Re: Call for mixed blessing-style jewellery and consumables

On 29 Apr 2008 Billy Bissette  wrote:

> Andrew Sidwell <takkaria@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in news:fv5flg$q6l$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> >> Armor and weapons could be consumable.  They could degenerate with
> >> use - how quickly would depend on how many/hard hits they take or
> >> give, on the item's quality,
> > 
> > I think this is less of a mixed-blessing idea and more a fundamental 
> > rework of how weapons or armour work.  To make it an interesting game 
> > mechanic, you would need some significant percentage of combat gear be

> > subject to wear and tear, and I think that's out of scope for V.
> 
>   It also is a very dangerous thing to implement.
> 
>   I believe Kamband is the variant I played that tried this?  (It was
> the same variant that made objects have a random material type, which
> led to some funny short item descriptions.)  Weapons simply wore down
> too fast.
> 
Yes, it was Kamband.

The problem in that case was aggravated by the additional innovation
that weapons could be made out of all sorts of materials; a sword made
of an organic substance would ultimately rot away (quite fast, in the
case of leather weapons!) while a mace made of crystal would be terribly
fragile. Meanwhile even ordinary steel blades wore away after only a few
blows. One was forever mortgaging one's soul to secure a supply of the
vital Scrolls of Repair Weapon, to avoid being left with a useless
stump.

The only weapons that didn't wear down were artefacts, but fortunately
the game was so unbalanced that it was generally possible to obtain an
artefact fairly rapidly :-)
-- 
Igenlode            Visit the Ivory Tower   http://ivory.150m.com/Tower/

     ** Melodrama is the art of knowing how precisely too far to go. **