To better balance two handed skill with other fighting skills, the following changes will go live, Wednesday, April 2.
Two handed skill will give a more constant bonus to offense and defense.
Wielding a weapon in two hands will give half-again your strength bonus, regardless of skill.
If you have two-handed skill you can increase your damage from strength beyond this.
Delay timer between swings for people using two hands will be decreased significantly based on two handed skill.
Wielding a weapon in two hands gives a bonus if the disarmer is using a two handed weapon. Similarly, if two-handed weapon is being used by the victim, a penalty is applied to the disarm check.
If either victim or disarmer has the two handed skill (and is using a two-handed weapon) an appropriate bonus/penalty will be applied to the disarm check.
Parry will branch from two-handed skill for classes that would get parry from dual wield.
Unfortunately, it appears we can't have the same skill branch from two different skills, so for now parry will still only branch from dual wield (if it should have). We'll have to revisit two handed branching parry at a later date.
In case you haven't figured it out, this was not an April Fool's joke. It was posted on March 31st.
Now soliciting feedback on this change. If your character uses two-handed fighting, or if you've fought someone who uses two-handed fighting before and after this change, please send me your thoughts on what, if any change this has made to game play. Some questions you may want to answer:
Have you noticed any difference?
Has this change over-powered two-handed over other styles?
Is two-handed still underpowered compared to other styles?
What other ideas do you have to better balance the styles of fighting?
Send all responses to morgenes@armageddon.org, please cc: mud@armageddon.org as usual.