In Morrowind you had throwing stars that were 'ammo', but i think that was more for the purposes of stacking and mechanics and less of what the definition is. To which ammo would be more 'an expendable component to make something else work'. Though that may be closer to charges... while ammo is usually for weapons specifically.

Course in Morrowind you had tons of different ammo types (iron, silver, steel, etc) but never hinted at what the damage value or properties were.

Just because you can throw something doesn't make it ammo. So i'll go if it wasn't intended to be ammo, it isn't ammo. Plain and simple. As such i agree with the glass sword not being ammo (it just sucks with durability).

I'm suddenly reminded of Valkyrie profile. You can make items and they are indestructible and you hand them out, but if you pick up items from the human world they have a 5% chance to break on every hit/use. A unique case where things do and don't break in the same game.

From a standpoint of game design, these function like ammo; they can typically be thrown only once, and then they're gone. So, IMO, it makes sense to call them ammo from the perspective of this topic.

Dongeon Master allows you to retrieve thrown weapons, but that game also lets you recover arrows that you shoot from a bow.

Also, Wizardry 8 has a special gun that can shoot things that are normally thrown, like throwing daggers and darts.

Or SaGa Frontier 2. Typical items (which are called "tools" by the game) will break after a certain number of uses (and the game displays the remaining number of uses quite prominently). There are, however, special unique items called "quells", and they never break. There's also steel, which also never breaks and is non-unique (except a few that are story-related, and generally stuck on whichever character comes with them), but has the drawback of interfering with your magic.

SF2 also has the interesting mechanic where, when a weapon breaks, it changes into chips, which can later be converted to the game's main currency. (Instead of being able to sell items for extra money, you can also convert tools (and only tools, not quells or steel items) into chips at certain points; the number you get is the game.) Also, weapons that reach 0 durability don't break until end of combat, but do only half damage until then.

Incidentally, for whatever reason, in SF2 only some characters can use martial arts. (Other art types are mostly unrestricted; there's one character who can't use magic (and that fact is actual very important from a story perspective), and one character who's restricted to swords and magic because both his weapon slots have unremovable swords.)

I think it's pretty much always a gameplay positive. For shooters it makes you change up your weapons and search the maps, for RPG type games it does that plus gives you options to improve your character like holding more ammo or having better accuracy to preserve it.

I remember when Mass Effect had no ammo, and Deus Ex Invisible War had all weapons use one plentiful resource, and it really did take away something from those games.

That said if you're making a 100% pure shooter with zero other gameplay aspects (exploration, stats, etc.) like an arcade game... Contra for example... then ammo becomes much more optional. Even then though, would Contra be improved by having the special weapons operate on ammo counters rather than simply alternating based on pickups? Probably.

That's the point that I've been making. Just because something has extremely bad durability, it's not automatically ammo. Otherwise we're going to be calling a lot of other things ammo just because they have really bad durability. There's games where you can find trousers with a durability of 1/1 that are destroyed the first time they're damaged and cannot be repaired.

In the original Diablo there's a hat you can get The Thinking Cap; Has 1/1 durability but does 30 mana and +2 to all spells.. The ONLY way to get it higher, is to find a specific shrine and only have two items on and hope the other item loses 5-10 durability and the hat gains said durability to make it so it doesn't instantly disappear.

Having only two items shouldn't be hard as you could just throw everything else on the ground before using the shrine, then pick it up after. Right?

It's been a very long time since I've played Diablo.

I agree with this statement.

D&D 3rd edition and Pathfinder explicitly call a shuriken as ammo for purposes of use, cost, storage and enchantment, FYI. (I wish they also did that for darts, javelins, throwing daggers/throwing axes...)

Ammo you typically enchant 20 or 50 at a time (like the inverse of wands), and ammo is destroyed on use, or if you miss a 50% chance to recover it.

Naturally you can have far more expensive daggers or whatnot you manually pick up again and would have melee and ranged use, but there's also a lot of money that goes into that. Typically bonus^2 x 1000 x 2. (The last x2 goes from cost to the market value). Which goes +1 = 1x1=1x2k = 2k, and +3 = 3x3=9*2k = 18k.

Compare to a +1 Arrow which i believe was 50g, or 1/40th the price of a +1 weapon. (trying to find the exact rules but having trouble finding it)

In Stonekeep you use bows and crossbows by loading arrows and bolts into their respective satchels which will be held in one hand, while your weapon is in the other hand. Darts don't have a "shooter weapon" but they're also loaded into their own satchel. In this case you equip the satchel in one hand and when you command an attack the dart is sent flying.

You also have throwing daggers and throwing axes and they're used quite differently. Open the inventory screen (which pauses combat and doesn't cover the enemies), drag the weapon you want to throw in front of the enemies, release it. The game will unpause automatically with the weapon being hurled forward. So darts are very different: they behave like other ammo weapons, except they don't use both hands.

BTW in this game you recover every arrow or other ammo from the ground or the corpses of your enemies. So they're limited only during the current combat. To be fair it was a bit annoying to have to pick several items from the ground in a few places...
You reminded me that I used to do the same thing in Stonekeep, except that it was me willingly activating some trap in a corridor that released arrows from the far wall. By that point I was too strong to die from a few arrows and could heal myself effortlessly, but the extra arrows were welcome.

what the hell is your idiotic rant even about?

If you think I'll care about your trolling any longer than this line I've written you're mistaken. Bye

Edit: Also, calling my previous post a "rant" is hilarious. Did you even read it?

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+pot+calling+the+kettle+black

But we're talking about an old game from 1997 so at this point, people might know already when they see it that it's THAT shrine. I'm not saying that everyone will, but the game is old enough that it's not unreasonable for even a new player to look up a guide about all the shrines to find out what they do after encountering one or two of them.


And I'm going to be a horrible person and not reply back to any other posts that replied to me at the moment as I have some stuff that needs to get done.