped by something like weapon familiarity where you have to tough out a few battles every time you switch weapons.

 

Frankly I find it that most RPG's overdo it with loot and scaling/leveling in general.

 

When you think about the great fantasy heros (like Conan, Aragon, etc..) .. tell me, how many weapons do they switch during their adventures? On average, 2.

 

But RPG's love their scaling and the more weapon tiers and the bigger the differences, the bigger the problem. The games start focusing on loot and becoming loot-centric, instead of adventure-centric. Is the gameplay rearlly so shallow and unsatisfying that you need loot as incentive to play?

I see it more as a design flaw.

"But you need to show the player progression!" - Oh, do you now? And everything ELSE in the game isn't progression?

 

I postulate that RPG doesn't need item scaling AT ALL. You could play the whole game with just one sword and loose nothing of the core magic. But I don't see it happening.

Showering player with loot and ever superior items has become standard fare.

 

I would be the happiest with the BG1 weapon/magic scale.

[JFSOCC]

It really depends on how you want players to interact with items and combat for you to decide if this mechanic adds anything meaningful to the game. If it was really easy to disarm foes and pick up their weapons, you could argue that having a penalty to using someone else's weapon that you have never seen before would make sense and at the same time weaken a potentially overpowered ability. So if you are solving problems with the game design or adding in new options for players while also being realistic, I think this mechanic works pretty well. 

 

The core question is are there major game design problems that weapon familiarity can solve, and can it solve it better than other game mechanics? I think the answer to that question is probably not. I personally like the idea just for the sake of realism and but I have to admit most players would probably just ignore it if the effect was small and would probably get frustrated by it if the effect was large. Finding a middle ground where it makes you like your items more but not be afraid to switch to new ones would be really difficult.

I think you can do this by being able to choose some upgrades linked to familiarity. If you can edit a weapon to fit your playstyle more, it becomes a personalised weapon. YOUR weapon. then when a better weapon comes along you can still pick it up (and eventually personalise it) yet, any weapon which is on-par with your own might be equally good, but not fitting to the way you play.

 

So speed vs damage, slashing vs piercing, what special effects it has (stun, life steal, slow, debuff, great critical, etc etc) is directly tied to how you envision your character's utility in combat. Am I a debuffer? Do I stun and kite? Do I prefer just to do massive amounts of damage? Do I play defensively and should my weapon give me parry bonuses instead of attack damage bonuses.

 

Once you can customise weapons to fit your playstyle, they'll be *yours* in the truest sense.

[Pintash]

I think you can do this by being able to choose some upgrades linked to familiarity. If you can edit a weapon to fit your playstyle more, it becomes a personalised weapon. YOUR weapon. then when a better weapon comes along you can still pick it up (and eventually personalise it) yet, any weapon which is on-par with your own might be equally good, but not fitting to the way you play.

 

So speed vs damage, slashing vs piercing, what special effects it has (stun, life steal, slow, debuff, great critical, etc etc) is directly tied to how you envision your character's utility in combat. Am I a debuffer? Do I stun and kite? Do I prefer just to do massive amounts of damage? Do I play defensively and should my weapon give me parry bonuses instead of attack damage bonuses.

 

Once you can customise weapons to fit your playstyle, they'll be *yours* in the truest sense.

 

This doesn't really make much sense to me to be honest.  The concept of choice in regards to how the weapon gains familiarity bonus completely destroys the immersion the mechanic is trying to create.  If I bought a sword tomorrow and practiced with it for 30 days I wouldn't then get to make a choice on whether I hit harder with it or slice faster with it, would I?

 

Not to mention you can't use a great sword as a piercing weapon no matter how hard you train with it.

 

The way I see this working is if you made that choice when you first use the weapon.

 

'I want to learn to swing this great sword with great force and inflict heavier damage upon my foes.'

 

This could then tie into the special effect part more realistically.  For example:  Choose power and eventually you get something like: 'you have now learned to swing your great sword with such power you have a greater chance to interrupt your enemy's concentration checks.' Or choose precision and eventually 'you have now learned to swing your great sword with such precision you have a greater chance to land a critical strike.'

 

I don't think it should include things like life steal though as that is more of a magical effect.

[Lephys]

Mechanics and lore can go hand-in-hand. The creation process can go BOTH ways. Mechanics can serve the lore. Lore can serve the mechanics.

They can feed off eachother.

Can. If the actual reason for the cap is pure mechanical balance, then you're simply making up a "reason" for the cap in the context of the lore. "It's really tough to do that type of enchantment." Why is that? What makes that enchantment different from other enchantments? That's the kind of explanation the lore demands, for it to be served as well. That's all I'm trying to point out.

 

It looks like you agree that, ideally, both the lore AND the mechanics are served by the design of the game. So, I'm in favor of seeking alternatives to decisions that are perfect for mechanics and balance, but are purely arbitrary within the lore (i.e. "That particular enchantment just so happens to be tougher than all the others, for no real reason that I can explain.")

 

My interest is only in clarifying my seemingly misunderstood perspective. I don't see that as a severe detriment to the game or anything. It's just not ideal is all.

 

 

 

Not that there wouldn't be some form of cap, in the lore, but, ideally, you'd have it based on something else.

 

What else? I really don't see why X is more "valid" or better than Y, when both are arbitrary.

 

 

Both aren't arbitrary. Not any more than the lack of everything you leave out of a world is arbitrary, at least. "This world ARBITRARILY doesn't have giant talking eyeballs in it!" True, because anything could go into a fictional world.

 

What else, you ask? Let me make this example:

 

P:E's world has only a trickle of magical healing. So, it makes sense that, with enchantments basically being magic permanently stored within items, there won't be very many magical items that heal. Or, if they do, they'll be very weak. For magical healing to be so weak is an arbitrary decision, really, but it's consistent throughout the entire lore. Living things have states health, and magic can do things otherwise done by non-magic, but it apparently can't heal living things very well. Cool. So, that Blade of Vivification probably is going to heal you a trickle (if it even exists... it's an example item, for this example), passively. No matter who you are. That's just how it works in this world.

 

Now, imagine you had a race (let's say orcs, just for kicks) who already were really physically tough and had more health than other races. So, mechanically, you feel that any amount of passive healing boosts to them would be overkill, so you need to balance that. So, you say "that Blade of Vivification doesn't work on orcs." Okay, but it still works on everyone else? Well, now that's an arbitrary decision, as far as the lore's concerned. It serves the mechanics perfectly. "My orcs aren't overpowered now by healing their extraordinary health pools all day! YAY!" But, in the lore, you have to forcefully, arbitrarily make up some explanation as to why that is. In other words, the very existence of a reason for orcs to work differently from other races in regard to healing, within the lore, is arbitrary. The ONLY reason there's even a difference there is for the sake of the mechanics.

 

Hopefully that makes more sense.

Now I know Trashman made the arguement that focusing too much on the core theme of the game can be a bad thing - and I agree - I dont think that's at all the case here.  It's been stated that all the magic/power of this world comes from a person tapping into their soul.  This is something we can assume from the lore we've been given.  This is also why the idea makes perfect sense.

 

So if we assume all magic comes from the manipulation of ones soul a magic weapon must have a part of (if not the entirety) of the soul of the person who imbued it with magical power in the first place.  Simply put; Magic weapons have a soul.  So to unlock the power of this weapon one must learn to understand the soul bound to it.  I think this is an amazing concept and not something I can recall being used before.  It probably shouldn't be too long of a process to unlock a magic weapons full potential otherwise it'd be punishing players too much for using new gear.

 

Now, I want to take this a step further and talk about the familiarisation aspect.  Say a PC has used the one weapon for a very long time, he's become familiar with it.  Is there any reason he can not make the choice to imbue the weapon with a part of his soul?  Say he's a wizard, why can't he use a fire spell and imbue the weapon with it's powers?  If some heroic warrior from the past has done something similar I see no logical reason why not.  There must however be a drawback to this.  He's giving up part of his soul.  Literally ripping that part out and giving it to the weapon.  If he choses to imbue it with the chosen firespell he should then lose access to that spell for good.  After all that part of his soul no longer resides within him.  This, for me adds a VERY interesting game mechanic.  It's power, but at a cost.

I like the ideas you're dancing with, here, Pintash! 8D

 

I'd have to consider the whole "permanently lose an ability to put it into a weapon" thing a bit more. BUT, you made me think of some other slight tweaks to what you've said.

 

What if familiarization severely lessened the monetary cost of enchantments? Or, what if it were, at the very least, directly tied to magical item improvements? I mean, it would probably still be separate from the ones you find that are already enchanted, and, like you said, those would have to reach some kind of happy medium, IF items were allowed to be enchanted via 2 different souls at the same time.

 

But, you'd essentially have better equipment (because of physical forging/crafting/material quality) that helps out and kinda scales through the game with your progression (you get access to better stuff as you go, whether because of the locations you reach, the people you know, the reputations you gain, the things you slay, the money you earn, etc.). Then, you'd always have progression with an individual weapon (or maybe even non-weapon equipment, *shrug*... although it makes the most sense with weapons).

 

Maybe you even get unique abilities/effects from imprinting your soul into an item than you do from any other process in the game. Maybe it's only a single form of enchantment, but other enchantments are lesser and/or different. If there were going to be things gained from soul-imbuing, I'd like to see them be unique/different, to kind of be worth the time and effort of doing so.

 

Also, it sort of feels like putting one of your actual abilities into a weapon is like wishing for unlimited wishes with a genie. Heh. AND, as cool as that type of decision/option is in an RPG (I'm not really against it, in theory, but am rather evaluating unintended consequences in the scheme of things), if you switched weapons AFTER doing that, you'd lose that ability forever, would you not? And if you didn't, then it's really not the same decision/doesn't have the same impact. And if you never had to worry about that, then the physical quality of weapons probably isn't balanced very well to the point of almost complete insignificance (in the face of the ever-available option of pouring awesome abilities into your piddly weapon).

 

*shrug*

 

There is much though to be had on this. TO THE THOUGHT CAVE! *whoooosh*

[Pintash]

I'm completely against the notion that hte PC is super-capable in every job. If adventurers can do the work of master blacksmiths, why are they in the adventuring buisness?

 

No, high-quality work should be left to specialists. The idea that the improvement isn't your own because you comissioned somone else to do it is kinda silly. It's liek saying the house isnt' your own because the workers built it, and not you.

After all, who will be the one gathering ingredients and forking the money?

 

Speakign of which, weapon improvements can take may forms, so it's not impossible for the player to have some impact there.

 

Well to be fair at no stage did I suggest that a PC can (or should be able to) create a +5 weapon AND imbue it with magical properties.  Nor is the imbuing in the way that I have described any sort of learned feat.  It's something the PC is capable of because of who he is.  It's the results of having control of ones own soul, knowing a certain skill/magic/whatever and being able to transfer that knowledge to an inanimate object.

 

It's more the having the magical properties of a weapon imbued by someone else I dislike.  For the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.

 

The other thing is the re-forging idea fails on principle.  To re-forge a weapon is to make it as it was made before.  It does not improve upon the original.  Only recreates it.

 

Also, for a smith to improve the weapon would mean to change it.  Say you have a steel blade that was a family heirloom and you've used it since your journey began.  You decide to take it to a master smith to improve it for you.  That smith can't turn your blade from a lowly +1 to a +5 without changing it.  Suddenly the blade you have become so familiar with is different.  Perhaps is heavier due to a special alloy being used to sharpen it's edges.  You no longer know the feel of the blade like you once did.  You still have some familiarization with it but not on the level you once did.  Losing familiarity with your weapon is probably a small price to pay for it to be improved so much, but there should definitely be that price, in my opinion.

[Lephys]

Sorry for the multi-post. I had to catch up a little on the thread, and I didn't want to post too much one of my single already-way-too-long posts, heh.

I think you can do this by being able to choose some upgrades linked to familiarity. If you can edit a weapon to fit your playstyle more, it becomes a personalised weapon. YOUR weapon. then when a better weapon comes along you can still pick it up (and eventually personalise it) yet, any weapon which is on-par with your own might be equally good, but not fitting to the way you play.

 

So speed vs damage, slashing vs piercing, what special effects it has (stun, life steal, slow, debuff, great critical, etc etc) is directly tied to how you envision your character's utility in combat. Am I a debuffer? Do I stun and kite? Do I prefer just to do massive amounts of damage? Do I play defensively and should my weapon give me parry bonuses instead of attack damage bonuses.

 

Once you can customise weapons to fit your playstyle, they'll be *yours* in the truest sense.

I'm with Pintash on this. If you chose PRIOR to gaining familiarity, and maybe gained a gradually-increasing bonus, that would be pretty cool. And maybe you're limited to just one "branch" of possible familiarity "specializations" with each weapon. You could switch, but then, after hitting that first milestone, you'd gain +1 to the new specialization, and simultaneously lose +1 with the old (representative of the fact that your brain can only retain so much at once). *shrug*

 

Also, almost everything you mentioned, JFSOCC, should probably go with physical weapon customization (at a forge/craftsperson.) Those things would fit very well in there. Obviously, now, there's balancing to consider if you do both (familiarization specializations AND physical customizations that can both achieve the same effects). So, maybe they could have slightly different sets of effects?

 

I like to think of familiarity more affecting actions performed with the weapon rather than the passive effects of the weapon itself. In other words, it seems cleaner to think of the "7 damage" on a weapon as the abstracted effectiveness of that weapon's passive traits/characteristics (sharpness, weight, possible swing leverage -- 2-handed weapons, for example -- etc.), and the manner in which that weapon is effectively actively used as attributed to character attributes/skill (which familiarity basically enhances, for all practical purposes). If you swing faster, or miss less (attack roll bonuses), or score critical hits more often, or parry better, etc... Those are the things it might be nice to section off for Familiarity to deal with, directly.

 

+2 Piercing damage on that weapon? Weapon customization.

+2 to-hit? Familiarity.

 

Even some things that can be influenced by both should probably be kept separate. Example:

 

Physically rebalancing a sword would allow people to swing it faster/more easily, but the individual to-hit/attack-speed bonuses would not be the same from person-to-person. So, ideally, the weapon's weight/balance should be its own thing, being a factor together with a given character's skill/familarity/stats to determine the actual attack speed or accuracy bonus. *shrug*

[TrashMan]

 

Mechanics and lore can go hand-in-hand. The creation process can go BOTH ways. Mechanics can serve the lore. Lore can serve the mechanics.

They can feed off eachother.

Can. If the actual reason for the cap is pure mechanical balance, then you're simply making up a "reason" for the cap in the context of the lore. "It's really tough to do that type of enchantment." Why is that? What makes that enchantment different from other enchantments? That's the kind of explanation the lore demands, for it to be served as well. That's all I'm trying to point out.

It looks like you agree that, ideally, both the lore AND the mechanics are served by the design of the game. So, I'm in favor of

seeking alternatives to decisions that are perfect for mechanics and balance, but are purely arbitrary within the lore (i.e. "That particular

enchantment just so happens to be tougher than all the others, for no real reason that I can explain.")

 

 

Except it's not.

 

There is no difference between "weapon can only be enchanted up to +5" and "weapons can only be enchanted up to +5, except in case A".

When it comes to games, lore and mechanics are interwined and often lore is the product of desired gameplay. You want a specific  gameplay/atmosphere, or a specific mechanic, and you create the lore around it. For RPG's lore and gameplay aren't created in vacuum.

 

Everytihing in lore is made up because it sounds nice, or you think it's cool, or makes sense, or whatever.

So no. I have to disagree with you.

 

 

 

 

Now, imagine you had a race (let's say orcs, just for kicks) who already were really physically tough and had more health than other races. So, mechanically, you feel that any amount of passive healing boosts to them would be overkill, so you need to balance that. So, you say "that Blade of Vivification doesn't work on orcs." Okay, but it still works on everyone else? Well, now that's an arbitrary decision, as far as the lore's concerned. It serves the mechanics perfectly. "My orcs aren't overpowered now by healing their extraordinary health pools all day! YAY!" But, in the lore, you have to forcefully, arbitrarily make up some explanation as to why that is. In other words, the very existence of a reason for orcs to work differently from other races in regard to

healing, within the lore, is arbitrary. The ONLY reason there's even a difference there is for the sake of the mechanics.

 

Everything is arbitrary. You make up lore reasons to justify lore changes all the time..mechanics or no.

 

"Hmm it would be cool if my orcs were different. Hey, what if they had different biology!" - orcs are different and some spells don't work on them. Same result. Same thing.

How do you know the differnet orcs idea didn't predate the Sword of vivification, and it merely plays in well? Or maybe the writer actually likes the idea and would have put it in, mechanics need or not?

 

Of course, at this point we're arguing nitpicks that really have little to do with the actual point of the thread.

Edited March 15, 2013 by TrashMan

[Lephys]

Everytihing in lore is made up because it sounds nice, or you think it's cool, or makes sense, or whatever.

So no. I have to disagree with you.

You're right that this isn't directly related to the topic, so I'll attempt to clarify one last time (in as concise a manner as possible).

 

Everything in lore, when isolated, is arbitrary. But lore is both the sum of all invented truths in your world and the cohesion of their intermingling.

 

Example Time:

 

If you make a game based on reality (bear with me), so that it's fictional, but only because the exact events didn't actually occur, and it's a modern military setting, and your mechanics dictated that AOE explosion damage would either be too powerful, OR, it would be underpowered (if "nerfed") to the point of pointless clutter in your game, OR, you just want the game to focus on firearms and melee combat, *Shrug*...

 

Whatever the reason, you're making that game, and your mechanics require you to balance the effects/advantage of explosives. So, you just say "There aren't any explosives in my game." Boom. You now have an arbitrary lore inconsistency. Are there explosives in the world? Yes. Are they available in the settings in which your characters are fighting? Yes. But they're just not there. It's your fiction... you can say there aren't grenades. But, you haven't said there aren't grenades in the world. There just arbitrarily aren't any in the game. So, you could correct that inconsistency by saying "Okay, the world I made just doesn't HAVE grenades. They haven't invented them." Okay, now, how have they invented tiny, controlled-explosion-propelled capsules that are bullets, but they can't just make a big hand-held thing that explodes, however effective? Are there not materials that explode in your world? Has anything ever exploded in your world? Did you have anything in your story that involved artillery, or nukes, or aerial bombs? Well, now you don't. Unless you keep changing the lore.

 

Obviously, that's more involved than "Attack Bonus enchantments are harder to do," but the purpose of the example was to point out that something more than just the simple decision itself is arbitrary. All the decisions have to make sense together. You can't just say "Orcs have different biology... they don't have blood or breathe air," without then inventing some explanation of how their cells live and get energy.

 

Does every player wonder how the biology behind that works? No. But that doesn't change the fact that, if it cannot be explained in your lore (for those who seek the explanation), it is arbitrarily inconsistent with the rest of the lore.

 

So, yes, I'm going to have to say that "because my mechanics needed it" is not an actual reason, within the lore, for something to be the way it is. And "Orcs can't be healed because they're just different" is the same thing as saying "because I said so." And I can say plenty of things that don't follow a lick of reason, so, obviously the quality of lore isn't inherent to whether or not someone thought it up. Obviously the worst lore you've ever read was arbitrarily invented, AS was the best lore you've ever read. So, there must be something beyond the sheer invention of lore details that makes it strong or weak. I believe part of that is consistency and reason. That is all.

[TrashMan]

 

Everytihing in lore is made up because it sounds nice, or you think it's cool, or makes sense, or whatever.

So no. I have to disagree with you.

You're right that this isn't directly related to the topic, so I'll attempt to clarify one last time (in as concise a manner as possible).

 

Everything in lore, when isolated, is arbitrary. But lore is both the sum of all invented truths in your world and the cohesion of their intermingling.

 

 

And there's nothing incoheseive about most things like that.

With good planing and thought, pretty much anything can go and be a great part of the lore.

With bad planing and little thought, even simple things cna end up feelign fake.

 

If your example, a game in the end has to decides what parts of lore it wasnt to model in the first place. You don't have to explain everything or show everything. Nor does everything in-game has to reflect to lore on a 1:1 scale....or at all.

 

After all the World/Setting and the Game are in a sense two separate entities. The game takes place in a setting, but the game isn't the setting.

 

So for example - in the setting (let's say a novel written in the setting), a single sword stab to the gut kills a guy. In the game, your PC can take several and still stand. No explanation or justification is technicly needed, nor will most people require it or care.

 

So in that examples, orcs having a different biology is perfectly valid - and you don't even have to explain the exact differences. After all, it's a fantasy setting with all kinds of creatures, so biologicly different orcs make more sense than 99% of the monster manual.

Edited March 16, 2013 by TrashMan

[Lephys]

So for example - in the setting (let's say a novel written in the setting), a single sword stab to the gut kills a guy. In the game, your PC can take several and still stand. No explanation or justification is technicly needed, nor will most people require it or care.

I beg to differ. In the "game" (aka combat, being abstracted, maybe even turn-based, etc.), you don't go around getting perfectly clean sword stabs to the gut. The HP/damage system's sole purpose is to abstractly quantify the effectiveness of concrete actions and details in your game world. So, yes, the world doesn't have HP, but it has single sword stabs to the gut that kill men. Therefore, for your "game" to be suggesting you're stabbing a guy in the gut with a sword, and he's simply not dying, when he would have in the "world," would mean that the game is simultaneously tallying 100% of his health as damage from the sword attack AND less-than-100% damage from the sword attack.

 

I'm sorry, but a game whose "world" has Person A taking a sword through the gut and being verisimilitudinously slain, and whose combat (aka "game") has an actual attack/maneuver that's represented by the ramming of one's sword through Person A's gut while leaving person A completely alive and only mildly maimed... that's a game with terrible design.

 

You might as well have the attack "Behead" deal only 1 damage to something with 100HP. What's stopping you from making that some easily-more-accurately-representative-yet-still-abstracted attack, like "prick" or "cut"? What's the point in numbers if you're going to contradict them, arbitrarily?

 

Bear in mind, that's completely different from ramming your sword through someone/something's gut that, in your lore, can actually survive that. Same with beheading.

 

There's a layer of logic to the game's design, no matter what you do, and how imaginative/creative you get. It's not even super complex, really. Just don't contradict yourself, and offer reasonable explanations (within the context of your lore) as to why things are the way they are if you don't want weak lore.

 

 

To summarize my original point in all this... Simply changing the lore to justify the mechanics is never the best option. I recognize, and do not dispute, that all changes to lore are not overly simple and bad. But, the ones that are, are.

[TrashMan]

 

So for example - in the setting (let's say a novel written in the setting), a single sword stab to the gut kills a guy. In the game, your PC can take several and still stand. No explanation or justification is technicly needed, nor will most people require it or care.

I beg to differ. In the "game" (aka combat, being abstracted, maybe even turn-based, etc.), you don't go around getting perfectly clean sword stabs to the gut. The HP/damage system's sole purpose is to abstractly quantify the effectiveness of concrete actions and details in your game world. So, yes, the world doesn't have HP, but it has single sword stabs to the gut that kill men. Therefore, for your "game" to be suggesting you're stabbing a guy in the gut with a sword, and he's simply not dying, when he would have in the "world," would mean that the game is simultaneously tallying 100% of his health as damage from the sword attack AND less-than-100% damage from the sword attack.

 

I beg to differ too.

If you're landing critical hits, doing mechanicly max posible damage with a weapon, what does that mean?

Of course it is different from game to game, and oyu have some where characters have 100000 HP and the most damage you can do is 100.

 

Mechanics aren't always ment to mirror lore. Games aren't setting in of themselves. A setting first and foremost forms in the mind of the creator/writer...and is consequently adjusted to fit the medium in question.

 

There are a million of examples where the same setting feels compeltely different in different formats (game, novel, comic book).

 

So criting someone on the head with a two-handed axe and they still continuing the fight - yes, silly design.

Creating magic rules that fit your mechanics? Not. Becuase magic isn't pre-defined nor has any comparison in real life. As long as the rules are internaly consistent and make sense, everything is fine.

[Lephys]

Creating magic rules that fit your mechanics? Not. Becuase magic isn't pre-defined nor has any comparison in real life. As long as the rules are internaly consistent and make sense, everything is fine.

Okay, obviously creating magic rules that fit your mechanics can be silly/bad. Therefore, all I'm getting at is that you need to keep it reasonable. You have to establish SOME world/lore/setting that goes hand-in-hand with the mechanics, like you said. But, they also both have to make sense, individually. The lore/world has to be a quality, interesting world. AND, the mechanics have to be functional and complexly interesting. AND, the two have to work together.

 

ALL I'm saying is, you can't take 2 out of three. You can't go with a crap lore decision just so that your mechanics can be good, and your lore and mechanics can work well together. Well, you CAN, but it weakens the game. The same goes for sacrificing mechanics for lore. OR, sacrificing their support for each other simply because your mechanics are really cool on their own and your lore is really awesome on its own.

 

Throw a pebble in a pond, and the ripples go all the way to the edges. At the end of the day, you've gotta be happy with that whole pond. I'm not talking about coming up with lore. I'm talking about finalizing everything.

 

In a further attempt at clarification... The decision to make some enchantments more difficult than others should come from the fact that you want your world to have to do without those things, rather than simply that it helps support a mechanic detail you didn't want to be questionable. Look at P:E, with healing. They're going to have SEVERELY LIMITED magical healing, and the entire world's built around that. So are the mechanics. Both are built around the very same core decision. They didn't establish a world with oodles of healing, then go "Hmm... with our current mechanics, it looks like healing's overpowered. Let's decrease its effectiveness by 95%, then change the lore to support this decision. Why is healing so weak? Uhhhh... because! Yeah!"

 

That's like taking a wheel off your truck to fix the trailer it's pulling. They're both necessary, side-by-side, to get the job done, so why would you sacrifice one for the other? The goal should be to tweak them both in unison. Not tweak one simply to fix the hole you just made in the other.

[TrashMan]

 

Creating magic rules that fit your mechanics? Not. Becuase magic isn't pre-defined nor has any comparison in real life. As long as the rules are internaly consistent and make sense, everything is fine.

Okay, obviously creating magic rules that fit your mechanics can be silly/bad. Therefore, all I'm getting at is that you need to keep it reasonable. You have to establish SOME world/lore/setting that goes hand-in-hand with the mechanics, like you said. But, they also both have to make sense, individually. The lore/world has to be a quality, interesting world. AND, the mechanics have to be functional and complexly interesting. AND, the two have to work together.

 

Precisely.

And the "accuracy enchantments are harder to do" can make perfect sense and be a good part of lore. Exceptions prove the rule and RL is filled with examples, so I dont' see how it would make the setting less believable.

As for why it is harder?

Maybe because the sword has to affect the wielder, hence the enchantment has to expand beyond the sword itself. Come to think of it, any enchantment who's target isn't the sword might be harder (and thus have a lower max).

 

Enchant a sword to be sharper - not too hard, since it is focused on the sword.

Enchant it to erupt in fire? - again, same thing. It's the sword that is on fire, enemy burning is a side-effect

 

Want a sword to shield you from magic? Harder to do as it has to affect you entirely, so the enchantment will be lower.

Enchant a sword to cut trough/block magic - easier, as only the sword is affected.

 

If you don't get the difference, the second case would be the fighter having to actively try to cut/block incoming magic missiles, lighting bolts or fireballs to dispell them.

The first would be having a magical resistance aura.

 

Actually, this might make legendary items interesting, as they can overcome those restrictions. No mage or smith can make a sword with more than +2 to hit, but that legenday sword of seeking? +4 baby!

 

 

 

In a further attempt at clarification... The decision to make some enchantments more difficult than others should come from the fact that you want your world to have to do without those things, rather than simply

that it helps support a mechanic detail you didn't want to be questionable. Look at P:E, with healing. They're going to have SEVERELY LIMITED magical healing, and the entire world's built around that. So are the mechanics. Both are built around the very same core decision. They didn't establish a world with oodles of healing, then go "Hmm... with our current mechanics, it looks like healing's overpowered. Let's decrease its effectiveness by 95%, then change the lore to support this decision. Why is healing so weak? Uhhhh... because! Yeah!"

 

Well, I didn't establish a world with massive to-hit bonuses and then gone on to change that...now did I?

 

B.t.w. - severly limited magical healing is BOTH a lore and mechanics decision. You really can't tell what went trough the minds of the Devs and how they've gone around making it. So the exact scenario you describe may have happened.

At the end of the day, making a game is a iterative process - games inevitably change from their inital concepts and ideas are tested and develpoment goes on. The "Purity of Lore" is in realtiy unnatainable as you never have unlimited time or funding, nor inital perfect ideas. Lore WILL be changed or ignored to accomodate balance and mechanics in at least some places. It is inevitable.

Edited March 20, 2013 by TrashMan

[Lephys]

B.t.w. - severly limited magical healing is BOTH a lore and mechanics decision. You really can't tell what went trough the minds of the Devs and how they've gone around making it. So the exact scenario you describe may have happened.

That's... quite literally my point. I'm sorry, as it isn't my intention here to imply a basis of intelligence difference or anything like that, but I really, truly, don't comprehend how you take the meanings you do from what I say, and miss the ones I intend. It could completely be my own fault. For realsies. Unfortunately, it confuses me, and all I know to do is to attempt clarification, which apparently leads to more unintended-meaning fuel. *shrug*

 

My point wasn't that you can't make changes, or that the devs brains never went through an iterative process with the design. Since we don't know the finalized details of this game to simply toss out here in discussion and suggest direct changes/balances to, we're using hypothetical examples. So, in the hypothetical example of "You have an RPG with enchantments, and you have to balance the mechanics with every possible combination of to-hit modifiers in mind," all I'm trying to say is, it might be more prudent to make more efficient mechanic changes (such as limiting the number of different systems that can provide to-hit bonuses in your game) that don't then require changes to the lore (that MIGHT then require further changes to other bits of lore and/or mechanics).

 

It's just as you said... the vision of the game is the root of both the mechanics AND the lore. The decisions for both are tied directly together. So, if the ONLY reason you have to go against the core vision of your game world is because you need a mechanical balance tweak, then I think it might be best to explore some other potential balance tweaks. In the case of our ongoing enchantment example, IF you haven't already dreamt up a world in which enchantments that affect people's skills/capabilities are more difficult than and not as potent as other enchantments, then suddenly changing that purely because the mechanics you're currently using would benefit from it is a bit silly, since the mechanics are supposed to be based upon your vision. Not vice-versa.

 

Direct P:E example:

 

If team Obsidian suddenly said "Hmmm... with our current damage numbers and hit-point values, I think we're gonna need healing to be a lot more prominent. Change of plans! The world DOES have oodles of magical healing in it! 8D," I would call that a pretty terribly-made decision.

 

All mechanics do is quantify an otherwise-unquantified world (the lore). So, if you as me, there's never a reason to change your lore for anything shy of hardware/software limitations. If you literally cannot produce mechanics that would in any way accurately represent what you had envisioned, then you might need to change that.

[TrashMan]

So, in the hypothetical example of "You have an RPG with enchantments, and you have to balance the mechanics with every possible combination of to-hit modifiers in mind," all I'm trying to say is, it might be more prudent to make more efficient mechanic changes (such as limiting the number of different systems that can provide to-hit bonuses in your game) that don't then require changes to the lore (that MIGHT then require further changes to other bits of lore and/or mechanics).

 

It's just as you said... the vision of the game is the root of both the mechanics AND the lore. The decisions for both are tied directly together. So, if the ONLY reason you have to go against the core vision of your game world is because you need a mechanical balance tweak, then I think it might be best to explore some other potential balance tweaks. In the case of our ongoing enchantment example, IF you haven't already dreamt up a world in which enchantments that affect people's skills/capabilities are more difficult than and not as potent as other enchantments, then suddenly changing that purely because the mechanics you're currently using would benefit from it is a bit silly, since the mechanics are supposed to be based upon your vision. Not vice-versa.

 

Direct P:E example:

 

If team Obsidian suddenly said "Hmmm... with our current damage numbers and hit-point values, I think we're gonna need healing to be a lot more prominent. Change of plans! The world DOES have oodles of magical healing in it! 8D," I would call that a pretty terribly-made decision.

 

All mechanics do is quantify an otherwise-unquantified world (the lore). So, if you as me, there's never a reason to change your lore for anything shy of hardware/software limitations. If you literally cannot produce mechanics that would in any way accurately represent what you had envisioned, then you might need to change that.

 

Never a reason to change lore?

Ideally you wouldn't want to, but games are built on gameplay (mechanics), lore is a nice bonus. If you just want pure lore, you read a book.

 

Especially if you are deep in development, chaning lore might be simpler or easier than chaning the mechanics. Or vice-versa. And the question is what is the CORE mechanics/vision? Is enchantment scale one of hte things you already had pre-planned, or was it flexible to bein with?

Any why wouldn't you change them?

Maybe your initial idea sounded good on paper, but is horrible in practice. Would a change make lore better or worse?

 

What we are talking about is so heavily subjective, that telling me that "change X is bad" simply has no practical value.

 

Ultimatively it's the result that matters.

If the developers were to implement familiarity mechanics because a pink flying unicorn told them in their sleep, as opposed as a product of carefull planing, it would make no difference to me.

 

 

Ya know, maybe we should stop agreeing and drag this thread on an on without having an actual conflict?

We need actual conflict.

*slaps with a glove*

"Thou, Sir, art a excrement flinging simion!"

[Lephys]

Haha. I know, I know... I really, truly do apologize for the way in which I present ideas and thoughts. I try to fill in little gaps, and strive for maximum accuracy and beneficial analysis of things, and I know it tends to come across as... well, counter-argument. Which, it is, often times, on smaller points within the whole. I joke with people that I'm an android, but it's less joke than people think (metaphorically... unless...! *rips chest cavity open to reveal wires and blinking LEDs*... Great Odin's Beard!!!)

 

I genuinely try everything in my power and knowledge to prevent that from happening, but, I'm just not very good at that, I suppose.

 

It's like we said; having something in your lore as opposed to not having it is pretty arbitrary, in and of itself. But that's understood. I mean, that's not in relation to anything else. It's just "does my world have furry animals in it, or does it not?" Obviously there's nothing wrong with your futuristic space station not having swords.

 

So, I simply had the hypothesis that, in the proposed example we were discussing about enchantments and balance concerns for them with things like familiarity and customization thrown into the mix, it might be more prudent to simply omit certain enchantments as opposed to including them and trying to explain why they are severely limited compared to others. Going back to futuristic space station example world, the complete lack of swords doesn't really raise any questions, but "grenades actually only ever generate an explosion up to 3-feet in radius" might be a bit difficult and... messy, to explain.

 

Alas, it was just an educated guess, since I can't really test it without being on the dev team. Otherwise, I'd just test the possibilities against each other, in the context of the rest of the game.

 

For what it's worth, I think it's awesome that, even in the midst of this back-and-forth, we DO agree on so many things, in the end. That's the best kind of argument, if you ask me. Each side is comprised of so many little details and factored-in variables, and, in challenging one another's entire points, we find that tiny switches get flipped, and our collective understandings culminate in a much greater one. I've thought of tons of things, from tons of angles, that I wouldn't have on my own, because you pointed them out, and hopefully I presented some lovely thought meals as well.

 

If it's ever just an annoyingly detailed degree of analysis, just say the word, and I'll stop. But, I can't help but take an argumentative response as an "I care enough about this thing you've brought up to challenge it with my own understanding." I'm like a puppy. If you throw the stick and don't say otherwise, I'm GOING to go fetch it and bring it back. If you're just trying to get a stick out of the yard, you've gotta let me know. Heh.

 

Also...

 

*Slaps you with a magical Grimoire*

I accept, and simultaneously disengage from you, good sir!

Edited March 22, 2013 by Lephys

[TrashMan]

Ya know I'm kinda similar.

 

I do tend to get hung up over details and talk about little things within the context of a big thing...sometimes exiting the context. 

 

 

And while you are right that the simplest solution is to not implement X if X might cause trouble (in this case, to-hit enchantment), from a lore perspective you'd still have to explain why they aren't possible at all (just as you would have to explain why they are more difficult).

I guess "magic just can't do that" is an explanation, but when magic cna do tons of other mazing things, it becomes harder to accept.

 

Either way, wether such an approach would be pruedent depends entirely on the goal of a developer. If the developer likes X..... well...

Edited March 22, 2013 by TrashMan

[Lephys]

Ya know I'm kinda similar.

 

I do tend to get hung up over details and talk about little things within the context of a big thing...sometimes exiting the context. 

 

 

And while you are right that the simplest solution is to not implement X if X might cause trouble (in this case, to-hit enchantment), from a lore perspective you'd still have to explain why they aren't possible at all (just as you would have to explain why they are more difficult).

I guess "magic just can't do that" is an explanation, but when magic cna do tons of other mazing things, it becomes harder to accept.

 

Either way, wether such an approach would be pruedent depends entirely on the goal of a developer. If the developer likes X..... well...

 

WRONG!

 

... No, I'm kidding, . I agree, heh.

 

So then, back to familiarity and weapon upgrade brainstorming? ^_^

[Atreides]

Wonderful topic.  I'm leaning to the idea that feats accomplished with the user are what makes a weapon legendary, provided the weapon's worth using to accomplish those feats in the first place.

 

Most of the magical/named weapons with written backgrounds in the IE games are about the previous owner that did something extraordinary with it, though it should be said that weapons that are outstanding/magical from the beginning increase peoples' chances of achieving extraordinary feats.  

 

Provided truly rare masterwork weapons are worth keeping and using in the first place, accumulating achievements with them could give bonuses like the ones in the stories.  While I'm sure pragmatic samurai/vikings used anything on hand to win their battles, they had a respect for their swords/axes, and more so the ones that had developed a reputation.  Personally, I'd like a mechanic that makes me consider keeping my favourite weapon vs upgrading to the latest potentially better weapon.  There has to be a balance where it's obviously better to upgrade from a lousy weapon fairly early on until I hit a plateau where the marginal benefit of the next swap's got me considering maintaining/upgrading my favourite.

The question I find interesting is how such a mechanic would affect player behaviour.  Would I reload many times until my character gets the killing blow, to notch up the achievement on my weapon?  Should familiarity bonuses be applied to non-physical weapons and gear?  Do mages that focus on fire spells get a pyromanic bonus?  And what about the trusty slippers of sneaking?

Edited March 24, 2013 by Atreides

[Lephys]

The question I find interesting is how such a mechanic would affect player behaviour.  Would I reload many times until my character gets the killing blow, to notch up the achievement on my weapon?  Should familiarity bonuses be applied to non-physical weapons and gear?  Do mages that focus on fire spells get a pyromanic bonus?  And what about the trusty slippers of sneaking?

An excellent post, Atreides. Your first question is one of the things we're trying to pinpoint the answer to. I think most of what has been mentioned would take care of the reloading-a-bunch-for-immediate-satisfactory-results thing. It's just a matter of making sure the familiarity progression isn't so long-term as to make it seem meaningless in the moment. You know, "I'd have to kill 500 things just to get a mild bonus? I'm not even sure I WANT to kill that many things! I don't even know how to weigh the benefits of that against the benefits of simply buying a new sword!"

 

As to the spell thing, I DO think something of that nature would rock! Mages always get neglected, it seems, heh. "This guy is like 80 times better with his sword. But your Firebolt? Still the exact same Firebolt. But, hey, you gained Fireball, which you can replace Firebolt with, so that all your allies in the area die, unless you want to drop the difficulty to 'non-friendly-fire' easy mode. u_u" (Exaggeration for effect, ).

 

And as for the Slippers of Sneaking? I think familiarity would only apply to something you actually wield. Passive bonuses to things you wear should probably be reserved for Talents (who until recently said "Ni!"... err, I mean, were called "feats.")

 

That kinda gets me thinking, though (some little specific phrase or another that you said sparked this, and my brain makes no sense, so... *shrug*)... What if familiarity with weapons were spread out across weapon type? Maybe that would get rid of some of the intensity of getting a new/different weapon. So, you'd get better with longswords by continuing to use longswords, even if you keep getting new ones. MAYHAPS you even still get slight extra bonuses for keeping the exact same particular weapon (this includes all the potential mechanics we've brought up, such as soul-imbuement/"enchantment" of the weapon as you go, or support for that via price reduction or increased ceiling, etc.). Then, on top of that, you'd still have physical customizations (make the blade more balanced, or the grip slightly different for your wielding style, etc.), AND whatever you so choose to do with enchantments/magic on weapons.

 

I definitely like the idea of some kind of familiarity/customization through use being implemented for magic (for any class whose main "weapon" will be their abilities/spells). Maybe for Mages, you could apply the familiarity thing to Grimoires? I'm not talking changing spell sets here (simply through use, however that spell-set thing is gonna work anyway...), but, just how you channel your energy through the tome in order to CAST the spells. Instead of attack speed and all that jazz, you could work with cast speed, projectile size, number of targets (weakening each "split" or separate projectile generated from a single spell that normally only produces one projectile for one target), after-effects, range, duration, etc. Maybe even spell behavior to a degree (such as "now bounces to nearby foes." This might fall under "after-effects.")

[TrashMan]

 

 

And as for the Slippers of Sneaking? I think familiarity would only apply to something you actually wield. Passive bonuses to things you wear should probably be reserved for Talents (who until recently said "Ni!"... err, I mean, were called "feats.")

 

That kinda gets me thinking, though (some little specific phrase or another that you said sparked this, and my brain makes no sense, so... *shrug*)... What if familiarity with weapons were spread out across weapon type? Maybe that would get rid of some of the intensity of getting a new/different weapon. So, you'd get better with longswords by continuing to use longswords, even if you keep getting new ones. MAYHAPS you even still get slight extra bonuses for keeping the exact same particular weapon (this includes all the potential mechanics we've brought up, such as soul-imbuement/"enchantment" of the weapon as you go, or support for that via price reduction or increased ceiling, etc.). Then, on top of that, you'd still have physical customizations (make the blade more balanced, or the grip slightly different for your wielding style, etc.), AND whatever you so choose to do with enchantments/magic on weapons.

 

 

Yeah, there is nothing to master in regards to slippers....

 

 

And bonuses for weapon type - that's basicly weapon proficiencies...specializations. They are general training, while familiarity is more specific. Best not let them on eachothers turf.