Gift of Hedone: Relationship between Stats & Gear

Hello you wonderful deviants,

So one thing I have been thinking a lot about is the interaction between your character stats as they level up and the gear you have.

As you are a Blacksmith in this game, I want to try and put at emphasis on coming back to smithing your gear, which has lead me to this iteration of how I think gear and stats will interact.

In short, your gear will do the majority of the heavy lifting, while your stats will become a multiplier of your gears effectiveness.

This next example is using arbitrary numbers for attack and your weapon, just for the purpose of demonstration - this would exclude any weapon traits, this is solely base damage

What you see below is the base weapon level, and then that weapons base damage. Then horizontally you are seeing the damage multiplied by the ATK stat modifier you would have. Which is a 1 + .01 per ATK stat point, so:

For example, if you had a level 10 weapon, and had 50 points in ATK (you would be a much higher level to have 50 in ATK) you would get a damage of 50 x 1.5 = 75

or, if you had a level 70 weapon, and had 80 points in ATK, you would have an ATK damage output of 630.

This multiplier will likely change as the game develops to a higher one like (0.02 or 0.05) - but I wanted to give you an idea of how they would interact. And it would mean the focus would be to rely on upgrading and improving your gear not just leveling up

This also wouldn't take into consideration any bonuses for Affinity or subclass bonuses or, higher level bonuses

Some questions:
Could I have a level 70 weapon at 10? No you would not be able to wield nor craft weapons higher than your actual level

Are you going to be able to allocate stats as you level? For the Protagonist, i'm thinking Yes (but will have to see how development goes), Maidens No (each maiden would have a set stat structure as they level up (like how Pokemon gain certain stats with some getting higher ATK, some others DEF etc.)

Will you need to craft a new weapon every level? Right now I'm thinking of allowing weapons to be upgrade a few levels before you need to craft a new weapon, so you don't have to do it every level.

What do you think?