Weaponry: Chain Weapons and Shields

                                            

                                     One major element of Fire Emblem is its weapons. In my game there’s been a few changes to how weapons are done. Like I mentioned in my “Familiar Mechanics” post I’m bringing back weapon durability and weapon effects from Fates. I’m bringing back weapon durability because Thracia's capture system wouldn’t work if weapon durability didn’t exist. I’m also bringing back the weapon effects system from Fates because like I said in my post about Conquest’s gameplay the idea is inherently good and lends room to thought provoking strategy but the execution in that game was off. Here I intend to add some polish to that system because I truly believe that a polished version of the weapon effects system could have a positive impact on the series.

                                                   The Dark Crusade has the greatest variety of weapons in the series bar none. Every weapon rank has at least 5 weapon ranks, some of them have 7. The main reason for this has to do with the changes made to the weapon rank system. In the old games you had to whack an enemy unit a certain number of times before your weapon rank upgraded. Here weapon ranks go up every 10 levels. In case you forgot there are 40 levels per tier so you’re essentially gaining 3 weapon ranks in every tier. The way I imagine experience gains will go it’ll take a while before you get a new weapon rank so there’s that to take into consideration. Obviously this is all speculation and we won’t know for sure until playtesting begins.

                                                   Each weapon starts out with having different weapon subcategories. Each “subcategory” is designed to serve a different role. Let’s use lances as an example. Within the category of lances you have:

• Naginatas
• Yari
• The regular lances from the previous games
• Javelins 
  
  
  
  
  

                            Naginatas boost defense and resistance but have lower might and lower the user’s strength. Yari boost your strength and have higher might, but they lower your defense and resistance. The “regular lances” from previous games like the Iron Lance, Steel Lance and Silver Lance usually boost your stats during the Player Phase but then leave you vulnerable during the Enemy Phase. These lances though are one-handed weapons so you can equip them alongside shields (more will be explained about that later). Javelins have 1 - 2 range and can be equipped alongside shields but they usually come with a cost. I’m still working on what that cost is, but you get the idea. The higher the weapon rank the more powerful the stats and abilities get.

                                

                              Chain Weapons: A lot of people are curious about how chain weapons work. This is completely understandable since this is a new weapon type unique to only this game. I thought it’d be nice to finally answer these questions. Chain weapons so far encompass weapons like the kusari fundo, the kusari gama, flails, and the two / three section staff weapons (of which nunchaku are one variant and yes nunchaku were used as real life weapons). There are also a lot of sickle weapons included here too (still unsure about whether scythes should count as chain weapons or as lances. I might count them as chain weapons just so chains could have the necessary variety needed for this game). Below is a rough draft outline of pros and cons of chain weapons: 

Pros

• Stun & Disarm Utility: Many chain weapons in real life were used to either immobilize an enemy or disarm them. Naturally I wanted the chain weapons in my game to reflect this. “Stun” here means that the victim cannot move or counterattack for an entire phase. Once that phase is over they’re back to normal. “Disarm” here means that their currently equipped weapon cannot be used. How long that weapon can’t be used is still up in the air. Some whip weapons might come with an ability to completely steal a currently equipped weapon or a currently equipped shield right from the enemy’s hands.

• Range: A good number of chain weapons tend to have good range. If you want to think about real world mechanics chains, whips and flails can have some good reach so naturally some of these weapons will have that same advantage.

• It can be difficult to double attack a Chain wielder: One idea I’ve been toying with is giving Chain Weapons an ability to reduce enemy attack speed when the enemy initiates an attack. This is designed to offset the low speed inherent in the new chain weapon wielding classes.

                                A good number of the classes that can double attack them tend to have weapon triangle advantage like myrmidons and ninja. Generally speaking the new chain weapon classes are designed to deal with weaker, speedy classes like these guys so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. 

• Flails are designed to mess with shields: Another new element of “The Dark Crusade” is shields. I’ll cover shields more in depth later on in the post but suffice it to say they should be a major part of the game. Since shields can solve a long list of problems you’re naturally going to want something that can deal with them. That’s where flails come in. Flails are designed to either break shields or just ignore their effects. No other weapon category has an entire sub-category that can do this. With Armor Knights expected to get significant buffs you’re going to want flail users that can deal with their shields.

Cons

• Cannot be equipped alongside shields: Chain weapons are 2 handed weapons.

• Accuracy could be better: Chain weapons don’t have the best accuracy. 
  
  
  There are other potential cons that I'm thinking of but I'm sure of whether I want to implement or not:
  
  
  • Difficult to double attack with: While a chain weapon might prevent you from getting double attacked it won’t help you double attack enemies either. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to do so, it’s just more difficult.
• Not that great against armored foes: Some chain weapons have nerfed damage outputs against armored units like Armor Knights and Soldiers (soldiers are now considered “armored” infantry units similar to Armor Knights).

                                     (Check out this video. It's pretty cool)

                          Chain wielding classes fare better against myrmidons and ninjas but they do pretty poorly against archers (who can camp outside the chain wielder’s range and just snipe them for days. Also archers have a high enough speed to double attack these guys) and against fighters. I hope that answers everyone's questions about chain weapons. 

                             Shields: Here you have equippable items that can solve a myriad of problems. Shields generally boost defense and resistance (sometimes both, sometimes either / or) and most of them have an additional ability. Is that a fighter with a Hammer about to beat down your Armor Knight? Just equip the Nullify shield and now all that effective damage gets negated. Is there a pesky enemy staff wielder with a Sleep staff (Status staves are definitely in this game) that’s about to threaten your fighter? Just equip a Protector Shield and now your fighter is immune to status effects.

                                 Shields operate here similarly to how they work in Tearring Saga. They have a finite durability and whenever you take damage their durability reduces by 1. Unlike Tearring Saga though these shields sometimes have special abilities that let them block attacks. The price here is that the shield wears down faster but at least it can save you from a potential restart. There are also new skills that let you do certain things when equipped with shields (soldiers in particular have a lot of these). 

                                  One of the new metrics of this game is to tell whether or not a weapon is one-handed or two-handed. One-handed weapons can be equipped alongside shields. One-handed weapons can also be equipped alongside each other if the unit has the skill “Dual Wield”. As its name implies Dual Wield lets units equip two weapons simultaneously and produces an effect similar to what Brave Weapons do. The trade off is that the user’s speed and skill drop so it’s harder to double attack (and easier to get double attacked in the process) but you can pull it off you can essentially attack 4 times a lot. On the flipside if a weapon is two-handed then you cannot equip shields alongside them. Two-handed weapons in general tend to either have higher might than one-handed weapons or they have some kind of ability that compensates for the lack of shield access.

                                 There’s also one last factor that goes into shields. Shields, like weapons, have their own weapon rank and can only be used by a handful of classes. The primary shield users for first tier classes are Armor Knights, Soldiers, Fighters, Mercenaries and Cavaliers. One of the main characters in the game also starts out with shield access as well. The number of second and third tier classes who have shield access are larger, but then again this is because branch promotion gives a huge amount of variety here.