Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 3037
Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06
Friday, 11th July 2014, 00:56
evocable consumables
The removal of item weight and consumable destruction is mostly a convenience. A very nice, well-appreciated convenience. Stash management isn't completely dead, but at least I don't have to make a stash run every time an popcorn orc wizard randomly pops one of my important emergency consumables.
There's one implication of the change that I don't really like, though. I'll use the potion of haste for my examples, because it is a pretty extreme case. By the time I get to Lair, I usually have multiple potions of haste in my inventory. Sometimes I only have one, very occasionally I have some really stupid double-digit number of them. Before, I would carefully carry them one and at a time to protect them, and if I lost one to item destruction I would very gingerly extricate myself from the current predicament and return to my stash to replace it. It didn't happen often, but surprise monsters while I was returning to my stash were far more alarming than they would have been while I still had haste on tap.
Since the recent changes, potions of haste are basically as good as a wand of haste, except you can stack more than nine charges in one item slot. All characters other than mummies and formicids are nearly guaranteed to have the functional equivalent of a wand of haste in their inventory generate in various parts of the dungeon, so long as they are reasonably careful about using it. You will basically never run out, which means you never have to play without emergency haste available. This doesn't seem desirable.
Instead of a stack of potions, then, or even a wand, why not convert haste into an evocable item? 'This clock carries a charge of stored time. If you wind the clock, it will release this stored time to speed your actions and reactions. Once drained, the clock will slowly steal time from the souls of those who die until it is recharged.' As an evocable item that recharges from gained xp, the player is encouraged to use the ability because the recharge from gained xp goes to waste if the item has not recently been used. The player will have the option to press this button many times over the course of the game, and doesn't lose anything permanent for doing so. Pressing the button is fun! However, since an evocable item occupies its own slot and doesn't stack, the player who uses it loses access to its benefits for a span of gameplay, which simply doesn't happen if you have a stack of potions or a well-charged wand instead. There's an actual risk involved, and getting through a dense cluster of mid-game uniques and vaults with drained evocables might require some careful strategy, in comparison to just brute-forcing them all with a stockpile of the good consumables. If you want to have lots of haste available at once, you'll need to assign exactly that many precious item slots to the job.
Haste is obviously a good candidate to stop existing in most of its current forms, but most of the other buff and emergency scrolls and potions are also potential candidates. Anything that is detrimental to gameplay when the player can spam it might be a good candidate to be an evocable item instead. If it is desirable to maintain the form of a scroll or potion so mummies continue to be unable to quaff haste, then call them clay tablets or grails. Magical grails confer an effect on the quaffer, and refill themselves over time. Note that I am not calling for these items to require actual skill in evocations; I'm only calling for them to be drained with one use and then slowly recharge through gameplay. Current evocable items are excellent design and I think it would be good if more items worked the same way.
There's one implication of the change that I don't really like, though. I'll use the potion of haste for my examples, because it is a pretty extreme case. By the time I get to Lair, I usually have multiple potions of haste in my inventory. Sometimes I only have one, very occasionally I have some really stupid double-digit number of them. Before, I would carefully carry them one and at a time to protect them, and if I lost one to item destruction I would very gingerly extricate myself from the current predicament and return to my stash to replace it. It didn't happen often, but surprise monsters while I was returning to my stash were far more alarming than they would have been while I still had haste on tap.
Since the recent changes, potions of haste are basically as good as a wand of haste, except you can stack more than nine charges in one item slot. All characters other than mummies and formicids are nearly guaranteed to have the functional equivalent of a wand of haste in their inventory generate in various parts of the dungeon, so long as they are reasonably careful about using it. You will basically never run out, which means you never have to play without emergency haste available. This doesn't seem desirable.
Instead of a stack of potions, then, or even a wand, why not convert haste into an evocable item? 'This clock carries a charge of stored time. If you wind the clock, it will release this stored time to speed your actions and reactions. Once drained, the clock will slowly steal time from the souls of those who die until it is recharged.' As an evocable item that recharges from gained xp, the player is encouraged to use the ability because the recharge from gained xp goes to waste if the item has not recently been used. The player will have the option to press this button many times over the course of the game, and doesn't lose anything permanent for doing so. Pressing the button is fun! However, since an evocable item occupies its own slot and doesn't stack, the player who uses it loses access to its benefits for a span of gameplay, which simply doesn't happen if you have a stack of potions or a well-charged wand instead. There's an actual risk involved, and getting through a dense cluster of mid-game uniques and vaults with drained evocables might require some careful strategy, in comparison to just brute-forcing them all with a stockpile of the good consumables. If you want to have lots of haste available at once, you'll need to assign exactly that many precious item slots to the job.
Haste is obviously a good candidate to stop existing in most of its current forms, but most of the other buff and emergency scrolls and potions are also potential candidates. Anything that is detrimental to gameplay when the player can spam it might be a good candidate to be an evocable item instead. If it is desirable to maintain the form of a scroll or potion so mummies continue to be unable to quaff haste, then call them clay tablets or grails. Magical grails confer an effect on the quaffer, and refill themselves over time. Note that I am not calling for these items to require actual skill in evocations; I'm only calling for them to be drained with one use and then slowly recharge through gameplay. Current evocable items are excellent design and I think it would be good if more items worked the same way.
- For this message the author KoboldLord has received thanks: 3
- doubtofbuddha, Lasty, Patashu
