This suggestion is for a more immersive gameplay experience by changing the visual, static values of items into a more interpretive value.
This blurs the lines of Good/better/best and leaves room for a more immersive experience through trial and error and a sense of vision through a character.
Examples:
This scenario a character is faced with using either a bat, a crowbar or a pipe. With the current system no matter the skill level or the situation we can look at each individual weapon and chose its inherent bonuses and any penalties we may incur with using each weapon. Such as a bash of 13 for the pipe with a +3 hit modifier or the bat with a 24 or 28 depending on the material with another +3. and the crowbar is different again with a 16 bash and a 3 cut with a +2 to hit. Clearly the bat will win out every time because it’s better in every way except weight, and even then that’s negligible when confronted with killing enemies as quickly as possible.
Blurring these traits would remove the obvious values like a bash of 13 or 28 or 16 and introduce an ambiguous value (not precise, open for interpretation) that is based more on the user’s skill. We’ll assume an individual with no intrinsic knowledge of bashing weapons at all. His or her view on what weapon would be better is subject to opinion more than anything. instead of a value of 13 for the pipe it would instead be something like ‘Harmful’ or ‘Serviceable’ or even as far as ‘Okay’, something that doesn’t tell you that this is an amazing weapon, but you feel it could work. The crowbar instead would use a word that describes that the weapon could deal more damage without explicitly telling you so like ‘Good’ or ‘Sturdy’ or something. Even assigning these in a range so anything from 14-18 bash would be considered ‘Good’. The baseball bat could be categorized as ‘Excellent’ for its bash or ‘Dangerous’
Of course this would be subject to skill. The better you are with the skill involved (Here its bash) the more accurate you can determine the worth of a particular item. Someone with 0 skill might not really see the difference between the pipe and crowbar, giving them both ‘Okay’ values. But someone with +4 skill would know that the crowbar is just a bit better, a bit heftier than the pipe and assign them ‘Poor’ and ‘okay’ respectively.
This would translate across the entire game, cutting your need on looking at these static values and more about cultivating your character and relying on skills instead.
Ideas? thoughts?
