Weapon degredation

[JollyGreenGiant]

Inspired by some thoughts in another thread, I thought I'd bring up a couple of ideas of my own.

First, I think it would be nice to have weapon degredation that functions similar to armor degredation.  Of course it should still be possible to shatter a weapon, but it would be nice to see weapons fall into various states of disrepair.  Corollary to that would be a skill to repair weapons.  The chance to shatter a weapon could be based on the weapon's state of repair in addition to the hardness of the hit.

Second, I'd like to see the possibility of weapons degrading/shattering on parries in addition to hits.  That would be regarding both the offensive and defensive weapon involved in the parry, mind you, and might depend on weapon type as well.  Some weapons (forked daggers, parrying daggers, etc) are specifically designed for not only deflecting hits, but catching and breaking or disarming an opponent's weapon.  I realize that the general idea when parrying a blow under normal circumstances is to deflect the energy of the hit, which doesn't create significant stress on either the attacking or parrying weapon.  However, just because that's the intended result doesn't mean it always works as intended.  Catch a blow poorly and you could find yourself short a spear.  Or with a short spear, as the case may be...

Thoughts?

[Cuusardo]

On a hack and slash mud I used to play on years ago, weapons degraded, and you had to get them repaired periodically.  I really do like the idea, seeing as Zalanthan weapons are all made out of materials that should require more maintenance than metal would.  I'd imagine blades would dull a LOT quicker, and would need to be honed every so often.

There's an armor repair skill.  Is there also a weapon repair skill?

[Anonymous]

Sounds pretty good to me, I think most Zalanthan weapons would have three states - sharp, dull and broken.  I don't know how feasible it is to sharpen obsidian, wood, bone or other stones even though there are whetstones in game.

I wouldn't mind seeing it, I'm a whore for realism in all cases other than when it has a noticeably negative impact on playability which this wouldn't.

[amoeba]

I would like to see a lot more shattered weapons.   A pure obsidian sword hit hard on the side should  shatter like the glass it is.

[Delirium]

Just so long as everyone can re-sharpen their own weapons.

Fixing weapons would be, and should be, the province of weapon_crafters.

[Forest Junkie]

There would most likely need to be a cap on the number of times you could hone a weapon though, right?

Perhaps dependant upon skill, a highly knowledgeable weapon-crafter could effectively re-hone a weapon many times without cracking the main piece of wearing it down too much.

It's a pretty nifty idea overall. I like it.

[Agent_137]

too much hassle, i'd rather just RP it out when I think about it. Just stick with the shattering, eh?

[Synthesis]

Weapons already break on parry attempts, sometimes.  I've had it happen to me on several occasions.

[Savak]

Weapons can & do break, but for the average PC, this does not occur very often.

Weapon "degradation" or something similar has been discussed and looked into several times, and generally speaking has been a liked idea.  But a viable implementation hasn't presented itself -- breakdown, salvage, repair, prevention of breakdown, turning broken large weapons into small weapons (longsword -> halfsword -> dagger, etc.), and so forth are all nice ideas but difficult to implement in a practical, bug-free way.  Thus far.

-Savak