Unrand: Plutonium Staff

[aracanid]

Basicaly a twin the the Plutonium Sword

+whatever staff
Antimagic brand; failed spellcasts by enemies have a 33% (50? 100?) chance of hitting them with transmutation miscasts
MR++
Spells cost only 1mp to cast
All miscasts have a chance of causing an additional transmutation miscast as well.
Reduced spell power
Reduced spell success rate
Causes heavy contamination when unwielded
Chaotic
stealth--

"You see here a brightly glowing staff (Contamination and -ve stealth). Hitting magicians with this will likely overload their magic beyond their control (Antimagic and miscast effect spell faliures) You feel that if you used your magic to cage the energys in this staff it would fuel your casting of spells as long as you sustained the containment (-ve Wiz kindof also explains the large loss of mana from the antimagic brand and 1mp spells). Attempting powerful spells with this would likely lead to a catastrophic chain reaction (-ve Archmagi). Enemy spells may unravel in the high energy fields surrounding this weapon (MR++)"

I kinda want to explain it as being some sort of fuel rod from a magical experiment, unfortunately rods already have a specific meaning . Anyway what are peoples thoughts on this, too powerful, too silly, hard to implement? I know this is cyc but semi serious theorycrafting going on over here

[Sar]

Well, firstly, it sounds like it has too much effects.

Secondly, it sounds a bit useless. I'm not sure what kind of character would want to use it.

Edit: Spellbinder is an anti-magic weapon (demon whip) that enhances enemy "miscasts" (well, regular anti-magic just makes monster skip a turn, Spellbinder makes them suffer actual miscasts), it's simpler than this proposal, more usable and more interesting IMO (since enemy suffers miscasts that depends on the school of spells it casts).

[and into]

An unrandart staff with contam on unwield that reduces the cost of spells could be cool. Those are the things that are unique about the proposal. (Well, the spell cost reduction is, but then if you had an effect like that, you wouldn't want people swapping it around all the time, so contam on unwield makes sense.) But reducing all spells to 1 (but greatly weakening them and giving --wiz) would be lopsided and tend to be awkward.

Perhaps damage it does could be based on MP? Or, more simply, attacks costs X MP but does heavy AC-ignoring damage? (Like an electrocution brand that always triggers, and checks no resistance.)

You could tack on MR++ too, give it +7 enchantment or something.

So putting it all together...

  Code:

Cigotuvi's Twisted Asklepian
+7 staff , MR++, Contam.
Spells of level 2 and greater cost 1 less mp to cast.
On every attack that lands, the Asklepian will consume 0 to 2 MP (equal chances) in order to infuse any struck by it with vile chaotic energies that produce horrible contortions and physical harm.

(Something like (MP consumed)*2d7 for damage seems about right. One third of the time you'd do no additional damage, one third of the time you'd do 2d7 additional damage, and the rest of the time 4d7. Perhaps chaotic (silver-vulnerable) enemies should be immune to this damage...?)

[aracanid]

Sar, using twice as many (slightly weaker) iron shots but not being able to use LCS seems like a reasonable trade off to me, maybe I'm wrong .

So the train of thought I had to come up with this was

• Lets have an antimagic weapon for magic users to use
• Ok how do we convince them to give up 1/3 of their mana? Step down the mana costs of spells somehow, lets say all of them cost 1 mana
• So now powerfull mages get much more out of their mana pool. Too much I think, so introduce some cost to wielding the weapon.
• Contam is nice but doesn't penalise you while wielding it
• So make the spells weaker and harder to cast to make up for the ability to cast much more of them

From this I had something like this

  Code:

+7 Antimagic Staff
All spells cost 1mp
Spells are harder to cast and less powerful.

My problem was with a mage with 17 mana being able to cast firestorm, LCS and the like 17 consecutive times. and something like Sif channeling giving you another 4 or 5 additional casts of these very powerfull spells for only 1 turn of channeling, Veh would also give crazy good returns on your mana.

This was added as flavour just to tie in with the plutonium weapon theme (as well as MR++)

  Code:

tMut on hit vs magic user
tMut on miscast on wielder
Contam
Chaotic
Stealth--

A different way to stop mass high level spells would be maybe adding +1 glow cost (% chance raising with spell level) to every successfull cast would be enough of a deterant that the spell casting wouldn't need to be constrained? You get much more late game firepower at the cost of having to push yourself into mutation terratory every time you cast a lot of powerfull spells? Extended you will have rMut anyway so maybe this works maybe it doesn't.

Edit: That Cigotuvi's staff sounds quite nice as well, attractive to wield but that on hit effect seems to be more of a deterant than a good thing. Assuming you are using this to hit popcorn I wouldn't want to be low on mana if something big turns up.

[Sar]

Low-power iron shots are pretty damn awful. Bad damage, and they miss all the time.