STUDYING THE BLADE - TTRPG Damage Rebalance and Diversification

[SirSwagmeyer]

About The Pull Request

Takes a good look at the current state of melee weapons, rebalancing them (LOOSELY) under player feedback, playtested data, and TT weapon charts, with a few liberties taken to make it not a complete nightmare to fight against.

I acknowledge that Abby wanted weapons to have a degree of TTRPG accurate rules-as-written damage values. I have adjusted various damage values to ensure that we have a semblance of genuine balance and diversity in weaponry whilst still trying to respect her TTRPG damage system.

The changed melee weapons are as follows

LONGSWORDS - Balanced, sharp, and conspicuous.

• Bulky Sized; no longer fits into a satchel.
• 30% Block Chance
• 40 force; still the highest raw damage out of every other 1H weapon.
• No AP

KATANAS - Nearly-as-lethal, exceeds against exposed bits, but struggles with heavy armor.

• 35 Force
• 20% Block Chance
• No AP
• High wound bonuses on exposed limbs.

FIRE AXE - Unwieldy, heavy, and painful. The All-In offensive option.

• 60 wielded force
• 20 AP; enough to penetrate soft armor and trench coats.
• 1.50x force modifier against doors
• 0% Block Chance

SABER - Jack-of-All-Trades, but specializes in nothing.

• 30 Force
• 30 AP; Unable to piece ballistic vests, but can bypass mid-tier fortitude and soft armor.
• Slightly increased wound bonuses.
• Swings faster
• 40% Block Chance

RAPIER - The Conservative Option. Considerably less damage, highest defense out of all available melee options.

• 25 Force
• 50 AP; Pierces most conventional forms of armor.
• No wound bonuses.
• Swings faster
• 50% Block Chance
• Sharpness: Pointy

MACHETE - Fits in your bag. Better than a switchblade, worse than every other conventional sword.

• 30 Force
• 10% Block Chance
• Higher exposed wound bonus

MISC Changes:

• Shovels deal blunt damage.
• Lead Pipes deal a little more damage and fit in your bag.
• Updated the item desc of the lead pipe; no longer mentions Nanotrasen and the Syndicate.
• Claw Hammers hurt a bit more.
• Chainsaw damage: 120 >>> 80
• Baseballs and shovels no longer deals tickle damage 10 >>> 30
• Tire Iron no longer deals longsword levels of damage 40 Lethal >>> 20 Bashing

Why It's Good For The Game

With this PR, gone shall be the days of the Sneaky Longsword in the Pocket meta. Gone shall be the days of never seeing a single melee weapon that wasn't a longsword. Gone are the days of trying to attack a CelPot Brujah and getting 50% of your attacks being negated before promptly dying in two hits.

Theatrics aside, melee weapons have been in a dreadful state for quite some time, now. The Longsword was a 1:1 reskin of the Adminspawned Claymore, and the rapiers/sabers were 1:1 reskins of the Captain's Saber from base SS13. This is going to be further exacerbated by "TTRPG-accurate" 40-damage rapiers/sabers and 120 damage Chainsaws.

I believe that an extensive look at providing each and every primary melee weapon around the map their own niche and specialty will increase weapon diversity significantly. I sincerely hope that this PR will give us more sights of people caving in skulls with a lead pipe, or mall ninjas drawing katanas on people, or Sabbat Pack literally shovelheading people.

Changelog

🆑
balance: Rebalanced a mass swathe of melee weapons including the longsword, katana, machete, saber, rapier, shovel, lead pipe, claw hammer, and the fire axe.
/:cl:

[github-actions]

You currently have a negative Fix/Feature pull request delta of -2. Maintainers may close this PR at will. Fixing issues or improving the codebase will improve this score.

[FalloutFalcon]

I kinda intentionally removed some of the random wound bonus, block chance, stuff like that, They aren't conveyed to the player like at all, and they kinda get in the way of the balance of the force values which are intentionally simplified to the ttrpgs system...

[SirSwagmeyer]

I kinda intentionally removed some of the random wound bonus, block chance, stuff like that, They aren't conveyed to the player like at all, and they kinda get in the way of the balance of the force values which are intentionally simplified to the ttrpgs system...

I can understand your point - some may see it as overcomplicating things; would you accept if I explicitly conveyed it all in the weapon description?

I strongly disagree on the idea that things should be "intentionally simplified to the ttrpgs system". It's too simplified - namely, it overlooks some glaringly concerning power creep issues - I believe that by simplifying a system as volatile as SS13 melee combat will only strip the system down to its worst aspects - hyperoptimization of a single weapon (the chainsaw, the fireaxe, and the longsword) and instakill killing sprees.

Are aspects like wound bonuses and block chance not included in the TTRPG system? No, but this isn't a TTRPG. This is a real time roleplaying game, and I think liberties and compromises need to be made to allow players to actually enjoy PVP.