Weapon Availability

[Zozma]

Okay, ive seriously been trying to figure out how to make sure that you cant obtain better gear without leveling up and the only real thing i can come up with is, only allowing the basic weapons to be sold in shops and making everything else you have to steal from enemies.

this of course will make thieves much more useful. and on top of that you can save your money for potions and the like which would be more expensive if this is the case.

Any thoughts, or ideas? I got the idea to do this from Tactics Ogre, where you can only buy like the second or 3rd leveled gear in shops and the rest were rare or stolen.
-----

Based on my idea, enemies will gain the next level weapon/gear of each type every 10 levels.
In shops i was thinking of spreading out the first 3 levels of gear only, thats what? iron sword etc.. the rest would have to be stolen or found on maps or poach items.

[DarthPaul]

I think this idea is great also make really good gear battle trophies in certain battles.

As for making thieves more useful why not balance that by removing the movement +2 and jump +2 and possibly.

Also you could make some items poachable from the higher tiered monsters.

[Zozma]

yes, im thinking of making move and jump +2's for the bard and dancer, and perhaps using a razele asm hack on move+3 for something else...

also i might bump move +1 to the thief job
---

for the weapons and stuff, picture one of the Tactics ogre games. how other than basic gear you cant get shit in the stores. different shops will still have differences but, i very much like the idea of making most of the gear less common.

[DarthPaul]

Possibly.

If you can get a hack for this.

Make an item that gives you one time access to a secret shop that has slightly better than basic gear.

Making the item hard to obtain would be good too.

This idea is based on the membership card from the FE games.

Also the "secret shop could be in a place noone would expect it to be.

Say sweegy woods.

I understand if this idea is too much work to consider.

[Zozma]

well, i was thinking that the poaching goes along those lines. it makes the weapons harder to get because you have to poach to get the monsters and sometimes u get crap instead of the good stuff.

[Cheetah]

Poach should be innate on more classes. Isn't there some way to change when items become available in stores though, I thought it was part of FFTPatcher? So it makes sense that you can have the really good stuff stealable or poachable only, but you can still have a steady progression of when items become available or at what store they are available.

[Zozma]

that is true, but that "steady progression" i think ill make it among only 3 or 4 items of each type, so that more items are harder to get.

as far as poach being innate? it gives you a reason to sacrifice your support skill, if its not innate on anything.

im going to wait for more opinions on this tho. But my goal is to give you plenty to earn along the way and try to make the final area something that youd want to be at least lvl 70/80 for as opposed to lvl 50 ish

[Archael]

only allowing the basic weapons to be sold in shops and making everything else you have to steal from enemies.

great

I support this idea

[philsov]

the nice perk with tactics ogre is that most equipment sucked.  Mini-knife + light robe were among the best equipment options, because so many of the equations were stat driven as opposed to being equipment dependant that all the larger stuff was more a burden than anything else.

It sounds nice, but in reality if this is implemented half my team will just be monks.

Edit:  Maybe if you implemented good equips via war trophies...

[DarthPaul]

I think I mentioned war trophies already but as phil said until good equips came around I would cut my losses and go with monks too.

[Zozma]

thats what im referring to. getting alot of war trophies.,

if an enemy is on lvl 1-9 and equips swords they will have the "long sword"

if the enemy is on lvl10-19 they will have the broadsword

etc. so if you are on a higher level like 30 or 40 you can steal weapons and gear that you cant buy in the store. and if you dont steal, poach, or win the war trophies then you're at a greater disadvantage then the enemy.

and with the monks, ill probably find a way to balance that somehow.

[philsov]

I thought you meant drops like from unit chests.  Can war trophies be modified based off unit level? O.o

[Zozma]

it would be nice if they could be. but that would probably require quite a bit of asm.

id probably have to set only event battle war trophies. other than when you have rare encounter 4th tier monsters. but then in this case it would be possible for you to get a better war trophy than the levels everyone is on, provided that you survive on a low level anyway.

[philsov]

let monks equip hats and nerf their HPM to compensate?  can't do much about fists/punch art without a moderate overhaul, though.

[Zozma]

after seeing Dark Cecil's videos where he easily one shots characters with a monk, im seriously considering it.

just nerfing their hp and giving them hats probably wont be as effective...

[Samuraiblackbelt]

you could make the monks like the ancient asian  monks who trained with weapons like staffs and nunchuks,you could replace sticks with staffs,or you could replace flails with nunchuks since you have axes with the same damage equation and you can still have oracles have sticks
but I would rather you replace the flails,even if you replace them with a staff instead,and that would make it easier to balance monks

that's what I'm doing in a project I'm working on anyway

[Zozma]

that bare fist... it just lets you 1 shot everything..

[Samuraiblackbelt]

yeah...

[Zozma]

its a weird issue, because i want monks to be bare handed if possible. but their punch is so strong that they easily overpower other jobs. i suppose Voldemort's idea for removing "martial art" innate from them migh tbe a good idea. i could then make martial art have to be equipped as a support to beef them up.

[Skip Sandwich]

get rid of Martial Arts, then, thats the real reason monks are so powerful. I second the idea to give monks weapons, but not hats, give monks access to Poles and Ninja Swords, with the pole formula changed from MA * WP to being PA+MA/2 * WP. Remove innate martial arts, and either raise thier PAM to compensate or keep it, but only as an equipable ability.