Your thoughts on weapons with skills

Hey there, I don’t know if this is the right category for this kind of stuff so let me know if is the wrong category to shut down and not be banned due to incorrect use of this kind of stuff.
Anyway.
I want to hear your opinion on a new feature I’m working on my 1st hack.
The idea to introduce something new and fresh today is quite… rarely to see… and well designed to put it in a hack such as what Fire Emblem The Sacred Chairs hack did with no Tower of Abuse or THWD (The Heroes We Deserve) with different prep stores.
Or (IDK BTW) the first hack to introduce the skill system in a way that really suits well.

And my idea is to give with this skill system, weapons with skills.

It might be broken at first glance but I want to hear your opinions on this fresh (maybe…) idea!
Let me explain: When I see FE GBA games, I wish that weapons have more than just common skills ( Have brave effect, devil effect, etc.) and wish to have properties like other RPG’s like:
Golden Sun Rare Weapons
Castlevania (Metroid-vania style games)
Etc,etc.
And I recreated “the weapons” of different castlevania games and give them skills in FE8 (Gameplay will be provided in video later) and tried to put them ranks to use so players will not have OP advantage on the beginning. Then let’s say this weapon:
The Muramasa FE8 - Muramasa. This is my sprite, don’t steal it.
(if you played Castlevania SOTN you will know what it does, if not… in short: when you cut or slash an enemy and bleeds, the sword has a property when you touch blood it recovers 8 or 7 HP)
and I recreated that by adding the skill life taker. This was just an example.
You can do it if you want but still this need to be tested. So… I’m ready to hear read your critics, even if those are negatives ones (remember, the idea, not me).

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Fundamentally i don’t see any kind of issue with it, at least not any more than using the skill system in the first place. Your example with a lifetaker sword probably isn’t any more broken than Nosferatu, say. The issue would, just like with the skill system itself, be clearly communicating the abilities of each weapon, balancing, and not going overboard with them so quickly that it bogs things down. If each character has a personal skill and then potentially one from their weapon, or even if you just have weapon skills, that probably won’t be too overwhelming. If you go whole hog five skills per character and then also skills on weapons, that could easily get obnoxiously dense in a hurry.

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I am a little confused with your assumption that people would be against weapons that grant skills when such things have been part of the franchise for a long time, and that skill system has the option to let you attach a skill to a weapon precisely because people thought that’d be a useful feature.

no different from a weapon with a special effect by any other means

Sorry @Devisian_Nights, I’m 'bouta end your life

It’s the same as with regular skills. Skills on weapons should be slowly introduced, easily distinguishable, and used in moderation. If these aren’t there, the player is going to have a hard time telling stuff apart. The less weapons with unique skills, and the less they’re used, the better. That’s why brave, devil, poison, life-drain weapons work well: they’re uncommon, easily distinguished by an adjective (well, except nosferatu, but that effect is on two weapons), and they’re usually not given to generic enemies that often. If an enemy has a weapon with a special effect, they’re probably someone important.

It helps for your skill weapons to be uniform as well, to help the player’s mental load: this is why bows and brave/poison weapons work well. There’s consistency in both, whether it’s all weapons of a type having an effect or all weapons with that effect sharing an adjective. You need to be careful with skill bloat just like with unit skills (e.g. giving all light magic different aura skills/buffs), but new weapon skills can definitely add more depth if they’re used responsibly.

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One nice advantage about using weapons with skills is that it’s easier to make what skill a weapon has memorable. Like you give a character a name and a portrait and neither of those necessarily help with remembering what skills that character has. While the Sol sword from Awakening has… well i don’t even need to explain what it has, it’s name is already doing that for me! (Granted, this is also helped by the fact that weapons can only ever have one skill)

Also, because weapons have durability people are going to be more wary about getting the most out of a skill weapon and are more likely to remember what it does. On top of that, any time you want to use a weapon to attack you have to specifically opt in to using it, unlike many skills which can happen passively.

I use the Skill Systems for other things besides skills (oddly enough). So I decided to give PRFs and other special weapons skills. Makes things alot more interesting. So I’m all for it lol.

as long as you don’t overwhelm your player’s with a spam of weapons with specific skills I don’t see how adding skills to weapons is a bad thing. Diversifying weapons and giving the player more freedom when it comes to weaponry has always been something I favored. Slowly introducing the weapon through enemies or through just dialogue could help the player memorize the weapons functionality with their skills more.