This article is currently only a proposal

The features or design guidelines described in this article are only a proposal made by one or some persons. It has not been evaluated or accepted by the core development team yet. Feel free to add your personal opinion about them or make counter proposals.

Here is a list of ideas for weapon categories and what advantages and disadvantages they could have. this article is written in coherence with the articles Realtime action combat protocol and Stat system 2.

The "Damage" rating is on a relative scale from 1 through 10, 1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest.

The "Delay" rating is the time between the player pushes the attack button and the character performs the attack and also the time until the character can attack again. (Could also be used for how fast the "charge bar" fills up.)

The "Special Attacks" are examples for special attacks that could be performed with the weapon. They aren't meant as complete lists. There is room for many more ideas here of course.

Legend for the diagrams:

Melee Weapons

Sword

Damage: 8
Delay: Medium

Swords are very easy to handle weapons because they got a quite large damage zone. This makes it possible to hit multiple enemies with one strike.

Special Attacks:

• Lunge: A powerful stab with an extended range that hits only forward
• Whirlwind Strike: A powerful attack that hits all tiles around the character.
• Impale: The character jumps up and lands on the tile in front of him ramming his sword into the unfortunate enemy that stands there. This attack is very powerful but needs careful timing.

Axe

Damage: 10
Delay: Medium

Axes are more powerful than swords but their major drawback is that they have a very small damage zone making it harder to hit enemies and almost impossible to hit more than one enemy.

Special Attacks:

• Smash: A poweful attack inflicting splash damage (hits the enemies around the target)
• Grand Strike: An attack with the same attack zone as a sword
• Rush: The character sprints forward hitting the first enemy in line with a very powerful strike. When the character hits a wall instead of an enemy he bounces back and is stunned for a short period of time.

Polearm

Damage: 8
Delay: High

Polearms (like lances or halberds) have a very large range for a melee weapon. This makes it possible to keep enemies at a distance and attack over small obstacles. The price for this ability is a rather slow attack speed.

Special Attacks:

• Leverage: The character swirls around his weapon a bit before he attacks. the attack is more powerful due to the extra leverage, but is difficult to time.
• Cry of Death: Increases the damage dealt by shifting all tiles one damage higher. (75% becomes 100%, 50% becomes 75%, etc.) The downside is that the maximun range of the weapon is reduced by one.
• Scale of Requital: Increases the maximun range of the weapon by one, but also reduces the minimun range by two. Should only be used in desperate measure due to the long delay afterwards.

Javelin

Damage: 9
Delay: Medium

Spears have the ability to be used as both melee weapons (thrusting), and long-range weapons (throwing), both dealing large damage. The downside is that the range is limited to four directions and that the delay is rather high. Javelins also deal less damage when they are thrown.

Special Attacks:

• Throw: The character throws his weapon giving it an even greater range (we should assume that the weapon is "magically teleported back" to the user immediately. otherwise this skill would become rather expensive)
• Desperate Measures: The character swirls the Javelin around in a circle with low-range yet deals a lot of damage. Should be used only as a last resort, seeing as how there is a long delay afterwards.
• Frenzy Stab: A short range attack that hits multiple times.

Whip

Damage: 5
Delay: Low

Whips have longer range than polearms, but are unable to be used in close-combat. To compensate, they are given more speed.

Special Attacks:

• Backslash: Uses the whip twice for double damage.
• Backhand: Attack with greater force. Needs careful timing seeing as how there is a delay afterwards.
• Overhead Slice: Swing the whip over your head to hit all the enemies surrounding your character.

Dagger

Damage: 2
Delay: Low

Daggers don't do much damage and have a very small attack zone. But they have a very short delay between attacks. So they can hit enemies much more often than other weapons. The dagger is also one of the two weapons that can attack an enemy on the same spot you are standing on.

Special Attacks:

• Raid: The character sprints forward hitting all enemies he passes.
• Backstab: The character jumps over the enemy in front of him and attacks him from behind dealing much damage.
• Frenzy Stab: The dagger version of the polearm skill with the same name. Hits the enemy with even more but less powerful hits.

Staff

Damage: 2
Delay: Medium

some can cause random status effects

Jo and Bo are wooden staffs used for fighting. Some rare staffs contain magical powers inside of them. Getting smashed over the head with a staff filled with magic power can have some rather weird consequences. The more powerful the magic abilities of the staff the more often the enemy will be randomly stunned, pushed away, poisoned, petrified, healed, teleported, turned into a frog or become the victim of other weird effects. For that reason even powerful warriors resort to using staffs as melee weapons in some cases.

Fist

Damage: 1
Delay: Very-Low

weapon damage is only appled to some hits

Fist fighting includes attacking with bare hands but also with claws, brass knuckles, fist knives or similar weapons. When attacking this way the character will attack with a fast combination of kicks, punches, elbow thrusts and headbutts. The damage bonus of the weapon is only applied to the right hand punches making it much less important than other weapons. Fists are also one of the two weapons that can attack an enemy on the same spot you are standing on.

Special Attacks:

• Roundhouse Kick: Attacks all enemies around the character.
• High Kick: Powerful attack that pushes the enemy back.
• Uppercut: Powerful attack that uses the weapons damage bonus
• Shoulder Throw: Throws the enemy over the shoulder. This surprising attack doesn't do much attack and stuns the enemy for a short period of time. Doesn't work against large enemies.

Ranged Weapons

Ranged weapons do not have a damage zone like melee weapons have, because they fly forward and hit the first target they collide with. Ranged weapons should maybe have some kind of "target cursor" to allow them to be shot in any direction and not only in straight 90° angels based on the direction the player is facing.

Bow

Damage: 6
Delay: Medium

Bows are the average ranged weapon with average damage and attack speed.

Crossbow

Damage: 7
Delay: High

Crossbows are heavier than bows and take much longer to reload. But on the other hand they do much more damage.

Thrown Weapons

Damage: 8
Delay: Low

Thrown weapons like throwing knives, javelines, darts or shuriken can be used very quickly and they do quite good damage. But they are quite expensive, even considering that the character has only to buy the ammunition and no weapon.

Boomerang

Damage: 3
Delay: Low

The boomerang, strictly a thrown weapon too, has some rather unusual propertys. When it exceeded its range or hit an enemy, it comes straight back to its user. It seems to know magically where the user is (explanation: the character planned his next moves and threw the boomerang so that it comes back to the point where he wants to go). On its way back it damages all enemies it passes. So a skilled player can hit multiple enemies with one attack.