Bay 12 Games Forum

The basic concept's to create unique items from items at hand, that with my initial thoughts into melee weapons being constructed had me consider the general parts a weapon may be made of, that an attempt to rough out lead me to considering weapons being built up of multiple components that may or may not be present in all cases, and that these were the main components I came up with on a first pass:

Strike - May attach to a haft to provide an longer reach style of weapon such as a spear, a grip to provide a shorter reach one such as a dagger or be used alone as a improvised weapon.
Blades, spikes, bludgeons, crude attachments, things of those natures.

Haft - If no strike is present and a haft is, then the haft should define the stats of the weapon. A grip isn't required but should provide some tangiable benefit such as the improved hold on your weapon permitting you to use it more effectively.
Various poles and lengths of wood for staves and clubs, metal poles and things of these natures.

Grip - An attachment or binding to provide an increased degree of comfort using a weapon, likely translating to an improved swing speed, accuracy bonus or damage bonus to reflect how the user doesn't have to fight the weapon as well.
Leather, fabric and string bindings, moulded grips attached via glue or fastenings, things of that nature.

Guard - A sub component of the grip where applicable, providing benefits such as defence against disarming if the right kind of guard, or improving defence with the weapon. Possibility for Grip + Guard to make a pugilists weapon such as makeshift knuckle dusters?
Basket guards, cross guards, things of that nature.

Other Modifications - Permenant or temporary modifications, such as nails placed into a bat or barbed wire wrapped about it, welding spikes onto a metal club. Potential for more outlandish modifications such as blades electrification?

Construction - Method of attachment would need tracking via components, certain methods wouldn't be permitted with certain component combinations; a spearhead could be fastened or glued to a wooden shaft, but not welded to it. Possibility that some construction methods would be more fragile and repairs would be targeted.

Quality - Construction and component quality should have bearings on the potential durability and performance of an item.


Lots of work, lots of potential flags that would need to be applied to determine what can be used with what, things to track like if it's possible to attach scissors to a broom to make a makeshift piercing weapon and what stats that would gain and general tracking of used components when an item's crafted - likely better to simplify some aspects and upon creation of the item derive stats and only reaquire them when there's a change of components and have combat calls reference the derived stats instead of checking every component each time?

Calculating basic attack speed based upon components would also be a consideration, as would figuring out how weapons such as flails, whips and chains would work - would they permit a player to ensnare or defend in a different manner?

Ranged and worn items could have similar systems permitting a player to create clothing with various layers for outer/inner/padding/attached aspects so they could make an armoured coat if they pleased, or for guns to be crafted in a similar manner to melee weapons with suitable components and skills, allowing for, if the game permits it, for battery systems to replace ammunition and for lasers/ray guns if the game goes that way to be created from more sci-fi tech?

One obvious benefit would be that instead of the crafting system where recipies are already defined and only accept pre-set substitutions that the player could make something much more freely from what's at hand and potentially adapt/improve as they find better components by running them through the same crafting interface again.

The obvious downsides and things to consider are that it's an absolutely massive undertaking to create such a system from scratch and get it working with the existing game, requires additional attributes and flags to be attached to a multitude of items to permit them to be implimented, a potential nightmare statting them all so that they perform acceptably within the game and that there's the consideration of how in depth the system is and if it's going to be worth the work, add anything signifigant to the game or even be fun enough.