The Tavern

The way it works right now is the most realistic anyway. If you have 10 scrolls A, 5 scrolls B and 1 scroll C you're going to get scrolls A burnt more often because there are more of them. Makes perfect sense.

I quite like the idea of giving the player, when hit with an elemental attack, a durational enchantment which makes the destructible items unusable. This is simpler than targeting individual items: I'd imagine I'd feel the need to check my inventory which potions etc were affected, or even drop some useful item on floor to make it available even when encountering such attacks. Putting the enchantment on player rather than the items seems like a simple solution to these potential problems. It's also harsher on the player. (: Plus you can make being in certain locations, such as Coc, Geh and Ice Caves give the player that enchantment. I also liked the idea of electrical attacks disabling your wands. The problem with destructible strategic items also goes away.

I had a similar idea before, but it's more complicated/convoluted: only drinking a potion or reading a scroll makes your potions/scrolls vulnerable to item destruction. The story was that the potion compartment in their backpack has magical protection, which is broken for a while if you open it. This would be a short player enchantment. Thus your consumables are effectively disabled when the possibility of elemental attacks is around, unless you want to risk it. But I think the player-enchantment-when-hit idea is easier to understand and still has less oddities (such as the problem with strategic item destruction).

--Eino

random item destruction is a terrible mechanic in any game

@partial: I think that's an overgeneral statement.