CLOK BBS

Just my thoughts on knapping.
I don't see why knapping had to be messed it in the way that it was.
since everything crafted has different levels like malformed, misshapen, crude, exquisite, etc, it hardly makes sense to stop the knapping skill at average turn-outs.
I understand that stone weapons were not meant to be as good damage-wise as metal weapons, but as far as I was aware, the damage factor wasn't solely based on quality of the item.
Knapping should be allowed to carry on until a person produces masterfully-crafted stone items, but the damage was cap out far lower than a masterfully-crafted item made of metal.
If say, a person had a bow and arrow, and both the bow, and the arrow were exquisite, and say the broadhead on that arrow was an exquisite steel broadhead, the damage would be something like 150 pierce damage. This is just an example.
Now say they also had an exquisite bow, and and an exqusite arrow with an exquisitely-knapped broadhead. That combo could produce a pierce damage of maybe 110 or 120. The bottom line would stil be, that metal is mightier than stone, but the quality of that stone shouldn't have to only go up to average quality. In real life, a person could at some point in their knapping skill, produce a stone item that was exquisite, or even masterfully-crafted, not simply improve until they were producing average-quality stuff and they'd never ever improve.
Knapping was seriously nerfed, for no other reason, than stone was never meant to be as good as metal. If we use that logic, then wood items should never be as good as stone, so wooden items should never have a quality level higher than average as well.
Why should people continue improving their skills in areas, where the maximum quality they will ever be able to achieve, is simply average. That's not very encouraging. If anything should be changed, it should be how much damage that weapon should do, based on the material used... not the quality of that material.

I don't really see the issue here. Knapping was for making crude weapons, not good weapons. If people wish to be attached to the title of master and exceptional than I suggest that a tweak is in order, I am sure there can be a middle ground. Lessen the price of all stone weapons to show their lower worth as well as have a internal accuracy penalty for using stone(and thus crude) tools compared to metal(honed) weapons. Wooden weapons, other than bows, have always been worse than stone weapons in terms of damage so giving them a similar treatment to stone would be fair and little change. Bows should stay different as they are an exception to the rule as they are not a true contact weapon like a club or blade, and so use different rules.

I'd like to put in my two cents about this. I regularly use stone weapons aside from broadheads, and the only thing that stone weapons are missing out on by lacking a masterwork quality is a 15% boost to accuracy and damage. It can be a bit of a bummer, but it's one of the downsides of playing a character that eschews more modern weapons in favor of natural weapons.

Knapping is an inherently primitive craft. From an RP standpoint, there shouldn't be an incentive for modernized characters like Traders and Mercenaries to grind up knapping, because compared to metal worked items it's typically inferior. Granted, that isn't always the case historically. The Aztec were masters of knapping, but it is also theorise that they had specialised tempering techniques for their knapping that modern day hobbyists have not been able to replicate.

Also, it's very easy to train knapping. It's a quick and low energy cost skill. It also trains up very quickly. So as it stands, if masterwork level items are left in for knapping, there's zero reason (on an OOC/Mechanic level) for ANYONE to knap in their free time just to have the skill for emergencies. Because of the ease of skill learning and the low skill threshhold required to get quality items with knapping, the change makes sense.

A better suggestion, I think, would be for guilds that are meant to be a bit more rough and tumble and survive on their own to get abilities that tie into survival skills such as knapping. Perhaps a way for Udemi to learn a bit of broadhead knapping that gives them the capability to knap abilities a bit above average, though maybe not to the point of Masterwork.

Nothing was changed, except you lost some adjectives on the components. It was always the case that stonework weapons capped at average. We simply remove the 'exceptional' and 'masterful' adjectives from components since they were making bug reports that weren't bug.