Swords
I like a "things and new and familiar" approach to RPG battle systems, where there are meaningfully different mechanics the player has to learn, but if someone is familiar with common RPGs tropes it will help them ease in. In this case, like you I'm fond of the balanced, user-friendly, jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none approach to Swords.
In my project, Swords have good attack, accuracy, and SP costs for their basic attacks. They are equally good at Standard normals, defense-ignoring Breaks, and accuracy-boosted Finesses. Their Elemental skills and Auras are also good. Etc. They excel at the basics.
However, Swords can also do a lot of the specialized things of other weapons, but at a lower effectiveness to Stamina Point cost ratio: that is, a higher SP cost for the same effect, or a lesser effect for the same SP cost. For example:
- Swords can attack from Row -2 or Row -1 and hit enemies in Rows -1 and -2 with an energy slice, but the damage per SP cost ratio is less than a normal attack from Bows.
- Swords have skills that can target groups of enemies, but the damage per SP cost ratio is less than Heavy Swords.
- Swords have skills that can debuff enemy stats, but the effectiveness is less than Axes for the SP cost.
- Swords have average guard stance skills, but the options and effectiveness for the SP cost for each option are not as good as those of Staffs.
- Etc.
Some battles can be won swiftly before low SP ever becomes a problem, making Swords a very versatile option. But more challenging battles call for specialization, in which case Sword-wielding units may be stuck with basic options while others carry the more specialized roles. If all your party members were Sword users trying to cover specialized roles they would run out of SP rather quickly.
Heavy Swords
Heavy Swords are used rather differently from regular Swords in that even their normal attacks have an area of effect that can hit multiple targets or "groups," but they are significantly less accurate. This makes them excellent at dealing heavy damage to crowds (especially with non-evasive enemies), but poor at dealing with any one particular enemy (especially evasive ones).
Compared to regular Swords, Heavy Swords normal attacks cost more SP, and are fairly committed to Rows +1 and +2.
Their Breaks do low damage to a group of foes, and thus aren't useful for taking out individual targets with high defenses. They lack a proper Finesse entirely.
Heavy Sword users can attack a single target with improved accuracy (though it's not a proper Finesse, since the accuracy is still lower than the Sword Standard normal), but the SP cost is rather high.
Heavy Sword users can also perform long range weapon throws, from Row -1 (but not Row -2) to hit a group of foes at lower base power, or from Row +2 to hit a group of foes in Rows -2 and -1 for lower base power (though still better overall than the 50% reduction from units being in the back row). But the SP cost for these options are also rather high and can't be sustained turn after turn.
The most powerful Heavy Sword skills focus on dealing heavy damage to groups of foes.
Heavy Swords are two-handed, such that the unit cannot also equip a Shield, and they also have poorer guard stance skills than Swords. Heavy Swords are basically relentlessly offensive crowd-control weapons.
Axes
I've actually applied a number of the same ideas you listed, in the principle of "things both new and familiar." Compared to Swords, Axes attack with a speed penalty, and they specialize in disabling enemy targets. By default their standard normal attack debuffs the target's defense stat (max two stages) and they have other normals that debuff other stats, though these debuffs are not as drastic or potent as those applied by skills that cost Aether Points.
Axes deal slightly more damage per hit than Swords, at about the same SP cost ratio (higher damage for a higher SP cost), but are slightly less accurate. The Axe Break is about as efficient as a Sword Break. Axes do have a proper Finesse but at a high SP cost.
Like Heavy Swords, Axes are fairly committed to rows +1 and +2. Axe users can throw their Axe long range from Row -1 at lower base power, or from Row+2 to hit an an enemy in Row-2 or -1 at lower base power (though without the back row damage reduction), but the SP cost to do so is pretty high. Like Heavy Sword users, Axe users will have to stay mostly in the front rows.
In contrast to Heavy Swords, Axes specialize in focusing on a single enemy at a time. Their disabling debuffs have a higher chance of working if one of the Axe's disabling debuffs have already been applied, so there is an incentive to stick with the same target. Similar in Disgaea, all the Axes strong attack skills target a single unit; Axes have little to no options for attacking multiple targets at a time.
Also in contrast to Heavy Swords, Axes are one-handed, such that Axe-wielding units can also equip a Shield or Sub-Weapon. Axes have poorer guard stance skills than Swords, so they have more need of a Shield.
Knives
Knives are the unique fast, accurate, and SP efficient front row weapons. Knives don't do as much damage per hit as Swords, but their SP costs are lower and more cost efficient (approximately 85% damage per hit for around 75-80% of the SP cost).
In contrast to Axes, Knives gain a speed boost with their attacks. They are especially useful for finishing off speedy targets with low HP at the start of a turn. They are also more accurate than Swords, and are basically Finesse specialists, good at hitting evasive targets (the opposite of Heavy Swords).
Knife Breaks are good, and they also have an even-more-accurate-than-standard Finesse for particularly evasive targets, but both suffer the same lower base damage compared to Swords.
Knives have average guard stance skills (as good as Swords), as well also a high cost guard stance option that allows them to preemptively counterattack or "slip in" damage to any enemies that target them with short-range physical attacks.
Knife users can throw their Knife from Row -1, or from Row +2 to hit enemies in Rows -2 and -1, but (like with Swords) the damage per SP cost ratio is not as good as the standard attack of a Bow.
Like Axes, Knife skills are mostly confined to single targets. Some of the more powerful Knife skills scale with the agility stat, making forgoing the use of a Shield (which lower agility) an option for higher damage.
Compared to other front row weapons, Knives gain a lot of positive traits at the significant cost of lower damage output on non-evasive targets.
Hammers
Hammers are lot like Axes in basic matters (speed penalty, reduced accuracy, high SP costs, fairly committed to rows +1 and +2) but with two crucial differences. While Axes deal reliably high damage per hit, Hammers deal highly variable or unreliable damage (sometimes as high as an Axe, sometimes low as a Staff), but all Hammer attacks can cancel enemy guard stances. That is, if a Hammer strikes an target that is in a guard stance, the guard stance's state will be erased and all subsequent attacks on that turn will deal regular damage. Because the damage output, though potentially good, is less reliable than Axes, the player should choose a Hammer primarily for the guard stance cancelling.
Since Hammers can break enemy guard stances but have the speed penalty of Axes, Hammers are best when synergistically matched with units that have skills that can overcome these weaknesses (such as skills that raise the Agility of the Hammer user, lower the Agility of the enemy target) or with units with low Agility themselves (so that their attacks will come after the Hammer has broken the enemy guard stance). Hammers are best suited for shutting down the defenses of enemy troops that try to wall you.
Hammers have a decent Break (at slightly less power than a Sword Break) that can be used for reliable damage in contrast to the variable damage of the Standard normal attack. They also have a Finesse but with a high SP cost and the unreliable damage swing.
The more powerful skills for Hammers are good but the variable damage makes them risky given the higher SP costs, and thus are better used after buffs and debuffs shore up the risk of low damage for the SP cost.
Also, in contrast to Axes or Heavy Swords, Hammers have a very effective guard stance skill but it has a high SP cost, making it more situational. Thus there are both pros and cons in pairing a Hammer with either a Shield or a Sub-weapon.
Spears
Spears specialize in piercing enemy defenses. Compared to Swords, all Spear attacks have damage formulas with lower base strength but which slightly ignore enemy defensive stats, such that Spears will do more damage than Swords to enemies with high defense but less damage to enemies with low defense. They are essentially highly specialized at Break attacks, drastically raising your bottom damage cap against highly defensive enemies.
Because of their unique damage formulas, Spears suffer less against enemies with buffed defenses but benefit less from debuffs to enemy defenses. Spear users also benefit less from buffs to their attack stat but suffer less from debuffs to their attack stat.
Spears have a proper Finesse but it has the same lower base strength, slight defense-ignoring property. As such, compared to other weapon Finesses it's better suited for the rarer situation when an enemy with high evasion also has high defense, as opposed to the more common situation where an enemy with high evasion has low defense.
Unlike front row weapons, Spears can attack from Row -1 for full damage (with their normal attacks), or hit enemies in Row -1 for full damage (though with attacks at slightly higher SP cost). However, unlike Bows, they cannot attack from Row -2 for full damage, or hit enemies in Row -2 for full damage, without a higher SP cost Spear toss.
Spears are somewhat committed to Row -1 or 0, in that their standard and most cost-efficient attacks are from those rows. They can attack from Rows +1 or +2, which attacks are able to do full damage to enemies in Row -1, but at higher SP costs.
Spears have average guard stance skills.
Spear skills are mostly single-target but some special skills can hit enemies in a line area of effect.
Whips
Whips specialize in dealing extra damage to enemies with low defenses. Compared to Swords, all Whip attacks have damage formulas with higher base strength but which greatly factor in enemy defenses, such that Whips will do extra damage compared to Swords to enemies with low defense, but extra low damage to enemies with high defense. Whips are the opposite of Spears in this regard.
Because of their unique damage formulas, Whips are extra effective against enemies with debuffed defenses but extra poor against enemies with buffed defenses. Whip users benefit more from buffs to their attack stat and suffer more from debuffs to their attack stat.
Whip attacks have an accuracy and speed boost comparable to that of Knives, but higher SP costs on basic attacks than Swords.
Whips have an very weak Break that attacks enemies in a group, but they have a useful Finesse with the same property of dealing extra damage to enemies with low defense.
Whips have the same basic Row properties as Spears, and can only hit enemies in Row -2 while bypassing the backrow damage reduction with a lower base damage skill.
The most damaging attacks for Whips are situational, dealing the most damage against enemies whose defenses are so low or debuffed they'd be taking tons of damage from most attacks and fall quickly anyway, making Whips best against enemies with low/debuffed defense but huge max HP. Whips by themselves lack the ability to debuff enemy defenses, and hence often require synergy with other skill trees or party members.
Like with Knives, some of the more powerful Whip skills scale with the agility stat, making forgoing a Shield (which lower agility) an option for more damage. But unlike Knives, Whips have very poor guard stance options, making this a more risky strategy.
However, other than attacking skills, Whips have the useful ability to "rope" a friendly or enemy unit and change their current row on the fly, allowing the player to pull a friendly unit back into the safety of the back rows when they're done attacking, or to pull an enemy from the safety of the back rows into the front where they will take full damage from front row attackers. The timing of such maneuvers are sensitive though (switching a unit's row is useless if that unit is just going to return to their previous row in the very next action), and may require careful maintenance of the speeds of friendly and enemy units.
Scythes
Scythes specialize in dealing the same damage at the same SP costs from any row (with short range slices and long range throws) and hence being able to switch and manuever between rows with ease. This also means Scythes, just like Bows, can attack enemies in Rows -2 and -1 at full base power while also skipping the back row damage reduction.
Scythes have similar damage output and SP costs to Swords for their Standards, but their Breaks and Finesses can only target all enemies for very low damage per hit.
Scythes also lack the speed and accuracy boosts of Knives or Bows.
Scythes are two-handed weapons, but their above average guard stances cover some of the loss of a Shield, and their row flexibility covers some of the loss of a Sub-Weapon.
Scythes have a low cost Aura skill that allows them to drain small amounts of HP from enemies who are not invulnerable to the Bio Medium. Although the HP recovered per turn/hit is small, the ability synergizes well with the Scythe's ability to easily switch between rows. A Scythe user can start in the front rows, take some enemy attacks, then retreat to back rows with low TGR to heal up over several turns.
The row flexibility enables other useful Scythe tactics, like the Scythe user attacking for good damage from the low TGR back rows while other party members load the Scythe user with defensive buffs and then springing to the front rows so that a fresh party member with full HP and buffs applied is now at the forefront.
The main weakness of Scythes, besides the limited Break and Finesse options, is that their more powerful damage dealing skills are situational and require a lot of synergy and set up with other skill trees or party members. For example, the most powerful Scythe skill, "Grand Release," has a very high SP cost and moderate AP cost and deals damage to all targets based on how many select negative status effects and stages of these status effects have been applied to each targets (negative status effects have up to four stages of increasing severity in my game) before erasing those status effects. Even with a few status effects at stages 1 or 2 Grand Release will not deal enough damage to justify the SP and AP cost. And since Scythes in themselves lack the ability to inflict the status effects, the skill will be useless unless matched with units that excel at applying them.
Staffs
Staffs specialize in multiple guard stances. The different Staff guard stances can reduce oncoming damage from the six Mediums at different proportions selected by the player, or counter oncoming attacks with abilities that disable the attacker.
However, the biggest downside of Staffs is that they deal much lower damage than Swords or Knives, though they do have average accuracy and SP costs comparable to Swords.
Staffs have a weak Break, but a decent Finesse, though still with the lower base damage.
Staffs are two-handed weapons but their guard stances more than make up for a lack of a Shield.
Staffs do have some decent attack options when combined with the user's Element, but these are more AP-dependent than other weapons and will probably do less damage than skills in the Element's skill tree, unless the target is weaker to the Physical Medium than to the Aether Medium. Staffs basically lack the ability to deal good damage at the cost of SP only.
Of all the weapons, Staffs are the most defensive and least offensive. They are best suited for units with a defensive or support role who still want to be able to deal some Physical-based damage, or for whose damage will come from other skill trees.
Fists
More of a "martial arts" job class than just a piece of equipment for a fist, Fists have a wide variety of punch, kick, and grapple attacks to manage SP costs (higher SP for higher damage, lower SP when higher damage is not necessary), accuracy (sacrificing accuracy for damage or vice versa), and attack speed (sacrificing damage for speed or vice versa, or attacking at boosted speed and damage for higher SP costs). Fists are great for units on which the player wants a lot of control.
Fist users can attack from the front lines, or shoot strong Energy-based chi projectiles at full power from any row (for high SP costs proportional to their high damage).
The biggest disadvantage of Fists is that although they can equip Sub-weapons, they cannot equip Shields, and although Fist guard stances are good at countering damage they are very poor at reducing or preventing damage (except for a high Sp-cost evasion guard stance). Moreover, most Fist regular attacks are from the front rows where the user will have high TGR. This, without support from other party members, Fist users can be the biggest glass cannons of all weapon users.
Bows
Bows specialize in being able to attack long-range from Row -2 and to attack enemies in Rows -2 and -1 at full damage without the backrow damage reduction.
Bows have less base power than Swords, but will still deal more damage if both weapons are attacking enemies with the backrow damage reduction.
Bows have low SP costs, high accuracy, and a speed boost. They are excellent for attacking magic users or other long-range units whose primary defenses against Physical attacks come from the damage reduction of being behind other units in the back row.
Bows have a decent Break and Finesse, but both come at the price of a slight speed penalty.
Bows are two-handed and have poor guard stance options other than a high SP cost evasion guard stance. Their defenses are very highly dependent upon being in the back rows where they have the damage reduction from short range Physical attacks and their TGR is reduced. Their skills do mostly commit them to Row -2, keeping them relatively safe but forcing other party members to stay in the front rows and take more attacks.
Although Scythes also have long-range attacks that can hit enemies targets in Row -2 and -1 for full damage, Bows not only have the higher accuracy, lower SP costs, and speed boosts, but also a variety of more powerful long range attacks for higher SP costs that (unlike Scythes) are easy to use and don't require an elaborate set up.
Boomerangs
Boomerangs are long range weapons that specialize in multiple target options. They can target single units, groups, all enemies, all enemies in a line, or all enemies in a Row with ease.
Most Boomerang attacks have low base damage (lower than a Staff) but with multiple targets. The damage is split between the number of targets beyond three, such that an attack that hits four targets will deal more total damage (but less damage individually to each target) than an attack that hits three, and yet the attack will not deal any extra damage than the base damage if there are less than three targets.
Boomerangs are unique in that they're optimized for dealing higher total damage the more enemies are targeted. Their skills are such that it actually costs Boomerangs higher SP to attack a single enemy for damage similar to that a Sword.
This means Boomerangs excel at gradually weakening or mopping up large groups of enemies, but they are poor at focusing on single targets at good SP costs. For example, Boomerangs would be excellent at dealing with an endless amount of weak enemies summoned by a boss, but rather poor at attacking the boss itself.
Boomerang have a Break and Finesse but like the Scythe they only hit all targets for very low damage.
Unlike Bows, Boomerang are single-handed and the guard stance options are as good as a Sword. Boomerang users are actually very good candidates for a Sub-weapon to help them attack single units, but of course forgoing a Shield will make them weaker defensively.
Besides the Boomerang weakness at targeting single units for efficient SP costs, the other Boomerang weakness is a lack of more devastating skills offered by other weapons. Most of the Boomerang's higher SP-cost skills are similar to their normal attacks but without the damage split property.
Magical Weapons
There are four different types of magical weapons: Magic Melee, Magic Bow, Magic Staff, and Magic Amulet.
Magical weapons are similar to each other and different from regular weapons in the following ways:
- Significant weaker at dealing Physical damage that scales with the user's attack stat
- Significantly better at dealing Aether damage that scales with the user's magic attack stat.
- Increase either both the attack and magic attack stat of the user, or only the magic attack stat, as opposed to only the attack stat from regular weapons.
- Skills, including normals, are far more AP-dependent than SP dependent, with the exception below.
- Tend to have skills that help users regain AP at the cost of SP.
- Guard stances are better at reducing or evading Aether, Mental, and Spiritual damage, as opposed to Physical, Bio, and Energy damage from regular weapons.
- Lack potent skills of their own and are more geared towards enhancing the power of the user's magic skills from other skill trees.
Some differences between the four types:
- Magic Melee weapons increase the user's attack and magic attack stats. Their normal attacks deal half Physical damage (scaling with the user's attack stat, reduced by the target's defense stat) and half Aether damage (scaling with the user's magic attack stat, reduced by the target's magical defense stat). These attacks cost a small amount of AP and place the unit in the front rows. Magic Melee weapons can generate AP at about the SP cost of a normal attack. They weapons are good for units that want to use more magic attacks while being able to deal still good damage with normal attacks from the front rows where they can take some hits for the party.
- Magic Bows are quite similar to Magic Melee weapons except that their attacks are done from the back rows.
- Magic Staff are for units that plan to do few regular attacks at all. The user can still do a normal, all Physical attack, but the weapon itself increases the user's magic attack stat only. Magic Staffs grant a skill tree of Aether-based, non-elemental attacks that can shore up the weaknesses of a unit with Aether attacks of only a certain Element (such as all Fire, making the user weak against units that resist Fire). Magic staffs are able to regain AP at higher rates than Magic Melee or Bow weapons, for a lower SP cost. Since their normal attack is weak and their skills AP-dependent, on the turns that a Magic Staff user is not using AP-dependent skills they will probably be using the turn to draw AP.
- Magic Amulets are extreme versions of Magic Staffs, having no normals at all, and wielding more potent Aether-focused attacks and guard stances for high AP costs. They can draw AP even faster than Magic Staffs but at higher SP costs. While a Magic Staff is suited for being becoming independent of SP, the Magic Amulet theme is sacrificing SP to gain AP faster, thus making them more SP-dependent.
