Re: Harem Collector
Ah yeah, it's time for some weapon pedantry.
Hero's Greatsword
The hero's weapon is actually based on a zweihander- that is, an actual zweihander and isn't just an anime-style BFS. The blade is just over four feet long, but only about an inch and a half wide, and at that size the blade almost looks delicate. It's too long to draw from a sheath of course, so the hero just carries it over one shoulder like you would a polearm. The hilt sweeps upward slightly, and the grip is about ten inches long. The dtraw doll charm dangling off the pommel in Meline's Halloween pic is accurate.
So what about the scene in the blacksmith quest where you threaten the banker with a dramatic sword-unsheathing sound effect? Are you shopping for dresses and flowers with a ginomormous chopper keeping one arm busy all the time? Seems kind of awkward for the guy who serves as party face to be forced to have a weapon half-drawn all the time.
Chimei's Fan
I really didn't want Chimei to have a fan at first, obviously since she had the Simple Bow for a long time, but I eventually realized I wanted Felix to be unique in being a magic-user type with a normal weapon. All the other magic-users have weapons that buff their Magic as well as a small bonus to Attack, and I wanted Chimei to join the club. The problem is that Eastern magic traditions seem to use the same tools as Western magic and staves, wands, and daggers were all spoken for. I considered using paper wards for awhile, but came up with a fan because it's a pain in the ass to think of upgrade items that would work with a stack of paper strips.
The fan right now looks like any other Japanese hand fan, bamboo wanes supporting a solid blue silk flappy surface bit (Wikipedia didn't know the technical term for that part of a fan). It's not actually constructed for use as a weapon, like tessen or gunsen, but in a binch Chimei can whack an enemy with it. BTW, Chimei's first upgrade is going to be a priority for the next update.
The obvious upgrade would be metal vanes. Sharpen it into a war fan. The symbolism of the weapon looking like a harmless decoration but actually being an effective slashing tool is kind of nice. You could also take dragonblood or something and make it into magic ink. Chimei could do some calligraphy, put power characters onto the cloth.
If you want to play up the primal aspect of her magic, use ironwood for a bamboo replacement. Maybe rip off one of the mythological fans that can command wind.
Larelle's Knife
One of Larelle's “things” about her character is that she's actually a lot more robust than the other magic-user-types in the game, and one of the things I wanted her weapon choice to reflect was that she was prepared to throw down on occasion. Add in the sinister side of her personality, and I came up with the ritual knife.
The knife blade itself is a sharply angled spike of metal, like a rondel dagger, about 6” long and etched with runes. The hilt and the inlay of the fuller are inscribed with a brambles and skull design. Larelle probably dug it up out of that tomb she was in, and started using it because it looked cool to her Hot Topic sensibilities.
Dude, you know what would be totally sweet? In the strategy game Dominions 3, priests of blood nations could be equipped with jade knives to boost the power of their blood sacrifices. You could rip off Rokugan too if you made it magical corrupted jade. It'd be pretty easy to just put an eerie green gem somewhere, and the blacksmith could make it into a pommel stone or something.
You could use monster blood here too, just have the blacksmith reheat the weapon, sharpen it into a better combat weapon and then quench it in red stuff.