Add disarm abilities or conditions. Melee being more useful for this.
Melee Mods that alter melee functionality like grenade mods. May make melee use take ammo. Laser Swords, shotgun axes, and rocket hammers are a thing.
Melee mods can do 1-5 modifiers
Low quality bonuses equal 1
Mid quality equals 2
High quality equals 3
Each Affix is 1, except loyalty which is 2.
Common has 1
Uncommon has 1-2 and can sometimes have mid quality.
Rare has 2-3 can have high quality
Epic has 4-5
Legendary has equivalent of six
Melee Damage
Attack speed
Critical bonus
Range
Attack Rate
Affixes
Elemental
Status effect
Life steal
Shield steal
Attack Copy
Attack rate at cost
Conditional attack rate
Damage boost at cost (shield loss, health cost, ammo usage,
Conditional damage bonuses (50%, consecutive hits, critical kill, etc)
Move speed
Mobile-benefits while sliding or leaping and increase distance/speed of leaps and slides and reduce cool down between leaps or slides and speed loss while sliding or rolling.
Fight for your life benefits
Throwing/returning
Ricochet/cleaving
Parrying- attack negation: usually melee only, but certain ones allow splash negation or element negation
Unstoppable- resist knock up/down/back, movement reduction, and flinch
Guarding -damage threshold and resistance benefits
Bonus health and shield capacity
On Kill and Kill streak benefits- More common numerical benefits like ammo regen, Health regen, shield regen, but temporary bonuses are possible. Kill streak benefits when numerical should be escalating.
Melee, jump, slide, reload override (example reload override might reload all guns or summon an ally)
Reduce speed loss while sliding or rolling as part of cooldown reduction on slides and leaps. Shield can probably negate entirely.
Artefacts changed to attach to various items the players have. Artefacts which attach to players are special; like Lesedi. Vehicle artefacts? Use when spawning? This replaces annointments and ensures thriving trading economy and reduces dependence on rng rolls for top end loot.
Artefact combination and creation system. Combine lesser artefacts to create more powerful ones.
Manufacturer specific bonuses replaced with loyalty benefits. Loyalty benefits count how many of a manufacturer are currently used and apply to all stats for that item. Compounding Loyalty gains added loyalty benefits for each Loyalty item equipped. Loyalty counts as two components? Compounding is 3?
Loot: Loot percentage increase, health, ammo, weapons, shields, grenades, rarity, or number of drops (usually boss only). Can do drops on hit for things like health, ammo, or grenades. Cutpurse benefit makes melee attacks that hit produce ammo items.
Unique Shield powered by eridium shards
Unique module? gravity manipulation to allow walk on walls or float by holding jump while shield is active.
Projectile count reduction and splash negation for Tina?
Projectile speed reduction barrier
Vehicles cost money. Some boss areas allow for vehicle purchases and might even be vehicle combat.
Weapons have shot volumes.
Modifiers and abilities can change shot volumes and thus enemy detection radius/chances.
Silencer shield that drops all shot volumes to zero while shield is active. Rockets and impacts still make noise. Dampening module for shields that reduces all player noise?
Legendary Shield that creates rotating spikes that damage things around it buzzsaw style. Damaging others damages the shield.
Hot key for slide and leap in direction of current movement.
Where is my flamethrower? Plumes of fire need to be a thing.
Borderlands
15 years since Lilith disappeared and many have given up hope of finding her again. A new mysterious ERD corporation has started pumping out new strange weapons. Tediore has started to undercut and buy out other corporations and has started open hostilities with those who don’t give in. The first was understandable as Maliwan top execs got killed by a skilled operative, but the rest were just as blatant. Why would they do all of this so openly? Someone knows where the 7th siren is and thinks they can use the siren control technology pioneered by Jack to control her. Someone might also secretly be behind ERD corporation.
Super corporate monopoly bad guy who seems like stereotypical corrupt greedy business type but is secretly an Eridian Infiltrator/body snatcher that took over Tediore decades ago. When revealed as alien after defeating body double bad guy monologues: leaderless and divided humanity could not stand against the things which even now strain against the boundaries of their prisons. Your half victories against minuscule portions or the weakest of creatures demonstrates just how pathetic you all really are. Hence, I have taken it upon myself to unify your species, use your armies to distract the creatures, and harness the power of the 7th siren in order to actually have a chance of stopping these things.
Raid bosses follow that characters can attempt to fight. Can hire mercenaries to help fight against raid bosses; they work for corporation so no loot for them. Cost is multiplied in multiplayer games and scales as more are purchased.
Mr Torgue’s Last Stand Campaign (mr torgue doesn’t do things for money; he does them because they are AWESOME; and so the board wants him to sell or die) Torgue campaign introduces Chunky Salsa mode: everyone who dies explodes for no reason. 100% more explosions. 1000% MOAR AWESOME
The Mask of Zer0 Campaign (who is under the mask and who will take up the role?)
Krieg’s assault on Hyperion campaign. (because some things you just don’t let go…)
Damage threshold instead of damage reduction. All damage up to X value is ignored from single source.
Double tap + crouch is a slide. Slide distance is function of move speed.
Double tap + jump is a leaping roll. Jump distance affects leaping distance.
Destructible terrain and obstacles. Obviously not all terrain as that would be impractical, but give the vehicles some love by making some terrain only passable by crashing through it or with shots from main gun (or just take a truly tremendous amount of shots)
Difficulty scalar boosts all damage not just guns. Enemies get increased damage threshold and all resistances. Larger health and shield pools. Forcing people to niche build just to stay relevant at highest difficulty is not fun.
Resistances only go to 100%. Multiplicative stacking, so highest single source is preferable.
Absorbing/healing from damage types requires a special ability. Resistances can’t do that no matter what bonus.
Shields don’t care about hit location or critical strikes; damage is damage. In exchange shields take progressively more damage as they take continuous hits over a short time; delay affects this interval as well. Simultaneous strikes don’t proc this effect but can benefit from it, so shotgun is better as a finishing move. Adds strategic element to game and promotes weapon diversity.
Shield manufacturer determines what added components can be had at generation. All Torgue shields can get health boosts regardless of type.
Shield universal components
Some manufacturers might use different trade offs…
Selective: shield has better rate against damage of a certain type and worse against others.
Impervious- takes reduced/no additional damage from consecutive shots for increased rate and delay; no additional has much greater penalties.
Capacity for health Turtle
Rate for capacity
Delay for rate
Dampening (adds damage threshold) for rate and delay
Enviro-Bubble protects against vacuum, gasses, and allows easy movement through water or other liquids.
Status effect chance reduction for reduced resistance.
All other stats vary by manufacturer.
Adaptive shields- are not 3 seconds and can do kinetic just fine. No native health bonuses. Does not contribute to Splash resistance by adaptation.
Scalar shields- underperform but gain permanent resistance (ratio of shield loss to damage is improved) as they are exposed to damage of a certain type. Possible scaling adaptive unique which has stronger resistance the more it is exposed to a single element reset when new element occurs.
Retribution for capacity Reflection shields are gone. Retribution is half effective at range but effective vs all attacks just not conditions. Killing players with their own OP weapons is nonsense.
Roid shields- do melee damage and melee attack speed. More likely to have health bonuses, move speed, reload speed, and damage bonuses. Unique version that adds to all stats except shield of 0.
Ablative shields- don’t actually stop damage; instead they have high general resistances while shield lasts. More often selective. Unique Ablative Barrier has projectile slowing benefit?
Absorption shields- work just fine against exotic attacks. Some of these convert attacks into shield or health instead or in addition to ammo.
Amplifier shields- boost projectile damage and speed at cost of shield while at full. Unique versions might not need to be full or have always on small effect while shield is active. Automatically breaks shield in exchange for large boost legendary.
Barrier shields- project a shield wall when crouched that reduces effectiveness in most directions in exchange for enhanced effectiveness in a single direction. Front by default but back protection is possible.
Recuperative Shields- reserve health and in exchange heal a % of the reserved health over time when the shield breaks.
Kinetic, Fire, Shock, Corrosion, Explosion, Cryo, Radiation, Splash
Despite having a resistance Splash is not an element or damage type. It is an attack type like melee.
Status effects typically ignore damage thresholds.
Weapons should exist that leave fire/corrosive puddles or create shock/radiation fields on hit/death.
Cryo reduces damage threshold to zero while frozen, all attack damage except fire and explosion does 100% more damage, explosion 150%, melee 250%. Status effect damage is unaffected by frozen. Fire damage accelerates the ending of the frozen condition, but for each tick removed by fire damage take large amounts of Cryo damage when effect wears off. Frozen increases knockback/up/down chances. Disarm chance as well.
Irradiated status effect increases all damage taken by 50% and reduces all resistances by 20%. Damage over time is high damage but large interval. Some abilities and bonuses alter these values. Radiation does not cause the target to explode on death. Radiation element attacks either add a splash radius of 50 or increases the splash radius by 50 if one is already possessed.
Shock does less damage to robots but greater chance of stun.
Disorient is an explosive status effect.
Knockback, Knockup, and Knockdown are all kinetic status effects.
Sludges shotgun- splatter gun with projectiles forming a spray that does corrosive and sticks to the target. Corroded condition has 50% longer duration to those that have sticky mass on them.
Grenades
Grenade travel speed modification?
Super slow grenade with massive aoe and damage as Nuke option.
If bonus grenade travel speed is a thing then the Torgue collision grenades gain bonus damage on impact from grenade speed.
All grenades default to kinetic element with all damage dealt counting as splash.
Legendary grenade that clones itself over time? Artefact that does this?
Universal vs manufacturer specific components. Default grenades explode on impact or shortly after depending upon manufacturer. All grenades have at least default components; total of 3 components. Common tier can add or replace up to 1 component. Uncommon can add or replace 1-2 components. Rare does 2-3. Epic does 3-4. Legendary varies but can have up to 5. Pearlescent varies but can go up to 6.
Universal
Attribute Modifier
Damage
Force Increase
Large Area
Disorienting (stun chance)
Fuse
Timed/Impact (Default)
Sticky
Proximity
Delivery Method
Lobbed (default)
Rubberised (bounces till it hits something)
Rain (divides into 3-5 mini grenades mid flight and falls down sharply once triggered in flight. Damage is divided between each mini grenade.)
Type
Sprayer
Cloud
MIRV 2 child grenades produced
Rays 8 rays spread around detonation and each does grenade damage. Each ray strikes once and does not impart force. 4 ray increase per added.
Warhead
Explosive (Default)
Radiation
Cryo
Fire
Shock
Corrosive
Enhancement
Shrapnel- damaged objects and creatures create bullets that spread out from them.
Cloning - divides into two when thrown. Legendary cloning version divides based on distance.
Jumping - short time after detonation jumps up and detonates again. Does +20% damage the second time.
Transfusion- 30% of damage dealt is returned as health
Conducting- 30% of damage is returned as shield
Manufacturer specific:
ERD
Cloud and Sprayer are the same - creates a swirling tempest doing more damage closer to centre of effect.
Phasing- goes through inanimate objects including walls: costs 2 grenades. Distance traveled through solid objects causes premature detonation.
Disruptor- removes invisibility, prevents digistruction temporarily including teleports, and increases shield delay decreases shield rate temporarily.
Hyperion
Longbow
Singularity
Rays have -6% compounding damage penalty. Rays can penetrate, apply actual force, and are much wider.
Vladof
Cloning- divides into three with each having 66% effectiveness.
Bullet Sprayer- each grenade sprays bullets around it.
Rolling- wheeled self propelled grenade.
Atlas
Homing - note that this makes rain, rays, and other child grenades seek out enemies
Disorient- has increased force and slightly better stun chance and stun duration.
Nuke- increased area, damage, and does DoT costs 2 grenades
Torgue
Collision- rocket assisted grenade flight does impact damage on contact with target.
Cluster- MIRV does 50% reduced damage but +2 child grenades and each of those has its own child grenade. Each cluster adds +2 mirv and increases child grenade count by +1 for mirv grenades though damage is reduces by a further 10%.
Force and Area- are one component with enhanced effects and massive blast volume.
Tediore
Rain- 6 grenades but each grenade that hits the same target improves damage for all grenades that hit that target by 6% per additional grenade. (Lucky 7 Unique?)
Make it Rain- enemies struck drop additional ammo and money.
Cheap- costs 1/10 normal price.
Pangolin
Bouncy- bounces up to 3 times after initial detonation off creatures and objects and explodes each time it bounces.
Replicator- leaves behind a tiny grenade 5% damage and 20% radius each time this grenade bounces or jumps.
Jumping- does so twice and maintains forward momentum.
Ammo based on weapon type:
Small Caliber are pistol and Smg
Large caliber are rifle and sniper
Shells are shotgun and other medium projectile weapons
Heavy ammo applies to rockets and various assorted large weapons like miniguns (each ammo gives minigun 10 shots or something like that)
Eridium Shards apply to exotic weapons
Some weapons can switch fire modes and change what ammo is used.
Some weapons use more than one ammo type per shot.
Pistols have low shot volumes.
Snipers usually have high shot volumes.
Exotic weapons can have a primary and secondary element doing both at once, can have a chance to bypass shields, can warp space or gravity, or even greater effects like stopping time in the affected area. Typically use one ammo type and eridium shards.
Characters
Terrifying Tina (call me “Tiny” see what happens). Action Skill: Pocket Artillery line: Active weapon becomes a Grenades Launcher (increased grenade capacity, regenerate grenades, fires them. Skill line can add grenade and rocket criticals, regenerate heavy ammo, and can alter range/rate of fire/projectile speed for heavy weapons)
Explosive Personality Line: AS=Active Armor (Tina doesn’t believe in reactive, so this thing explodes to break up attacks and to blow up enemies. Skills add radiation, kinetic, and splash damage resistance, and increased damage threshold on nova, nova damage, radius, etc can have rocket pack while AA is active that converts heavy ammo into flight capability; over use causes massive explosion potentially killing Tina)
Chaos Line: AS=Explodidur (fires random melee weapons at enemies does benefit from melee mods and melee skill or ability triggers.) (can build Krazy stacks by killing targets or taking self damage. stacks can make splash areas much larger, bonus gun, melee, and splash damage, more melee and splash benefits than gun. Can be made to decrease enemy resistances. decreased accuracy including launcher or thrown grenades and does increased self damage).
Explodidur half damage benefits from melee, gun, and splash bonuses. Skill might restore full benefits to melee. Uses half rate of fire from guns and half attack rate from melee. Half projectile speed and half melee attack speed.
Ava
Action skill unlocks all 3 versions but can only use one at a time.
Phaselock ( levitate enemies and can be made to halt projectiles, amp damage of affected creatures, singularity, or taunt enemies onto targeted creature)object crushing/movement and prevent falling damage; size/weight/range limits based on level. Can make affected creature confused and irradiated.
Beam (shock and radiation; can be made to chain, splash, multiple homing balls that do less damage than beam, charge up) damage and projectile speed by level. Can sacrifice beam damaging capability to convert into healing and empowerment for allies.
Warped Area (creates an area that subtly buffs allies and hinders enemies. Skills can add impairments or add boosts. Can alter zone to follow Ava and builds into sacrifice all other effects to become a protective barrier. Gets larger with level up but not damaging, might proc status effects as % with skill)
Lesedi (African looking. Cyborg with connection to strange eridian artefact that interacts with technology. Objects affected by any skills have blue and purple lines of light running through them like the artefact.
Has to purchase separately but can have all skills at once. To start all skills share the same cool down and cannot be used concurrently.
Domination line Techno-possession: take over robots by touch, see through drones, and bypass security; reduces vendor costs and can gain weak point info about robots)
Creation line -Free Digistruction: can create small unique robot minions, items, and temporarily redistribute components from separate items; skills can decrease catch a ride and New U costs and optionally reveals component information about items)
Fortification line- Empowered Tech enhances other players or vehicles making their items stronger or performance better). Can effect temporary armour for players or add armour to vehicles. Can make it so created or dominated things benefit from Empowered Tech. All skills in this line offer slight survivability benefits to Lesedi.
Lesedi can have her artefact absorb a single lesser artefact regardless of its normal item type. Capstone ability for fortification line? Capstone for creation divorces cool downs from each other. Capstone for domination let’s any AS be used twice before going on CD in exchange for triple CD time. Skill for fortification line can supercharge shield to grant invulnerability? Must have shield?
0ne (Is 0ne a child of Zer0? Just get a 
as response. Cute flirty yandere version of Zer0, still just as deadly). (Yandere like ooh that man makes me want to drain him dry, and after I drink his blood he might even get a happy ending; I leave him alive.)
(can use multiple skills in exchange for giving up grenade or melee mods)
Shadow line- creates a holographic clone(s) and can switch the places, make digistruct, make multiple clones later, exploding clones. Shared invisibility with clones?
Precision line- Continuous melee override skill with dual claws and can climb faster with claws out. Skills offer critical bonuses, weapon handling, melee criticals, zoom benefits, chance to ignore shields, better accuracy while sliding Acrobatics skill- reduced accuracy loss while leaping, climbing, or jumping, increased jump height, better air control, climbing speed, slide distance, and reduces delay after leaping roll or slide.)
Stealth line (go invisible) can either do survival benefits while invisible or damage and accuracy benefits. Speed + better speed while invisible. Also handles enemy detection and noise made including shot volume at all times. Shared invisibility with clones?
Terra (big woman) (daughter of Salvador and Ellie?)
Only single action skill: Goliath Rage
Regains percentage of max health per kill.
Weapon Lust - Berserk can dual wield during GR, including two melee weapons or use gun and melee weapon. Ammo regeneration and gun benefits. Can be made to use improvised weapons like cars if big enough.
Rage line (Wrecking Ball while GR is active kills makes bigger, able to jump and fall farther, healthier, stronger ,and more damaging) (melee benefits and overall damage benefits, later gains speed benefits)
Titan Line Strength of Stone (while GR is active resist being moved or knocked up and gain damage threshold and kinetic resistance while in contact with the ground) survivability and lifting/throwing/jumping/leaping roll benefits (possible head butt while leaping?)
Expansion character?
DDD (not a comment on her chest size… or is it?)
Daughter of Dahl as “The Warmaster.” Passed over for generalship in Dahl’s armies by entitled older brother. Disaffected Dahl Daughter has drones that take different forms depending upon which skill is used. Drone has fuel limit. Fuel limit determines drone time and how long tank lasts.
Support line Drone is an ablative barrier that reduces projectile speed and follows her around. Can be commanded to follow someone else, guard an area and stay, and automatically attaches to any vehicle that she drives. lasts longer when mounted; cd unaffected?
Skills grant drone aura that increases healing effectiveness, drone drops healing items, barrier alterations, and team shield regen and capacity benefits. Fire support and commando Drones get shields and can use its shield to restore depleted shields. Make fire support drone drop boosters instead of mines; missing health, ammo, and small shield benefits for each booster. Sacrifice drone to second wind an ally. Grant shield mod benefits to barrier as capstone? Team accuracy, damage, and recoil reduction on shield or barrier break for 10 seconds; cool down of 30 seconds?
Munitions line Fire Support drone, ammo crate air drop on activation, that has basic minigun capabilities to start. Can be converted to digistruct ammo crate that opens automatically. Artillery/rocket/strafe bombing/beam weapon strikes happen as % proc with internal cool down.
Skills grant better gun damage, recoil, accuracy, projectile speed, handling, hits on shields have steeper enhancement curve, ammo capacity/ammo gained from pickup, and ammo regen, etc. Drone can be made to give ammo to others. Can be used to scatter mines. Drone kills restore fuel skill. Possible line of skills with munition splitting and ricochet in exchange for costing more ammo; proc 10% on critical strike?
Mechanics line: AS is commando drone that is invisible when not performing any actions, does vehicle and robot repair, and does status effect attacks; crowd control.
Skills grant marking/targeting for artillery strikes and can mechanise mines or render mines invisible so that they will follow enemies when they pop up. does vehicle upgrades, capstone can sacrifice drone to convert vehicle into a Dahl heavy tank temporarily. Sacrifice drone to convert runner into HumVee with added occupancy and armour. Item benefit skills: such as improving the benefits from grenade/melee mods. Barrier becomes damage amp shield with projectile speed benefits. Skills improve drone statistics; armour, speed, damage, rate of fire, accuracy, shield, damage threshold for barrier drone, ammo capacity, add alternate fire modes like napalm sprayer for munitions or makes invisibility work while attacking with commando drone. Better fuel consumption and bigger fuel capacity for all modes. Ejector seats: you and any allies inside a vehicle are launched clear of a vehicle instead of exploding on vehicle destruction.
Gauge would be a complex and fruitful mentor for all these characters.