Barkeep
Posts: 4435
Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28
Manuals and buff potions
But! Those potions are complex and opaque. What do they actually do really? So, what if:
* Remove manuals
* Change !Might, !Agility, and !Brilliance to !Offense, !Defense, and !Arcana, each potion working by providing a strong, temporary boost to skills:
* !Offense boosts Fighting, UC, and all weapon skills
* !Defense boosts Armour, Shields, Dodging, Stealth
* !Arcana boosts all magic skills and probably Evocations and maybe Invocations
* Fighting, Spellcasting, and Evo could give +MaxHP or +MaxMP or not, depending if the potions should act more like Heroism or more like !Rage.
The boost should be large — +10 is a nice round number but there are lots of ways you could tweak, including changing the bonus for different skills. Players can see what happens so the mechanics don't need to be super simple. It seems broadly sane to let this push skills over 27 but maybe that would cause problems. Oka and Ash don't let you do this now.
Benefits: No more manuals, new potions are mechanically clear, you still get a way to manipulate skills.
Downsides: You might still carry a weapon that would be more useful under the influence of the potion, though you could already do that with brilliance and spells and I suspect there are cases where it makes sense to do that with weapons and !might right now.