Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-670597-20140808235816/@comment-670597-20140907202814

Hey everyone! Just thought of a new weapon idea after returning my dog to her gate after a long walk; I began to swing her chain leash when it hit me! A chain weapon with medium distance that relies on the momentum of its swings to deal damage. I unfortunately don’t have an incredibly decent name for the weapon, so for now I’ll just refer to it as the Chain Weapon.

Chain Weapon: A chain weapon is a weapon made of one or more heavy objects attached to a chain, sometimes with a handle. The flail was one of the more common types of chain weapons associated with medieval Europe, although some flails used hinges instead of chains. There were several chain weapons that were used in feudal Japan; these weapons were allegedly used by the ninja. The shoge was a ring with a sickle-like knife on a chain that could be used to pierce armor, grapple, and to entangle the legs of man and horse. The kusari-gama was a kama on a handled chain. The chigriki was a staff with a weighted chain on the end. The manriki-gusari was a double weighted chain. The nunchaku was a short chain with two short wooden sticks on the ends. The nunchaku is often thought of as a feudal weapon. It was used in those times for farming and not as a weapon until much later. As for the design of the Monster Hunter variant, I was thinking of a softball sized metal ball attached to a 12 – 14 foot chain, which in turn is attached to either a handle, ring, or gauntlet; held or worn by your hunter. The appearance otherwise will depend on the materials used to craft it. It would be the highest ranged Blademaster weapon, though not having near the range of Bows or Bowguns, but requires a great deal of skill to use as the hunter must be at a certain distance from the monster in order to deal the max amount of damage they can; too far and the Hunter will miss with his swings, and too close the hunter will be dealing very little damage. The specialty of the Chain Weapon would be the build-up and retaining of Momentum, the level of which would be shown in a circular-shaped gauge in usual area under the Sharpness gauge. As soon as the hunter draws the weapon they begin to swing the ball and chain at a noticeably slow pace, though this swinging will increase in speed as more momentum is gained. Momentum is gained in three ways; simply having the weapon drawn, attacking with the weapon (despite whether or not the hunter hits the monster), or using the special button. The special serves both as a charge up for your momentum, and as a targeting reticle (which will appear as a red cross at the distance where the weapon’s max damage will be dealt). With momentum buildup comes an increase in overall damage, element/status damage/chance, and attack-speed. It is, however, rather easy to lose momentum; getting struck by the monster, evading, and sheathing the weapon will remove 25, 25, and 100 percent of your momentum gauge. The chain weapon could also have different modifiers that could work similarly to either the Gunlances’ differing types, or the Bowguns’ attachments. These modifiers could be a heavier ball for higher damage but an increase in how much momentum is lost on being hit or evading, a spiked ball that changes the weapon’s natural impact damage to that of piercing damage, a bladed weight that replaces the ball and changes the damage to that of pure cutting, and finally a longer chain that increases range but also decreases the speed of momentum buildup.