Shattered Kingdoms

bladed != pound.

Also, Jet Li tends to extend about 1 in 3 blows with a staff, and not consistently use it to whack people at reach.

While it is possible to use a staff to reach, it's not very wieldy or quick. I'd suggest two different aim/damage ratings for staves that can reach, one for reaching and one for non-reaching attacks but that's likely more effort than it's worth. Instead, I'd just make staves that can reach overall worse than other staves, thereby basically ensuring they're used for reach and reach alone.

I do agree that staves in general could use a buff. They should be amongst the fastest weapons in the game (faster than everything short of, say, daggers and rapiers and the like). A competent staff user can usually beat one or two swordsmen handsdown, given the fact that the staff provides such a huge amount of fast blocking as well as the ability to strike hard and in places that swords aren't often accustomed to blocking against. I'd even go so far as to say staves should provide an extra attack. IE, a sorc using a staff should get two attacks, whereas a merc using a staff should get upwards of five attacks.

More varied damage types would be good as well. As it stands, the majority are pounding damage, or slashing on the bladed staff subtype(s?). I can only think of one staff that has an unusual damage type (flaming bite).

I wouldn't buff the amount of damage the average staff does, if extra attacks are added. The idea behind a staff is inflicting more wounds in different places on the body, versus the straight one-shot damage dealt by bladed weapons. The extra attacks could be simulated by buffing the damage, however, so it really just depends on whether adding attacks or buffing damage across the staff subtypes is easier, I suppose.

Keep in mind, in sk the double-bladed sword falls into this category, too. Hence why I suggested a "balanced weapon" skill. In fact, I don't see why it can't be a toggleable thing, whether to use a staff at reach, or to balance it out for better defense/speed

Perhaps it could be used in conjunction with mood. When mood aggressive, a staff can be used at reach with penalties to attack and damge, whereas when set to mood defensive, it can't reach, but gets buffs to speed, accuracy and damage.

The classes that would consider staffs are ones with lots of magic and not much weapons training. They aren't going to be doing martial arts techniques - that's Fist stuff.

I think there's scope for some magical weapons designed for sorcs and the like - nice stuff, as compensation for daring to enter the front row. It doesn't bother me that staffs are otherwise a poor weapon. There's a reason they weren't used in any Dark Age military I can think of.

They wouldn't be doing martial arts stuff...You mean..like what bo staffs are majoratively used for? Or, say, jo staffs? Or quarterstaffs? I know, tonfa! All of these are staffs that people with weapons training would use, and were also used in some martial arts practice.

Heck, you don't even have to go eastern here. Quarterstaff combat was certainly practiced in the European Middle Ages. But it was primarily for peasants - people who wanted to use weapons, but didn't have access to swords.

In SK, just about everybody has access to swords, except classes deemed so non-martial that they aren't allowed to use them. If you actually made staffs into a good weapon for fighters, you'd probably have to remove the skill from the caster classes that have it - for both balance reasons and character concept reasons. I cannot see a mage choosing a quarterstaff over a sword, if the amount of effort to learn and use both is the same.