I'd prefer block and parry, instead of shield and block. But that's just semantics. But I think it would be more self-explanatory.

Damn, how could anyone want axes and blunt to be in the same category? That was one of the worst things they did in Oblivion.

Weapon Categories

1. One-handed Swords, two-handed swords, daggers
Damage type: Pierce and slash
Secondary effects:
A. Bleeding (DOT) ----- (higher rate of occurance)
B. Massive Wound (much improved DOT) ----- (low rate of occurance)
***note: Daggers sacrifice damage for weapon speed


2. One-handed and two-handed clubs, hammers, maces, staves
Damage type: Primarily blunt...some special maces with spikes can additionally have piercing
Secondary effects:
A. Stun ----- (higher rate of occurance)
B. Either Knockdown or Knockback ----- (low rate of occurance)
ba. Knockdown if strike is a vertical swing originating from above the head
bb. Knockback if strike is a horizontal swing going from side to side.


3. One handed and two handed axes and polearms
Damage type: Slashing
Secondary effects:
A. +5 chance to crit ----- passive
B. Dismemberment ----- (VERY low rate of occurance)
***note: Polearms sacrifice weapon speed for reach


Difference between one-handed and two-handed weapons of same type (ie a two-handed sword versus a one-handed sword)
Answer: Two-handed flavors of the weapon category have a greater rate of incidence of Secondary effect B. (ie Massive Wound, Knockback/Knockdown, and Dismemberment) in addition to the expected increase of damage in the two-handed versions.


Scale for next section, from best to worst
1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Average
4. Below Average
5. Poor
6. No effect


Pros and Cons of each damage type
A. Slashing
Pro: excellent against flesh
Con: poor against heavily armored creatures, poor against undead

B. Pierce
Pro: good against flesh, average against heavily armored creatures
Cons: poor against undead

C: Blunt
Pro: Excellent against undead, good against heavily armored creatures, average against flesh
Cons: Tend to be heavier therefore slower to swing and damage range does not go as high as equivalent slashing weapons, most creatures are fleshies


Categories to play with within each class of weapons
A. Weapon speed - time it takes to complete a swing
B. Damage - top number of damage
C. Damage variance - range of damage ie 16-30
***note: the better the damage variance, the closer the lesser number is to the higher number in the range. ie 5-21 versus 18-21

Weapons and the general rules they adhere to
Daggers: Excellent weapon speed, Poor damage, Good variance
Swords: Good weapon speed, Good damage, Good variance
Hammers, maces, clubs, staves: Below Average weapon speed, Average damage, Excellent variance
Axes, Polearms: Average weapon speed, Excellent damage, Below Average variance


Lastly, ranged weapons such as bows and crossbows are not mentioned because they can have any form of damage type depending on their ammunition.
An additional penalty (% rate) on their Secondary Effects can be considered to balance this.


Discuss...

Fair point. I won't contest that.



Considering that you were striving for realism with weapons, it seems odd to me you would advocate the idea of making a non-magical healing skill just as useful as a magical one. Seriously, bandaging your wounds wouldn't realistically make them all disappear in seconds like Restoration does, but in order to make it equal to Restoration, it would have to. Unfortunately, bandaging your wounds doesn't (and can't) get the same "it's magical" excuse Restoration does, so it would come across as unrealistic and unbelievable. There's no need for making two identical skills, especially if you have to make one completely unrealistic to do it.



Because Oblivion was the last TES game? And because I don't want to take three separate skills just to talk to people effectively. I would like to be good at multiple things, not waste a quarter of my skills on what used to take 1/7th of them or 1/10th.



Can you please explain what Thaumaturgy is, then, and why it is the opposite of Daedric (which is presumably Conjuration)? It's rather hard to discuss it if I don't know what it is?



First off, if you're referring to Morrowind, I assume the reason they didn't make the Sneak animation better is because of technical limitations. If you're referring to Oblivion, why are you trying to rob a store when the owner is inside it?

Also, why shouldn't you have to be sneaky to be a thief? What's the difference? That's like saying "you shouldn't have to be skilled with weapons to be a fighter" or "you shouldn't have to be good at magic to be a mage." Stealth goes hand in hand with being a thief.



Once again, splitting these skills is completely arbitrary. If you use two-handed weapons, you're only going to take Block, and if you use one-handed weapons, you'll take Shield. In that regard, it's pointless to split up Block and Shield.

If you're trying to be good with both two-handed and one-handed weapons, you would then have to level up both Shield and Block. Effectively, if I wanted to be good with both Sword and Greatsword, I would need to take four skills. That seems needlessly punitive towards people who want to be good at both one-handed and two-handed weapons.



That's a personal style choice, and I can't really argue that. I personally like to be good with most types of weapons, and a list like this makes it nearly impossible to do so without filling up just about all of your skill slots.



Um, the fact that if you wanted to go somewhere fast, you could just hop on your horse and do it. You didn't need to take a separate skill just to use the only reliable form of fast transportation into the wilderness in the game.



Yes, but I do. I can tell you right now that any Dodge skill would be pointless to take, because you can override it with your player skill without any trouble whatsoever. Why should I waste a skill slot when I can just develop a little finesse with the arrow keys?



That's actually a pretty cool idea, assuming Bethesda makes wilderness travel more detailed and forces you to eat to survive. But, certain aspects of it bother me. Tracking? Didn't you just suggest that Security does that too? Concealing yourself in the wild? Isn't that what Sneak is for?

There's something called shoplifting in which you swipe something when the owner is looking the other way. It's more of a sleight of hand thing than a sneak thing. Same with pickpocketing. Theft can cover those both.

Shades is right, sneak and theft should be separate. And difficulty should go down the bigger the crowd gets.

So, basically a skill for petty theft that nabs you like 15 gp? Sounds pretty lame and useless. Why shouldn't I just forego pickpocketing in favor of robbery?

Making petty theft separate from stealth (which nets you real money) would be like making a Frost Spells skill separate from Destruction. Frost Spells are a small aspect of Destruction that add to it as a whole, but as their own skill they wouldn't be worth taking.

What's lame is "streamlining" skills to the most viable (killing variety and, therefore, killing replayability) because you only play the game one way each time.

You can swipe anything as all stealing would be governed by the theft skill. It's only useless if you only make straight combat oriented characters. Which is your problem. Let us roleplay in our roleplaying game.

Let there be some difficulty in our roleplaying game. It makes it too easy if I'm given 12 skill slots because I'm expected to want a bunch of useless skills, but I just get to spend them on the best and use player skill to circumvent the rest. Every skill should be equally useful; it's bad design to make some skills good and others crappy for the sake of roleplaying.

The theft skill would be useless compared to sneak and security. Hmm, would I rather be able to swipe like, 15 gold at a time, or be able to break into stores and rob them blind for over a thousand?

Do not agree here.

In crowd there are more people around to catch you pickpocketing...but you are correct that the victim is maybe less likely to be able to catch you himself.

To reconcile these two factors, create two states NPCs could be when in a crowd.
A. Undisctracted crowd member: less easy to steal from victim because surrounding crowd members will spot you.
B. Distracted crowd member: easier to steal from victim because crowd is distracted by something occuring in the environment. ie. an explosion somewhere or someone (away from your location) is getting killed, etc.

Generally it should still be easier to steal from someone when you and the victim are alone and they are not aware of your presence.

Define "wooden" and "steel" spear. When I said wooden earlier, it was a mere reference to the fact a spear, no matter what material the head is made of, is mostly wooden, as opposed to a sword.

Anyways, let's assume it's really a very cheap spear with a stone head or simply a pointy stick, and compare it to a spear with a steel head: It would break more easily, be much weaker, but due to the lower weight, very slightly faster. So, if speed is the only thing you care about, it would be a better weapon. Since situations in which only speed counts are rare, it's probably useful in less situations.

A steel dagger is heavier, slower, less sharp and easier to break than a daedric dagger. Maybe it is longer though? Maybe there are two different "steel daggers", one of which is longer?

The problem with your question is that it ignores that I was talking about certain situations.

Is a daedric spear worse than a steel sword and wooden shields?
Yes, if you fight an archer.

Or maybe with a modern example: Is a gun made from cheap materials worse than a high tech gun? Depends on the type of gun, and the situation. A high tech pistol is certainly worse than a cheap rifle on long ranges.
It's just that I'm saying material should not be the only thing influencing how good the weapon is. And that materials have advantages and disadvantages. For example, a certain way to build a machine gun might be very reliable, but also cause a lower rate of fire. Another way could be cheaper, but allow a faster fire rate until the weapon eventually overheats. Both ways to build the gun, representing the materials, have advantages and disadvantages.



I disagree. Being aware of your presence is harder when there's alot of people around.
And stealing while in a crowd does not look like stealing when your victim is alone.
When your victim is alone and you don't want to be noticed at all, you want the victim to look elsewhere, sneak to it without making any noise, grab the item you want, and disappear.
When you're in a crowd, you might for example talk to someone for a while until it seems as if you were friends to someone who watches the scene. Then you shake the hand of the person and walk off, stealing something while shaking the hand. Others might SEE it, but they might not realize it is actually a crime you just commited. They just won't pay attention to that detail. That's one example. There's many things you can do in a crowd, like "accidentally" walking into someone, start talking alot while helping him up and letting your hand slip in his pocket. Others WILL see that, but they won't notice what exactly you did there - if you did it well. This might actually have much to do with speechcraft, and I wouldn't mind that being one approach of stealing: Talking to a person, distracting him/her with your speechcraft skill (or streetwise or etiquette or whatever), and when you have him distracted enough, trying to steal with your security skill - being made easier by how well you distracted the person. Or you could try without distracting, which is more risky and works worse in groups, but doesn't require you to have a high charisma and speechcraft.

Well, that's why whether or not you are currently visible would also factor in when checking your theft skill. However, if someone is looking in your direction. It's all about how distracted they are, as you said.

This has the potential to get really in depth, but generally, if people are aware of your presence, then the busier the room or street, the easier it is to swipe something. That's when shoplifters strike, when the store is really busy.

Maybe it should work this way:
Instead of the crowd directly affecting your theft skill, it should affect how distracted the people in the crowd are, then the distraction is what affects your theft success.

The bigger the crowd, the more distracted everyone in the crowd is. However, if you do something suspicious, like sneak around, some people will ignore distractions and focus on you. So, in a big crowd, where it's hard not to be seen, sneaking can work against your theft success instead of for it.

So sneaking is a good idea in a dark alley stalking one person, or entering someone's house while they're home. But for shoplifting during open hours and pickpocketing, it's better not to sneak.

FYI: sneaking is more about moving quietly so someone can't hear you coming, it really doesn't effect how easy you are to spot, in real life. That's determined entirely by lighting and your clothes and spells.


EDIT: but this is terribly off-topic, sorry.

They would be useful in different ways, and I wouldn't let bandages or medical healing help you instantly. With Oblivion and Morrowind using a system of short term fatigue, and Oblivion using regenerating magic, the player never had to sleep if they had a healing spell. Rest was really a lot less useful. With magical healing scaled back and included in a smaller way with Thaumaturgy, you'll still have to depend on rest to get yourself back to full strength. If times and dates are important again the next game, the time you lose has consequences.

Streetwise and Etiquette need to be separate because they also include the cultural aspects and stress the difference between the upper and lower classes. I would see diplomacy working the way the extra speech options in Mass Effect did. It gives you more solutions so you'd make things go your way.

It's the ability to make miracles, or as applied to the TES world, Aedric aligned skills. Daedric would include conjuration, as well as other spells influenced by the daedra. This works well under the name Daedric (the language skill in Daggerfall) because

I was referring to both of them. Theft under the speed skill would be more like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hboPd9GzJxg&feature=related.

Plenty of people rob banks in daylight. I don't think of pickpocketing or robbing stores without being caught is the same as being sneaky or unnoticed, though I'd like sneak to be more geared toward having people not take notice of you rather than being invisible.

Block isn't a separate skill. You don't take it because you block with whatever is in your hands as part of the skill of whatever is in your hands. If you're holding a sword, you block with your sword skill. If you're holding a shield, you block with your shield skill.



Now if a skill was thrown in there for that, then some people could be really good at increasing their horse's speed and endurance, and their effective control of the horse during mounted combat.

Actually my worry is that everyone would always take dodge because almost every character needs it. If you can maneuver in the next game out of combat distance in such a way that the enemy usually swings and misses you, then maybe they should rework that.

I was thinking of having a bit of a split between the urban aspects and the wild. Outdoorsman would help you do those things better in the wild.

That's been possible since Daggerfall. In Daggerfall, a good stategy to combat is to attack while backing away from your enemy. When the dodge skill was in Daggerfall, it was pretty much useless compared to actually dodging. How would they rework being able to move out of your enemies' range?

Your positions make quite a bit more sense now than they did before, although I still disagree. If you would like to continue our debate, we should do it over PMs. This thread is about weapons in TES V; we're getting off topic.

If the enemies are generally better and lunging at you when you backpedal and have quick attacks to catch you when you're close, it would reduce the player's dodging ability. It would also help to not have attacks stun the crud out of people.

Rock on.

1. Blade = 1h Swords. 2h Swords. Daggers(dags Can be dual wielded seems logical). etc.

2. Blunt = 1h or 2h Mace/Club/Staff/Maul/Sledgehammers etc.

3. Poleaxe= Polearms, Halberds, and 1h/2h Axes. etc. (possibly Dual Wield small 1h axes? or is that going too far from TES?)

4. Fists Weapons = Barehands, Claws, Studded Gloves, Brass(or other material) Knuckles. etc. (can be dual wielded obviously)

5. Ranged = Long Bows, Short Bows, Crossbows, Throwing Knives/Stars, Darts, Primitive Guns etc.



seems to cover everything I hope Dual Wielding is finally brought in for very small weapons.

Sorry daughter helped me post before I finished.

Having too many weapon skills devalues each individual skill yet having weapon diversity offers more in-depth gameplay. The problem I have with weapons in Oblivion is all of the types were governed by strength, so magic or stealth classes had to worry about putting points into strength attribute if you wanted to use a melee weapon. Weapons could be broken into blades, axes, blunts, staffs, hand to hand and ranged. I like spears but I would group them as a member of staffs and and yes all the ranged is group but I'll explain why I suggest it in a moment. Having hand to hand enhancing weapons, brass knuckles like, would be nice and allow enchants.

Ok a two handed blade would have a different style then one handed, similarly the staff would handle different than the spear. Instead of a single governing attribute I would prefer it if agility of speed would govern small one handed weapons and while strength would govern the two handed. So if you leveled blades using a dagger you would get bonus to agility or speed attribute and likewise strength bonus multiplier for a claymore. It would be something like this

Skill--------------Type----------Governing attribute

Blade---------Two handed-----------Strength
Blade---------One handed------------Speed

Axe-----------Two handed------------Strength
Axe-----------One handed-----------Strength

Staff-----------Two handed-----------Intellect
Staff--------------Spear-------------Endurance

Blunt----------Two handed-----------Strength
Blunt----------One handed-----------Agility

Marksman--------Bow-----------------Agility
Marksman-----Crossbow-------------Strength
Marksman-------Throw----------------Speed

Hand to hand---Fist weapon----------Agility
Hand to Hand---Magic imbued--------Intellect

These are just examples and would need edited/balanced, but this would allow a player to select a mage or assassin type character and not feel forced to put attribute points into strength to wield a weapon. Instead of having three weapon skills that play the similar you have very different styles that play and feel different, but not having dozens of weapon skills dominating the skill list.

One thing I would really like to see (aside from the aforementioned variety) is a remodeling of the hand to hand skill. In morrowind it was pretty much useless, and in oblivion it was a bit better but still wasn't nearly useful enough to build a character around. You could do some specials such as knockdown or disarming, but it didn't happen enough to be effective and the only way to really kill an enemy with hand to hand is to backpedal until they use all their fatigue swinging at you, then punch them and make them pass out. At that point, you can stand over them and punch them for 5 mins until they die. It was completely useless against multiple enemies, it just took to long.

I would like to see a hand to hand skill that did as much damage as normal weapons, but applied it to fatigue. You could then use knuckle weapons to transfer a portion of that damage to health damage or increase the overall amount of damage you do. It should have some unique, context based specials that are unlocked as you increase your hand to hand skill such as disarming, throwing (throw them to the ground, deal damage and they have to get up), knockouts (maybe a power attack could act like a drain fatigue spell, so for a split second their fatigue hits 0 and they slump to the ground), etc. This will make it a lot easier to take down both single opponents and multiple opponents, because you have a lot more ways of disabling your opponents (even if your ability to kill them is still limited). A solid hand to hand fighter may not be able to kill the 3 necromancers trying to kill him, but he can maybe throw one over the edge of a cliff, start hitting another and knock him down with a punch quick enough for him to run to the third and grab their staff from them, punch them a bit, knock them down, and wail on the second guy until he is totally knocked unconscious, deal with the third in a similar manner, then maybe break their necks or suffocate them while they are knocked out or just continue on with 1 dead and 2 knocked out (or 3 dead if that's your play style)

longbows with built in zoom capability. So you can zoom without being journeyman of marksman. But make them hard to come by, say make them standard issue for guards and legion archers. Also it would need to be very powerful, this would give more incentive for picking marksman as a main skill. In my opinion archery was one of the aspects of oblivions combat that was done very well. Also as many have no doubt said, more unique and interesting weapons. some of my favorites were actually the less powerful weapons, like fine steel mace, club, and elven shortsword. So perhaps more diversity in weapon stats, give some of the less expensive materials an edge over the fancy ones, like increased durability (dwarven weapons and armor should be much better because they are created by master craftsmen, why is daedric so great just because it comes from oblivion?) The last statement is just an opinion, not taking any shots at daedric weapons/armor. Also more materials for the different races, like something for Argonians and Khajiit, Orcish weapons, and if the game takes place in Skyrim it would be exquisite if the Nords had their own style of weapons and armor, no doubt similar to what the Vikings used.

as an archery buff, i'm really surprised at the misconceptions about historical longbows and archers...

everyone seems to think archers were dainty little agile ninjas...in reality longbows of the middle ages had a 100 lb to 150 lb draw (compared to modern recurve bows' 40 lb to 75 lb), meaning archers were usually built more like body-builders than purse-snatchers.

i will agree that the bow-wielding thief has become standard in fantasy settings, but i would like a compromise. perhaps an agile, stealth-based thief would have to draw the bow for 5 or 6 seconds in order to get it to full draw, meaning a slower rate of fire (albeit with more precise aiming), while a strength-oriented character could let fly more arrows in quick succession, with less accuracy?

again, crossbows could negate this aspect a little... although, has anybody here besides me ever cocked a crossbow before? not easy.

dont know if this is right or not, but werent dwarven armours not actually armour made by dwarves, but pieces of dwarven contraptions fashioned into armour by the other races?

The draw weight on a longbow is approximately 500lbf, on a crossbow there was no draw just a hair trigger (1lbf?)

I think you got these the wrong way round

Kinda raises the question though, with everybody going on about realism in combat, would you be willing to accept that a character needs a huge amount of strength to effectively fire a bow? Even a shortbow would take some amount of strength. Archers of the middle ages were hunchbacked freaks with their drawing arm twice the size of the other because of all their training

That would be... AWESOME. Would it not be cool to have a character with one arm twice the size of the other?

Yes in reality but in Nirn you can jump over walls and run as fast as horses...

Given, but that's the point. If we're gonna penalize certian weapon styles with the laws of physics, it's all or none