Elemental: War of Magic - Fallen Echantress Weapon Alterations Detailed

In order to grant more depth to the weapons in Elemental: War of Magic, Stardock plans to add quite a few more variables and effects to the seventeen different weapon types that will be available in its Fallen Enchantress expansion pack. Lead producer Derek Paxton breaks the welcome modifications down:
We added Staves that make spell casters more powerful, swords that do lightning damage based on the wielders level, bows that do more damage vs beasts, etc. We have a unique great sword that is stuck in one of our elemental lords (good luck getting that one). We have weapons that poison victims they strike, Slag Teeth that are like short swords with increased crit chances, the Druss Blade that ignores armor, etc.

There are common, uncommon, rare and unique weapons. There are a lot to find and we want players to be discovering new ones as they play and replay the game. We won't have Diablo style drop rates (you won't be swimming in magical equipment). Instead we want every magical weapon you get to be something special and interesting. You should have a few to spread around to your champions by the mid to late game, and you can share them with units that can use them best or pile them all on one champion so he becomes even more powerful.

And this is open to modding. There are a lot of bonuses to give, and they can be impacted by things like the wielders level (as in the sword that does +1 lightning damage per level of the wielder), only have their bonus apply against certain creature types (this is part of the conditional gamemodifier work we did for traits), vs damaged units, vs units with a higher or lower specified stat, etc.

But my favorite ability is that weapons can apply a spell when it strikes an opponent. This came out of the requirement to be able to have weapons that poison opponents. Instead of simply applying a poison effect the weapon applies a spell, so we have the capabilities of the entire spell system open to us for what weapons can do (more about all the new spell functionality later). Weapons can blind opponents they hit, they can weaken them, they can curse them, whatever the modder wants to make a spell to do, the weapon can apply.