The sword is a weapon which repays careful study and diligent practice a hundredfold in battle
This is a structure for some skill trees and weapon rules for a fantasy type game. It is intended to reward specialisation and thematic cool, and to make there be more of a meaningful difference between various types of fighty character. If I like it, I'll probably design an extended version of this which applies to all skill trees. This is intended to lean towards the historic/gritty/realistic end of fantasy, but the timescales are absurdly quick. With some fairly minor thematic decisions about skills, it could go crazy high-fantasy though.
The basics
You earn 2xp a week.
Skills have three levels: Novice, Scholar, and Master
Weapons themselves are divided into a number of broad classes, with a number of specialisations in each:
Specialisations are not listed here, but include appropriate subsets: longsword and zweihander are both specialisations of two-handed weapon, as is pollaxe. Spear, halberd, and great maul are all specialisations of polearm. Etc etc
Novice
You get novice use of single weapon for free. To buy other weapon classes to novice level costs 2xp each.
With novice in a weapon class, you may use weapons of that class to call single, and to parry as appropriate. Novice use of bows or crossbows does double strikedown. Numbers subject to change.
Novice applies to all weapons in a class - you can use a sword as well as a club, or a kite shield and knightly sword as well as a scutum and gladius.
Scholar
Scholar costs 4xp, and requires having that weapon class to novice
Scholar only applies to weapons in a given specialisation, not the entire class. If you have bought scholar for your spear, you are still only novice when you borrow someone else's halberd.
If you have a specialisation at scholar, you may buy a second specialisation in the same class to scholar for 2xp.
The abilities granted by scholar will generally be fairly consistent across a weapon class, but e.g. a rapier and dagger user may have a disarm per fight, while a thug with an axe and a sap might instead have a per encounter call of quad from behind.
Master
This costs 6xp, and requires having the appropriate specialisation to scholar.
If you have bought mastery of a weapon, you will automatically spend 1xp each week on maintaining that level of skill, and so only earn 1 xp per week from then on.
Mastery only applies to a specific weapon in a specialisation. You can be a scholar of the spear, but you will master just your own spear. If this weapon is stolen or lost, there is a week's downtime while you retrain onto the new one (so if you lose your weapon in interactive 3, you are a master of the new one in interactive 5).
The abilities granted by mastery are more powerful, relatively speaking, and may be tailored to individual characters/physreps to a certain extent - if you have a relatively short spear, you may get different powers from mastering it than would be gained by someone who has a 7' spear.
Thoughts
I quite like the general principle of having various levels of ability. In particular, the permanent cost for mastery puts a natural cap on progression and ability, and means that older characters will be better than new ones, most likely in flexibility, but not able to become godlike in comparison. I'll probably write an extended version of this for magic and so on at some point.
Haven't worked out how to incorporate armour and so on yet, but the answer is likely to be making wearing light armour free, heavy armour a novice type skill, and then introducing a skill tree for both lights and heavies. Unsure. The ability for a highly trained knight to have mastered both her heavy plate and her pollaxe is quite a nice thing, though.
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I realise this is a very partial piece of a system, and needs the rest of a system to give it context and attach it to. I mostly thought it was an interesting idea which I felt like writing down instead of forgetting. Feel free to steal and/or adapt if you are working on various larp things.