The Tavern

When a stack of potions/scrolls is affected by cold/fire, its weight is doubled and the whole stack is cursed so it cannot be dropped on the ground. This can happen up to 4 times so after first "destruction" every potion/scroll in the stack weighs 8 instead of 4, after second "destruction" it is 16, then 32 and finally 64. No more than 64 (or perhaps 32 if 64 is too much). Scroll of remove curse can partially "fix" such stack by decreasing weight: 64 gets back to 32, 32 back to 16 etc.
Pros:
1) walking with too many items is still bad because you risk getting burdened which can be fixed by either consuming the items (reading/quaffing) or dropping other items like wands/food/evokables.
2) you still can have several potions of curing for your MUCK, 1 cure mutation, 1 restore abilities etc. though eventually it is going to weigh 64.
3) Str becomes more important
4) Scroll of remove curse becomes more important
5) New mini-game - what should I have for my Str 27 character, perhaps I should quaff some not very useful potions with 64 weigh.
Cons:
1) Extra work for developers
2) It is still optimal to drop consumables before fight. But it applies to non-cursed items only.

Just... why?
I don't think turning item destruction from an annoyance into an outright death sentence via a highly illogical an arbitrary mechanic is a solution to any of its percieved problems. In fact those problems are not only completely unaddressed, but actually severly exacerbated, since now carrying just the right amount of stuff is a matter of life and death rather than just optimization.

Well, this is not a final solution, just an idea which can be improved further in several ways:
1) Limit max weight of an item to 16.
2) Incremental increase: 4,8,12,16,20,24...
3) The same monster cannot affect the same stack more than once
4) Limiting max weight of the whole stack to something like 80
5) ...

The main advantage is that it does not destroy items you really need (like a single Blink or Fear) so there should be less unavoidable deaths.

Look, Crawl isn't a game about describing a sensible world, but this doesn't make any sense. My scrolls got hot, so their mass increases? What?

The real problem this idea has (besides being complicated) is that it takes the most annoying part of item destruction, the added inventory management overhead created by dropping items to avoid destruction, and multiplies it by adding a curse minigame and keeping all low-str builds from effectively using consumables.

Also, why is this in a new thread at all?

Ok, forget the idea.

XOM LOVES THIS!

Seriously, why would your MuCK even be carrying potions at all?

And on topic 1) why wouldn't you just post this in the ongoing item desctruction thread and 2) your idea doesn't seem to have much merit to me.

I posted it in a new thread because this is not a suggestion to remove item destruction.

I think we could just change the title of the other thread, or branch it.

Please remove the thread or move it to CYC.