because in the end daggers were overpowered (and they were never meant to be played as "little swords" with a lot of damage) and two-handed didn't benefit much from a few extra points.
As I've already explained, those are very arguable statements, but ok, fuck it, I've invested enough time in the previous post and I see no need to waste even more of it on pointless arguments. I'll just say that you're release date is tad too close (considering you're not working full-time) to think about what was meant to be - it's more realistic to just polish what you already have, but, seeing that you're already changing everything askew, maybe it's too late to advise that.
Because the town quests don't really require strength, unless you're murdering your way through. It's much more useful in the ruins (think dungeons).
Ruins are cool and stuff, but it's not like there's zero opportunities to use high strength in the city. Take the broken tower, for example - instead of going all that "perception/crafting", why not offer a simple STR 10 check to force the grate open? Maybe not with your bare hands but with some form of lever or maul or whatever. And I'm sure other opportunities can be found.
You think?
Basically, 5 stats give bonuses to fighters. The problem is that most people prefer INT, PER, and DEX bonuses and are willing to sacrifice everything else. For most fighters 2 extra points of damage or extra 5 HP aren't as important as more SP, THC bonus, and AP. That's what we're changing.
Well, PER influence on the % of special abilities is huge and very important, considering that, say, splitting your opponent's shield in half ensures an easy victory - you're starting to almost autohit them, even with head strikes. And same can be said pretty much for every weapon - passive abilities are way too useful to not exploit them completely.
As for the stats - I think one of the major points of such sacrifices is that INT, PER and DEX make your character much more fun to play than STR and CON. Int gives you more skill points - more quest solutions, more weapon options (via crafting), more approaches, it's obvious. PER gives you cool passive abilities and nice hitting chances, allowing for weapon interplay and fancy aimed tactics. AP gives you more actions per turn - more tactical freedom. While high STR and CON give you exactly what? The ability to popamole better? I mean, 10 str, 10 con guy with shield and in heavy armour may work, but how droll will he be? That's why people dislike these two stats, I guess - other three make for a better gameplay.
At first. A beginner shouldn't use these attacks. Once your skill is high enough, you'll start fighting more skilfully.
That's in theory, I guess. In practice, raising your skill after 50 points gives you seemingly small increases (definitely not enough to use them reliably, the sole exception here being opponents who had their shield split - they're easy to bash in the head), especially when your opponents dodge & block skills also don't sit on one place.
...which is probably the worst way to fight, but what do I know?
It's easy to notice that I wasn't praising that style either, but with your focus on making con and str much more important, it seems like this is what you're aiming for.
It was easy to get high THC with small weapons and high PER and very little skill (the actual skill, I mean). It had to be changed.
Why? It makes the gameplay better by allowing more tactics and it's not like high to-hit chance is enough - without high STR, damage output is pathetic.
The SP bonus was too much, which is a problem because it creates wildly different skill ranges, especially if one starts farming SP and trying to kill as many people as possible (sometimes even your own allies). Limiting it to quests only makes sense and removes an exploit.
Your game is already about all about metagaming, so exploits actually make it better. I mean, from what I've seen in many years, people just love to exploit in RPGs, so what's the problem with it anyway?
They are paying the raiders the ransom and trying to get more bang for their buck.
Ass-pulled excuse, to be honest. No matter how you look at it, you're doing a big and a very hard job on both of those quests and even if raiders may not be a serious issue for daratans, aurellian outpost certainly is so I don't see why they go so skimpy on you, especially if you're the member of the house, especially when you manage to give them the working smelter (which, even if you don't know what it actually is, still remains a priceless tresure in the post-apocalyptic world).
