Gloves of Infusion

[Hurkyl]

Infusion is a glove ego which has the following effects. When equipped or unequipped, your MP is drained to zero. On every melee attack, roll

  Code:

Y = Min(1dX, CurrentMP)

You lose Y MP, and your attack does Yd3 additional damage. The value X is computed by

  Code:

X = ExperienceLevel * WeaponMinDelay * 0.25

and randomly rounded up or down in the usual way. With the numbers given, with a delay 0.7 weapon at XL 14, the average effect would be to train 1.725 MP and do 3.45 extra damage. The effect caps at XL 27 where it would average a 2.8625 MP drain for 5.725 damage.

Rationale: it comes up a lot that things are hard to balance because many characters aren't spending their MP, and so balancing things with their MP cost makes them (allegedly) too powerful in the hands of such characters.

One way to ameliorate this problem is to give more characters reasons to spend their MP. Guardian Spirit is almost unique in this regard; this proposal attempts to expand this class of items.

The numbers are chosen with a brief amount of consideration at trying to be more powerful than gloves of archery but less efficient and substantially less powerful than casting conjurations.

Addendum:

If this proposal is interesting, then how this interacts with axes needs to be considered.

[daggaz]

Anything that makes using axes in a crowd more desirable is ...desirable.

[dracos369]

How would this interact with AC?

[Hurkyl]

How would this interact with AC?

I envisioned either acting like a slaying bonus, or doing damage separately but ignoring AC (like brand damage). So infusion is probably not the best name and some bikeshedding would be required.

If the bonus damage can be reduced by AC, it would probably need to do more damage.

[Quazifuji]

Is there any other effect in the game whose damage scales based on weapon min delay? Normally, it seems like it's part of the game's design (whether intentional or unintentional) that one of the perks of faster weapons is that they benefit more from flat damage bonuses. If there aren't other effects like this, it might be a bit confusing/spoilery that this is the only bonus that works this way. I might be in favor of removing the min-delay scaling and just letting these gloves be especially powerful on fast weapons, just like rings of slaying, electrocution brands, or, for that matter, the Infusion spell.

That said, I do like the idea. Having more items like Amulet of Guardian Spirit that give mana uses for non-casters is interesting, and these gloves seem like a reasonable way to do that.

[Hurkyl]

I'm just wary of allowing them to do too much damage; maybe I'm being overly conservative in that regard.

[Hurkyl]

As written in the opening post, it allows people to conserve their mana by using throwing or switching to a ranged weapon. If this is undesirable (and I think it is), it could be made to trigger on ranged attacks too.