-tweaking weapons for balance and stuff-
On whips, I mentioned earlier that changing the whip to edged and adjusting stats such as penetration and contact area made it effective for causing light scratches and breaking bones of unarmored targets, but it would uselessly ping against armor due to the huge contact area and minimal --ie, 1--penetration.
What if all blunt weapons were changed to edged with 1 penetration? The contact area is kept the same, so the force is kept into a small area, but penetration is terrible, which would make any hits to armor translate as blunt. I assume the small contact area would let warhammers and such be more effective than the edged whip against armor. Against unarmored targets I don't know how it'd do. Penetration is bad, but there's the small point and cutting edge to take into account.
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So rather than make a useless brainstorming post I made a quick testing weapon to try in arena. The vanilla warhammer copy-pasta'd with the changes made. Ignore the // comments and the extra attack I put in, that was my own earlier tweaking for flavor.
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HAMMER_EDGED]
[NAME:edged hammer:edged hammers]
[SIZE:400]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:37500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:32500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:1:bash:bashes:head:2000] //increasing contact to 100 renders the bash attack useless against armored targets, and causes the AI to prefer the blunt claw attack for its lower contact area maybe? They seem to use the claw alot.
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:1:strike:strikes:claw:2000] //it's that curved back part of the hammer head. originally edged, changed to BLUNT because EDGE gets more priority apparently. now it's just flavor.
Trying it out with a fully kitted steel hammerdwarf with grandmaster stats in fighting, armor user, hammers, etc, just to make sure you can't lop off limbs with this weapon.
Trying on an unarmored kobold, and it works like a hammer. Breaks bones, also can tear skin. I tried hitting the kobold's ear and tore the cartilage. On the now unconscious kobold a hit to the lower body tears skin, bruises muscle, bruises nervous tissue, and breaks the spine. Bashing his thumb tore the skin, broke the nail, and got lodged in the wound. Unrealistic, but whatever. Bashing in the throat tears it. Killed the 'bold with a headshot.
Testing on a dwarf w/ copper armor now. Hammer breaks bones and bruises as normal. Killed with a headshot.
Testing on a dwarf with steel armor now. The steel hammer continues to be effective, despite being edged and going up against the same material it's made of. Killed w/ headshot.
Testing against adamantine armor. Still good. Chips bones and everything, despite edged and being inferior quality metal. Again, headshotted.
So, it looks like changing blunt weapons to edged is a viable, not game breaking change. Probably could change the morningstar as well by lowering the penetration but not down to a critical level like 1, to better simulate a mace covered in spikes. Haven't done extensive comparison between edged and blunt hammers, and more testing could be done against things like bigger targets, or with lower skill levels, or seeing how a higher contact area changes the effectiveness.
