need feedback for weapon proficiency groupings

[subtledoctor]

I'm working on something that will look like the "Combat Skills" rules found in the "For Gold and Glory" restatement of the 2E AD&D rules. This rulebook basically eliminates the "2.5E" Skills & Powers stuff and harkens back to the original PHB rules, with some added twists in the form of spending weapon proficiency points - now called "combat skill points" - on combat skills like bling-fighting, being ambidextrous, dual-wielding, brawling, wrestling, hurling, etc. (This being a CRPG, some of the PnP skills won't really work here, but I plan to implement most of the Might & Guile 3E-style feats as combat skills.)  For weapons, this system lets you spend skill points to gain proficiency or specialization in groups of weapons, rather than single weapons. This is similar to how BG1 handled weapon proficiencies. BG1 had eight categories:

Quote

• Large Swords (long sword, scimitar, bastard sword, 2-handed sword)
• Small Blades (short sword, dagger)
• Axes (battle axe)
• Blunt Weapons (club, staff, mace, war hammer)
• Spiked Weapons (morning star, flail)
• Spears (spear, halberd)
• Bows (bows, crossbows)
• Missile Weapons (sling, darts)

There are some flaws with that in the BGEE/BG2/EET context. For one thing, it doesn't include katanas and ninja-tos. Also, axes get shafted. It's generally  very unbalanced - blunt weapons and large swords let you use huge amounts of weapons, while axes/spears/spiked weapons are rather rare. The value of the investment of a proficiency point just isn't the same.

I'm thinking of these categories instead:

Quote

#1

• Large Swords (2H sword, bastard sword, long sword)
• Curved Swords (katana, scimitar)
• Small Blades (short sword, wakizashi, ninja-to, dagger)
• Chopping Weapons (battle axe, war hammer, flail)
• Clubbing Weapons (club, mace, morning star)
• Staff/Pole Weapons (staff, spear, halberd)
• Bows
• Crossbows
• Missile Weapons (sling, darts)

This is very nicely balanced, IMHO. Nine categories plus the four fighting styles leaves me 11 proficiencies to reuse for other combat skills; I've already got nine planned out, so there are two spare proficiencies if I am struck by inspiration or want to implement more 'out there' or arcane skills. (Potentially four spares, if I want to mess with stats 108 and 134.) The only thing I don't love about this is grouping flails with axes and hammers. I don't think it's awful - the inspiration is from the Gold & Glory "cavalry weapons" group which includes one-handed flails, maces, and picks. And it kind of makes sense as the category of crushing weapons that is more advanced than your simple clubs.

An alternative might be this - put flails with maces, and move clubs and staves to their own category:

Quote

#2

• Large Swords (2H sword, bastard sword, long sword)
• Curved Swords (katana, scimitar)
• Small Blades (short sword, wakizashi, ninja-to, dagger)
• Chopping Weapons (battle axe, war hammer)
• Spiked Weapons (mace, morning star, flail)
• Bludgeoning Weapons (club, staff)
• Polearms (spear, halberd)
• Bows
• Crossbows
• Missile Weapons (sling, darts)

Ten categories there - probably the most I would like to use. But still fine for these purposes.

Maybe we could mess with swords - even put axes into a "blades" group:

Quote

#3

• Large Blades (2-hand sword, bastard sword, katana)
• Medium Blades  (long sword, scimitar, battle axe)
• Small Blades (short sword, wakizashi, ninja-to, dagger)
• Hammers/Flails (war hammer, flail)
• Clubs (club, mace, morning star)
• Staves/Spears (staff, spear, halberd)
• Bows
• Crossbows
• Missile Weapons (sling, darts)

So, what do people think? #1 or #2? Does the axe/hammer/flail combination offend you more than the club/staff combination? Is it weird lumping axes with swords? Would you organize them a different way altogether, to make 9-10 groups?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Edited September 8, 2022 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

I once did this, but more crudely than is possible today with EE's expanded functionality, I used in game DPLAYER scripts to assign proficiency to a weapon if specialized with its relatives in a group, or specialization if having attained high mastery.

On the degree of relatedness and transferability of skill in weapons:

• Axes can certainly be grouped with hammers, an axe can be used for push cuts as well as chops, but otherwise the motions are practically identical - a hammer's just a very blunt axe.
• I also grouped long and bastard swords as double edged, single handed blades, but I wouldn't include the two-handed sword, too much is different kinesthetically when you're using both hands to move something.
• Similarly backswords, those with only one edge - the katana and scimitar - need at least their own category
• Katanas in this game are single handed so it's less justifiable to treat them separately, unless you change this, but katana and wakizashi could form a single proficiency if you don't like mixing them with scimitars.
• The short sword and ninja-to can be grouped together, as the difference between a double-edged and single-edged blade matters less if it's mostly used for thrusting vs slashes. However, daggers probably shouldn't be grouped here as they can be held in completely different ways (reverse or ice-pick grip) to any sword.
• Staves don't really belong with spears, you hit people with either end of the staff when stick fighting; a spear, not so much.
• Whether spears are similar enough in use to halberds to make a group is an interesting question, the weight of the blade - and its moment of inertia on a long pole - is going to slow down both thrust and recovery a lot, so if you want to group them I'd increase min required strength for halberds substantially (should definitely be higher than a 2h sword)
• Bows and longbows are similar enough to aim, less so to draw. Perhaps specialist rate of fire (rather than THAC0 bonuses) should be separate, if that's even possible?
• Flails are like no other weapon, and should have their own proficiency.
• Mace/club/morning star, sure, but two of those are already unified by the tweakpack.

Edited September 6, 2022 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

Well, we need to get down to 10 groups or fewer to free up proficiencies for other skills, so some things are going to need to go together. Notably, this represents weapon skills that result from training, so they can be grouped by the likelihood of being trained in two weapons, not restricted to whether the movement is the same. For instance, the 2E/G&G rules combine the horseman's mace, flail, and pick together under "cavalry weapons" since a member of an organized cavalry would likely be trained in the use of all three from horseback. (Two-handed/infantry versions of flails etc. are not represented in the BG games so we can forget them.) The rules allow you to spend one Combat Skill Point (CSP) to become proficient in one such weapon, or spend two CSPs to train in all three. I'm going to abstract it away and just assume that every in-game proficiency pip is the equivalent of two CSPs, and just use groups. That's basically what BG1 did.

So yes the use of daggers is quite different from a drusus or ninja-to; but a master rogue might instruct novice thieves in all of them. Meanwhile, clubs/saps/staves might be a different lesson. And thieves wouldn't learn to use cavalry flails or greatswords at all.

So the ultimate question is, what groupings 1) make sense as far as distinct skills that would likely be learned together; and 2) nicely balance the player choice for expenditure of proficiency pips.

Edited September 6, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Satrhan]

I wish there was a way to combine having similar weapons grouped in a proficiency, while also being able to specialize like in bg2. I mean, it makes sense that you can become a grand master in a certain weapon, like say the longsword, but that you wouldn't be able to automatically wield a similar weapon, like a bastard sword or a scimitar, quite as well. But you wouldn't be a novice at it, probably more at the specialized/master level to stay in the game terms. And you would be at least proficient with a short sword or a katana.

But to answer your question, no matter which way you group things. there will always be some weirdness. I would try to group weapons on the way they are used in real life.

• Two handed swords, which I'm imagining to be greatswords or zweihanders, probably should be their own category imo. If you look at how they could be used, they share some characteristics with regular long swords of course, but also polearms. Probably unique enough to be it's own proficiency. There are I think enough of them in the game to justify it being a separate proficiency too.  If katana's were two handed they should probably go here as well. They do the same damage in game anyway.
• Long swords and bastard swords are just variations of the same design, so grouping them seems obvious. 
• Short swords and daggers are also similar enough to group them. 
• Curved/single edged blades like scimitars, katanas, wakizashi, and ninja-to are fine in a group. However even though they would probably handle a bit different than straight or double edged swords, I don't know if they are that different. I think you could make an argument for putting them with large blades or short blades. Of course the large blades group especially would become quite big, so maybe better to keep them as a different proficiency, from a game perspective.
• Spears and halberds together as polearms is another obvious option. Adding staves to this is probably fine. Even though they are a bit shorter than your average spear or halberd probably, some techniques would still apply to all weapons. Also makes this group interesting by having piercing, slashing, and crushing options.
• Maces, morning stars, and clubs are all variations on the same theme, a stick with some weight at the end. Adding spikes or flanges helps with penetration, but doesn't change the overall function. They are also (generally) symmetrical, so it doesn't really matter which way you hold them or hit with.
• Axes and war hammers on the other hand are very directional. Hitting with the side of one will hurt, but for maximum effectiveness you will want to hit with the edge/head. The technique for using either of them wouldn't be that different, so grouping these seems reasonable.
• Flails are quite unique because of the chain. But other than that they are pretty similar to other blunt weapons, having a weight at the end of a lever, and no specific edge or head alignment to keep in mind. So I would put them under blunt weapons with maces, morningstars, and clubs.
• Long bows and short bows together is another obvious one. Main difference would strength required and effective range, and maybe rate of fire.
• Crossbows are relatively simple to use weapons, bus have some things in common with bows. So putting them in either their own category or with bows would make sense.
• Would it be possible to separate throwing daggers/axes/hammers from their melee counterpart? Because then it would be obvious to put those together in a group, along with darts, as thrown weapons. Axes and hammers are pretty different from daggers and darts of course, but if you throw a lot of stuff you would become better at throwing accurately, no matter what it is exactly.  
• Slings are again quite unique in how they operate, but you could say they some things in common with thrown weapons, depending on arm and wrist movement to accurately get a projectile to hit a target. 

That would leave eleven proficiencies: Two handed swords, large swords, small swords, curved/single edged swords, polearms, blunt weapons, axes and hammers (need a good name for this one), bows, crossbows, thrown weapons, and slings. You could cut that down to nine if you group crossbows with bows, and slings with thrown weapons.

Apologies for the wall of text btw, was thinking about this for a while anyway and found a good excuse to write it down

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Satrhan said:

I wish there was a way to combine having similar weapons grouped in a proficiency, while also being able to specialize like in bg2. I mean, it makes sense that you can become a grand master in a certain weapon,

I mean, it's doable with a fair bit of effort. But, I'm not sure the end  result is  worth that effort. You would still need to use distinct proficiencies for each weapon, so you would not free up any stats. In Scales of Balance I just give a bunch of pips early on, which can only get you proficiency or specialization. So you end up proficient or specialized in many weapons, and building toward grandmaster with your later, fewer pips as you level up. The process is different but the result is very similar, and  the effort to implement it is an order of magnitude easier.

1 hour ago, Satrhan said:

Would it be possible to separate throwing daggers/axes/hammers from their melee counterpart?

No; but I have a plan to address this. Equipping one of these weapons will apply a ranged thac0 penalty. A serious penalty, like -4 or even -6 or something. So being proficient or even specialized with daggers will not let you throw daggers like an ace. It's an entirely different skill.

Separately, there will be a 'hurled weapons' proficiency which will, in several steps, eliminate that ranged thac0 penalty. So you can be specialized in daggers if you want to stabby-stab, but if you want to be that guy at the carnival throwing knives (or hammers or axes) at apples over the damsel's head, you'll need to invest specifically in the weapon-throwing skill. (Probably, this penalty will not apply to halflings.)

The question there is: the throwing penalty will not apply to darts and slings because they are ranged-only and the assumption that your proficiency is melee-related will not apply. So should darts and slings be entirely separate from the weapon hurling skill? Basically be just like bows and crossbows? Or, and this is a bit radical: should bonuses from proficiency and the hurling skill be combined for darts and/or slings? Resulting in better thac0 bonuses for those two weapons than for other thrown and  fired weapons? (Darts would have to be majorly toned down in  response - certainly  would get no STR damage bonus, and maybe have their APR dropped to match  daggers since your to-hit chance would be higher.)

Edited September 6, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Guest morpheus562]

If one was so inclined, any of the throwing weapons should be able to be made into a thrown only weapon. In those instances, they can be part of their own thrown weapon prof separate from their melee counterparts.

[subtledoctor]

Yes. But  I don't think I want to make such drastic changes to item files. In my game throwing weapons are a bit of a mish-mash. Some work the vanilla way, where it is a single .ITM and you right-click to change the attack method. Some are changed or added by mods which use the CDTweaks bastard sword method, where you use an item ability to create a whole new item in your inventory, and the new item uses the alternative method. And to be honest, I hate the mod method. The vanilla way is fairly elegant, and doesn't interrupt the flow of the game on the main screen. Because the alternative items cannot be created in the weapon slot, because the relevant opcode has been buggy since 2001, the mod method is super clunky. You have to go to a completely different game screen, then hunt through your inventory for the item, then drag it to a weapon slot and then change back to the main screen. All just to throw something that is ostensibly already in your hand at the moment you wanted to throw it. I just hate it so much.

The way I'm envisioning, there is no need for that. The skill of hurling weapons is like the BG2 fighting styles: a gloss on top of the existing proficiencies. This way you can be good at throwing things, and good at using daggers, and therefore great at throwing daggers... but still not so good at throwing hammers. If thrown hammers shared a proficiency with thrown daggers, then you could not have such nuances.

[polytope]

12 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Well, we need to get down to 10 groups or fewer to free up proficiencies for other skills, so some things are going to need to go together.

If you need extreme parsimony, I'd do it like so, firstly, drop the "small swords" grouping entirely, band single handed swords simply by form of blade.

1) Bastard, long and short swords thus form one group...

2) ...whilst scimitar, katana, wakizashi and ninja-to form the other.

3) Two handed swords, halberds and spears can all be grouped together; as two-handers you can lunge with, you get the point, haha.

4) Axe, mace and warhammer all are unified as striking weapons having a weighty metal head atop a relatively short shaft (which means they handle differently to group 5).

5) Staves, clubs and morning stars make another category as wooden poles used to deliver a bonk, of various sizes and a varying degree of metal to make them more painful (morning stars seem to have been baseball-bat size generally, if not even larger).

6) Might seem crazy but flails and slings could even be grouped together, if you can actually hit things with a sling you're probably well on the way to using a flail effectively and without hurting yourself.

7) Daggers might pair with darts (better than darts sharing a proficiency with slings anyway).

8&9) That just leaves us with bows and crossbows, note that longbows and heavy crossbows are strictly weaker choices throughout most of the saga (the magical varieties of shortbow and light crossbow are just so much better), Beamdog added some decent ones for the SoD expansion, but not (AFAIK) anywhere else. As such there is little point in a separate longbow category if you aren't going to introduce competitive long bows, unless you're assuming other mods i.e. Item Revisions are also installed.

[Endarire]

If you're going for 10ish proficiencies, consider what items have similar functions.

There are effectively these main groups of weapons:

-Cleric weapons.  Blunt only.

-Druid weapons.  Scimitars and some others.

-Fighter weapons.  All.

-Rogue weapons.  Shortbow, sling, dart, quarterstaff, and a buncha 1-handed weapons, mostly sharp ones.

-Sor/Wiz weapons.  Hardly any profs.

[subtledoctor]

Yeah, I thought about setting categories by class. Make categories for each class, in a kind of a hierarchy: wizard, thief, druid, cleric, fighter. Thieves, druids, and clerics would get their own + wizard; warriors and bards would get access to all. It could be doable… but rather boring. If your proficiency group represents all the weapons you can use, and you steadily add pips, what’s the point of the process of adding pips? Could as well automate advancement and make it a static class feature. 

I suppose warriors would have choices in how they advance - would your fighter focus on light roguish weapons, or bludgeoning cleric weapons? Could simply give non-warriors proficiency in all of their appropriate weapons and then have no more pips as you level up; using pips to advance proficiencies could be a specific class trait of warriors. (Which, honestly, is probably closer to the way 2E AD&D was actually played…)

Frankly, maybe it’s worth considering whether we need proficiencies for weapons at all. Maybe every class should just automatically be proficient with all appropriate weapons, and pips could be spent on other kinds of combat skills - the four fighting styles, hitting harder, hitting more accurately, dodging attacks, hurling weapons, parrying certain attacks, deflecting missiles, becoming tougher, training ability scores, resisting poisons… etc. 

[polytope]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Frankly, maybe it’s worth considering whether we need proficiencies for weapons at all. Maybe every class should just automatically be proficient with all appropriate weapons, and pips could be spent on other kinds of combat skills - the four fighting styles, hitting harder, hitting more accurately, dodging attacks, hurling weapons, parrying certain attacks, deflecting missiles, becoming tougher, training ability scores, resisting poisons… etc. 

For my tastes at least, that would break verisimilitude as well as resulting in less interesting gameplay. I mean, it's not believable that a fighting man can pick up a new weapon he just found, of a sort which he's entirely unfamiliar with and use it as deftly as his career-long favourite.

Moreover, since weapon specialization and conversely non-proficiency penalties allow fighters to exceed each other's performance with specific weapons, this likewise makes them vary on an individual level in usefulness in different encounters where a particular weapon or damage type would be optimal. Admittedly, there are not many battles in the vanilla or lightly modified game where weapon type matters all that much, but remove weapon proficiency/specialization/mastery and fighters only become even more bland and similar to each other, varying only in ability scores, hp rolls and experience points really. If every warrior type is equally skilled in all weapons the best course of action therefore becomes - in almost any encounter - to just give the most powerful magic weapon you've found to the highest hp, strongest fighter in your party and send them to the frontline, it's actually more simplistic and less nuanced than before.

[subtledoctor]

2 minutes ago, polytope said:

I mean, it's not believable that a fighting man can pick up a new weapon he just found, of a sort which he's entirely unfamiliar with and use it as deftly

I think the idea is that your class shows which weapons you are familiar with. A "fighting man" is presumed  to have trained with other fighters, on fighter-y stuff like combat with a variety of weapons. That is explicitly a class feature. In BG terms, if Charname is a fighter it is assumed you have trained with Hull, Jondalar et al. Just like if Charname is a mage, it is assumed you have trained with  Gorion, Firebead et al. to learnt he basics of learning and casting magic spells. Verisimilitude only goes so far; this is a game of 2D sprites very roughly acting out the results of dice rolls.

After all as I said, once upon a time D&D just worked this way. Attacks were based on class, level, bonuses... weapon specialization was only added later, and was an optional rule. The game does not need it.

11 minutes ago, polytope said:

since weapon specialization and conversely non-proficiency penalties allow fighters to exceed each other's performance with specific weapons, this likewise makes them vary on an individual level in usefulness in different encounters where a particular weapon or damage type would be optimal.

I want to step back and question whether this is actually a good thing. You have a character who is bound to choices you made early on, and now, in any given combat encounter, that character is either more effective or less effective. At the time of the encounter, there are no interesting tactical choices to make, nothing is enhanced or made more interesting. Whereas, if you have two usable weapons then you have a tactical choice to make in any given encounter.

10 minutes ago, polytope said:

the best course of action therefore becomes - in almost any encounter - to just give the most powerful magic weapon you've found

I'm not convinced this is a bad thing? Because you can easily go too far in the other direction, and in fact I think the vanilla game does so: it veers toward the dreaded territory of "builds," where you conceive and build a character with an eye toward this or that particular weapon (defender of Easthaven, Belm, Celestial Fury, whatever) and this effectively moots a substantial portion of the game's magical items. BG2 addresses this by shoveling magic artifacts down your gullet by the truckload, so everybody will always be equipped to the nines. But that is far from ideal. Letting warriors be skilled with both bastard swords and flails (for instance) means you won't pass up something amazing like Foebane just because you are "built" for flails.

Don't get me wrong, if people like the game to support "builds" of this sort, there's nothing wrong with that. And the base game already provides for that preference. I want to look at alternatives - and even consider somewhat radical, structural alternatives. The one-weapon-per-proficiency BG2 system is based on optional AD&D rules; why not explore other optional rules?

35 minutes ago, polytope said:

just give the most powerful magic weapon you've found to the highest hp, strongest fighter in your party and send them to the frontline, it's actually more simplistic and less nuanced than before

No, because the point here is to add lots of different combat-related skills that will affect your performance in different circumstances. The choice of "which weapon am I good with" is hardly complex or nuanced. I want to add things like, "will I grapple or parry?" and "have I picked up any alchemical or magical tricks that would help here?" and "have I learned to be tougher, or healthier, or more determined, to help deal with this situation?" By taking some complexity from weapon choice, we can add lots more complexity and different ways to develop combat-related skills that the base game doesn't contemplate.

[Graion Dilach]

If quarterstaves should be grouped with something, that should be with spears. Sure, a spear has a pointy end, but as the Chinese bo fighting style proves, there is a reasonable overlap (and more commonality between the two groups than staves vs clubs). Namco even managed to get away with this within the Soul Calibur fighting series with the sheer amount of moves shared between the guan dao (which is an Eastern kind of halberd) user and the bo user characters for a long while.

[subtledoctor]

Yeah and I was actually thinking axes and halberds together…? Given a halberd is basically a species of poleaxe? And CDTweaks/IWDification has two-handed axes with the axe proficiency and the halberd animation?

Alternatively: why do we even have halberds in the game? It’s a bit weird to pick out that one polearm and make it so common. Not to mention it’s an anti-cavalry weapon and the game has no mounted combat? Maybe give them the spear animation and call them glaives. Or just “spears.”

Edited September 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

13 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

After all as I said, once upon a time D&D just worked this way. Attacks were based on class, level, bonuses... weapon specialization was only added later, and was an optional rule. The game does not need it.

Yes, in the earliest prints of AD&D (and D&D) there was no weapon specialization, bear in mind that also back in the day:

• There was no spell school specialization for mages, either.
• Assassins had roughly a 50% usually to instakill a target of their own level equivalent if they gained surprise, no save.
• The difficulty of resisting a psionic blast - the saving throw - was based on the target's intelligence rather than level, as was the severity of effects. Seems an interesting change at first glance but actually allowed a low level psionic player to instantly kill really powerful things like dinosaurs and purple worms or even render a white dragon comatose.
• The Slow spell didn't allow a saving throw.
• Going back even further, to original D&D, the Haste spell doubled everyone's attacks per round and had no drawback.

All these things were subsequently revised due to playtesting.

13 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I'm not convinced this is a bad thing? Because you can easily go too far in the other direction, and in fact I think the vanilla game does so: it veers toward the dreaded territory of "builds," where you conceive and build a character with an eye toward this or that particular weapon (defender of Easthaven, Belm, Celestial Fury, whatever) and this effectively moots a substantial portion of the game's magical items. 

It's a well known (and well liked) trope in various kinds of fiction that one member of the crew has particular skill with a certain weapon even if they're weaker than their companions in other respects and thus occasionally saves the day. Your mod, your choice, but I personally prefer this precedent.