How we could make repair skill matter !

@Chris

Ours is a magical world . As crafters we can only do so much with a piece of metal..where our skills truly lie are on infusing these ordinary weapons and armors with magical properties through enchants and masterworks ...and even though a meteoric blade could potentially last for 1000 years the same should not be said about the magic infused in that blade ... Should these magical properties diminish in power overtime ?

My vote is on ''yes they should''.


Diminishing Enchants/Masterworks Power through Repairs

Repairs are unavoidable and repairing an item should have a cost ..the item can never be what it was when it was first made.



Lets take this hammer as an example its enchants consist of 35 STR and masterworks 18 STR + 35% knockdown damage .. to sum it all up 53 STR + 35% knockdown damage .

When this hammer reaches 0 durability it will become unusable unless repaired .. What if when it is repaired it will lose 10 % of its magical power so 53 STR becomes 47.7 STR + 31.5% knockdown damage instead of 35% ?

Making Repair Skills matter

The hammer posted has 115 durability which means when it reaches 0 with current system it will need at least 3-4 repairs to full which equates to it losing 30%-40% of its enchant/mw power ...

However

If taken to a crafter with a high level of repair skill he could restore that hammer durability in 1-2 repairs instead of 4 thus causing said hammer to only lose 10%/20% of the enchants/mw power .

You could allow at level 100 repair a chance to restore between 20-50 durability /1 repair kit ...at level 150 could restore between 50-100 durability/1 repair kit.

Skill could also affect how much of the enchant power is lost but it should never be 0 .

Coto Repair

Will work the same as now..they will restore 100% item durability but 10% of the enchants/masterwork power will be lost or based on repair skill level.

A few thoughts

The ways implemented so far to phase items out of the economy have hurt crafters and fighters alike, crafters with enchants that cost alot of durability, with items (that can be repaired forever )and dont have enough durability to fit them ( thus greatly diminishing our ability to make decent items ), and fighters by greatly increasing the rate at which items decay during combat . By adding a system that diminishes enchants/mw power you can change all that ... an item with 10/20 major repairs will just return to its base stats, so will need to be replaced, this will also allow you to switch your focus from durability being the only factor to determine how quickly an items is recycled, to the number of repairs an item should withstand until it gets replaced/recycled .

Lets say you increase swords durability to 500 ... this will allow crafters to create 5/5 swords ... it would be an epic sword with maybe 200 - 300 durability left ... in the current system a sword like that, cannot be crafted, but if it could it would never need to be replaced ... however in the system im proposing the magical stats on this sword lose 10% power everytime is repaired ... 5 times repaired...50% enchant power lost .... durability left becomes irrelevant ..it will be replaced .



Also a 500 durability sword can be bought by a fighter used to kill 50 dragons to get the ''weapon afinity'' buff ( Dragon slayer ..5% damage vs Dragons ) , then repaired to full ( wont lose anything from magical stats if it has none) ....then bought by a crafter that wants to ench/mw said sword .... And so a market gets created for ''Afinity Weapons'' and a new system gets added.


The enchant power lost /repair is just an example could be 2% or 5% .....up to you.

I think a system like this will really benefit crafters ( allows you to increase items durability so we can craft better items ) , fighters (they get better items ) and the crafting economy ( gear gets replaced more often).