Dungeon Master
Posts: 3160
Joined: Sunday, 5th August 2012, 14:52
Contaminate artifact property
It seems to me that the property works best if the following things are true:
1) using contaminate artifacts should be a choice, and the choice should be one with possible drawbacks.
2) Stopping use of the artifact should not instantly prevent all consequences of use.
To that end, let me propose something that's in between the old, terrible version and the new, harmless/terrible binary version: When you are wearing an artifact w/ this property, you gain 1 contamination every 1000 or so turns if you don't already have contamination. If you do already have contamination, when that contamination would decay it instead has a (number of contaminated artifacts / 5) chance of instead increasing by 1. Taking off the contaminated artifact multiplies your level of contamination by 2.
As a result, wearing it for an extended period would probably eventually slide you into yellow glow sometimes, particularly if you already do a lot of things that give light contamination now and then (spell failure, certain charms, potions of resistance), but would mostly be fine. If you try to manage the contamination too much by removing the artifact after a small amount of contamination lasts longer than expected (a possible sign that it's climbing upwards), then you run the risk of doubling it into yellow glow territory, prompting people to avoid micromanaging contamination by wearing/removing the item frequently.
Thoughts?