If there is a distance component, as there is in Legend of Grimrock, you could leverage that on spears.
Either allow back-row heroes to deal as much damage with melee weapon from the backrow, or to have a pre-emptive attack at incoming enemies.
If this does not fit your current design, sorry, your OP did not mention much about your actual gameplay mechanics.
Its somewhat similar to Grimrock in that regard yes:
Spears allow attacks from both front and back-row, but deals less damage, and very few heroes can use them.
Many rpg:s have loads of damage types and resistances. That can get messy. My plan is to cut it down to 4:
1. Physical - most weapons and abilities
2. Magical - staffs and wands fire - some abilities both by casters and others. And enchanted swords!
3. Fire - deal x instant dmg + x/2 dmg the following turn (burn-damage). some magical weapons, environmental dmg, some spells such as fireball
4. Poison - deal x dmg for y turns. Some abilities and environmental dmg.
Then I can characterize monsters by damage modifiers and encourage some tactics and utility of making a mixed party of heroes;
Treemen...........
fire (2.0)
poison (0.5)
Ghost.............
physical (0.4)
magical (2.0)
Undead.........
poison (0.5)
physical - blunt (1.7) (subclass of some weapons such as mace)
physical - piercing (0.5) (subclass of some weapons such as bow)
Typical other damage types are cold, arcane, holy etc but i dont think I need those. These 4 seem distinct enough to me. Any feedback on this idea? I dont want full immunities as this can potentially lock the player in an unwinnable fight if unlucky.
Instead of a specific modifier I should maybe have some fixed damage modifiers - as it's easier to overview for the player...
resistant - take half damage from certain damage type (same as mod 0.5)
vulnerable - take 80% extra damage from certain damage type (same as mod 1.8)
And that's it! Might be more distinct, what do you guys think?
Oh and as a slightly separate question, how to deal with poison damage? Replace or stack DOTs? (damage over time)
Lets say the assassin has poisoned daggers (or a poison applying ability) which deals 5 damage each of the coming 4 turns (lets call that 5x4dmg).
If she uses the same next turn would that enemy have a 5x4 condition DOT PLUS a 5x3 DOT? Or a 10x4 DOT, or simply a single 5x4 DOT (the highest replaces).
If it replaces, a poison-heavy hero becomes someone that needs to constantly switch target, as opposed to someone with an axe, dealing a direct 14 dmg each turn. If there is only one monster to attack, the poison-guy becomes rather worthless.
How is this (poison-DOT) typically handled in turn-based tactical rpg-fights?
I think WOW stacks different abilities, but replaces the same ability if cast again (refreshes the remaining time). This works badly in my game I think.
There's the halfway step, where you have an initial poison strength, and additional attacks don't stack that initial amount, but increase the poison strength by some amount.
So initial poison is 5x3, next hit may do something increase that to 6x3, or 8x3 or whatever. You could even play with that stat and show it to the user. "Initial poison damage: Y per turn, Additional hits to an enemy already poisoned by mandrake root will increase the poison damage by X per turn."
Note: in pen and paper RPGs both of those properties are creature properties.
That is, the weapon by itself inflicts the same damage, the creature absorbs it differently.
There are some ways to do this, a simple tag system might work.
