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[Org]

Yes, well, Dwarves nned to. Why should elves get the fun to beat things up with a piece of wood. Come on, sometimes I have a hard time getting bars of iron

[Mr.Person]

Will Toady eventually add in wood weapons? Like the Poor Man's Mace?

The real question is, do Elves get wooden scalpels?

[Rockphed]

Have you ever had a paper cut?

[Granite26]

My whole point was that a lot of times, people take what they see in movies--ninjas with sharp edged katanas, or Zorro cutting candlesticks in half with a rapier, or the lightsabre--and assume that the edge ruled everything.

I've always had it in my head that the rapier became popular when firearms that could pierce plate (and field cannon) became popular enough that wearing heavy armour became more of a liability than a merit.  The problem is our (modern) culture looking back and seeing 'SWORDS' as something that was constant. 



Oddly enough though, I see us repeating the same thing with tanks versus helicopters, and battleships versus aircraft carriers.  That may be why we see rapiers as so sexy:  We're at the same 'agility over armor' phase in mechanized warfare.  At some point we may develop energy shields that weigh a lot but completely deflect the armorment a helicopter can fly...  Will we be back to loving knights over pirates?

[Alfador]

I've noticed toady has handled the concepts of "undead" vs "has soul", but I can't seem to find a mention of exactly how said concepts were handled.

Would someone like to enlighten my curiosity?

The way I see it, you have to distinguish between undead body without a soul (eg. zombie) and undead soul without a body (eg. ghost). And then you start getting into the technically-not-undead, golems/constructs made out of the body parts of the once-living (eg. bone golems, Frankenstein's creature, a creature made entirely of dwarf lung). Things could get hairy if you build a magically animated construct out of pieces of creatures that are still living. Imagine if you will... a tumor golem. It can metastasize as an extraordinary ability.

[Tormy]

Sharpness isn't really all that necessarily in medieval combat, anyway.

A lot of medieval swords were never sharpened, because, when you got right down to it, bashing someone in the face with a big iron club got the job done in a lot of circumstances, without having to worry as much about the blade itself chipping or breaking.

Sharp is good and all, but it's not everything.

Correct, but hell, "medieval combat" is only a small part of DF. We have dragons, trolls, unicorns, and all kind of fantasy creatures...you will be able to mod in a creature which has 20 tissue layers even. So yeah...sharpness of the weapons will be very important in the game...or at least it should be important. 

In fact...:

Elves already make wooden weapons

Wooden weapons makes me worried. Let's take our modded in creature for example again, which has 20 tissue layers. How could an elf -who wields a crappy wooden sword- damage a creature like that? The creature will just do a /lol while the poor elf is hitting him with the wooden toy sword. 

[Mephansteras]

According to one of ThreeToe's stories the wooden weapons are magically hardened to be nearly as good as metal. Although that does bring up a good question. Is Toady going to do anything special with the elven wooden weapons for this release? Or are they just going to use base wood stats?

[LegacyCWAL]

Yes, well, Dwarves nned to. Why should elves get the fun to beat things up with a piece of wood. Come on, sometimes I have a hard time getting bars of iron

I don't know how much fun Dwarves would have beating things up with a piece of wood.

A piece of wood with a sack of rocks tied to it like a flail, on the other hand...

[Org]

That or some elf body parts...

[Footkerchief]

According to one of ThreeToe's stories the wooden weapons are magically hardened to be nearly as good as metal. Although that does bring up a good question. Is Toady going to do anything special with the elven wooden weapons for this release? Or are they just going to use base wood stats?

I'm pretty sure items will have the ability to augment (in some fashion) the properties of their base material.  This is even more necessary on the armor side, since iron plate and iron mail obviously have pretty different properties.

[Aqizzar]

Yes, well, Dwarves nned to. Why should elves get the fun to beat things up with a piece of wood. Come on, sometimes I have a hard time getting bars of iron

I don't know how much fun Dwarves would have beating things up with a piece of wood.

A piece of wood with a sack of rocks tied to it like a flail, on the other hand...

"Never underestimate what a thinking being can accomplish with a sharp enough stick."

[Tormy]

According to one of ThreeToe's stories the wooden weapons are magically hardened to be nearly as good as metal. Although that does bring up a good question. Is Toady going to do anything special with the elven wooden weapons for this release? Or are they just going to use base wood stats?

Ah okay...well if their items will use the base wood stats, logically the elves won't stand a chance vs. more advanced civs / specific creatures in the next version...zerg tactics or not.

...but again:

I'm pretty sure items will have the ability to augment (in some fashion) the properties of their base material.  This is even more necessary on the armor side, since iron plate and iron mail obviously have pretty different properties.

That is true, so maybe I shouldn't worry at all.

[Sowelu]

I've noticed toady has handled the concepts of "undead" vs "has soul", but I can't seem to find a mention of exactly how said concepts were handled.

Would someone like to enlighten my curiosity?

'Soul' is a very specific concept in DF.  It represents anything thinky: skills, thoughts, memories, preferences, hopes, dreams.  In general, your physical attributes are part of your body, while your mental ones are part of your soul; this has importance to bodyswapping stuff, or someone becoming a ghost, or being possessed by one.

I don't know how or if it's been handled yet for undead, but relevant questions are things like, does a zombie have memories and thoughts--or is it totally controlled by its master?  If it doesn't have thoughts, then can it perceive things, or it the master controlling it like an extension of his body?  Can a zombie have mental attributes without having memories?  Stuff like that.  I haven't seen anything about what got decide here.

[Neonivek]

My largest issue when people are saying "But Obsideon is much better" is that that there is a serious point of diminishing returns existing there. How sharp does a scapal have to be? I mean technically I believe at this time frame they already had Gemstone-enhanced tools.

As for Zombies... Toady isn't sure yet but he does make strong cases for Zombies as having a soul and it allowing zombies to control bodyparts seperated from their main body.

[Aqizzar]

As long as virtually any creature can show up as a zombie, I'll be happy.  Before playing Dwarf Fortress, the thought of zombie fish being able flop out of the water and trash across the ground (amid undead trees that keep growing) never could have occurred to me.