Is there any interest amongst the folks here in doing something about weapons that end up just not being that great no matter how you use them? The two I'm particularly interested in are the quarterstaff and the sling. These poor guys just never seem to be useful (with the exception of the exceptionally-rare Sling of Buckland, which is nice - but that's a rare ego-variety). I'd love to give these weapons some sort of functionality that would make them at least situationally useful.
Quarterstaff - This could be turned into a weapon used primarily for defense. It could grant some plain old armor class bonuses, but something more interesting would be to give it the ability to outright parry melee attacks - basically working with mechanics similar to the Protection against Evil spell, but working against all creatures instead of only evils. It would require the shield slot to be empty for this proposed added bonus. It couldn't parry -too- often, because this could be quite powerful for a simple added benefit of an entire weapon type. Still, even with a low chance, this could be very handy for characters who are using spells or ranged attacks as their primary offense. Perhaps an argument to make the chance a bit higher than exceedingly rare would be the fact that you have to give up a shield for it to work - not only missing out on some armor class, but also any resistances and other powers an ego+ shield might provide.
A special ego-variety of the quarterstaff could even have the ability to outright parry ranged attacks.
As for the sling: This one's a bit harder to think up a generic bonus for the entire weapon type. Slings are already the weakest ranged weapon, and to add insult to injury, their ammo is heavy, so you can't carry as much around with you. To counterbalance this and make the humble sling a weapon that people might actually choose to wield over the other ranged weapons, there could be a variety of somewhat-common special ammunition with an ability unique to sling ammo only: Exploding ammunition. Now, there might actually be exploding ammo out there already - if there is, let me know, but I don't recall ever seeing any. If so, exploding ammo could just be somewhat common for the sling, as opposed to the rare exploding bolts/arrows.
This exploding ammo would do a small (probably adjascent) radius attack, and could come in a variety of flavors - firestones, voltstones (electric), thunderstones(sonic, not electric), froststones, et cetera. With things like the thunderstone, and maybe some other unique things like plasma spheres, shatterstones (shards), voidstones (nexus) and such, slings could enjoy a diversity in damage brand types that the other ranged weapons don't have available. The voidstones, doing nexus damage, could even have the neat ability of having a chance to displace (phase door) the target. Brightstones (light damage) could have a chance to blind (probably mechanically causing confusion) the target. The thunderstones (sonic) could have a chance to stun.
So, the overall perks to slings would be A) Unique damage brands that are rarely resisted by enemies, B) Some unique damage brands that cause status ailments and C) a radius of damage for their branded ammo types. Thinking about it, the status-inflicting ammo would be fun even without the radius explosion effect. Maybe the common, damage-only brands would be the exploding ones, and the status-inflicting brands would be single target only. There could be some ego ammo that has a larger-than-normal radius of damage, or that does that status inflictions as well as explodes over a radius.
I know I'd buy one.
Quarterstaff - This could be turned into a weapon used primarily for defense. It could grant some plain old armor class bonuses, but something more interesting would be to give it the ability to outright parry melee attacks - basically working with mechanics similar to the Protection against Evil spell, but working against all creatures instead of only evils. It would require the shield slot to be empty for this proposed added bonus. It couldn't parry -too- often, because this could be quite powerful for a simple added benefit of an entire weapon type. Still, even with a low chance, this could be very handy for characters who are using spells or ranged attacks as their primary offense. Perhaps an argument to make the chance a bit higher than exceedingly rare would be the fact that you have to give up a shield for it to work - not only missing out on some armor class, but also any resistances and other powers an ego+ shield might provide.
A special ego-variety of the quarterstaff could even have the ability to outright parry ranged attacks.
As for the sling: This one's a bit harder to think up a generic bonus for the entire weapon type. Slings are already the weakest ranged weapon, and to add insult to injury, their ammo is heavy, so you can't carry as much around with you. To counterbalance this and make the humble sling a weapon that people might actually choose to wield over the other ranged weapons, there could be a variety of somewhat-common special ammunition with an ability unique to sling ammo only: Exploding ammunition. Now, there might actually be exploding ammo out there already - if there is, let me know, but I don't recall ever seeing any. If so, exploding ammo could just be somewhat common for the sling, as opposed to the rare exploding bolts/arrows.
This exploding ammo would do a small (probably adjascent) radius attack, and could come in a variety of flavors - firestones, voltstones (electric), thunderstones(sonic, not electric), froststones, et cetera. With things like the thunderstone, and maybe some other unique things like plasma spheres, shatterstones (shards), voidstones (nexus) and such, slings could enjoy a diversity in damage brand types that the other ranged weapons don't have available. The voidstones, doing nexus damage, could even have the neat ability of having a chance to displace (phase door) the target. Brightstones (light damage) could have a chance to blind (probably mechanically causing confusion) the target. The thunderstones (sonic) could have a chance to stun.
So, the overall perks to slings would be A) Unique damage brands that are rarely resisted by enemies, B) Some unique damage brands that cause status ailments and C) a radius of damage for their branded ammo types. Thinking about it, the status-inflicting ammo would be fun even without the radius explosion effect. Maybe the common, damage-only brands would be the exploding ones, and the status-inflicting brands would be single target only. There could be some ego ammo that has a larger-than-normal radius of damage, or that does that status inflictions as well as explodes over a radius.
I know I'd buy one.
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