Crafting of waponry like in Vagrant story

I'm a big fan of the "crafting" system in Vagrant Story, even though it was made way too complicated. For those of you who've never heard of it or anything about that game at all it is something like this:

Most swords for example consists of a grip, a blade and a cross guard of some kind. In the mentioned game you could combine different grips with blades and cross guards to get a weapon with a certain effect (or look). This worked for polearms, swords, crossbows, daggers, axes and maces. Parts with the name sometimes had varying values on their damage output (at least that's what I remember), somewhat like a different quality.

People would be able to craft different sword parts and combine them to make unique looking weapons, like a longsword blade combined with a claymore grip to make a two handed longsword which causes somewhat more damage, still not as much as the claymore, but therefore it should be slightly faster to attack with it.

 

Yes, I was thinking of making a post like yours

I think Vagrant Story has some very interesting crafting features, and also that it could be included nicely in the loot system :

Adventurers kill monsters, monsters drop weapons, adenturers bring these weapons back to crafters, and crafters disassemble those weapons and make new more powerful ones with the parts they get.

That way, looted weapons could be mostly useless "as is", but could contain a powerful element which could become very handy in the hand of the right crafter.

Also you forgot to mention a gem could be attached to some weapons in order to get bonuses