I would love to hear people's opinions, both in how it could be a bad idea or how it could be implimented better! The basic idea is to add 3 or so types of weapon "damage". This is meant to serve 3 purposes: - First, to diversify the damage further in the game (Right now it's only variable if you're dual-wielding or trigger a power/combo attack by a set amount.) - Second, to add a new set of skills to diversify in and make the perfect fighter ever further out of reach (though sense they're all in rows of 5.. another 2 would need to be designed too. There's a dozen ideas someone could come up with those so that's not a hard thing to come up with elsewhere) - Third, To make it easier to diversify weapon/armor types later as more get added to the game in the future. The simplist types I can think of would be Slash/Cut, Pierce/Thrust, and Crush. Slashing and Piercing are self explanitory, while Crushing tends to be brute-force attacks where the primary source of damage isn't the shearing action but the raw leverage of the blade. Think over-head and wide-arc style attacks particularly with heavier weapons that don't need to break skin to smash a bone. As for implimentation, each weapon could be given a simple break down of how often each ratio is used, and maybe it's effectiveness(or keep that too secondary effects only). Probably kept in simple ratios (like 60% Crush, 30% Slash, 10% Thrust for a Claymore) Then armor could have benefits verses specific types of damage (Like how Plate is made to turn away slashing weapons, but thrusting attacks can better strike at joints and puncture specific plates) also in simple ratio (x.8 Slash, x1 Crush, x1.1 Thrust). Then finnally, each skill devoted to a specific type of attack works two-fold, to increase the ratio of using that type of attack as well as it's effectiveness like the various Stance/Style specific skills, with the benefit of making some of your attacks stronger and more likely to happen when specalizing, but sometimes still making weaker attacks. Or making a well-ballanced warrior who can take advantage of different armor types but not excelling at any kind of attack in particular. This could be left entirely random afterwards (with level 10/20 perks helping better utalize the right attacks when) or having some minor player-control, like being able to double the chances of a particular type of attack when recognizing the enemy's weakness. In summery, the chance of using any 1 of the 3 types would be: WeaponBase * StancePrefrence * WeaponStylePreference * SkillWeightBoost WeaponBase: The weapon's default ratios StancePrefrence: Barrage tends to crush, Blitz tends to thrust, and Guard tends to slash. Attack/Defend non-biased (maybe excluded entirely) WeaponStylePreference: Twohanded tends towards Crush/Slash, Fencing Slash/Thrust, etc (maybe excluded entirely) SkillWeightBoost: Every skill point in a specific type of attack would probably up it's weight by 10% while also boosting that type of attack, changes to Attack/Defend in effect until using a different type of attack. Then the damage would be modifed by the opponent's armor, and maybe the weapon(if weapon's damage varied by type of attack as well as it's ratios for each attack) by about 20% or so (unless tovrick wished for the system to have a bigger impact on difficulty, but that seems to be reserved for Rival fights.) It be a relatively simple addition "Oh, I have a skill that makes an attack more powerful and common" but add additional complexity to the design of a perfect warrior, and compliment the fun varried animations at that! Also it could really open up the potenital weapon/armor designs while making them statistically different enough to not be entirely cosmetic. Thoughts?