Tomb Titivator
Posts: 911
Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36
wand mechs proposal
- A wand does not hold charges. Instead, a wand has a binary charged/inert state.
- Wands stack in the inventory. The number of charged and inert wands can be displayed as (2 charged, 1 inert) or (2/3). The stack can be zapped if it contains at least 1 charged wand.
- An inert wand cannot be zapped but becomes charged when you apply a scroll of recharging to the stack containing the inert wand.
- You would rarely want to drop some wands of one type but not others of the same type. However, this can still be accommodated by making #-dropping and #-picking prioritize charged or inert wands, so you could still turn your (5/9) stack into a (1/3) stack, if you really wanted to.
- Every time a charged wand is zapped, it has a fixed chance to discharge and become inert. This chance:
- would depend on the type of wand, e.g. 20% for hasting, 4% for flame.
- could depend on evocations skill, if desirable; probably not.
- could be higher (e.g. could be double or triple checked) if the wand type has not been identified through a scroll or through an evo-check while zapping. This is to shoehorn a use for the scroll of identification. Note that this system can apply to Box and Sack just as well.
- Box of beasts and sack of spiders can stack in the same way as wands. The only difference would be that they are always generated charged, get destroyed instead of becoming inert, and cannot be charged.
- Troves would always ask for charged wands, and could theoretically even ask for multiples.
- Pakellas would need to rethink his recharging ability. Suggestion: instead of Quick Charge, Pakellas lets you use potions of magic to directly recharge inert wands. Supercharging reduces (by a third?) a wand type's chance of becoming inert to a zap.
- Some Good Consequences: wand play is more random (you're never sure you'll have 2 more zaps from a single wand) and requires less micromanagement. Carrying multiple and fully charged wands has greater value, since they could become inert, one right after another. You never suffer from picking up a wand if you're already carrying another wand of the same type. The maximum number of charges and the number of charges that ?recharging adds collapse into a single variable (the chance to become inert), making wands simpler and less spoilery.
- Discussions question: when you zap a charged wand and happen to render it inert, should this still zap the wand, or should the wand fail to zap? Should this depend on whether the wand type is identified?