Let's say, hypothetically, that weapons had infinite usage.

[PresidentEden]

Thread inspired by my decision to replay Final Fantasy I. For those who aren't aware, the Fire Emblem series is different from a lot of other RPGs in that weapons have finite durability. This creates an interesting rationing problem that I think is well-executed and adds a welcome additional level of strategic depth to the franchise. Additionally, weapon use is an important balancing factor in the design of weapons -- one advantage to Iron weapons is that they're more durable and cheaper to replace than Steel, and a particularly frugal player may be inclined not to use Steel even though the character can do so for cost reasons. (It's not usually a big deal, but it's there.)

Naturally, then, a mod or a new game in which weapons had infinite durability would have to rebalance the weapons' other stats, and potentially enemy stats as well, or risk degenerate imbalance. What would you do to try to balance out the weapon system if durability were removed from the equation?

[MercuryHg34]

Infinite durability solves a couple of issues while creating new ones. For example, it doesn't make sense that a weapon made of iron would out-last a weapon made of steel; steel is much more durable in real life. Infinite durability solves that logical loophole, but then brave weapons or killer weapons in particular would become extremely broken. I would simply, as you suggested, re-balance the stats for each weapon. Forging them would be much more expensive, and their frequency/drop rate would be much lower (since there isn't as much of a need to replace them).

[Aether911]

If that was the case, I think the best system would be near FE2's one, maybe mixed with FE4's. So every unit would have a basic weapon, and you could find/buy more powerful weapons in limited supplies. And i wonder if being limited to the usage of only one weapon (like FE2) would be a good thing - maybe one for each weapon-type the unit can use - or just an inventory like others FE.

[Rehab]

Give every unit (a means of acquiring) a preferred weapon with unique qualities tailored to their strengths. Or even give every unit a sidequest/base event where they can forge their own preferred weapon, like the Jedi and their lightsabers. Bam

It was always odd to me that you could buy as many iron swords as your coffers could afford and as your storage could hold, but you could never get them repaired. Though it made sense for the sake of gameplay (Jegus firefox how have you not judged this to have become a word yet) that you could forge custom weapons at every chapter shop in the context of the durability system, overall it made it even weirder that you can't have a weapon repaired by nonmagical means.

The idea of limiting both the supply of really good weapons and the number of places you can get a weapon forged makes the most sense to me, both in terms of the best approach I can think to take for infinite durability weapons, and in comparison to the traditional weapon-use system, at least going by how easy it'd be to explain. Like, it should be a full-blown event (er, figuratively speaking, really unusual basically) to meet a blacksmith skilled enough that the only limit to their product's quality is how much you can pay.

Also/Or, if we really wanted to to keep durability around in some form, we could have the same system FE4 had with repairing weapons, but make places to get them repaired scarce, perhaps merging the place to get repairs and the place to get forges. So you could either spend your gold to get your trusty preferred weapons repaired, or spend it on forging. (Maybe the former could be balanced with the intentionally ridiculous stats some forges are capable of attaining by giving the former special qualities beyond good weapon stats, while only allowing forges to tinker with Might, Crit, Hit and Weight and such)

As for enemies, what first comes to me is to give each faction of enemies the same weapon grade, possibly excepting enemies designated as mercenaries (who may be bringing their own weapons to the job, thus explaining possible inequalities between individuals), and enemy commanders. Preferred weapons could be introduced gradually, possibly with the player being given a choice of whose to acquire first, with enemy weapon quality being ramped up as the player acquires more and progresses in general.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Rehab

[Momentai~]

If weapons were to have infinite usage, I'd like for them to be handled in the same way that the Monster Hunter games handle their weapons. In MH games, the weapons can be used infinitely, but most weapon types have a set sharpness that will wear down with usage.

To give an incentive not to spam the silvers and their magical equivalents, I think we'd need to have the weaker weapons stay at full power for a longer period of time and the stronger weapons only retain their full strength for a brief amount of time. Oh, and the stronger weapons should cost much more to restore to maximum sharpness/ whatever you'd measure tome durability in (pages?). On top of all that, the stronger weapons should probably take a bigger power hit as their sharpness wears down, and at the lowest weapon durability the iron weapons would be stronger than the silver weapons, with the steels falling somewhere in between (e.g. [i'm just gonna list some values to give a sense of the sort of scaling I'm looking for] silver weapon, mt of 48/24, sharpness 4/0 vs iron weapon, mt of 36/28 sharpness 4/0). I hope that makes sense, lol.

[Klokinator]

I like how in FE5, a weapon can break and still be usable (even though clearly shitty) and then repaired later when you have the time. A system like that was most optimal, IMO. If weapons broke and their stats divided by 1/2 or 1/3, that would be fairly sensible.

[Renall]

I raised this in a topic a while ago; one suggestion I had is that some weapons, or all weapons, have limited durability per map. That is, a Brave Sword has 5 charges or whatever, but always starts a map with 5. You can use it 5 times over the course of the map, but that's it. The idea there was to make weapon use tactical (rather than strategic) by making stronger weapons useful in all maps but not something you can use to just solo the entire chapter.

If you're going to actually make weapon uses infinite, you probably have to do like FE4 and have there be a Brave Sword. One. And it'd have to be fairly weak.

I suppose what you could do is make weapons infinite but forges finite. So you could make the Brave weapons really crappy, but let them be forged into great weapons, but those forges wear off and have to be refreshed, costing you cash. This might also help balance out Silvers against special weapons, as a Silver would have great "baseline" stats (thus good damage for free) or cheaper forges than stuff like Killers/Braves (thus less taxing on your coffers).

[Dragrath]

I like how in FE5, a weapon can break and still be usable (even though clearly shitty) and then repaired later when you have the time. A system like that was most optimal, IMO. If weapons broke and their stats divided by 1/2 or 1/3, that would be fairly sensible.

either that or before the weapon breaks you could have it repaired, at a cost thus for more valuble weapons you would have to keep their uses in check. While perhaps hammerenes could be used to "temper for free" the main way would be paying the smith to fix the weapon for as many usages as you can afford. this would rage from cheap for bronze and iorn to expensive for legendaries and brave. And while we could perhaps earn more gold infinitely... the gold would take work to gain perhaps optional missions or a variant of the Arena as opposed to having a golden gaffe like DLC... Thus you would be forced to decide to train everyoneand have them somewhat well equiped, or train a select few and have them decked out(in the hopes of getting more funds through side missions/arena abuse...)