Disclaimer: Please ignore this post if something similar has been suggested or considered already.
1. Modifiers to combat experience gained in a fight, based on the difference or ratio between your current combat experience and that of your opponent.
- If you are more skilled than your opponent, you should earn less experience from hitting/blocking/dodging them.
- Likewise, if you are less skilled than your opponent, you should earn more experience.
- I believe that this change would make risk-taking more attractive and grinding (e.g. auto-wrestling ravens to get legendary skills in one day) less attractive in adventure mode. As your character becomes more skilled, you should experience diminishing returns from fighting unskilled opponents, like badgers or random peasants.
2. Modifiers to combat experience gained in a fight, based on the difference or ratio between your size and that of your opponent.
- If your opponent is much smaller than you, you should gain less blocking and dodging experience, as well as more striking experience. As a general rule, I think smaller creatures are easier to dodge and block but harder to hit.
- Likewise, if your opponent is much larger than you, you should gain more blocking and dodging experience, but less striking experience.
- Again, the intent here would be to make combat more challenging and grinding less effective.
3. Weapons and armor should experience wear from combat.
- Weapons should take damage from hitting things, while armor should take damage from being hit.
- Wear should reduce the effectiveness of both weapons and armor, if it doesn't already do that.
- Higher-quality weapons and armor should take longer to wear out, and artifacts should experience no wear whatsoever.
- The intent of this mechanic would be to make longer-term play in fortress and adventure mode more interesting. Fortress mode players would have a reason to keep their armorsmithing and weaponsmithing industries going indefinitely, and adventurers would have a reason to go questing and tomb-raiding indefinitely.