Experimenting with a Sabin equipment overhaul and some other weapon ideas

Hi all, really been enjoying the new release. I've been playing since 1.9 dropped and this mod has really opened my eyes to what is possible in balanced game design.

The new release inspired me to have a go at tweaking some things that have been rubbing me the wrong way about Sabin's equipment and to a lesser extent equipment in general. On the first point, it always seemed strange to me that a monk would be hitting elemental weaknesses with weapons and picking up elemental damage procs. It's too close to what mages do with rods and seems most unmonklike, Yang notwithstanding (who was, in the end, a throwaway character in the original context). I tried to reimagine the monk equipment according to the same themes as monk training ― enhancing certain internal capacities in ways that create new synergies. I also wanted to go further in making different weapons fulfill different roles that remain relevant the whole game rather than lying in a linear sequence of upgrades.

So, I took inspiration from how other weapons were overhauled in BNW by associating special properties like dual wielding and two-handed wielding with particular types, and moved X-fight from Kagenui onto claws, usually halving each's power in the process. This makes claws light off-hand weapons that facilitate fast attacking with a main weapon. I then made each claw have special properties that follow its elemental theme (though poison is unchanged, since it made sense as is and so it retains its role as an anti-personnel weapon).  Mythril claw, lacking an element, provides slightly better stat bonuses. Spirit claw becomes survivability focused and grants auto-regen. Ocean claw takes inspiration from Jeet Kune Do and grants initiative and evasion. Hell Claw embodies frenzied destruction, and gives offensive boosts and auto-haste. Frostgore tries to establish an inexorable smothering blizzard theme with a mix of initiative, magic boosting, and stamina focus / defensive properties, making it particularly suitable for stamina or magic builds or enhancing fishing for procs from the main weapon (still working on this one; it didn't come together quite as easily as the others). Stormfang pursues a lightning theme and lets its wielder deliver devastating coups with a big vigor boost (but has its power adjusted further downward to compensate).

Of course, reworking claws to be support weapons meant Sabin would need weapon diversity. I made his training cover the four traditional weapons of Chinese martial arts: spear (the king of weapons) lives up to its name and is the main highlight, giving options to single wield for punishing hits or combine to give up raw damage for synergies. (Sabin thus becomes the only spear-wielder who can't dragoon; no big deal given all the other options opening up.) The straight sword (gentlemen of weapons) and the sabre (the general of weapons) come in to round out low-mid tier options. (Staves (grandfather of weapons) sneak in via Bone Club and Magic Bone.

From there, it seemed fun and thematic to give claws to Shadow as well, giving him back the X-fight option lost from Kagenui, and opening up more synergies. And gave Shadow a slightly weakened equippable shuriken and access to other throwing weapons, so that he can be played a little safer at the expense of some of the other new raw damage options. Throwing shuriken with the command of the same name remains useful for the improved damage formula and ability to split across the enemy group. I also opened up more swords to Cyan to cement him as the master swordsman and create more shared weapon tradeoffs. Previously, Terra, Celes, Edgar, and Locke formed a clique where mutually equippable weapons would have to be allocated carefully among them while, for the most part, other characters lived in their own worlds of weapons. Now, Sabin, Shadow, and Cyan participate more in these tradeoffs, bringing much more of the cast into these calculations without homogenizing equipment nearly as much as it is among the first four. The result I'm aiming at, which seems to obtain reasonably well so far, is more diversity in equipment builds without affecting the exquisite balance of BNW too much. To a first approximation, I think this should happen with these changes since they don't affect either individual item power or the stage of the game at which individual items become available, and the synergies are not of fundamentally new or stronger types; rather there are just more options to choose from, and more ways to allocate weapons across characters.

That said, these changes are very little tested, and my main intention in sharing now is to invite others to explore some ideas with me rather than to provide any kind of polished play experience. To that end, find here a bps patch (which you can apply with flips) that you can use to try these changes out. The patch is against BNW 2.0 unheadered.

I've gotten a chance to play through the three scenarios portion with this patch, and have also done a bit more endgame testing in WoR and some shallow Kefka's Tower dips (I'm still a bit underleveled). The result of this is that I went from halving the battle power of claws across the board (for the most part) to cutting the early game claws closer to 0 and boosting the late game claws closer to the original values to match the original damage scaling better.

As adjusted, the changes don't disturb the balance vs vanilla BNW much as the damage output from the newly available setups, while a bit more consistent across weaknesses to what could be had from Sabin's claws before, doesn't exceed what could come from Blitzes, and for Shadow, Cyan, and others affected, doesn't exceed either other weapon setups already available or Bushido output. The tradeoff now is a bit more crowd control potential with the weapon attack able to split to two targets vs. picking up status effects from Blitzes; otherwise the two options are basically equivalent, which I think might be even a bit more balanced than before. And it does succeed in increasing build diversity considerably. So I'm pleased with the changes so far, judge them to be on the right track, and expect the rest of the game to play well. I'll continue playing and noting observations here and any changes that end up being called for.

I've gotten a chance to play through to the Floating Continent and to do more endgame World of Ruin testing. I've made more changes that take the original ideas further and rebalance other aspects of the original BNW equipment. I'd call the result so far pretty good beta quality, and I prefer the way the game plays with this to vanilla BNW as it gives many more options without affecting the original balance too much. I can recommend it for general use, and not just testing now.

Main changes since original version:

• More character can use more weapon types, and fewer weapons are exclusive to a single character. For instance, Locke and Shadow can use darts, and Locke can use Tarot cards, giving those characters more back row options mid-game. Terra also picks up Rods (see below).
• Battle Power has been lowered for the mid-high tier of weapons right below the highest tier to smooth out the progression, and make endgame unique weapons stand out more in raw power.
• Battle Power and hit rate adjustments plus more dual wielding and X-fight options make the fight command more competitive with the martial skills (Bushido and Blitz) without overshadowing them. Fight command use still has to consider enemy counterattacks, especially when X-fighting with the possibility of the second volley being randomly retargeted.
• Elemental swords, like claws, no longer do elemental damage, and their procs are reduced to level 1 spells (which still hit quite hard vs. a weakness). They are now more useful for the stat bonuses relatively speaking, and still produce a very respectable DPS bump vs. weaknesses albeit with less consistency. This is also offset by the ability to two-hand wield elemental swords and the greater ability to dual-wield weapons generally. In order to make spellcasters stand out more as sources of elemental damage, weapon elemental damage is now a role played more exclusively by Rods:
• Rods can be two-hand wielded, and increasing the ways in which they can be used in DPS vs defense tradeoffs. Rods are now more consistently the sole sources of elemental weapon damage, and the main source of flexibility in which elements magic users can hit, which impacts especially the fights with wallchanging bosses. Terra can now use rods, making her more solid in the role of offensive magic powerhouse.
• Hit rate is no longer uniformly 100 for almost all weapons. Lower hit rates are used to balance average damage output of weapons that give X-fight or counter attacks.
  • Some brushes have stronger procs that add healing (Remedy and Regen) as a result. So brushes are less of a guaranteed full heal, making them more of a solid support option and less of a main healing strategy, though they are still decent for that. Healing consistency can be restored by dual-wielding a healing shiv at the expense of defense potential.
  • Claws have had their special properties reworked a bit more and have had hit rate reduced as well as battle power to balance the DPS output of the fight command to just under that of the Blitzes, so that they are more solid in their role of better crowd control at the expense of better overall DPS and status effects. Now you will choose which to use more based on the configuration of the fight and whether enemies can counter one or the other.
  • Club series of weapons gives X-fight, but with battle power and hit rate lowered, similar to claws. This gives Gau an X-fight option near the end of World of Balance, and a stronger one in World of Ruin, which brings his physical rages closer in damage output to his magical ones as they both progress, improving their relative competitiveness. Also has implications for Umaro.
  • Similarly, Umaro can use claws now. This means there will be three characters who can make excellent use of the Stormfang, and choosing which to give it to is interesting.
  • Fewer instances of strict upgrades or weapons that strongly overshadow alternatives. Main example is Scimitar and Falchion, which can still be dual wielded and grant counterattack, but have had strength reduced to be more in line with other weapons at similar availability and cost, and Falchion has higher Battle Power than Scimitar, but lower hit rate.
• A few weapons give X-magic, but are either restricted to characters without strong magic options, or, in the case of the one which can be used by most characters with good magic, comes with severe drawbacks.
• Murasame and Masamune lost counter attack and gained different level 3 elemental procs. WIth counter attack, they were redundant with each ofher and with Scimitar and Falchion and overshadowed the Black Belt. Now, they become some of the few remaining ways to get elemental damage from weapons, and stand out in the arsenals of their users (Cyan and Shadow) more.
• Similarly, Viper Darts are now Ice Shards, and have lower Battle Power but proc Ice 3.
• Experimental change: Gave the empty-hand weapon the Atlas Armlet property, making two-handed and bare-handed fighting a bit more competitive, and letting it potentially free up a relic slot in some builds.

Download link above has been updated to this version.