Based on this thread about balancing different playstyles and weapon builds, I would like to talk about a fourth playstyle to balance against the others: unarmed.

Right now, it's rather nice early-game, but quickly overshadowed by enchanted weapons. One way to go with unarmed would be to make the player automatically use a kick attack every time he attacks unarmed. This would make the playstyle rather distinct, giving three attacks per turn with a chance the last attack (kick) will knock back the enemy (forceing them to move next to you again), while balancing it by retaining the lower damage per hit unarmed already has.

Another way, very cool, very flavourful, but very code-heavy, would be to introduce unarmed martial arts, learnable from special NPCs. Ideally, you could learn several martial art stances from different NPCs, each giving specific bonuses when fighting unarmed, but all mutually exclusive, ie. you would need a menu to switch from one stance to another. This is to prevent minor bonuses from several stances to snowball into overpowered unarmed.

Example stance effects:

* Getting automatic kick while fighting unarmed, as described above, could be one stance. You could also get boosted knockback from kicks while in this stance, knocking the monsters many tiles back. (Fighting Warhorse Style)

* Stance allowing you to block weapon strikes unarmed. Very useful indeed. (Indomitable Jade Mountain Style)

* Stance that increases your attack speed and accuracy as you land blows - successfully hitting a monster would grant a short buff, stacking over subsequent hits, thus making you more effective in prolongued fights where you land many blows.

* Defensive stance giving you a bonus chance to dodge any attack, moving you to random empty adjacent square. This would both result in less attacks landed against you and sometimes give you some breathing space by giving you a free move, but could also mess with your positioning by moving you randomly (though you could prevent this by switching the stance off). The dodges should never move you into a lake or known trap, and would be useless with no empty square around you. (Bending Reed in the Wind Style)

* Berserker-like stance that massively boosts your unarmed damage while you're hurt - the more HP you're missing, the more damage you do, maybe giving even more damage boost for missing limbs. This stance is obviously double-edged and situational. (Bloody Hands of Cruentus Style)

Of course, this rework to unarmed would require its own subsystem, so it's easier to propose than actually implement.

BTW, I think gauntlets already add their enchantment to unarmed attacks?

I would very much like for different palystyles to all be relevant and more or less balanced, because it feels good to be able to pick a different playstyle/weapon/equipment each game and not feel underpowered or as if playing a challenge game.

Right now, I think dual wielding and two-handing are quite balanced. Early to mid-game, using two-hander is very powerful, while dual wielding is always powerful. You can sometimes dual wield two-handed weapons by end-game, but this is OK, IMHO.

Sword-and-board definitely needs a buff, simply because you do no damage with your shield, while you can block with you weapons. There are three thoughts on improving shields I had:

* We could increase the gap in block value between shields and all other weapons. This would make shields much more useful, but I'm not sure it's the best way to go - right now, blocking seems very well balanced and getting hit more often without a shield could easily make the game very much harder to play, basically inverting the current problem into making sword-and-board the only best strategy.

* Quoting myself:


In addition, we could make all shields take less stamina per block than any weapon, with heavy shields taking next to 0 stamina. This would be probably my preferred method, because we don't need to rebalance blocking value, while making shields useful. Weapons could carry you through fights by blocking hits, but you would not be able to fight that long, because you would be loosing stamina quickly. With a shield, you would be able to last much longer, loosing only minimal stamina. Thus dual wielding or two-hander builds would be good for very aggresive playstyle, because you have more damage but need to kill things quickly and then regain stamina, while shield builds would be good for defensive builds who can fight for a very long time in one go.

* We could give shields a shield bash attack. This again should be balanced not to transform shields into just another weapon. Maybe the shield bash could be a bit like a kick, doing less damage than most weapons, but having a chance to knock back the enemy? That could be quite useful in many situations.

Also, thinking about different playstyles, I would like to add a fourth playstyle to balance against the others: unarmed. Right now, it's rather nice early-game, but quickly overshadowed by enchanted weapons. One way to go with unarmed would be to make the player automatically use a kick attack every time he attacks unarmed. This would make the playstyle rather distinct, giving three attacks per turn with a chance the last attack (kick) will knock back the enemy (forceing them to move next to you again), while balancing it by retaining the lower damage per hit unarmed already has. BTW, I think gauntlets already add their enchantment to unarmed attacks?

Do blocked attacks cost stamina, like attacking does? If not, it should, because blocking enemy strikes would definitely be taxing.

Which gets me to my point - we could make heavy shields more worth the hassle. Light shields are better because of their accuracy, thus blocking more blows. Heavy shields, on the other hand, could drain less stamina per attack blocked, because of their increased bulk and stability. Thus you could pick to wear a heavy shield and loose only very little stamina from all the blocked attacks.

If you wear a shield at all, that is.

Is that a question whether the doors or ToX were changed to ebony? Not yet, they are still iron.

I have several suggestions for ToX.

Also a question: Is it intentional that doors in ToX are very hard to destroy by kicking? Doors in GC are made of granite (strength 55), while ToX has iron doos (strength 100), thus making it very hard to get into rooms with locked doors by destroying the door, especially early into ToX /or if you haven!t found pickaxe to dig around the door). Is that a design choice? If not, what about changing the door material to eg. ebony?

Yeah, I wouldn't take sickles away from Seges.

EDIT:

And here we go.

Me neither, but I understand the game balance.

OK, I'm not touching long swords. What about flaming swords? I still find it wierd to have them aligned to Crunetus when all good angels use them. On the other hand, so does Xinroch...

Farming sounds more as Seges than Loricatus, but OK.

I like the idea of each god having his own weapon his priests would be using, plus having the spear be the weapon of the learned is just cool flavour. An elegant weapon, of a more civilized age. (Why spear? Well, why frogs?)

I understadn that concern. Cruentus gets at least the battle axe in return. Loricatus still favour many, many things. Giving Atavus some aligned armor is just a thought that occured to me because of the recent change to let him enchant armor.

BTW, I just now checked and Atavus no longer has a championship gift. He enchants the armor you have instead.

Aligned/attached items can be (rarely) gifted by the given god when you pray to her, and grant slightly more piety when you sacrifice them at an altar. As I said, it would be mostly a flavour change, to make weapon alignment correspond to your stories and in-game lore. Players probably wouldn't notice much.

I was looking at the attached gods of various weapons and armor, and there are several I think could warrant a change to make more sense than now. This would be mostly flavour change to allow priests of all gods to wield aligned weapon (most priest do now, but some gods with no priests so far also ahve no aligned weapons), and for all gods to gift their weapons.

Long sword should be attached to Valpurus, not Cruentus. Justifier is a long sword, all Attnamese guards wield a long sword, all good angels use a long sword, yet Valpurus has no aligned weapon (discountig Justifier, which is a special artifact). This wouldn't upset the balance of gaining favour with Valpurus much, as we can see with Morty and his scythes.

Spear should be attached to Sophos. This is because he has no aligned weapon, bur Vermis is attached to him. Also so that the scholar-knight of Sophos can use their terrible martial art of Keihäs-Käyttö.

(Battle) axe should be attached to Cruentus, not Loricatus. Loricatus as a smith god has hammers and pickaxes, but why axes? Axe makes much more sense as a weapon of Cruentus, IMO.

Mace should be given to Legifer. Mortifer has Neerc Se-ulb, while Legifer should have Turox (see below), but Legifer has no other weapons while Morty has scythes.

Thunder hammer should definitely go to Loricatus. Magical hammers for the smith god. No question.

Flaming sword should probably be aligned with either Valpurus or Legifer. As said above, swords and Valpurus seem like a good match, but fire and Legifer is also good. As flaming swords are used by good angels, they don't make much sense aligned to Cruentus.

Weeping blade is now aligned to Scabies. As it's mostly made of crystal, maybe it would be better as a weapon of Silva? Maybe not? I'm not sure on this one.

Finally, Turox should be changed to a weapon of Legifer. This is mostly because of this story by Ischaldirh which I adapted to replies for lady Decora, so Turox was blessed by Legifer and should be his aligned weapon. Thus maces could also become weapons of Legifer, as said above.

As for armors, it makes good sense to give all chain/plate mails to Loricatus, but with the new changes of Atavus enchanting armor, armor becomes a bit of a theme for Atavus. Maybe he could be given gauntles, boots, belts and/or shields, to have a change to give those? It would also make sense, because Santa Atavus needs gauntlets and boots, or his limbs will freeze off in his secret Fortress of Solitude northern fortress.

Would you agree to those changes?